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PAVs love their neighbours - Only those that aren't ZANU-PF
Rejoice Ngwenya
July 08, 2013

I soliloquize while sitting in a rattling old minibus on my way home. Had she been alive, my friend and freedom writer Luphi Mushayakarara would have probably put it this way: “Like you, I’m also a 53 year-old victim of 89 year-old Robert Mugabe’s insidiously incapacitating 33-year dictatorship.” In true no nonsense Luphi-takes-no-prisoner style, she would have sarcastically added: “If you don’t understand the meaning of this phrase, it’s not my problem you are devoid of basic English language skills!”

In many ways, I have subconsciously taken up this acerbic, cynical, affectionless genre. Unless we are saints, or the Son of God, being victims of a violent dictatorship drains us of all our human affection. It becomes legitimate- almost a compulsive right - to express outrage. If you for once tolerate an oppressor, they misinterpret your humanness for submission. They oppress you more.

I for one have absolutely no problem expressing rage at ZANU-PF, especially when it comes to voting. I have the constitutional right to use my ballot paper as a tool for uttermost contempt, resentment and abhorrence of the ideals, institution and doctrine of anything that represents or symbolises ZANU-PF. And this is documented. If by act of commission or omission someone has missed that in the past ten years of my writings, it is not my fault they are devoid of basic English language skills!

My ire does not strictly fall under the category of hate speech. Not loving something cannot be equated to hating it. Hatred is a negative force that consumes both victim and perpetrator. Mine is calculative indifference, not an expression of hatred. It is a state of defined predisposition. It is possible not to love ZANU-PF without hating them.

The good thing is I am not the sort of victim who cowers behind the proverbial burning bush, arms covering my head and waiting for the fatal divine blow. No! If you have never met a ‘pro-active victim’ [PAV], you have just encountered one. PAVs walk about defiantly adorned with the type of head gear that ancient Roman Gladiators put on a few minutes before taking to the Coliseum. A PAV chides ZANU-PF for the land ‘reform’ and ‘indigenisation’ illusions. PAVs despise illegitimate presidential elections run with fake voters’ rolls. A PAV turns off ZBC stations as soon as they start demonising progressive activism. PAVs buy The Herald, Chronicle and before even reading them, slice those ZANU-PF ‘newspapers’ into A4-size sheets and donate them for use in rural pit latrines.

PAVs will always raise the issue of Gukurahundi, and enquire why some ICC rooms at The Hague are still vacant while perpetrators masquerade as ZANU-PF election candidates. A PAV who lost his commercial farm will keep knocking doors at the IMF and World Bank to convince them that compensation and restitution are part of Zimbabwe’s resumption of normal relations with the Bretton Woods Institutions. PAVs that lost relatives, homes, limbs, virginity and property at the hands of ZANU-PF thugs in 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 must approach the new Constitutional Court for compensation.

PAVs whose personal and corporate financial assets evaporated due to Gideon Gono’s one trillion percent inflationary shenanigans must sue him for incompetence. In short, all I am saying is as a PAV of proper mental disposition, I have a constitutional right not to be associated with, alternatively not to love, issue plaudits to the archaic institution that is called ZANU-PF.

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