The Phone Call

You wait and wait until waiting becomes part of your everyday life. It is like waiting for the second coming of Christ.You wait for a phone call – you will never receive.You only expect it will ring. But the stubborn reality knocks hard on your expectant soul. The phone never rings. Your circle of friends has also become smaller. They used to call you – but they have long abandoned calling you. You stare and gaze at your mobile.You just expect to hear that voice, and the Victorian title that always goes with such formal telephone calls

‘How are you Sir? We are calling you for an interview’.

But soon you realise you are leaving in Cuckoo land. This is only but the figment of your imagination. It is an undying and craving for that moment. A moment that never comes.You feel disillusioned, betrayed, hopeless and worthless.You see others driving early in the morning – driving to work.You see others clad in tie and suits – clutching briefcases and folders.You also imagine – one day under the sun, ‘It will be Me’.

Upon realising that it will take years to receive the phone call, you end up doing all the menial jobs.You end up going into the so called entrepreneurship. Not out of personal choices but just to keep yourself financially liquid.You end up selling airtime vouchers/credit for others to top up their mobile phones and for them to make phone calls.You stand by the roadside running to motorists with airtime credit.

They never know you are a holder of some prestigious academic qualifications. They view you as one of the school drop-outs or the ordinary level graduate. You are even ashamed of mentioning that you are a University graduate a holder of a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). Kudos to Strive Masiyiwa  for creating such a huge employment for the thousands of youths through airtime selling.

You only wish one day, you will receive a phone call. A call that will change your life for the better.You try to drown yourself into faith and hope, yet time is moving at a breakneck speed.You had ambitions of starting a family – but without the phone call it’s all proving to be a big gamble. A gamble that you will not afford to attempt.You only wish in the best of times, in the fullness of time all shall be well.

It is a painful reality that you have to live with.You hold your mobile (NOKIA 3310) and you realise there is no missed call. But with this thing called hope, you still believe,
God’s time is the perfect time.

Not Guilty

He was wearing a khaki over-sized prison garb. I tried to avoid giving him a second look. The more I tried, the more tears started streaming down the contours of my cheeks. Many thoughts came to my mind, the ill-cooked porridge, typhoid, diarrhoea, the lice infested cells and the danger of being sodomised.

He tried to fake a smile – but I knew deep down he was hurting. Many years were passing by. Each and every passing year had a hardening effect on him – but he never forgot or stopped praying. He even became more prayerful than before. Nhamo was a young man who had mastered well the art of kneeling down.

Nhamo was a very kind-hearted guy who always radiated a contagious smile, he had rare display of kindness and natural and immeasurable love for people. He was one of the few souls around the neighbourhood. He was more concerned with his small business enterprise than in sitting in the street corners and smoking marijuana than most of us. He operated a small shop. Nhamo always made it a routine – to smile to his customers. Some days when I just felt low, I would just make it a point to take a stroll down the street up to his shop. At times I would just buy candy for R5 (five South African rands). His smile would brighten my day. I would go back to my cramped one room feeling rejuvenated.

It was close to 3 days without seeing him behind the counter. The fruit vendors told me they saw him in handcuffs and leg irons being frogmarched into the police van. I sensed trouble. He was framed for a crime he did not commit.Friends and relatives used to frequent the Remand Prison. As time passed by – they started coming once in a week, once in a month and once in a year and eventually they stopped. I always made it a point to see him once every week. Years seemed to have dragged slowly.

On a sombre and heavily overcast one Saturday morning I woke up to the shocking news that Nhamo was no More.
Such is life when the innocent rot and die in prison. Nhamo left a void which is irreplaceable. We were pained, we cried, we grieved but we had to learn to adjust to live with the painful loss. We know no amount of words will ever bring him back.

It is our daily prayer that his soul has found serenity in the silence of death.

Hate Has No Cure

There are times when one wonders – where do broken hearts go? Are there spare parts for broken hearts? It is when one crave and long for the lost love. When, one’s mind goes in a full circle searching for those long gone nesting stories, the long waits of a lover, the good times and of course – the widening gulf between the ‘so called’ inseparable lovers.

When one’s mind dissect through the sands of time, the painful reality of lost love, love that was discovered, nurtured and lost – lost but never found. What’s left are only dreams, meandering thoughts, empty, vague and slippery memories.

When she says, ‘I just need a break’ or when he says ‘Let us just be friends’ it is only but a lighter way of expressing that your worlds are now worlds apart. When one echo the statement, ‘you are a nice person, but we can’t be together- I wish you well in your love life’, then you know the romance and love has gone. Machiavelli was right, in life there is a thin line between love and hate.

All love shifts and changes, feelings change, memories fade and love vanishes in thin air. Many have experienced heartaches – many have never moved ahead. Some have developed hate and some believe love is but a curse!‘Let us be friends, I wish you well’ – never believe them.

Listen to the late Sam Mtukudzi

Listen To Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner

Madonna

Why I find it Difficult to listen and believe politicians

Why I find it HARD and DIFFICULT to believe them

Lying is part of their occupational induction

It is in their DNA system

When they fall sick they fly to developing and developed countries  South Africa is their first port of call.

Some even consider flying to the East Asian countries, Malaysia and Singapore ad infinite

This is the norm rather than the exception with most political leaders across Sub-Saharan Africa.

When you fall sick you die in your poor hut or in a remote rural clinic or in an urban referral hospital with no drugs – thanks to the abundance of pain killers and paracet that never run out of supply.

They give you food hand-outs in the run up to elections. But after elections the reality crystallises and strikes you like a bolt of lightning!They dish out housing stands in the pre – election era – they destroy those houses (they say they are regularising and demolishing ‘illegal structures’. They never stop to amaze me, they ‘illegalise’ what they would have ‘legalised’. Such a tragedy – save us the bureaucracy, internal ‘politics’ of administration and the flowery semantics about legality and illegality within the Urban Councils Act, Rural District Councils Act and Regional Town and Country Planning Act. (regularise– who cares what it means).

They tell you to watch the Dead national Television – yet their mansions conspicuously stand unique with the large-sized DSTV satellite dishes. You watch 100% local content – they watch the global breaking news.They slash and write off residents electricity bills when elections are near – they don’t address the viability challenges facing the power company. Afterwards the citizens are induced to more power cuts. Electricity supply remains epileptic.

Oftentimes we hear them saying ‘our local universities are the best’ – and ironically and painfully you never find their children in such local universities. You only find them in foreign universities, South Africa, of late in countries like Australia and now in the far East. The poor you are on your Own – Steve ‘Bantu’ Biko was right.

They promised 2 265 million jobs  over the next five years – yet statistics from the labour union show that, rather 300 people are losing their jobs weekly. They tell you ZIMASSET is a Godsend policy document – never mind the contents! But the poor are tired of hearing such loud-sounding nothings – they said the same with other previous policy documents (STERP) may quickly come to mind.

They tell you there is a lot of investment – when the reality on the ground points to the fact there is disinvestment. You then tend to wonder the Gods Must be Crazy! They preach against Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) they talk about de-linking with Bretton Woods Institutions arguing that such institutions perpetuate a continued stranglehold on African economies. Thus perpetuating neo-colonialism. The next morning you find them with a begging bowl – literally kneeling down to beg the IMF  and World Bank for bailouts.

You hear them refuting claims that diamond revenue is not flowing into the treasury – the next morning you see them making a somersault (noting that the treasury is receiving very little amounts of diamond revenue). Who to believe now? You hear them saying we hate foreign powers since they will meddle in our internal affairs – thus meddling in our sovereignty. Yet we see the same politicians arguing for the continued use of the currency of other sovereign countries (US dollar and the South African Rand). So who is fooling who? Isn’t this equal to the usurpation of economic sovereignty?.

We read latest reports such as, Troubled Water in HRE.pdf indicating that the urban poor have succumbed to diarrhoea and other water-borne related deaths. Yet the filthy rich politicians have boreholes and they drink bottled water! Most of the African countries (Zimbabwe) sadly rank low in the recently published report on the 2013 Corruption Index Perceptions.

That’s Africa for us. They call it Africa – we call it home. They call them politicians – we call them hypocrites. After all politics have become a career and a source of livelihood.

Chinua Achebe was right when he rightly pointed out such contrast in A Man of the People. Let his soul rest in Eternal Peace. May his dear soul find serenity in the silence of Death?