By Wisdom Mumera.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – The crafting of the National Pledge worded so as not to be a prayer and yet to be sentimental and spiritual is such that at its ending one has an abiding sense to ask, ‘So What?’
Afraid to create a national prayer to a vague ‘God’, (there are many some say), whilst also aiming to craft a national umbilical vow that links us together in the fight against imperialists and every other negative factor lurking out there, the crafters walked a thin line.
In the first line one gets the sense that he is praying then the prayer peters out into a historical soliloquy about dead heroes, proceeds into an Indigenisation scripture and flat lines out as an open ended vow for hard work wherever that will be.
It seeks to place in each one of the unemployed population as sense of belonging that can drive the disgruntled masses forward in the midst of the economic and social turmoil that has engulfed it.
How the sense of Ubuntu/unhu, foraged for by the Pledge can be instilled in the debris strewn economic implosion Zimbabwe is today is hard to understand.
The country has become a mish-mash of patch-ups and make-as-you-go policies and stunts which have time and again thrown the economy into tailspins.
The lustful and frenetic intercourse of the Land Reform that birthed arid plains of unused farms and displaced workers. The violent elections with rigging allegations; the Indigenisation Act of multiple interpretations and retreating investors plus the abiding presence of a leader caught in a perpetual loop of dying.
In-fighting in the ruling party has become another national hiccup to progress.
Resultantly the population has become a cynical bunch of survivalists resigned to anything seeking to locate then as a united force that can conquer adversities.
Many of the people have made themselves lone warriors with hunched shoulders to batter their ways through obstacles. They are the vendors daily raided by Municipal police and their wares taken.
They are border jumpers visiting neighboring nations to hoarde and evading exorbitant ZIMRA duty payments. They are self-employed mechanics repairing cars at derelict bus stops after their companies sent them away on three month notices.
Being located as part of the larger family of the nation is an anathema to them. Zimbabwe is one thing and they are something else. The government is actually an enemy.
Down there where life is a strong smelling piece of shit, a high sounding piece of poetic vow can never locate them. It will be caught away by the stronger stench cloud of hardships and disappear into a presence of nothingness.
A dry cloud above their heads. A national anthem we strain to remember during national events. Another bird whose meaning are homework for the child but irrelevant to the scavenging for food to eat every day.
For the school children, the foremost group aimed for, the sheen and thus meaning of the pledge will wear off once the hard grip of life catches them at school’s end.
Everything linked to nationhood has become distasteful crap focused on by both those stealing and benefiting from national coffers or those foolish enough to spend time away from seeking for money.
The understanding is that well-meaning and normal Zimbabweans don’t have time for political rallies and machinations. They engross themselves with working for their families not shouting down with anyone or up with the other.
To them Mugabe or Tsvangirai are news items. They are not focal parts of life and should remain at the tether ends of attention.
That’s the same with the Pledge. It shall peter out into a hollow song. A national nothing forced down the throats of school children.
The simple reason being that people have other more pressing issues to focus on due to the malfunctioning of the economy.
A bad economy makes for a bad field to sow philosophical seeds into.
The government says it’s not a prayer, and it’s not. There is no amen by the way. It’s just us telling God, in passing, about our nation and how we are ready to fight for it.
However the government maybe should have made it a prayer. That would have seen the nation placing faith in someone bigger and better, to turn around the economic fortunes.
At the end the National Pledge is another much vaughted nothing. In a global world where the Third world is a convergence ground for everything for all over an economic mess deprives a people of all feelings of nationhood as they cling to anything that works for them.
If supporting gay pays, they support. If loving America more than their country pays, they will support Trump to the grave. If hating Mugabe pays, they will.
In an economic mess anything pays if it pays for survival. A National Pledge however doesn’t.
It’s just a loud exhalation of a dreamy line from a lost dream about what could have been for this small Southern nation and its disparate population partisan to the bone and unable to unite for any one thing in this economic cesspool.
The best way for the feeling of nationhood to return the government simply needs to remedy the economy and then later on teach poems.
Comments
About Author
