Dire straits
For the majority of Zimbabweans it seems as though suffering and day to day hardships have become normal as people continue with their day to day business, like all is well. I feel that somehow we as a people should take decisive action and reclaim what belongs to us rather than settle for suffering in silence.
We are being held at ransom by an administration that is illegal, that lost the only credible election held since 1980 and went on to withhold the results for a month while rigging was carried out, culminating into a bloody one man runoff that witnessed a lot of innocent lives being lost and livelihoods forever changed. We as people have to do something rather than vest our trust in bodies like SADC, the AU and UN as we hold our destinies in our own hands.
Life has become unbearable for the majority of the people and those who can bail out and immigrate to foreign countries are doing so.
Yesterday droves of desperate people endured the pouring summer rains as they stood in winding queues in an effort to obtain either an emergency travelling document or passport at Harare’s passport.
The remainder of my friends who I was with in college are now preparing to leave the country as the future remains bleak. Industry in Zimbabwe has come to a crushing standstill and the only professional people who are able to survive are those working for NGOs and being paid in foreign currency. Unfortunately not all of the people can work for NGOs and the only way out is to move out of Zimbabwe.
Hope is almost non-existent on Harare streets as talks are scheduled to resume next week between the warring parties. People no longer refer to them as talks, but jokes, as they no longer believe that a viable solution to lift the country out of the current mess is going to be decided on.
The cholera outbreak in Harare was at first denied as existing by the Zanu PF administration when the first reports of deaths surfaced and if something had been done then more lives would have been saved. Its very sad that the administration plays politics with people’s lives on a daily basis and don’t care about the people’s welfare. If there were diamonds in Budiriro then something would have been done a long time ago.
I came across a relative of mine who is a nurse at Parirenyatwa Hospital and resides in Budiriro 4 and she told me that the situation was dire as people were dying in large numbers on a daily basis. She told me that the situation was a time-bomb waiting to explode as some of the hardest hit areas had gone for close to 7 years without clean running water and the sewerage infrastructure long crumbled. In an open area between Budiriro 4 and 1 streams of raw sewerage flow and close to the streams are the watering holes where people get water from and the fields where they do their urban farming. Parents are no longer allowing their children to play outside due to the Budiriro outbreak and police have shutdown completely all forms of street vending, something they would have done long back to curb the outbreak if the administration had acknowledged it.
We today find ourselves at dire straits due to the Zanu PF way of doing business, held hostage in our own country and dying in droves due to a treatable disease, cholera. Service delivery is in ruins and people are unnecessarily dying while those who hijacked the reigns of power stick to their guns and continue playing the politics of intolerance and greediness. God help us.
November 21st, 2008 12:29
‘God helps those who help themselves.’
Make a decision, Zimbabwe. Do you want ‘peace,’ or do you want ‘freedom’? If you want both, then understand that freedom is moral, while peace is merely an ideal. 200 years ago, Kant created the formula for achieving world peace: Achieve world freedom first.
Martin Luther King and Gandhi were not murdered because they were men of peace; they were murdered because they were men of freedom.
Hegel wrote that only by a willingness to risk one’s life is freedom won.
Be non-violent, like King and Gandhi. But be militant, like King and Gandhi. Perhaps secret militancy is best, at first.
Adopt a color for your symbol of freedom. Since blue is the color of the universal sky, why not ‘blue’ as the color for a freedom philosophy for Zimbabwe? Blue shirts. Blue blouses. Blue bracelets, blue earrings. Blue scarfs; any patch of blue will do. Adopt a freedom hope phrase, such as “Roar like the lion, thunder like the Falls,” or “First freedom, then peace.” Carefully pick a symbol for expressing your drive for freedom, one which can be seen in public but which has a double meaning, such as an ‘umbrella’ or a picture of ‘Victoria Falls.’
And by all means, secretly recruit policemen and army troops to your freedom cause; they will become fierce defenders of your freedom once it is won.
Finally, tell EVERYONE: Freedom has to be won, peace without freedom is known as ’slavery.’
November 21st, 2008 14:38
the blue movement has my support!
November 21st, 2008 17:17
Yah as long as we die in silence or talk and talk without a decision…we will all die in silence and die holding or keyboards typing nothing but excercising our knowledge on blogs,why can’t u stand up and fight u cowards,we women hav march and been detained bur u men of Zim are busy typing .ocwards.Face death and die in peace and lets see who wins Mugabe or you.Stand up a die fighting like a man….
November 22nd, 2008 14:24
We already have RED for the MDC… and where would we get money to buy a blue scarf! get real…
November 22nd, 2008 18:30
Tatenda:
You make my point. ‘Red’ is NOT the color of freedom. Red is the color of Christianity (Prince of Peace), the color of war (blood), and the color of Marxism/socialism.
Green is the color of Islam (a desert religion) and of environmentalism.
Black is the color both of anarchism and power. But blue is the color of the sky, a universal feature of the entire blue planet, because ocean water is blue.
As for the cost of a blue scarf: Why buy a new scarf? If anyone in Zimbabwe is more worried about the cost of wearing a piece of blue than a piece of red, I’d suggest they have a personal psychology which appreciates ‘peace’ more than ‘freedom.’ Mr. Mugabe–any tyrant–depends upon peace-lovers keeping him in office; he will fiercely oppose freedom-lovers, because they represent an end to his dictatorial rule.
It’s your country; you choose. Red ideology, or blue philosophy?
November 23rd, 2008 04:51
I am sure that ‘freedom’ was also very much on the mind of the two Elders, Jimmy Carter (ex-President of America) and Kofi Annan (ex-Secretary General of the United Nations), when they tried to obtain a visa to go to Zimbabwe this week to to help with the political situation there. But, exactly according to form, I have just read a report that Mugabe simply refused to give them one and refused the planned delegation’s entry.
If that isn’t perfect proof of what Mugabe is about I don’t know what is! Here are two very experienced men of the world and part of the distinguished team of Elders, whose only objective is to help and bring their experience to bear in the world’s troublespots, and Mugabe refuses even their simple entry into the country. Shame on the tyrant! He cares not one tiny jot about ‘his’ so-called pweople! I wonder what Nelson Mandela (who is also an Elder) will have to say to that?