Becoming The Muse

Coffee With Zimbabwe At 45

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words and wish you a happy Easter Holiday and in a rare coincidence, our country is celebrating its 45^th year of independence.

I havent actively written anything about our independence in a while; what can I say, they call us the Born Free generation because I was born in a free Zimbabwe, but how am I born-free when all I inherited is debt, unkept promises and price-tags that keep rising.

in my drafts folder there's a post with only a title, a picture of the flag & a map of Zimbabwe.
it should have been an independence celebration post, 2 days ago but in my draft it remains, blank, pretty much like most of my hopes & resolutions in ,this teapot shaped country 😦

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) April 20, 2019

“Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo” The country is built by its people…. Who are these people who are building the country? Honestly, I feel like a second-class citizen in my country, side-lined from this grand narrative of nation building as the opportunities open only for those who have connections, its never what you know… but who you know. I worry about what will happen to the next generation whose role models are flamboyant tenderpreneurs whose sources of wealth are as elusive as the million-dollar tenders they acquire.  

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that in case you ever wondered why Easter dates keep changing, its because it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. The next time Easter will fall on the 20^th of April and thus Good Friday, once again, coincide with Zimbabwe’s Independence day will be in 2087… I wonder what life will be like then, when we no longer have to defer to someone’s liberation war credentials as a hall pass for unscrupulous behaviour.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the Zimbabwe at 45 celebrations are being held Nembudziya Growth Point in Gokwe, about 290km from Harare. This is a commendable move by the government to decentralise the celebrations and thus bring spotlight and development to other areas of Zimbabwe. Regardless of one’s opinions about the country, one cannot deny that in the runner-up to independence day, Gokwe experienced a boom in its commerce and infrastructure that had been long forgotten in the past 45 years suddenly got a new lease on life.

But of course trying to fast-track over 40 years of neglect into a semblance of development, for the optics, rather than actually doing something has a way of showing you up, when it pours and rains on your parade…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that a positive spin on this will reference how in most African culture, rains signify renewal and ancestral blessings. When it rains during an event, it is a fortuitous sign. One could say that the rains during the independence celebration, herald a prosperity to come, ironically, however the rain could also be symbolic metaphor for how our state of affairs is stuck in the mud….

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you its been a year since the country introduced a  new currency the ZiG aka ZImbabwe Gold, the responsible authorities say that it has been stable and well received by the public… As an armchair observer, I cant help notice that the ZiG was introduced at US$1 : ZiG13.5616 and today’s rate is US$1 : ZiG26.7994 meaning the ZiG lost approximately 97.61% of its value against the US dollar an alarming statistic normalising losing 100% value in a year as stability…

According to government analysts, the majority of people who speak ill of the progress of the second republic are those who migrated abroad.. team diaspora, which would imply those in country have no complaints about things but reading between the lines, given how the legal apparatus deals with those alleged with inciting violence or trying to undermine a constitutionally elected government…

I also cant help notice how those posting images celebrating independence are also not in the country… would that conversely imply that those in country find nothing to celebrate?

Mukai timwe hatingakundwe kudhakwa nenyika pic.twitter.com/BajYCPEOce

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) April 18, 2025

If you having coffee with me, I would tell you that I wished someone a Happy Independence day and they asked me if it really was Happy…. I am yet to respond.

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods…

~B