It’s not how well you say it
When the cock crowed, euphoria filled the land. Five year plans were brandied about with enthusiasm, gusto and the future seemed bright. We looked beyond our borders and thought, just like the South Africans do now, “Thank God we are not like those countries up north.”
When Mozambiquean refugees sought haven from the RENAMO stoked civil strife in their homeland, we were prone to treat them with contempt, calling them mamoskeni” while we gloated in our own sense of wealth, success, stability and invincibility.
We laughed at our Zambian brothers and their “worthless” Kwacha (back then) and how they needed wheelbarrows to carry enough money to buy a loaf of bread… Little did we know that bearer cheques lurked in the shadows or that a new currency would have the suffer a fate similar to that of the bearer cheques in a short, short period. Read more
Angels needed
Gotta find me an angel
To fly away with me
Gotta find me an angel
Who will set me free
- Mick Hucknall, Simply Red
Recently I read an engaging book titled “Being Afrikan: Rediscovering the Traditional Unhu- Ubuntu- Botho Pathways of Being Human” by Mandivamba Rukuni and this quotation grabbed my attention:
“We Afrikans on the other hand [unlike Westerners] have maintained strong family ties, but do not use them for business……….When it comes to business we shy away and avoid working with family members.” Read more
Solidarity is ‘Western’ for Ubuntu/Unhu
In my culture, when someone asks ‘how you slept and woke up’ in the morning, you respond ‘ndamuka kana mamukawo’ meaning ‘I woke up well if you did too’. This is an acknowledgement of the existence of other beings around you.
You acknowledge other people because they are part of you and you are part of them. It is an acknowledgement of the importance of life apart from one’s own and it is a profession of love and respect for what surrounds you. In other words you stand in solidarity with others by the way you respond to those around you. I believe I do not have a choice for who is around me and who to respect and this makes everyone and their existence important. This is not something I strive to be, it is what makes me proud to be Zimbabwean and African and it is what I am. That we grow up living in solidarity, believing in solidarity and paying solidarity to each other without thinking about it. ‘I am, because you are, because we are!’ We are one whole and one body Read more
