Raising the flag and not the fist in Zim

I met Boyd Maliki the other day in the centre of Bulawayo. Sure, the same one, the cartoonist famous for the Nyati and Taikuni characters that tickled us for decades in the Chronicle. I know that most of you wouldn’t know Boyd even if he stopped and slapped you in the face. Not that he is that type of character, but what I have always marvelled at is the way he has preserved his anonymity with such precision.

He even told me that he was the ‘culprit’ behind some intriguing columns in the independent press under various pseudonyms as recently as just a month ago! Sure, I didn’t know that Boyd could write… I mean carry a column. Cartoonist draw not write, so you think. Well here is a confession. Those few of you who know me pretty well, especially from our University of Zimbabwe days, when stones were still soft, know that I started off as a cartoonist.

I was the resident caricaturist for the infamous students’ rag ‘Focus.’ It was a publication whose articles sent authorities into paroxysms of panic. Our list of contributors will make a who’s who of the current crop of politicians, activists and artists. We had the likes of Tendai Laxton Biti, Tawana Kupe, Titus Moetsabi, Thomas Deve, Chrikure Chirikure and Trevor Ncube. Also regular as contributors we had James Timba, a very left leaning Munyaradzi Gwisai, Professor Shadrack Gutto who along with the late Kempton Makamure we dubbed the ‘Marxist Brothers’ including anyone who had something to say.

Focus was banned more times that I could remember, with my cartoons contributing in no small measure to the proscriptions. The magazine made embarrassing the establishment an art we would provide students a platform for venting their frustrations. I must admit that it really tested the elasticity of the freedom of expression.

But then I digress. Maliki, at our chance meeting along Jason Moyo Street in Bulawayo lamented the fact that we were running the danger of becoming irrelevant. By ‘we’ he meant the aging generation of columnists and cartoonists. He went on to list a number of great scribes who had fallen off the wagon and were doing things they never imagined to be doing. It was indeed a shocking revelation.

That’s what it’s all about… confronting reality head on. That is how the people in my homeland are living. Having arrived back in Zimbabwe, ironically on Independence Day, with memories of Botswana’s first civil service strike still fresh, I realised then that keeping quiet would be doing the legions who follow my ranting and indeed me. My calling is to create a window through which all of you can peep.

So Boyd Maliki reminded me, and this is the main reason why I am back. I confess I have made lots of promises that I have not kept, chief among them compiling a book that was supposed to have been on the shelves by now. For that, I am sorry… as if you deserve it. I will complete the book because I am broke which therefore transfers responsibility to your shoulders… that of buying the book to save a poor soul. But then, there are those among you who know fully well the folly of taking me seriously.

That having been said, which in other circles might be termed as ‘paying the bills’ allow me to let rip. I have been in and out of Zimbabwe for the past four months, mostly in. Long enough to notice that there is a serious shortage of cash in the country. We are paying the price of calling the owners of the money all sorts of names. You just don’t do that.

But then we all have full knowledge of where all the money is going, into the pockets of a select few. These few will then use it to buy favours from the desperate many. But what I then noticed is that people have realised the folly of pandering to the whims of politics and politicians. The current state of the Government of National Unity (GNU) and its birth certificate, the Global Political Agreement is nauseating for want for a better description. It has poisoned life as we know it in the country. The media, both state and independent, is deep in the throes of an epidemic that is worse than cholera.

We all know that the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation in its current state is beyond repair. If I had my way, I would have it shut down and we start things afresh. Watching the news is an outright pain. In fact calling it the news is so misleading. It is a compilation of political commentary, praise singing, crass boot and backside licking of the lowest order.

The epidemic seems to have spread to the independent media with some papers literally inventing stories that would easily pass as science fiction owing to their incredulity. Headlines that mislead are the order of the day, tempting cash strapped Zimbabweans to buy. If we could discern the veracity of some of the stories only by staring the headlines, I bet you some of these papers would have collapsed by now.

Don’t get me wrong, I am one for plurality in the media, but passing off fabrication as news, as some of the tabloids are wont to do, is just not on. That is the job that the highly partisan state media has ordained itself to do. We have to commend them for being unapologetic about it. It makes it easy for you to know which papers not to buy and which television channels to stay from.

That having been said, I have always stated here and elsewhere that I admire the ingenuity of my countrymen in eking out a living. One of the survival tactics is to steer clear of politics. Following politicians and their antics is very stressful activity. They are so full of hot air that one wonders why ZESA does not harness that to power its thermal power stations.

Civil servants have taken politicians to their word at their peril. Flung from one side to the other in the political divide their heads are forever spinning. Today it’s Biti ‘holding onto our money,’ then the next they are told that they would be paid peanuts after all, only to be yanked back to square one where we are told the revenue from the Chiyadzwa and Marange diamonds has not seen the light of day. At the end of the day, there is no guessing who ends up the fool.

Another survival tactic is what one called ‘flag-raising.’ You would be forgiven to think that there is a massive outbreak of patriotism in Zimbabwe by the number of cars flying the national flag. But those in the know say that cars ‘raising the flag’ are less likely to be harassed at the numerous police roadblocks dotted around the country.

‘Name-dropping’ is another tactic used to telling effect, particularly if you intend to unclog the creaking wheels of bureaucracy. This is the time to raid the family tree for relatives, distant and close, who are in positions of influence. The details of which remain privileged information… for now. That’s how we survive here.