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Blessing Musariri Shelling the Nuts

A survey of six different people revealed that five out of six people are not fond of the police at all, with comments ranging from, they are supposed to be protecting us but who will protect us from them, they make things worse not better.

ONE May 12, I woke up to find that during the night someone had messed with my morale and the dial had been turned down to almost zero.

I suspect it had something to do with waking up while it was still dark outside with the imposition of a long drive looming.

It was the out-of-town court case again (a pure waste of time and money for everyone involved except the lawyer).

When I left the house I was warm enough but that soon changed as my car does not have heating.

So I am cold, alternatively sitting on my hands to warm them up and feeling very unamused with life when at five minutes to eight I come across a police road block on the 101km peg marker to Chegutu.

It’s okay, I tell myself, I have everything, I checked before I left home. Plus maybe they’ll just check my registration and let me go, however, the number of cars parked on the side of the road is an ominous sign.

Good morning, good morning we say. May I see your licence. I hold it out for her to look at. She takes it. I want to object but I think, okay, keep it cool, she’s going to hand it back, but no, she tucks it securely into the crease of the ever present receipt book and says I’d like to inspect your car.

It’s at this moment that I know I have entered a hostage situation. I am not getting my licence back without paying something, judging from the number of people standing around outside their cars. But I have everything I tell myself so this shouldn’t take long.

Show me your spare tyre, she says. Dutifully I go to the boot, open it and lift the carpeted panel to reveal my non-biscuit. The policewoman leans in and presses with one finger.

Your tyre doesn’t have enough air pay $10.

Whaaaaaat! Now, I give myself a weekly budget and there is no provision on it for paying spot fines, which is why I now know where to take my fire extinguisher that I will probably never use, ever, except by accident, to be serviced. I tell the lady, I don’t have ten dollars for her. She says well you had better find it otherwise we drive your car to the camp and park it there until you can pay.

You know! I simply don’t have time for this, I have to be in court in a few minutes. I ask her is this really something that a person is fined for? She turns her back on me and says, Are you asking for leniency or challenging? I say, No I want to be clear.

Let’s take my tyre out of the well and show me conclusively that it doesn’t have enough air. She turns away and starts talking to a colleague.

I say to her back, You do know that there is a problem with cash, how do you expect people to just have money on them to give you? She ignores me, so I join the rank of the hopeless, leaning against my car waiting for what, I don’t know.

I seriously don’t have time for this and now I’m angry. I haven’t driven all this way to be thwarted at the last minute. I re-engage. Listen, I say, write me the ticket and I will go and pay the fine at the police station in Chegutu. Right now I have to be in time for court and may I have my licence back, you’re not supposed to keep it.

I will give you back your licence she says, as she said when I asked for it earlier. She doesn’t specify when she intends to do so however, only sometime in the future.

Well I don’t know what you expect me to do. Do you have a POS machine so I can swipe my card? Silence. She re-engages.

You say you are going into town, will you get the money there?

I say, if there is money in the ATM, yes.

Yes but will you get it? She asks me.

I don’t know if the ATM there will have money, I reply. I realise I’m losing my audience so I adjust, or I can borrow from the person I am going to meet. (I hope.)

Okay, she says, let’s go and get the money, I will ticket you in town.

I ask for my licence again and once again I am referred to a point in the near future . The policewoman thinks I’m now being cooperative and she is happy, she talks to a colleague to tell him she is going to town in my car to collect a fine. I am not happy. In fact I am fuming.

We drive for about two minutes in frigid silence and I am waiting and watching. She doesn’t not belt up. I give her another minute’s grace.

Do up your seat-belt please, I tell her. In fact, I say, you should fine yourself for travelling without a seat belt. Had it been me you stopped with a passenger who does not have their seat belt on right now you would be writing me a ticket.

She says,how can I pay a fine when I am the one who charges them?

Then you should be the first to follow your rules, I say.

It’s at this point that I imagine she is realising it might not have been such a good idea to jump so readily into my car. I know at this point other people will have given in to the inevitable and will be chatting amiably with the policewoman. Not me. Not on this day.

At the one and only traffic light in Chegutu, a kombi does the most illegal U-turn I have ever seen. He uses the whole intersection as his driveway even reversing back into it in order to position himself nicely. I wait for a reaction from my passenger. Nothing.

Okay, I say, so me you fine but him you watch and you say nothing. These are the people you should be dealing with not sitting here in my car holding my licence to ransom.

Silence.

We arrive at the destination and I am lent the money which I give to the policewoman, who writes the ticket and finally hands me my licence.

She asks me to sign the admission of guilt and I refuse. I tell her that as her finger was not a pressure gauge, she did not prove there was not enough air in my spare tyre so I admit nothing and also I completely disagreed with the entire process, so I was not going to put my name on anything to do with it. She took the money and left.

If we were in a workshop, it is at this point that the facilitator would say, There’s a lot to unpack here.

What if I had been someone on the verge of a psychotic break.

Sure the sun shines most of the time in Zimbabwe but it ain’t an easy life, for almost everyone.

I would have spent all week trying to get money out of the bank and being told sorry, your money might be there but we cannot dispense it because, well, there’s no money to dispense.

At the same time someone is chancing it in court to try and get your money. This would lead to all sorts of other stresses and then with your finger acting as a pressure gauge you delay me and hold my licence to ransom for $10!

Well, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was probably even bigger than this.

A survey of six different people revealed that five out of six people are not fond of the police at all, with comments ranging from, they are supposed to be protecting us but who will protect us from them, they make things worse not better.

Only one person took the philosophical approach of, oh well, that’s where they get their money, they’re just trying to get by. So is everyone else.

So what this basically comes down to is dog eat dog, catch 22, survival of the fittest, all the idioms of a system that is not working properly.

So do we just accept that this is how it is now and keep a roadblock fund in some corner of our car along with the triangles, the fire extinguisher, the reflective vest, the honeycomb reflectors, the over inflated spare tyre. Have I left something out?