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Mr Sikhala

Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in the village, in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, the most stupid of all men tries to cry under water, oblivious of the fact that the consequences are certainly intractable.
Must every man’s head not think?
There, the village elders, the ageless autochthons of wisdom and knowledge say there are three things that a man must know to survive: what is too much for him, what is too little, and what is fitting.

Sunday is normally a moral compass day both in the village and in urban areas but this last Sunday, this villager, the son of a peasant, was taken aback by one Job Sikhala, a village idiot by all standards.

Speaking at a rally of the sinking and stinking MDC-T yonder in Glen View, the jobless Job showed he had a full stop of a brain in his huge skull by calling for a coup d’etat to topple President Mugabe while he is out of the country for eye treatment in Singapore.

Well, the MDC-T prodigal son was in typical village idiocy mode, tantamount to urinating in the communal well, everyone, himself included, drinks from. Who does not want peace in this country?

In the village, one sometimes comes across people of such character that one cannot recall them without shuddering even when many years have elapsed since the last encounter.

To this type belongs one Sikhala, a political joke who sometimes treats us to such terrible and unpleasant drama, that some wit dubbed him witless, which is what he is now known for.

Back in the village, the soothsayer says Jobless and Witless Sikhala has a problem of allowing blood to run to his head more than other parts of the body.
He therefore confuses himself as the blood tips his balance.

This villager who has known Sikhala for many years together with his equally awkward friend, the lanky Tafadzwa Musekiwa, now scratching some old men’s back in yonder London, has never taken both seriously.

They are political chancers who have lost both their moral compass, their political focus and yes, their respect from the electorate and deserve no other place in the political history of this country than the dustbin.

Sorry Job, this villager will never hug a hyena to make peace. The hyena is filthy and again it will attack you in the process.
The idea of a coup is a figment of a poor mind, housed in a body completely incapable of doing anything useful.

Such a body houses a brain that thinks it can move a mountain.
A few years ago, this villager who had last seen Sikhala during the college days where he was the master of student armchair politics calling himself Ken Saro Wiwa, was later to meet Sikhala, now a permanent resident of Zimbabwe’s political dustbin, at a musical show.

There, the bespectacled Sikhala, cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, dropped tears at the lyrics of Leonard Karikoga Zhakata, in the process trying to hold back mucus from his nostrils by continuously frowning and this villager felt, hey this man is a weakling.

This villager realised Sikhala had sought solace in drink and smoke. This villager is not sure what he smokes?
Do village elders with cotton tuft hair not say every head must do its own thinking? And, that a man who talks continuously talks nonsense?

Over the years Sikhala has failed to mature and these are the kind of people who make the MDC-T tick. With friends like Sikhala, who needs enemies? Surely, by allowing back such a person in its rank and file, the MDC-T is desperate. Very, very desperate! Why would a political party engage such a thoughtless person? Fetid!
My grandfather, the learned but uneducated philosopher of our village, used to say if you see someone riding a bamboo-cane in a way that he is enjoying his imagination and fantasising like he is riding a horse, tell him “What a lovely horse!” What a lovely horse Sikhala? Ride on!

Back in the village, the most serious parody I have ever heard was that in the beginning was nonsense, and the nonsense was with MDC-T, and the nonsense was MDC-T.