The Sunday Mail
“TODAY is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one,” American country music singer Braid Paisley once said. Today is the first blank page of the year 2017, and as Zimbabweans, what kind of a book are we going to write for ourselves?Are we going to write a book of doom and gloom, a book of pessimism and despair? Or are we going to write a book of hope and possibilities, a book of optimism and self-belief?
But we are not going to write the book we want, if we choose to be professional moaners. We are not going to write our own script if we choose to be spectators to our destiny.
For us to write the book we want, we have to be prepared to make mistakes. We must be ready to make mistakes, many mistakes actually.
British author Neil Gaiman puts its more appropriately when he says: “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.
“You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.”
As Zimbabweans, are we going to make mistakes in 2017? Are we going to make new things and are we going to try new things? Are we going to push ourselves, are we going to change ourselves and change our world?
Are we going to do things we have never done before and most importantly, are we going to do something? Gaiman continues saying: “So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself.
Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.”
Zimbabwe has gone through a lot over the past few years. In 2017, let’s not freeze. Let’s not stop and let’s not worry that it’s not good enough.
Let’s not even worry that it’s not perfect. Let’s make the mistakes. Zanu-PF’s 16th Annual National People’s Conference set the tone for 2017 by focussing on nothing but efforts to revive the economy.
Let’s make many mistakes as we try to revive the economy. Let’s not allow armchair economists to freeze our efforts and let’s not allow theorists to tell us we are not good enough.
Field Ruwe, a Zambian media practitioner based in the US, a few years ago wrote about an encounter he had with a certain white man who introduced himself as Walter.
While flying from Los Angeles to Boston, Ruwe wrote that this white man from nowhere went into a tirade.
“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die. Get up and do something about it,” the white man said to a stunned Ruwe.
This white man went on to give Ruwe a shocking lesson on why Africa will never develop and why Africans always see whites as superior. Ruwe wrote that he almost lost his cool, but this white man seemed not to care.
“I see you are getting pissed off.
“You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth . . . I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you will all be crowding around him chanting ‘muzungu, muzungu,’ and yet he’s a riff-raff.
“Tell me why my angry friend?” asked the white man.
As if that was not enough, the white man became even more ruthless with his talk.
“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy. When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. “You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state . . . Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hard working people of earth. I saw them . . .
“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? There were in bars quaffing . . . I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates . . . Wake up you all!”
This conversation went on and on according to Ruwe. Clearly, this was one hell of an arrogant white man, but he was speaking the painful truth.
In 2017, Zimbabweans should be prepared to make mistakes. They should not be held hostage by outdated theories from the lazy intellectuals.
Hard-working Zimbabweans should try to change their world. Let’s leave the lazy intellectuals quaffing in bars. Let’s leave them to organise their demos and let’s leave them quarrelling among themselves.
Happy New Year to all hard-working and patriotic Zimbabweans!
