Online Reporter
Communion with Bishop Lazarus
On Friday, September 19, at around 7am, a curious plane landed at the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport after flying for a distance of close to 13 000 kilometres from the United States.
IN it, were condemned men — seven Zimbabweans and some Mozambicans — united by colour, blood and fate.
Apparently, they were being treated as human garbage whose presence in the US was no longer desirable.
So, to all intents and purposes, the flight was a real-life version of Hollywood’s action movie “Con Air”, as it was filled with former prisoners whose continued stay in the US was considered untenable.
Among the deportees, who came back home with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and existential confusion, was Mr Blessing David Mabugu (Bishop Lazarus has decided to affix the honorific Mr to his name as his own small way to try and give him his dignity back), who left Zimbabwe as a nine-year-old and was returning as a confused 30-year-old man.
For him, the problem was not just the cultural shock of exchanging the suburban sprawl of America for the vibrant, chaotic symphony of Harare; it was actually foundational, as he had forgotten his mother language, Shona.
“I can’t speak Shona anymore; I don’t understand it . . . it has evaporated,” he told reporters, with an American accent for emphasis. Kikikiki.
He had become a linguistic orphan.
The simple, melodic language of his childhood, the very texture of his first memories, had been erased by close to two decades of survival in a monolingual pressure cooker.
He had become a perfectly manufactured American product, now being returned to the manufacturer as faulty item.
It would be comic were it not tragic.
But Mr Mabugu was scarcely a model citizen in the country that he considered his new home.
He had a rap sheet that would have made Zimbabwe’s late prolific criminal duo of Stephen Chidhumo and Edgar Masendeke green with envy — aggravated assault, robbery with the threat to inflict immediate bodily injury, terroristic threats, carrying a firearm without a licence, recklessly endangering another person, resisting arrest, you name it.
Strategic defiance
Mr Mabugu’s comic tragedy is more than just an anecdote; it is a stark, satirical reflection of a global predicament.
While we have been looking outwards, towards the gleaming cities of the West, a profound shift has occurred.
The very nations we once saw as beacons of opportunity are now loudly, and often rudely, reminding us that we are guests — and that the welcome mat is being vigorously shaken out. From Washington, Brussels and London, the West has become unwelcome to outsiders.
They are now building physical barriers, limiting asylum claims, fast-tracking deportations and expediting the removal of individuals without full judicial review and reducing refugee quotas to keep them out.
The “nation of immigrants” narrative is being aggressively revised by a new wave of populists who preach a gospel of fortress mentality.
This is not the subtle, structural racism we have always known and almost become accustomed to; this is full-throated, prime-time xenophobia.
It is no longer about assimilation; it is about exclusion. They are not just building walls; they are building a philosophical moat.
Racism scholar Ambalavaner Sivanandan called this “xeno-racism”, a prejudice not based on biology, but on the simple, brutal calculus of “insiders” versus “outsiders”.
And so, we find ourselves at a crossroads, armed with the tragicomic story of Mr Mabugu.
Scholars like the late great Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o have long warned of this.
Ngũgĩ’s seminal work, “Decolonising the Mind”, was not just about literature; it was a battle cry for psychic independence.
He argued that the most powerful tool of colonialism was its assault on language and culture, creating a permanent class of aspirational exiles who see their value through a foreign lens. Mr Mabugu is Ngũgĩ’s theory made flesh, a man so thoroughly decultured that his deportation is less a punishment and more a case of mistaken identity.
The message could not be clearer: The project of building Zimbabwe is no longer a choice; it is an urgent, non-negotiable necessity.Building Zimbabwe, therefore, is the ultimate act of strategic defiance.
This is not a call for isolationism, but for a radical reclamation of agency.
The task is to build a nation where a future Mabugu is not a figure of pity but of curiosity.
A Zimbabwe where a nine-year-old who leaves might actually want to come back, not as a deported stranger, but as a contributor.
A country where the airports are gateways to opportunity, not just revolving doors for the dispossessed.
And the first step is to relearn our own language, both literally and metaphorically.
We must remember how to speak to one another, how to invest in each other and how to value what is ours.
Bishop Lazi can only hope that Mr Mabugu has already enrolled in a Shona class for adults. Kikikiki.
His journey back to himself is a microcosm of our national journey.
The West, in its infinite wisdom, has done us an unintended favour.
By making it abundantly clear that we are on our own, they have gifted us the most powerful motivator of all.
So let us roll up our sleeves, dust off the blueprints and get to work.
A self-sufficient, proud and truly home-built Zimbabwe will be worth it.
After all, there is no place like home, especially when you have just been unceremoniously reminded that you do not have another one.
From Exodus to Nehemiah: Blueprint to self-authored destiny
The discourse on Africa’s development has long been haunted by a pernicious paradigm: the continent as a patient, perpetually awaiting external intervention.
This model, a hangover from the colonial and immediate post-colonial aid architecture, fostered a debilitating dependency, outsourcing agency and mortgaging national destiny to the fickle priorities of foreign capitals and international financial institutions.
Against this backdrop, Zimbabwe’s conscious pivot towards fostering self-sufficiency and building internal capabilities, as embodied by President ED’s mantra “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo” (a country is built by its own people), is not merely a policy shift; it is a profound and necessary act of philosophical reclamation.It is the nation insisting on becoming the author of its own narrative, a move that aligns with both pragmatic development economics and a deeper, scriptural logic of stewardship and vocation.
The fundamental premise is elegantly simple: Sustainable development cannot be imported. It must be endogenous, cultivated from the soil of local knowledge, driven by local ambition and sustained by local effort.
This is the essence of building internal capabilities.
When a nation prioritises its own human capital — empowering its engineers, agronomists, entrepreneurs and artisans — it invests in a renewable resource.
This stands in stark contrast to the exhaustible and conditional nature of foreign aid.
The current thrust, visible in the growing emphasis on local manufacturing, agricultural innovation and indigenous financial systems, is an attempt to rewire the national psyche from a mentality of waiting to one of building.
It is a sharp-witted rebuttal to the notion that Zimbabweans are incapable of solving Zimbabwean problems.
The call to self-sufficient action is epitomised in the Book of Nehemiah.
Upon hearing of Jerusalem’s desolation, Nehemiah does not merely lament; he petitions for the authority to rebuild. His famous declaration, “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will arise and build” (Nehemiah 2:20), perfectly captures the synergy between faith and works.
It is not a passive hope, but an active, collective commitment.
The wall was rebuilt because the people, with “a mind to work” (Nehemiah 4:6), laboured with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other, undeterred by external criticism or threat.
This is the precise model Zimbabwe now embraces: arising to build, with the clear-eyed understanding that the responsibility for reconstruction lies primarily within.
Furthermore, the Apostle Paul’s directive to the Thessalonians provides a theological foundation for economic self-sufficiency: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12).
This passage is remarkably prescient.
The injunction to “work with your hands” glorifies productive labour, while the goal of independence (“not be dependent on anybody”) is presented as a virtue that commands respect. For Zimbabwe, this translates into a national ambition rooted in dignified work and the pursuit of economic sovereignty, not as an isolationist fantasy, but as a prerequisite for dignified engagement with the world.
Critics may dismiss this path as ambitious, and they are correct.
But it is an ambition far superior to the one of perpetual supplicancy.
The alternative — a return to the queue for external salvation — is a demonstrably failed model.
It is a path that leads not to development, but to debt and deference.
By choosing to invest in its own people, to unlock the latent genius within its borders, Zimbabwe is on the right, albeit challenging, path. It is moving from a narrative of Exodus — a longing to escape — to one of Nehemiah — a determined commitment to rebuild.
This is the only foundation for a truly bright and sustainable future: one built by Zimbabweans, for Zimbabwe, undergirded by the ancient wisdom that those who build are the true authors of their destiny.
We are the people we have been waiting for.
Bishop out!
Tinaye Agere