DUMISANI KUFARUWENGA

I’ve lived through it all. I’ve lived through the tumultuous 70’s, where us little boys hunted with dogs in Chimumvuri mountain in Buhera and ate magwingwiziri (wild berries), and I also slid with naked buttocks down the smooth, slippery and perilous rock in Musabezi River in Shurugwi while herding cattle, and ran small errands for the liberation war fighters as mujibha (boy collaborator). I came out alive.

I also lived through the 80’s, mostly at Fletcher High School in Gweru where we ate goko (crust) and fendefa (reject bread slices) and played soccer in the lower field and drank beer in Senga beerhall and had a helluva of great fun dancing with girls after sneaking to the then Gweru Teachers College. And trudged on. I survived the sinful but fun filled early 90’s at the University of Zimbabwe, where hooligans drank daily and passed annually. And immediately thereafter fled back to Gweru. I toiled for Government for peanuts but gained invaluable experience until I said, towards the end of the 90’s, enough is enough!

I jumped ship and landed in the private sector. I strove and struggled and somehow survived the long arduous hours of tedious toil of the private sector, earning a modest living, until the Zimbabwean Government bankrupted the country in the mid 2000’s. I fled back to Harare, hoping to find reprieve. But things got worse. The Zanu PF Government steered the country towards total economic collapse, and at a personal level, l faced and experienced total financial ruin! But I lived. And I witnessed the same Zanu PF that had impoverished many Zimbabweans, wresting power from a Trade Unionist called Morgan Tsvangirai who had, against all odds, beaten Zanu PF in an unfree and unfair election.

And saw Zanu PF further plunging the country into deeper economic turmoil. And I was still alive when Emmerson Munangagwa cheated a young man called Nelson Chamisa to the presidency of Zimbabwe by hook and crook and bloodshed, and Nelson Chamisa fled into hiding from mainstream politix, keeping everyone guessing about his next political manouvre. I’ve seen it all. And as I tum 57 on this 16th day of September 2024, I no longer say to myself, “I’ll wait and see,” but rather; I see, and wait.