According to Victor Hugo, him that wrote about the Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables to name but a few, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
On July 13, 2016, Zimbabweans stood up around the figure of a simple man with a simple message and reminded our masters that they cannot fight the full force of a people determined to claim their rights.
We were all mesmerised when this man, name unknown, donned a flag around his neck and started saying truths, things that a mother has thought of on her way to the well because pipped water installed by our colonial masters, those who we removed because they were no good, no longer guarantees the health of her children.
The children that she cannot afford to see get sick as she will not be able to afford to take them to the clinic, and even if she could snag a few dirty dollars together, would not be guaranteed to find any medicine even if she did go to the clinic.
This man said truths that even dzoramombe kumusha, working for food now that even the employer has no money, grains having been sent to GMB two years ago but the cheque somehow never came, watching the cows and listening could say yes, even I think so. It was home truths, simple truths: corruption yanyanya, try and care a little.
In time we learnt his name, this Evan Mawarire, and soon we heard he is as Pastor. He was not the first pastor to get fed up of course, one such pastor followed the masters to their buffet in Victoria Falls and got a draconian bail sum for his troubles, from a system that punishes the beggar for daring to ask for, not some more, just some. Even Dickens couldn’t think this up.
Then came the news that the regime had lost its ‘button stick’ and a police helmet. A long time ago, a little scrawny fellow at UZ called Lawrence Chakaredza snagged a helmet from a riot policeman and went around campus shouting AHOY! UNION AHOY! as the helmet threatened to bring him to the ground because of its size.
You got the picture of such a thing while reading the charge, but you quickly thought: ‘button stick”? A stick made out of buttons? Why, pray-tell, would a pastor be interested in such a stick, we wondered.
But, there was no mystery there, turns out they are adept at thievery but cannot spell to save their mansions. It was a ‘baton stick’ that had allegedly gone missing. Nothing to do with buttons at all.
Like a true Man of God, Mawarire went to the police station to assist the police in their search for these clearly valuable things. Yet, because he posed such a threat, they put him in handcuffs, and went to his house to search. Everywhere.
You got the idea that it was no ordinary helmet or baton stick they were looking for then they started looking through his whatsapp messages, I mean, we know they are not paying their police much anyway but one would need to be a special kind of emaciated to wear a helmet that small, right?
But no, their motives were more sinister. Like a leaking faucet, they started doctoring messages and sending them out, and we heard that Pastor Evan Mawarire was conniving with the West to topple the regime. I mean of course, the West had tried through Ari Ben Menashe and Thabo Mbeki and Heaven-knows-who but settled on asking Zimbabweans to reclaim their flag. Suddenly, the charges were upgraded to something all too serious.
But, serious only if you lacked a sense of humour. I mean, honestly? Overthrowing a constitutional government? Which one again? When was the last time we had one of those? Because we are certainly not seeing one now, what we have is an organised crime syndicate that is robbing our country blind while building palatial homes and sending money abroad for when the chickens come home to roost.
The organised thievery is so rampant that banks cannot cope with the amount of money they have to send out, so children are being roped in to ship some of the money by road: can you say Chinamasa’s son?
But then, to a man, the country said no. Zimbabweans decided that enough was enough. Without being called, spontaneously, they made their way to the aptly named Rotten Row, where justice dies every day and rots in the bowels of the cavernous building. Out of step-politicians, perhaps misreading the runes, had said that nothing was going to happen on July 13, because they had not organised anything.
But a people with a cause need no organising: they came. In their throngs they came. With their flags they came. Men and women they came. In cars and on foot they came. Black and white they came. Lawyers, without anyone instructing or promising to pay, abandoned paid work and thronged the place, ready to represent anyone that got taken or needed representing, but mainly to show solidarity with their colleagues from ZLHR. They came to say no, enough is enough. Thousands, though ZBC won’t tell you that.
One by one, they stood up and said ‘AHOY! ZIMBABWE AHOY!’ Without fear, without an organiser, individuals from different homes took orderly turns to vent their frustrations at a thieving kleptocracy while the system first delayed bringing Pastor Mawarire to court, then took forever to run a bail application.
The farce of it all would be funny if not for the seriousness. They delayed and delayed, then the charges leaked out. And they stalled. Magistrate needed to think, to call a friend, to use all three lifelines but decision still unmade.
Hours later, we finally worked it out: they were waiting to see what Dr Magaisa had to say about the charges. He of course dispenses his erudite constitutional knowledge for no fee, online, and they wait upon his thoughts like the Spartans of old waited upon the Oracles of Apollo at Delphi: just as they seized on his thoughts to get a certain lady from Dotito out of Parliament and a certain spouse to inherit the husband’s parliamentary seat, they waited.
Rubbish, he said, Dr Magaisa, the charges were rubbish. I paraphrase of course, but you get the gist.
The crone opening a school in some place was news on ZBC, not this momentous day, (could be he did that months ago, you can never know), while Dr Small House was gyrating on some video from Singapore, we are told that Pastor Mawarire is free.
They must have figured that any other option would have seen that crowd spontaneously march on State House. Better to give them something to celebrate than deal with their ire, they reasoned. But it is too late: the people have risen, they know they have power. They know that they are on the right. That this is our time.
And, like I said before, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Tinomudaishe Chinyoka is a Zimbabwean lawyer based in the United Kingdom. He writes here in his personal capacity.
