A PLAYFUL middle-aged civil servant wanting to make an older civil servant uncomfortable said: “Mdhara makura. Chiendai munozorora mwana wenyu apindewo basa. You cannot spend your whole life locating dusty files.”

The older civil servant laughed it off. 

He nodded to the Director’s office and said: “Ndinoenda kupi? I am younger than him, saka it only makes sense kuti I should go after him.”

The middle-aged civil servant knew that  the older civil servant would respond that way.

It was routine.

As routine as the September calendar of events in Zimbabwe; the MDC celebrating its anniversary on September 11; Rhodesians commemorating Occupation Day in private groups on September 12; the MDC leadership flying to Washington to lobby stiffer sanctions against their own people; opposition groups getting on the streets of Harare with instructions to make Zimbabwe ungovernable; American and British media exerting relentless pressure on African leadership to accept homosexuality.

And when the late former President Robert Mugabe was alive, he would say: “We are supposed to be free and independent Mr Ban Ki-moon. Supposed to be free.”

The man whose wife had been beaten up by a friend’s housemaid and was not angry that his wife had been beaten up surfed YouTube for African reactions to Western pressure to accept homosexuality.

Mugabe had declared to the UN General Assembly: “We equally reject attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. We are not gays.”

In the same space, the late MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said: “It (homosexuality) is a very controversial subject in my part of the world. 

My attitude is that I hope the constitution will come out with freedom of sexual orientation … of course, there is a very strong cultural feeling towards gays … but to me it is a human right.”

President Paul Kagame said: “It (homosexuality) hasn’t been our problem and we don’t intend to make it a problem. We are struggling with all problems we have.”

Former President Uhuru Kenyatta said to racist Christian Amanpour: “I want to be very clear … I will not engage in a subject (homosexuality) that is of no major importance to the people under the Republic of Kenya. 

This is not an issue, as you would like to put it, of human rights. 

This is an issue of society; of our own base, as a culture; as a people regardless of which community you come from. 

This is not acceptable. This is not agreeable. … Those are the laws we have and those are laws that are 100 percent supported by 99 percent of the Kenyan people regardless of where they come from.”

And, racist Amanpour was obdurate: “It’s a global issue right now!”

And Uhuru Kenyatta said: “It is important to them where they are. I am saying it is not important to me as the leader of 49 million Kenyans … as the leader of the people of the republic of Kenya, I represent that which our people are desirous to be. And I have no choice but that is my position.”

And in the same space, Tsvangirai, who wanted to be President of black Zimbabwe where more than 99,9 percent of the 14 million people he wanted to lead were against homosexuality, wanted the obscenity to be made an inalienable constitutional right. 

And in the same space, the MDC leader had rejected the black Zimbabwean people’s right to self-determination and invited racist Europe and the US to interfere with Zimbabwean sovereignty.

In the same space, the MDC leader had rejected compulsory acquisition of land from the racist settler-white minority for equitable redistribution. And it was in the same space where Chairman Herbert Chitepo had said: “I think everybody who knows about revolution knows that revolution has been about land everywhere in the world. 

It is about land because land is the thing on which you live. 

You build your house on it; you get your food from it. 

Life is sustained on the land, and without it you are really facing death. 

That is what revolution is about.” 

The MDC leader had rejected land redistribution, which guaranteed the continued existence of black people and accepted homosexuality designed to ensure the extinction of black people.

In the same space, the Senegalese President snubbed visiting Canadian Prime Minister’s support for homosexuality saying: “We cannot ask Senegal to say tomorrow we legalise homosexuality and tomorrow gay parades. That is not possible either because our society doesn’t accept it.”

In the same space, the Zambian President snubbed the US Ambassador’s interference: “We are saying no to homosexuality. … Are you saying we are very primitive now because we are frowning upon homosexuality. 

Even animals don’t do it. Why should we be forced to do it because we want to be seen to be smart; to be seen to be civilised and advanced … I don’t know, to be honest with you, how far this matter will go because already, you are tying it to aid. 

If that is how you are going to bring your aid, then I am afraid the West can leave us alone in our poverty and we will continue scrounging and struggling and see how we can get going.”

And, in the same space, the new MDC leadership boasted: “Patakasangana naTrump akatibvunza kuti nhai vakomana, mari yamurikuda kuti nyika ifambe imarii? 

Tikati isu tirikungoda US$15 billion. 

VaBiti vakanga vakapedza macalculation.

Zvikanzi mari iyoyo vakomana hainonoki. 

Kana murimi vakomana imi tinoziva kuti imi hamubi mari. Hamuiti sevayavaya.”

And in the same space, Donald Trump had declared: “Thank you to the LGBT community. 

I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs … I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBT citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. Believe me.”

And, he did not expect African Presidents to protect their own people from the ‘violence and oppression of a hateful’ Western cultural hegemony.

Not even given the irony that, in the same space, even among those prescribing homosexuality to Africans over 36 States (out of the 52 States making up the US)  had not yet accepted homosexuality in all its entirety.

In the same space, African legislators to the Commonwealth Parliament also rejected the inclusion of homosexuality as a human right.

In the same space, Yoweri Museveni said: “Homosexuals are disgusting.”

In the same space, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said: “I am a constitutionalist. 

The current provision in the constitution forbids that.”

By late morning, things did not look good.

The observers from the office of the man whose wife had refused to be touched saw army trucks arrive.

The  man whose wife had refused to be touched called the ‘boyz resmoko’. 

He said: “These ones do not have handcuffs.”

The Peace and Governance graduate’s mate agreed: “Saka mahwani aya ava kuchitanga manje.”

The subdued echo of an AK 47 sounded.

The sounds of other shots followed in rapid succession and then stopped as abruptly.

The pace of the activity on the ground quickened.

The frontier of conflict halted and fell not into a tactical but rapid and disorganised retreat.

A speeding blue kombi (commuter omnibus) appeared from a side street, turned the wrong side of the one-way street and came face-to-face with a truck disgorging armed men of peace.

They watched it try an about-turn and crush into a street sign post.

Three marchers sprinted out.

Two stopped in their tracks just as fast.

They raised their hands in the air and went down on their knees.

The third had gone behind a tree.

A soldier appeared to beckon.

The third re-appeared from behind the tree, his hands in the air.

He went down on all-fours and crawled to where the other two were.

Two more laboured out of the broken vehicle.    To be continued…