A clarion call to my generation: Get off your butts, do something!

By Eleph Gula-ndebele | Nov. 2, 2023

If ever there was a clarion call for this Zimbabwean generation of young people to get off their butts and do something, that is probably it. Why am I going there? Well, because I worry.

“EVERY generation uses the ashes of the previous generation’s misdeeds as the foundation upon which to build its own dreams and aspirations,” said no one, ever.

However, that is probably what Franz Fanon should have said in place of his now canonised quote: “Every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.”

If ever there was a clarion call for this Zimbabwean generation of young people to get off their butts and do something, that is probably it. Why am I going there? Well, because I worry.

I worry about our nation. I worry about our communities. I worry about my children. I worry about my family.

I worry about the pervasiveness of a crass national culture where we glorify vulgar and conspicuous consumption without any focus on tangible and sustainable production.

I worry about mbinga culture perpetuated and exemplified by our so-called leaders.

I worry about how that culture is subsequently re-wiring the neural pathways in the malleable brains of young Zimbabweans away from the dignity and satisfaction of honest hard work towards instant gratification, graft and corruption.

I worry about liberation movements which have morphed into jailer and tormentor-in-chief to the bodies, spirits, dreams and ambitions of the very same people they fought to liberate.

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I worry about the toxic nature of our binary body politic that labels one either a sell-out or a Zanu PF project in the event that one associates with either the opposition or ruling parties.

I worry about the growing rifts between our points of view.

I worry about prosperity prophets and their miracle money, anointed bricks and cement.

I worry about forwarded messages on WhatsApp telling our parents that the Zionists who are currently practising the most brutal and systematic genocide on the people of Palestine that the world has seen since apartheid, are lauded as the true children of Israel.

I worry about the stark reality that six out of every 10 young women in Zimbabwe between 15 and 34 are not in school, work or any form of training. Six out of 10!

With a population as young as ours, I worry that the people we call our leaders are seemingly not worried about that at all.

I worry that former opposition legislator Job Sikhala has been arbitrarily denied his right to freedom for over 400 days without trial, while his comrades tweet Bible verses and assure the nation that God is in it.

I worry about the fact that as I type this, I am scared to stand up and speak out against the injustice, indignity and crass brutality visited upon our people daily by leaders who only care about themselves.

I worry that long after ruining party apparatchiks and their counterparts in similarly lucrative careers of opposition politicians and devastated our social, cultural and economic fabric, there will be no Zimbabwe to speak of or remember.

Maybe one day in some distant future we will reconcile these positions. However, on current evidence, I worry that we will probably not.

https://convowithtrevor.com/icwt-newsletter-issue-62/

Eleph Gula-Ndebele is a husband, father, patriot and Zimbabwean