Joe Black was born in the summer of 1979, with Zimbabwe on the verge of total independence. Having missed the dreaded ‘born-free’ tag by mere months, he proceeded to grow into a fine upstanding citizen of the new democracy. Not.
You may be surprised at the colours! I haven't converted to Old Hararians - I remain a Harare Sports Club man. I'd lost a bet to the OH coach, so we had to change for a while. Now I kinda like it ...
Hello boys and girls, daddy’s been a little too busy to spend time with you lately. Sorry for that, I still love you but you know daddy’s got to work, okay?
I’ll be sure to make time for you on the weekend and tell you a lovely story, yeah? My cars just gone in fora service so movement will be limited, but don’t worry, I’ll find something to write about, alright?
Lovely. Wave to the nice Liverpool man, now.
Some of you may know that I went to Rock Down Harare on Saturday, the annual multi-band rock shindig I’m kinda turning into a tradition. With my mates and three cooler-boxes in tow (mine filled with Miller Golden Draught), we headed to the Borrowdale Racecourse to see what we could see.
The music was good, the sound system was awesome (same guys who did HIFA apparently), and we had a great rocking time. I also learnt a few things about my paler brothers, and thought I’d share.
1. White people are still here. If you thought all the “whites” had left Zimbabwe (after losing their farms to the war vets and watching a black headmaster ruin their kids’ beloved school) then you’re very, very wrong.
2. White people love rock music. They can’t dance, they do more shouting along than singing, and are mostly too pissed to even remember the words. But they love it, the louder and screechier the lead guitar, the more frenetically epileptic the dancing.
3. White people love Castle Lager. In copious amounts. You’d think Natbrew had secret underground pipelines to the Farms, because it seems the average white man (or boy, or woman) can consume a Brahman’s weight in Castle.
4. White people take chairs everywhere they go. From the peaceful (and relatively civilised) environs of the HIFA main stage, to the raucous hedonism of the Rock Down Harare concert green, you can’t walk ten meters without shin-banging against a garden chair.
5. White teenage girls hunt in packs. Okay, all teenagers roam in packs, but there’s something strangely discomfitting about a horde of (vodka-sneaking) little girls, braces bared like fangs, mini-skirts skirting the borders of decency.
6. Oh yeah. White girls wear mini-skirts. Mini-skirts so short they wouldn’t look out-of-place in a rust-belt dust-bowl strip joint. Minis that wouldn’t be off if worn as belts.
7. White people have cooler-boxes. Maybe another relic from the Good Old Farm Days, but every white man has a sturdy cooler-box. Next to his chair. Filled with Castle.
8. White people park wherever they want. Try parking along the road and not in the designated car park, and a (black) security guard will rush you with the speed of three dogs and get you the fuck out of there right quick. If a white man comes and parks in front of you along said road, nothing happens. Whining to the guard won’t help.
9. White people will pay. Charge a ten (US) dollar cover? They’ll pay it. Charge five dollars for a pissy little “burger”? No sweat. As long as the Rock is on and Castle’s in the cooler.
10. White people know how to fucking party. Keep the music playing and the booze flowing, they’ll party their arses off till morning, no fighting, no pocket-picking, no bottles flying like wherever the Blecks congregate.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of shit I learnt at the rock concert, but I guess it’s a start. Maybe now you’ll understand The Whites a little better.
Oh, one more thing. If you’re white and are pissed off cos you don’t understand satire, please fuck off cos I don’t really care!
I live in a nation of thieving whores, a festering pit of lies and decay run by a coterie of charismatic charlatans spreading their tentacles through the moral and economic fabric of an entire people.
I live in a nation of unrepentant liars, and I see them canonised and celebrated as sacred beings, testaments to the Hardiness and Patriotism and Enterpreneurship that only Super Patriots and True Sons of the Soil can possess.
I live in a nation of idiots, buying imported goods at four times their US dollar value because they think now they have a few greenbacks in their pockets and can afford an Amstel, they’ve Arrived.
I live in a place where nice guys finish last, and is so pervesely corrupt that there appears to be no way a decent, hard-working and law-abiding citizen can survive without breaking a law (discounting the fact that almost all genuine enterprise is either regulated or criminalised).
I live in the nation of fools and the wannabes. Looking at the fools’ ongoing reverence for the politico-business elite, I notice that the modern Zimbabwean fool, above all else, reveres and desperately wants to be close to the “unprincipled winner”; those who engage in bad acts, ones which everyone knows are bad, and get away with it through flagrant indifference to the law and the rules.
Savviness. Deep down, that’s what fools want to believe in and actually do believe in - their own savviness and the savviness of others. In business, they believe, it’s better to be savvy than it is to be honest. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilised, sincere or humane.*
Savviness is what fools admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. That quality of being shrewd, practical, ruthless, well-informed, perceptive, “with it” and unsentimental in all things economic and political is, in a sense, their professional religion.
Fools make a cult of it. And it’s this cult that the “dharas” understand and exploit for financial (and sometimes political) gain. What is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! The Phidzas are winners. The “boys dzengoda” are winners. The Range Rover Elite and the Pentecostal Pastor Class are winners.
And only a fool can admire an unprincipled winner.
It’s hard to overstate the extent to which I see people (some my friends) identify with, socialise with, and revere the very opportunists whose purpose is to manipulate and deceive them.
When did we stop celebrating Good? When did we start caring who bought a Range or Q7? When did Corruption become a way of life?
Where have all the good guys gone?
* Paraphrasing NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen
So I have NO water at my new place, but the power issue seems to be fine for now.
What’s worse is that I can’t DSL in the area, so I have to get a UHF link. Not sure how long that will take, but I reckon I’ll only be posting from the office. I suppose that’s alright, just don’t expect any midnight replies or anything.
Keep the faith, Joseph. Keep the faith.
It’s a classic age-old tale of love, lust and laughter, replayed over and over through the ages since time immemorial.
The man, the wife and the mistress, flung together via a confluence of forces variously known as Fate, Luck or Consequence.
It usually begins with the man apart from his wife, alone, and seeking out the comfort of another woman. All is fine at first; the mistress knows her situation and plays the blushing Ingenue to the cheating husband’s Cad.
She provides for him, she cares for him, she fucks his brains out, even plays marriage counsellor as required. For a while they are blissful in their sin, and the sun shines brighter than ever before.
She eventually decides to improve her standing in the relationship, and invariably confesses her undying love to the man of her dreams. He says he “cares for her”, and they carry on, but the tension rises as the mistress becomes increasingly demanding.
She demands he leave his wife, and promises they would be happy together forever. The clingier she becomes the more he withdraws, and eventually he pushes her away.
Stung by his callous indifference, she confronts him and asks the tough questions, and he plays it coy. They walk away from each other, seperate in their grief, both indignant and relieved, gutted and unflinching.
He returns to his wife, the love of his life, and settles back into the warm comforting routine of familiarity, forever yearning for the excitement of the mistress, bored in his happiness whilst being the perfect man.
She moves on, life’s lessons happily filed, searching for laughter, for someone who will say I Love You back, someone to fill the void left by what she thought was the answer to all her dreams.
This is the story of the small house. The characters may vary between male and female, bitch and bastard, wife and husband. But the result is always the same.
Heartbreak.
