New year letter to Grandpa

DISCLAIMER
This story is pure fiction about my Grandpa Hamudiamwe and no one else. Any resemblance it might have to your own Zimbabwean or African grandpa or any person you know is pure coincidence. Therefore all forms of intelligence should take it as such, a fiction story about Grandpa Hamudiamwe and no one else.


Dear Grandpa Hamudiamwe (Chief of our village)

In view of the worsening economic and health situation in the village which threatens the whole village with a serious crisis and a death toll of a grave magnitude I wish to draw your attention to the following matters.

Grandpa your refusal to allow equitable power sharing with other aspiring leaders in this village has left the village hanging in limbo and resulted in our continued suffering in this village. You now want to continue ruling the village with your helpers who together with you suffer from an extreme group think that is bordering on bunker mentality. What I mean in simple terms is that you and your helpers are so divorced from reality that you developed your own view of the world, which is the basis for all your activities, operations, and decision-making processes, regardless of the true nature of the wider environment in the village and the world. Bunker mentality is a phrase derived from the bunker used by Hitler and other leaders of the Nazis in the last days of World War II. Rather than come to terms with the reality of their impending defeat, they created their own version of the world within their operations room or bunker. Rather than come to terms with the fact that sanctions or no sanctions you have failed the people of the village, you choose to blame it all on the West whom you claim are waging a cold economic war on you. Did you ever stop and analysed yourself and your helpers and the many blunders you made ever since you started ruling this village. Grandpa if you were to open your eyes wide enough to read the writing on the wall you would notice that the reason why other villages are not willing to help you rebuild the village is because they want you completely out of the picture of the village chieftainship because you have become very notorious because of your dictatorship tendencies and your violation of basic human rights in this village as you try to maintain a one party state. So dear grandpa as long as you continue to cling on to power the suffering in the village will continue. Are you sure that is what you want?

Let me also bring to your attention the main reason why you and your helpers have lost respect in this village. Grandpa some of your helpers whom you trust and had given authority to see to the proper functioning of various institutions in the village contributed to the fall of the village to this pathetic situation we are in right now. Most of your helpers became grossly corrupt and law unto themselves. They diverted foreign aid into their own pockets, acquired more than one farm whose land they didn't fully utilise, acquired personal interests in the village's corporations, acquired shares in the various factories,(there is nothing wrong with that if your professional code of conduct allows it, but there is then a danger of bias when your helpers are involved in policy formulation)and established a near monopoly in the business of selling fuel. They took the lion's share of practically every important enterprise in the village. So even as they gazetted prices in paDare(parliament), the minute they got away from paDare they would call their garage managers, factory managers and shop managers not to follow the gazetted prices. It is such double standards that the ordinary people in the village noticed and they followed suit & also became corrupt, thus increasing corruption in the country to Nigerian levels if not more. The result was a deterioration of all standards in the village and the subsequent decay of all institutions in the village. Grandpa any questions you have concerning why producers and retailers continued to flout the gazetted prices and why production slowed down drastically in the industries ask some of your helpers because they are shareholders in most of the industries and are some the producers and retailers , don't rush to blame it on sanctions and sabotage by the foreign settlers. This gross corruption destroyed our village grandpa, it destabilised the village and dangerously undermined the very basis of public confidence in you and your helpers. What puzzles me is that you had a very competent and loyal intelligence service at your disposal who must have informed you of the corruption that was going on. They could not have dared to withhold correct information from you regarding that issue of corruption so the conclusion most villagers come to is that you knew what was happening but did not have the nerve to stop your helpers from being corrupt, for reasons best known to yourself. You will no doubt, grandpa, appreciate that the inability to control your helpers has been a sore point for the people of this village. This village-wide corruption fuelled by your helpers resulted in many negative consequences in the village, most of them disastrous in nature, for example it made it extremely difficult for the entire village population to salute, respect and have confidence in you and your helpers. The entire village government under your leadership was severely compromised by this corruption and it was your national responsibility as chief to prevent it but you didn't. It is also common knowledge grandpa, that you and most of your helpers keep large bank accounts aboard and this shows that you have no confidence in the village that you run. Those funds you keep aboard are badly needed in the village for development and if you were to bring them all back into circulation in the village our economy would greatly improve.

I could go on and on listing the mistakes you made during your reign but I choose to go straight to the bottom line. The bottom line grandpa is that I beg you to put the interests of the villagers and not your own selfish interests first. If you do that, you will do the most honorable thing under the circumstances and together with your helpers resign from the village chieftainship and allow a transitional government to be put in place before fresh democratic elections can be conducted in the village, so that the village can start on a new slate. Your resignation at this point in time as we start a new year will serve the best interests of our beloved village and the villagers who are suffering immensely as we speak will be most grateful to you.

Before I pen-off allow me give a prayer grandpa. Here goes the prayer, "I stand at the threshold of a new year. May God help me to be kind, fair and wise in all my affairs. Let Jesus lead me as I try to adapt Christ-like behaviour as taught by my Roman Catholic christian upbringing and as I learn to love all my fellow villagers and try to act in ways that make their lives better. Amen."


Yours sincerely
Muzukuru Stillwaters