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Tichaona Zindoga My Turn
It is the dream of many people to one day hold a child of their child or children, the local parlance for having grandchildren, which should be a satisfying experience.The first time should be an intense moment of emotion — the confirmation that indeed one would have lengthened the genealogy and responsible for another bough on the family tree whereon a little bough sprouts to give life to another, and so on.
Children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Until perhaps the day the brood is so big it ceases to amaze or fascinate.
Procreation may all have been a duty, after all; an impersonal chore in the calling of nature.
Maybe at this point one begins to feel lonely and getting old; first in the private moments of not so fleeting glances at the mirror.
You are getting old, boy.
The greying and grieving hairs and wrinkles say those words; and say them louder by the day, in spite of the sharp and edgy efforts to silence them.
Moments are there when this reality is checked, forgotten, in the escape route of the silly and playful grandchildren or stories about the good old days.
Only they, too, will outgrow silliness and playfulness to adopt more measured aspects in the course of their own growing up and getting old.
Then the man will be left alone.
Alone with Gogo, if he is lucky, with whom the bond of love and life grows fonder and stronger.
The children and the children of their children will not be around most of the times.
Contacts with the world outside, including in the village, will be at a bare minimum.
Thus begins the life of silence, even between the old man and his wife, in a world where unspoken words say a lot and quite differ from the time past where the same could be construed as a sign of antipathy and coldness.
It is time for a warm kind of coldness and aloofness.
More time will be spent in the past: what was, has been, should have been, could have been.
The bitter and the sweet.
Until all that loses colour and taste and effect.
You look back in the years and do not wince at the pain that you went through.
You do not smile at your successes.
A fire does not flicker in your heart when you think of the first love — and all the lovemaking of yore — and the beauty that caused you sleepless nights.
You feel nothing.
Blank. Void.
This is evident in the blank stare ahead and nowhere; punctuated by mock tears of the unseeing eyes.
The days pass by duly, dully.
Until one day, you dream of yourself on your mother’s lap and sucking milk from her breast!
It is a dream that ordinarily should succour life and let you imagine you are born again — but then, the wisdom of our people disparages that as a stupid, foolish dream.
You cannot be born again — even Nicodemus knew it — and suckle again.
The halcyon, heavenly, days are gone forever.
You better wake up from the stupid dream.
And tell no one, because they will only laugh at you!
“I wish I was still young.”
Not that growing old is always this bad. We have known many old people who are as glorious in old age as ever.
They would be prepared to meet their Maker, after a fulfilling life.
The business of regretting and whining and dreaming of their mother’s milk is simply not their province.
It is usually the province of the profligate ones — who replay with regret the story of their misspent lives.
And it would seem in Zimbabwe we have one old man called Morgan Tsvangirai.
He is a father and grandfather.
In politics he is clearly and convincingly on the sunset of his misspent life: he that was a powerful trade unionist, a formidable opposition leader and Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe.
It is known that he squandered the goodwill of many people who were craving for an opposition to Zanu-PF when he chose to become a pawn for white interests that resisted the wishes of the majority, especially on the land question.
In that stroke of folly, he also systematically severed himself from the worker base he had cultivated.
Tsvangirai has failed to unseat Zanu-PF, losing three presidential elections in the last 15 years and, while the office of Prime Minister should have given him a perfect opportunity to fulfil his wishes and the wishes of those that think better of him, he preoccupied himself with paramours on high seas.
Today, Tsvangirai is calling for mass protests against the Government of the Zanu-PF he failed to defeat in democratic elections only last year.
We are now told that he will lead the demos “from the front”.
It is not difficult to see where this is coming from.
Tsvangirai is looking back to his trade union days and hopes to replicate the successes of that halcyon era.
In fact, it was in July this year that Tsvangirai revealed his deepest regret — that he was getting old.
“The problem in Zimbabwe humbwende (cowardice),” he said at a rally in Chitungwiza, urging youths to embark on protests.
“Fear will not get us anywhere; it will not solve our problems. Sometimes I wish I was still young,” he said.
Many would ask what Tsvangirai did with his bravery — (not even including when he was supposed to join his contemporaries in fighting the colonial regime of Ian Smith).
To get entangled in messy love affairs?
Now he wants his glorious days back, to do what?
Life is only lived once.
That is the reality that people will have to live with.
It is understandable that Tsvangirai is willing to dare this phenomenon.
His life depends on it.
But he should wake up from the stupid dream, because everyone knows that he is the problem hence calls for leadership renewal within his own party and we hear now even the Americans, his dear friends, are looking at life after Tsvangirai.
Tsvangirai will also do himself a huge favour by disabusing himself of the dream that the conditions of 1997-1999 are the same as those obtaining today.
There is a world of difference, even if he were to be young again.
Besides, should people seriously take his leadership “from the front” against poverty when he is walking from a $4million mansion?
Online Reporter