I am hanging off my chair with laughter. I FINALLY got my first piece of hate-mail, and I must say it feels gorgeous.
The comment from “Anonymous” regarding my blog in general and my last post in particular was as follows:
“This blog is nothing but an exhibition of prejudice, bigotry, racism, afro-phobia, and other hot air judgements without a shred of objectivity. It is a pity that a person should subject many innocent readers to such trash with impunity. Shakespeare would have called us to tear him/her to pieces for his/her bad verses.”
You know people are taking you seriously when they take time out of their hectic schedules to read your entire blog and then compose a well-written response accusing you of all sorts of things. I didn’t even know the meaning of half the words she wrote (I just KNOW it’s a she, it’s the bigot in me!) and by the time I had hunted down a dictionary I was too tired to be offended.
But seriously, everything she says is absolutely, 100% true. I don’t deserve freedom of speech, even if I’m simply airing my opinion. Freedom of speech is reserved for special people, like Her Highness, who must be given time and space to express her own opinion that I’m a bigot, a rascist, prejudiced, and afro-phobic. And that is NOT a “hot-air judgement without a shred of objectivity”.
A plague o’ both my houses! Shakespeare surelestly turneth in his grave. Never was this my intention, but alas, we must be judged not by our intentions, but by the consequences of our actions. Your Highness, mayst you and your bosom buddy Sir William ever find it within your holy hearts to forgive me? I promise to never again enter your office, brutally tie you to your seat, staple your eyelids to your forehead, then navigate your computer to my blog and subject you to “such trash" "with impunity". So too the many other “innocent” readers who have been abused and have no recourse whatsoever except maybe to, um…er…I don’t know, maybe stop reading immediately and perhaps not return to the blog? Remove me as their friend on Facebook?
What? Stop reading? Remove you as a friend? What shocking suggestions. Instead, why don’t you pay $100 a night for a resort hotel, find pubic hair in your hotel bathtub minutes after checking in, and then simply smile, in order to appear to have a “shred of objectivity”?
Kiss my ass.
Like I said, people are the worst.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Of National Awards and Rubbish Hotels
You know what would make the world a better place? Less people. People are the worst. The last three weeks have contained more insanity than one man can reasonably be expected to take, especially one already living at the point of incipient insanity. I don’t know what’s gotten into people over the course of the last year, but I’ve suddenly found myself surrounded by blithering idiots deep into what was supposed to be my red letter year. If I can’t rectify this situation in the next thirty days, I swear on my left testicle you will be reading about me in the papers. I will find myself a new residence in a quiet corner of the Helensvale shopping center parking lot, where I will spend my days collecting cigarette butts and arranging them neatly in order of size, and biting off the nose of anyone who dares walk past and accidentally kick my collection.
This post is not so much an entertainment piece as an honest-hearted appeal to all intelligent Zimbabweans in the Diaspora. Please, COME HOME! Your country is being run by imbeciles! And I don’t (just) mean the politicians. I mean the workers and the suits that employ them. My staff appears to have been contracted by the Devil to drive me to commit murder most foul. And yet I employ some of the best of what’s available in my industry! But at least my company has some modicum of resemblance to a well-run business, because I have high standards, a short temper and a mean upper-cut, and my staff knows it.
The level of sheer incompetence permeating the ranks and leadership of most Zimbabwean companies at this point is utterly unbelievable. There is no such thing as customer care. To get a simple quotation can take you a week. It’s almost as if people don’t want to make money anymore. The executives are the worst – and yet these guys are constantly giving each other awards for mediocrity. Every other week there’s a damn supplement in one or other of the newspapers detailing an awards ceremony where idiot executives with businesses that are in the toilet are recognized for things like “visionary leadership”. Yeah, whatever. Using their definition, my ass has visionary leadership when it signals my brain that it’s time to take a dump. If it’s not the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), it’s the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), the Institute of Directors Zimbabwe (IODZ), the Institute of Personnel Management Zimbabwe (IPMZ)… the list of ass-kissing organizations willing to sell their souls for publicity is endless.
I have so many personal examples of this. Now, I’ve never been a fan of people who wash their skid-marked boxers in public, but I must share this particular story. I’m not too worried because most of the readers of my blog are Zimbabwean anyway.
So two weeks ago, as you all know, we had our Heroes and Defence Forces holidays. Like other tried and true patriotic Zimbabweans of similar financial stature, I decided to commemorate our fallen heroes by packing two large cooler boxes of several types of intoxicating substances and travelling to a resort town to spend the weekend forgetting what our heroes did for us.
My wife and I decided to leave the brat at her mother’s for the weekend. Someone should have told me once you have a child, there is to be little sleep, rest, or sanity while it’s alive. And honestly, if I may share a very personal anxiety, I’m not even sure he’s mine. The rascal could be anyone’s, because I know for sure he didn’t so much as dip even a little toe into my gene pool, because my side of the family is all looks and all brains. While this kid may be considered good-looking at the right angle, in the right light, in the right culture, he certainly lacks more than a little in the intelligence department. He’s one year old, but I don’t think he’s normal for his age – if you take your eye off him for a second you’ll find him engaged in every manner of skulduggery imaginable.
He looks for opportunities to wash his hands and face in the toilet, enjoys sucking used ear-buds, and prefers to climb into the oven when the need to take a nap overtakes him. Not normal by any measure, and certainly no such behaviour has ever been found in the history of my side of the family. In my opinion he will be the catalyst that causes the appearance of the world’s first boarding crèche. If you needed more proof that his mother has more to do with his behaviour, here it is: she buys him clothes emblazoned with shocking phrases such as: “Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.” and “Trouble is my middle name”. Why? Why would you feed a baby such negative affirmations?
Anyway, I’m digressing. We dropped off the brat at its grandmother’s, and set off with another couple to Kariba, in remembrance of the gallant sons of the soil who may or may not have travelled a similar path. I’ve never been a history buff, don’t email me. Because my work days don’t leave me time to think, I hadn’t realized we were headed into a holiday until the last minute, so the only place we were able to book into was that nauseating pink monstrosity, Caribbea Bay. This hotel is owned by African Sun Hotels. African Sun Hotels used to be called Zimbabwe Sun Hotels, until their board decided it wasn’t enough to pollute only Zimbabwe with their bullshit hotels – they wanted to share their incompetence with the rest of the continent, so they transformed their company into the equivalent of a giant shitting elephant that travels long distances defecating all over people’s feet for profit.
For those of you who have never gone to Caribbea Bay, don’t. To begin with, the hotel was designed by an architect who had either a wicked sense of humour or a serious mental problem, or both. The hotel was meant to resemble a Caribbean villa, but ended up resembling a flowing stream of pink diarrhoea instead. The colour itself is frightening – the building looks like it belongs in Stephen King’s classic clown horror novel, It. At night, I kept expecting to see a murderous clown come bounding out of the darkness with a knife in his hand and evil in his heart, ready to slit my throat and then finish me off with a litany of dry jokes. Seriously, just looking at that building made my eyes bleed.
But let’s not dwell on things of the past. The current CEO, one Shingi Munyeza, may not have been with the company when this tasteless crime of architecture was committed. However, he is now a multiple award-winning director. Organizations are stepping over themselves to heap acclaim on him for his achievements. Mr. Munyeza himself suffers from severe withdrawal symptoms if he is not featured in at least one of our newspapers once a week, waxing lyrical about the expansion plans of his company and how they are a building a training school in Equatorial Guinea and blah, blah, blah.
Equatorial Guinea? What the hell is in Equatorial Guinea? There’s been nothing of any use to come out of Equatorial Guinea since the guinea pig. And if that’s not theirs, then they should just shut down their country and admit that as a people they have failed, they are a useless waste of oxygen, and let us all have the oil for free. It can be like a sort of communal bath, except for oil extraction.
Anyway, so seeing as this guy is in the papers like Jesus is in the Bible, and considering that he's training people in other countries on how to run hotels, I thought, well, maybe this won’t be so bad. It’s a good thing I didn’t verbalize that thought, because everyone who knows me knows I am never wrong, and the shock of this first ever incidence of wrongness would have made their poor heads explode and spoil my Hugo Boss sandals.
This post is not so much an entertainment piece as an honest-hearted appeal to all intelligent Zimbabweans in the Diaspora. Please, COME HOME! Your country is being run by imbeciles! And I don’t (just) mean the politicians. I mean the workers and the suits that employ them. My staff appears to have been contracted by the Devil to drive me to commit murder most foul. And yet I employ some of the best of what’s available in my industry! But at least my company has some modicum of resemblance to a well-run business, because I have high standards, a short temper and a mean upper-cut, and my staff knows it.
The level of sheer incompetence permeating the ranks and leadership of most Zimbabwean companies at this point is utterly unbelievable. There is no such thing as customer care. To get a simple quotation can take you a week. It’s almost as if people don’t want to make money anymore. The executives are the worst – and yet these guys are constantly giving each other awards for mediocrity. Every other week there’s a damn supplement in one or other of the newspapers detailing an awards ceremony where idiot executives with businesses that are in the toilet are recognized for things like “visionary leadership”. Yeah, whatever. Using their definition, my ass has visionary leadership when it signals my brain that it’s time to take a dump. If it’s not the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), it’s the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), the Institute of Directors Zimbabwe (IODZ), the Institute of Personnel Management Zimbabwe (IPMZ)… the list of ass-kissing organizations willing to sell their souls for publicity is endless.
I have so many personal examples of this. Now, I’ve never been a fan of people who wash their skid-marked boxers in public, but I must share this particular story. I’m not too worried because most of the readers of my blog are Zimbabwean anyway.
So two weeks ago, as you all know, we had our Heroes and Defence Forces holidays. Like other tried and true patriotic Zimbabweans of similar financial stature, I decided to commemorate our fallen heroes by packing two large cooler boxes of several types of intoxicating substances and travelling to a resort town to spend the weekend forgetting what our heroes did for us.
My wife and I decided to leave the brat at her mother’s for the weekend. Someone should have told me once you have a child, there is to be little sleep, rest, or sanity while it’s alive. And honestly, if I may share a very personal anxiety, I’m not even sure he’s mine. The rascal could be anyone’s, because I know for sure he didn’t so much as dip even a little toe into my gene pool, because my side of the family is all looks and all brains. While this kid may be considered good-looking at the right angle, in the right light, in the right culture, he certainly lacks more than a little in the intelligence department. He’s one year old, but I don’t think he’s normal for his age – if you take your eye off him for a second you’ll find him engaged in every manner of skulduggery imaginable.
He looks for opportunities to wash his hands and face in the toilet, enjoys sucking used ear-buds, and prefers to climb into the oven when the need to take a nap overtakes him. Not normal by any measure, and certainly no such behaviour has ever been found in the history of my side of the family. In my opinion he will be the catalyst that causes the appearance of the world’s first boarding crèche. If you needed more proof that his mother has more to do with his behaviour, here it is: she buys him clothes emblazoned with shocking phrases such as: “Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.” and “Trouble is my middle name”. Why? Why would you feed a baby such negative affirmations?
Anyway, I’m digressing. We dropped off the brat at its grandmother’s, and set off with another couple to Kariba, in remembrance of the gallant sons of the soil who may or may not have travelled a similar path. I’ve never been a history buff, don’t email me. Because my work days don’t leave me time to think, I hadn’t realized we were headed into a holiday until the last minute, so the only place we were able to book into was that nauseating pink monstrosity, Caribbea Bay. This hotel is owned by African Sun Hotels. African Sun Hotels used to be called Zimbabwe Sun Hotels, until their board decided it wasn’t enough to pollute only Zimbabwe with their bullshit hotels – they wanted to share their incompetence with the rest of the continent, so they transformed their company into the equivalent of a giant shitting elephant that travels long distances defecating all over people’s feet for profit.
For those of you who have never gone to Caribbea Bay, don’t. To begin with, the hotel was designed by an architect who had either a wicked sense of humour or a serious mental problem, or both. The hotel was meant to resemble a Caribbean villa, but ended up resembling a flowing stream of pink diarrhoea instead. The colour itself is frightening – the building looks like it belongs in Stephen King’s classic clown horror novel, It. At night, I kept expecting to see a murderous clown come bounding out of the darkness with a knife in his hand and evil in his heart, ready to slit my throat and then finish me off with a litany of dry jokes. Seriously, just looking at that building made my eyes bleed.
But let’s not dwell on things of the past. The current CEO, one Shingi Munyeza, may not have been with the company when this tasteless crime of architecture was committed. However, he is now a multiple award-winning director. Organizations are stepping over themselves to heap acclaim on him for his achievements. Mr. Munyeza himself suffers from severe withdrawal symptoms if he is not featured in at least one of our newspapers once a week, waxing lyrical about the expansion plans of his company and how they are a building a training school in Equatorial Guinea and blah, blah, blah.
Equatorial Guinea? What the hell is in Equatorial Guinea? There’s been nothing of any use to come out of Equatorial Guinea since the guinea pig. And if that’s not theirs, then they should just shut down their country and admit that as a people they have failed, they are a useless waste of oxygen, and let us all have the oil for free. It can be like a sort of communal bath, except for oil extraction.
Anyway, so seeing as this guy is in the papers like Jesus is in the Bible, and considering that he's training people in other countries on how to run hotels, I thought, well, maybe this won’t be so bad. It’s a good thing I didn’t verbalize that thought, because everyone who knows me knows I am never wrong, and the shock of this first ever incidence of wrongness would have made their poor heads explode and spoil my Hugo Boss sandals.
I have nothing against Shingi Munyeza, I don’t even know him personally, but I think he should shut the hell up about how great his company is, and all organizations that have given him an award should have their licenses revoked and their executives jailed for exercising such back-assward judgement.
Now I know tourism was low and our hotels in particular suffered heavily over the last ten years. They didn’t have money for capital expenditure. So I won’t talk about the peeling paint on the walls, the battered dinosaur-era non-functioning AC unit, the doors falling off their hinges and other such capital intensive shortcomings. But I will talk about the basics, which cost little or no money. Surely to win “Businessman of the Year”, or some other such award, you must be getting the very basics right, right?
Upon entering the room, I immediately went into the bathroom, because long journeys mess with my stomach like that. While dropping off my friends in the pool, I absent-mindedly began inspecting the room, because there was no literature to otherwise engage my furtive mind. I noticed that the shower curtain which was once completely white, was now a doo-doo brown at the bottom. Not cool.
Then I looked at the bathroom stool in the corner – it had steel legs and a pleather covering which was also a suspicious off-white colour. Maybe it came like that. Nevertheless, it was filthy, with brown stains that also looked like you-know-what. Upon closer inspection I noticed a red streak that may or may not have been ketchup. Since white people have slowly started trickling back into our hotels, it may well have been ketchup from chips that some drunk tourist was eating while clipping his toenails in the toilet. You never know with white people.
Not being a natural at complaining in real life, I thought it best to ignore these housekeeping flaws. I decided to finish my business and then take a bath. There was not a bath plug in sight. Strange, that a hotel that is part of such a large group of hotels and that is led by such a decorated CEO could slip on two basic things at once. Was it a trend at this facility, I wondered? While searching for the bath plug that had gone AWOL, I found something that made me realize that God loves me despite my foul mouth and voracious appetite for anything that tampers with my blood-alcohol content.
Curled in a corner of the tub, trying their best not to get noticed, were three strands of pubic hair. I named them SNE, HNE and DNE, for See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Do No Evil. I am convinced God made the bath plug disappear so I wouldn’t make the mistake of sitting in that tub and developing haemorrhoids the size of golf balls. So, clearly, this hotel has an issue with housekeeping. This was later proved beyond doubt when, the following day, after returning from a leisurely 2 hour breakfast, we found our bed stripped of all linens. We assumed the housekeeper was in the process of replacing them, so we lounged around awaiting his return. We watched TV on the couch, then decided to stretch out on the bed, then fell asleep for an hour, only to wake up and realize that the moron housekeeper STILL had not returned. WTF?
Ok, I’m tired of typing, this story will have to be continued some other time, and if any of you are thinking of bitching again, think again, coz I don’t care what you have to say. Damn, this is why God invented personal assistants.
TO BE CONTINUED…
TO BE CONTINUED…
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting...[drumroll please!]
So I've finally decided to post a picture of myself, so you can get an appreciation of the amazing looks that go along with the amazing brain. Also, if I'm going to be sleeping with your girlfriend, wife, sister or you (if you're a female, that is, don't want to excite any pink-martini sipping, skinny jean-wearing fairy boys in case I have any among my fans - my poop chute will ALWAYS be an exit, just as God intended it to be, you twisted sons-of-...I'm digressing), I thought it would help to know what you're working with. Too bad the law doesn't allow me to show you the ACTUAL goods, but all females that bear no resemblance to Joice Mujuru can come to the showroom for a test drive.
I don't exaggerate, my nuts are about as big as Jupiter, and if you can picture that, it means I don't need to say much about the other key area of my anatomy.Some days, because I'm the boss and 500 people exist solely to serve me daily, I don't even go in to work - I just stay at home and admire my nuts, and then I send an email to my staff inviting any who would like a day off to come to my home and recite a short poem about how impressive my private parts are, and then I free them for the day. It's a win-win, all round. Well, except for the wife.
Then again, maybe that's not really me in the picture. It could be anyone; hell, it could be Bob. Except taller. And not exuding evil.
You never know with me.
Now stop reading senseless shit on the Internet and get back to work.
I don't exaggerate, my nuts are about as big as Jupiter, and if you can picture that, it means I don't need to say much about the other key area of my anatomy.Some days, because I'm the boss and 500 people exist solely to serve me daily, I don't even go in to work - I just stay at home and admire my nuts, and then I send an email to my staff inviting any who would like a day off to come to my home and recite a short poem about how impressive my private parts are, and then I free them for the day. It's a win-win, all round. Well, except for the wife.
Then again, maybe that's not really me in the picture. It could be anyone; hell, it could be Bob. Except taller. And not exuding evil.
You never know with me.
Now stop reading senseless shit on the Internet and get back to work.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Let's Fire the ZRP and Start Again
The goddamn city is teeming with traffic cops. If I get stopped at a roadblock one more time I’m going to commit perpendicular vehicular homicide (I don’t know either, dammit. Don’t you listen to music?). But I’m getting ahead of myself. Some people might get the idea that I have something against the police.
The fact is: I do. I can’t stand the ZRP. I know their motto is not “to serve and to protect” (that one is for the LAPD, or NYPD, or both, not sure), but what the hell is the ZRP motto, actually? Do they have one? Isn’t it a travesty that we all know the motto of the NYPD even though 90% of us have never set foot in North America, let alone New York, yet we are hard pressed to repeat the motto of our own national police force, whose members diligently harass us, excuse me, serve us daily?
These guys really get my goat. (I hung out with a white friend this week, can you tell?) I wouldn’t have so much against the ZRP if, for all their pervasiveness, they actually accomplished something. Some yellow-eyed varmint scaled my durawall AND my electric fence somehow last night and managed to steal my borehole pump. Of course, one robbery does not an incompetent national police force make. But these and worse incidences are becoming more common in Harare. Yet, last week I was detained for almost an hour by our boys in, er, vomit green. And my crime? Not having a bloody radio license.
Just writing about this is making my spleen ache. Let me briefly go into this incident in all its glorious stupidity. I was stopped at a roadblock on my way to see my mother-in-law. It is a measure of my abhorrence for our police force that I preferred to rush to that destination rather than stop and chat with the police, as engaging as their conversation might be. After taking my driver’s license and then asking for every piece of paperwork that he could possibly think of, short of my marriage certificate, the idiot cop – who had a strange, spheroid head, navy-blue gums and a suspiciously red tongue that had the amazing ability to continually lick his cracked lips without imparting any moisture to them – then took his time to slowly circle my car and check it for any faults. After realizing that I even had the stupid cut-out reflectors they make us stick on our bumpers (notwithstanding the fact that all cars manufactured after 1980 have built-in reflectors in the taillights) the Devil finally gave him a break and handed him a weekend present.
DIM-WITTED COP (DWC): Eh, mdhara, ko tipeiwo ka license.
ME (ME): Ha shamari, inga ndakupa wani, license rawakabata iro? Urikumbodei?
DWC: Ndirikuita basa rangu mfana, usaite zve rough, hantika? Because kana zva zve rough tese tinozvigona, wazvinwa? Right. Tipe radio license tione?
Deeply annoyed but failing to manufacture a plausible excuse in the heat of the moment, I looked at him combatively and exhaled.
ME: Sha, urikundi delaya, radio license rei, I don’t listen to that rubbish on radio, ndinoridza iPod.
DWC: iPodhi? Ndochii ichocho?
ME: Iyi iPod, (showing him my slick black 16GB iPod) I don’t listen to local radio shamari, so I don’t see why I should finance their programming.
DWC: Ho nhai, tione kanhu kacho (taking said slick black 16GB iPod).
ME: …… (wanting to curse but deciding not to antagonize the idiot anymore since, actually, I had no acceptable excuse for not having the senseless but nonetheless mandatory car radio license.)
You know the saying “trouble comes in threes”? It was written about me. First, I was already late to my appointment. Then, an idiot cop chooses me to help update his shockingly limited knowledge of post-millennial technology. And then…
Just as I began to ask if I could have my iPod back and leave, a white family in a Land Rover appeared to ignore one of the other douche-bag officer’s signals to stop. And this is where I saw that, contrary to popular belief, our ZRP officers learn so much more than how to march and salute at that hallowed training institution that is Morris Depot Academy.
This officer, with my driver’s license and slick, black 16GB iPod firmly in hand, immediately sprang into action. “Sprang” is actually an understatement. George Bush couldn’t have reacted quicker if Osama bin Laden had sprinted across the White House front lawn stark naked in broad daylight. The cop bolted to his twin-cab pickup which was parked nearby (yes, our traffic cops have made so much money that they now report for roadblock duty in their private cars, no lie), with a colleague hot on his heels, and took off in a cloud of dust after the Land Rover. For all the dramatics you would have thought they were setting off in pursuit of one of the most notorious armed robbers in the country.
So here I am, sitting in my car with my mouth agape in disbelief as this imbecile disappears into the distance with not only my driver’s license, but also my friggin’ iPod! How unprofessional is that? I’m beginning to think “Unprofessionalism” is a course they teach at Morris Depot, because all of our ZRP officers are especially talented in this area.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was stuck at this roadblock for an hour while I waited for these conscientious police officers to return with my property. I wasn’t surprised the chase took so long, it couldn’t have been very high speed. After all, the alleged armed robbers (two of whom were under ten years old, from what I could gather) were in a late model Land Rover while our Starsky and Hutch were in a 1995 Mazda twin-cab with an unbelievable top speed of 73 km/h. Seriously, what's the point in taking off on a chase in a vehicle that goes from 0 - 100km/h in...NEVER? It simply defies reason.
While waiting, I had to contend with the bitching of the other two cops who were left behind. As it turned out, just as the one officer forgot to hand my property back to me, the other officer forgot to leave the ticket book, rendering the remaining officers useless for the duration of the time. And boy, could these guys bitch. By the time I left I could have easily gone to police headquarters and applied to become the head of the ZRP Worker’s Committee because I had heard just about every single grievance that exists and has existed in the entire national police force for the past twenty-five years.
This is what upsets me: while our police officers are industriously hunting down criminals who dare to drive on the streets of Harare without a radio license, commuters are riding to work in kombis that have broken turn signals, snakeskin tyres, and rusted floors. Kombi drivers stop where and when they please, Highway Code be damned. Motorists routinely run red lights – in fact, I think if you don’t know how to run a red a light, you can’t get a driver’s licence anymore. Armed robbers are running amok – you are playing Russian Roulette if you are routinely one of the last shoppers in a supermarket in Harare these days. And worst of all unwashed scallywags are scaling our walls and stealing our boreholes!
This means I have to shower with City of Harare water. Again! GODDAMNIT!!
zakeozim@gmail.com
The fact is: I do. I can’t stand the ZRP. I know their motto is not “to serve and to protect” (that one is for the LAPD, or NYPD, or both, not sure), but what the hell is the ZRP motto, actually? Do they have one? Isn’t it a travesty that we all know the motto of the NYPD even though 90% of us have never set foot in North America, let alone New York, yet we are hard pressed to repeat the motto of our own national police force, whose members diligently harass us, excuse me, serve us daily?
These guys really get my goat. (I hung out with a white friend this week, can you tell?) I wouldn’t have so much against the ZRP if, for all their pervasiveness, they actually accomplished something. Some yellow-eyed varmint scaled my durawall AND my electric fence somehow last night and managed to steal my borehole pump. Of course, one robbery does not an incompetent national police force make. But these and worse incidences are becoming more common in Harare. Yet, last week I was detained for almost an hour by our boys in, er, vomit green. And my crime? Not having a bloody radio license.
Just writing about this is making my spleen ache. Let me briefly go into this incident in all its glorious stupidity. I was stopped at a roadblock on my way to see my mother-in-law. It is a measure of my abhorrence for our police force that I preferred to rush to that destination rather than stop and chat with the police, as engaging as their conversation might be. After taking my driver’s license and then asking for every piece of paperwork that he could possibly think of, short of my marriage certificate, the idiot cop – who had a strange, spheroid head, navy-blue gums and a suspiciously red tongue that had the amazing ability to continually lick his cracked lips without imparting any moisture to them – then took his time to slowly circle my car and check it for any faults. After realizing that I even had the stupid cut-out reflectors they make us stick on our bumpers (notwithstanding the fact that all cars manufactured after 1980 have built-in reflectors in the taillights) the Devil finally gave him a break and handed him a weekend present.
DIM-WITTED COP (DWC): Eh, mdhara, ko tipeiwo ka license.
ME (ME): Ha shamari, inga ndakupa wani, license rawakabata iro? Urikumbodei?
DWC: Ndirikuita basa rangu mfana, usaite zve rough, hantika? Because kana zva zve rough tese tinozvigona, wazvinwa? Right. Tipe radio license tione?
Deeply annoyed but failing to manufacture a plausible excuse in the heat of the moment, I looked at him combatively and exhaled.
ME: Sha, urikundi delaya, radio license rei, I don’t listen to that rubbish on radio, ndinoridza iPod.
DWC: iPodhi? Ndochii ichocho?
ME: Iyi iPod, (showing him my slick black 16GB iPod) I don’t listen to local radio shamari, so I don’t see why I should finance their programming.
DWC: Ho nhai, tione kanhu kacho (taking said slick black 16GB iPod).
ME: …… (wanting to curse but deciding not to antagonize the idiot anymore since, actually, I had no acceptable excuse for not having the senseless but nonetheless mandatory car radio license.)
You know the saying “trouble comes in threes”? It was written about me. First, I was already late to my appointment. Then, an idiot cop chooses me to help update his shockingly limited knowledge of post-millennial technology. And then…
Just as I began to ask if I could have my iPod back and leave, a white family in a Land Rover appeared to ignore one of the other douche-bag officer’s signals to stop. And this is where I saw that, contrary to popular belief, our ZRP officers learn so much more than how to march and salute at that hallowed training institution that is Morris Depot Academy.
This officer, with my driver’s license and slick, black 16GB iPod firmly in hand, immediately sprang into action. “Sprang” is actually an understatement. George Bush couldn’t have reacted quicker if Osama bin Laden had sprinted across the White House front lawn stark naked in broad daylight. The cop bolted to his twin-cab pickup which was parked nearby (yes, our traffic cops have made so much money that they now report for roadblock duty in their private cars, no lie), with a colleague hot on his heels, and took off in a cloud of dust after the Land Rover. For all the dramatics you would have thought they were setting off in pursuit of one of the most notorious armed robbers in the country.
So here I am, sitting in my car with my mouth agape in disbelief as this imbecile disappears into the distance with not only my driver’s license, but also my friggin’ iPod! How unprofessional is that? I’m beginning to think “Unprofessionalism” is a course they teach at Morris Depot, because all of our ZRP officers are especially talented in this area.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was stuck at this roadblock for an hour while I waited for these conscientious police officers to return with my property. I wasn’t surprised the chase took so long, it couldn’t have been very high speed. After all, the alleged armed robbers (two of whom were under ten years old, from what I could gather) were in a late model Land Rover while our Starsky and Hutch were in a 1995 Mazda twin-cab with an unbelievable top speed of 73 km/h. Seriously, what's the point in taking off on a chase in a vehicle that goes from 0 - 100km/h in...NEVER? It simply defies reason.
While waiting, I had to contend with the bitching of the other two cops who were left behind. As it turned out, just as the one officer forgot to hand my property back to me, the other officer forgot to leave the ticket book, rendering the remaining officers useless for the duration of the time. And boy, could these guys bitch. By the time I left I could have easily gone to police headquarters and applied to become the head of the ZRP Worker’s Committee because I had heard just about every single grievance that exists and has existed in the entire national police force for the past twenty-five years.
This is what upsets me: while our police officers are industriously hunting down criminals who dare to drive on the streets of Harare without a radio license, commuters are riding to work in kombis that have broken turn signals, snakeskin tyres, and rusted floors. Kombi drivers stop where and when they please, Highway Code be damned. Motorists routinely run red lights – in fact, I think if you don’t know how to run a red a light, you can’t get a driver’s licence anymore. Armed robbers are running amok – you are playing Russian Roulette if you are routinely one of the last shoppers in a supermarket in Harare these days. And worst of all unwashed scallywags are scaling our walls and stealing our boreholes!
This means I have to shower with City of Harare water. Again! GODDAMNIT!!
zakeozim@gmail.com
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