Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-The Zimbabwean online population has gone craze with a new infatuation, taking selfies or normal photos with the Zimbabwean flag draped around various parts of their bodies.
Most want it around necks, like a colorful but tired hangman’s noose, whilst on their faces are plastered cheesy smiles that are a wrong pointer to the reason why a whole nation’s symbol has landed on the neck.
Others in a bid for creativity have wrapped it around their arms, a parody of shackled arms, a nation of arrested people.
Started by Evan Mawarire the hashtag #ThisFlag has become a craze that has improbably unsettled the ruling ZANU PF into starting its own diluting #OurFlag.
People have been placing the hashtag on topics and news that they deem representative of the economic, political and social breakdown that has afflicted the country. Long bank queues, piles of uncollected rubbish, misspelt names of Mugabe during the failed Million Man March, and various other sores ravaging the Southern African nation.
With online access now very widespread in the nation the #ThisFlag hashtag has caught up among many people.
Prominent figures have also latched onto the craze.
Trevor Ncube Chairman of Alpha Media Holding, the publishers of dailies Newsday and The Standard has voiced his opinion using the tag.
Lone diamond protester Fagio Marowa has taken it up also. Dj’s. NGO’s. Unemployed youths. Celebrities.
But is this a revolution or just another online buzz that will fade with time and cynicism?
After all this, one is tempted to use words such as storm, building a picture of a latecomer to the Arab Spring though Zimbabwe is currently experiencing Winter. So is this a Zimbabwean Winter uprising?
Zimbabwe has always flattered to deceive previously in political terms.
The emergence of Tsvangirai threatened to bring change that had refused since 1980, but all that fizzled out due to various factors some of which the people can only blame themselves for. Today Tsvangirai is still determined to bring about a new government but something has gone out of him and his movement.
They have split, and split. And they have split again.
Despite the large numbers during the party’s recent demonstration the MDC-T is now a lumbering fighter, tired and with less agility, prone to self-defeatist acts.
The Zimbabwean population since the advent of the MDC-T and its storming entrance has itself recoiled back into the cocoon of cynical resignation from anything political as ZANU PF has repeatedly won all Presidential elections despite accusations of rigging and violence.
They have been bursts of exuberance for change which, like all other gaseous bursts, always die out into frothy bubbles of nothing.
Lone demonstrators have become the in-thing, taking up placards against disappeared US$15billion diamond monies (Fagio Marowa and Sylvanos Mudzvova) against misrule (Kariba Pastor) and the Dzamaras.
#ThisFlag has all the ingredients of a nothing movement, segmented and secluded as it is to an online and technologically savvy population. It’s not the type of people whom one can expect to steer a country into a full throttle battle for change with ZANU PF.
The revolutionary party has been known to employ full blooded guerilla and gung-ho tactics against anyone with the faintest agenda of removing them from power. To expect the #ThisFlag movement from their sanitized perches of online texting to take on the guerillas is far-fetched.
After they have tweeted off their complaints most of them are liable to revert to their normal tasks. Preaching, playing music, dating or cuddling their poddles.
They are genuine Zimbabweans with real complaints but their caliber does not seem the right one to dig the country out of the current mess.
That’s the negative part.
The positive side is that they are vigilant Zimbabweans arming themselves with the nearest weapon to fight off a government they accuse of destroying the whole nation.
At a time things are seemingly going from bad to worse the hashtag is more powerful as a symbolic act of a people taking responsibility for their country instead of waiting for dithering and conniving politicians to come up with ideas.
Recycled politicians from ZANU PF, Mujuru and co, booted out and desperate for further bites of the cherry have placed themselves on the table menu as salvation and its painful how a big part of the population have believed their sincerity.
In that light the movement of the hashtag is better. For all its weaknesses it has purity untainted by history with the enemy
The hashtag has been used so widely that ZANU PF supporters are straining to come up with their own online punches.
So far it has failed, so widespread and popular has become #ThisFlag.
The burden for now is in taking the next step which is in bringing the online movement down into the everyday lives of other ordinary Zimbabweans.
That will determine whether #ThisFlag is really a movement for practical change or just another tired kick of a dead chicken
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