Mwenda Njira

Mwenda Njira

Let him who is without sin cast the First Stone

Respectable countrymen and women, last week I promised to take you along on my sojourns to the land of the Swahili and the Monomotapa ruins. I purported to travel to these news making regions of the continent to see for ourselves the birthing of democracy the African style.

Instead of having to subject you to the equatorial heat and humidity of Nairobi and to expose you to the Harare bedlam, a better idea dawned on me. “What about following Uncle Bob and Africa’s big brothers and a sister to the palm trees of Sharm el-Sheik!” Yes, you have guessed right. The AU meet in the land of the Pharaohs. What transpired in the land of the pyramids was nothing short of an enactment of one of the most famous scenes in the Bible: where the ‘self righteous’ brought before Jesus a woman caught in the act of illicit carnal pleasure for judgement. Always take note, dear country folks, of the impartiality of world justice when dealing with women: only the woman was brought before the master for the administration of justice.

Some of you remember well how the crowd left in shame, one after another, when Jesus asked that whoever had never sinned should cast the first stone to condemn the woman. Was Jesus encouraging women to leave their marital homes in search of wanton pleasures of the flesh? By no means! The simple lesson was that humans should not haste to judge lest they are judged themselves. Almost 2000 years later, the famous episode repeated itself in Egypt a few days ago as ‘righteous’ statesmen and women of the world bayed for Uncle Bob’s head after his famous one-man election recently.

But before I explicate what transpired within the walls of Peninsula Hotel in the Red Sea town, allow me to grab my cup of tea, my sweater and make myself comfortable on the goatskin stool-thanks to Chibwe the Great-may he rest eternally. Coming from the warm beaches of the Red Sea, I find the Chipeloni winds from the Soche Mountain quite bone-chilling. As I sit down to sip my warm mandimu tea, I hear the Great one in his deep baritone voice, “You should grow more flesh to keep yourself warm my boy.”

I take out my woolen jersey from my suitcase and get to sit on the goatskin stool only when Nangondo, mother of our five children, is not around. I was allowed to have the ancient wooden stool in the living area on condition that I cover it with white dowels that Nango had crocheted. I even promised to have the stool in the sun as frequently as possible so that it does not produce any funny odours. Is it not amazing as to what great lengths men take to please a woman? As for me, it all started with having to take daily showers if I had to win over Nangondo’s love, then a pretty form two girl at Stella Maris Secondary School in Blantyre. A daily shower was quite a shift in my lifestyle from a shower every fortnight at St. Patrick’s Secondary School at Mzedi. Get me right. It was not as though I did not want to bathe but Mzedi could be cold in winter and the Montfort Brothers in their wisdom had all dormitories fitted with cold showers only. Well, that helped to save on bathing soap too. So what was a man supposed to do? Stink as a he-goat, of course. Nango changed all that. It has been said and I agree that, usually, behind every successful man there is a woman.

The lemon tea is already doing wonders. I can no longer feel my lungs within me. Back to the glittering sand of Sharma el-sheikh beach shall we? Well, when I heard that the political gurus of the African continent were gathering in Egypt, I had ruled out Uncle Bob’s attendance. Was it not rife in the media from Mbabane to London, Cape Town to Washington D.C that the great African comrade of the Chimurenga fame had no business going to the august summit? Under what legitimacy would Uncle Bob be mingling in the company of honourable sons and daughters at the helm of decent African politics? A fighter that Mugabe is, he does his homework well and knows his facts, perhaps a little bit of the Bible too. He had as much legitimacy as Uganda’s Museveni and his movement system, Kenya’s Kibaki whose hands were still wet from the blood of thousands of people who died in the aftermath of the recent general elections. No summit had ever questioned life presidencies of individuals such as Brother Leader of The Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, their very host-Muhammad Hosni Burak-president of Egypt since October, 1981. Was Mugabe any worse than the whole holier than thou lot?

Your very own, Mwenda Njira the traveler, was there when the chartered Air Zimbabwe Jumbo jet stooped down and threatened to plough through the Egyptian bitumen. Without the slightest hesitation, the old soldier accompanied by half a dozen strong and well-fed men (one wonders where they get their food from amidst the six million percent inflation rate chaos) in dark suits and glasses and a score more members of his entourage emerged from the huge aircraft before being rushed to Peninsula Hotel.

I know, dear folks, that you are wondering as to how the nosy Mwenda Njira gets to go around the globe and be able to tell you about these things. Do I have a Jumbo jet at my command like the Chimurenga comrade does? By no means!

Let me divert a little from the Red Sea resort story and sell you into my small secret. You see, Chibwe the Great, did not attain his title through child play. The old man earned every grain of that accolade. His fireside stories were replete with his military adventures in the jungles of Burma during the Second World War.

No one and nothing could stop his reminiscences of how African members in the King’s army could turn enemy fire into useless smoke, “When the amaliongo fired their bullets they turned into smoke. We just coughed and moved on,” he would say sucking from his thick pipe and occasionally laughing at his own jokes. Chibwe told of stories of how they could produce a whole army battalion from the dust collected in their worn out army boots.

“In those days, my children, local knowledge was used for the benefit of all African brothers against the common enemy. Lero dziko lazondoka.” I can hear his lamentation even today.

I had the rare privilege of learning at his feet back in Kandota Village. He was larger than life itself. Chibwe taught me the greatest remedy to life-the ability to laugh at oneself and to learn from one’s mistakes. He taught me all the tricks I needed to survive in this turbulent life.

So, among the tricks that the Great one taught me, was the use of the Flying River Reed-FRRII. I gave the denomination II to the one I use after the initial one developed by Chibwe was buried together with him when he passed on. FRRII is a powerful piece of ingenuity man has ever made. Shooting between Blantyre and London in .34 seconds it outperforms any known flying object invented on this planet. It takes a little longer though to get to places such as New York and Rio because of the vast bodies of water that one has to fly over. Chibwe in his greatness did not manage to perfect his art when it came to crossing vast water bodies. Perhaps that will be my challenge before I join him in the land of the ancestors. I will not divulge any further details about this flying object. I plan on having it patented before mass production for commercial purposes. When that is accomplished, ladies and gentlemen, Mwenda Njira will not be sitting here on the goatskin stool, sipping lemon tea and telling you about other people’s political prowess. But that is a story for another time. Back to Peninsula Hotel, Egypt.

I watched with interest as the Zimbabwean entourage arrived. I expected a cold shoulder reception by the Egyptian Czar. Well, the newly elected leader of the Republic of Zimbabwe, His Excellency Robert Gabriel Mugabe was treated to a red carpet just like the rest. Pictures were taken and video was shot as Uncle Bob joined a lavish lunch by the host, Hosni Burak.

As you might have heard, beloved country folks, when the moment of truth came in that kachipinda komata, there was no single soul that had a moral ground solid enough on which to stand to accuse Mugabe of stifling democracy on the continent. Uncle Bob has never struck me as a religious person and I was sweetly surprised when he tactically employed the biblical principle to save his own neck at the summit by courageously declaring, “ Who ever has a clean democratic record in his country, let him be the first to point an accusing finger at me.