The revered and seasoned Bulawayo economist broke her silence.
She broached the subject of zeroes who call themselves heroes, of the loud, lousy and lost locusts that leave behind a trail of destruction and decay.
Bulawayo listened to her. Sometimes it takes a listening soul to heal headaches and wounds. They heard her silence and called her a humble and hurt heroine.
She said she couldn’t brook it anymore, any further, lest history judges her harshly.
She was obliged to listen to her conscience, to listen to their plight and wailing. She listened to her inner voice because noisy and nagging had been her silence.
She was clear. She didn’t mince her words. “I can’t perfume the odor. I can’t soothe the lousy and lost locusts. Their decadence is suffocating every decent ordinary person. It’s untenable and unholy!”
If she had a way she could talk like an optimist, but her conscience pricked on her.
Her silence was a loud silence, her ignorance was a brilliant body of knowledge.
She didn’t want to dabble in the wisdom of the unwise, unfeeling and misleading.
She was a professional, not a professional liar who is no stranger to swinging principles of Ubuntu and decency out of the roof by virtue of singing for one’s supper.
All that silent and sincere bitterness put her in a quandary, in a corner where she risked being loathed and labelled a doomsayer, an alarmist, a pessimist.
If that’s what it took be on the side of a history driven by honesty, transparency, truth and decency, she said: so be it. Better to be mired in justice’s mileages rather in lousy locusts’ mirages.
She asked herself a series of concerns and questions…
Where is their sense of humanity? Where is their humility and honour? Do they have an idea about ethics?
About care, empathy, sympathy and even karma? About money as a means, not as an alpha and omega?
Are ordinary citizens’ lives not divest of dignity and basic rights?
Were the claimants’ promises fulfilled? Which ones? The pointer is not problematic, it is a zero like zeroes becoming heroes.
Where is their zero tolerance on the corrupt and inept? The answer is a ZERO! Talk of zeroes becoming heroes.
How do l sleep soundly after telling lies that things are looking up to those who have wakeful nights?
For starvation and hunger stare them in the face, because the ghosts of unemployment haunt them.
It is not as if they chose idleness, joblessness and doom over productivity and positivity?
How do l say companies are being revived and capacitated when company closures and incapacitation are the order of the day? When public funds and entities are treated like private possessions?
Has the country’s biggest meat processer and marketer been reopened, by the way?
I don’t want to be part of the charade and lies that are paraded and propagated as the truth!
Was it not “revived and reopened” amid, hype, pomp and fanfare? Then what next? A gimmick? How can pomp be a flop? Are these not ordinary citizens’ lives and emotions they are toying with? How cynical?
Did they ever put a comma or a full stop to their notorious rituals of political pretensions and deceptions?
Are we honestly not fed up with circuses of currency instabilities and inconsistencies?
Of the Promised Land that isn’t on the horizon?
If the economy is not comatose, l want to see companies revived, operating at full capacity.
l want to see the youth empowered, employed and treasured, and not being used and abused as political condoms and sodoms.
The future doesn’t belong to the bungling, looting and lying geriatrics and lapdogs who stole our future and are busy stealing our children’s as well.
We are sick and tired of zeroes who masquerade as heroes.
