Victims of a Dictator

By Thomas Makavanga

Victims of a Dictator speaks about a village that never enjoyed independence compared to what their leaders always boasted about but where they allowed to exercise their right and their only hope of changing the leadership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Feb 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482860757

Thomas Makavanga

Thomas Makavanga was born on 14 February 1976 in Buhera District, Zimbabwe. After his parents failed to raise money for his secondary education, his school principal helped him out. He moved to South Africa in 2008 for greener pastures.

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Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Makavanga.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 1

S itting on Munetsi Valley beyond Munetsi Mountain is Munetsi Village. A colonial era settlement when blacks were pushed to more arid soils, the village had dwelled in total negligence. Even the many years of independence had not brought any relief to the villagers. Their success story had few paragraphs based upon their sons and daughters who had joined the globetrotting trend scavenging for the missing clue to the puzzle of life. Apart from being told that the white man no longer ruled them, nothing had changed. In fact freedom celebrations had turned amateurish, the hope and promises of anything good to come fizzling out into a beer-drinking talk as political uncertainties surged with each sunset. Munetsi village was still stuck in a haphazard settlement of thatched huts of mud and poles. Asbestos roofing was unaffordable, save for a few doted houses and a few shops at the shopping centre. The dust road constructed during the colonial era still existed, its maintenance neglected just like the villagers. The nearest clinic was very far, a day’s journey to and fro. Drinking homebrewed beer was not only a village tradition, but even with no doctor’s orders, a herb to wrestle off depression. For a moment though.

Poverty and illiteracy ruled. In their rags and unwashed bodies, the spirit of hope never faded, holding on to their homebrew as a stress reliever amid rising inflation that now made it impossible to frequent beer halls, the villagers never stopped grumbling. Not to be outdone were the local old missionary churches who were on their side preaching faith as an all-conquering weapon and encouraging the villagers to say, ‘We believe in God’ while singing ‘God bless our village,’ hoping for some divine interventions in the villagers’ fortunes. No change of fortunes for now as if God’s ears were a distant from the reach of their agonising voices. What if God was not on their side?

‘Is God on our side?,’ one villager would ask, sipping the homebrew upon seeing a group of Christians clutching their Bibles and singing hymns on their way to a church service.

‘Does God take sides?’ If God can take sides, I think he is not on our side. We have not seen or heard from him ever since we got independence. He departed from us. If he had been on our side, we would have seen a change in our fortunes. Who can pray to God for his entire life without seeing a change? If He is a God of miracles, we are tired of hoping. We want a tarred road. We want a clinic. We want better lives. Now tell me, when God stares at us from heaven, what is his conclusion? Can he call his angels and say, ‘Look at my beautiful kids?’

And not to weigh the burden only on Christians, the chief and headmen conducted traditional ceremonies as a last effort to appease the ancestors and maybe turn around the fortunes of the village. What if the ancestors were not on their side?

‘Are the ancestors on our side?’ The question was repeated several times a traditional ceremony was looming.

‘Do the ancestors take sides? If the ancestors can take sides, I think they are not on our side. Who knows after we had abandoned them for so long praising a foreign God? We lost them. But I for one have never trusted dead people. They died poor, how can they make us rich? Some were thieves, others were prostitutes. Can they come out of their graves and turn around our fortunes when they lived unfortunate lives. Never trust dead people. When they are dead, they are dead’

If ever a battle had loomed large, the one pitting God and the ancestors were knocking in the record books. But would the villagers care about its intensity? Would they care who would take the honours? They had prayed to God without an answer. They had begged to their ancestors and wondered at last if dry bones had ever lived. Worst of all, they never had any consolation from those who were ruling. Only empty promises. They had been promised a tarred road. They had been promised a nearest clinic. And they had been promised better lives, better than in the colonial era when lorries came into the village ferrying them to work in farms, where they had always admired the life of a white man whose God had given him everything. Their ancestors had not. They had fallen in love with independence and freedom, thinking that the life the white man was enjoying in their country belonged to them. Who didn’t want to be free, to come out of that colonial bondage that had haunted them even in their dreams? Independence was a hope too long to reach, the cost, an arm and a leg.

The news of being free from colonialism changed nothing. In their poverty, they waited and waited with great expectations, hoping that the lorries that once ferried them to work in the farms would this time ferry them to live in those farmhouses. Nothing came. They no longer worked in farms. They no longer had money to buy beer. They no longer had income for their families. If getting independence had its own damages, what was the cost of repairing