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Absurd!
The Merriam Webster Dictionary says the word means “ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous”.Theatre of the Absurd.
This is a literary genre in which, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, playwrights believe that the human situation is essentially absurd.
More importantly, “Language in an Absurdist play is often dislocated, full of cliches, puns, repetitions, and non sequitur. . . characters. . . sit and talk, repeating the obvious until it sounds like nonsense. . . The ridiculous, purposeless behaviour and talk give the plays a sometimes dazzling comic surface, but there is an underlying serious message of metaphysical distress.”
The clichés, repetitions and non sequiturs; sitting and talking and repeating the obvious “until it sounds like nonsense” to the point of ridiculousness and purposelessness strikes us like attributes of some boring drama playing out in a geographical country called Zimbabwe.
In fact, let’s just call it an episode. The episode involves, if you follow the news, one Itai Dzamara. In this episode, a man, or rather, the man has disappeared.
We are not sure if the disappearance is disappearance from the face of the earth, which we doubt very much. But he has disappeared, at least for now, and a lot of scenes are being enacted around this alleged disappearance.
Only the scenes are repetitive, boring, fallacious and ultimately ridiculous. The latest scene involved a lot of fanfare at Zimbabwe Grounds in Harare’s Highfield suburb. The political actors in the opposition MDC-T were in their element.
Then two characters by the names of Temba Mliswa and Jabulani Sibanda ghosted in. They made familiar clichés and repetitions. They were not comic, even darkly, but simply absurd.
Let’s take absurdity at literal level. Given the fact that the noises that the opposition has been making around the issue of Dzamara is meant to be political pressure — a contrivance — against President Mugabe and his rule, we find it absurd that the same opposition expected and still expects President Mugabe to endorse a conspiracy against himself.
It’s like being handed a bottle of poison to drink and you thankfully take it and down it when you have no intention whatsoever of committing suicide.
That’s simply absurd! How can anyone in his right senses do that? It’s too much to ask a whole President to take part in an absurd theatre and expect him to be taken seriously.
In this light we find President Mugabe’s response to the theatre around Dzamara quite sensible and, with his statement through his spokesman George Charamba, quite a nice way to tell the opposition to go to hell.
One known anti-Mugabe regime change merchant Dewa Mavhinga indicts President Mugabe that he is going, “against the letter and spirit of the Constitution and fundamental values contained therein.”
(As if President Mugabe did not clarify that it was not his constitutional duty to be investigating cases of missing persons, which duty resides with relevant arms of state.)
Another notable fifth columnist, Okay Machisa, says: “Government must investigate this issue. We have certain people in certain political parties that were born murderers. It is in their DNA, they don’t want to hear different opinions. We know why Dzamara was abducted, we are not going to assume, we know. This is an irresponsible statement.”
You can guess there were familiar noises from Obert Gutu and one Jacob Mafume, both spokespersons of the opposition. Gutu complains that the clarification by President Mugabe is “odious, utterly insensitive, arrogant and repugnant”.
But then he also says they are ridiculous! We suggest he looks hard in the mirror.
The other Dzamara
There are sensitivities around this Dzamara matter, which we must fully acknowledge.
Some people are bound to be touched by and in this incident in which an innocent man has apparently disappeared.
There are many people who find this saddening, heartrending, even. That is why, apart from the political players involved, some people are quite upset about the alleged disappearance. And they are justified.
Think of the family: his wife and children, who clearly may not have shared Dzamara’s eccentrics and less so his apparent part in his alleged disappearances.
There is pathos in this. Family is likely to be touched. We, however, doubt that Itai’s brother, one Partson, feels enough tragedy — the pathos in this.
He has been speaking out and organising events ostensibly for the benefit of his absent brother.
But then you begin to see a disturbing streak in him He is a struggling writer and has written close to a dozen books he thinks are motivational but then, as you all know, he is yet to be a Milton Kamwendo still less a TD Jakes or some such fella.
Yet something tells you he’s loving every moment in the dark sun of his brother’s alleged disappearance. Perhaps just the right storyline to make a book out of.
He says, “In a way . . . keeping this matter in the conversation goes a long way in establishing the truth. So it’s actually a welcome development. We, however, remain adamant that the State is our primary suspect”.
Can you imagine how ballistic this same brother went when the initial prayer meeting a few weeks back was called off and the conveners had expressed discomfort over the politicisation of the Itai issue? He scolded Watson Furayi, a respected pastor, accusing him of sabotaging the event.
The younger Dzamara fumed: “Furayi did not have the mandate to call off the prayer because, after all, it was not his project.”
So whose project was it?
The events of July 11, which we saw MDC being rechristened Muchatipa Dzamara Chete, provides ample evidence on whose project it was.
It is trite to mention that the younger Dzamara holds significant stake in all this and this is not just from a familial perspective.
It has something about him and his lofty ambitions as a struggling writer and perhaps as an opposition-inclined individual.
What is he doctor of, by the way?
Online Reporter