Licensed to kill

Baffour Ankomah Baffour’s Beefs
HOW could society just throw its hands in the air and let bad drivers in kombis have their way?
I guess many of us paid attention to what went on in Normandy last weekend when the nations of European stock minus Germany held a fest to remember the day their troops landed on the shores of the province in northern France 70 years ago, on their way to defeat the German war machine that had terrorised and nearly run over the rest of Europe in World War II.

Last weekend was 70 years exactly when the “D-Day landings” happened on June 6 1944, which finally led to the defeat of Germany in 1945.

It is said 156 000 Allied troops (mainly British, American and Canadian) took part in the landings at five places on the Normandy coast. Of the 1 213 warships involved in the landings, 200 were American and 892 were British. And of the 4 126 landing craft involved, 805 were American and 3 261 were British.

And as they were licensed to kill, the sheer waste of human life in the operation was quite staggering. Between 2 500 and 4 000 Allied troops were killed the very next day, while a frightening 9 000 Germans are estimated to have been slaughtered over the campaign.

So can you imagine the feelings of the Germans when their brothers hold such a fest to rub their noses in the mud, 70 years on?
And not only that: There have been scores of films made about the war in the past six decades to mock the Germans for being so uppity to think they could beat all their brother Europeans put together. And in fact they nearly did – trust the German machine.

So, was it why the 70th anniversary celebrations were so lavish? Even the “vile”, Crimea-grabbing Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who had been locked out of the G8 summit the day before, was allowed to come to Normandy to join the celebrations. These nations of European stock – they know where their bread is buttered!

As such, Queen Elizabeth II was there in her dazzling royal green and pink and everything in-between. And poor Prince Charles was imposed upon to wear his military uniform, which he does quite rarely these days.

And Barack Obama was in his element –  giving one of those rousing speeches that give the impression that he was right there in Normandy when the troops landed 70 years ago. But you bet his mother had barely reached puberty at the time.

Obama’s soundbites were exhilarating, though. “If prayers were made of sounds,” he said, “the noise over England that night would have deafened the world. Blood soaked the water. Bombs broke the sky. Hell’s beach earned its name.”

And then he added: “We come to remember why America and our allies gave so much for the survival of liberty at its moment of maximum peril. And we come to tell the story of the men and women who did it, so that it remains seared into the memory of the future of the world.”
History is important

So what am I all about, going to Normandy and back? Simple. I want to draw the attention of my readers to the fact that history is important, and that the next time they see any Muzungu having the temerity to tell Africans not to talk about the slave trade or the evils of colonialism or the brutality of Henry Morton Stanley, because we are supposed to be 50 years old as independent nations, they should point to Normandy after they had neatly knocked out the teeth from the mouth that dared utter that blasphemy.

History is important – both to the Muzungu (as we have seen in Normandy) and to the African. George Orwell was not even African, yet he had the presence of mind to write some of the most memorable lines ever written by man about the importance of history:

“He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the future, controls the present.” That was George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair) at his best! Thank God he was so different from the Blair we know so well.

Interestingly, it is not for nothing that the Blair we know is the type of Muzungu who frowns when the African remembers his past. Because if we don’t remember our past, he knows we can’t control our future; and if we can’t control our future, it means we can’t control our present, and therefore the Muzungu can have the land while we eat grass.

Well, perhaps the Muzungu may care to listen to one of his own, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

The Muzungu is well entitled to his own opinion, but the fact that the “D-Day landings” were celebrated so lavishly on June 6 2014 “so that it remains seared into the memory of the future of the world”, is a fact that even the all-owning Muzungu cannot own.
The murderers on our roads

Someday, I will do a full-length piece on the importance of history in this column, but for now allow me to concentrate on my real beef for this week – the murderous kombi drivers of Munhumutapa.

Remember, I am still a mukwasha and I have liberty, by the grace of my lobola, paid in full while all protocols were being observed, to have a discussion with my in-laws. Is it not what the tradition says? Or are my in-laws already regretting taking my lobola? Well, that is the price they pay for overcharging the lobola.

Seriously, I want to add my pained voice to the concern expressed by so many in recent months about the cavalier attitude of the young men who happen to be kombi drivers and who, in their sorry minds, think they have licence or have been licensed to kill on Zimbabwe’s roads.

Imagine how one such warped young man took the life of Lance Corporal Vimbai Primrose Nyagande, the 25-year-old female soldier who was run over by a kombi driver on May 26 as she walked by the road near the 2 Presidential Guard premises in Dzivaresekwa in Harare.
Reports said Lance-Corp Nyagande was killed on the spot when “the kombi driver wanted to do an insane overtaking manoeuvre on another vehicle using the wrong side. Somehow, in the process, he completely lost control.”

We have all watched in horror, grave horror, at the manner in which kombi drivers in this land once part of the great Munhumutapa Empire have been allowed to become a law unto themselves to a point where they think they can do anything on the road and get away with it!

To me, the greatest horror in all this is the apparent impotence of the authorities to do anything about these young men. As a result, these drivers (I nearly called them miscreants) to whom the lives of millions of Zimbabweans are entrusted day in and night out, as they commute to and from work, have become so pig-headed and brazen that they care no more about whose life they take, and how many they take.

And in the face of this serious menace, a whole nation appears to have thrown its hands in the air as these terrible young drivers do what they want.

But we shouldn’t allow them an inch anymore. Thus, in addition to the solutions already proffered in the past few months to deal with the menace, I have a simple one that will make the kombi drivers sit up and take notice of the disgust the nation holds them in. I shall come to it presently.

Not only kombi drivers
But we shouldn’t delude ourselves that kombi drivers are the only problem on Zimbabwe’s roads and streets.
If truth be told, I should say with the liberty of a concerned mukwasha who has observed, even studied, his in-laws so thoroughly that when it comes to bad driving, he knows it is not only the kombi driver who is guilty. I am writing this from Juba, capital of South Sudan, so I know what I am talking about.

Since Sudanese independence in 1956, Juba, the now sprawling capital of Africa’s youngest country, was deliberately neglected by successive governments in Khartoum to the point where in this day and age, Juba has no traffic lights (or robots as we say in Harare) anywhere in the capital city. Not one!

Thus, if you are so unlucky to mention traffic lights to some folks who have just come to Juba from upcountry, they might think it is a type of sadza.

But come and see the driving in Juba. The city, despite its neglected state, was planned in straight lines much like Harare and Bulawayo. So there are many intersections that beg for traffic lights or robots.

Yet, at these robot-free intersections, the drivers are so cool and considerate that they allow other cars and motorcycles to cross and criss-cross, so smoothly, that who needs traffic lights in Juba?

Transplant this scene to the intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Sam Nujoma Street in Harare, or any other intersection in Zimbabwe’s capital city, and see the behaviour of the drivers! Simply horrifying!

Nobody would want to give way to anybody. In fact, nobody gives way to anybody in Harare. Thus, before you blink, the whole Samora Machel-Second Street intersection would be a sea of cars going nowhere. And you ask yourself which mother gave birth to these unfortunate drivers who happen to be my in-laws?

Yet as a mukwasha, I have come to know my in-laws to be very personable, in fact some of the most rational human beings ever created by God the Father. They can even be cute, especially when they put on their national dress – the ubiquitous suit and tie.

But just wait till they sit behind a wheel, the wheel of a car. You don’t know what demons seize them! They become totally transformed, so much that sometimes I wonder if they are the same wonderful in-laws I have come to know and love.

Truth be told, the psychology of driving in Zimbabwe is terrible, and it is high time some mukwasha told them!

The psychology
One, they don’t give way, ever! Once they get out of their gate and onto the street and the road, they have the right of way come rain or shine, to the point where some of them come straight at you even if they see clearly that you have made a mistake, in overtaking or manoeuvring.

I shudder every time I see it. Car A has made a mistake in overtaking Car B, and Car C, oncoming, will not stop to allow Car B to get out of harm’s way. Car C just comes on its merry way as if the man behind its wheel is immortal?

And just check how everybody wants to be in front of everybody. As such they speed or manoeuvre in areas they shouldn’t, just so they can overtake the car in front.

And when they stop at the robots, they let their cars creep slowly forward until they are almost in the middle of the road by the time the green comes on.

But what really gets my goat are those drivers who tailgate unnecessarily, putting pressure on you to get out of the way, if not off the road, so they can speed away.

And then, there are those who don’t know the difference between the fast lane and the slow lane, so they sit in the fast lane driving at 15km/h.

And horror of all horrors are those who zoom at you with their high lights on at night, and despite how many times you flash at them to dim their lights, they take no notice – foolishly ignoring the fact that if the oncoming driver is blinded by their lights, both cars are in danger of colliding head on, and both drivers might end up going to hell.

To me, all this comes down to the lack of respect for one another and the absence of personal discipline. If we all recognise that everybody has the right to go home and rest after a hard day’s work, nobody would try to create an illegal lane on the side and try to get in front of others when they should not.

Back to the kombis
So how do I propose to deal with the kombis? Back in 1979, in a faraway land called Ghana, Captain Kojo Boakye Djan and his colleagues who staged the June 4 Uprising to free Flt-Lt Jerry Rawlings from jail and possible execution, had a simple trick.

Traders were hoarding their goods and creating artificial shortages that was making the economy scream and people suffer. The response of Djan and his colleagues was not to take the sinning traders to court.

Traders who were unlucky to be arrested were flogged openly in public – in front of their colleague traders. This sent the fear of God into every trader, and overnight the goods returned to the shelves.

If Zimbabwe’s Parliament has no such law, it should enact one to give the police the authority to exact on-the-spot public flogging of kombi drivers caught flouting driving regulations. And I bet my bottom dollar that the nonsense on the roads will stop overnight!

Hitherto, the kombi drivers have mostly been made to pay small fines and let go. In rare cases are they imprisoned. The money that goes to pay the fines does not even come from the drivers, it comes from the takings from the endangered passengers. So the drivers don’t feel the pain.

Trust me – and I know human rights activists will howl – but if kombi drivers are made to pay for their sins with their skin, via public floggings, the nonsense on the roads will stop because it will put the fear of God in them.

Ah, I can hear you say, “but this is barbaric”. Well, what is more barbaric than running over a 25-year-old soldier walking along the road, because an “insane” overtaking manoeuvre by a kombi driver went insane?