admin
This time, September/October is an incredible time in this part of the world.
It is spring time and if you are a town dweller, the jacaranda trees are just the marker of this short-lived beauty.
If you are a rural dweller, or have such a background, you do not lose out, either.
The countryside, where people have spared the environment, is a burst of colour the most beautiful of which is the red of the new acacia spring.
It is called pfumvudza.
You just have to love it!
We guess so much ink has been spent on the subject already, but please belabour just this once more:
It’s from one Margaret Kriel, who writes a blog called “Letters From Zimbabwe”.
She says: ”The wearing of the colour of the jacarandas is obligatory in Zimbabwe in September … I have a dear natty little purple outfit that gets worn faithfully every year at this time. It must be in the blood, as something strange always happens to Bulawayans in mid-September.”
(That’s rather hyperbolic isn’t it?)
But Ms Kriel continues: ”Spring time brings madness to many places in the world, they hurtle round maypoles in England, they eat giant white asparagus and drink tart new Beaujolais in France. In China they decorate their front doors with bright banners featuring the Chinese character “fu” (meaning blessing or happiness). You have a bit of leeway here with your decor as you can either hang the poster the correct way up, or upside down if you feel that way!!
“In Ireland they have Morris dancing and ceilidhs, in Argentina the school kids are given the day off from their studies.
“In Zimbabwe we celebrate all year round, celebrate the finding of a loaf of bread or the secret liaison with a butcher friend who gives you an oxtail for supper!
“But in September we have traditionally celebrated the jacarandas. Do you remember the Jacaranda Festivals of days gone by? When shop windows, especially Meikles, would dress their windows in a glorious profusion of lilac, lavender, amethyst and heliotrope and tanzanite.
‘’Of course, Borrow Street Pool would open on the first of September and then on the second Saturday of Spring the Jacaranda Ball would be held at the MacMurray Hall in the Grand Hotel. Aah, that sprung dance floor made of highly polished wood, we would ‘trip the light fantastic’ till dawn and at midnight the Jacaranda Queen would be crowned!!”
You can tell which genus of human this our Ms Kriel belongs to (Rhodie, does that ring a bell?) but you can also not escape the wistfulness in the tone that denotes the deep beauty of the season.
Suicide season
But when she says, “spring time brings madness to many places in the world” Ms Kriel seems to hint at something that one of ours here, one Nathaniel Manheru, made a couple of weeks back.
He wrote in his column: “The Rhodesians called it the suicide season. Zimbabwe’s springtime. Particularly the month of October when temperatures soar exponentially, and then peak.”
He said, explaining what he termed as the Rhodesian syndrome: “Check your record: all agitation scenarios for oppositional capital have always been set in spring, preferably the hottest months of September and October. There is a clear script founded on a psychoanalytical presumption of greater irritability of the native mind in about that period . . . That our media share in the same bespeaks of the enduring hold the Rhodesian and western ethos enjoy in the newsroom. We have to have an agitational media every spring, and for as long as capital relates antagonistically to zanu-pf. That is a fact.”
He even accuses some sections of the media of agitating for a revolution, this time of the year.
Waiting for a zanu-pf spring
You can tell from the headlines in the media, especially the private media, that in the past few spring weeks they have been agitating for something to happen.
We have all known how they want an uprising against the sitting Government of zanu-pf, a perpetual enemy.
They have tried, and have failed, to precipitate the same.
Someone bright within those oppositional circles may have thought of another idea.
Why not have a zanu-pf spring, an open season of warfare within the party, whose implosion can be extrapolated over the spectrum if it happens?
From the conception of that bright idea we have seen how all the coverage has been around the ruling party “factionalism” which narrative has been pitched higher and higher in the past few days.
Can you imagine how dramatic it is when we are told that Grace, the First Lady, has “pinned” Vice President Mnangagwa?
One newspaper told us that this week, casting the First Lady as having so big ambitions for the Presidency of this country.
Every left, right and centre we see images of a ruling party fighting itself.
Ordinarily, it would be quite a surprise for the party to emerge from this spring in one piece.
Somebody is waiting for that.
And if it happens – if the big tree falls – the twigs will be for the taking!
Zimbabwe’s Arab Spring
It is a fact that the opposition in this country has great admiration of what happened in North Africa where an incident involving a vendor who set himself on fire in Tunisia, triggered a wave of popular protests that swept away ruling establishments.
We have all the vendors in the world, but we just have not been able to mount our own Arab Spring.
But the opposition still hopes.
This week there was yet another attempt at Arab-Springifying vendors as MDC-T masquerading as vendors attacked police officers and damaged property along Nelson Mandela Avenue.
Vendors are a harassed lot, most of them duly so because they are illegal.
However, you just have to listen to one Promise Mkwananzi, a former MDC-T youth secretary who decamped with Tendai Biti and has now formed an organisation purporting to represent the interests of informal traders.
He told one newspaper that: “If the Government does not resolve the matter amicably soon, an irreversible uprising may be the only route open to the suffering majority.”
An unnamed interviewee adds: “They (Government) must be careful. The more they crack down on us, the more people will be pushed to engage in all these kind of radical and revolutionary options such as fighting back.”
It is a clear wish for a revolution; a Zimbabwe spring revolution.
But all this is bound to fail.
Just why don’t we talk about beautiful jacarandas, and yes, where we can find a loaf of bread and meat (without any immoral liaisons, of course)!
Online Reporter