Fare thee well, President Robert Mugabe. Though I never agreed with your leadership style, and I still think the fact that you have perished by the sword of your subordinates is an outcome that sadly vindicates my stance that says you may have been eloquent of speech but not so much a leader, I must say that it is truly sad that you leave the stage much like Julius Caesar did after perishing at the hands of the people he trusted the most. Perhaps we can take solace knowing that they did not take your life, much unlike Brutus and his co-conspirators did to Caesar. Nonetheless, beholding treachery is never pleasant, most certainly not to genuine adherents of the strictures of hunhu.
For those of us who have a deeper understanding of Chikaranga, an almost spiritual acceptance of it, and the values it enjoins us to abide by, friends ought to be the last refuge of a beseiged fellow member of the community. We now live in different times. Our forefathers have turned their backs on us, a result of the way we have abandoned them. The sanctity of friendship, which is meant to endure beyond the grave that awaits all mortals beings, that ancient glue that our ancestors fashioned back in the fog of antiquity, it is no more. I mourn what we have become.
Your departure from the seat of power fully and vividly captures what we have morphed into, a nation of the insincere and the deceitful. Only this morning, we were bowing down at your feet, clutching them as we extolled you as the only other son of God, appealing to Divine Providence to grant you eternal life, alas, declaring ourselves your forever-loyal sons. At the hour of your greatest need, when you needed us to reciprocate the favours you gave unto us, we abandoned you. We can only hope that we have not entrusted ourselves into the hands of Barabas.
One point that I must state is simple . It is part of a personal story. In 1979, one day my village was turned into a battle ground. Lives imperiled, with my sister and late brother, I fled from the scene of bloodshed. As the Liberation War was coming to its end, this scene in my village was not uncommon during that phase of our nation's ancient history. It was replicated right across occupied Zimbabwe. Exactly a decade after fleeing from Ian Smith's soldiers, I had to flee from soldiers, again, but these were now your soldiers, ironically our soldiers in post-war and independent Zimbabwe. In 1989, I was left breathless by made-in-Israel teargas, an experience I shared with my fellow university students as well as subsequent students. It felt like an act of betrayal because it was precisely that, an act of betrayal. In light of this, the natural response is joining the masses celebrating your departure. I do not celebrate tragic events, regardless of my personal feelings.
To celebrate is to expose deeply seated grudges and enduring bitterness of the heart. I bear no grudges nor does my Moyo heart harbour any spirit of animus against you. As a matter of fact, I am looking forward to sitting down with you to eat roasted maize as we chat about our shared interest of anthropology. When I come home, be there. We will have a lot to talk about.
Kwaheri yakuonana Mzee Gushungo.
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