Perhaps hope is a malaise, but I don’t know what else to offer right now…?

I came home to vent my spleen at my keyboard, working off battery power as our electricity supply has been sporadic to put it mildly. I have been reading through the comments to my last blog and I feel both empowered and entirely frustrated by the comments on the blog site.

Perhaps hope is a malaise, but I don’t know what else to offer right now…?

Should we, at this late stage in the drama, send out the cry for people to take up arms? Hasn’t there been enough violence? Do we want to descend into yet another war torn African state?

Right now, sitting comfortably at my desk, my own answer to those questions is an agonised, YES,  but not for the war-mongering reasons you may assume. It would be better to die a quick death by a bullet, than watch my children starve, or hunt dogs to roast over the fire – now a sickeningly common occurrence in our ravenous country.

Right now I would rather swiftly end the misery than experience the agony of a parent who spends every last cent to get to a hospital for a sick child only to discover that there are no drugs, no doctors, nobody who actually cares.

But who am I to tell the nation that they must die for democracy?

It is so easy for us, the armchair activists, to level criticism at Zimbabweans and claim what we need is an attitude change.

We don’t have time for such a luxury – that will take generations.

How do you change a deeply entrenched cultural heritage that demands absolute veneration for the elders, or the chief, or for that matter anyone in authority, from policeman to pastor to MP? How do you change overnight thousands of years of teaching that dictates that women and children may not, under any circumstance, question authority, that they must drop to their knees in the presence of anyone deemed “higher” than them?

Gogo has long complained about how useless the chief in her rural home is.

He is a beneficiary of state patronage, given a new 4×4 when he doesn’t even have a driver’s license and only uses the car as an office, parked in the shade of a fig tree at his homestead, receiving his subjects while seated at the wheel.

Absurd but true.

I asked her if her fellow villagers feel the same as her and when she answered an unequivocal yes, I asked why they don’t just get rid of him. Send him packing on his way. She was mortified: you just can’t do that.

A seasoned democracy activist attended the “historical” signing ceremony last week and told me that when Bob got up to rant, even slumped over the podium, his ascent brought total and fear-filled silence to the audience.

It was only when a woman in the front, apparently elderly and obviously courageous, shouted “nhema” (liar) far into his speech, that a modicum of heckling and booing ensued. It is the ancient tradition of respect for the elders that keeps him entrenched.

Another friend, one of the many single mothers, has her two younger children enrolled at a government primary school down the road. As I type they are sitting in their classroom, bright and eager to conquer the challenge of reading, writing and arithmetic; but guess what? They have not had a teacher since last term.

Yesterday, the principal was stationed at the gate warning parents that their children will not be allowed back into school until they have paid the top-up fee of $10 000. The schools only opened 3 weeks ago and the parents dutifully paid the $5 000 fee. Now they are already demanding a top-up. In addition the parents have also been told they have to pay transport allowance of $500 per week per child.

Do the maths: a one way trip by chovva is $500. That means the teacher is spending a lot of time on the back seat of a chovva, as each one should receive the equivalent of 40 trips per week. No wonder they aren’t at school, they are too busy joy-riding around the city!

Added to this single mother’s problem is the fact that the school have told her that she cannot pay by cheque. There is no cash in Zimbabwe, and I mean none.

She came to see me on her way home yesterday and when I told her to refuse to pay, keep the kids at home she was, like Gogo, mortified. She is one of many of Zimbabweans who pretends that all is normal – typical ostrich syndrome. By sending the kids to school every day, at vast expense, she deludes herself they may imbibe a bit of learning from the ancient desks they spend their days at, waiting and HOPING for a teacher to come and guide them.

I despair at the charade that is playing out in Zimbabwe.

It is time to stop paying taxes, buying government papers, supporting any government institutions and by default keep Gono and his ilk in the driving seat.

I know I sound confused, on the one hand adamant that change in attitude is impossible, on the other hand I continue to hope that Zimbabweans will end the malaise of apathy and passivity.

I wish I had the courage to move from armchair observer to megaphone activist.

This entry was posted by Still Here on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.