I have made a deliberate and sensible choice not to lower my expectations in life and be part of the “Stay Positive” brigade and that deci...
I have made a deliberate and sensible choice not to lower
my expectations in life and be part of the “Stay Positive” brigade and that
decision is non-negotiable. That nonsense of being asked to stay positive when
there is nothing to be positive about is what made this country the absolute Shxt
Hole it is today!
At a social level, this “Shinga Mwanangu” claptrap has seen
our sisters live miserable marriages generation after generation, whilst being
pummeled daily by bullying and horrible husbands. This is NO different to what
the Emmerson Mnangagwa regime is doing to us by refusing to fully implement
Political Reforms that would set this country on a strong economic footing.
What is there to be positive about in this country and why
should citizens be asked to suffer whilst smiling at the outcomes of their
tormentor’s cruelty, a tormentor that does not seek to change his ways? We have
no clean running water, no electric power, no jobs, no money, no political will
to Reform from Emmerson Mnangagwa, no fuel, we have CORRUPTION galore, no
health care, nepotism and mismanagement of State institutions continues,
looting of State and national resources also continues unabated, fraud by the
political elites remains standard and yet you expect Hopewell Chin’ono and the
country to be positive?
Positive about what exactly? We have no bright future under
this regime and it is deliberately killing that future for generations to come,
should we be smiling to that tragic reality? NO! I will not lower my standards
and join the “Stay Positive” brigade in a hole by making life there comfortable
instead of getting out and seeking a normal human existence. My father taught
me that if you are in a hole, don’t make life there comfortable, GET OUT.
The elites have been making life in our hole comfortable
for themselves by buying generators, buying solar equipment installations,
drilling boreholes, buying 4 X 4s, seeking medical treatment from South Africa
and the list goes on. What my father taught me is what I have chosen to do, I
have chosen to be on the right side of history, I have chosen to be with the
people, and that requires me to work on getting out of that hole!
I have made this choice at a time when I could have been
with the tormentors making millions like what the Regime Associates do daily,
but that is not how I was brought up! I might not live to see a better Zimbabwe
through natural or unnatural circumstances, but I am at peace with the
decisions that I have made, and I am not afraid to die for holding those
principles.
Many have asked me about that probability as a price for
speaking out, I respectfully ask you not to ask me anymore. I know the price
for speaking against a gangster State, but more importantly, I also know the
huge price for keeping quiet. It is a soft genocide that we are seeing everyday
as we bury our loved ones dying in hospitals without medication.
We shall all die,
but it is what we leave behind that will count many centuries after we are
gone, so I am at peace with any such eventuality were it to happen to me. It
has happened to many others, and it shall happen to many others too until our
politics becomes civilized. I am a product of my existence and as such, what I
say and what I do with my life is a reflection of how I was brought up by my
parents! We live under an incompetent and corrupt government that hires private
jets for Vice Presidents, a Government that dishes out cars to traditional
Chiefs when hospitals have NO ambulances!
A government that has left the poor to die from easily
treatable diseases and turned public hospitals into death traps, and yet some
amongst us have the nerve to ask me to stay positive?! We have been asked to
stay positive since 1997 when this crisis began, what has that positivity
yielded for our people 22 years later? Some make these calls whilst sitting in
their Range Rovers or call me from air-conditioned mansions in Harare asking me
to be positive.
It shows the huge
and shameful disconnect between the Haves and the Have-Nots of this country and
it also shows that whilst making their millions, the elites of this country
will continue being happy cohabiting with this regime’s broken moral compass! I
want to put it on the record, until this government starts doing the right
things, it’s Regime Associates and Apologists should Stop asking me to be
positive! It is nonsense and it is insensitive to ask me to be positive when I
am seeing compatriots die daily because of this government’s shortcomings!
I do not seek to be accommodated at the feeding trough like
many amongst us, that is why I turned down the offer to sit on a parastatal
board when it was made last year, what I am after is a better life for all. A
life that gives all hard working citizens of this country a fair chance to live
a decent life. They will never get it at the rate at which this government is
destroying our country, they will never get these opportunities if elites
continue to seek accommodation instead of CHANGE in return to keeping their
business interests going!
The selfishness of the elites is only truly self evident
when those opportunities are blocked for their own kids, that is only when they
join the masses in protesting. But why would they complain when they were
getting forex at 1 to 1 and when they don’t spend hours in fuel queues like the
ordinary citizen?
There is a name for that, SELFISHNESS! I come from Murewa
where one of the first black millionaire businessmen in Rhodesia, Mr Kanyasa of
the Farai Uzumba bus service fame chose principle over money. He died in a
Rhodesian jail fighting the racist colonial regime’s oppression and racist
corruption. There were many black businessmen like him who made profit not for
profit’s sake.
Those are my heroes, those are the people that I look up to
because they understood that being rich on the back of regime favors in a pool
of government induced poverty is the equivalent of losing your soul to the
devil. If they had taken the “stay positive” route, Rhodesia would have stayed
in colonial and racist shackles forever or much longer than was necessary.
Mr Kanyasa from Uzumba and of the Wafawanaka totem had the
largest fleet of buses in Rhodesia, a hard working millionaire businessman. He
also had supermarkets and land, but he chose to support the liberation struggle
giving freedom fighters clothes, food and money and allowing his buses to ferry
them where need be. He paid the ultimate price for it, but today he remains an
icon of our liberation struggle and to this very day those with a moral compass
remember him in their thoughts. I have no such wealth like Mr Kanyasa, so why
should I reduce and recede my integrity by tacitly supporting a broken regime
when a man who could have thought of saving his millions chose to do the right
thing?
I have questioned
myself why black millionaires of today and political elites become so
insensitive to the suffering of our people to the point of losing their moral
compass and expecting someone who is going to bed on an empty stomach to be
sensitive! Positive about what? “Being positive” doesn’t fix political and
economic problems, it doesn’t fix crippling power shortages, drug shortages,
cash shortages, fuel shortages or water shortages. If it did we would have been
living in a better country where the citizen was happy!
It shows that we
have NO decent community and business leadership when people in privileged
positions in our society ask us to be positive in the midst of an uncaring
Regime. It shows that we have NO leadership when the privileged define silence
against a corrupt regime as patriotism! This government has induced a chaotic
existence in pursuit of easy pickings from things like fuel cartels and forex
trading at the central bank, the RBZ! This “stay positive” brigade is shameless
because they speak from their own position of privilege and they are
unconcerned by why we are not positive as long as their lives remain on track
and their interests are protected?
The regime is aware
of this weakness so it seeks to co-opt them and pretends to sort out their
economic concerns through tinkering with the economy whilst the looting
continues, and the regime also gives them futile seats on the table to feel
special. When truth, justice and common sense become secondary elements to
one’s existence, when decency, empathy and compassion become tradable
commodities, then the “stay positive” brigade becomes NO different to our
persecutors!
It is aiding and abetting the suffering of our people in
pursuit of business favors from this regime. This regime should simply
implement Political Reforms and stop asking for “positivity” from citizens
groaning under a political crisis that manifests itself through economics, when
it is giving us nothing in return! If you so wish to be positive about this
gross incompetence, corruption, nepotism and mismanagement, please do so on
your own, but don’t attempt to guilty trip us into supporting the very people
who have made our lives unbearable! Stop asking me to be positive, Ask
Mnangagwa to implement Political Reforms!
*HOPEWELL CHIN'ONO is an award winning Zimbabwean
international Journalist and Documentary Filmmaker.*
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