Letter to my Son

My Dear Son

I know the days of writing letters are long gone, and I would have told you directly if you were here. Or left a recording. But my voice is raspy, old and ragged. And I don’t want you to hear me cry, it’s the last ounce of dignity I have left. Besides, people have always told me I was good with the pen since I was a young man, so I figured why not steal from my past and go out in a blaze. So take your time and read through. These are not my memories, they are the memories of every Zimbabwean, they are the feelings of every one of your countrymen bottled up inside. I am only puncturing the swell to let it all out.

I know when you look at this generation, you will judge us harshly just as history has. You will wonder how a whole nation stood by while a few cronies enjoyed the fat of the land while they wallow in poverty. You will never understand how everyone talked about the hardships, unemployment and the like and then go on to vote with their feet. You will never fathom how it is that a nonagenarian slept in office and none of his followers had an inkling to challenge him. Until that fateful November! And in retrospect we can agree we hired the devil to scare away the monster. Now we are paying for our sins. If you ask any elder still around they would sigh and pretend to be lost in their senility because really they have no answer. They will feign momentary memory loss due to the embarrassment of the realization that we were part of the problem.

That we conspired to prop up an inept crocodile regime hiding behind too many excuses.

We abdicated responsibility and pretended there was nothing we could do yet we chose to do nothing.

We allowed our grandparents to go hungry in the rural areas to such an extent that they would gyrate to whoever promised them grain.

That whilst the rural folk went to the polls in numbers, duress or no duress, we chose to seek ‘asylum’ in neighboring countries and demonized our country of birth whilst there.

That our young people sold themselves short in Egoli working for nothing but food and accommodation.

That our graduates littered the streets selling airtime and ‘hustled’ in our CBD while their degrees gathered dust at home.

That we were reduced to a nation of beggars and paupers in a country that held our umbilical cord. That we resorted to subscribing to foreign television channels to pepper over the cracks, to escape from the realities on our front yards, to escape from the propaganda of the current regime.

That our daughters resorted to selling their bodies to finance their education in tertiary institutions, while those who were well off, took advantage and posed as ‘blessers’.

That our sons resorted to all sorts of ways or even joined the state sponsored terror groups just to survive.

That we were tricked into believing that loose change was the reason why bond notes were being printed, fearlessly at par with the mighty US Dollar, yet it was clear this was a backdoor reintroduction of the much maligned local currency.

That everyone who dared to speak up was branded an enemy of the state, and would subsequently disappear.

That we were so desperate that even when right hand persecutors and enforcers-in-chief of the regime became turncoats and immediately presented themselves to people as saviors, without even apologizing or repenting from the atrocities they are known to have committed whilst at the buffet table, we marched with them.

We watched in horror as the few brave cadres who had mustered enough courage to stand up to the system, slowly turn into the monster they purported to fight. They started doctoring constitutions and clung to power reminding everybody that humanity was at best, the same specie.

That even the former First Lady, whose level of education is unknown, appeared to be running the state from the bedroom, upsetting everyone in the process.

How she, under the guise of philanthropy, grabbed a farm and built an orphanage whose school fees is more expensive than most schools in the group A category.

How she and her husband would grab goods from an impoverished citizen trying to earn a living, and use the confiscated goods to ‘donate’ to our brainwashed fellows.

How our police force had become public enemy number one, surpassing the taxman in terms of revenue collection. How the corrupt force had even unearthed a tire deflating spike as a weapon of choice to man roadblocks, endangering lives in the process.

We can only hope that you do not look at our history and deride us in laughter, but pick up the key important things never to repeat.

That you never allow the image of the past to become a horror story of today. That no matter how sincere the crocodile maybe, he only wants to lure you into the water.

That you should never be hoodwinked by whoever would have delivered you from a previous regime, because whatever they tell you, never forget what they have done. Or are capable of doing.

That whatever you do, you should never be deceived by political parties where everyone but the youth themselves, is a youth.

We can only pray that you do not judge us based on what you know, but on what we knew.

For we thought that the Africa Union was a union. Turned out it was a toothless organisation filled with self-serving old man who have no spine. The way they dealt with the Burundi Crisis a clear example that they were an unholy alliance which would never be interested in helping out the mess in our country. That we thought any other country would take pity on us and intervene to help. Alas, how wrong we were. Its each country for itself, and no help came from without.

Trust me there were times when we thought this was a nightmare from which we would awaken, as year after year we had goblins ransacking the country’s coffers to celebrate the yearly birth of a nightmare, disguised as a February movement.

But it was no nightmare, and our brothers joined in as millions of dollars were raised to celebrate mediocrity, oppression, anarchy, lawlessness and poverty whilst the countries hospitals were in shambles and civil servants threatened to down tools (which they never do)

We only ask that you teach your children early that no one can ever use the fact that they gave birth to you as a tool to abuse or oppress you, myself included, as the regime has used their revolutionary role to keep us in slavery.

Now even younger men, old through thuggery, claim that they fought and died for this country, and demand compensation for good measure.

Teach your children to always think of generations to come, something we clearly failed to do.

Don’t be angry when you encounter the potholes, when there is no electricity, because that’s not how we envisioned it.

We also had high hopes for our independent country until we realized we were not reading from the same dictionary as them.

To them independence and sovereignty meant that they chased all previous occupants from farms and took over as landlords.

That they started growing black jack in areas which supplied the whole region with food.

And don’t get us wrong, we are not saying we were not due our land, but a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The ones who needed the land never received it and the ones who did, got more farms than imaginable for a single person. Now such is the life we lived. They controlled everything from agriculture to commerce to the very politics of the land and used this hegemony to craft draconian policies which benefited their enterprises.

We can only hope that your generation does not use education as a measure of a man’s character.

Our era, as you have discovered, was full of learned people. From the president to the common security guard on the corner. We even have renowned professors in government all of which collude to make sure that they arm the unpopular regime with soundproof ideas of oppression.

None of this mattered anyway when it came to office holders as known thieves and murderers occupied senior government positions in clear mockery of our justice system.

Reports also surfaced of our national plane flying all the way to Egoli with three passengers only. And the management of that company still proudly go to work, briefcase in hand, and pay themselves handsomely as well. I had no idea incompetence should be rewarded!

Or the whole Cabinet which were made to remove shoes to enter a shrine which was purported to ooze with diesel by a now forgotten meshuga. Go figure.

My son, I do not know if you will ever understand but I sincerely hope you are not cut from the same cloth our generation was.

I pray the apple falls as far away from the tree as possible. Because I, like many others, have let your generation down and we know it.

It is better my son, to be violent, when there is violence in your heart, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence, like we did.

This is exactly what we are, clueless and completely lacking in courage. Did I tell you people had their houses destroyed by the same government which allocated them the housing stands, using their kith and keen, without doing anything?

That people would go about their business the following day, if they had any business, as if nothing had happened. Yes, those are the levels of cowardice I am talking about. Shocking yes, but that’s what we are, that’s who we are.

Of course you will never believe that at one point people lost the monies they had deposited in the local banks when we switched to the multi currency. And for the second time in a decade, the same thing happened, only at a worse skill. And you still find people stupid enough to wear t-shirts with the face of the reptile.

There was no accountability whatsoever. Most people would go to work for up to a year without receiving any salaries and yet they continued to report for duty.

Even I found it odd, but such is the situation that even the state wants to pay civil servant bonuses in form of land. The same land which they grabbed from the whites under the guise of giving it to the people and now the people have to grovel and toil for it.

I have no idea how we found the strength to carry on. I now know that cowards live longer, I have only just come to understand that they also suffer more.

Even if you brand us as cowards, we won’t contest the accusation because after all the excuses, that’s probably what we are.

But we ran our race, albeit a poor one. No in truth, we never really joined the race, we boycotted hoping the regime would be too ashamed to race against themselves.

But we were wrong and we found out that they actually enjoyed racing against themselves as victory was guaranteed. Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great, you can be that generation.

When you hear all these things I know you feel I am exaggerating, as all old people do, but nothing can be further from the truth.

Even your children will also wonder when they learn these things in their history class and they would make light of it. But people were maimed, murdered, tortured, robbed, raped, and persecuted my son. Never forget that.

And that’s not the worst part. Do you know what the worst part was?

We did nothing.

An ailing frame can only be awake for so long my son, I do hope you decode the encryption. It’s up to you now, we have been overtaken by time.

Until we meet on the other side.

Your remorseful father,

Timy Timid