RESILIENT STONES SOCKED IN THE HOT SOUP OF HONESTY AND DISCIPLINE – ZIMBABWE The last time I had a keen and serious in soccer was when I was doing my ZJC up to Form 3. Those were the days of Reinhardt Fabisch of the Dream team. I remember us, taking a radio set into the (Chikanya) mountains as we gathered some wild loquat fruits (mazhanje/mashuku). I can’t remember whose radio set exactly it was, but it must have been Evans Manyenga’s. The radio had been ‘smuggled’ and the village and we also ‘smuggled’ it into the mountains to listen to proceedings at the National Sports Stadium in Harare. I remember Zimbabwe won and were so happy and cheered all the way back into the villages. Then over the years, the Zimbabwean team began to sink, sink and sink. I just lost interest in the game. I have always supported Dynamos ever since I began to know about soccer but as we speak I don’t even know who is who there, though I still support. And we used to chant, “If God hated Dynamos, why did He create the sky blue!” So for a while, I have not been knowing what has been taking place in this beautiful game as I have sometimes heard Charles Mabika say, when I tuned on to my television set and perhaps was commenting on some Mbada Diamonds, what, what... Last night, I took my time to follow our team play Mali. I really enjoyed the game and saw how much new talent we have now. I like the strikers but was not quite happy with the defenders. It seemed they were doing some ‘comprado bourgeois’ business (at least from my judgement). What I saw in the team was what I see our nation as, at least as I have a panoramic (bird’s eye) view, as I pitch down here in Bloemfontein. Not exactly to invoke some fascist-nazist thinking in us, but we are a great nation. In September 2011, I presented a paper in Nairobi on Social Protection Mechanisms in Zimbabwe. After my presentation, one Ethiopian guy asked me a question, “What is the secret with Zimbabwe? I have been to Harare but has never seen a single beggar there?” The question was impromptu but in a few seconds, I managed to weave some ‘intelligent’ answer. I said, “You see, Zimbabwe means a house of stones. It is a nation made of stones. This stones are not just some stones but that hard, granitic stone with a lot of resilience. Ever since we have been battered in economic terms, we have always find coping strategies to fight poverty. The secret is resilience.” So when I saw Simba Sithole duck the Malian defenders, beat all of them and score, I saw that resilience. There are many things that have confirmed to this fact, judging from what I heard this past week and I will demonstrate to us shortly. On Tuesday we had a lecturer by the Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the Free State University, Professor Jonathan Jansen. He first posed a question on the people sitting in the front row of the class about where they came from. Everyone said their countries until he came to one Zimbabwe and there he stopped and there he hooked his presentation on “Is the school system working in South Africa.” He asked, “Do you know why Zimbabwe’s school system has remained robust and enviable despite the challenges the economy has gone through?” We tried to look for the answers and he hammered it himself. He pointed to the school systems built on staunch missionary principles of discipline and truthfulness. He bemoaned how South Africa used to have a similar system until this was destroyed by the apartheid regime through such draconian laws like the Bantu Education Act. He also cried foul on how the politics in the country was tempering with the education system, how in South Africa you can pass with a 30% and so many other things. I checked with our systems, surely, they speak much to truthfulness: hatidi kunyepera vanhu kuti ishasha ivo vasiri. I tell you, Professor Jansen pitched Zimbabwe up there and said, if you are Zimbabwean and you said you wanted a job, he would hire you without an interview (it might be an extreme statement but he meant it). As if what Prof Jansen had not said enough about Zimbabwe, Dr Pillay of the National Research Foundation (NRF) came for a lecture presentation on Thursday. He was surprised that more than a third of the members in our programme were from Zimbabwe. He picked on where Prof. Jansen had left. He said, “You know what, if you have a good neighbour and you know what that neighbour can bring you, you just have to invite him in every time you have something to enjoy. This is what exactly we are doing to Zimbabwe. She is our good and very useful neighbour. We realised this and that is why we bring so many of these to our programme. They have a good education system and we envy them. Even if a Zimbabwean you talk to is a gardener or painter, the people THINK!” After these two sets of praise about Zimbabwe, members in our group now praise us greatly. They have high respect of Zimbabwe. I may not know exactly where you are stationed, but I want to bring it to you that we are a highly respected people out here. There may be some bad elements here and about, but not all of us. I didn’t know how rotten potatoes can smell like dead and rotten rats until we searched in our room and found out that it is one potato in a 2kg packet we had forgotten in a drawer that had brought this bad smell into the house. Now the atmosphere has come back to normal after removing the bad one. There may be a few tsotsis and magweregwere out there, but the rest of us are known as honest, hardworking, resilient, and intelligent, you name it. God bless Zimbabwe. Long live Zimbabwe. Keep the momentum, nation of resilient stones.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 08:09:35 +0000
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