le=”MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt”>It’s Christmas. For as long as most Zimbabweans can remember Christmas was a time of fun, feasting and family. Most of us received new clothes, even shoes, and only the poorest of the poor did not have mountains of chicken and rice to eat, and beer and coke to drink.
This Christmas will be like no other. And we join millions of Zimbabweans around the world in praying that there will never be another one like it.
Most families have been split up in one way or another – death, disease or the diaspora has claimed everybody’s mother or sister, husband, child or cousin. Those still in the country have no fuel or bus fare with which to bridge the urban-rural gap. Tables will be bare, bellies empty and throats dry this festive season – in cities and villages alike.
Of course, not everybody will suffer in this way. The tiny Zanu (PF) thievocracy, still clinging for dear life to political power, are at the top of the food chain in more ways than one. They will feast, and they will drink. They will splurge on all that glitters. They will spoil their children with fancy imported gadgets and snug, warm, new shoes.
But don’t envy them, for they have sold their souls and the day of reckoning is coming. Not only have they sold their own souls, they have caused innocent ones to stumble and fall. They have forced them to betray their beliefs, their morals, their culture, their families. They have destroyed lives, livelihoods, families and futures.
We receive countless stories of women and youngsters resorting to prostitution and drug abuse and men resorting to theft, bribery, violence and other crime in order to stave off the hunger pangs of their dependents.
Children can no longer be children in
And we trust that the people walking in such terrible darkness in our beloved