Zimpapers Logo

Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga
IT’S the best news of the year. The government has confirmed that annual bonuses will be paid to civil servants. It’s also good news to relatives, hangers-on and vendors. The trickledown effect will ensure that everyone has a share, including Caesar.

The second best news is that some companies will be throwing Christmas parties for their employees. Note that I said SOME companies, if they haven’t done so already.

It’s such small things that bring about cheer to a year that has provided little to celebrate about. For some, this is the only occasion when workmates let their hair down and act silly.

It’s a very simple equation: Food+Booze+Music=Chaos. It’s a privilege employees get to enjoy only once in a year.

Taking a leaf from parties that I’ve organised, been invited to or gate-crashed, I will let you in on a few dark secrets. The Christmas party, true to initial assumptions, starts innocently enough.

The boss normally demands the mandatory slot to deliver a monumentally boring speech. It’s the one thanking everyone for a very ‘productive’ year, blah, blah blah!

Then the food is served, more to ensure that people do not suffer an excruciating hangover the morning after. It is made up of the traditional European culinary fare of rice, chicken and salad.

The braai composed of isitshwala (mealie-meal) and inyama (beef) is usually the last resort. It’s for those who go by the adage: You can take the SRB (strong rural background) from the bush; but you will not . . . (finish it yourself.)

Those who come from the north and east of Zimbabwe gocha their meat. This involves tossing the meat into a blazing inferno that would require the fire brigade to be on standby. The charcoal pieces that are rescued from the flames are then served to those with stomachs lined with asbestos.

Then we have those from the west and south who wosa their meat. These briefly pass their meat over hot coals or charcoal. It is then taken out with traces of blood still dripping from it, literally eating a cow alive. So much for cultural diversity.

With the food and dull speeches out of the way, the main business of the day begins. The music is loud and nearly everyone hits the dance floor with some help from Delta Beverages.

On the dance floor, you are bound to see the difference between talent and reckless abandon. The guys with two left feet from the accounts department have their day.

When the dancing gets frenzied and daring, this is the signal for the bosses to say their much anticipated goodbyes. It’s crucial that they not be witness to the carnage and debauchery that will follow.

There are the added security concerns as well. Studies have shown that bosses are injured with alarming frequency at Christmas parties. Why do workers wait the whole year to settle scores at the annual staff party?

Bosses would rather be judges at the disciplinary hearings that inevitably follow particularly raunchy parties, than be victims. On another note, I have always been amazed at the extremes some men go to pursue their female colleagues. A male who has been consistently turned down suddenly believes his fortune will turn for the better at the staff party.

Only for him to be publicly told off point blank to the derisive laughter of colleagues. The kind that condemns one to a life of voluntary perpetual solitude as a monk.

There are other interesting events that occur at such parties. These I will leave to your fertile imagination. We care not to repeat these in a family newspaper such as this one.

However, there is something intriguing about the managing director’s personal assistant (PA) who has had six too many, enough to make her redecorate her lily-white dress with a regurgitated version of the day’s menu.

It’s not often that I get a ‘pat in the back’ for something I have successfully pulled off. I hold the record of organising the biggest staff Christmas party on record.

I was working for a certain tyre-making company that will remain nameless. We threw a party for more than 1,200 employees, pensioners and their wives!

It was the aftermath that had tongues wagging. The whole city was littered with bodies of our company employees. It’s not my fault that they tried to finish all the wise waters on offer.

It’s a miracle that we were able to account for every single worker the following week. The MD got all the credit, by the way. So unfair.

The worst parties will always be the ones at a university I used to work for. Apart from attempts at pleasing academics who felt they deserved much more than a few beers, their end-of-year parties were an exercise in futility.

You can’t throw a party with two fishes and five loaves of bread. Let me just leave it at that.

I have to pause by paying tribute to colleagues in the journalism profession who know how to sniff out a good party. They use the press card to open doors that are normally shut for the rest of us. These include corporate functions that are devoid of supply limitations. This is where the expression: kuphela wena (no known literal translation) comes from.

Journalists don’t have the courtesy of waiting to be invited. They just appear (omazivelela) and they do it so unflappably. You would be mistaken to think that they are the ones who organised the party in the first place.

In my long experience as a host, I have learnt to set aside their own loot. You literally have to budget for them. If you don’t, you run the risk of making the news the next day for all the wrong reasons.

In fact, this tactic has worked for me in instances where the host sets aside beer for gatecrashers. For as long as there are parties, there will be gatecrashers, and journalists in that order.

As we count our losses, and scandals, after a good office party, we also look forward to a Christmas with friends, relatives. Now that’s a story that deserves another article.

A word of caution, though, you only live once so look after yourself. Drive carefully and drink responsibly because we want you back here in 2016.

In the wise words of my good friend a Phiri, “complications’ of the new season”.