Zimbabwean is in great pain!

The report of today's Bulawayo24 is about two young men who beat a man of 72 years to death because he refused to share information about soccer results! Our citizen loses his life because of a trivial matter. The question we ask ourselves is how it is possible to confront an elderly man and demand from him soccer results, thereby refusing to answer them means losing his life. These stories about African Ubuntu cannot be true to Africa, about Africa if we take into consideration the number of deaths happening in our societies. The jigsaw puzzle is the nation born out of pain; the pain has manifest itself into various other forms of societal pain developing a generational cycle of pain: This is the dilemma we find ourselves in.

Understanding the causes of pain; where did it originate; the genealogies of pain are specific to Zimbabwean societies. The number of suicide cases, deaths, homicide cases, rape cases of children even babies, instant justice leading to fatalities, ritual killings of children: recently a newly born baby was abducted from the country hospital for ritual purposes. It was going to be killed and its head was to be sold to south African Ngangas. Households of female elderly citizens living alone in rural areas are targeted: they are sexually assaulted by young men who have no perspective in their lives either than enjoying sexual sprees in villages: rape for these boys is now a hobby; rape old women who could be their grandmothers.

In Bulawayo24.com today the police are expressing concern about deaths emanating from trivial disputes that could have been resolved peacefully without using violence. "This follows the murder of a 23-year-old Bulawayo man who was struck twice on the forehead and chest with a pick by a yet-to-be-identified suspect". "In another case, a Tengwe man (39) was fatally assaulted after he was caught with the suspect's wife at Elephant Rest Business Centre booking rooms," reads a police statement. "In a related case which occurred in Maphisa on June 27 at around 2am, two complainants were attacked by six unknown male suspects while coming from a beer binge at Mbeba Business Centre.

As I write, a man has lost his life in Odzi district after he was accused of extra marital affairs with his wife. Such death in unsupervised gold mining areas are common. Sex workers are not spared in this scourge. There are reports of dozens of miners who eke out a living in gold panning and are murdered cold blood. Robbers are in every city in Zimbabwe: robberies are reported daily, some are fatal. It does not surprise people to hear about brutal killings taking place every day in communities. We have internalized pain even to the extent of watching scenes of sporadic fightings that end up in deaths: pornography of violence.

As I write again, a security guard has beaten a man to death!!!

Pain is institutionalized: The government used pain to cow down citizens from rebellion. The methods police use to deal with the population is maximum beatings sometimes without any reasons. The abuse of power of the police over the population is senseless beatings just to prove they are the law unto themselves. To talk about respect for human beings is farfetched because if the government cannot respect life, how then can we expect the police and army to respect citizens. These brutal beatings of innocent and unsuspecting citizens by army and police are a command coming from higher authorities.

Pain is institutionalized because it is a corrective in homes, at schools: corporal punishment is used on growing up children. Children are subjected to pain at formative years. Domestic violence is in some cases considered a corrective to "unruly women", women who challenge status core are beaten to submission by their subordinates and husbands: such corrective is legitimatized by both men and women. A mother in Bulawayo beat her daughter to death for admitting having had sexual intercourse with a boyfriend. Not so long ago, in South Africa a Zimbabwean mother after giving birth threw the newly born baby in boiling water and the baby died instantly.

Former President Zuma said something still very pertinent to this day. After the Xenophobic attacks in South Africa, he openly said that South Africa was born out of pain. The liberation that was an armed struggle triggered talks that led to independence of rainbow South Africa. However, "we did not go back to the people and told them that the struggle has ended. The violence we used to free this nation was necessary, yes: now that the nation is free, we need to move beyond violence. This is the jicksaw piece that was missing after the independence of South Africa. Zimbabwe never thought along those lines: instead, independence meant to them revenge of the past 150 years of tribal animosities.

In 1983, Joshua Nkomo wrote Robert Mugabe a letter, warning him that teaching children to be contemptuous about other people's lives, would spiral into the wider society and become a culture which would wipe out, even its creators. Zanu is recruiting Green Bombers again. Wait and see the results of a mixture of this training and poverty and unemployment. This statement is taken from the comments section in Bulawayo24 regarding the surge of violent deaths that has alarmingly risen country wide.

Violent deaths are not exclusively in black communities in Zimbabwe: our white cousins are not better either. Recently there was a case of a Caucasian mother who teamed up with her second son to murder the other son. His body was buried in Borrowdale. Violent deaths cut across all sections in our societies: all tribe and races are not spared from acts of violence. Reading an article written by Sam Wezhira last week was giving us a warning about what is ahead of uncontrolled gun culture in the country and reports of high-profile robberies which are not adequately investigated.

We have a government that glorified violence since the inception of this country. Zanu is a violent party, and they are openly proud about their violent traits. Acts of violence were part of the lives of freedom fighters: thousands of people perished in the hands of the liberators. Kangaroo courts were set up to determine who is a sell-out. Freedom fighters were able to square personal grudges by false accusation of "selling out" to the white regime in Salisbury. Those accused of selling out to Smith regime were thrown in open fires to burn, if they were lucky were shot down short range.

While President Zuma acknowledged openly the root causes of Xenophobia in South Africa, in Zimbabwe there was never a time when there was such a reflection of what the causes of violence in our societies could be. Pain, a result of violence is our daily bread: Pain is what we are fed on. It has been so before independence: the pain continues in various forms: pain whose manifestation dates back from the time of liberation, perpetuated by Zanu is present beyond 1980.

Our Freedom is clouded with blood of genocide of the 1983 – 1987. The farm invasions of the second Millennium left thousands dead: black and white. How many black farm workers were burnt to death in their homes? Immediately, after the total chaos of farm destructions, there were demolitions of homes in high density areas in all towns and cities. This exercise left about three quarters of a million-population homeless: the pain of losing homes: lives were lost because of the ego of one person; Robert Mugabe said so, is ludicrous but here we go it happened.

As if it is not enough, when Robert Mugabe lost elections in 2008, the army went for a kill. Thousands of people were murdered cold blood, maimed, raped until Tsvangirai gave up presidential elections – a successive alternation of pain of decades. When the people tried to react to brutal regime, our son Itai Dzamara was abducted. We feel the loss of his absence and we are sure he was murdered by the brutal regime. When we imagine the methods used to kill him is what will make us sleepless because of recycled pain of decades in us.

The people are reacting to how the government's disdain in life of citizens. The nation has inadvertently internalized violence as means to settle disputes. Our opposition parties have also copied and pasted violent attributes of Zanu too. We remember how Dr. Thoko Khuphe together with Douglas Mwonzorwa were nearly burnt to death by MDC-Alliance at the funeral of Tsvangirai in Bhuhera at the behest of their President Nelson Chamisa, supposedly he is a Pastor and an Advocate by profession. Thuggery attributes and disdain in life in MDC-Alliance are manifestations of violence from Zanu PF. Violence is present in communities and most of our institutions.

The opposition parties in Matabeleland want independence, want a separate Mthwakazi nation from the main Zimbabwe curiously will want to use the same violent attributes of the enemy Zanu to free us. Again, this exemplifies the degree in which our psyche is embedded in violence emanating from the enemy Zanu and Mashonaland. Some Mthwakazi parties are using threats and gruesome deaths if the people of this nation do not submit to their call for separation of Mthwakazi from Zimbabwe. The violent attribute of Zanu are wholly embedded in some Mthwakazi party and mirror the enemy it wants to replace. Several scholars have given warnings of an independent Mthwakazi, it could be worse than South Sudan. Among themselves they are hidden conflicts that will be squared up after independence.

The people of Matabeleland should loudly question these threats of violence by the moulds of Israel Dube. The worst thing the people of this region can do is to condone violence from any institution even from those who purport to liberate us. Threatening people with Winnie Mandela necklace is not a civilized way of demanding independence from the government and to cow the Ndebele people to submission. It is barbaric to sink low to openly talk about burning people as a corrective. Again this is the act of pain and how it has manifested itself in us. It is horrendous to realize that few people have had the gut to challenge Israel Dube for his hate speech. In civilized countries Israel Dube would have been fished out long back and brought to face the rule of law.

When we pass on, we shall leave our children in great pain. Violence is internalized in our psyche: we shall pass this pain to the coming generation creating and recycling violence for generation to come, a curse. We shall never win if we confront violence with violence. It has dawned on us late in our lifetime to realize that independence was fought for the benefit of the few, who enjoy freedom. Living in a pit-latrine kind of economy cannot be freedom for the masses. There are laws for the ruling class and separate laws for the masses. Can I imagine if I had known this when I was in Zambia in 1974, dreaming about an independent that never was to some of us?

There was no need to go to war to fight for one percent of the population to enjoying the fruits of independence, the rest we are languishing in abject poverty. How many people perished in the liberation war? Our resources are plundered by foreigners: looting is the correct predicate perhaps. The second republic is clueless. We are ruled by a president who has insulted us by calling us dogs, cockroaches, and lice, in a civilized country Mnangagwa would never be near power but in prison charged of genocide and murders including Itai Dzamara's death.