Rabbie Serumula, author, award-winning poet and journalist. Picture: Nokuthula Mbatha
The universe says nothing about corrupt actions of THE HAND THAT GIVES.
All we know is that it receives.
I believe those actions are a job for karma.
But what is karma to politics? when sometimes liberators become oppressors.
If word from the Good Book is still something to go by; if you do not provide for your household, you have denied the faith and are worse than a non believer.
But what quarrel do morals have with politics?
If YOU NEED A HAND to pull you up, will it matter if it is claw-like, scrawny, big-knuckled, blue-veined, bloody or bare?
Or barely sorting out its own problems at home? On its own body, that it scratches, rarely.
And this body itches! Corruption is the driving force behind the bedbugs that chew on us - champions of living below the poverty line. We are the body. The itch is on us. We are the itch.
Zimbabwe, this hand from down the south of your border, is coming to scratch the clampdown by your authorities on independent journalists, activists and human rights defenders, before it peaks.
Many of whom had been abducted and tortured in recent months, and weeks.
Back at home this hand doesn't scratch too well.
Like THE HAND OF A NON BELIEVER, who has denied the faith.
And does not provide for their household. Or their body. Or their country, or their people.
Or they do, perhaps not enough. Or perhaps not to our satisfaction.
Or maybe corruption has gotten to us and we are looking for anything to point at.
But Zimbabwe, you will receive two sets of hands in a special envoy of former Cabinet minister Sydney Mufamadi and former parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete.
These hands will engage your government to identify ways South Africa can assist you.
We hope you accept them.
Though their intentions are noble, THESE HANDS are of non believers. At least to us - champions of living below the poverty line.
They don't believe in empty plates - our staple, an alchemy we perform every night.
We are slowed down by eating in the morning because burning wood to bathe leaves little time to make breakfast.
No matter how fast they say it breaks, we hardly have much to make it.
So I guess time is on our side.
These hands don't believe in communal toilets - a blackhole that swallows our young and sacrifices them to the sewer gods; A whirlpool we conjure after filling our tummies to the brim with water from those communal taps they don't believe in either.
Maybe they do believe. Maybe when we are out of their sight, we walk out of their minds too.
We, children of wrath, expect to be scratched by hands that shy away from our existence.
Who only touches us when our wound starts to decay. When elections are near. When we are back on their minds. When we start to smell bad. When they need to give us food parcels. And build us new shacks with the same bare amenities they soon forget.
But Zimbabwe, do not forget that sometimes liberators soon become the oppressors.
Bloody or bare, RECEIVE THOSE HANDS.
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