Pastor Evan is in jail. Oh, he’s out now? Gees, things move fast around here- trying to keep up with inflation, I suppose. This time, sadly, Evan doesn’t have the sort of support he had before from Zimbabweans, because being the dotards that we are (I just had to use that word after I heard it in the Trump vs Kim Jong Un war of words. What a gem, right!? What a gem!)… ok, we’re not dotards – not all of us – but we only support things that are sexy and easy. When it becomes hard we quit. When it gets real we run. The moment Evan stops resonating with our Hollywood-created ideals of what a hero is, we abandon him. We want leaders who can lead courageously and relentlessly be on point, but we are afraid to follow and support them persistently. Yes, we should question, yes we should criticise, but to dump someone for their first sign of weakness is the mindset of gold diggers who expect someone else to provide all the strength, all the answers or, in a relationship, all the damn material resources.
Instead of holding Evan to account, we turned and bolted, because when we didn’t have him as a leader, when he was in the USA for those few weeks, we suddenly realised that we had to be the voice. We had to be the faces of this flag and of protest and it freaked us out like the contents of a pit latrine.
The only thing Zimbos support unreservedly, unquestioningly is English soccer. If Evan played for Arsenal or Man U, we’d be cheering him on even if the flag he had around his neck had red white and blue colours.
Talking about supporting unreservedly, I support my man Ex-Q, but that video with Lulu Diva is below par man. What’s with the auto-tune my guy? And if you’re going to collaborate with with someone all the way from Tanzania, make sure the video has a dope script and that the other artist WORKS for it as well. Lulu Diva didn’t really work in that video. She just dropped a few lines and appeared in a revealing outfit – as if that sort of thing excites us anymore.
Ex Q, sha What is this?
Last week, Zimbabweans suddenly seemed to wake up to the fact that things in our country are bad, so bad that we all started having nightmares about 2008 – that unforgettable year when the Zimbabwe dollar became totally meaningless and when the supermarkets emptied out, leaving us all shopping in alleyways.
“2008 is coming back!” I saw people post on their timelines over and over. I even saw two very well written articles by some very intelligent people about the return of the 2008 scenario.
People speak of the horror of having to line up for fuel again and of prices going up in the shops. Ruvheneko Parirenyatwa tweeted that she was looking for diesel. Edith WeUtonga spent hours looking for fuel so she could attend a show and people are complaining all over Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Nah fam, you got it wrong. This is not 2008. This is much worse. It’s worse because we went through 2008, didn’t fix our problems and hoped that somehow we could miraculously escape a repeat situation. It’s worse because if you are among the original crop of born frees, you were 28 years old in 2008. You had no house, you had not achieved any of your dreams, but you could tell yourself and people that you were young and had time. All you needed was the economy to change and you’d get things right.
Now you’re 37 fam! You and I are watching our dreams slip away. We’re married (or unmarried and wondering when, or if, it will happen), we have less energy than we did ten years ago. We have more responsibilities and we look around the world and see that our peers who left the country have done so much better than us in every way and feel a sense of regret that we stayed, anger that we didn’t do something and hopelessness that it will ever change.
We watch the days go by and see peers die, and shudder to think that we too will die before we see the Zimbabwe of our dreams.
It’s worse because the kids who are becoming adults now have only ever known a country of blackouts and inflation and broken dreams. They celebrate when electricity comes back. They get excited when they find a safe route around a pothole. And at the same time, their biggest ambition is to leave Zimbabwe.
Yes, I know, this is an entertainment website. That’s the entertainment fam, the circus of reality.
The turd on the cake is that in 2008, we had hope. We all pinned our aspirations on the MDC and believed Tsvangirai and his team would lead us to the promised land of Zimbabwean utopia. We had unity in our opposition of what we believed was wrong, now we don’t even know who the opposition is.
I don’t know about you, but hope is the light that makes any darkness bearable. Without it, we are sitting ducks – in the dark.
I wish you had been at Alfred Kainga’s show over the weekend; the laughter would have balanced out the grimness of these words today. I’m probably going to get fired cause my brief is to write satire in a humorous way, but I find no humour in the nonsense I see around me. Not today.
Now, Ruvhi, where’s that diesel again?
