The Land of Make Believe

While our so called leaders continuously play tug-of-war, back and forth with the old reigning champion team unfairly stacked, the rest of Zimbabwe watches, powerless, but at the same time pretending all is normal.

The backbone of our nation, those who still hold on to the few jobs left, continue to trudge to work, manning their stations at abandoned hotels, echoing shops, and factories in industrial sites now quiet, no hum of machinery to assail their ears. Workers who pretend that the long walk to pretend-jobs are worth it.

Zimta and Ptuz have finally come together to condemn government destruction of the precious teaching profession and are declaring 2008 the great year of non-learning. But tomorrow, parents, who once benefitted from the proudest education system in African, will once again send their little ones off to schools with no teachers, books, water in the taps or examinations to prepare for, their bellies grumbling , and the only thing they have to look forward to is a game of soccer in unkempt fields.

Gideon Gono, the great rapist of the economy, magnanimously increased withdrawal amounts from the ATMs, but in reality he is methodically cutting off the populations last bid for stocking their empty pantries. But the nation continues to queue, often discovering their bank accounts have run into arrears from the outrageous charges being levied. Everyone doggedly and passively holds on to their place in the queue pretending that the paper they may or may not get actually hold some kind of value.

Our farms lie parched and windswept, but still invasions are led by bullies intent on grabbing the little left in production.

The public media, ah, they are the greatest makers of myth. They report on business deals, government promises and diplomatic offensives. If one were to believe them then this country is a great haven of success and prosperity. Yet, Zimbabweans continue to passively swallow and keep their mouths shut.

Then we have the police, the armed forces, the bloated and incompetent civil service, whose main job it is to ensure the charade of normality prevails.

The popularly elected party is still dubbed the opposition; the Prime Minister accepts the empty title designate, and the illegitimate regime-backed ministers carry on with business as usual, and on Tuesday our esteemed parliament will once again open its doors. No doubt the normal fiasco of pomp and ceremony will prevail, perpetuating the fantasy that all is well in the seat of power.

Once again the mad ogre has managed to dupe us all in to giving the regime legitimacy and we, the people of Zimbabwe, watch awe stricken with deafening silence as the great puppet-master makes his subjects dance to his tune.

This entry was posted by Still Here on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.