Zimpapers Logo

stools, uncharacteristically designed but well polished by years of use, are the emblems of village comfort and hospitality. These stools have heard many stories but are repositories of some of the top secrets of the village. They will not speak. They have never attempted to speak.

But back to the import of this installment, the soothsayer took the villagers through a long journey of life where principles, morality and humanism are the strings that hold the community together.
The soothsayer, predicted that Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was a man going out of his morality and mind too, and needed to be stopped before the village witnesses a same-sex marriages and condemn its future to an abyss. I guess it is time to say no and stop the madness.

Back in the village we know what madmen are capable of doing. There are sayings that advise on how to handle – even indulge – the mentally challenged.
This is the wise counsel from the soothsayer: “Ukasekerera benzi rakakwira mumuti rinogara pashizha” and “Ukasekerera benzi pakugeza parwizi rinokudyirai sipo.”
But there is a worse one from this village oracle: “Ukasekerera benzi panhamo rinodya chitunha.”

And what an untold abomination that would be!
The village soothsayer predicts that if Tsvangirai wins the next elections, by two moons this great nation will witness a gay marriage. And, my God, by Christmas that year the British and their kith and kin in yonder Europe will give him a present through a gay rights award, disguised as human rights award. My foot!

The soothsayer was bitter and sharp-tongued, and is prepared to cast a spell!
“It sounds like a joke but surely my people, this thing will come if we close our eyes to what this man is saying. There will surely be a curse bestowed upon us by the ancestors.
“Imagine your son, bringing home another bearded man home and announcing him as his wife.

“Imagine as per our custom, a goatee-bearded man-cum-wife waking up in the following morning, distributing bathing water on bended knees to all the elders of this village and performing the chores of a new bride. What a spectacle?

“Imagine my people, how sad it will be to find your new bride shaving his beard. Imagine my people, a goatee bearded man carrying a bucket of water on his head and serving everyone of us here in the village?” ranted the soothsayer.

But in the village, there what are called appropriate registers, the social fabric lingua franca that defines how people relate.
“Will your young son say maiguru to that man brought into your house as a male bride? Will your wife and yourselves say muroora to that man brought into your house as a bride. Hey, men, tell me if you are ever going to have grandchildren in your house?

“This is no laughing matter. It is something quite serious,” the soothsayer went on, the elders shaking their heads in disgust and disbelief.
The fire that seemed to have died down in the heat of the deliberations saw villagers move their polished stools towards it but was resuscitated the same way and once again the villagers pulled back.
This was followed by a moment of silence until one villager decided to take the soothsayer into the future. So what is the future?

Casting his red-hot eyes into the future, beyond what we all could see, the soothsayer, systematically cleared his throat and hey, the men spoke with the authority of an oracle in the know.
“There is no future in such men. There is no future in a man who is brave to challenge his own people on behalf of foreigners. There is no future in man who can change his values and adopt unacceptable one on behalf of foreigners.

“There is no future in someone who changes colours like a chameleon.
“There is no future in men marrying men and women marrying women, for, where will the future generation of kids come from and where will the next generation of workers come from?

“This man is never the future, neither is he the past. There is no place for him in governance, especially where family, creation and procreation is the centre of continuity and life itself.
There is no future from a man who does not understand that he is, himself a product of marriage or copulation. If his father was gay, would he be there? If his mother was gay, would he be there? Is

this not a case of a tail waging a dog and not vice versa? So what future is there?
“Anyone who does not respect the rules of reproduction is not worth living. This is no laughing matter my people,” warns the soothsayer.