“Now or never is here again. Must I
Look in the face of the moon’s other side?
The moment demands decision. My whole
History is unequal to it – let me be!
I read all day, walk all night. I have
No end but this; no resources but books.
Thus again I dawdle and dither. Perhaps
Th’impartient problem will heart ay my
Expert vacillation”
The footnote to Hamlet – Mind blast – Dambudzo Marechera (1984)
My daughter, I know you are not yet in your mother’s womb, your mother does not know that one day she will be carrying a precious cornerstone of my survival. She is confused what kind of a person your father is, at one time she thinks I m socked in her motions of feelings and the other she holds I m a confused vagrant wondering in the wilderness of her love.
When you are finally going to be a fetus, struggling for space in your mother’s womb – it will be the birth of a struggle within a struggle. It will be the dawn of tears, laughter, endurance and perseverance.
You will one day be ushered onto this selfish earth, barren yet it’s pregnant with contradictions. You will come to realize that the lands of your birth have been forsaken by those who came before you, for good or for evil you will forever live a life of seeking answers to the hard questions which, I as your father failed to answer.
You will live in a dichotomy. It will be highly absurd for you when you ask yourself why personalities are dominating the institutions which were built out of the sacrifices of nonentities. You will wonder why the nonentities rose at a frightening pace to become personalities which unilaterally decided what is good and bad for the majority. You will equally wonder what happened to the value consensus on principle which has led a whole movement engulfed in discussion on the very same principle which is supposed to be the campus for the betterment of this place you call home – Zimbabwe.
My daughter you will curse your father and his generation for failing to put closure to the generational gap deficit between his generation and the one which came before him. You will throb in tears as your peers dance on top of your father’s grave calling him names such as coward, useless and good for nothing – I understand you fear my jewel.
I hear you; I won’t be there to tell you my story. To flip the pages of embarrassment and turn over to the new leaf for you to escape the barrage of firing arrows which will be pearling your innocent flesh with impunity.
If only you could tell them that your father had a dream which you my daughter have to carry over for the betterment of your generation. Never mind how the struggle has been arm twisted into rubbles, my battle has been and remains on the footnote of generational takeover through the straightening of institutions.
Never regret the radical DNA in you which you inherited from your father’s blood for it will remain in you like a menacing shadow. You would like to know how you father stepped to the fore. I have always resisted taking it to the public fore, it’s against my persona to build a domineering personality but I know you will one day want to understand yourself better in your bumpy road from the womb to the day when you write a letter of this nature to your daughters and sons.
My father, your grandfather was come to understand a long journey of stepping on shock pads over how my radical life have evolved. From grade 3 to grade 7 your father was expelled from school six times on different charges of which all he was found guilty as charged.
The same happened in his secondary life where he frequented the disciplinary committee to explain himself to those who where better placed to judge other people’s conduct and trying very hard to effect a correctional service institution within the education system.
Your father remained tall, his conviction was later on to be defined in 1998 when he was to become one of the 15 members who organized the strike at St Mary’s Boys High in Nyanga which left the school grounded for two weeks. The team included Revai Sadziwa who later on went to Midlands state university, Blessing Tichiwangani who became an electrical engineer, George Mudhara, who passed away in 2001, after starting his own company, Cleophas Mutepfe who is now based in the Uk, Farayi Chidhaura, who went to Harare poly, Gift Jamela, Simbarashe Rukanda, Brian Chigumira who is now in the Prison Services, Tapiwa Tafamombe who is now in the president’s office, Eddie Muchena who later went to the Midlands state university, Passmore Bore who is now a Marketer with Jaggers, George Maredza who is now a broker, and the other two comrade I can’t name at the moment.
At that defining moment, a collective group of 200 students were mobilized to shutter the buildings of the school and embarked on a 42km journey on foot to the shanty town of Nyanga where the ministry of education offices is located.
My daughter your father experience the jail smell and blood stains on the walls when he was 17 years old, as usual he was guilty as charged after taking an active role of mobilizing the students to take an act of defiance against the fees which had been hiked from Z$1200 to Z$2200. Your father and his colleagues spent 3 days in cells only to be released without being charged and kicked out of school soon after.
The rest of the story I will tell you in the next letter my daughter, so that one day you will not be puzzled of the radicalism which might come to define you.
The struggle of Zimbabwe might be gone but definitely not lost my daughter, when you will be reading this letter which came from the very centre of my heart you won’t help but concur with me when I insist that Zimbabwe’s struggle has been hi-jacked by personalities who are trying hard to force us to think that Zimbabwe owes them a gratuity for the sacrifices they have made for the country, hell know, recognition yes nothing more nothing less.
On the same token I will agree with you when you tell me that your father’s generation is fast losing it. Yes we are, stepping on each other’s toes sublimating into personality praise singers for those people who are fast running out of new ideas except exhausted rhetoric and dogmatic positions of fundamentalism.
Intellectual capital has become a farfetched mirage, which until your birth and those of like mind might become a reality.
So wakeup my yet to be conceived daughter, its sun shine, the trenches ahead might be minefields but the late Dr. Zvobgo will argue they must not keep you down forever, dust yourself and brace for the vicious struggle against the personification of institutions, organizations and the country. Guard against becoming and academic and failing to become an intellectual – my daughter your father might not have been either but his inspiration is to become the later. I will take care of you in vernacular Chengetai
