SUNDAY SOUND-OFF…..
On this Mother’s Day we must speak life, and celebrate life. When we speak of life rather than existence we talk about dignity and decency. No mother alive would have gone through the birthing process to bring anyone into existence so that their very life is smothered and disregarded by others. In Zimbabwe life has lost its value unless you are of a certain tribe and scribe…VENE.
The first cry of any baby is one to defend life, to affirm existence out of the womb and indeed independence. It is natural to cry out for affirmation literally or metaphorically but most inhumane to be indifferent to cries for those who seek the same. In the nation of today our common people cry out for a new contract that spells out certainty, stability and all that is respecting of individual rights and values.
When life loses meaning and value the first and natural instinct is to defend it. The Treaty of Westphalia 1648 may have established the modern concept of sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, but must naturally be understood better still is the sovereignty of individuals. Their inalienable right to pursue life’s purposes in a way that visits no harm to others while maximising the potential for comfort to themselves.
When life loses its meaning of independent choice it’s reduced into a morass and unending sonorous dirge of nothingness. When community good is snuffed out for selective convenience and replaced by expectation for blind subservience then it’s time to cry freedom!. It’s time to reconnect to the original affirmation of personhood, without which we are nothing. No mother will and should ever allow the actions of others equally mothered to render the lives of others intolerable to insufferable.
The degree of despondency and mass disregard for the common good cannot be allowed to continue in the great fruited plain of Dzimbahwe that’s everywhere replete with pain because of selective gain by the indifferent few. It’s inconsolable that for a small country so disproportionately blessed and favoured anyone should go to bed hungry, unsheltered and without basic human modicum of hope. Our people have survived colonial repression but should never tolerate independent state hopelessness, and mass pillage of our precious resources.
Dzimbahwe is a spirit and place of common shelter and belonging. An understanding that we belong together and our fate intertwined. The great Mutapa never presided over mass poverty and ruled sovereign over great disease and disaster and yet you hear shrill and committed depraved cries of those who imagine themselves Kings but wish to visit continued harm and disregard for the people. “Vene for them means “Vana Vavo” and all those who choose to accept to be treated as “children”.
Our common Zimbabwean mothers will never accept to have their own children be broken and consigned to worthlessness by one equally mothered however ugly in spit and spirit. We stand at the cross roads as a nation in deciding whether the present course is sustainable or we make a dramatic cut to break from the mad rush to the abyss of another failed state.
Everywhere Zimbabweans are crying. They are expressing the firm and fervent expectation for a set of sovereign life circumstances necessarily better than currently visited upon them. It’s not enough to reduce everything to political choice, sometimes it’s a simple human acknowledgement that one has failed. Njuga dzarema Cdes.
In the spirit of Mother’s Day to those who believe we are on the right track I say if not swear in one loaded statement “YOUR MOTHER” …??. Mai Venyu for believing that a nation united in depravity, disease and despondency can continue to tolerate this nonsense. MAI VENYU to those who believe that it’s the best we can do. MAI VENYU to those who choose to believe that it’s normal to live in a state of neglect and mass negation of all that’s good life abetting and fostering.
MAI VENYU Kuvasveta Simba, Vapambepfumi, Nhasvambuya. Dzimbahwe belongs to all of us. It’s the place we find strength and common sanctuary. Dzimbahwe is the destination and state of our common prosperity and shared hope as a people. Dzimbahwe is not Zimbabwe Ruined or Reduced to Ruins.
Happy Mother’s Day!!
DZIMBAHWE ??????????????
Dr Raymond Chamba