By Tabani Moyo
Life is a paradox I must say!
On a day like this we need to start from the beginning. I guess!
You are growing old ‘young’ Tabani! The cotton grower from Gokwe you are really growing old! You are now 28, you are not growing any younger you know. I know the dangers of time, you keep on seeing the same faces, same building, same workmates and you mislead yourself that everything is the same and nothing is changing – time is moving!
You better start realizing that you are not living in no man’s land! Time is triggering motions of changes some of which are dramatic, some earth shattering and others threatening the essence of human kind’s survival, ‘young’ man as Annie Musodza will keep on misleading you, that you are still young! Time is not on your side.
As in Wole Sonyika’s You Must Set Fourth at Dawn, the rainy season that leaves moist thickets, fording swollen gorges, sliding on treacherous rock and being suck into mud gullies, day or night – at night – with nothing but few stars seen through branches, or chasing after fireflies as if to test one’s patience and judgment are gone. They are gone cotton boy, you are now supposed to make tough decisions, decisions that will make or break you and the nation at large.
You have made enemies and friends alike during the 28 years cotton boy, it’s the time for you to carefully structure and charter your plane to destiny--- friends of yester year are now enemies. The danger cotton boy is captured in Bob Marley’s song witch you can’t remember the title stipulating that your best friends are the worst enemies since they know all your secrets and they hold the leverage to reveal them. Cotton boy, never mind, you keep on telling yourself it does not matter that you have broke ties with friends of yester year. Yes you keep on telling yourself that it’s okay, you are of your own making, never ‘godfathers’ making.
You look in the mirror today and you can afford a smile? Why? You have served your conscience well, growing up in Gokwe, walking 10km to and from school you must be very proud? Are you not? Well you are very proud, from the arid lands of Gokwe, where you have to wait until there is moonlight to start tilling the barren lands with the hope that they will feed the multitudes of hot air stomachs to coining the Save Zimbabwe Campaign name that have brought this inclusive government today, you have made some strides ‘young man’!
As they say, the struggle shall never be televised, when books are going to be written never expect your name to appear in those fly by night books, in their foreword to epilogue never dream your name to be captured. You have never played a role in the struggle for Zimbabwe in their minds, thought and fliers disguised as books, never mind that cotton boy, you will write your own books to counter such futile ‘truths’ when they present it to mean facts. Facts are sacred you will intent to tell you kids later on in life, that they must never be tempered with. Never allow clobbered thinking to warp your critical thinking. When facts are misrepresented always stand for the facts to remain your campus for you are the custodian for future generation’s access to information.
They will tell you that you were never close to the points of action when Gift Tandare was shot. They will tell you that because we now have more access to information and a proper context of the struggles of Zimbabwe which they were not able to witness due to the dictates of nature.
That’s why you got surprised when you passed by a certain country and found a group of people claiming that they engineered the brand Its Our Country Too (Oc2) which was used at the All Stakeholders Conference of September 2008 which gave birth to the People’s Convention of February 2009. You set there listening as if you were a stranger to the day light intellectual robbery and disregard of intellectual rights. You knew deep down in you that the people who coined that brand are; Tabani Moyo, Ellen Kandororo, Nixon Nyikadzino, Takura Zhangazha, Benjamin Nyandoro and three more comrades you can’t remember at this time. So history Cotton Boy can easily be distorted, you have to learn and live to challenge that!
When Honorouble Nelson Chamisa was nearly killed at the airport, ‘young’ man, they will tell you that they were the first to seek help, that they informed the world that all was at stake, yet you know deep down in your heart that you informed the world and coordinated efforts together with Itai Zimunya to keep the world informed. Never mind them cotton boy, if you stand by the truth you will always stand by yourself!
They will tell you when the action was folding in Highfileds on the 11th of March 2007, they kept the world focused on Zimbabwe’s brutality which took place yet you kept silent until today, that you were at the epi-center of events keeping the stakeholders, the media and the international community’s lenses zoomed on the country together with the other comrade you can’t name given the processes happening in the country. You were the information centre cotton boy they know, you know and thats why you are dismissing myths of the present day history coming to the fore.
You have worked closely with the MPs so that they get into office! The other time Cotton Boy, you had to be detained for ensuring the safety of your good MP friend for St. Marys. It was yourself and Maureen Kademaunga who mislead the police that the prospective MP was not in the Building when you knew that he was hidden under you office desk.
All the same, life at 28 can be a paradox; the people whom you thought were making a stand for certain values, life time principles have become anathemas to the same – butchering the very same principles with perceived impunity. Life is not that simple, history will judge the same brutality. No human being can manage to mortalize history, given the fact that humans are mortals and history will forever remain the cardinals of our reference points.
Unfortunately at 28 I have come to learn of young generations sublimating into primitive accumulation, in a capitalistically cannibal manner that have left me with more questions than answers. There is nothing wrong in differing but I see everything wrong in a failure to appreciate principles – very sad.
In the same vain, I have come to realize of paid for mercenaries amongst our midst, people who are willing to hire corruptible and disgruntled soldiers to bash those holding differing perspectives to officialdom, above all there are certain civic individuals who have settled for a rather atrocious position that because the MDC is in government they hold themselves as equally ruling and part of the government because of perceived proximity to the person of PM Morgan Tsvangirai. It’s a perception and a dangerous one for that matter. People who will do anything for money – such people are dangerous in life because they can KILL for money – there is need to go back to the source!
At 28, I hope Zimbabwe will start answering some of the hard questions which are more profitable for nation building than caressing individualistic egos. Facts should be respected at all cost as in Thabo Mbeki’s words, “we have the possibility and latitude and necessity to speak thus because we live during our own age of revolution. Exactly because it is such an age, all of us face the demand to understand objective reality accurately and objectively, to enable the revolution to decide on the correct strategy, tactics and operations. Respect the truth. In this situation of an inevitable contest about the future of our country, information, facts, the truth themselves become an area of contestation… opponents of change see it as their obligatory task to falsify reality, in their interests. The imperative to understand the critical difference, and in some instances the contradiction becomes ever-more pressing.”
It is equally imperative that the arrogance in differences exhibited by personalities in the civics and those who have crossed the line to the government be done away with in a civilized manner rather than creating vacuums for overzealous personalities to believe that they can come up with remedies.
Everyone be it in government, political parties, civic should never believe in the old myth of young children they saw joining CSOs and mislead themselves that the same people are still kids--- they will be humiliated and fall with a thud.
Well at 28, you are grown up young man its time you start looking for a women to settle down with have children and continue with the struggle with the hopes that your kids will fight a faithful struggle and keep the struggle for democracy, human kind survival, human rights, struggle for education freedoms, against poverty, deprivation among other things as opposed to the struggles for wealth accumulation, and contestation to donor funds alive.
It’s the paradox of life at 28!
