Epitaph for Jeremiah
Jeremiah died on Friday morning. No … let’s put that correctly - Jeremiah was killed on Friday morning.
Jeremiah worked for one of our contractors - their office messenger. I’d met him often as he came by to drop off a wad of paperwork nearly every day. Seeing him from my office window, pedalling in slowly and resignedly on his delivery bicycle, I’d always think that he should have already retired a couple of years ago. Save for the sheer necessity to feed himself, I guess he would have - but there’s no such luxu
ry in Zim today for people like him. It’s work until you drop.
He managed remarkably well for a man of his age and size, I often remarked to myself - a large, heavy set man, puffing a bit as he swung off his bike and leaned it against a pillar. He had a heart problem, and had been off work for some time earlier this year. Yet, here he was still pedalling away, almost a fixture in our lives.
“Morning, Mister Pat” was all I’d get out of him as he wandered past and dropped papers onto the desk. Zimbabweans have a quaint way of making up nicknames for you when they don’t know or can’t pronounce your name. I never did find out how he’d decided on “Mister Pat” - but then a greeting from Jeremiah was a great honour, so I wore his nickname with an inner smile.
Smile? - a smile for him was a great rarity - his face normally impassive as if weighed down by the past …. or was it the present? His wife had died a year or two ago - I forget exactly when. That, together with his health problems, was hardly a great introduction to the harsh realities of Zim today. Faced with the enormous pressures of ekeing out a livelihood in our country, it is no wonder that our life expectancy has almost halved in twenty-five years of “independence” - or should that be “oppression”?
Jeremiah was a victim of the politically-driven onslaught that is crushing the ordinary person in Zimbabwe, a victim of corruption and mismanagement which is dragging the country’s economy down on our heads - a corruption that pervades throughout society like a slow-acting poison. To resist it requires the inner strength of a saint. I guess that’s one of the things that makes me so proud to call myself a Zimbabwean - because we must have millions of them! How our country still runs at all, how anyone resists the corruption, how anyone survives in the hell we call an economy - I still haven’t figured out.
The poison finally caught up with Jeremiah - indirectly. As the establised commuter transport system in the country crumbled since independence, the informal sector responded by using private vehicles to transport commuters - “pirate taxis” as we used to call them. In a typical response, the government “legalised” this mode of transport (party-based entreprenuers had sensed easy profits in a loosely-policed industry), and so the “commuter omnibus” was born - another tentacle of corruption! They soon became almost a law to themselves, fast money earners, low input costs, and not enough police to keep them under control. Not openly violent, not openly lawless, just “bending” any rules that exist - a sort of affable lawlessness. Driving at breakneck speeds, they defy anyone to tame them and laugh as they cheat death. Such are the effects of the poison.
It was one of them that killed Jeremiah on that Friday morning as he pedalled his way to work. No warning - just a quick screech of brakes - no pain, just instant oblivion for him. A crowd of curious onloookers formed a brief roadside requiem.
They phoned me from the office to tell me the bad news. A stunned silence followed, and I put down the phone. I wept inside. Not for Jeremiah …. No, his Zimbabwe is now at peace. I wept for our Zimbabwe, my Zimbabwe, the living, the ones who still suffer this Godless regime. Hamba gushle, Baba. You are home now. Pray for us.
