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Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” is rated by many critics as one of the best novels by an Englishman in the 20th Century. The novel is a parody of HG Wells’ optimistic vision of mankind’s future, which was published under the title “Men Like Gods”. This was back in the 1920s and 1930s. Europe and America were coming out of what they would want us all to believe was a “World War”, and artists were battling to define a contemporary mood that was both hopeful and fearful all at the same time.
War and strife produce that kind of dissonance in the psyche even when one has emerged as the victor: you are on the one hand jubilant that you have triumphed; but you are at the same time apprehensive that the times of trouble could return.
Needless to say, Wells was hopeful, and envisaged men becoming like gods in a glorious future. And Huxley was seeing a half-empty glass. Two artists, one contemporary setting, very different world views.
It is that kind of dissonant imbalance that many Zimbabweans appear to be experiencing since the epoch-defining outcome of July 31, 2013.
On the one hand, there is the jubilation of overcoming a spirited adversary, literally at pain of death, after more than a decade of bruising struggle. And on the other hand there is that unsettling sense of bewilderment as to what comes next after triumphing so overwhelmingly without really thinking that the battle could actually have been won so decisively.
To a large extent, Zimbabwe has been polarised – as is becoming unsettlingly normal in this country – between those who are jubilant and those who helplessly ask, “What’s next?”
The “delay” in announcing a Cabinet and the “delay” in announcing a 2014 National Budget only added to that sense of being lost at sea without a compass.
That budget, like the Cabinet, before it, did come as it was bound to. And still some people still feel a little like they are up a stream without a paddle.
Maybe that is because we have become used to being presented with statistic-based budgets, whereas this time Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has opted to give us a budget that is more of a national call to duty.
Yes, the usual towering numbers are there as they should be in the Blue Book.
But more important is what this budget stands for: a break with a past anchored on formulaic economic theory that sounds so brilliant but delivers so little.
Instead, what we have is a budget that sounds so simple, pedestrian even, but holds in it the true promise to deliver so much more.
This is a promise that can only deliver if we all heed Minister Chinamasa’s rallying call, delivered somewhere in the middle of his statement yesterday. He said, “The old economy is dead. There is a new economy emerging.”
And with that new economy should emerge a new Zimbabwean who puts the country first and realises that we all have a role to play, whether we are in the formal or informal sector.
This is not the time to bicker about politics, semantics or personal preferences. It is a time to dare to create a truly brave new world in which each and every Zimbabwean can feel like a king or queen in this, our only land. It is a time to dare, a time to turn dreams into realities.
We would do well to remember the words of Thomas Sankara back in 1985. He said then, “You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.”
Sankara speaks to us all today: let us dare to create a future we can all call a brave new world populated by men who are like gods.
Online Reporter