"See, black Zimbabweans do not hate whites.
They love them, actually, and a couple of them have seen the
humanity and humanness and hospitality and have become “vakuwasha” and
“varoora” (sons and daughters in law, which Zimbabweans as indeed Africans
would readily call them being as ever ready to form bonds of kinship.) The whites mind their own businesses, one of which is to see
the country return to white colonial rule.
They do not participate in any nationally representative or
significant activities.
 |
| Stunned, too...Bryan Adams even wondered whether he was playing in Africa or Europe |
Tichaona Zindoga
Writing this, I have been pretty excited about last weekend.
The guess is right: it is because of the senior national
soccer team, the Warriors, who have done what we all feared to be the Houdini
by qualifying for the semi-finals of the ongoing CHAN tournament in South
Africa.
I am one of the millions of Zimbabweans that support football
and in particular the national team.
The Warriors have not been able to reward the Zimbabweans
adequately.
They have at times, most times, been a disappointment and
outright disgrace and scandal.
They have been the Worry Us.
Some of us grew up with the reality of Zimbabwe being the
near boys of African soccer.
They would go so near but fail to go any far.
The soccer governing mother body, Zifa, has been a big player
in the underdevelopment of soccer in the country.
However some people said it was because of bad luck and a
particular curse by one bitter ex-coach, while others put it down to the
special kind of luck that always pitted Zimbabwe in tough groups with tough
West African countries being the final hurdle.
It was the hurdle that we always failed to pass, until one
beautiful year numbering 2002 when improbably beating Mali in the Africa Cup of
Nations qualifier heralded a debut dance with the kings of African football the
following year.
The two showings in Tunisia (2003) and Egypt (2005) were all
but confirmatory of Zimbabwe being the near yet so far, as they flattered only
to deceive.
Years of barrenness have followed.
Until this.
It does not matter that CHAN is the second tier continental
tournament reserved for players that play in comparatively impoverished leagues
and economies and that it has had problems getting recognition from Fifa and
clubs.
Yet Zimbabweans are all excited, all the same.
It is our Nations Cup and World Cup.
And the quality of the football in the tournament has not
been too bad, which has heightened people’s expectations and ratings of the
tourney so far.
Zimbabweans can believe again.
Today, they look set to cruise past Libya and book a berth in
the final.
Libya sounds easy prey
enough; that is, if you banish bad luck, or more especially our distinctive
tendency to self-destruct, which has dampened any excitement of the soul
somewhat.
Self-destruction will come in form of complacency.
Zimbabwe should not drop guard.
The people are ready for the best thing after Independence on
18 April 1980.
The Warriors have the capacity to deliver.
They should deliver the silverware.
I am tempted to shout something like “Yes we can” (generally
being disinclined to pouting such slogans as come from my opponents in the
other world.)
Yes, Zimbabwe can achieve great things; especially on its
own.
Which brings in the second aspect of this piece, namely the
bizarre show by, or events around, one Bryan Adams this same last week.
Bryan Adams is a musician from Canada.
He used to be big.
He no longer has currency, being generally played in slots
dedicated to old music by white musicians.
There were issues around Bryan Adams who performed at the
Harare International Conference Centre on Friday night.
First, tickets for the show were mysteriously sold out in a
few hours and ended up almost exclusively people’s white hands.
Three thousand five hundred people, of whom 99.9 percent were
whites according to one statistic, attended the show.
One of the few blacks that attended told me he could only see
one other black soul about.
One commentator believes that if a bomb had detonated at the
HICC we would have lost about all of our white species in Zimbabwe.
That would have been such a pity, wouldn’t it?
Here is one newspaper editorialized the saga: “It was the
secrecy surrounding the concert that has left many ordinary Zimbabweans shell
shocked as there was no pre-publicity or details on where were people could
purchase tickets.
The million dollar question is how the 3 475 people, almost
all of them whites, managed to know about the concert and buy tickets. Even the
media was surprised at the announcement that Adams’s tickets had already sold
out.”
The paper tells us the tickets were “were sold underground,
most of them to the white community.”
It compares the charade with the Harare International
Festival of the Arts where all races are brought together in song and dance.
The paper ponders in all this: “And you tend to wonder —
which year we are in?”
That is a loaded parting shot.
It can only be answered one way.
Here is what a weekend paper reported Adams to have said: “He
said the audience at his Friday night show certainly made him wonder whether he
was really in Africa or Europe.”
It is clear that the show was never an African thing in an
African country called Zimbabwe.
It was a Caucasian thing organized, sponsored and ultimately
held by and to serve the white interests.
In fact, this brings the valid observation that whites in
Zimbabwe are generally not part of Zimbabwean life, culture and processes.
They have their own places where they live, which they flee
when they see a growth in the number of black faces.
They have their own shopping malls, bars and clubs, where
they do what they want including homosexuality.
They flee the black man like he has leprosy.
Some of them left the country at Independence, which we all
thought was the best thing to happen after nearly a century of colonialism and
near to actual slavery.
Most of them had killed black people in the land of black
ancestors because the white man envied our land and gold.
Those that stayed put hid themselves in their suburbs and
farms and exclusive clubs.
The land reform programme in 2000 knocked some of the last
vestiges of white exclusion.
Some of them decided to fight back.
They for the first time in years started to participate in
national life, namely via elections, which they had never done.
They hoped to wrestle the land back from three million blacks
that they, the under 4 000, had had almost an exclusive claim to.
The local whites have been helped by their kith and kin in
Europe, America, Australia and Bryan Adams’ Canada.
In fact, some elements in Canada did not like Bryan coming
here, as they reasoned that this would “legitimize” the current government led
by President Mugabe.
What they did not expressly say is that they feared that such
a supposedly big concert would show the world that Zimbabwe is not a place
where whites are killed and eaten by a “monster” called Robert Mugabe.
The horror stories have been a careful plan to justify
Western intervention in Zimbabwe to topple the heroic Mugabe and replace him
with a puppet called Morgan Tsvangirai, failure of which scheme today has
brought grief to Tsvangirai who is set to be shunted disgustingly aside like a
used something.
The white clique, most of them in the genus we call Rhodies,
as well as their exiled kith and kin are supposed to reap the fruits of the
suffering and emasculation of the black Zimbabwean.
They wait.
They pray.
They live on the periphery, and like vultures, they wait for
their moment.
One would be surprised to realize how many they are until
they are privileged or foolish enough to go to the white places.
See, black Zimbabweans do not hate whites.
They love them, actually, and a couple of them have seen the
humanity and humanness and hospitality and have become “vakuwasha” and
“varoora” (sons and daughters in law, which Zimbabweans as indeed Africans
would readily call them being as ever ready to form bonds of kinship.)
They whites mind their own businesses, one of which is to see
the country return to white colonial rule.
They do not participate in any nationally representative or
significant activities.
Their children go to their exclusive schools where a few
blacks, whatever their source of money, send their kids.
Simon Chimbetu, the late eminent musician and nationalist had
a song about it.
When we celebrate heroes they do not come, he tells us in the
song Ndima.
They do not participate in national events.
They do not stay in Chitungwiza, the people’s homestead.
Nor in Budiriro or Sakubva.
At “the meeting place” where we spend our days they do not
come.
He concludes: working together with them/harmony with them
has been impossible…Ndima iye ichigere
kupera.
The decolonization remains incomplete.
The whites of this country should be reminded that, if they
do please, they can keep their Brian Adams’ and we keep our Warriors.
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