Much ado about nothing

By Patson Dzamara

Zimbabweans are an excitable bunch. Indeed, we love things. Our propensity for trivia is second to none. As such, it is very easy for us to be dazzled and distracted by anything. Not only that, we seem good at hallucinating.

We somehow find it convinient to create fallacious illusions from which we siphon some sort of reprieve in the midst our oppression. It’s amazing how we create and attach meaning to virtually anything. We run to town over what does not mean a bag of beans.

I see how some seemingly garrulous old men and women are tearing their inner wear over the soldiers and police ‘fight’. Some are already saying things like, chabvondoka, freedom has come, the revolution here. Oh please!

We can’t be shallow enough to think that the army’s theatrics will bring us redemption. That will never happen. This is the same army which has helped sustain our oppression. This is the same army Mugabe relies on to muzzle our voices and to trample on our wishes. Whatever they did, are doing and will do, they are not our friends and that is not going to change anytime soon. Let that sink.

It is actually ridiculous that some of us think a mere tiff bettwen them and their equally guilty partners in crime – the police – is something to cheer. Worse still, some of us have already concluded that this is the beginning of a revolution. Some are already circulating photos of certain army hoodlums looting shops from last year’s protests just to augment their fallacies and to quench their thirst for a ‘revolution’.

Zimbabweans hear me. We can never cheat our way to freedom and it will not be delivered on a silver platter. We must not settle in being dazzled by these side-shows. We must quit thinking and wishing that our salvation shall come from somewhere else rather than from us. There is no saviour who is going to march on our behalf into our promised land.

It will take a lot of work for us to welcome a new and better Zimbabwe. It will take more than us doddering on meaningless trivia and baseless conjectures. We must be willing to pay the price, no-one else will help us, especially those complicity in our oppression. It will cost us tears, sweat, blood and even lives.

Much ado about nothing.