Becoming The Muse

Of Coffee With March 31 March

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words and wish you a happy new month… Did anyone hit with an April fools prank or you have outgrown such. Living in this teapot shaped country feels like one long April Fools all day every day.

By now you might have run into news about a protest march that was supposed to happen on the 31^st March in response to allegations of the president’s bid to extend his tenure beyond 2030 as well as corrupt individuals known as zvigananda who use their proximity to power for personal gain. This was as highlighted by the face behind the 31 March movement former war veteran Blessed Bombshell Geza via social media channels.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that prior to the date the police had beefed up their presence in the streets and mounted roadblocks to keep the peace where they conducted searches for weapons, such as knives, machetes and other paraphernalia.

I had my backpack searched which did not have weapons but did have some ‘erbs… nothing illegal just some good ol’ Rosemary and Feso  leaves which makes some great natural shampoo… did I not end up having to giving a mini-hippie lecture on the beneficial uses of natural herbs and how they are not drugs. My Press Accreditation card also got me several suspicious looks as if I could be an architect of misinformation, instigation and incitement on my way to spread lies and foment an uprising.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that depending whom your source is, the 31^st of March passed without incident and everything was business as usual, as reported by state-affiliated media which kept repeating the mantra that the situation in the country was calm and dismissed reports of protestors barricading roads or police skirmishes with protestors as misinformation, as everything was business as usual.

To be honest, it wasn’t business as usual, the capital city was eerily deserted and so were other cities around the country, with people choosing to stay home resulting in a stay-away shutdown of the country. On one hand, one could say the planned protest was a flop as the people did not turn up in their multitudes to march, but neither did they go about their usual routine resulting in the country coming to literal stand-still…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that a generally shared sentiment was how the city’s streets were dirt-filled and roads in a state of disrepair, the city council could have taken the time to do a clean-up campaign… The images shared on the 31^st of March aren’t flattering to a city that had aspirations to attain world-class status by 2025…

So what next? Well, the infamous Bombshell released an update on the protests saying that he was calling off protest and would give an update on Wednesday but still maintained that he would put pressure for the president’s resignation before the week is out…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that a fortuitous coincidence that Cde Bombshell called off active protest on the eve of April Fools one can imagine the amount of lies and misinformation that could have happened and slipped in under the guise of April Fools, making difficult to tell real updates from pranks.

Having witnessed a military-assisted power transition before and living in its aftermath, its easy to see why the ordinary people are sceptical about being made pawns in political manoeuvring and mostly just waiting out the drama so we can go about planning our lives amidst the conspiracy theories, propaganda and the reality.

Remember our former Minister of Sport who is now the President of the International Olympic Committee, well an army general was retired from his post so that he could be promoted to the new position of Minister Of Sport, there’s a lot of theories as to why a position held by a gold medallist would be given to someone with military decorations and no apparent sporting qualifications but hey speculators will speculate, when everyday feels like April Fools.

I wake up expecting someone to say April Fools after an announcement like how the power company has introduced a mandatory inspection and re-inspection of premises electrical installations billed at $25 dollars per household with an extra charge for electricity generators…

What next? Are they are going to start billing us Solar tax for the electricity one uses from solar power, maybe I shouldn’t write that as that will give them ideas…

 Whats been going on in your neck of the woods?

So, Comrade Bombshell dropped another bombshell in which he alleges that the president has vascular dementia and zvigananda around him use the resultant forgetfulness to facilitate corrupt deals and that there will now be a motion to impeach the president on health grounds…

No official response has been made yet and Bombshell’s claims for now remain only as allegations, hopefully things return to a sense of normalcy as we wait for the other shoe to drop.

~B