The final battle

There is a class war going on in Zimbabwe: the rulers wage war on the poor – bulldozing their houses (yes, that had started then, it was happening in Epworth) slashing their maize (that started in the ’80s), harassing them with regulations and keeping them queuing.

Nothing is new, is it? It has just grown worse because ‘the poor you have always with you’, and the chefs have learned nothing so we have had more and more of the same. More houses and more crops destroyed, more unpredictable rules, longer queues for more things. Then it was passports, driving licences and chitupas.

Now it is upfu, bread and money.

Because they are people, not cattle to be be driven around with a big stick, our longsuffering electorate have every time, in increasing numbers, voted against them. So we had the ‘Third Chimurenga’ and they lost more votes. We had Murambatsvina and they lost more votes. We had ‘elections’ this year and, however they rigged, stuffed ballot boxes and killed opponents, they lost votes.

And how did they react to that? They set about, in the best way they knew, losing the few genuine votes they had left. More killings, burnings, torture and general nastiness.

Don’t try to tell me ‘They are military men, so they haven’t learnt the difference between a military campaign and an election campaign.’ No military man with any sense would totally destroy what he wants to conquer.

And, if anyone ever really got a degree in violence, the first thing they would teach him would be when to use it and when not to use it.

You attract chickens by scattering grain, not by threatening them with a stick.

Did you see the recent election poster about ‘the final battle for total empowerment’? That kind of empowerment can only be for one man. The trouble is that we are trying to deal with a man who only understands unconditional surrender and he has taught his minions the same.

There is hope. Even he has realised that this is the final battle. And it is not clear who will surrender. We have borne a lot so far and we are still here, so I reckon that since we won’t surrender, he and his thugs will have to do that.

You don’t escape from the International Criminal Court by committing more crimes. Someone ought to be telling them that. And then tell them that we won’t keep fighting them if they just hand over power to the government we elected. We won’t torture or humiliate them.

If they give up enough of their ill-gotten gains and ask for forgiveness, we might let them retire quietly, with enough to live on, as long as they will eat sadza, muriwo and the occasional chicken like the rest of us, not rice and T-bone steak, and they are satisfied to drink Chibuku, not Scotch whisky. That’s better than they could expect from the court in The Hague.