Why I am rooting for my new president

Everyone has a story to tell when it comes to Robert Mugabe. Like millions of Zimbabweans, I was resigned to the fact that Robert Mugabe would be my president until he dies. However it was the thought that Grace Mugabe would succeed him that that made me want to puke. To be honest Zimbabweans never really liked Grace Mugabe even years before she opened her mouth and uttered those taboo words. Second wives are always accused of taking another man's wife. I remember growing up in police camps and I would hear women saying,"akatora murume wemunhu" meaning she stole someone's man/husband. Obviously this is just perpetuation of patriarchy where only the second wife is blamed but not the husband who is thought of being helpless to the charms of the second wife. In all my stay in Zimbabwe, I had never experienced such behaviour as exhibited by Grace Mugabe from any lady. I had stayed with both my grandmothers, my mother, my mother in law, all my aunts, my sisters in law etc. and none of them had behaved like our former first lady. I had only noticed such behaviour from intoxicated people or those that had a mental illness. From 1989 to 1990 we had stayed at Mbizo Police station in Kwekwe and our house was right next to the gate and around 300 metres from the gate there was the council's Garandichauya bar. There ladies of the night would walk to and from the bar and when they were intoxicated they would shout obscenities.

 I had promised myself that after Mugabe dies in office, I would visit Heroes Acre once more to make sure that he is gone for good. This would be second time I would have visited the shrine. The only other time I visited Heroes Acre was in 1999 during the burial of Vice President Joshua Nkomo, I had gone to pay my respects to this great stateman, I walked all the way from Avondale. So on 18 November 2017, I woke up in Pretoria around midnight as I normally sleep only for a few hours. I started looking for any available flights to Harare. I had two challenges that morning, firstly to wake up my wife Manyoni and disturb her sleep, she loves her sleep very much and also to convince her that I was going to spend so much money that morning. My sales experience came in handy as I was on my way to O.R Tambo airport by 4am. I landed in Harare around 10am. As I disembarked from the taxi along Robert Mugabe road that morning, I kept on pinching myself to make sure that I was not dreaming,where all these people demonstrating against the all powerful and mighty Robert Mugabe for real?


Robert Mugabe Road in the morning of the demonstration

 I really wanted to go to Zimbabwe Grounds in Highfied for the gathering but I had to go home first to catch up on sleep and also to recharge my phone. Highfield has special significance for me as I was born at Harare hospital just a few kilometres away. In line with the Shona custom as the first child, I was supposed to be born at my mother's parents home in Murewa. When the days of my birth drew closer, my mother went to Murewa hospital. She then had complications and she was transferred to Salisbury as Harare was known then during the colonial era. The referral hospital for blacks was Harare Hospital also known as Kugomo and I was delivered there through ceasarian section. My father's uncle has a house in Highfield and also at that time my mother's eldest brother had bought a house in the nearby high density suburb of Glen Norah upon his return from Zambia with his Zambian wife and we alternated among the two houses. Growing up I was naughty and my mother always reminded me that as a child born via operation (ceasarian section) I should not give her so much grief as she had suffered so much for me and also that whenever the weather was cold she would feel the pain from that operation.

After lunch I took a taxi back to Harare city centre and started moving up the road with crowds of people along fourth street on the way to State House. I passed by Eagle House where I started my insurance career 20years ago. The special place for me was along Samora Machel avenue where the president's office is housed. In August 2007 in the company of my wife a few weeks before I left Zimbabwe to escape the dire economic situation and settle in Pretoria, I was assaulted by an armed police guard in the evening on our way back to Holiday Inn hotel from First Street. I had decided that it would be safer to pass through Samora Machel Avenue as it would be safe from any potential muggers due to the presence of armed guards.


Along Samora Machel Avenue

I eventually made it to within 100 metres of the State House and everyone was jovial and the soldiers were friendly. State House induces fear in many Zimbabweans, it is not like The Union Buildings here in Pretoria where families go there for a Sunday picnic. When I was working in Harare, I tried to avoid driving nearer to State House as much as possible. Manyoni was working in Borrowdale and my biggest client was also in Borrowdale so I had to go there most days. The most direct way to go to Borrowdale was to drive past State House. I would avoid the State House by either driving up Second street (now Sam Nujoma street) and then turn right towards the University of Zimbabwe campus or go via Newlands and then Highlands. The soldiers and police guarding State House are very brutal, I once saw a motorist being forced to push his car alone all the way past State House after it had broken down. I almost had a run in with the goons around 2004 when my company issued Mazda double cab bakkie stalled next to Prince Edward school on the corner of Princes road and Prince Edward street. Unbeknown to me the motor cade of Robert Mugabe was going to pass through that intersection on his way to Zanu-PF headquarters. Two men wearing suits whom I suspected to be members of the dreaded CIO stopped and ordered me to push my car off the road, I could not push the bakkie on my own as it was very heavy. After about 30 minutes another car stopped by and I explained to them that I could not push the car on my own and the two security officers then helped me to push the bakkie off the road.



A long suffering Arsenal fan in our midst




Banner asking Zimbabweans in the diaspora to come home

 I am rooting for our new President Mr Emmerson Munangagwa even though, I have consistently voted for Morgan Tsvangirai and his party since 2000. I was hoping that he was going to put together a transitional government for a few years and sort out the economy and postpone the elections. Myself as a farmer and businessman, his success is my success. I feel like the economic failures of Zimbabwe always follow me wherever I go. Zimbabwe should move away from being the skunk of Sourthern Africa. I am tired of being a foreigner. Being a foreigner is hard my friends. My experience has been always to expect the answer,"No", and when that answer is served, it always crashes my spirits. I long to be part of a society where I have equal opportunities like everyone else without anyone telling me that I do not qualify because I am not a citizen. I also want the same for my children as I worry that if they experience what I have experienced as a foreigner they might not handle it well.

On Sunday 2 September 2007 my brother in law was then pursuing his doctorate at University of Pretoria and also my youngest sister was pursuing her masters' degree at the same university. My brother in law asked me to accompany him to the main campus in Hatfield Pretoria. Whilst he was busy discussing with fellow PHD candidates who were all from other African countries and mostly Zimbabweans, I was reading the column by the late editor of Zimbabwe Standard newspaper Mr Bill Saidi. I then wrote to him recounting my story and on the following weekend he wrote the following  column http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/sep9a_2007.html#Z20

When optimism buys you zilch

Zim Standard

  sundayopinion by Bill Saidi

IN the evening, when you and your wife are walking back to your hotel,
after tucking into expensive but delicious pizza, it is downright
humiliating to be asked to lie down flat on your belly in the street.

Depending on your threshold of tolerance, you might decide there and
then to leave the country of your birth for the wild blue yonder.

Some people might call this over-reaction; others might, at a pinch,
propose that this display of cruelty to a man's dignity was the last straw.

Which is what it was for the man who wrote this to me last week:

"Events over the past three months left me with no choice. At the end
of June, I left my position as a branch manager of an insurance company. I
just wanted to concentrate on my business(es); three grocery shops, a
seven-tonne lorry, a minibus and a pick-up.

"As much as my branch manager position gave me a lot of prestige, it
no longer made sense for me to continue earning a salary that could barely
fill (up) a tank of petrol. So I left it all - a good Toyota twin cab truck,
a three-bedroomed house, with a swimming pool in a posh suburb and all the
prestige, to concentrate on my indigenous businesses."

This Zimbabwean is writing from Pretoria: "I am starting work tomorrow
exactly 12 days after having collected my quota work permit at the SA
embassy in Harare. I had to leave Zimbabwe in a huff, maybe I had no choice
or maybe I had a choice but I am just a coward."

He was responding to my piece last week, Up Close and Personal. . .in
Agony

For him, the clincher was an encounter with armed men guarding
Munhumutapa building in Harare. In his own words:

"On our way back to the hotel, I decided that as it was past seven, it
was no longer safe for us to use Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and I suggested we use
Samora Machel Avenue and this should be safe for us since there would be
police guarding Munhumutapa building. As we approached Munhumutapa building
the metal button of my jacket accidentally hit against the metal section of
the telephone substation next to the pavement. At that time the armed police
asked my wife. Ambuya, chiyi chamakanda pahwindo? (Lady, what did you just
throw at the window?)"

Here, I am inclined to say "The rest is history". But I suspect some
people will not be content until I give them what others call the "full
Monty" or the whole enchilada. But what followed was almost routine, vintage
Zimbabwean.

After a few exchanges with the soldiers, he ended up lying flat on his
belly, in front of his understandably flabbergasted wife. It was his wife's
comment later to which he thought I ought to pay special attention:

"Shamwari, iwe ne optimism yako! Let's leave the country. You see,
that policeman could just have killed you . . . just like that (snap of the
fingers? and got away with it."

Evidently, it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision. The couple had
been contemplating it for some time, as other couples - single men and
women, confirmed old bachelors and middle-aged spinsters and families - have
done since 2000.

Nobody with even a cursory understanding of Zanu PF politics, since
Gukurahundi, could imagine them reacting to this human haemorrhage with
anything other than "Who cares?" or "So what?"

Life in exile has never been a bed of roses, not in the Americas, in
Europe, Asia, Africa or Australasia.

Not everyone who has fled the economic and political squalor of
countries such as Zimbabwe has eventually finished up as a human Zero. The
people who escaped Nazi terror included the German-born Werner von Broun and
Albert Einstein. They became living legends in their adopted country, the
USA.

This should not encourage young Zimbabwean nerds or eggheads to flee
to South Africa in the hope that, while there, they might discover a Nobel
Prize-winning chemical that, when secreted into the womb, will ensure no
African child is born with the genes that could turn them into maniacal
dictators - although this might solve a lot of problems for the continent.

Zimbabweans have eventually done well in many fields of human
endeavour, once they have braved the scourge of xenophobia that afflicts
every country in the world.

The South Africans are divided over what status to accord Zimbabweans
escaping what has been called The Mugabe Menace: bona fide refugees or
economic asylum seekers?

So far, Zimbabweans do not enjoy the status of refugees: their country
is not in a state of civil war - well, not physically, anyway - nor has
their president declared publicly everyone who opposes his regime must be
fed to the lions in Gonarezhou.

What he has done, not in so many words, is to indicate, chillingly,
graphically, that opposing Zanu PF too openly can be very costly - at least,
to your health.

You will be starved of food, either with empty supermarket shelves or
the denial of food aid from donors.

Personally, my sympathies lie with both sides - the cowards and the
people of courage who decide to stick it out to the end.

Incidentally, I spent 17 years in another country, before 1980. I have
mixed feelings about my period there. Mostly, I wonder how I survived that
long.

saidib@standard.co.zw