Why should Mugabe's name be sounded more than ours

Upon what meat doth this our Mugabe feed, that he is grown so great?

"Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates.

The fault, dear Manheru, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings. Manheru, Musewe and Mugabe; what should be in that "Mugabe"?

Why should that name be sounded more than ours?

Write them together, ours are fair names; sound them, they doth become the mouth as well; weigh them, they are heavy; conjure with them; Manheru or Musewe will start a spirit as soon as Mugabe.

Now in the names of all gods at once, upon what meat doth this our Mugabe feed, that he is grown so great?" (This, of course, is borrowed from Shakespeare.)

If only we could put Zimbabwe first and all work together for the people, then surely, our names, yours and mine, would all become melodies with similar weight and none would be sounded more than the other.

Our strength is in our diversity. That is what will create a strong, vibrant and prosperous Zimbabwe.

Upon what meat, my brother, doth our Mugabe feed that he is grown so great while we must find ourselves dishonourable graves?

Upon what feat hath he wrought that he is grown so venerable where it not for the forgotten droves of our brothers and sisters that paid the ultimate price for our "freedom"?

Alas, those who lived to tell the tale now live destitute and rejected. In my books, all of us in some way contributed to the struggle. We all deserve to enjoy its bounty.

Surely that is not a favour to be lavished upon us at someone's whim?

Heroes and heroines alike walk our streets today and some lie in dishonourable graves.

How pitiful.

It is time we put a stop to this false claim that somebody, a name, a lone man, and others that count a few liberated us and therefore have the incontrovertible right to all power and wisdom, to rule us, to command us, to summon us, to expunge us if necessary and deliver us into a bottomless pit of despair. If that is your "freedom", I want none of it.

Zimbabwe belongs to all who live in it and all who were born in it.

Or is it our fear, my brother, for Kahlil Gibran counsels us: Fear is never in the hand of the feared by in the hearts of those that bear it.

Until when must we the "liberated underlings" be forever so beholden to those who expunged the oppressor?

Men have surreptitiously laid privilege to this heroic deed; was it not fate or was it not a symphony of a collective?

"One key attribute the lack of which stands us out as a weak people, a weak nation, is being able to sum up each stage in, and of, our lives.

The absence of that attribute makes us both an unconscious and goal-less people, bringing us uncomfortably closer to beasts of the wild."

And so you wrote recently. I concur with you on that, my brother, literate as I am, that indeed we are a nation that has failed to audit its talents , its treasures and even its very own history; a nation of beasts masquerading as liberators; lack of leadership perhaps? Goal-less? Indeed!

Because 34 years after independence our country is destitute and can neither pay its way nor gainfully occupy millions of its "liberated" educated underlings.
Things fall apart as the throne dithers and remonstrates against the West while the East feeds on our treasures like vultures.

Only their purses and offspring bulge.

That is a truth, so hard to swallow; but swallow it you must.

Shall we then, my dear brother, set and measure our goals, our success, our worth, or our price perhaps, by that? Surely not?

Goal-less? Yes!

Simply because we sit on prodigious wealth, plundered by an oligarchy whose only goal has been to enlarge the bulk of their bellies.

That is their ineluctable fate. If that is good and honourable, my dear brother, then you and me are truly not cut from the same cloth!

It is obnoxious and scandalous for anyone among us to defend a political system that is hopeless and corrupt which has created so much pain and suffering for millions of ordinary Zimbabweans whose only crime has been to be born in these times.

Our "liberators" have underdeveloped Zimbabwe and decimated our potentials at a pace faster than the colonialists.

If that is your Sovereignty, you can keep it!

My judicious Manheru, if only we could apply your grand prose, my "vaunted literacy" and the much vaunted wisdom at the throne to ameliorate the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe, then surely, our names, Manheru, Musewe and Mugabe, shall start a spirit even feared by the gods.

But first we must destroy the throne that we have erected within our own hearts for our Mugabe.

I, for one, truly believe that there is an outside to our current circumstances; an outside to tyranny, greed, corruption and the absurdity of entitlement to power without responsibility. We must all believe that tout le temps!

My dear brother, our fates now surely lie in our hands and the people of Zimbabwe come first.

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Vince Musewe is an economist and author based in Harare. You may contact him on vtmusewe@gmail.com