I want to be sauntering lackadaisically in the lush green plains of Manyene listening to the side splitting jokes of my elders like mudhara Hahuhunazvi (nickname meaning "you won't lick this beer").
I want to be able to go to Chambara or Nyamhere clinic and get painkillers if I have a headache. I long for the days as I child when I would dread a visit to the clinics because it was guaranteed I would get a 'jekiseni' (antibiotic injection).
Those days are no more. Our country is in a terrible state. Ruled by people who would rather spend millions of US dollars going kusikero (post-natal baby inspection and weighing) in a foreign country than spend a few hundred thousands dollars making sure every clinic is well stoked with medicines.
I want to be building my homestead (kuvaka musha) rather than toiling in a foreign land trying to raise some cash to send my relatives back home. I want the economic gangrene that has infected Zimbabwe to be amputated and thrown onto the rubbish heap of history.
I want my country to stop being the shebeen example (and every sundry drinking place) of bad management. A country that any drunkard so sloshed that they have got only a few brain cells left in working order, if you ask them "Which is the worst managed country in the world?" they will slur out "Zimbabwe" in that half passed-out state.
I want my skills and expertise to benefit my people without risking starving myself. I want a country that simply works.
No matter how desperately I want proper leadership in Zimbabwe, I will not be fooled into thinking that a Gambia scenario will work in my country. The Gambia is a country that is barely 20km across and maybe an odd 150km long. The length of the country would fit in the distance from my home town of Chivhu to Harare. The width of the country would leave out places like Mhondoro Mubayira and Manyene if Simon Mazorodze road were a line running down the centre of the country. Chitungwiza would be a border town.
It is entirely surrounded by Senegal except for a thin sliver of beautiful beaches on the Atlantic. Its army is made up of a mighty 2500 soldiers. It has never fought in any wars. The army's most strenuous experience has been harassing Jammeh's opponents. Relative to Zimbabwe it is a toy army.
Zimbabwe has more than 80'000 militarily trained personnel (army, air force and police) in active service. The armed forced have fought in several engagements in the past few decades, from Mozambique to the DRC. The Gambia's most strenuous engagements have been sending 200 soldiers on UN peace keeping missions.
There is no regional army that can take out Zimbabwe's army in a few hours of marching like was done in the Gambia. You can be assured that any war will be brutal, lengthy and have no guaranteed outcome.
Having foreigners occupy the fiercely proud people of Zimbabwe will also be a problem. You can be guaranteed that triggering violence will lead to lengthy internecine violence like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
We need to solve the Zimbabwe situation, but let us not imagine that a The Gambia scenario is one of the solutions.
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