Obama-nia for Africa
Barack Obama
First things first: (his brains aside) Barack Obama is handsome, cool, and energizing like a drop of dew on an October morn.
By ancestry, Obama is an African and it’s not far-fetched to say through him the ancestors have spoken with a voice that has resonated across the globe, rebranding the black image.
Just like me, my friend Innocent has been glued onto Obama’s presidential campaign.
We both know the twist and turns of the law professor cum US Senator cum presidential candidate’s campaign trail like our hidden souls.
“Obama is a shining star of our generation, and his rise has been nothing less than meteoric. He represents a line of great inspirational and transformational leaders like Nelson Mandela, and he’s making history right before our eyes,” says Innocent. Read more
A donation to eternity, A contribution to the future
“You must appreciate that you make history also. For history is a very human thing. We bring it into being by what we do and do not do. Thus, we must understand that everything we do is important and a contribution to that history. Every night we don’t read; every day we refuse to learn our own history contributes to a negative history. There is a quote by King Kheti found in The Husia, the sacred text of ancient Egypt which says, ‘Every day is a donation to eternity, and even one hour is a contribution to the future, ’” wrote one Dr John Henrik Clarke in “Pan Africanism and the Future of the African Family.”
I strive every day, in every way to be the change I want to see in the world, as Gandhi advised. The hwindi is oblivious to this. He is struck in his own rut, which he has been in for a long time now. I don’t know when exactly roles reversed, and we became the meek, servile sheep at his mercy. It wasn’t always like this. Yes there was that time, of crippling transport blues and debilitating winding queues (of course that seems like a description of the present) when they became kings because for a certain fee they could “allow” you- if you were unprincipled enough- to jump the queue. Read more
Destroying my Kaffir (Nigger) mentality, once and for all
Because of my Kaffir mentality, I have suffered many a loss and lost opportunities in my life.
Today, loudly, boldy, I declare - no more of this Kaffir mentality. Like many people I know and have grown up with, I have for far too long carried the kaffir mentality. Now, it hangs about my neck like a heavy load.
Put simply the kaffir mentality revels in its limited self, and has a few characteristics: eating, drinking, spending, smoking, gossipping, church-going devoid of action, bearing children, complaining, slaving for others, dealing, and then heading off to a freshly dug grave where people wail and extol non-existent virtues. I am sick and tired of the kaffir mentality, period.
And as I write, I am armouring myself, ready to break out of the cocoon of this kaffir (nigga) mentality and be the change that I seek. Read more
Hope and lessons for Zim from the Desiderata
Commuter Omnibuses, Harare (PHOTO: FUNGAIFOTO)
An elderly lady was breathing fire the other day. Kombi fares had shot up in the last hour she had come into town, and now on her return trip home, an astronomical fare had come into place. All she wanted to know was why? Did the hwindis, “loaders” and rank marshals think that money grew on some Zimbabwean trees that only they knew?
Needless to say the response she got from one hwindi in particular was less than savoury. It bordered on contempt and gross disrespect for her gender and age. That set her off.
Then she said, “Munoti muZimbabwe mazara huori, saka regai tese tiite huori, asi tiripo vamwe vasina kuora!” (Roughly, you say that Zimbabwe is now full of corruption, so there is nothing wrong with being corrupt, but after everything we have been through, some of us are still not corrupt…” Read more
Out of hellfire
Out of hell, fire and thorn, I was born
And carved
Chip by chip,
Then chiselled to my bone marrow,
And left out to dry under
A sun that bleached my skin black;
Till I nearly became one with dust
Then sand-papered and polished with a thick wax
Now, here I stand like a fine sculpture - a son of the soil
My features stand out, and
My bust is set up
Ready to conquer anything that arises
In this hidden valley of a thousand hills
A woman in rebirth
In the beginning is a word, and the word becomes a voice shut up in her bones; in a whisper, it weaves itself into her loins telling her to burst forth like a bud from her self-made cocoon.
She hurries away from the word wearing a resolve to find her lost seed. But her heart thickens within cobwebs hanging inside the crevices of her being. The voice groans inside her. With her left toe, she scribbles a note on the ground for her grandmother, and another for herself, and then she drags her feet, shoulders clumped as if she is carrying a heavy load. Read more
