Prime
From across the table: The national bet has failed, let us tear the paper!
Raymond Mujuni
What you need to know:
- We also told some men – mostly men really – and women to wear 18th century wool on their heads and decide which residence chicken thieves - idlers, murderers and those who annoy us - should spend the rest of their lives.
Societies develop through combined aspirations and in our case, we last collectively aspired in 1995 by drafting a piece of paper called the constitution – from then on, we swore by the bile and commas in it that we’d choose to toss, turn and fret on nothing but the collective aspiration it provided us.
We created a Parliament – funnily, with the hope it would legislate – an executive on whom we heaped tonnes of work, and to make it worth the while poured luxury, power and affluence; we cleared of any intemperance that may – in whatever small way – veer its holder from the task at hand.
This allowed for a near 2000-man army to jump onto truck-backs in his [and maybe someday her] protection, we assigned them talk-backs to clear the road, environ and space that our head of executive chose to go.
We couldn’t, for the life of us, tolerate even the slightest inconvenience of sharing a road so we allowed for roads to be blocked with green trucks. We would all rather be collectively inconvenienced squeezing onto what is left of the tarmac in our suburbs and endure brain-sparring jams than hear our head of executive arrived late for a function of great importance as a ‘national anti-corruption day’ and if he came late, it was the officials who rather chose to misinterpret the time and show up early, those snobs!
We also told some men – mostly men really – and women to wear 18th century wool on their heads and decide which residence chicken thieves - idlers, murderers and those who annoy us - should spend the rest of their lives.
For their worth, collectively, we’d all put aside some of our own money to pay for their chicken bills at restaurants, sauna and steam at the spa, a DSTV subscription for all their kids and new wigs for the wives they didn’t declare.
The only thing we expected, in return was that they’d smooth out the administration of our society. They’d see to it Panadol - that isn’t expired - is in the shelf when the doctor diagnosed us of headache, a semblance of a public road is laid down from our homes to our places of work and ‘some ka money’ in the accounts of the people who worked hard enough to make sure these public goods reached us.
What I can’t understand, for the life of me, is why this seemingly easy-to-execute deal is not being upheld?
I can rationalize insufficiency but why for the life of me can we not pay a small token into the accounts of medical interns?
And while we are at it, what in the dingle bells, is the head of government business doing showcasing two-left feet in a local council election in the middle of a national crisis as impactful as a medical strike? Does she not see herself as accountable, in any way, for the strike? Is there nothing she truly feels she can do? Even a fisherman can tell when to throw out their fishing rod on a sail-spree!
This deal that I speak of is the social contract and as far as I can see, ours is slowly running it’s course. No amount of Chinese debt plastering, large patronage and plunder, good English or ghetto rhyme recitation may save it.
I’d worry if a society lost all form of collective aspiration.
But I’d worry more if from the executive to the legislature and from the legislature to the judiciary, we’re all round tongue-tied and mumbling under the breath of collective sighs. Like the say on the streets, let us tear the ka-paper! [Tuyuzze akapapula]
And isn’t it funny how the constitution is our Kapapula now?
