Superstition: Fact or Fiction?

A few years ago a self confessed wizard rocked up at a police station in rural Zaka, Masvingo province and told bewildered officers that he was tired of witchcraft and that he had come to surrender his ‘instruments.’ Unconvinced, the cops asked if he could stage a live demonstration of his capabilities and he gladly obliged but with a health warning. He went into a trance and started chanting incomprehensibly while rubbing together two sticks from his arsenal.

From a clear blue sky a well aimed bolt of lightning struck a huge tree at the compound turning it into an inferno. When he turned to his audience wearing a satisfied smirk on his face, he discovered that the witnesses had fled in terror into the surrounding bundu. I was after a long while that they eventually emerged sending the wizard on his way with the revelation that they were unqualified to deal with matters spiritual. They suggested a long list of prophets.

However, on each occasion, he produced the same results and effect with some of the prophets being said to have fled the district for good. Not until one brave one managed to fix the problem and burn the paraphernalia in front of a cheering crowd that included the local chief. He was ably rewarded with a number of beasts levied on the community.

Why am I telling you this? The issue here is not so much that the whole story sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone, but rather, the fact that here was someone confessing to the fact that he was a wizard with a live demonstration to boot. This incident received wide coverage by the Herald newspaper and the ZBC. Now hold it, before you doubt the credibility of the two sources, I should vouch for them on this point though painfully so.

The question that came to my mind was why witchcraft cannot be turned into doing good rather than evil? I know that I am wading in highly contested territory here, but let us just say that there was a way in which we can tap into this technology which has consistently fallen in between the cracks of superstition, religion and legislation. The Witchcraft Act in Zimbabwe outlaws the practice, in fact, it denies the existence of it and it is a heinous crime to label someone a witch.

Yet the reality, and I am placing my head on the chopping block here, is that these things exist whether we believe them or not. Religious personalities have been known to exorcise evil spirits, products of the principality of the devil. But that is knowledge gone to waste if you ask me. For a start the Zimbabwe Electricity Sometimes Available (ZESA) would benefit immensely from such technology.

Engineers will agree with me that a few channelled bolts of lightning would alleviate Zimbabwe’s nightmare of blackouts and load shedding. The construction industry would use the same to clear land demolish stuff. Lightning might even be bottled for domestic use. Imagine not having to rely on conventionally generated electricity for cooking and lighting which as we all know costs an arm and a leg.

Witches have also been known to travel by other means. They either ‘teleport’ themselves or ride a broomstick or hyena depending in which part of the world you live in. Riding a hyena would not make a pretty sight though. It could get you in trouble with wildlife activists. I know what the sceptics among you are thinking, that this guy is busy legitimising the absurd, cultivating the fertile minds of the primitive among the human race. Or that I am just pain crazy.

While I appreciate the compliments you should accept the reality that Africans are among the most superstitious in the world including the ones who claim to be educated. Many are finding it difficult to come to terms with everyday challenges. We believe witchcraft is real acting to influence, intervene and alter the course of human life for good or bad.

You will sure find people who bear witness to witchcraft or even actively participate in it. Like politicians who in an election year take the beaten path to an Inyanga (traditional medicine man) to boost his or her chances of winning? One was even caught with a human head in the boot of his car!

How about the short hairy creatures we know as Tikoloshi, those short ugly bearded creatures that have incredible strength and a voracious sexual appetite. They are used to gain wealth and come with instructions that are broken to one’s peril. A recent case is Ramotswa in south eastern Botswana; a young man committed suicide after a female manager at his work place called him into some secluded room and showed him her breasts. Before the hot bloodied males among you speculate whether they were worth dying for, there is more to the story.

Apparently, the woman who is much older than the unfortunate young man had pursued him quite some time. The implication being that she desired him in more intimate ways. He had deflected her so many times but realising that his job was on the line he finally gave in. In the suicide note that was found after he was found hanging from a tree, he described the whole episode where the woman said she wanted to show him something. She called him into her office and slowly opened her blouse... to reveal a hairy human like creature suckling from her breast. He must have snapped.

Then there is the portion that enables the user to have sexual intercourse with any woman he pleases without her permission! One such man was severely assaulted at a popular fleamarket in Bulawayo earlier this year. This is how it is said to work: the offender identifies a victim and then ‘imagines’ being intimate with her while clasping the root in his pocket.

The victim will feel everything though the offender could well be standing some distance away reading a newspaper or something. The chap who was caught confessed to using the muti. I should add that it is now inadvisable to read a newspaper with your hand in your pocket at fleamarkets in and around Bulawayo. You have been warned.

I do not believe that rational people are making all these things up given the frequency that they occur. One might argue that unless these incidents are verified and placed under scientific scrutiny, they belong to the realm of fiction. What if these occurrences do not subscribe to known laws of science. Scientists do admit that there is much more that is yet to be discovered. From a religious point of view, the existence of evil is widely accepted in the context of the great controversy that began when Satan was expelled from heaven.

We should be aware of the conflict between the forces of good and evil so that we can take evasive action. Those who have dabbled in witchcraft are paying the price and live a life of regret, if they are not already dead. We just have to walk the world with our eyes wide open and not take things for granted just because one cannot explain them rationally.

Whose Falls are they anyway?

“Come to South Africa and see the Victoria Falls.” This rather incredulous statement is contained in a brochure that I assume was approved by the South African Tourism authority. It was the subject of a conversation I had with a fellow countryman the other day. Me, and my big mouth had mentioned this to him as we discussed how Zimbabwe would benefit from the 2010 World Cup. How could they, he howled beside himself with anger. I said to him that the South Africans have been marketing the Falls as their own for ages while we were busy invading farms and beating each other up and starving each other half to death.

We are all aware where the Falls are but with the global soccer spectacle just around the corner, the South Africans are going to make the most of anything that can channel money in their direction. They even have direct daily flights from Joburg and Cape Town that make sure that their tourists stay long enough to view the Falls and are quickly whisked out before you can shout “Zanu PF Youths!” My friend mentioned that it seemed obvious that the South Africans were giving our country a wide berth when it came to benefits. Granted that the bulk SA’s tourism industry is controlled by whites this is not surprising, he fumed.

We might be the quintessential skunks of the world but allow us to get the benefit of our God given natural resources. A tourist dropping by for the day just to spend on curios and ice cream is not enough. But then who can blame them? Thina the owners are not marketing our tourist attractions enough. So, what can stop others who see potential in them do it for their own benefit? Aren’t we the ones who frustrated Michael Jackson from building a resort along the Zambezi?
We were so full of ourselves that all potential development fled across the border to Zambia. As I speak no less than 4 luxury hotels have been constructed in Livingstone while their airport has been upgraded to take wide bodied aircraft. They have even built an international standard stadium that will host any of a number of world cup bound teams for acclimatisation. The way things are going on the political front in addition to having the likes of Karikoga Kaseke at the helm of tourism in Zim, we might as well forget getting any of those teams even taking a peak from our side of the Falls.

I will accept the Zambians making the most of them because we share this natural wonder, but the South Africans! Let them keep their world cup and will keep ‘our’ Falls. No amount of sweet talking will be able to gloss over the sorry state of our country particularly when war talk remains part of the discourse. As it is said in the bible, we will reap what we sow, which in our case is absolutely nothing. By the way my friend, being of the war talk type had the last word, “Let the South Africans keep their world cup, and we will keep our Victoria Falls!”

‘Hate’ is such a harmful feeling
Did I say some time back that Ian Khama and the Batswana ‘hate Robert Mugabe with a passion?’ Well, allow me to re-phrase that statement without it losing much of its currency. Let us say that Batswana hold a less that flattering view of our Uncle Bob. I regret using the word ‘hate’ because as a prowled the website New Zimbabwe.com before it crashed I encountered several instances of people who said they ‘hated’ Ian Khama, even if they did not present a plausible reason why.

Hate begets hate. There has been so much of it going around in Zimbabwe I don’t want to be the one encouraging its circulation. I tried to search for reasons and the only thing I came up with is the fact that Khama does to like the GPA experiment one bit. I recall an outright attack on Ian by one Jonathan Moyo to the effect that ‘what else could people expect from a country that had more goats than people.’ I felt that was below the belt stuff... until Jonah scampered back cap in hand to Zanu PF. Just typical isn’t it?

As if to rub salt into the wound, the Botswana president repeated his displeasure at Zanu PF’s failure to fully honour the spirit and the letter of the power sharing agreement. Addressing his nation recently he said that in the absence of genuine partnership it would be better for all the parties to go back to the people – conduct genuinely free and fair elections. Talking about free and fair elections...

True democracy is a tangible ideal in Botswana. Batswana exercise one of the basic fundamental rights, that of the freedom of speech. We all know that the same cannot be said about the homeland where there is freedom of speech but not after the speech. Before anyone officially declared yours truly a cheerleader of the Lt General Seretse Khama Ian Khama, may I be allowed to mention the fact that not everyone in Bots is quite enamoured with their president.
Spencer Mogapi, the vocal deputy editor of the local Sunday Standard newspaper has a beef with the fact his president is not directly elected. In Botswana the leader of the party winning the elections automatically becomes president. He writes that it is important that the president should earn those powers directly from the people.

‘Zimbabwe, a country we would like to portray as run by a red-eyed dictator has a better system. Robert Mugabe may be rigging the elections every 5 years, but Zimbabweans are, as of law, allowed, from time to time, to go to the polls to choose who they want to be president,’ Mogapi writes. So there you are. We do get the occasional credit even if it is in a hackneyed sort of way. Pamberi!

The xenophobes have it!
We are in the news again for the wrong reasons too! Zimbabweans have been attacked in South Africa’s Western Cape Province by the locals. Their gripe is that, what for it, Zimbos are allowing themselves to be exploited by the local farmers by agreeing to work for peanuts. Yah, you heard me right. The locals claim they don’t want to work because the farmers are offering wages that are well below the government stipulated ones.

But then here come these desperate foreigners to give the farmers a life line. So their cockeyed solution is to drive them out. We all know how overenthusiastic the South Africans can be when it comes to moering (Afrikaans for hitting) people. The story here isn’t so much the violence but the fact that Zimbabweans have been driven from their own country and resorted to travelling the best of 4000 kilometres (as the crow flies) to the Cape winelands for refuge and sustenance! Now who is the criminal here?

Lenox Mhlanga can be contacted at lenoxmhlanga@hotmail.com and on Face book at www.facebook.com/lenoxmhlanga

And the drink goes down the drain

I am sure that when I informed the editor that I had stopped drinking he must have fallen off his chair. There are many who can’t imagine me teetotal. My history on the bottle is a colourful yet disastrous one that would require more space than this column can offer. There is so much I can recall and philosophise about the devil’s drink. There, I said it.

Anyway, I can attest to the fact that my decision had absolutely nothing to do with the trend in my adopted home of Botswana. Their president Ian Khama hates alcohol and its effects second only to Mugabe. The reasons are personal, his family having been affected by alcoholism, his father Sir Seretse and sister, Jackie being notable victims. We all know how Batswana love their drink. They will drink anyone under the table particularly the women.

So when Khama accepted the presidency on Fools’ Day last year, a day his countrymen will never forget for various reasons, he declared his four ‘D’s’ chief among them DISCIPLINE. Being a military man he should know the meaning of the word. He felt that Batswana have no discipline because they doth drink too much. So he went about sorting out the problem. First, he slapped a 30% levy on alcohol making taking it out of the reach of the majority. Sad to sad they have resorted to Chibuku and other vicious concoctions that I will not care to mention. Then he reduced the operating hourss for liquor outlets, bars, night clubs and declared war on shebeens.

He also banned the operation of braais (barbecues) outside butcheries because he felt that this encouraged people to drink all day while besatshisa inyama. Drunken driving was next in line and a presidential directive increased traffic penalties by 100%! Batswana, while acknowledging their drinking problem, were appalled. In fact, the whole thing was so political that the opposition used it as a campaign tool in the just ended elections.

In fact, the former Minister of Trade and Industry, Neo Moroka lost his Kgalakadi South seat to the opposition because he was the face of Khama’s alcohol prohibition campaign. Kgalagadi is a well known guzzlers’ paradise and they made their displeasure clearly known. An enterprising Botsalo Ntuane, BDP candidate in one of Gaborone’s constituencies, organised a free concert featuring South African pop band Splash on the eve of the elections. He stepped on stage and shouted to the capacity crowd, ‘I love alcohol!’ He won the seat for the ruling party.

Allow me to digress. Here I was in a country renowned for the highest number of drinking holes per square kilometre and all of a sudden I stop drinking! Hard to believe as it sounds I am comforted by the fact that I was never an alcoholic. Otherwise I would have suffered from horrible withdrawal symptoms which I did not. I have always said to people that I was a social drinker and never felt so desperate to drink. I should admit though that this seemed to be the case when I was at the University of Zimbabwe but there beer kept us sane.

We went by the motto ‘We drink daily and pass annually’ more as justification than anything else. But unlike a great many of the UZ Alumni who got their first taste at the Students Union, some of us were already veterans. I am glad that my former roommate at the New Complex Phase One, Finance Minister Tendai Biti was not among us sinners. Such people had a role to play like the time when I went celebrating passing my second year and had one too many smuggled vodkas at Bretts nightclub.

A concerned Laxton Biti, as we knew him then, came to my rescue as I lay immobilised in my room by the mother of all hangovers. He dutifully brought me all my meals and though I never ate any of them I was moved by his concern for someone whose agony was self inflicted. I will not forgive Darlington Masenda, another non-drinking student, who was the DJ because it was partially his music that contributed to the damage.

Arthur Mutambara was another sober individual who I remember for his driving ambition to be in some position of leadership. His futile attempt to get elected as chairman of the Ballroom Dancing club on campus might never make it into his biography which is why I mention it here. He may deny it by witnesses will remember giving his reason to stand for election as his curiosity as to why it was led by people coming from Matabeleland.

His persistence later got him into the Students Representative Council and look where it he is now, Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe! I clearly remember Mutambara’s infamous brush with the notorious CIO that saw him tumbling out of the Phase Two window. Mugabe later remarked that ‘these students boast of being tigers yet when the heat was turned on they jump out through windows like kittens.’ He always boats about this incident claiming he was the first to be arrested by the regime before Morgan Tsvangirayi who only was later locked up for challenging Arthur’s incarceration when he was a trade union leader.

Anyway that is beside the point. I have to admit that I come from a family that drinks as if it were going out of fashion, which in itself speaks volumes. Being of royal blood, kings were known for their liking for the frothy brew, notable among them Mzilikazi kaMatshobana who suffered from excruciatingly painful gout. I recently learnt that I am a direct descendent of Soshangane wakoGasa. If I had a good excuse for drinking this was definitely going to be it.

But then there are many negatives that come with the practice of imbibing. I have lost a great deal of very close relatives, notably uncles, to the bottle. In fact my maternal grandfather’s young brother so idolised beer that he composed a song to entice me into appreciating it when I was 10. I used to accompany him and my father on their fishing trips which I thought were an excuse from them to drown themselves in booze. After taking ‘several’ he would burst into the rendition, “Amahewu, amnandi, amahewu, amnandi sibili!’ They say that the rest is history.

So the question in your minds is now what? I believe we all have quotas and I have exhausted mine. Sad to the brewers this might sound but I think my contribution to the industry stops here. There is this theory that people who don’t drink have more time to indulge in other extra mural activities such as chasing women. Though there might be a grain of truth in that, I would not relish being ‘planted’ in the ground like a flower. There is this disease that is wiping out Batswana and I would not like to be another of its statistics.

Is there anything wrong with making an about turn in life and sampling how it would be like if one’s mind wasn’t clogged with alcohol? There are a lot of things that I appreciate more like family, nature and just being alive. That does not mean that I will shun my former drinking companions. I miss the humour and the antics only now that I will have all my faculties alert enough to fully capture the fun for me to recount to you on these very pages.

Lenox Mhlanga can be contacted on http://www.facebook.com/lenoxmhlanga

Khama and Mugabe: Two sides on different coins

I have been dreading this day and it has finally arrived! To say that it been a long time since I last wrote a column is an understatement. So much good and bad has happened and the Editor is yet to forgive me for the disappearing act. But to be quite honest, living in Zimbabwe was no longer funny. I would personally look forward to a trip to hell if there ever was one. I remember vowing to be the last person to leave, holding the keys to lock up the country after every one had gone.

Today I find myself in a foreign country, Botswana to be exact, licking my deflated ego. How I got here is a very long story which you will pick up bits of with time. In a nutshell, I ended up airlifting my family out of what had become a shell of a country in January. Rewind to the year 2000 at the infamous Men’s bar at the Selbourne Hotel (also known as the ‘Dog Section’) where sitting with my drinking mates we speculated whether Zimbabwe would sink beyond the point we were experiencing at the time.

That was the time when my friend Owen Maroleng had boldly declared that Zimbabwe had not only reached rock bottom, but had begun to dig further. We were to scrap for nine more years after that, each year far worse that the last, the patrons of the Men’s bar dropping off like flies. At one point it became exceedingly impossible to clasp a pint that we thought pubs would be turned into museums. Imagine queuing at the bank the whole day only to withdraw enough to by a couple of buns to feed your family.

Diverting such scarce resources to buy booze would have earned a family man a date with the firing squad. Survival became the watchword. One spent the day scheming as to how he was going to put food on the table. Mugabe had turned us into hunters and gatherers of the Stone Age. Water stopped flowing into our apartment in December, 2008. It was the bleakest Christmas in living memory. I decided there and then that enough was enough. We packed our bags and headed for the Tswapong Hills.

Landing in a foreign land is an intriguing experience. You are at once reminded that you do not belong. The label ‘foreigner’ sticks to you like a bad smell. Not being able to speak their language becomes a major handicap. Batswana get visibly irritated when you use the Queen’s language on them. Not that you would have done anything wrong, it’s just that the language has a tendency of ‘getting under their tongues.’ But looking back at where one was coming from, this was a minor setback in comparison.

Everything here works. There is little stress when conducting day to day activities. The shelves are groaning with food and other things and the Batswana could not care less. God blessed them immensely when compared to our curse. Though there is disconcerting paranoia with ‘illegal Immigrants’ (read Zimbabweans), one should take it the same way that you treat an unwelcome fly that wants to spoil your meal. The Botswana government seems content with spending two million pula a month deporting illegal Zimbabwean immigrants only for the former to make a u-turn at the border.

We accept that some Zimbabweans here can be a nuisance, bringing crime to an otherwise laid back society, we actually make a very significant contribution to the success story that this semi-arid country of just under two million has become. The booming construction industry is supported by Zimbos. The demand for Zimbabwean maids, herd-boys and girls, gardeners, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, nurses is endless. Add the fact that Francistown has been built on the capital brought in by Zimbabwean cross border shoppers. The only problem is that Batswana do not seem to appreciate this for a fact.

However, there is one thing I admire the Batswana and their government for. They hate our dear leader and Zanu PF with a passion. They just can’t understand how a government can be so cruel to its own people. The face of Botswana’s disgust is in the form of none other than their Minister of Foreign Affairs, Phandu Skelemani. He comes from the Kalanga north worst affected by the excesses of the Mugabe regime.

President Lt Gen Seretse Khama Ian Khama and his government do not recognise Robert Mugabe as legitimate. During an interview Skelemani laid this position bare when he said that he accepted Mugabe as a person ‘except when he is pretending to be President.’ Mugabe’s displeasure with Ian Khama came to the fore during the signing ceremony of the Global Political Agreement last year when after a rambling diatribe he turned to the former army commander moaning, “Khama, Khama, Khama, I don’t know what wrong I have done to you!”

Much to Mugabe’s displeasure, Khama has given refuge and comfort to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi. Batswana prayed for him in a moving show of solidarity and sympathy when he lost his wife is that tragic accident. Ian even sent his top men led by Skelemani in the presidential jet to found out whether there was any foul play. They whisked Tsvangirayi to Gaborone to seek second opinion on his condition. As far as the Botswana government’s verdict on the GPA experiment, the jury is still out.

As far as being the bastion of democracy Botswana more than deserves the tag. It’s so refreshing to witness its democratic ideals in action. Arriving at the start of an election year, I got the opportunity to see real democracy in action. I have been moved to tears when comparing the sham of last year’s disputed elections In Zimbabwe. The Batswana have their share of problems, but the ideals of their founding fathers have been jealously guarded for the last 44 years! No wonder the old croc is so peeved these Batswana were making him look really bad as if that wasn’t the case.

Allow me to take you down memory lane to 1984 when I first visited Bots. It was at Francistown’s Bluetown suburb where we had stopped for a few drinks. Just outside the pub were two gentlemen standing about 50 metres apart shouting through loudhailers. I couldn’t catch what they were saying because they were talking in Setswana.

Standing between them was a motley crew, wearing party T shirts from different parties. I leaned over to ask the barman what was going on and he told me that the two were council election candidates, from the ruling Botswana Democratic Front (Domkrag) and the the opposition Botswana National Front. At no point during the event was there violence and not a single police officer was in sight. After the ‘rally’ the two opposing candidates came into the bar bought each other drinks and continued the debate with the patrons. I was totally blown away!

Now if that was that incident affected me then, fast-forward 25 years and here I was witnessing an African miracle before my very own eyes. This month’s elections in Botswana have been such a revelation. They were a stark contrast to those held in March and June of 2008 in Zimbabwe. Which explains why Mugabe is not so impressed with Ian. Figures!