ZEC: another 33 Senate seats announced

2 Responses to “ZEC: another 33 Senate seats announced”

1. Kevin Hughes
   April 4th, 2008 23:24
   1

   You may want to update the Senate count as there is one uncontested seat in Rastinga, MashWest which is held by ZANU-PF so the results would be 21 ZANU-PF, 19 MDC, 4 Mutambara and 16 outstanding seats not yet announced by the ZEC.

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2. Concerned African.
   April 5th, 2008 22:34
   2

   ZIMBABWE, WITH LOVE

   Your Excellency, I know you to be a proud man
   You fought gallantly to be free of alien command
   Then, none could deny you your demands
   As you fought to free your beloved fatherland

   Yours was a land of plenty under a kingdom
   But many like Marley had cried for your freedom
   And many also had looked on you to lead on
   Carrying the hope of a lighthouse beacon in the region

   Time flies doesn’t it? It has been twenty-seven years!
   In that auditorium, I sat and listened to you and saw tears
   Of joy and happiness undiluted flowing in arrears
   You were a hero, triumphing over adversaries, showing no fear

   It was said the country was a bread basket
   Brimmed with rich produce for the market
   Happy farmers with fertile lands and healthy harvests
   Sang praises to ‘Good Old Bob’, guarantor of the fest

   But the fight wasn’t over, as Nkomo you just couldn’t stand
   And you took an enema to Matabeleland
   Seeking a strong nation, from a strong hand – your hand
   As the dreaded Gukurahundi delivered your demands

   You’ve always loved rigid rule by one party
   Brooking no distraction from ZAPU and calling for one voice, one country
   You then swore the house had a new enemy
   And ensured this snake had no place cool enough for its underbelly

   You made your word like ZANU-PF stick
   And wasted no time wielding the stick
   Your position you’d retain with no risk
   Little bother if your country ailed and was sick

   For, while you concerned yourself to see politics married,
   Your ministers and officers enriched themselves without tarry
   The passport to riches was the party card they carried
   As they amassed fortunes well beyond their salary

   But what did you care? You were the only one, supreme
   So what if little mice stole some cream?
   You had all the power and ministers led the lives of their dreams
   As the country spent well beyond its means

   Commodities like a bucket to the bottom of a deep well, plunged in
   The times became leaner and coffers grew thin from plundering
   As oft happens when one takes out more than one puts in
   And you now looked on to next in line for finger pointing

   Those who sang ‘Good Old Bob’ saw you’d lost your flavour
   And realised they now were definitely out of favour
   For votes and to energise those for the party’s endeavours
   Land was the issue, productive land, to justify their labours

   You gave no hoot to the World Bank
   Or the erstwhile masters, whom you owed no thanks
   You’d get the land by book, boot or by tank
   Anything to appease veterans at the gate in their ranks

   The country’s horizon shone with a little less shimmer
   Here, the potentials by day were growing dimmer
   But you’d sworn to make the rich farmers slimmer
   Land had to be shared, though GDP outlook was grimmer

   Everyone agrees a drunk should go home
   But no one fancies that random and clumsy stagger home
   The redistribution incompetence and failings could fill a tome
   As ministers and cronies waded in for bargains of their own!

   Investors took flight like disturbed pigeons
   For surety and stability in other safer environs
   Where the rule of law was guaranteed in every region
   And property was not threatened by one man’s ambition

   The economy shrank and faltered
   Still your ministers grew fatter
   But your tirade you took further
   And denounced the ‘tea-boy’ cum MDC’s father

   They were traitors !
   They were fools, stooges of manipulators !
   Still, they were threat to a government of idle perambulators
   So you invited your veterans and constitutional violators

   Elections were staged to get you out of the jam
   But everyone saw, everyone knew this was simply a scam
   It was everyone else’s fault but you and your thugs bringing bedlam
   Loudly, you said, over construction of a mansion for Grace, your belle dam

   The moribund economy in mire did wallow
   As fertile commercial lands lay fallowed
   The farmers had been seen to the gates without a harrow
   So unemployment blossomed and scarcity saw inflation grow

   Once thought a gift, heaven sent, indeed you were a Trojan, hell-sent
   For, now your people live with inflation, at ten-thousand percent
   But, you blame everyone else for the disaster, your government
   As unabashedly another term you now seek, and won’t relent

   Your Excellency, when you lie in your fortressed palace, do you dream?
   Of retirement days free with countrymen milling like children for ice-cream?
   Of the country rich again with foreign investors bursting at the seams
   Of mismanagement and social unrest, history to be seen only on some film?

   Or do you your Excellency dream of your people clamouring at the gates
   Mad with hunger and like those for Ceauşescu, taking you to the same fate?
   Or the souls of Matabeleland moaning in the afterlife, restless for a rebate
   To see you at the Hague like Taylor waiting as the world litigates?

   Oh, you’d say these are musings of one who’s chewed too much khat
   And laugh scornfully that yours would never come to that
   But look about you, there are many wishing things do just that
   And may expedite events like Sankara, Kabila or Sadat

   Your country has emptied of professionals to make others better
   Like your record with NEPAD which makes everyone else’s better
   And now no AU state head will send a stern and sobering letter
   For critique is taboo amongst those who have made Africa no better

   Once it was said you had a degree in violence
   I hereby confer you a well earned doctorate in incompetence
   For having presided over your country’s ruin and decadence
   It’s now bankrupt on its knees, cap-in-hand and in dire indigence

   But Sir, I’ve gone on long enough,
   Yet scarcely have I said enough
   But I’ll tell you what I dreamt of
   And hope you take some hint thereof

   I dreamt of a truth and reconciliation committee
   Which did meet, like Mandela’s post-apartheid committees
   To examine your government’s folly, then I saw weeping invitees
   Disconsolate about Matabeleland but Tutu preaching peace

   Avoiding continual conflict and strife, therein your way out
   If like Kaunda you desire to retire at home and walk about
   Leave the scene for others capable, but what a mess to sort out?
   Yet, one last request before like the beleaguered Nixon you sign out

   Presidential pen and paper in hand, commence a letter of love
   Which starts Zimbabwe, for it’s all, not just Mashonaland you love
   Then implore Tutu to pray for forgiveness, understanding and love
   And enjoin us all to pray Zimbabwe casts aside racial and tribal politics -
   to move forward, with forgiveness, understanding and love

   By Lloney Monono
   Culled from the anthology “The Dance Of Scorpions”

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