Silent Musings of a Mad Zim Executive

"Why Did You Let Zakeo Die?"

2012-02-07T07:54:00.000-08:00

That was the question posed by an upset fan last year when I had gone three months without updating my blog. I had received countless other emails prior to this one, all condemning my laziness and lack of commitment to the cause, which cause I do not know. Because this particular fan is very intelligent and polite, albeit exasperatingly long-winded and prone to digression like the wind is prone to blowing, I decided to honor her with a reply. I now post my reply here because I am indeed lazy and not at all likely to reply everyone who wrote to me about this. So if you wrote me, this is your carbon copy reply. Read it, ignore anything you don't understand and shut up. With a little concentration you will have gotten the gist of it by the end.

"Dear E.

I know there is possibly no excuse you will accept for me taking so long to reply your mail. But I have to try. What had happened was, when I sat down to reply you, on the very day you had written me, my keyboard switched off because my car battery went dead due to the cats and dogs and hamsters and gherkins it was raining outside. (Wait...is a gherkin a pet?). This totally threw me off, but I was determined to write you so I tried to use my mouse, cutting and pasting individual letters from websites in my history to make words, but by the time I finished the first sentence I had turned 71 and forgotten my train of thought. Maybe it’s the arthritis setting in because I keep forgetting everything these days and getting lost on my way back from the toilet. The viagra doesn't help at all, I think we need some kind of Truth in Advertising Commission in Zimbabwe because they told me it would improve blood flow to key organs in my body, and I don't know what’s more key than your damn brain, and at my age it feels like hardly any blood ever goes there at all, pills or no pills.

Thanks for the mail, gosh. It's like getting a gift from a thoughtful lover, before you even open it you know she's visited the spanking new iStore in Sandton or the HP Experience Store in Eastgate and gotten you, well me, the 64GB 3G iPad or the new HP high definition 21 inch monitor, and not the Limited Edition 5-season pack of the Sex and the City DVDs.

In reply to your mail, however, I think your comment about baby seals was extremely insensitive. Who clubs baby seals in this day and age? That is inhumane, and I'm not afraid to tell you that I was shocked. Everyone knows that the correct way to slay a baby seal is using a current - a quick electric shock conducted by a rod inserted in the ear. The seal doesn't feel a thing, as far as anyone can tell, and an additional benefit is that there is no scarring, which is unsightly on your plate. Next time, try your seal marinated in Mediterranean lemon and herb sauce, served with a dollop of garlic-mashed potatoes, a few caramelized onion rings, and a sprinkling of basil leaves for garnishing. Just please make sure the seal has been caught and slaughtered humanely. Do not ever, I mean ever, order the Baby Seal Club Sandwich, I will never speak to you again, much less invite you onto my yacht.

Zakeo is not dead. He got tired of being a super-hero, and, like the Brad Pitt character in Mega-Mind, faked his own death so he could live in unshaven bliss somewhere far far away. But now the nights have grown colder, the criminals bolder, and the nay-sayers...um...older. (damnit, couldn't think of anything else that rhymes.) I do believe it's time for him to make a return. I must warn you though, he is bigger and better, if at all that is possible. Can you handle it? He is even more suave, more sophisticated, with beauty that makes flowers swoon every time he walks through a meadow. (Granted, there isn’t that many meadows in Harare anymore, probably due to inflation or sanctions or something, but trust me, the flowers in the one meadow I know of swoon every time my name is mentioned.)

What's that saying about the rarity of a thing increasing its value? The calls for Zakeo to return are really getting louder, and I promise you he will post something soon. Badat emptor! (That means Bad guys beware! by the way). (Ok, I just made that up, but so did the guy who came up with caveat emptor and he got away with it.)

Patience is a virtue, so please stop bitching and be patient.

Warm regards,

Z."

A Real Lady Doesn't Wear a Bhrugwa

2011-07-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

Driving around in Harare has become a tremendously interesting exercise for me. Because I drive an SUV with black tinted windows, people struggle to see the driver. This forces them – usually women, I should mention, because it rarely ever happens with men - to stare intently into my car, without realizing what they are doing, as I drive by. Obviously these are single women hoping they’ve caught the driver’s eye, whoever he may be. The trouble is that, even without seeing the driver, the majority (if not all) of these women should know simply by comparing themselves with my car that I am totally out of their league, so the intent owl-stare is totally misplaced. To clarify: if you are a woman and you exhibit any of the characteristics listed below, you have no chance of being anywhere near my league:

1. If you are walking around holding an empty. There’s nothing wrong with drinking soft drinks, of course. But if, after finishing your soft drink, you need to walk back to the store to collect your $0.20 bottle deposit or whatever, it’s probably safe to say I can’t take you clubbing at Whiskey Mist next time I’m in London. I cannot possibly foresee how you will dress, or behave. So, either buy your soft drink and let your gardener have the deposit, or better yet get a can and a straw.

2. If you are wearing a bhrugwa. Why would you do that in this day and age? Look, I understand that for some women, at certain times of the month, a full on zadza-dama panty is what they have to wear. I don’t support it - unless we’re boarding an Air Zimbabwe plane and might need to share a parachute in case of an emergency - but during that time of the month I can at least understand it. The women I don’t understand are those that wear these panties everyday. It’s 2011, honestly, get it together! I’m tempted to start a Thong Drive to collect thongs for those women who either can’t afford them or don’t know what they are. No matter how beautiful you are, a parachute panty is going to put me off 10 times out of 10. I know it boggles the mind that thongs have far less fabric than a full panty yet cost twice as much, but don’t question it – just buy them and wear them.

3. If you are over 18 and under 50 and use sanitary pads. I don’t care what anyone says, pads are fucking nasty. Use a tampon for chrissake. That way you won’t have to wear a bhrugwa, and we don’t have to visualize all that blood actually leaving your body.

4. If you drink beer, especially from a bottle. I know people have vastly differing opinions on this, but since this is my blog, only my opinion counts. If you’re in a club, be a lady and order a cider and drink it from a glass. Or order a cocktail. A wine even, sparkling or otherwise. Just don’t order a Lion Lager or Carling Black Label. Goodness, if I walk up to you, what on earth will I say? Beer was made by men for men, because it used to be the one thing we could safely enjoy without feminist bitches trying to copy, because quite honestly, it tastes nasty, and we didn’t enjoy it much in the early days either. But alas, it seems we can’t even enjoy shit we don’t enjoy alone and in peace anymore. You want the right to also not enjoy it. Now I have to wait for you to finish taking the swig from your bottle of Eagle Lager, watch you bypass your beer belly and thud the bottle back onto the table, and then burp out biological-weapon grade gases into my face before I can point out that that is the prettiest pair of shoes I’ve seen all night in this club, are they Prada? and by the way, my name’s Zak. Alternatively I’ll just go to the bathroom and lick the bristles of one of the toilet brushes for the rest of the night instead.

I could go on and on, but fuck it. It’s Friday, I’m ditching this shit. Please, stop staring into my car!

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

zakeozim@gmail.com

If You Don't Know, Shut Up

2011-07-05T01:12:00.000-07:00

I wish it was legal to shoot people. I know not everyone can be intelligent, but when it comes to idiocy some people go far beyond the call of duty. Now, I'm rather okay with those who wear their lack of intellect on their sleeve. It's easy to notice, you know what to expect every time they open their mouths, and you are ready for it. Forewarned, forearmed and all that.

The people that truly annoy me are the ones that conceal their simpleness. Like U.S. Navy Seals on a covert mission, their stupidity invades your Abbottabad of supreme wisdom and attacks when you least expect it, leaving you disoriented and trying to figure out where the last 30 minutes of your life just went.

Case in point: I have a friend who purports to be intelligent. However, in reality he knows pretty much close to nothing. The problem is, he always pretends he knows more than he does, which really wastes everyone's time when we eventually discover that that particular topic, or any topic on Earth for that matter, is not his forte at all.

Because I cannot download my corporate emails on my Blackberry in Zim (despite the bastards at Econet promising to install a Blackberry server since January), I recently resumed using my second line from Telecel on my Nokia E71 after reading in the paper that they - finally - were offering 3G connectivity on a test basis. Telecel are so slow - if cell phone network operators were piss Telecel would be those last few drops that you shake off your dick at the end of a long pee. Econet would probably be the odorless fart that comes out before the pee. And Net-one...well, Net-one just drips down your leg when you're already back at the bar.

But I digress.

So I tested my Telecel line and, slap me on the ass and call me Sarudzai, the 3G actually worked! My phone downloaded all my emails, but I now needed to know one thing: how do I change the settings to enable me to send emails? So, because my friend, let's call him Dave to protect his identity from the Idiot Police, conceals his stupidity like a g-string on an overweight chick, I mistakenly thought he would have the answer. Here's a transcript of our actual sms exchange, not edited whatsoever:

ME: Dude, wats e outgoing email server for telecel?

DAVE: U don't put in all that. You just put in the access point name, like where u put econet.net for your econet, and just enter "internet" for telecel.

ME: I hav to send email. I can surf fine.

DAVE: The outgoing server depends on your domain. Is it gmail?

ME: No. And no it doesn't, it depends on the ISP. On my laptop it's mx.263.co.zw coz my broadband provider is 263 Technologies. On econet it's smtp.ecoweb.co.zw or sumthn lyk that.

DAVE: Oh. Its for outlook?

ME: Well, for the built-in email client on my nokia. Same as outlook, u could say.

DAVE: Try imap.telecel.co.zw.

ME: K. Did you make that up?

DAVE: No. Lol. Email clients always use either pop3 or imap servers. Always.

DAVE: If its a pop3 server, incoming is pop.telecel.co.zw, outgoing smtp.telecel.co.zw

DAVE: Difference is that a pop one downloads and then deletes from the server. The imap doesn't.

ME: So... how come my 263 one is mx.263.co.zw?

DAVE: I have no idea mate.

ME: But you said Always. Why did you say that then?

DAVE: Go away.

ME: If u don't know, next time just say I don't know. You've wasted 15 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

DAVE: No. I've given you the valuable knowledge that what I thought worked doesn't. Now you'll never have to try it again. Knowledge.

ME: You've given me the valuable knowledge not to waste my time with idiots. Idiot.

DAVE: Go away.

ME: Okay.

Jesus. With friends like this, is it any wonder I'm always cranky? Please, it's really not too much to ask - if you don't know something, don't waste other people's time pretending you know. Shut the hell up and let us get on with our lives.

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

The Show to End All Shows

2011-05-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

For once, I am thoroughly upset at myself. Somehow I missed the beginning of the new season of Big Brother Africa. I started to suspect something was wrong when everyone else around me, in our day-to-day encounters, began to appear more fulfilled than I. This being an unusual and downright unacceptable state of affairs, I finally cornered one of my acquaintances yesterday to investigate. After a brief interrogation, he revealed the reason for his sudden smug satisfaction with his otherwise pathetic life: Big Brother Africa is back, and this time it is AMPLIFIED!

Needless to say, I am mortified for having missed the first several weeks of this show. Nothing titillates me more than watching, for 24 hours straight, a group of ugly, attention-seeking, cantankerous, belligerent people engaging in never-seen-before activities such as cooking, cleaning, showering, and talking. But hard as it is to believe, that’s not even my favorite part of the show. At various intervals, the producers of the show put these people through mind-melting tasks such as: naming the currencies of various countries; dancing like video girls; and acting like clowns (literally). The I.Q. level that is required to excel in this show is truly astounding.

It’s unfortunate I’ve been so busy lately with this other thing I have to do called Life. As soon as I’m done with that, I’m going to register myself online so I can meet like-minded people in the BBA chat room, where, it appears, great fun is being had by all. I revel in intellectual debates, and there are some comments on the site from other members of the intelligentsia that simply cannot go unchallenged. For example:

“Lets kip Confidence in that heads house othewise well die of boredom…” -vaughanz

“NSIL 7777 @ SHANI APO????........Q-RIOUS” -Anon 9692

“LUCLAYS BIZZY BODY IN HOUSE CANT B SEEN AS SWAGG”

How on earth can anyone not see Luclays bizzy body in house as swagg? Comments such as this cause me deep concern, so I will soon be deeply embedded in that chat room, engaging in mental warfare with these geniuses of our generation. And if I were the C.E.O. of M-Net, I would cancel all other channels and shows to ensure that this divinely-inspired and brilliantly executed show is broadcast to as many Africans as possible, as it is a true reflection of our various cultures and values, values which are important for our 13 year-old children, nieces and nephews to appreciate.

Well played, M-Net.

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

Fanmail from the Illiterati

2011-05-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

A few weeks after posting my article entitled "It's Not About the Business, It's About You, Idiot", I received this lovely comment from an anonymous but obviously adoring fan:

"Bollocks!!!! This post is seriously flawed & misleading. Sometimes it takes several failures for people to fugure out what they need to do to be successful in business. It is only those who get off their backsides and try something who will ever make or improve something. They might never make it but if they do, their actions will poitively impact not only themselves but countless other lives.

It's IDIOTS like the author of this post whose put - downs discourage people from venturing into the unknown. The likes of California & most of the USA, South Africa, Australia e.t.c are great because of people who saw others making money in particular ventures and sought to do the same. In the process of so doing, there imaged some top & shrewd industrial, banking & commercial giants. A market is created by the entry of many participants. Not all those participants will become rich but the wealth of the nation increases because of their joint actions.

VW Toureg??????? For crying out loud, couldn't you have found a better car to use as an example? Your choice of car just shows how low you really are.

ZAKEO ZAKEOS you are an IDIOT, A LOW - LIFER with such a narrow mind who will NEVER make it onto the Forbes list."

Wow. Serious stuff indeed! I always enjoy reading fanmail, especially when my readers set aside some of their precious time to carefully analyze each of the points I raise before posting comments. I am not at all averse to criticism, which is why both positive and negative comments to my posts remain on my blog. What some misguided readers don't realize is that I didn't start my blog to be agreeable. If I wanted to be agreeable I would sit silently in my office with the door closed, considering the fine paint-job on my wall, instead of switching on my laptop and having an opinion. Unless you're a delusional, bald-headed, drugged-up Nazi, you'll find it rather difficult to disagree with someone who hasn't said a word.

But open your mouth and you open yourself up to all types disagreement and criticism. You could say "The sky is blue", and some fuckwad will jump into your face and scream, "Blue?! Blue?! Are you blind? The sky is azure, idiot!"

So some people will disagree with me. I get it. I expect it. Hell, people even disagreed with Jesus, and he raised the frikkin' dead. It's not something you would think people should find disagreeable, but they did.

However, when I posted my first article I gave a few terms and conditions for people wishing to read my blog. They have evolved slightly, but the key points remain the same. If you wish to read my blog:

1. Don't.

It is written primarily for my amusement, and for like-minded individuals, of which there are very few in the world. My blog is not and has never been politically correct, nor is it sexually, racially, or religiously correct, and at times may not even be grammatically correct. If you like your shit correct, visit my other websites, www.nationalgeographic.com and www.christian.com.

2. Don't comment.

Because my shit smells like freshly-baked candy cakes with the pink icing on top, I do not accept negative comments from anyone whose shit smells any less delicious than mine. Period. If you are so intelligent and erudite go start your own blog and get off my dick. Otherwise stop blowing air out your ass about what I've written; I know what I'm talking about because I'm a genius, and handsomer than a photoshopped Brad Pitt-Denzel Washington hybrid sex machine to boot.

3. If you absolutely must comment...

Have the decency to read the entire article, digest the points I have made (though many times I admittedly have no point at all), and then give a considered and well thought-out comment. If you can't do this, do something even easier: shut the fuck up and close your browser.

For example, with regards to the article under discussion, some imbecile commented, "I'd venture to say you've never started a business..." Now tell me, what the hell does that have to do with anything? Does Bill Gates' computer lecturer also run a multi-billion dollar global business? Must every business college professor, just because he teaches people how to run a business, also himself have a booming business to make his teachings valid? Even if I didn't have a business, it doesn't automatically mean my ideas are wrong, especially since it's me, and no one exists that can prove that I've ever had a wrong idea in my life.

Stop annoying everyone else and read the damn article before commenting. My accomplishments, as extensive as they are, will not be catalogued here, for that is hardly the purpose of this blog. But in my article nowhere do I discourage people from starting businesses. I clearly state that even if you can't have an original business idea and want to copy, at least find a business that you can be passionate about, and that you'd be willing to stick with through lean times until it turns the corner. No matter how romantically you want to wax about it, building a successful business is about more than just having a dream. Its also about focus and discipline, hard work and passion. I'd love for Anonymous to point out to me anyone on the Forbes Rich List who didn't have these things, and whose business did not take at least a decade to build.

I also did not say people shouldn't try different ideas. I complained about people wading into already saturated markets, just because they heard such and such is making money, without a clue how that person runs their business profitably, and without the same level of passion for that type of business as that person has. I mention car dealerships; there are streets in Harare on which you will see six car dealerships on a 1km stretch of road, all selling the same entry level Japanese cars, with the same colors and the same prices. And then 100m on you see another guy spreading 3/4 stones and erecting shades to construct the 7th car dealership, to sell the exact same type of cars. This makes no business sense. What's his unique selling proposition: Will he offer better pricing? No. A different range of cars? No. A 30 day money back guarantee? Hell no. Free 2 day test drives? You must be kidding. Extended financing? Please. He has no clue what those things are, but he just wants a car dealership because "ine mari".

It's a waste of his time and energy. He will without fail lose money. But let's not "discourage him from venturing into the unknown", shall we? Let's let Tonderai follow his dream, because the sky is the limit and his "actions will poitively (??) impact not only himself but countless other lives." And from him will "image some top & shrewd commercial giant."

Nice.

I must also mention at this juncture that if anyone is discouraged from "venturing into the unknown" by the "put-downs" in my article, then I've done them an enormous favor. They were going to fail spectacularly anyway, and I deserve a medal for saving their bank a lot of money and them a lifetime of headaches, ulcers and high blood pressure. Successful businesses are built by people who have grit and the strength of conviction to follow through with their ideas despite whatever obstacles may litter their path. If you can be discouraged from pursuing your business ideas by a tiny blog written by an anonymous author on the World Wide Web, then you're a born loser and are better off focusing on honing your skills as a waitress at the
Cheesecake Factory forever.

Lastly, it's not my fault I don't watch MTV Cribs, or BBC's Top Gear, or read GQ Cars. I really thought the VW Toureg was the fanciest, most expensive car in the world. Obviously I'm mistaken. Can someone please tell me what better car exists in the world, so that next time I write about a bank teller's aspirations for two years in business I can use that car instead. That will be much more realistic, for a bank teller to have imagined buying a car just like Jay-Z's in two years rather than one his old classmate is now driving. How idiotic of me.

Intelligent people will more carefully consider their next business ventures because of this blog post, they will take from here what makes sense for them and filter the rest, and give themselves a better chance of success. The failures will say, "That guy is a low-life and an idiot, fuck him and his discouraging ideas, I will follow my dreams, all of them together, at once, and in 1 year I will be a billionaire and driving a Bugatti Veyron."

To both groups I say, "Good luck."

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

Why the "Buy Zimbabwe" campaign is Bullshit

2011-04-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

So I'm reading an article in this little paper called Business Connect about this "Buy Zimbabwe" campaign that was recently launched in the capital. I had heard about this campaign and saw several other articles about it in other papers, but I did my best to ignore it, on account of my blood pressure. Then the bastards behind it went on to plan a whole seminar about it, and take time out of their busy schedules to meet and discuss how to get consumers to start buying more local products, and how best to lobby government to raise duties and limit importation of finished goods. A whole businessman by the name of Supa Mandiwanzira actually stood up to say, "...Government must put legislation in place that will force all supermarkets to put 50% of local goods on shelves at any given time." I now feel compelled to comment.

With all the common sense quite evidently seeping through my pores and making people around me smarter just by association, it amazes me that some people still choose to have seminars and such without consulting me first. Because if these learned gentlemen had taken 2 minutes to brief me that they are concerned about Zimbabweans not buying enough local products, I would have given them one devilishly simple but amazingly effective strategy:

Stop making shit.

There is no amount of campaigning that can persuade me to eat a turd. There is no legislation anyone can dream up that can force me to pay for a steaming plate of dog shit. And, unfortunately, dog shit is exactly what the majority of Zimbabwean companies are serving up and expecting us not only to buy, but to pay MORE for than the imported substitute on the basis of being patriotic. Let's take an in-depth look at some of the vaunted local products that sell-out unpatriotic Zimbos like me are shunning:

Charhon's Loose Biscuits: Affectionately known as "ma-doggie", these treats are a delight - if you have polycrystalline diamond cutters for teeth. Otherwise your teeth will disintegrate from just looking at a packet of these biscuits for too long. These are cookies for real men. I can't imagine why anyone would opt for imported Bakers Strawberry Whirls instead - unless they're gay. I think our President has gone to great lengths, on numerous occasions, to enunciate our national position on that particular group of people. If locals, particularly Zimbabwean men, continue to insist on eating soft yummy cookies that don't need a jackhammer to break, a law to ban them might well become necessary, if for no other reason than to stop us becoming pansies. These biscuits have remained the same for decades, while people's tastes have changed. Still, the dipshits at Charhon's insist on shoving them down our throats. Even when, at one time, Zimbabweans became so desperate for an alternative that they bought truckloads of dollar-for-two lemon creams from across the border, Charhon's did not budge from their strategy. Never mind that these dollar-for-two lemon creams weighed about 0.02 micrograms each and evaporated at the sight of your tongue. We just couldn't take ma-doggie anymore!

Willard's Corn Flakes: Willard's Corn Flakes have a unique ability that is as startling as it is odd - they turn soggy the second you say the word "milk" in their presence. By the time you pour the milk in, they're already porridge. How great is that?! Fuck Kellogg's - who wants corn flakes that stay crunchy and delicious for so long anyway? Unless you're a retard and need more than 2 minutes to finish a bowl of cereal. Lightbulb! Let's legislate to send all the Kellogg's Corn Flakes to hospitals for the mentally challenged! Even though they're 10c cheaper than the local version, they must be removed from the shelves before they kill the local corn flake industry, or the retards starve, whichever might come soonest. Seriously, Willard, wherever you are, do us all a favor and suffocate yourself with a fucking cereal bag.

Gloria Self-Raising Flour: The quality of this flour is as inconsistent as a woman on...well as a woman in general. It started out that you never knew how your mafet-kook (yes I know that's not the spelling, leave me alone) would come out with this flour. Now if you bake with it, you are almost guaranteed a disaster. Unless you tie the bag with a long string and hoist it up to your roof, it simply DOES NOT RISE. Sort of defeats the purpose of calling it "self-raising" - it's about as self-raising as my dick if I sat watching Thabo Mbeki skinny-dipping on a frigid winter night in Cape Town. But I suppose that's not important. The important thing is to buy Zimbabwean, and forget about imported Snowflake Self-Raising Flour which actually rises.

Fresh Produce: Mr. Mandiwanzira is quoted as saying: "It's sad that we are importing carrots and tomatoes from South Africa when local farmers are throwing away their tomatoes that would have rotten (sic) because they don't have markets." Really? Who's throwing away their tomatoes because of lack of a local market? Tomatoes?? Perhaps he was exaggerating for effect, but tomatoes are one product I know the masses in Zimbabwe are willing to buy locally. Potatoes, on the other hand, are a different story. Whereas South African potatoes come washed and look presentable, local potatoes come with clumps of red soil attached. These clumps of soil are genetically engineered to remain attached to the potato no matter what you do, until you get home and soak them for at least 30 minutes. The problem is when the store assistant weighs my potatoes at the supermarket, I want 10kg of potato only, not 8.5kg of potato and 1.5kg of soil. We all know the soil is ours - ivhu nderedu - and we will never pay for it.

Various local sweets: Crystal mints have had the same boring taste and the same packaging since I was in Grade 2. Crystal toffees still have that amazing ability to adhere to your back tooth the second you pop one into your mouth, and then slowly dissolve and leave a rather disconcerting, oily, thin film on the roof of your mouth. Despite the advancements in chewing gum technology, Dandy is still churning out the same flavors in the same packaging they had 25 years ago. Dandy bubblegum loses its taste as soon as you unwrap it, still. After approximately 1.5 seconds of chewing, the taste has disappeared like an MDC bandana at a ZANU-PF rally. Freddo chocolate is still the same Freddo chocolate I used to buy at the tuckshop in primary school, with the same stupid white and green packaging with the same stupid jokes, like "Why did Freddo cross the road?" "Because he hopped the Buy Zim campaign would get people to eat him again even though he tastes like ass." Or something like that. Should I really forego my velvety Cadbury's Chocolate Eclairs for hard-as-rock Crystal Toffees? Or forget about smooth Endearmints in favor of Crystal mints, even though they shred the roof of my mouth and leave a faintly bloody taste on my tongue? No sir, I will not.

Furniture: Entering a local furniture shop such as Pelhams, TV Sales & Hire, Banet and Harris etc. is like walking into The Land That Time Forgot. They still have the same design of lounge suites that our mothers bought before we were born. Yet here we are, the new consumer, this generation of MTV Cribs and Forbes Top 20 Celebrity Mansions on E! We don't want leather couches with polished wood in the armrests. We don't want couches that have buttons. We don't want bedroom suites that have so much wood they'd be deemed a fire hazard in any other country. We don't want velvet or floral material on our lounge suites. No, damn it. We want corner couches in white leather. We want shaggy rugs that feel like heaven under our feet. We want bedroom suites that are sexy, not just functional. As long as we don't have these made in Zimbabwe, don't expect us to "buy Zimbabwe."

Clothing: Edgars and Truworths have been flighting lots of press ads recently, showcasing their new range of work and casual wear. Trouble is, none of their designers have ever heard of Cosmo, or GQ, or any fashion magazine that exists in the world, apparently. Their clothes are appealing only to a very Christian receptionist from Budiriro going to an interview at a briefcase company which recently expanded out of the briefcase and into a cubicle on the 2nd floor of a non-descript building just opposite pa Charge Office. You can get more fashionable gear at Mr. Price in Musina for a fraction of the cost, true story. Would it really kill these idiots to glance at a style magazine now and again?

Cordials: Otherwise generically known as Mazoe, because that's what us Zimbos do. All toothpaste is Colgate, and any soft drink is Kokora. Only at a Zim restaurant can you say to the waitress "I'll have a Coke please", and she smiles sweetly and says: "Ok, what kind?" And then you...without a moment's pause, you say, "Cherry Plum". That will never happen in Indianapolis or Birmingham. Anyway, I digress. Whilst Mazoe itself is an excellent brand, all other locally produced brands in that category should be ashamed of themselves for even claiming to be brands. I bought a 2L bottle of Squish Squash Cream Soda the other day. I wouldn't have, if I'd known the mixing ratio is 1 part water to 5 parts juice. My first glass was unbelievably watery after mixing it using the universally accepted ratio of 1 part juice to 4 parts water. Mr. Mandiwanzira sir, do you know how frustrating it is to add juice, sip to taste, add juice, sip, add juice, sip, and on and on for 20 minutes before getting the taste of your juice right?! For my second glass I simply resorted to using a shot glass to measure one shot of water, then filled up the glass with juice. You don't dare put ice in a glass of Squish Squash - may as well drink a glass of colored water. Tacoola, Quench, Citrade - all the shit's the same. Is it any wonder I now choose to stick to Ceres or Liqui-Fruit when I can't get Mazoe?

Eversharp pens: Before I rant about Eversharp pens, I must give credit where it's due. Despite what I'm about to say about them, the honest truth is that ever since I was allowed to use a pen in school, I have been guaranteed that no matter where an Eversharp pen has been, when I needed to write, the thing writes! It generally doesn't need persuading, it doesn't think twice, it doesn't stutter, it just writes. Brilliant! But my God, its been 50 years and we still have the same gold-tipped refill, the same grey hexagonal barrel, capped by the same ridiculous blue, red or black plastic cap. Not a single brain cell has been expended in trying to innovate this pen, for over 50 years! Meanwhile, Bic now has gel pens, rollerball pens, glitter gel pens, 0.5mm pens, 0.7mm pens, purple, pink and gold pens...the list is endless! So while my staff are happy to use an Eversharp pen to write notes in a staff meeting, my 14 year old niece would slit her wrists if she were forced to use one at school. Surely it wouldn't kill the geniuses at Eversharp Pvt. Ltd. to sit down and even copy the innovations of 10 years ago. That would be a giant leap forward compared to where they are now.

I could go on and on, but this is really not a profitable endeavor for me, since none of you bastards donate money to my blog. I think my point is clear. If "Buy Zimbabwe" means the same as "Buy Shit", then the Zim manufacturers can go to Hell. We are not prepared to sacrifice our hard-earned cash and our taste-buds on this garbage.

Before this campaign gains steam, I think we as consumers should start our own. We can aim it at the manufacturers, and call it the "Stop Making Shit Campaign". We can have our own seminar and media coverage, and I can be the spokesman. We can even have a logo or badge of some sort, which can be put on products we certify worthwhile. Instead of saying "Proudly Zimbabwean", it can say "Guaranteed: Not Shit" or something to that effect. If anyone can design such a logo please let me know. I won't pay you, but you'll feel good for bringing down a fellow Zimbabwean's blood pressure.

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

It's not about the business, it's about you, idiot

2011-04-07T09:16:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired of meeting failures. Zim must be where colossal failures are created and then deployed to other parts of the world to breed. Yes, I know, running a business in this country is terribly difficult. The banks are not lending, the potential market generally has very little income (none of which is disposable), and if you sell on credit you will soon learn that everydamnbody in this country is a remorseless defaulter. But is that the main reason why the 5 businesses you tried to run last year all failed? I submit that it is not. Further, I would like to submit two key points which, in my estimation, explain your financial mediocrity:

1. You are an idiot.

2. You are an idiot.

Why do we Zimbabweans think that just because someone else is minting money in a certain type of business, we should get into that business too? Does it follow that we too will mint money in that business? Here's an idea: stop being a jack-ass that mimics everybody else's ideas and do your own shit.

As an example, at the height of the fuel crisis, how many people did you know who suddenly jumped on the bandwagon and were importing fuel and opening gas stations? Suddenly, no longer did you go to a BP or a Shell for gas - you went to Praise Petroleum, or Ekhaya Petroleum, or Country Petroleum, or Essox Petroleum. Essox Petroleum? Who the hell are you? As it turns out, nobody. You're a guy who was a bank teller the previous year and suddenly decided to quit your job and jump into fuel because you heard Kuda of Sakunda Petroleum had bought a VW Toureg. And that just ate you up, because Kuda was your junior at St. Ignatius. Kuda, of all people! He played Thirds rugby for heaven's sake, and was in the C stream, and when they discussed the list of potential prefects for his year he was somewhere between "Never" and "Who?" Meanwhile, you were almost made deputy headboy (if it wasn't for that bitch bastard Mr. Goredema, fuck him), played First Team volleyball, and on top of all that, captained the chess team superbly in your Upper 6 year.

So how dare Kuda your junior in high school drive around in a VW Toureg and employ 150 people, while you slave away in a cubicle at Trust Bank with your box Nissan parked outside, braaing cockroaches trapped in the crevices of its cracked dashboard? Surely, if Kuda could do it, so could you. So with two other equally incensed and clueless friends, you started Essox Petroleum. For what reason? "Bhikozi fuel ine mari mdhara." Really? "Defaz! Iwe, anaKuda vakuto dhraivha ma Toureg shamwari, ka Kuda kaye kaye sha. Ne fuel dhedhi!"

Hmm, making money from distributing fuel. Not a bad idea. Except for one thing: none of you morons knew anything about the complexities of running a sustainable service station. How did you think your experience in correctly aligning and clipping together bank notes would serve you in the fuel industry? How did you imagine your supreme deftness in operating a money-counting machine would help you make millions selling bulk fuel to the mining sector? Did you burn with a passion for excelling in the energy sector? Did you wake up every morning and check Bloomberg for developments in the oil industry, and calculate what impact those international developments would have on your business, and act appropriately? The answer is no, because you have the intelligence of a comatose slug, and therefore no clue what it takes to build an enduring business.

Despite my demonstrable and extensive knowledge of everything on the face of this earth, some people still opt to not heed my advice. Two years down the line, Essox Petroleum was a distant memory in the minds of the 30 or so customers who regularly patronized it, stopping their run-down tin-can cars to put $5 of petrol in the tank. $5? What are you driving? A lawnmower? (As an aside, and I have said this before, if you can only afford to put $5 of petrol in your car at a time you should seriously consider the merits of suicide. Not all suicide is a bad idea, some of it benefits the community at largetremendously, because lets face it, the earth can only accommodate a certain number of people, and we all we would be better served by keeping space for only productive people. By putting only $5 of petrol in your car at any time, you, my brother, make manifest that you do not fall anywhere near the group of people who can be defined as "productive".)

But I digress, My point is, a year later Mr. Essox was buying diamonds from Mutare and selling them to Libyans at the Holiday Inn. A year after that he was bringing in printer cartridges from Malaysia. This year he is running a car dealership, while working hard to get contacts who can help him buy mining claims, while also investigating the possibility of buying cross-border trucks, and, possibly, importing car parts from China.

For Pete's sake, how many people own car dealerships in Harare? There are more car dealerships in this city than supermarkets. How many women are going to China to buy "original" designer label clothes for re-sale? Who do ya'll plan to sell to, when all of you are going there? How many people own kombis, and now taxis? There are more commuter omnibuses and taxis in Harare than there are commuters in the entire country. And in the midst of all this, I challenge you to find an establishment that sells a full, comprehensive range of bakery ingredients for you to bake your son a lovely, unique birthday cake. Or one that rents out a large selection of good quality men's suits and tuxedos for weddings. Or a cocktail lounge that is actually a lounge, not a bhawa, and actually sells actually really cocktails. Why are we all trying to do the SAME DAMN THING?

Do something different. If you can't do something different, heed this advice: it's not all about the business. It's about the man. There are indeed people who have made millions in fuel. But there are also people who have been equally successful in marketing computer consumables, in selling used and brand new cars, in mining. You can make money doing just about anything. But you need to first have a little bit of passion in the business you're trying to develop, and secondly you need to have the patience and the discipline to stick with the damn thing until it turns the corner. If u flit from one business idea to the next like a leaf blowing in the wind, the ball and chain of failure will remain firmly strapped to your ankle until you die a miserable death. And we shall not cry. We shall drive to your funeral in our VW Touregs and celebrate the end of your sad, pointless, wretched excuse of a life.

The moral of the story is: do one thing, and do it well. Do it consistently. Do it for long enough. And you will find success. And I will find peace, because you will no longer keep taking the elevator to my office to make yet another presentation of a hare-brained business concept that you want me to invest me for 50% equity. Because according to my calculations, no matter what currency you're using, 50% of 0 is 0. I do not want to invest in your stupid ideas, unless you one day have an idea to leave me alone, forever. I will invest at least $50 in that one.

zakeozim@gmail.com

Rihanna Has the Fashion Sense of an Epileptic Chameleon

2011-03-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

So I'm wondering, who exactly was it on Rihanna's wardrobe team who first thought "Hmm, for 2010 what if we go for a 'demon spawn of Jo-Jo the Clown and Elizabeth Taylor' look"? Red hair, crimson lipstick, blue eye shadow, and technicolor-dream booty-shorts. Seriously? Don't get me wrong, I think it's very attractive, for people between the ages of 3 and 7. Just didn't appreciate my 4 year-old niece walking around singing "Come on rude boy boy can you get it up, come on rude boy boy is you big enough..." I had to wash her mouth out with a Dettol Handwash and Satiskin Bubble Bath mixture. For this reason Rihanna has been added to my already extensive shit list. And for the teenagers in my sphere of concern, please don't copy Rihanna's style, it's garbage. Unless you want to get married to Ajigijah the Clown from Avondale shopping center (and surrounding environs). Go buy yourself a damn identity before buying shit you see on TV.

Then again. Maybe it's just me.

Your 2010 Resolutions, Unveiled

2010-01-02T03:57:00.000-08:00

Throw away any 2010 resolutions you may have made already. They are useless. Besides the fact that you will have forgotten you wrote them by February, whatever items you wrote are of no consequence to the rest of us who have to put up with you for another year.

Because I know everything, I have taken the liberty of listing a few New Year's resolutions the rest of your friends and family and significant others wish you would implement. They might not say so, but they emailed me and asked me to compile this list for them, to you. Yes, even you.

1. Take it easy with the Facebook

Scientists are recommending this radical new thing that everyone should get in 2010. It's called "A Life" (not sure if I got the spelling right) and apparently it's fantastic. Scientists are in possession of data that they claim clearly proves that no one whatsoever cares "what you're doing right now". They also did an experiment and found out that if I had a turd and cut it in half, I wouldn't give you even the smaller half in exchange for knowing "What's on your mind?" Turns out, WE SIMPLY DON'T CARE what's on your minuscule mind. So what you got so drunk last night you can barely stay awake at work this morning? Will knowing that make my shit smell sweeter? So what your son/daughter/puppy took its first steps? Shall we give him/her a medal then? About damn time anyway, we were secretly beginning to think he/she was retarded. And do we really have to know that "you've gotta feeling, that tonight's gonna be a good night, that tonight's gonna be a good, good night..."? No, we don't. Get an original thought before sharing it.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook is great for keeping in touch. But some of us are abusing it. In 2010, please, get a life. Phone your loved one and have a conversation that doesn't involve clicking "send" at the end of each sentence. De-friend a few hundred people on your profile. Start with the ones you don't remember ever meeting, then move on to the ones who post stupid song lyrics as status updates (unless they are really actually a she-wolf in the closet and need to be let out so they can breathe, which is unlikely in Zimbabwe since we don't have wolves in this part of the world). End off with the ones you wouldn't bother to take out for a drink if you heard they were in your town. No matter how popular you think you are, unless you made an album that sold 500,000 copies, or won an Oscar in 2009, you're lying to yourself - you do not have 500 friends.

Delete the "We're Related" application. If you need an Internet application to remind you who your relatives are, you're a douche bag and don't deserve to have any relatives.

Oh, and last year I swear I really meant to come to your "Obsessions! Friday Night White Party!" at Visions Night Club, except I couldn't find a gas station with enough petrol to fill me up for the trip from Harare to Sydney, Australia. It must have been amazing; I saw 658 people from across the globe confirmed they were ATTENDING, with another 1158 MAYBE's. God only knows what the 3592 idiots who said NOT ATTENDING were thinking. Unfortunately in 2010 I'll be teaching a course on "How Not to be a Stupid Asshole on Facebook" so I doubt I'll have time to make it to any parties outside of the Southern Hemisphere. So don't worry about inviting me, if you don't attend my course let's catch up in 2011.

Also, I think we all know by now that it's always darkest before dawn, which is the time when a strong man stands up for himself and a stronger man stands up for others, and if you dream it, you can achieve it because the sky is the limit. We get it. You're positive. Your every status update is a quote by everyone from Gandhi to Jesus. Well done for being able to copy, it's a great talent, but in 2010, give it a break already.

2. Stop Tweeting

I fart in more than 140 characters. Twitter is a mindless invention, which encourages uninteresting people to share their brain-farts with us every 30 seconds. Keep that crap to yourself.

3. Be a Better Wife/Girlfriend

Here are 3 simple steps to being a better wife/girlfriend:

1. Shut up. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, not his ears. Hard as it may be for you, try not to unpackage every single little emotion you have, inspect it, share it, cry over it, debate it... When you find life is getting you down, surprise your husband/boyfriend with a beer/whiskey, serve it to him with some Colcom country-style boerewors or biltong, and feel your burden lift just by watching the smile spread across his face. Isn't he a handsome bastard? Of course he is, and you are a lucky woman to have him. If life is getting you down because you just found out he's sleeping with 18 other women, say a prayer and thank God for blessing you with a man in possession of such astounding sexual stamina.

2. Give more oral sex. He may or may not say it to you, but he wants more of it. Every day. Twice a day if possible. Ladies, you'll thank me later when you realize something - this is the easiest way to get more of whatever it is you want from him. Good sex will rent you an apartment. Good head will buy you a house. So just do it, it'll only take a minute. If it all sounds like too much work for you, get your friend/sister/workmate to help. After all, a friend in need is a friend indeed.

3. Take a cooking class. Your cooking in 2009 would have triggered a terror alert if your house was hooked up to the system. This is why he kept going to Mereki to eat sadza nemabhonzo cooked in the open next to a landfill by fat, unwashed ghetto women. Learn how to cook. Balance the gourmet with the traditional. Just because he did his Masters at Leeds University, doesn't mean he no longer appreciates a good serving of sadza neguru nematumbu.

4. Be a Better Husband/Boyfriend

Who am I kidding? If you're a guy, I instinctively know you were great in 2009, and simply by being a year older you're going to be even better in 2010. Well played, man.

5. Watch SKY/CNN/eNEWS etc

Conversations with cavemen are not all that interesting. You don't have to be a glutton for news, but please, resolve to watch just ONE news bulletin a week so you're not so much of an idiot when we talk to you.

6. Stop Badmouthing Your Country to Foreigners

When is the last time you heard a Brit say: "You know, England is headed nowhere. What a shit country this is, if I had the money I would move to Uzbekistan coz this country is going down the toilet"?

Are you tired of Americans abroad saying," I'll never go back to the States, dude, hell naw. I mean, what for, there's a recession, executives are stealing money, fuck that, I'm gon' stay right here in Abuja."

Please, stop being an ass about your country. Yes, we have problems, but if all the brains that could help solve our problems stay away until "things get better", how will they ever get better?

Let's bitch to each other, but not to outsiders. And let's bitch with a view to improving things.

Coz no matter how much your punk-ass settles in wherever you are or how realistic your accent sounds, you will always be just that. A punk-ass foreigner, yeah?

7. Be less racist, nigger

Ask yourself this: every time you get bad service in a restaurant, is it really "jus coz u black?"

Have you never seen white people complaining of bad service, from both white and black employees? I have. So, could it simply be that you're getting bad service because that employee is having a bad day or just sucks at their job?

We want white people to be more color-blind, but how can they do that if all we ever see is color? Get over yourself. Businesses should treat you well because you're a customer, but white people don't have to roll out the red carpet for you just because you're black.

And if you're black, have some damn pride in 2010. Stop saying things like, "I just knew that business wasn't gonna last when I heard Pasipanodya took over. Ah, typical of us mabhoyi."

Stop that shit, people. When Hitler slaughtered the Jews in Germany, did you hear white people walking around declaring "I just knew one of us motherfuckers was gon' do some shit like that. Typical of us Caucasians, we're fucking racists, man."?

8. Join a gym/Go to gym

You really have to. You're not "thick". You're not "chubby-cute". You're not "more cushion for the pushing". Dude, it's a beer belly. Sweetheart, looking at a silhouette of your side profile, I can only tell which is your ass and which is your stomach by looking at which one is higher from the ground - and sometimes even that's a close call. You're fat. If you're comfortable with yourself, great. But if not, don't make excuses. Join a gym today, just do it. We can't spend another year looking at that. Oh, and try to eat a little less, please.

I could go on and on. Start with these 8 resolutions. We will review your progress quarterly, publicly.

I wish you the best this year. I hope all your dreams come true.

I hope you shall know the truth and that that truth will set you free to do something with your pathetic life. I hope you get off your ass and make a difference to your own damn life instead of complaining about how your husband/mother/boss/president is making you miserable.

I hope a thunderstorm of blessings follows you throughout the year, and that lightning bolts of goodwill strike more than once in the same place in your life. I wish you good health and long life as long as you are not oppressing others.

May success follow you like flies after you've stepped in a street kid’s pile of shit walking through down-town Harare.

And as you think of the year that lies ahead, remember one thing: you were here exactly 365 days ago. You didn't matter then. You probably matter less now. So don't stress yourself - have fun.

Here's to 2010!

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

Only in Zimbabwe...

2009-12-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

Damn. Another year is gone. Today I pulled out my list of new year’s resolutions from last December, and was astounded to discover that I managed to accomplish a whopping one (1) item on that list. What a year. If I didn’t have such huge balls I would have drunk poison in February. As it is the amount of testosterone my testes are manufacturing hourly prohibits me from being a wuss and copping out by dying a self-inflicted death. Suicide is for sissies. Although I may not have accomplished many of my year’s resolution, after reflecting on this past year of my life I realized there were quite a few significant things I did accomplish.

Some of you might not understand because you have not been in Zimbabwe for so long that you have done that annoying thing us Zimbos love to do: the minute we land in a foreign country (particularly the US and the UK) we activate our copycat gene, which, amongst other things, allows us to speak fluent American or Pommie English immediately, resets our sense of style to match the local culture, and erases the detailed memories of what life in Zimbabwe is like. Never has there been a nation with youngsters more willing to ditch their culture like a break-time cigarette at the approach of a prefect.

As I look back upon all the days of 2009, all I can say is: good riddance to bad rubbish. I’m not one to constantly focus on the negative (on a Wednesday), but looking back on 2009 I realize there are certain things that we do and say that can be found only in Zimbabwe. For example:

Only in Zimbabwe…

…can one be arrested and tried for saying “our President has failed and must go”. According to The Standard newspaper, one Rashidu Omar of Mutare is in court for allegedly insulting the President after saying those words in front of a ZANU-PF official. True story, read it here: http://www.thestandard.co.zw/local/22613-in-the-dock-for-insulting-mugabe.html.

Now, can someone explain to me how saying someone “has failed” constitutes an insult? To say someone looks like a piece of baboon biltong with spectacles – THAT’S an insult. But this? This is just a waste of taxpayers’ money, and whoever took this guy to the cops should himself be thrown in jail.

Reading this article I realized that it is quite a feat that I have ended the year without being abducted by the CIO and held incommunicado for “distributing subversive material”, “spreading alarm and despondency” and/or treason. (Yes, those are all actual crimes in Zim.) Not that I insulted our president in any (provable) way – I quite like the old man. Perhaps not as president. I think if you look past the alleged murders, the beatings, the sanctioned rapes and lootings, the abductions and disappearances, the starving of his people, the adultery…you’ll find him to be a decent enough chap. In any case, these are all allegations, there’s no evidence he committed or sanctioned the committing of any of these deeds. Well, except for the adultery. We have solid proof of that one. And she goes to a university in Hong Kong.

Perhaps I was saved because, at the end of the day, what shines through my articles is that I am thoroughly apolitical. In fact, you could say I’m ‘apeople’, as I don’t support any form of people. I hate everyone equally. What’s to say the MDC will be better than ZANU-PF in the long run? Who knows whether deep down inside Tsvangirai is a worse dictator than Mugabe? So everyone is fair game in my posts. The only person I support is myself. All others go to hell. On to the next…

Only in Zimbabwe…

…do the local authorities find it perfectly reasonable to levy a single household a monthly charge of $800 for electricity, $1200 for water, and $950 for “rates”. This for a month in which the household enjoyed electricity daily from midnight to 4am, water for zero days of the month, and a weekly dose of amused cackling from a City Council employee each time we phoned to gently enquire about the possibility of having our refuse collected. Look, I understand that our country is trying to resuscitate itself from an economic coma. I didn’t expect it to all become rosy immediately. But if I’m going to pay $800 for electricity, Voltron had better be bringing it from Uranus in a box the size of a car. It had better be such an advanced form of electro-magnetic energy that it does my laundry, shops for my groceries, cooks my dinner, then engages in foreplay with my wife and has the good sense to let me step in at just the right moment to finish the job. (Because, of course, every man knows that foreplay is a necessary evil, a lengthy and ponderous means to an end.)

$1200 for water? For a household of 2 ¼ people? What do these waters do? Are they drawn from the legendary Fountain of Youth? No. As it turns out, the waters are drawn from the equally legendary Fountain of My Toilet. No need to investigate the veracity of this statement. The taste will testify.

Throughout 2009, I steadfastly refused to pay any utility bill I deemed outrageous. An investigation needs to be conducted into who screwed the pooch on this. ZESA and the City Council are starting to review most bills downwards. I instructed my accountant that unless she wants to spend the rest of her days tilling the land hard-won single-handedly by Robert Mugabe, she had better make sure none of my utilities are cut off. It’s not my fault the gentlemen entrusted with working out the pricing models have the reasoning skills of an intoxicated amoeba. Thanks to my Herculean effort through my accountant, none of my utilities were cut off, so I count that as an extraordinary accomplishment for 2009. I refused to be raped. At least not continuously. At least not continuously by the same entity, anyway. Rape me once, shame on me. Rape me twice…I must like it.

Only in Zimbabwe…

…hs txtn bcm e prfrd way of commnctng absltly bldy fkn evrythn. For heaven’s sake, call me! Yes, I know Econet jams its 3G penis up your arse everytime you even THINK about pressing the call button on your cell phone, but really, I can’t take texting anymore. People in Zim are so broke it is a calamity to be avoided at all costs for the SMS they are sending you to exceed 1 message. So they shorten absolutely every word in the SMS until the entire message is just a jumble of consonants requiring the CIA’s best code-breakers to decipher. Don’t do this to me, people. The other day someone sent me one of these ridiculous broken-word SMSes in Shona. Now, Shona is hard enough for people to read on a good day, but how the hell am I supposed to understand this without getting a temple-thumping headache: “Ko mkma mkti mchndiphnra ska hw far cz ndkngmira 2 hr frm u. Plz cl cz zvn hzvna kmira mshe kmba plz plz ndaona mto.”?

If you can’t afford to SMS me using standard shortening of words, don’t bother texting me, I will not read your message. In 2009 I did not assault anyone who had sent me a stupid indecipherable text message, although most times I fantasized about driving to their location, snatching the phone out of their hand, knocking their two front teeth out with it, then shoving it down their throat. What I’m trying to say is: 2009 is gone. Don’t try this again in 2010. I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS.

More to come…

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

The Death Penalty. For Sex.

2009-12-07T01:10:00.000-08:00

I read an article in the Herald just the other day that I found rather bizarre. I could think of nothing else to do but share it with you. For once, just this one time, I am inviting opinions on a topic, primarily because my own opinion on it is not quite fully formed yet.

The article reported on a piece of legislation soon to be presented in the Ugandan Parliament that proposes a maximum sentence of DEATH for anyone convicted of engaging in gay sex. Yes, you read that right. They intend to hang all the gays in their country. As crazy as that sounds, it is still only a bill that is to be debated in their parliament. What I found unbelievable is that the law in Uganda ALREADY imposes a minimum sentence of life in prison for anyone convicted of gay sex. Yes, LIFE IN PRISON. As a MINIMUM. I don’t know about you, but I find that mildly preposterous.

At this juncture, I feel it necessary to make my own sexual orientations clear. Homosexuality is an extremely sensitive and controversial subject, but, as always, take my opinions for what they are as I do not and have never felt the need to be politically correct.

Firstly, I am a true, black-blooded African and Zimbabwean. You can already guess where this is going. I feel no need whatsoever to engage in any exercise that will stretch my sphincter muscle beyond its God-given limitations. Besides this, I find it strange that a man can look at another man and start to feel hot under the skin, yet feel nothing whatsoever watching Beyonce gyrating wildly, semi-nude, as she tends to do in almost every video nowadays.

Secondly, I am a Christian. As such, I condemn homosexuality because it is condemned in the Bible. I totally understand that not all individuals are Christians or bound by the Bible’s laws, which is fine by me. It is not for me to judge, for judgement belongs to God etc. The Bible clearly speaks of “men who lie with men” as being part of a group of people who will not inherit the Kingdom of God. If you don’t believe in the Bible then you obviously will feel no guilt or fear in engaging in homosexuality if you are inclined to do so. However, my issue comes when gays want to get married. I completely disagree with the idea of gay marriages, for the simple reason that marriage is an institution of God. A civil union is one thing, but if God condemns homosexuality, how can a Christian priest preside over a ceremony that joins two men in Holy matrimony? How can a church even CONSIDER having gay clergy – that is a most ridiculous notion! Why not take it a step further and allow into the clergy drunkards, polygamists, thieves, adulterers, and murderers?

That said, let me say that, unlike most Africans, and Zimbabweans in particular, I feel no need to mete out personal justice on gays. I am not homophobic by any stretch of imagination. Why? For the simple reason that the same Bible verse that condemns homosexuality also condemns adulterers, fornicators, thieves, and, of particular concern to me, drunkards. I more than occasionally enjoy a glass or six of my favourite whisky, putting me squarely in this same group of those who will not inherit God’s Kingdom. Therefore, all things considered, nothing gives me the right to sit on my high horse and pass judgment on those who choose to join the Butt Brigade.

This does not mean I don’t have a problem with gays. I don’t know if any readers of my blog are gay – if any are, perhaps they can explain something to me. While gays expect us to respect their right to choose their sexual orientation, they completely forget that the rest of us have rights too. A while ago, I went on a cruise ship trip to Mozambique. Unbeknownst to me, the cursed cruise company had booked a group from the Miss (or was it Mr.?) Gay South Africa pageant on the same ship. This may not have been a problem, except for the absolutely appalling behaviour of the group. Firstly, they were annoyingly arrogant. There were 100 or so of them on a cruise ship with 1500 people, but one would have thought it was a gay cruise the way they strutted around. Secondly, and the thing which irked me most about the whole incident, they walked around the ship damn near naked THE ENTIRE TIME.

The cruise was a family cruise, with many young children onboard, yet these guys acted as if they had a special instruction from the Chief Gay Leader to wear only their underwear regardless of the time of day, the location or the weather. When I say underwear, I don’t mean boxers. I mean briefs and Speedos that accentuated every nuance and curve of the male genitalia. So ok, fine, gays have rights. But do their rights supersede mine? The way they danced and pranced at the pool, Jesus. It was like watching a late night movie on E-TV on Friday night. Except gay. They slapped each other’s asses at the pool. They kissed at the ice cream bar. One of them even tied a cucumber around his waist and walked around with it dangling between his legs. Why would a grown man feel the need to do that? Many a child departed that cruise confused – it was 5 days of gay soft porn.

Thankfully, my son was not on this particular holiday. It was absolutely disgusting, not to mention disrespectful, for anyone, straight or gay, to have walked around like that where there were young kids around. I don’t think the behaviour of this particular group did anything whatsoever to advance the cause of gays in Africa. Several people I spoke to, both black and white, left with an extremely sour taste in their mouths. As is often said, freedom comes with responsibility. Surely, if gays want to be respected, they should also give respect. Which brings me to the central question of my post:

Just how much freedom should the world allow us? If gays contend that what happens between two consenting adults in private is no one else’s business, what happens if, for example, when next I visit my grandmother in the rural areas I am strangely taken by one of her more gracious-looking female goats? What if the goat, noticing that my lavish attention exceeds that of one who is regarding her solely for culinary purposes, proceeds to wiggle her goat-ass seductively in hopes of saving her own rump? What if, as I stand back admiring her shiny coat of fur as it glistens in the early evening sun, a certain soldier friend of mine begins to slowly salute her? Does full freedom not give me the right to take my she-goat off into the words, caress her horns, and with the wanton abandon that would necessarily have to permeate my psyche to engage in such an endeavor, proceed to have my way with her? Should I not be free to marry my she-goat and kiss her and slap her ass in front of you, your kids and your parents? After all, it’s my choice, right?

Am I wrong in equating homosexuality to bestiality? Perhaps. Your opinion is your own to form. To me they are the same – unnatural acts that will become more acceptable the more we accept them.

The ubiquity of the gays on our cruise ship led my friends and me into an interesting discussion. As much as we all condemned homosexuality, I asked a question, which I now pose to you: what would you do if your son approached you and told you he was gay? Would you disown him? How would you respond?

Most of my friends said they would disown him until he “stopped being gay”. But my follow-up question was: how can you disown your son for the sin of being gay if you yourself are an adulterer, an idolater, a drunkard, or a thief? Should you perhaps not take the plank out of your own eye before pointing out the straw in your child’s? How would God judge you for your decision to disown your child?

Does passing legislation instituting the death penalty for gay sex make sense? Will it solve the problem, if you think there is one? Without actually catching a man deep inside another man’s poop-chute, how on earth do you prove the existence of gay sex in a court of law? Is a limp wrist sufficient evidence that the individual must be engaging or must have engaged in gay sex at some point? What if it’s a tennis injury – will Ugandans continue to play tennis if they risk being hauled to jail and possibly hanged for having a poor backhand?

What of the issue of a gay gene? Is there actually such a thing? Why do you think someone would intentionally choose to lead such a traumatic lifestyle if they have a choice to be straight?

Another question that I raised, which I now pose to my male readers (female readers can wonder this about their boyfriends and husbands, or better yet ask them then post their response): how much would it take for, say, Will Smith (or any other male you think is lookable) to take a drive in your dirty tunnel if he were so inclined? What if he offered you USD$10 million. Cash. For just one round. Would you let him, knowing you would be made for life? What about $1m? Would you do it then? What if he promised you it would last only 5 minutes and he wouldn’t tell anyone? What if the offer was $100,000. Or $10,000? You can post your responses anonymously, so be honest, fellas. I think we all have a price, if we are to be honest. The lowest that came out of my group of friends was $10,000, negotiable. What’s your price?

I’m really curious to know your opinion. As you try your best to ignore the pigs soaring at a dangerously low altitude outside your home, share with me: What do you think of the gay conundrum?

P.S. Please note that my discussion of gays only includes gay men and 100% lesbian women. It does not cover bi-sexual chicks, who I think are hotter than a Kalahari Desert nymph in heat. Not only should being bi if you are a chick be legal, it should be encouraged. Bi chicks should get a higher tax-free threshold, subsidies on certain important household purchases (vibrators run quickly to mind), free education up to the undergraduate level, and an automatic end-of-year bonus if a straight male certifies that the bi chick has been especially supportive of any one of his many fantasies involving multiple women. I mean it hey.

zakeozim@gmail.com

www.zim-madness.blogspot.com

Funny as Hell! Even tho' Hell probably isn't all that funny. But this is. Just shut up and read!

2009-12-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

As you all know, I am a connoisseur of all things fine. One of the finest things I discovered a while ago and only now thought about sharing, is one my favorite websites: www.despair.com. The owner of this site is my hero, because he has proven that you can make a faeces-load of money from nothing. In this case, his "nothing" is a collection of posters called "Demotivators" which, much like this blog, tell the absolute truth about life. In an irreverent, witty way that will leave you in a pondersome (I believe I've just invented a word) mood. The posters are brilliant in my opinion, because this guy and I have one great thing in common - we hate optimists. If I were gay or he were a woman, he would be my soulmate. But I am not and he is not, so let's leave it at that.

If you've never heard of this site because you are specially skilled at depriving yourself of all things awesome, navigate there now. If you are a Facebook friend of My Royal Highness, navigate to my photo album and check out a few of my favorite posters. No optimists allowed.

If you buy anything from this site please note that I charge a 2.5% commission on all purchases, to be paid by the buyer because the seller lives in America and I don't know him and even if I did he would laugh until the paramedics are called if I brought up such a brilliant suggestion to him.

Please don't buy something and then not pay me. Ask yourself: What would Jesus do? Or Muhammed? Or whoever it is you worship. (Unless it's Satan, in which case it becomes a moot point.) Do the right thing.

zakeozim@gmail.com

Of National Awards and Rubbish Hotels II

2009-09-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. I have taken an inordinate amount of time to update my blog. Please stop telling me - I was there when it happened. One reader emailed me and said if I don't update soon she will never forgive me for ruining her Fridays and will never return to my blog again until next month. I filed her email under "Stupid" and continued to not post anything.

I didn't delay my post on purpose, people. I love to spend my time ranting about my experiences to complete strangers, it's what keeps me sane. If I could, I would do it every day. When my posts become erratic, it doesn't mean I no longer give a granny's nipple about my readers. Well, I don't, really. Particularly now - I'm fresh out of granny's nipples. Erratic updates to my blog mean there's something more awesome happening in my life at that particular time. Like the past two weeks, during which I have had the swine flu. It was terrible. Swine flu is the cold you get in Hell. One minute I would be shivering like an MDC minister at a State House function, and the next I would be sweating like a ZANU-PF militia at the inclusive government signing ceremony. Then my joints began to ache agonizingly, sort of like Britney Spears during her comeback concert. Of course, my doctor is not convinced it was swine flu, but whatever. Like I'm really going to trust a University of Zimbabwe class of 2002 graduate. The only opinion of his that is really of any value is how to choose a rock to hurl into a swarm of riot police while teargas-induced rivers of tears gush out of your eyes.

Believe me, I was really sick, and pharmacies these days stock a healthy range of nothing. They're the only businesses in this country that still have bare shelves. It's inexplicable, if you ask me. It's like...can someone explain to me why every new iPod doesn't come pre-packed with an iTunes CD? Am I supposed to recite some secret Silicon Valley incantation for the software that runs the damn thing to magically appear on my computer? Yes, I know it’s available for free online, but I’m on Zimbabwean dial-up, which is slower than a Botswana tortoise on sleeping pills. The file is 65MB, for Pete’s sake. That will take me about 9 days, 13 hours, and 47 minutes to download, at an estimated telephone cost of US$1,324,599.72 at current TelOne tariffs.

Man, I have mastered the art of digression. There should be awards for this.

Back to the lecture at hand - here's the rest of my story:

So upon waking up after an hour of dozing on a linen-less mattress, we thought we would phone the reception and find out how much extra we would have to pay for linen – it was, after all, sold as a bed and breakfast package. No mention of linen. Well, the wife thought she would phone, because complaining is every breathing woman's God-given talent and they instinctively know from 2 years of age that if they don't exercise their Complaint muscle several times daily it will eventually seize up and cut the oxygen supply to their brain, killing them instantly.

As soon as she picked up the phone, she realized that there was no sticker on the phone indicating how to contact reception. Isn't an extension list a basic requirement of every hotel room? We searched high and low for any piece of paper that would educate us – none was to be found. So now, what number to dial? 0? 9? 911? None of these worked, so we had to schlep it all the way down two flights of stairs and, because of the retarded layout of the hotel, what seemed like two kilometres to get to the reception to report that someone had kidnapped our housekeeper.

Rather than call the police and request a helicopter and a team of armed detectives, the front desk girl seemed quite relaxed about the situation. In fact, she came off as distinctly unconcerned, as if this is a regular occurrence. Our housekeeper, as it turned out, hadn't been kidnapped or fallen down a disused well. We were never told where he had got off to. Maybe they could have told us, but then they would have had to kill us. Anyhow, we didn't press the issue, and upon returning to our room, voila! the housekeeper was there. Real world-class hospitality, this.

The following morning, I donned two pairs of socks and a pair of sneakers to shower. I lathered up the soap in my hair and on my face and just as I began to rinse it out, the stream of water from the shower sputtered, spat, then promptly died. I waited a few seconds, eyes tightly shut, hoping the water would return soon. After a full minute, a few enterprising drops of soapy water managed to squeeze their way through my tortured eyelids. Enraged and in pain, I roared like Wolverine for the wife to come hand me a towel, which she promptly did because whenever I roar like Wolverine grown men duck under parked cars and all babies within a mile radius drop dead.

The wife immediately called the reception (we had had to do some serious detective work the previous day to get this number - apparently the front desk girl is hot stuff in the Kariba District Council area because when I asked for her name and the number for the reception she automatically assumed I was hitting on her, notwithstanding that my wife was standing next to me. Or that she looked as if an evil hair stylist had played a practical joke on her. It was almost as if I had asked her for cell phone number and bra size, the way she gave me attitude.)

My wife demanded to know what was going on. By now my eyes were on fire, because I couldn't get a drop of water anywhere to rinse the soap out of them. The best she could get out of the guy at reception was: "Sorry medhem. I'm sending mendainance there now." Thirty minutes later, lying on the bed in my towel, the tears having finally managed to wash out the soap from my eyes, the "mendainance" team arrived. These guys were exceptionally talented, because the minute they knocked on the door, water began to gush out of the the shower. Problem solved without a word. We never did get an explanation for why our room in particular had a water cut.

That evening, our friends convinced us to go on the heavily-touted sunset cruise. Personally, I didn't see the need to pay $25 to see the sun, when I see the sun every day of my life for free. The sales agent then told us that drinks and snacks would be served on board. Quick as a flash, I did a few calculations in my head and concluded that, even if they only had some donkey-piss whiskey like Johnny Walker Red available, and I drank at least 6 shots, which I could easily do in an hour, then I would come out $2 ahead, even if I didn't look at the bloody sun setting. As it turned out, the bitch lied. There were no free (in my mind, prepaid) drinks on board! You had to buy your own drinks. This had us fuming, once more, because we had left our whiskies and Hunters Golds and Savannahs in our rooms, fully expecting to be served like kings and queens on board.

When I had calmed down, I asked the waiter what they had, and he offered me Fanta or Stoney Ginger Beer. I told him not to worry, I wasn't pregnant and would not be operating heavy machinery soon after the cruise - he could tell me what they had. That little bit of wit went over his head like a barber's clippers; only after my friend translated did he offer me Castle Lager.

Castle Lager?

I don't drink bloody Castle Lager! I've got nothing against those who do, I just personally can't stand the taste or smell of beer, nor do I want to trade in my natural six-pack for a beer-belly anytime soon. If I had had any hope that something might crop up to make that otherwise dull cruise enjoyable, that hope was extinguished there and then. Nothing is enjoyable without a good single-malt by your side.

So, apart from almost throwing the waiter overboard, the cruise was an expensive non-event. The sun did indeed set, but one would have thought with 50 or so people actually paying to look at it, it would have done something even mildly spectacular. It didn't even have the courtesy to hide itself from passers-by standing on the shore who hadn't paid a cent. It didn't flash its boobs or turn blue for a nanosecond. Instead, it simply slid silently over the horizon just as it has done over the last three thousand years. Snore. I want my money back.

That cruise is the biggest robbery ever. It's operated by a third party, and it appears African Sun Hotels took great care to choose a cruise company with a similar attitude when it comes to attention to detail. Here are the other little details that cost so little but that annoyed the hell out of me because no one bothered to attend to them before or while I was at Caribbea Bay:

One of their two pools was green. Advice: Don't bother running a resort hotel if you can't ensure your pools stay sparkling blue, because that's the one place people at a resort hotel want to spend most of their time. It doesn't cost much to buy a few kgs of chlorine and pool acid - surely if I can afford it at my home a Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed company can afford it too.

Their dinner plates were too small for a buffet. I put a bream and some butternut on my plate and had no space for anything else. We each had to make two trips to the buffet and get three plates, so that our table had twelve plates, yet we were eating regular portions.

Half the tables in the main restaurant were wobbly. We resorted to stuffing napkins under the table legs just to enjoy our meals without distraction.

The phones in the rooms only work when you don't want to use them. 80% of the time we needed to make a call, the line would be dead. All we could do was wait until the phone decided to work again.

Th only thing that is still good about Caribbea Bay is the dancing guard who welcomes you at the gate. That is still a sight to behold, except I thought we agreed in 2003 that our niggaz don't dance they just pull up their pants and, do the rock-away... Maybe he didn't get the memo.

Anyway, my point is, I'm disappointed in us. We need to get our own basics right and stop yelling at the top of our voices about foreign investment. You don't need US$20 million to fix a wobbly table or properly supervise a housekeeper. If I owned a hotel in Guinea or anywhere else, I would not award a management contract to a company that can't get simple things like that right.

And if it were up to me, I would not award any of these arrogant CEOs any business award. The Dairibord CEO Anthony Mandiwanza is decorated, yet we can't get fresh milk or cream in our supermarkets for love of money or tits. The Air Zimbabwe CEO Peter Chikumba received numerous awards last year, during a time when flying Air Zim meant you had a very flexible itinerary. His planes never arrived on time, and never left on time when they left at all. I could go on and on.

If you ask me, it's better not to give an award when a deserving person cannot be found.

Here Comes the Hate-mail...

2009-08-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Of National Awards and Rubbish Hotels

2009-08-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

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.

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…

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting...[drumroll please!]

2009-08-19T10:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Let's Fire the ZRP and Start Again

2009-08-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

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 Cause of the Gay Gene Revealed

2009-07-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

This country is going to drive me insane. I have to type this post at double-speed because there is no electricity in the entire CBD. For heaven’s sake, even the fifteen rebel groups that run Somalia are able to come up with a plan to ensure that at the very least, the Mogadishu CBD always has power. And here my laptop battery is about to go the way of Simba Makoni’s political party. This damn new government has enough money to buy our MP’s brand new vehicles but can’t upgrade a single ZESA power station. The bastards should walk, I say. Until we have clean running water and a continuous supply of electricity, MPs should get an allocation of strong Bata sneakers and Cabinet should meet under a tree and drink mahewu. Just the other day my gardener switched from borehole to Council water without warning me and after unsuspectingly taking a shower in it, I realized it had given my chest hair a perm. A few days later my skin developed blotches and I had to rush to the doctor before I turned into Michael Jackson. This is definitely NOT the Zimbabwe I want.

Our government needs to learn to spend money on the right things. We’ve had about as much of this profligacy as we can take. With the way the MDC MP’s have been baying for these new cars, I’m certainly glad I’ve kept my identity hidden, because they would be all over me like a coloured chick on a crate of free beer. They almost castrated Tendai Biti for daring to suggest that they should be allocated locally assembled Mazda vehicles from Willowvale Motor Industries.

Funny how the shoe suddenly fits when it’s on the other foot – I vaguely remember the MDC expressing unending disgust at the excesses displayed by ZANU-PF ministers and MP’s. They suckered us into believing they didn’t want the Mercedes Benzes and the never-ending perks that had become the sole preserve of ZANU-PF officials. Now, all of a sudden, they also want a piece of the cake – MDC MP’s are to be found at all sorts of lavish gatherings these days, some of which have nothing at all to do with bettering the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans. Last month sometime I saw some of them on TV attending the Miss Deaf pageant. Why do our elected officials always seem able to free up large amounts of time to go to beauty pageants and such, but can only dedicate minimal time to visit their constituencies? My new stance on politics is this: I don’t trust a politician farther than I can spit to hit him.

And yes, as difficult as it is to believe, there is actually such a thing as Miss Deaf. I find that mildly discriminatory. Why should deaf people get their very own beauty pageant? While we’re at it, why not have a Miss Cripple? Or Miss HIV? How about a separate Miss Black and Miss White contest for blacks and Caucasians respectively. Ridiculous. I didn’t go to the stupid Miss Deaf pageant, although I can’t say it was on principle. Actually, I’m waiting for the Miss Mute Pageant – my company will gleefully sponsor that one, because there is nothing more appealing to me than a beautiful woman who can’t talk. If I find one, I will divorce my wife immediately and elope with her so I can someday die in peace.

Which leads me to the subject of this post. Five paragraphs later, I know, don’t correct me, I know what I’m doing, I am vastly experienced at this whole blogging thing now. I had what turned out to be a less than civil discussion about the male-female relationship just the other day with a female friend of mine. She and her husband recently moved to a Western country, and she declared on Facebook that she has found that she is slowly turning into a feminist. I countered that in that case, she will soon find that she is also slowly turning into a divorcee. This simple but true observation brought out what must have been all the unshaven, square-shouldered, dildo-hugging feminists within range of the entire Internet. A huge debate began on whether or not I am a male chauvinist pig, a phrase I am convinced is uniquely Zimbabwean, yet whose meaning is unknown to anyone in Zimbabwe. Seriously, do YOU know what the word chauvinist means, without looking it up? And is it chauvinist pig or chauvinistic pig? No one knows, at least not within these borders.

Those of you have read my previous posts will find this easy to believe: Ten minutes into the discussion I had everyone so mad they resorted to typing in ALL CAPS. Man, women can be so unnecessarily sensitive.

Anyway, what made her so mad was that I said women are beautiful beings, but they are at their worst when they're trying to be men. I said women should be content to just be women.

I can right now hear a thousand Zimbabwean women across the world clicking their fingers and gyrating their empowered heads on their necks and declaring loudly, black American style: "Pshh oh no he didn't! I know he didn't jus' say we should JUS BE WOMEN! What the HELL does it mean to JUS BE A WOMAN!" Now, I am not sexist, but I believe...

Wait, a random thought just crossed my mind: can one be mute, but not deaf? Because that future wife I spoke of earlier wouldn't be of much use to me if she can't hear me barking at her to bring me more ice for my whiskey. I'll have to research that.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I'm not sexist, but I believe women should stop trying to compete with men. It's gotten completely out of hand, and someone needs to put an end to this equal rights bullshit. There is no such thing! Women only want equal rights when it suits them, but are quite happy to let the housebreaker bash their husband’s skull in while they cower in the bedroom. Do you know what equal rights means? It means if we are in bed and something goes bump in the night, I have to leave the bedroom and go check out what the problem is. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. If it happens on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, I stay asleep and you drag your equal ass to the living room to see what’s going on. And if it happens to be a housebreaker, you’d better fight. If you decide your balls aren’t all that big after all, you’d better run in a direction away from me and the rest of the family. That’s what a real man would do.

Equal rights means if I have to put the toilet seat up to take a piss, you should equally have to put the toilet seat down when you want to take a piss.

Equal rights means taking turns to take out the garbage, mow the lawn, replace the oil in the family car, or change a flat tyre on a freezing freeway in the middle of winter. Next time the car dies on the road, let’s have the woman get out and push the damn thing while the husband/boyfriend sits inside with the 3 kids and the luggage.

If I was president of this (once, long long ago) great nation of ours I would have long since banned Generations, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young & the Restless, Oprah, Tyra, and other similar trash that is poisoning the minds of our once gentle African women.

It's terrible to be a man these days. Women want you to cook, change diapers, mix your own drink, and braai your own meat. What rubbish! This is not the way of our forefathers! Incidentally, that word gives us a hint of a woman's place in the world - have you ever heard anyone talk about "our foremothers"? Men used to be leaders. Bushmen used to go hunting for supper, and didn't have to worry about coming home and being told to wash the bushbaby's little turd-encrusted ass before skinning, cutting and cooking the kudu they would have killed and dragged home all by themselves.

Women want to play rugby and soccer. Why? You don't see us men rushing to learn netball to prove a point. Women want to be soldiers and karatekas and gladiators. For God’s sake, I don't want to lie next to someone I know can deliver a rib-cracking punch to my side, a skull-fracturing roundhouse kick to my temple, then stuff a grenade into my mouth all within 3 seconds just because I turned in my sleep and inadvertently pulled all the blankets from her. This is not my idea of sexy, and men want sexy.

No man wants a stinky, rugby-playing, bicep-flexing domineering woman for a life partner. I don't know what the hell has happened, but Zimbabwean women have lost the essence of what is to be an African woman. No wonder there is such a proliferation of gays; men can't stand it anymore. (Although by that statement let it not be misconstrued that I support gayism; I do not, but that’s a topic for another day).

I always work myself up and can’t complete my posts. And my battery is about to die anyway. Trust me, there will be more on this topic later…

Come One, Come All...

2009-07-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

So, here's an exciting development:

I have decided to migrate my blog to Facebook. Anyone wishing to continue reading my senseless rants and then being insulted at the end of it all, please feel free to search for me on Facebook.

Caveat Emptor: By requesting to be my Facebook friend you explicitly and implicitly agree to the following terms and conditions:

1. We are not really, actually friends. Because Facebook does not offer an option to accept someone as a pen-pal, an enemy, or even simply a subject of potential future ridicule, I must unfortunately accept you all as "friends".

2. Everyone will initially be accepted as my "friend". However, if you post a stupid comment, you will be summarily removed. What counts as a stupid comment? Anything that disagrees with anything I say or think. I am so intelligent that the thought that I have made an error in thought or writing should never cross your mind. If you really feel that I have made an error somewhere, go and lie down until the feeling passes. Whatever you do, do NOT mention it to me, because I don't care what you think.

3. If you are a woman, you agree that should I ever request it, you are ready, willing and able to lie down and allow me to have my way with you because not only am I severely blessed with super-galactic intelligence, I also possess literally deadly good looks. Just the other day I took a five minute walk in the CBD to a Nando's and caused a seven-car pile-up when women drivers lost concentration and rammed into each other and parked cars as they stared in disbelief at the flawless work of divine art that is me.

4. If you are a man, you agree that should I request it, you will immediately hand over to me your wife/girlfriend/sister (I will delete inappropriate based on my impeccable judgement upon seeing the candidates) so I can have my way with her, or them (depending). You also agree that if you are such a loser that you have no wife or girlfriend or sister that you will perform gardening services at my place of residence for an indefinite period, because I am such a man's man and you need all the help you can get. You also pledge to me your first-born son, because after a few days in my aura, women will mistake you for a non-loser and you might actually snag one of them.

5. You agree to be insulted by me no end should I flip open my laptop and realize I am in a head-cracking mood. This is usually the case everyday, although on some days my good friend Johnny comes over to soothe me.

If you do not agree with any of the above, do not send me a friend request. Go to the bookstore and find a good book to read, and don't bother me again.

See you soon!

Hell in the Heavens (Part II)

2009-07-07T11:10:00.001-07:00

Well, tickle my testicles and call me Nancy. Who could have guessed that a story about an anonymous idiot annoying me forty thousand feet above the ground could garner so much attention? Due to the sheer number and frightening intensity of emails I have received initially requesting, and then demanding that I finish this story, I feel it’s only fair that I preface this post with an apology.

Somewhere along the way, some readers of this blog have gotten the idea that I am interested in what they think. It must have been something I said, and I sincerely apologise for misleading you. The truth is it’s not so much that I’m not interested in what you think, as I don’t give half a damn. Now I know what you’re thinking (because you’ve emailed it to me every waking hour of my life since I started this blog), well, isn’t this guy just as arrogant a prick as ever there was in the history of pricks. And arrogance. My reply to that is: practice, practice, practice. One day you too might become as awesome a human being as I am and then have reason to be arrogant.

People make me so mad. I made it quite clear when I began this blog that there are only two sets of opinions that matter in the world: mine, and those of anyone who pays me a substantial amount of cash. So those that have sent money into my account, please share your views and comments. The rest of you can feel free to shut your faces. And while we’re on the subject of voluntary donations and shutting faces, the last time I checked my bank account the number of people who had wired money to me was roughly… zero. So guess who now has my official permission to shut the hell up? You’re welcome.

Anyway, I think I should explain my absence only because I fear if I don’t I may keep getting annoying, time-wasting emails. The reason I’ve not been updating regularly is that I was being a true black-blooded patriot, a son of the soil as they say, by drafting my own clauses that I think should be included in the new Zimbabwean constitution we are working toward. For example, one of the items I am going to put forward is a recommendation that we change our president after one term, or when he starts to look like a piece of biltong, whichever comes soonest. I remember watching a certain president of a certain African country (I daren’t say his name) on TV campaigning to be re-elected last year, and I didn’t want to vote for him so much as I wanted to cut him up into little pieces and serve him on a platter with ice cold beers at my next braai. With impressive suggestions such as these, you can rest assured that us Zimbabweans who are still in the trenches are going to deliver a concrete, people-driven, forward-looking law of the land for you yellow-bellied prodigal sons in the Diaspora. No thanks necessary; really, it’s our pleasure.

And then, there was this whole business of Michael Jackson dying on us. And our President didn’t even declare a state of emergency. I’ve been a fan of Michael Jackson from the time he was a cute little black boy right up to his death as a hideous crazy white woman. I needed some time to grieve.

Now, to finish off my tale of woe. So, I’m sitting in this plane trying not to scream and bash my head against the window until it breaks or I die, with the latter being the preferred option in the circumstance. I watch Asshole approaching with that frozen smile you get when you realize that what you thought was just a fart you were going to silently deploy is in fact something slightly wetter than a regular fart. And a little bit smellier.
I’m trying my best to wipe the smile off my face but I can’t. He smiles back. He scans the overhead bins for space to put his oversize hand luggage. I say three quick prayers in the hope that he won’t find space. One prayer to God. One to Allah. And I cc: a prayer to all other deities known and unknown. But the Devil is quick, if you didn’t know. He came floating down the aisle disguised as a butt-ugly forty-something year-old flight attendant to Asshole’s assistance. What the hell happened to airlines, don’t they discriminate anymore? Is there not enough space, sir? she says. Here, let me take your bag, I’ll put it up front there’s space there. Go ahead and take your seat.

What?

Bitch. I thought we were supposed to keep our luggage near us at all times. All times! But I guess the spawn of Satan get special treatment on certain SAA flights.

He sits down next to me, takes a moment to buckle his fat belly in, and then turns to me looking like the cat that got the cream.

“Boss,” he says, irritating me no end with the first word out of his mouth. I don’t know, Zimbabwean men have taken to calling each other “boss” a lot lately, a trend I don’t at all understand, since most of them are not and have never been the boss of anything. What’s wrong with “bro”? Or even “ekse”? “I haven’t see you in so long man, are you still in business? What are you doing boss?”

I open my mouth to answer, but I guess in some cultures that’s a signal for the other person to speak some more.

“Boss, you wasted your time all these years in Zim boss. The States is where it’s at. People made crazy money, not this Mickey Mouse money ya’ll was making here.” Yes, he actually spoke like that. Since I left America, I’ve not heard anyone actually talk like that. Ya’ll was..? So now I can feel my blood pressure rising in my eyeballs. This guy hasn’t seen me in years, has no clue what I’ve been doing, but has the temerity to immediately conclude that I’ve been making Mickey Mouse money. I don’t know how much that is, but the derogatory tone of his voice informs me without further explanation that it is certainly not a lot.

“Well,” I say, “you know how Zim is, man. We’re struggling to survive…”

“See,” he interjects, “that’s the problem with you black people. Always jus tryna survive. S’why we don’t never become shit. I was doing my thang in the States, boss, we was making money, till this damn recession started. You wanna know what we were doing?” This far in the conversation I was smart enough to know that that question did not require an answer, so I kept quiet. “You know, we were simply taking out loans to build houses. After building a house, it’s immediately worth twice what you spent to build it! So we would talk to the lenders, the builders, the appraisers, and after doing the deal, everyone would take their cut once the house was sold. We made sick money, sick money, boss!”

I am not exaggerating (this time), this is actually how the conversation started and proceeded, with minimal input from me. In fact this version does not do this idiot justice because I have to summarize. If I had to type everything he said I would suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome the rest of the rest of the year. He just wouldn’t stop talking: “So what are you doing, huh? I know, ya’ll still running those little shops of yours. Boss, you need to up your game. I stopped by one of your shops. Pathetic. Boss, the first thing you need to do is change that logo. You need to brand your business. That logo looks like it was home-made in WordArt. Spend some money on really branding yourself, professionally, that’s how you make money. And the sound in your shops? Boss. C’mon. Invest in a Bose system. Spend that extra cash on your business. I saw your ML parked outside. What do you need an ML for? Sell one of your Benzes, and put that money into good sound systems for your shops. I’m talking about re-branding your business, throughout. What do your customers feel when they walk into one of your shops? Huh? Boss, what do they feel?”

Let me at this juncture inform you, dear Reader, of what I later found out about this guy, just so you can put his comments in perspective. Yes, he lived pretty large in the States for a while. After a few years, however, he was implicated in some type of tax fraud. The FBI and the IRS couldn’t pin the crimes on him directly, so rather than bother with an investigation, they simply served him with deportation papers. He was locked up in a detention center for two weeks before he was flown home. He came home with nothing more than a few bags of fancy designer clothes and a bad attitude (which is duty-free, unfortunately). As we spoke in the plane, he had been back a couple of months. He was living with his parents. He is thirty-five. Wife? Of course not. Kids? Plenty. Money? I’m willing to bet: none.

I, on the other hand, am only twenty-eight. I am married (sorry to disappoint, ladies). One child. I run a company with almost five hundred employees and well over two million dollars in monthly turnover. I don’t mean to brag but…well, actually I do, I love to brag. It appears to me that I’m not the one who actually has Mickey Mouse money, or a Mickey Mouse life, for that matter.

Aargh, you know what, I have to stop talking about this guy, on account of my blood pressure. He said so much more that I don’t have the patience to type. The only reason I didn’t knock him out with the mean end of my cell phone is that I know him. He’s always been like that. And also because I knew he was lying, because there are very few people in the world whose lives are better than mine (Will Smith and Hugh Heffner spring to mind). But above all, I ignored him because I learnt a while ago that most times, the best way to deal with an asshole is to shoot him. But I had already checked in my gun.

zakeozim@gmail.com

My Solution to Save the Inclusive Government

2009-06-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

For those of you keeping abreast of the goings-on in Zimbabwe, you will be aware that President Mugabe's refusal to remove RBZ Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana from their position is putting a tremendous strain on the inclusive government. I believe a major problem is that no one has come forward and applied for these positions, so for the sake of my nation, I have written the following letter to the Minister of Finance requesting that I be considered for the position:

Honorable Tendai Laxton Biti
Minister of Finance
Ministry of Finance
Harare

14 June, 2009

Dear Sir,

RE: Application for Post of Governor, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe

By way of this letter, I hereby apply for the post of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. I am fully aware that technically there is not yet a vacancy for this position, but my submission of this application letter is a resounding vote of confidence in your ability to overcome the misgivings of He Whose Name We Dare Not Speak (I’m sure you know of whom I speak, but just in case there is another Whose Name We Dare Not Speak, the one I am currently referring to was born circa 67 B.C.E., looks and walks like a fossil, and wears spectacles so thick if he squints his eyes he can see into the future.)

I feel I am highly qualified for this position, especially now that our country trades in US dollars and South African Rands. First of all, I was educated in America and lived there for over 5 years. That alone makes me something of an expert on the US dollar. I must admit I could not have dreamed of taking up this post 10 months ago because truth be told I do not know my quadrillions from my quintillions. Now that we are dealing in currencies of sane people, with hundreds and thousands, I think my A in ZJC maths should stand me in good stead. I am so confident of this I would venture to say that given the current level of activity in our economy, a ham sandwich could probably run our Reserve Bank. I assure you, sir, that I am more intelligent than a ham sandwich, except on Friday nights when Johnnie Walker tramples all over my gray cells.

I have vast experience dealing with numbers in a business setting. What’s more, I have proven myself to be an imaginative and visionary entrepreneur, qualities I am certain you are looking for in a Reserve Bank governor. Case in point: A year ago, my brother and I were having a whiskey at the Keg and Sable, admiring the scenery, when we simultaneously noticed that we could see right through the skirt of the girl standing in front of us near the door. I mean, we could see the outline of her entire Netherlands, if you catch my drift. We were appalled, or at least would have been had it been 3 double-shots earlier. As it was I must admit we were mildly entertained.

In our subsequent discussion, it emerged that neither of us could name a single store in Harare that sold petticoats! Can you believe that? All these poor Zimbabwean women were walking around having their nether regions examined by drunk perverts because no one had the foresight to manufacture or import so bare a necessity as a petticoat! We immediately stopped drinking and dashed home to do a bit of research on the Internet, and in no time we had placed an order to China for a consignment of 10,000 petticoats of varying sizes and colours. We paid for it using funds we had externalized the previous year (please forgive me for this infringement upon the law, it was a temporary lapse in judgement, and it only happened a few times.) A week later our shipment arrived and we set about saving the dignity of our mothers and sisters throughout the country and across the political divide. In our first month we sold 2 petticoats, to our maid. Although that may not sound like much, it was an impressive start, and we would have done much more if the current RBZ governor had not jumped out of bed one morning and decided that the country would start trading in US dollars, of which very people had any at the time, according to our research.

Honorable Minister, as you can see, I am uniquely blessed with an unorthodox business mind, which is something every central bank governor should have. My first act as RBZ governor will be to ensure that Dr. Gono returns the Mercedes Benz S600 Brabus that he acquired a year ago using state funds. Yes, I know he says he didn’t buy one, but he should return it anyway because this new government needs to show restraint, and there is no point in buying me my own brand new Mercedes Benz Brabus when there is a perfectly good one available already.

Sir, my second act as RBZ governor will be to donate petticoats to all the women in your home area, to ensure that you are voted in for another term as MP when election time rolls around again, I have yet to do a stock-take, but I think we should have somewhere in the region of 9998 petticoats to distribute during your campaign. You can even take one or two for your wife, Honorable Minister, although I doubt anyone has ever been drunk enough to examine your wife’s Netherlands. Except of course yourself, sir, so consider yourself lucky.

Next, Honorable Minister, I will immediately re-introduce the Zimbabwe dollar. Our economy has never seen such boom times as it did during the heady days of rampant illicit forex deals, illegal mining activities, and overt insider trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. This will go a long way in lifting everyone’s sprits as the entire nation is currently in a state of shock and rapidly sinking into a psychological depression from which we may never recover. All civil servants will once again be allowed to resort to corruption, bribery, extortion, and any other nefarious activities they deem fit. In one fell swoop I will have lifted a huge burden off your shoulders because you will no longer need to worry about paying them that $100 a month allowance.

Lastly, I will accompany you around the world and assist you in all your begging activities. I will carry your suitcases and your begging bowl. I also wash underwear as one of my skills. I know we need something called balancing payments support and queues of credit, and I will definitely be an asset in our quest to secure these. I am tremendously gifted in the art of begging because my father never gave us pocket money when we were kids, and we survived 5354 break-times each by relying on the largesse of others. To boot, President Obama is also a personal friend of mine, so I could always put in a good word for our nation next time I speak to him. Well, let me not say next time as I’ve never actually spoken to him as such. He’s actually more of a pen pal than a friend, but I think he should fix the postal service in his country because his replies to my letters never seem to get to me.

I am sure you will agree that my credentials are impressive. I can begin immediately even though I am employed as C.E.O. of a medium enterprise - when my nation calls, I come running. I now eagerly await your positive response.

Yours Financially

Zakeo Zakeo

Hell in the Heavens

2009-06-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

Why is it that no matter where I go, there is always someone there determined to drive me to drink with their obnoxiousness? Not that I ever need much of an invitation to drink – I think last year I single-handedly contributed not less than 6.7% to the gross global earnings of the Chivas Brothers Company. I really am doing all I can to stop this recession from spreading to every sector and every company. Well, to one company at least.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I enjoy the occasional glass of whisky (or four). I am refined in my drinking habits and dignified in my drunkenness. But every once in a while I meet a real ISO-certified asshole who makes me want to empty my whisky into buckets and then pour it into my mouth continuously until I pass out. Case in point:

I woke up at 5am this morning to catch a flight to Johannesburg. I suspect those readers that know me are already struggling to believe this story, as on most days I am generally up round about the crack of lunch. I’m known for waking up early about as much as Michael Jackson is known for his insatiable appetite for women. But suspend your disbelief for a moment, will you? This is a true story. Anyway, my driver arrived promptly at 5.30am to pick me up, just as the hardest-working witches whizzed over our heads in a rush to park their brooms before sunrise. It was so ridiculously dark; I think all people who wake up this early as a matter of routine are evil. If your husband, wife, brother, mother or whoever ever says to you, “I just can’t sleep past 5am. I’ve always been a morning person,” I think you should drive a stake through their heart that very evening when they get back from work or wherever the hell they claim to have gone. Trust me, it’s the only way to kill them, I’ve done my research (with a lot of help from MGM Studios in conjunction with Twisted Pictures Entertainment).

I am neither a wizard nor a blood-sucking vampire as far I know because as much as I’m not a morning person, I’m decidedly also NOT a night person. I can’t stay up past 10pm, so I’m really just an afternoon person, which is relatively harmless, unless of course I’m a daywalker, like Blade, in which case I’m even more badass than I thought I was because it means I routinely present monthly reports to my Board of Directors in the morning, hunt vampires and kill lycanthropes during my lunch break, and then come back and review my company’s weekly marketing plan before quitting time. Jeez, even I didn’t know I rock this hard.
But back to the matter at hand. I don’t know what type of plane passenger you are, but I am one of those that loves to keep to himself. All I want to do on a plane is read a book or a newspaper (but not those worthless in-flight magazines – complimentary copy my ass, no one takes those things home coz they’re BORING), listen to my iPod, do a little bit of work on my laptop if I need to, and sleep. I particularly value the sleep part. So it pains me a great deal when I get seated next to another type of passenger: the motor-mouths. These passengers think it is polite to tell you their life story no matter how disinterested you make an effort to appear. Then they want to know your life story, never mind that you’ve been giving them one-word answers since they boarded the plane. Anyway, as soon as I walked up to the SAA check-in line at the airport, I spotted an acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in about ten years. He’s always been talkative, so I groaned inwardly and tried to duck behind this fat woman who was in line in front of me. The problem with assholes is that they can sense fear. He immediately cast his eyes around behind, spotted me, and greeted me with as much joy as John the Baptist must have greeted Jesus at the river that day.

I made idle chit-chat with this guy for about 5 minutes, you know the usual, man it’s been so long, when did you get back, what you up to these days etc, before, thankfully, he was called up to check-in. When it came time for me to check in, I was determined to sit as far away from this guy as possible because having woken up at 5am, I needed conversation on this plane about as much as Kate Moss needs a regular supply of Slimfast. So I asked the check-in lady where she was seating me, only to be told, to my absolute horror and disgust, that this flight was free seating. Free seating?! Since when do you get to sit randomly on a plane? Even kombi drivers tell you where to sit in their long-distance omnibuses these days. But I quickly recovered from my shock and realized that I still had a chance of avoiding sitting next to Mr. Motor-Mouth if I could make sure that he boarded first or that I sat in a fully occupied row. The problem with the latter plan was two-fold, however: Firstly, the plane was not full, so I would doubtless have gotten the look of Satan if I had dared to try and squeeze myself into the middle seat of an occupied row in a half-empty plane. The second problem was that even if by some miracle I could pull that off, there’s no guarantee that I would have found myself in between two fellow guardians of the Seventh Circle of Eternal Sleep Society of which I am an active, paid-up member. The last time I sat next to a stranger on a plane I made the mistake of commenting that I wondered why the game of Sudoku was so hugely popular. Man, that guy spent the entire two hours of our flight educating me on all the technical aspects of the game, and tips and tricks to use to improve my time. I had never played Sudoku, and still have not, and will not. Don’t you hate when people assume that just because something fascinates them to death, it should also leave you in breathless awe?

Anyway, I realized after making these quick deductions that my best chance was to ensure that he boarded first. But as we all know, God has a wicked sense of humour. My acquaintance was held up for an inordinate amount of time by the customs officials, until the runway bus began to board. Now, while I’m on this topic, please indulge me for a moment as I ask a question that has genuinely baffled me no end for years now: Is it really necessary for the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe to provide a bus to ferry passengers twenty meters from the boarding gate to the plane? A ten month-old baby could casually walk that distance in 9.8 seconds. Incidentally, upon deplaning on my last return trip to Harare we were made to wait for almost ten minutes in the frigid night air for the bus to come and collect us to take us this twenty meters to the airport entrance. When the feisty old white lady standing next to me asked the CAA employee who was engaging in what was quicklybecoming crowd control why we couldn’t just walk to the airport entrance, he told her because it was dangerous. It was quite a hilarious conversation that followed as she refused to let the issue die. What do you mean, dangerous? she quizzed. Because of the traffic, he replied. We all glanced around the dark runway; it was dead silent and apart from ourselves, nothing else moved. We looked back at the cranky old white lady and a hundred eyes implored her to ask the obvious question: What traffic? Unperturbed, he replied ground traffic. What ground traffic? the lady persisted. There’s no one but us, why can’t we just walk? At this point the guy began to realize the issue was not going away. He thought about it for a moment, then a flash of fear briefly streaked across his face as he realized that actually, he had no clue at all why we couldn’t just walk. He only knew that it was not allowed. After a moment he said: Air traffic control regulations do not permit you to walk on the runway. He sounded even less convinced of this reply than of his “because of traffic” retort earlier, but he issued it with a finality that said: I may not know what the hell I’m talking about, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose my $100-a-month-paying job because you idiots want to just walk into the airport. Thankfully for him, the bus arrived just then, saving him from another round of interrogation by Super-Gran.

Now look, I’m for keeping our airport up to international standards as much as the next man, but seriously, I think purchasing a bus and fuel and paying a driver to ferry passengers twenty meters to the three planes that use Harare Airport a day is a waste of resources. But that’s just my opinion.

Now back to the asshole (don’t worry, you’ll soon understand why I refer to him as such). I could not for the life of me fathom what the Zimra customs officials were talking to him about, but our bus left for the long ride to the plane without him. Ten minutes after we were seated on the plane, the bus came back with a handful of late passengers, my unwanted acquaintance among them. I watched in terror as he quickly scanned the plane, found me, and made a beeline for the seat next to me. Resigned to my fate, I steeled myself in readiness for the almost two-hour-long torture that was to follow. And boy, did it come in some style.

Holy crap, I’ve just realized that I’ve mastered the art of digression. This post is already 2000 words long and I haven’t even gotten to the subject at hand. More importantly, I now need my beauty sleep, so since this is my blog and I can do what I like, I’m going to end like this:

TO BE CONTINUED…

zakeozim@gmail.com

Zimbabweans Are Trying to Kill Me

2009-03-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

There have been no updates to my blog for a while now because, well, I've had better things to do. It's been a hectic two weeks, with no time to even go for an after-work whiskey. How is an executive meant to survive the trials and tribulations of running an organization in Zimbabwe without the help of the Chivas Brothers? The situation is becoming untenable (saw this phrase in The Herald today, hope it fits in this context as the journalists at The Herald mash it in anywhere). If I don't rendezvous with Johnny Walker, Jim Bean, or Jack Daniel soon, someone is going to catch a hot one. Don't know what that is? Here's an example of how to find out:

So I'm talking to my driver yesterday, and I suddenly realize this guy is trying to aggravate me to death. He keeps referring to people I know by weird shortcuts of their names, shortcuts which in reality are not actually shortcuts at all. So everytime he says a name, I have to spend thirty seconds decrypting it, by which time I have lost the gist of the conversation. No matter, since I got far more than my fair share of gray cells at the brain auction, I trot along his train of thought and catch up to where he is in his conversation. Just as I begin to nod in understanding, he throws in another not-a-shortcut and loses me for another thirty seconds. After the third time I decided I had had enough and suspended him for seven days pending a disciplinary hearing.

Can we Zimbabweans not admit that sometimes it's simply not necessary to shorten certain names? Can we not admit that sometimes it's even counterproductive? Below are my all-time most aggravating Zimbawean shortcuts - if you ever have the pleasure of meeting me do NOT say these shortcuts to these names in my presence, unless a powerful reverse roundhouse karate kick to your temple sounds like a nice surprise:

Gift – Givhi (some genius decided to take a name with one syllable and shorten it by converting it to two syllables in it while Shonarizing the pronunciation.)

Gideon – Gidza

Derek – Dhedza

David – Dhivha

Farai – Fatso

Steven – Stivho

Tendai – Tindo

Lloyd/Lorraine – Lodza

Lovemore – Ravhu (evil as it may seem to torture your child with a name as imbecilic as this, some parents are so diabolical as to put a little turd icing on the dung cake by referring to their children as Ravhu. I hope there is a special place reserved in hell for these people.)

Warren –Wasu (if my parents had named me Warren and some idiot called me Wasu, I would be in jail serving a life sentence for multiple aggravated assault with intent to cause serious bodily harm and/or death.)

Gertrude – Getty

Melody - Mello

Nigel – Nigga (it’s only a matter of time)

Let's all unite against stupid nicknames and retarded shortcuts to perfectly good first names. We can start a petition and send it to the Deputy Prime Minister...although he will be permitted to come up with a shortened version of his name because half of Parliament is usually asleep by the time the Clerk finishes introducing him as "The Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the Honorable Doctor Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara." In this particular instance, it would be quite acceptable to simply say "Here comes Adza." Don't you agree? I do.

zakeozim@gmail.com

I'm Tired of Being Raped

2009-03-03T01:54:00.000-08:00

You know that feeling you get when someone suddenly penetrates your posterior orifice without your permission, prior warning, or lubrication? No? Well, take your car into Toyota Msasa for a service and when you receive your bill you will have a rough idea of what that would be like.

Last week my driver dropped off my car at Toyota for a routine service (more correctly referred to as an oil change in the U.S.) and after taking the whole day to service it, they called me and told me the car was ready and to send the driver to collect it. The bill? $860. Let me re-type that number for those of you who may be slightly confused: US$860. Yes, American dollars, eight hundred and sixty of them, to change the oil in my car. Upon enquiry, I was told that no, that does not include a stripper on a pole, a lifetime supply of fuel, or a free set of 24 inch chrome rims. What it did include, though, was a lovely little pack of facial tissues emblazoned with the Toyota logo. That was great, because after being raped like that, what I really needed was some tissue to clean myself up. Thank you, Toyota Zimbabwe.

There are a lot of things I know, and only a few things I don't, on account of my above average IQ. I'm not a mechanic, and I don't claim to know the costs involved in draining a little 5L tank of engine oil and refilling it with new oil, adding windshield wiper fluid to the wiper fluid container, and glancing at a set of brake pads to make sure they are not worn. Since it takes Toyota an entire day to perform these steps, I must conclude that they are far more complex than my uninitiated brain can imagine.

Let me share with you a few things I do know. I know that during my years in Atlanta, I drove a Toyota Camry and every 3000 miles I would take it in to Sandy Springs Toyota for an oil change. I would park it in the service lane, then wait in the air-conditioned customer waiting area where coffee and doughnuts were available free of charge. Within 30 minutes, my car would be parked in the collection area, and the pretty young lady behind the counter would call my name and present me with my bill. Total amount? $39.99.

I also know that qualified mechanics in the U.S.A command minimum wages of between $12-15 an hour. That means each mechanic is paid $1,920 per month, on the low end. In contrast, mechanics in Zimbabwe are paid an average wage of $200 per month or $1.87 an hour. I know a little bit of Math, and a lot of Economics, but the logic here escapes me. Which leads me to my next point.

The last thing I know about this situation, which you probably don't, is that we all sexually assaulted the mother of the Managing Director of Toyota Zimbabwe in our previous lives. We must have, because I can think of no other reason why this company would hate its clients so much that it would want to levy so astronomical a charge for a simple service. This is not even daylight robbery, it’s daylight sodomy in the first degree. What surprises me is that the service section of Toyota Msasa is always fully booked. Is it because Zimbabweans love to have their posteriors violently examined by their vehicle service providers? I submit that they do not. They have no choice.

This is simply what lack of competition does in an economy. I can’t wait for the competition to really heat up in all sectors of our economy, because I’ve had about as much as I can take of this crap. Just the other day I stopped by this little restaurant called Sopranos in Avondale for a quick lunch. This place used to be a lot better than it is now, but only the customers realize it so far. Anyway, I ordered a chicken and mayo Panini with fries, which was always my favorite menu item to eat at Sopranos. Because it was take-away (“to-go” for you annoying Americanized Zimbabweans) I sat outside and ordered a glass of ice water to sip on while I waited. After waiting a full 20 minutes, I began to wonder if the chef was actually physically chasing a live chicken that he would catch, behead, and then pluck before cooking it just for me. It was an inordinately long amount of time to wait for what is essentially a glorified chicken and mayo sandwich.

After about 30 minutes of entertaining myself by laughing at motorists who didn’t seem to notice the huge pothole in the middle of the street outside, the waiter finally came with my food packed in 3 little keylite containers. When I saw the bill I almost choked on the ice cube I was sucking. $16! Yes, those dull green pieces of paper with the picture of an ugly old white man on them, SIXTEEN of them for a sandwich. But that wasn’t so accurate. Upon further inspection of the bill I noticed that I had been charged $1 for each keylite container that my food was packed in. This was too much for me to take, so I asked to see the manager, at which point a youngish, Indianish man approached my table. I explained to this young man my reluctance to part with $3 for containers that I was going to throw away as soon as I got to the office, and likened the act to using my dollar bills in place of tissue paper and flushing them down the toilet.

His response? Sorry sir, that’s what we charge for the containers because we pay 60 cents for them. 60 cents?! I said. I run a similar business and we pay 10 cents for these containers, where the hell are you buying yours? I don’t know where they buy them, he said. Well, you shouldn’t be putting a mark-up on containers, surely not such a large one anyway. Are you in the business of selling food or containers? You’re chasing away your customers. Sir, he replied, in my year of working here you are the first customer to complain about the price of the containers. Yes, I said, but you should know that not all customers complain. In fact, very few customers ever ask to see a manager of a business to complain when they don’t like the service. Most simply don’t return. Anyway sir, he interrupted, we serve the best food in town, you can try some other restaurants and you won’t find food as good as ours…

Well, excuse me all to hell. These guys think their food is so good that I would still enjoy it with a penis up my arse. Anyway, because I didn’t want to have to put my sandwich in my pocket, I paid the damn $3 for the containers and grudgingly left. When I got to my office and tasted the sandwich, I almost threw it in the trash and ate the container instead. The Panini was stale, they scrimped on the mayonnaise, and they must have imported some type of special, flavorless, moisture-less chicken from Brazil at a huge discount to protect their giant margins. Then they threw in a bunch of fries as limp as a certain part of my body was after seeing Madonna half-naked in that video. You know the one. So not only did these guys rape me intentionally, they didn’t even have the decency to try to make the experience enjoyable for me. Sopranos used to be one of my favorite cafés, but I can promise you that I am never going back there again.

There are so many examples of this type of behavior among Zimbabwean businesses that I could go on all day. The City of Harare is charging $1 per hour to park your car in the CBD. That is surely the most extortionate parking rate in the history of the world. Then they charge $100 to retrieve an impounded vehicle, never mind that the average monthly wage in our country is $200. TelOne, drunk off the realization that it can actually charge real money for once in the history of its pathetic existence, has been printing phone bills with, it seems, a minimum charge of $800. I have friends who have received home telephone bills ranging from $1500 to $3200. I won’t even talk about Zinwa which (despite its disbandment) has been gleefully levying residents for a non-existent supply of water. Econet is charging 29 cents a minute for a local call, with no per-second billing, and 15 cents for a local text message. They tell us this is the “regional average”. Well, for my “regional average” phone bill can I get some “regional average” service, at least? And what good is benchmarking charges to the region if salaries in your country are not benchmarked to the region as well? Does Econet pay its customer care reps “regional average” wages? I seriously doubt it.

I think we’ve lost our minds. As a capitalist and a businessman I hated the era of price controls, but Zimbabwean businesses are making me so mad right now I almost wish for price controls to return.

zakeozim@gmail.com

Hands up if you agree that The Herald should be disbanded

2009-02-25T02:43:00.000-08:00

So I’m sitting in my office the other day reading and digesting the many highly informative, not to mention insightful articles contained in our most widely-read daily newspaper The Herald. I thoroughly enjoy The Herald, and I can see why it’s Harare’s most widely-read daily, notwithstanding the fact that it’s Harare’s only daily. As I’m finishing off an article about Gideon Gono’s U-turn on the possibility of us adopting the South African Rand as our official currency, my friend rang me on my mobile. I said to him “Have you read the paper? Can you believe we may soon be using the Rand officially? Man, what happened to protecting our sovre-ne-ty?”
Yes, I said it just as I’ve spelt it. As soon as I uttered the word I almost punched myself in the mouth. What has this country done to me, I am an American-educated genius, for Pete’s sake. When I thought about it a little more, I decided to write a letter to Parliament requesting that they ban ZTV and all newspapers in the Zimpapers stable for the irreparable damage they have done to our English. When you hear the word “sovereignty” pronounced “sovre-ne-ty” on the news every day, you end up saying it, too. Bad English is like yawning, it’s annoyingly contagious.
As I started to bash out my letter on my PC I realized that while they’re at it Parliament should probably pass legislation to criminalize certain uniquely Zimbabwean phrases, otherwise they will never die and will haunt us and our children’s children long after George Charamba and his journalistic junta are dead. If I hear any of the phrases listed below again I’m going to slit open my stomach, rip out my liver and drink my own bile. Then I’ll puke myself to death.
On thee ground: as in, “Members of Parliament are encouraged to regularly visit their constituencies to assess the situation on thee ground…” Every time I hear this phrase I could punch a hole through my TV. This phrase is a favourite of underperforming ministers, the most memorable being former (and yet now current, again) Agriculture Minister Honourable Joseph Made, who went up in a plane to assess the situation “on thee ground” with regards to farming preparations countrywide. The Honourable minister declared that we would have our most productive agricultural season since Independence. He even went so far as to predict a bumber harvest, whatever that is. As it turns out, he was slightly off the mark – Zimbabwe recorded its worst harvest since Independence. So much for assessing what’s happening “on thee ground”.
Sovereignty: notwithstanding that no one in this country seems to know how to correctly pronounce this word, those that use it have totally lost touch with its definition. If there was a Zimbabwean dictionary, it would define this word thus: “SOVEREIGNTY (sov-re-ne-ty): the world records we currently hold in inflation, unemployment, poverty, and preventable deaths. These gains of independence must be defended resolutely, with blood and tears if necessary, from the imperialist colonialist masters.”
Of which: as in, “They want us to pay $2 for sugar, of which in South Africa it only costs $1.” Huh? Shoot me already.
Forget and smile: as in, “If Brown thinks he can come and take over now that we’ve invited the MDC into government, he can forget and smile.” I don’t know where this phrase originated from, but in my opinion saying it should carry a heavy prison sentence. People who use this phrase should be locked up in the basement of Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison so the rest of us can forget and smile.
Overspeeding: if you are driving at 70km/h in a 60km/h you are speeding. If you are driving 120km/h in a 60km/h, you are…overspeeding? Yes. Only in Zimbabwe.
Hail: Lately people and countries across the world have taken to hailing Zimbabwe and events in Zimbabwe an awful lot, according to The Herald. Here’s a sampling of a few of the headlines I have seen in The Herald recently: “SADC hails inclusive govt.”; “Liberalisation of economy hailed”; “Teachers hail vouchers”; “Argentina hails Zimbabweans”; “China hails Zimbabwean solidarity”. And these were all in a single issue of The Herald! Should these journalists be put in front of a firing squad or what? A cursory glance in a thesaurus reveals there are at least 11 other words that mean the same as hail. Surely if they wake up the Herald editor he can look through his copy and pick an alternative word.
Detractor: Please raise your hand if you are Zimbabwean and can give me a definition of the word “detractor” in 20 seconds or less without using a dictionary. Now raise your hand if you are a Zimbabwean and can say a sentence using the word “detractor” in 20 seconds or less without using a brain. Do you see a problem here?
GNU: Where did people, including the press and our supposedly educated political commentators, get this idea that we have a Government of National Unity in Zimbabwe? A GNU is an arrangement where feuding political parties decide to merge and govern as a single entity. An example of this is when PF-ZAPU merged with ZANU in 1989 to form ZANU-PF. PF-ZAPU at that time ceased to exist as a political party. Now, both MDC formations have been screaming from the mountain-tops about their independence from ZANU-PF. Prime Minister Tsvangirai has said, and I quote, “…this is a transitional arrangement. No one is joining anyone…” I would also tell you what Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara said about the arrangement, but I was so distracted by the impressive shape and contours of his head that I lost concentration while he was speaking. Besides, no one except fellow robotics professors understands what the hell he is talking about most of the time. Anyway people, pay attention because I will only say this once: what we have in Zimbabwe is an inclusive government. Don’t talk to me about a GNU again, I will walk away. I know it’s rude to walk away while someone is talking, but it’s also rude to be stupid while someone is listening. This is why I generally prefer to have tea with robotics professors.
Please join me in starting a petition requesting that all journalists employed by the Herald and ZTV News as of 28 February 2009 be put in front of a firing squad and executed. Only then can national healing begin, at least for me.

zakeozim@gmail.com

Close Encounters of the Undesired Kind

2009-02-21T02:09:00.001-08:00

I meant to update my blog Wednesday but I was held up by the police on my way from one of my branches. By the time I got back into town I was so frustrated I had high blood pressure and if I had tried to type an email my eyeballs would have exploded and damaged my keyboard. I had a highly unproductive but nevertheless lengthy conversation with one of Commissioner-General Chihuri's finest on whether or not I should be incarcerated for driving 20km/h above the speed limit. I don't know why people continue to heap criticism on our police force, they are just as professional as any I have encountered elsewhere in the world. The only difference is language, and if you are not careful you can take offense at things that are not meant to be insulting. Below is an actual transcript of that actual conversation that I had with that young constable. I have taken the liberty of including a direct translation for the benefit of the non-Shona speaking readers.

OFFICER: Eh, ndeipi m'dhara? Paka apa, paka apa. (Good afternoon sir, could you kindly pull over to the side of the road?)

ME: Horaiti. Ndimi munaroka basa, Officer? (Sure. How are you today, Officer?)

OFFICER: Hapana apa m’dhara. Kukwara nezuva nenzara chete. Mu-town hamuchatengeke kana drink zvaro. (May I see your license and registration please?)

ME: Ndiyo yaZimbabwe yacho. Zvakaoma. (Here you go.)

OFFICER: Tisu takaomerwa, kwete imi munofamba murimumvura so-o, he? Inonzi chiiko iyi? Prado? Ha, murikuzviita. Anyway, inzwaka m’dhara. Wanga uchimhanya kaiwe. One-twenty, iyi iri pamushini iyi. Limit i-eighte. (Sir, I stopped you for doing 120km/hr in an 80km/hr zone.)

ME: One-twenty! Handina kumbopfuura hundred shamwari. (Is that right?)

OFFICER: Eh eh, usade kundivhundutsira, nhaika? Pakanyorwa kuti chii apa? Buda mumota m’dhara, buda tinyatsotaurirana ka-air conditioning kari imomo kari kukufurira. (Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to step out of the car please.)

ME: Ayewa, ndobudire chii? Taura shamwari, ndirikumhanyira kubasa. (Ok.)

OFFICER: Manje m’dhara speed yako iyi haina ticket. Totoenda newe ku-station, tokuvharira, wozoenda kucourt mangwana. Hameno. Toita sei? (Unfortunately I have to write you a ticket.)

ME: Haa, ko ndozvinei? (I’m so sorry Officer. Can’t you just give me a warning this time?)

OFFICER: Saka toita sei manje, because apa tinenge takuto-impounda mota, torova paperwork dzacho dzese, tokuisa mumacells. Asi tokuvharira kuChitungwiza, hatisi vekutown, and then mangwana kana mota dziine fuel, woenda kucourt. Kana dzisina, unozoenda Friday. (I’m sorry sir, there have been too many accidents on this stretch of road lately, we are under strict instructions to not be lenient. Your safety and that of other drivers is our primary concern sir.)

ME: Unopenga! Ndingarire mumacells izvozvo? O, chitora two dollars iyi wozotenga quart shamwari, ndoyandinayo. (I understand.)

OFFICER: Eeee! Maita basa boss. Thenks so much mufunge, mwari akukomborerei zveshuwa. Handei hedu boss. (Here’s your ticket sir. Please slow down and drive safe. Have a good day.)

I know you probably think I’m exaggerating, on account of I exaggerate everything else (except for my intelligence, which is truly out of this world), but this is a real-life exchange that occurred. As an unflinching patriot, I am proud of our police force, which the Herald reliably informs me serves in strife-torn countries in far-flung corners of the world. If our force was so terrible, why would the UN continue to call upon them time and again to serve in Azerbaijan and Kyrgystan?

It is totally against my principles to bribe the police, or anyone, for that matter. However, my principles evaporate like a mist in the morning sun when I am confronted with the prospect of jail. You see, the thing about me is that I’m not a hero. I have been working on this though, and I'm close. I'd say about as close as Michael Jackson is to being white. The thought of some tall, dark and never-handsome resident of Chikurubi called Gidza cuddling with me in the middle of the night is enough to make my little yellow liver shrivel. I think my main problem is that I have a vivid imagination. I can imagine Gidza deciding that over this particular weekend, I would be his significant other. I can imagine him cracking stupid jokes and laughing dementedly, unleashing demons of halitosis into my delicate nostrils. Man, I would keep my bum so tightly squeezed I would produce diamonds from the carbon fibres in my jail suit. Eventually, like after about 10 minutes of being in there, I would decide I would rather die on my ass than live on my knees, and I would commit suicide by holding my breath until my soul departed my body. Then Gidza could have his way with my cold, lifeless corpse, if he can pry open my buns of steel. Is it really worth going through this kind of turmoil for $2? To those of you males whose principles are worth more than your posterior virginity, I say may God look upon you with unending favour, and may you be in heaven 30 minutes before the Devil knows you’re dead.

zakeozim@gmail.com

Will the Real Zimbabweans Please Stand Up?

2009-02-10T04:08:00.002-08:00

Personally, I don’t believe in power-sharing. What’s the point of power if you have to share it? It’s one of those ridiculous phrases like “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” Why the hell not? Why would I want to have my cake but not eat it? So I can grind it up, pour the crumbs in my fuel tank and hope the sugar can power my car? Or perhaps, I could just hold on to my cake and smash it into the face of the next imbecile who tells me the power-sharing agreement won’t work. Pessimists make me so mad.
Ah, you say, you contradict yourself, my brother. No no, gentle reader. I said I don’t believe in power sharing, I didn’t say it doesn’t work. Anything works, if the conditions are right. Well, except NetOne lines. Those just don’t work, plain and simple.
I am certainly praying this power-sharing works. Us poor sods still living and working in Zimbabwe don’t have the luxury of being pessimistic. There is such a dearth of hope-inspiring things in this country, we are elated when something remotely positive happens. So while we acknowledge the freedom of expression our fellow Zimbabweans living abroad have suddenly acquired, we would appreciate them not throwing cold British water on the few things that stop us from slitting our wrists with the jagged edges of our empty, torn Lion Lager beer cans (we have those now).
We must be honest; we have not actually worked in about two years now. Oh yes, most of us made money, but truth be told, we did not work. It was terrible. It’s hard to not work. The lower level Zimbabweans spent their time basking in the sun, waiting in lines to withdraw enough money to get home and back to the bank the next day. Others spoke ceaselessly about this RTGS rate and that cash rate, and made hundreds of US dollars daily by just filling in forms. Us higher level Zimbabweans, executives, I mean, remained cocooned in our plush offices, afraid to admit that our business had since folded and we were guarding the barn long after the horse had escaped. The few amongst us who recognized that the jig was up were far too petrified to go down and mingle with the great unwashed in a pathetic quest to stitch two dollars together and hope it adds to ten.
No matter how eloquently I describe it, if you didn’t live it you won’t understand it. Which leads me the subject of my post, five paragraphs later. I am sick and tired of Zimbabweans living abroad declaring their intense desire to return home “as soon as the situation improves”. What about the rest of us who survived election violence, cholera, and the atrocious English of Patrick Chinamasa and Sikanyiso Ndlovhu? Personally, I think I am the most loyal patriot any country could ever want, to the extent that I am considering selling my patriotic virtues to any other country that may feel it is short on patriots. Zimbabweans still living in Zimbabwe are patriotic to a fault, literally. But back to my point. If you Zimbos in the diaspora think we're going to let you come back in and simply capitalize on our blood, sweat and tears, think again. I am personally on a crusade to make sure that diaspora Zimbabweans do not return en masse to steal opportunities from right under our noses.
Presently, I am finalizing a document to the government that proposes that we close all our borders to Zimbabweans who were living in the diaspora, or the “cowards” as I have heard them referred to in some circles in my head. We who have been in the trenches all along generally agree that we should get first dibs on any and all business opportunities that arise from this miraculous rise from the ashes that is occurring. Diasporans have all spent years riding on lovely, pothole-less eight lane highways while we've endured driving on dust roads with craters the size of Arthur Mutambara’s ego. While you were enjoying Woolies or Debenham’s low-fat cranberry and kiwi yoghurts, we were standing in lines to buy unpasteurized milk in Mazoe Orange Crush containers. It must have been nice for you to know that when you woke up every day there would be water for you to bath and brush your teeth, yes? Meanwhile, we had a bathing schedule here - we bathed when there was water, which in my household was on Mondays and Thursdays. (It sounds like big deal if you've never done it, but it’s not really, especially if you have a car - you just have to stay out of the sun to minimize sweat and keep your AC on high. I hadn't known bathing was so over-rated. Also, sex makes you sweat, so we got more into making love, we weren't into having sex. But, I digress.)
So it is my correct and considered opinion that our entry requirements be made far more stringent. Personally, I recommend the following simple test: Any returning Zimbabwean who cannot fill in an RTGS form in full in thirty seconds or less direct from memory should be not only barred, but also deported back to whatever colonial hideout they came from. This exercise should continue until at least 2020, or until we are positive that there are few opportunities left to be exploited – whichever comes soonest.
I hope my proposal doesn’t make anyone angry. Actually, I don’t care. This is the freedom of expression that comes with democracy. Isn’t it?

zakeozim@gmail.com

The Truth Shall Set Me Free, or Kill Me

2009-02-09T03:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, let me start by being perfectly honest. I am an angry man. I am seething mad. I have to tell the truth, and maybe it shall set me free. So many things make me mad, I'm starting to think I have a problem. I would visit a psychiatrist, but everyone knows there are no such things in Zimbabwe. If you meet anyone claiming to be a psychiatrist in Zimbabwe, you should slap them quickly with the back of your hand and walk away. People who lie make me so mad.

I don't know if simply being mad is a good enough reason to start a blog, but amongst the other myriads of senseless web pages floating around in cyberspace, this will surely be one of the less senseless ones. In any case, my blog isn't really written for you to enjoy; it's more of a catharsis for me, because if I do not release these feelings of anger welling within me, I fear I may commit homicide or suicide, or both, in that order (of course). Anger can make you lose your mind, I tell you. I guess that’s why the word mad can mean variably “seized with great anger” or “insane”. I’ll tell you a secret about me that everyone else knows, if I’m not one of these two things at any given moment, I’m definitely the other. Although I oscillate wildly between the two variants of this word, the great thing is that your response in dealing with me should always be the same: caution. Of the 300 or so people I currently employ, there is not yet one who does not know to exercise extreme caution in my presence. So whenever I am around, people rarely smile and they speak in low tones, as if there is a tiger in the room waiting to pounce on their poor, sun-baked unwashed backs. It’s a great feeling to be an executive in Zimbabwe, sometimes.

Anyway, I digress. You will notice that I often digress from whatever topic I have chosen to discuss, but since it’s my blog I can do what I like. The point I was making earlier was that this blog is utterly pointless, and generally should not be read by people. If you don’t like it don’t post comments saying so, that will make me very mad. In fact, while I’m on the subject, here are the terms and conditions of my blog. Your continued reading expressly implies acceptance of these terms and conditions.

1. You are not permitted to post comments saying you do not like anything I have written. I am a highly educated and respected executive, and it is very unlikely that anything I write will not be to your taste. If it is, you should silently admit that your taste is wrong, and that someone of my intellect cannot possibly be mistaken.
2. This is not a politically correct blog. It is not racially, religiously or sexually correct, and at times it is not even grammatically correct. If you like your things correct, please visit my other website, www.nationalgeographic.com. Alternatively, you could start your own blog.
3. If you like my blog, I am saving you the bother of posting comments to that effect. I know us Zimbabweans generally use the hunt-and-peck two-finger method of typing, which, besides taking up a lot of time, can result in severe carpal tunnel syndrome. Instead, you are to simply wire a donation to my account in the Cayman Islands using these details:
Account Name: Zakeo
Bank: National Bank of Cayman Islands
Account #: 0912023011
Swift Code: M-BROK
These funds will be used to assist the needy, wherever they may be found in the world or in my house, whichever comes soonest. Please note that to lessen the burden on you, this money does not need to be free funds. The needy will take cash from any source, whether it was legitimately acquired through legal business dealings, embezzled from government parastatals, or donated by unsuspecting depositors in the financial institution you run.

Please do not make me madder by failing to adhere to these rules. I have enough on my plate without having to be corrected by you, even though I am sure you have many acquaintances who like to hear and agree with your opinions. I have so many of my own opinions that it’s generally too taxing for me to consider other people’s. At times, I don’t even agree with some of my own opinions.

But enough about you. In my next post I will tell you a little bit about myself and why I’m so mad.

Thanks for reading, but really, I advise you to find something better to do. If you can’t find anything, you are better off reading a book. So go find a book.

zakeozim@gmail.com