Laugh, The Beloved Country

Apologies for not posting much these last few days as I have been practising being a Zimbabwean – hanging around all day, doing fuck all. But that is not my fault and I happily point this out to anyone who listens, that it is all the blackmans fault for not letting me have him as my servant no more. I am also suffering from NHAN (Never Had A Nanny) which seems to be the reason why my mates like sadza more than me!

Whilst scrolling through Zimbabwesituation.com, I came across a couple of rather curious articles. The first one:

South Africa's Business Day newspaper reported that Zimbabwe's government has embarked on a project to resuscitate agriculture. The plan involves the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono setting up technical colleges to produce ox-drawn carts and ploughs to help communal farmers produce food. Gono is quoted saying the project was part of government's mechanisation programme.
Government says at least half a million ox-drawn carts would be produced at institutions set up in 62 districts around the country. Gono said this would also create jobs for youths as well as boost agriculture.

I was totally stunned! Gono must be reading my Blog and saw the First Day Cover depicting the World Ploughing Competition. (Scroll down a bit if you havn’t seen it.) So I am right and the second stamp depicted is now the plan. What a clever man.

In 1977 I arrested a cart maker because he was a nasty piece of work, who had defrauded several thousands of dollars (real Rhodie dollars, not Zimbo rubbish), from scores of his fellow black country men. What should have been a simple case turned out to have more twists than an Ox’s tail. (Oxs’ tails are twisted by the farmer to make them pull the plough.) You will have to wait for my memoirs to read the whole story.

But, in another twist of the tale…

Political commentator Dr John Makumbe dismissed this plan as another
stop-gap measure taken by a desperate regime. He said Gono forgot that when they took the commercial farms, they ate all the meat at a braai and there are no cattle to pull the carts. Eventually he said government will force the farmer and his family to pull the ploughs.

Which means, that they will revert to the first stamp! I am so bloody KLEVAH!

AND to prove it, here is a little short video for you to watch…

The second article really made me laugh. One thing I have learnt about writing is to do your research well. This rule, a certain Peter Thatia writing for the Eastern Standard of Kenya and printed on the front page May 25^th, was obviously forgotten. Whilst I do congratulate him on giving Mugabe a hard time, there were a few glaringly bad errors:

Flashback to the gloriously sunny Salisbury afternoon of April 18, 1980,
when a surging crowd of unprecedented proportions on the continent of Africa roared in unison as the Union Jack and the flag of Rhodesia came down for the last time. Robert Gabriel Mugabe had finally arrived.

Well, last I heard they were all there to watch Bob alright, but the wrong Bob!

With over 200,000 hits, this footage and the comments posted with it, show who the real hero of that night was.

The Rhodesian flag wasn’t there either. It had been replaced several months before by the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia flag and at the time of the celebration the land was officially under the Crown once again.

In the same article, Mugabe:Shame of Africa

http://www.eastandard.net/archives/?mnu=details&id=1143969056&catid=4

there is more blah blah and then this sentence –

Do they care about the genius who created the best education system in
Africa (by 2000 Zimbabwe had the highest literacy rate in Africa at 85 per
cent), or the devious schemer who went ahead to have two children with a lover 41 years his junior (whom he later married) while his wife Sally was dying with cancer?

Actually, Mugabe’s troops were instructed to destroy all the schools for the blacks in the Tribal Trust Lands and kidnap the kids to be made into freedom fighters. Mugabe simply took over the existing public school infrastructure of the whites and like everything else there, has totally destroyed it.

The best bit from the article is this -

In his personal website, launched in 2002 and recording over 300,000 hits so far, President Robert Mugabe makes an interesting statement about himself:
"I know you love your leader as much as you love your country. I know you deserve to see what kind of a man I am. To those of you that already know me, this will simply be a joyous refresher of your cherished memories of me. To those with still unfulfilled desire to know me better, I welcome you into an intimate glimpse of Mugabe The Man."

I have had a link to this website ever since I started blogging and it is indeed a wonderful glimpse at Mugabe – The Man of Men. One problem though; it’s a huge piss take and thanks to Peter Thatia, it is becoming more popular everyday. You can go to it by clicking the picture of Tinpot Mugs on the cover of Time magazine.

Catch ya laters, alligators and stay tuned for more fun and games from the man, who according to local lore, is the Last of The Rhodesians.