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 CeauÅŸescu, 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”