By Elvis Mugari| I Lucifer Mandengu was born here against my will.

I wish I was born elsewhere. This is the place where one should just come back to die…”

These are prophetic words enshrined in Charles Mungoshi’s novel ‘Waiting for the Rain’.Who can deny the aptness of this prose?

Lucifer Mandengu, the protagonist, was metaphorically referring to the Zimbabwe of 2020.

The Zimbabwe that was once an industrial area but now reduced to only a residential area.

Mandengu castigates his motherland, the land in which his umbilical cord is buried.

He detests the inertia in a country whose economy was once highly esteemed but now a discussion topic for infants.

Today we are no longer reading the fictitious novel but living in its intended metaphor. We have degenerated into that dystopia portrayed in Mwangi’s book ‘Kill Me Quick’.

We are living on the threshold of dire suffering brewed in our government’s offices.
Everyday we are nursing the wounds of despair in Zimbabwe. The entire nation is submerged in a deep pool of wretchedness.

The nation we live in today is a parody of our ideals, expectations and aspirations. We are faced with ignorance, injustice, corruption, bad governance, empty rhetorics and insecurity.

These giant vices hinder our progress as a nation, drawing us perpetually downwards and backwards.

The only thing that keeps our heads up is the early 20th century Germany psyche “my country, right or wrong” had it not been that, the majority of us would have sought citizenship elsewhere.

But what really is going on? This question is now a cliché, one of the over-asked question whenever two or more Zimbabwean minds meet.

Of all the answers and theorems given to this question, the most heart-wrenching one is that we are facing anthropogenic poverty. Yes man-made suffering.
What is more astounding is the fact that we all know the solution.

The ship is wrecking and the captain of the ship holds on to the reigns. We are made to believe he is a political Hercules and we are all matchless to his somewhat super or is it sub-human power. A deity they see in him those in his inner circle.

The solution lays in our power to change the dispensation but sadly this power has been and still being tampered with.

Each passing day is a countdown to the proverbial call. We are facing a slow and painful death. It is time we took action to confront these transgressions to overcome them and to lay the ground for the much desired change in our nation.

It is up to you and me, as concerned citizens and stakeholders, to ensure that the change we desire starts today. I am commited to finding the solutions to these transgressions.

We will come together to actualize our vision of a progressive Zimbabwe by getting rid of the giant vices that face it.