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What caught this writer’s attention in the narrative was the statement: “Stanbic Bank legal adviser could not comment on the issue yesterday and referred all questions to the financial institution’s managing director, Mr Joshua Tapambwa, who could not be reached for comment”.
What’s in a name? Joshua Tapambwa!
Joshua, a Hebrew name that means Jehovah is generous; and Tapambwa, a Shona term meaning we have been invaded – a juxtaposition of opposites: names, their meaning and implications in time and history. Both names showing the paradoxes in the Zimbabwe issue.
The biblical Joshua, son of Nun was successor to Moses who led the children of Israel into the Promised Land – the land full of milk and honey – abundance and not lack. But, we first meet him in the book of Numbers when he together with eleven other leaders were sent as spies to explore the land of Canaan.
Only Joshua and Caleb came back with a positive report, and they were the only two survivors delivered from Egyptian bondage who crossed into the Promised Land, together with the new generation born during the Israelites’ 40-year sojourn in the desert.
It was also to Joshua son of Nun that the Lord said, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses” (Joshua 1: 3).
Joshua son of Nun’s leadership skills were exceptional. He could follow orders as well as give them.
He also put the children of Israel in an invidious position in his dying exhortation: “And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24: 15, KJV).
According to The Sunday Mail story, there is no doubt that Mr Joshua Tapambwa is standing between a rock and a hard place through names which if inversely placed (Tapambwa Joshua), would have made his task easier.
For, the realisation that we have been invaded would make him want to live up to the leadership qualities of the Biblical Joshua.
His course of leadership will determine whether the antithesis of his names can be reconciled for the good of Zimbabwe.
We hope that he will not be like the other ten leaders in the book of Numbers 13 who told the children of Israel – mission impossible, thereby prolonging their wandering in the wilderness.
For as Gerald Stein wrote in, When I have reached the point of suffocation: “It takes years to learn how to look at the destruction of beautiful things; to learn how to leave the place of oppression; and to make your own regeneration out of nothing”.
The sanctions altar broken
Things happen and in some cases we fail to understand their significance.
And, dear reader, I hope you will not think that I’m stretching things too far to make them fit into the scheme of things – sanctions busting.
But picture this: the Joyce Meyer 2010 Festival of Life flyer reads, “Live Laugh Learn”. The festival was held from June 4 to 6.
The festival’s evening venue was Harare Civic Centre Grounds (next to Interpol Headquarters), Corner Robert Mugabe Way and Rekai Tangwena Street, Harare.
I stand to be corrected, but it was probably the first event by an outsider to be beamed live by our national broadcaster. All three days, it was well attended.
As I drew parallels with last week’s event where people in their thousands also lived, laughed and learnt, a colleague remarked that in the spiritual realm, last June was when the evil sanctions altar was pulled down, manifesting in the natural in what happened last Wednesday.
For, on March 2 2011, the Government of Zimbabwe launched a National Anti-Sanction Petition Campaign at the Harare Agricultural Show open car park (between Harare International Conference Centre and Interpol offices), same location as the Joyce Meyer Conference.
According to reports, thousands of people turned up. This is the historic event, which United States of America ambassador to Zimbabwe Charles Ray has tried to discredit through the media labelling it a Zanu-PF event. Are the people in Zanu-PF not human?
This is an event when we had men of God such Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa, Archbishop Paul Mwazha and Bishop Trevor Manhanga acting like “the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do . . . ” (1 Chronicles 12: 32).
But, the backlash and pressure on these spiritual leaders who have a very huge following nationwide on why they participated in a “Zanu-PF event”, thereby legitimising Zanu-PF’s claims about the decade long sanctions, is unthinkable.
Unfortunately, such attacks give credence to those who say that Christianity is a Western outfit that has no place in Zimbabwe’s traditional religious order.
As if these sanctions have not polarised people enough, they want the polarisation to continue, making a mockery of the national healing and reconciliation exercise.
It is very disturbing when it comes from Christians. They want Zimbabwe to go back to the era when some of us wondered why suddenly God was for the MDC and Zanu-PF was viewed as “evil”.
Those days when the polarisation got as far as the pulpit in some churches with either pro-MDC or anti-Zanu-PF sermons or vice versa! Those days, when basic principles of prayer stated in 1 Timothy 2: 1-2 were negated.
Jesus is not Anglo-Saxon, and if you were to ask me whether he was at last week’s event, I would unequivocally say yes, just as much as I would say he was at the Joyce Meyer Festival of Life conference at the same venue.
If He were still around in the flesh, would the Lord have attended the event? Again, the Word of God through Zacchaeus’ encounter with the Lord shows me that He would have gladly been there because, “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19: 10).
I have picked up the Joyce Meyer meeting because when I wrote about the event, I also wrote about her husband Dave who fuses national issues, the history of the United States and its revolution with the Word of God.
Maybe we need to learn one or two things about how men and women of God in the United States view their roles vis-à-vis the national interest.
Why, for example is Billy Graham called a pastor to American presidents? During the Gulf War in 1991, George H W Bush invited him to the White House.
If national interests meant that Billy Graham had to intercede on behalf of America’s oil interests in the Middle East, why should it be any different with any other nation? Or is it a case of prophets not getting due recognition in their backyards?
And why did Government or Zanu-PF want the church leadership at the anti-sanctions campaign launch? Winning an election is just a means to an end.
As long as sanctions stand in the way of economic development, no sane leadership can stand by and allow people to continue voting with their stomachs.
It is an open secret that most urban churches are now major culprits of the dubious “private colleges” scam, because the congregation is not bringing offerings to the house of the Lord, because they have nothing to offer, which was not like that a decade ago.
What church leadership can also stand by as people are accused of “forming” churches to beat the unemployment blues?
How convenient it is to blame and point fingers, when we cannot proffer solutions that will see people’s lives meaningfully transformed.
The prolific US ambassadors
Maybe it’s their sheer love of writing, but have readers ever wondered why in a sovereign state with so many envoys from equally sovereign states, it is only US ambassadors who have the penchant to say this and that to the Government of Zimbabwe, its head of state, to its people – using its media, both private and public, and in a majority of cases insulting common decency?
No other foreign envoy behaves the way US ambassadors do in Zimbabwe.
Is this part of their brief, and each time acting like the Almighty pronouncing judgment on the “sinful Zanu-PF and its leadership”?
Is it then not surprising that some people ask whether God has conveniently been Americanised by its successive administrations, thereby making Him look like He is no longer the omnipresent; omnipotent and omniscient Lord?
Knowing that these envoys are not speaking in their individual capacity, the questions that beg are: Has Zimbabwe by proxy become a US state?
Is the US embassy in Harare also doing public relations for the MDC formations?
Ambassador Ray in his letter to The Herald Editor (March 4 2011) endorsed that holier than thou attitude. And saying this when March 4 is so incredibly important in the history of Zimbabwe’s revolutionary struggle.
For, on March 4 1980, results of the first democratic elections were announced and then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe formed his first democratic Government.
It was not a victory that the British and their allies gave Zimbabweans on a silver platter. It was also not a one man, one woman vote that was handed to Zimbabweans just like that.
Zimbabweans united to fight a common cause and a common enemy – settler colonialism.
Now, after being hoodwinked with bread crumbs for three decades, they came to their senses, and last Wednesday they demonstrated that they are THE kings and queens of this land, who won’t settle for anything else, except removal of sanctions, and working with the international community as partners, not servants that take orders.
That sea of people at that square spoke of aspirations that cannot be silenced anymore – aspirations of total ownership and control of resources.
In the last paragraph of his letter, Ambassador Ray admonishes The Herald Editor, “I greatly hope that your esteemed newspaper will carefully report these important distinctions as this Zanu-PF political campaign unfolds”.
Your Excellency, is this an embellished threat to The Herald, and are you also indirectly trying to influence the newspaper’s editorial policy to suit your administration’s mission, just like we have seen your predecessors doing – influence editorial content in the private media?
” . . . This Zanu-PF” is not a fly-by-night organisation sponsored by the West. It is the revolutionary party that waged the bitter liberation struggle against settler colonialism that brought real political independence to this country, and will do the same with economic independence, just as the American revolution did. If the “American dream” is attainable, so also the “Zimbabwean dream”!
But even more glaring in this “threat” is an indicator of how successive US administrations influence the Fourth Estate in their country.
Both the electronic and print media are testament to a media that has been schooled to protecting national interests. How is it done? Through letters like this or more subtly?
The PR for the MDC-T was so evident because a day after the anti-sanctions campaign, NewsDay carried a story, “Tsvangirai snubs Mugabe”. As an individual, he did, but as someone who claims that the MDC-T controls urban centres like Harare, he did not.
The hand-holding referred to by Christopher Dell was also evident because reading between the lines, what the US ambassador said in his letter was what the MDC-T leader said in a post script Press conference just after the national anti-sanction campaign launch.
A Press conference soon after such a mammoth event was nothing but an acknowledgement that the people had spoken.
“Tsvangirai said the programme was organised by Zanu-PF and its party slogans were constantly chanted during the proceedings”.
Yes Prime Minister you might have gone to the Joyce Meyer conference last year and not the national Anti Sanction Campaign, but in spirit you were there because you admit watching the live broadcast: “The abuse was a Zanu-PF character. There was no way I could have attended the function. How do I attend a function where I am being denounced?”
Responding to President Mugabe’s warning to the West about their business interests, Tsvangirai said this could only be done by “thugs” and not a government: “We never sat as Cabinet to talk about it. How are they going to do it? If it is going to be done, it will be done by thugs and people who do not respect the rule of law”.
When the Svosve people told the white former commercial farmers (like the Campbells), “your farm is on our land” becoming some of the pioneers of the land reform programme, they were labelled thugs and names like “jambanja” (disorderly and violent exercise) were touted, but as I write, the recently opened tobacco auction floors are testimony that revolutions are not a stroll in the park.
Reflecting on ambassador Ray’s letter, I ask why the US administration has been sending African-Americans to Zimbabwe and other African countries when they continue to demonstrate that they are not their brothers’ keepers.
Initially, people thought our black brothers would put a human face on Uncle Sam’s African policy.
The saddest moments are when they try so hard to make black Africans on the continent house niggers.
Niggers indeed; that term which appears more than 219 times in Mark Twain’s epic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – the journey to freedom of a slave and a white delinquent boy.
On January 18, a Polish website carried a story with the following headline: “219 ‘Niggers’ Removed from ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'”. Replacing “nigger” with “slave”. What’s the difference when Mark Twain’s work of fiction is a historical fact?
This is the sad irony when the Anglo-Saxon world abdicates its colonial responsibilities and when it makes us think that being a “slave” is better than being a “nigger”; or that claiming ownership of one’s identity with the attendant resources is being a “thug”.
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