The Sunday Mail
Now, idleness begets vice. If idleness is the devil’s workshop, one needs to take a long hard look at the devil’s incarnate.
Enlightened playwright and social critic Voltaire concluded his satirical tale “Candide” with the observation that violence and plunder could not compare with the productive and peaceful life of those who minded their own business, “cultivated their own garden”, and traded the surpluses with their neighbours.
“Candide, as he was returning home, made profound reflections on the Turk’s discourse … ‘You must certainly have a vast estate,’ said Candide to the Turk; who replied, ‘I have no more than twenty acres of ground, the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labour keeps off from us three great evils— idleness, vice, and want.’”
Idleness
Invariably, idleness is associated with futility, insignificance and vanity.
Idleness will influence grown men to rise in the morning, take a bath, shave and put on a fresh shirt, then board public transport into town only to sit and pass foul air in the park under the ridiculous auspices of the Occupy Africa Unity Square absurdity.
Idleness.
It is indeed a great evil of our time and our nation. Instead of cultivating one’s garden, a whole brood of otherwise fine and promising farmers – born and bred in a land where land was given back to them – finds it curiously prudent to idly occupy a recreational park in the city centre.
The word “occupy” has no link to production whatsoever.
The Shona have a fitting verb to substitute; they say “kupakata”, simply seize, take hold of, but that on its own does not produce anything except, of course, and rightly so, idleness.
Surely, if Itai Dzamara was not so idle and idle-minded he would have cultivated his garden; he would have been providing his wife those sacred rights, he would have been watching his seeds and his children grow, and he certainly would not have wondered off on another mind-boggling idle venture because all who loathe idleness will soon forget his mesmerising and idle-seeking escapade.
Imagine how his wife and children used to welcome him back home every squandered day of that senseless and thankless idle occupation of Africa Unity Square.
“Maswera sei daddy?” he would be asked.
“Ndaswera ndakatyora zvangu mupark maimwana.”
Idleness. Idleness is an unforgivable sin.
Vice
Now, idleness begets vice.
If idleness is the devil’s workshop, one needs to take a long hard look at the devil’s incarnate. Forget Morgan Tsvangirai, he cannot be sanctified to the embodiment of a devil, but rather look to this green-horned devil called Obert Gutu.
For all intents and purposes, a generous serving of pity ought to be dished out to the unfortunate guardians that sent this blabber-mouthing rabble-rouser through Law school.
Yet still, a spell-binding bad judgment of character must be bestowed the party that bequeathed him spokesperson.
Obert Gutu is a reactionary. He is vile, divisive, vindictive and the epitome of vice.
Dzamara’s disappearing antics just provided him with the impetus to unleash both his idle mind that thinks of nothing other than what vice can breed, all in a bid to quench his insatiable appetite for elusive power.
In their bigoted miasma of vice, the Obert Gutus of this world will never proffer any solutions that go beyond the shaft of their noses except to nag and pester well-meaning Zimbabweans into political unrest that only results in a frightening quagmire. Vice breeds like gangrene when a mind such as Obert Gutu’s campaigns for a doomsday Waterloo.
Zimbabweans who heed the great evils of Obert Gutu and his kith and kin will surely be the proverbial flies that follow the corpse to the grave only to be buried alive.
Want
Of course, the illusory and misleading resultant effect of idleness and vice is the smokescreen of want. Yes, poverty of the mind, idleness and vice nudge the foolish one into seeing possessions that they want, instead of seeing what they need.
An impoverished idle mind will preoccupy itself with nothing but want of vice, and more vice and more vice. The greater the idleness, the grander the vice and the more pathetic the forms of want. Want of elections. Want of reforms. Want of retrenchment. Want of packages.
Zimbabweans do not want great evils. Zimbabweans need gardens. Gardens to cultivate. Gardens that will help them mind their own business. Gardens that will help them trade the surplus with their neighbours.
Gardens that will keep them from the three great evils of idleness, vice and want.
Is it not refreshing, therefore, that we have gardens in abundance, which we repossessed from our erstwhile slave-drivers?
Today, we can cultivate tobacco, maize, potatoes, sugar beans, groundnuts, and even though we are at times ravaged by drought, we still tend to our gardens.
Is it not refreshing?
Dubulaizitha, igamalamingu Vukani Madoda
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