John 11 verse 35 is the shortest verse in the Christian Bible. And in its conciseness, it describes the pain that Jesus, one of the most prominent figures of history, felt at the death of a much-loved friend, Lazarus.

“Jesus wept,” it reads.

Jesus – a teacher and man of great esteem – was actually humble and unashamed enough to show his emotions.

But today, any man who dares let the floodgates of his innermost emotions fling open is derisively termed a ‘cry baby’ or ‘little girl’.

I got to thinking about this whole topic over the weekend after watching Roger Federer win his first ever French Open tennis title. As the Swiss national anthem played and his nation’s flag was raised, the guy just couldn’t hold back his elation and shed a few tears of release.

But while I enjoyed his show of honest emotion, many others thought he was just being a big baby. “He won so why is he crying?!” asked a perplexed friend. “Besides, it’s really embarrassing for a guy of his age to cry like that!”

I blame such attitudes on gendered socialisation whereby as children, little boys are often told not to cry because, as the saying goes, “Boys don’t cry.”

I remember meeting one little boy walking along the street with his father, bawling as though his life were at an end. “If you keep crying like that, I will buy you a dress and turn you into a girl,” scolded his father. “Would you like that?” The little boy, who couldn’t have been more that five years old, vigorously shook his head and almost instantly stopped crying. The thought of losing his male identity was far too much for him to bear.

See how from an early age, our gender identities are already fixed for us by our elders, leaving little room for adjustment?  And also note how crying is associated with femininity, and therefore weakness? Patriarchy is already at play.

So for a grown man to show open emotion is considered a watering down (excuse the unintended pun!) of his masculinity, and all the connotations of strength and braveness that this entails.

The very few times that I have witnessed men cry is upon the death of someone. And correct me if I am wrong, but more than often, men will only cry at the death of a male someone – that is, a father, brother or male friend.

I have seen men stand strong and firm at the loss of a wife or mother, but lose all composure at the loss of a father or close friend. And perhaps even more bizarrely, break down when their football team loses a cup final, or is relegated to a lower divison!

Once again, I think that our socialisation tells us that it is okay to cry for dad, but to cry for mum – the epitome of feminine gentleness and protection – implies that you are just a big baby. And it’s somehow also okay to cry if Manchester United loses the UEFA Champions’ League final because it’s a clique of guys involved in very masculine activity.

Let’s stop justifying when it’s okay for a man to cry and when it is not. People react differently to situations and it’s really not for anyone to gauge whether or not it’s right to cry at a certain event or time.

But the name-calling has to stop. And men ought to be free to express their emotions in whatever way they please.

Over the course of two years I attended nearly one hundred events in Harare where I intently listened to the incisive words of poets, fiction writers, spoken word artists, musicians­artistes if you like.  My ears and my mind soaked in poignant ideas thoughtfully assembled into analysis.  I felt the ways these engagements facilitate deeper understandings of both the beauty and pain which is Zimbabwe.

There was also something else that caught my ear.  Once performers have microphone in hand, so often they are all about their sisters and brothers.   And in all the possible combinations.  Women thank their brothers for supporting them.  Men praise the work of their sisters.  To express gratitude in these ways perhaps signals a sense of camaraderie, belief in the power of collective voice.   In fact, comrade was used almost as often as brother or sister.    My comrade, my sister, your words make me think.

Sister and brother usage also extends beyond opening salutations.  Often a piece is dedicated to a brother or a sister.   This is for my brothers out there in the diaspora who want to come home.  This is for my sisters struggling to get by.   The dedication again speaks to a connection.  To say I understand what challenges you face, my brother, my sister.  And I want my work, and what I say, to be part of what helps to overcome these challenges together.

Proceeding into the work, sisters and brothers are again everywhere.  Words trace and piece together what brothers and sisters experience.  Hardships, aspirations, successes, and a life course bound up in so much.  To lay bare the unfolding stories, ideas and individual experiences are made known by presenting sisters and brothers in dialogue.  Sometimes the conversation is to question the actions of another.  My comrade, my brother, I am a sister who sees the hypocrisy of your ways.  Other times, the conversation is to reflect and inform.  My comrade, my sister, I am a brother seeking freedom.

What I find interesting is that these are references to brothers and sisters who are simultaneously factual and fictional.  Or more there’s a play with words leading to emotive loss being expressed.  The sister and brother and the hardships they experience exist (fact).   Space free of suffering for the brother and sister does not (fiction).    It might seem that I’m reading too deeply into common speak, use of brother and sister.  I mean is there anything significant in how often people say:  Hey, how are you?  But no.  I think there is something much deeper going on with all the factual and fictional brothers and sisters floating around in the intellectual and creative airwaves.

I was telling someone the other day that collective organizing is untenable in Zimbabwe.  So what choice is there, but the individual.  To be one.  And to focus on them.  A brother.  A sister.  Each one a factual marker of the challenges so many individual people actually experience.   Each one continually thanked, referenced, and written about.   Each one central to expressing the hope that facts become fictions.   A yearning for factual markers to not represent spaces of suffering.  Spaces which today are largely fictional.   It’s a factual/fictional play on words expressing an extreme sense of loss of what used to be.  A time where one didn’t have to speak of their sisters and brothers in pain.  A time where the collective had more voice and more power. An attempt to commandeer words (brother and sister) in an effort to turn reality around.  To hope for and make suffering, not factual, but rather fictional.

Ok maybe this sounds like a wacky line of thought.  But listen carefully, not only to how much brother and sister are used, but also consider what emotions are going on when used.

Recently I was at a function in London when, upon introducing myself as a Zimbabwean, someone ventured to ask me a question I have become very much accustomed to now, ‘so, what has changed with this new government?’ In response I explained that as far as I was concerned, there had been no fundamental change in political direction and that the levers of power remain firmly in the hands of those who wielded power in 1980 and as such, we are not really in a new political dispensation as yet. The person who asked the question was clearly unimpressed, he pointed out that in fact he had information that ‘a lot of positive changes’ had taken place in Zimbabwe and cited the so-called miracle reduction of inflation from 231 million percent to just 1.1 percent as an example some of the positive changes that are not being highlighted. He then noted that Zimbabweans in the Diaspora and international media have a tendency of reporting only negative news on Zimbabwe because, he quipped, ‘good news does not sell.’ It appears this is a generally held view among some international observers which I wish to address in greater detail here.

Well, I do not see how my grandmother in Bikita would take comfort in the miraculous reduction in inflation because she still does not have access to foreign currency. The switch-over to use of foreign currency which cured inflation in one stroke may be significant to political elites but certainly makes little difference to ordinary men and women in Zimbabwe who continue to suffer. It is like focusing on improving working conditions for those who are employed when 94 percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed!

Personally, and I am confident many other Zimbabweans share this view, I desperately desire to hold great hope and optimism that Zimbabwe’s future is bright and that political change has come. I want to be able to proudly tell the world that Zimbabwe is open and ready for business. I want to tell anyone who cares to listen that my country is a beacon of democracy and persuade investors to rush to Zimbabwe and do business with my countrymen. It is my wish that l should tell the world that violence, human rights abuses, police brutality and repression belong to the past. Unfortunately, sadly, that would be untrue; I would be telling blatant lies if I were to lay claim to such things. Creating false hope and false images of change does not bring the desired change to Zimbabwe.

It appears to be that the desire to be ‘positive’ about Zimbabwe and project a positive image of Zimbabwe may have led some of our erstwhile colleagues who now occupy high political offices to massage the truth and polish the rough edges of reality in their presentation of the situation in Zimbabwe. All of a sudden, themselves victims a compromised and corrupt court system, because they are now part of government, they believe there is rule of law and that their colleagues who face various politically motivated charges must face trial by ‘impartial courts.’ One minister from the smaller MDC faction, when asked why farm violent farm invasions were continuing unabated responded, ‘government is broke, we do not have financial resources to deploy police to stop the invasions.’ Was this not precisely the same political excuse given by the police in 2000 when farm invasions began?

Clearly, but for reasons as yet unclear to me, many former advocates of rule of law and democracy who are now in government have become shameless liars quite ready and comfortable to sing from the same hymn book with those who once persecuted them.

Being frank and truthful about the minute changes that have taken place in Zimbabwe does not make one a pessimist. My great hope and optimism for Zimbabwe lies in the hope that there are many who will realize that the struggle for democracy and good governance does not end when one gets a seat at the high table; that is precisely when the struggle begins. Only the truth will set our leaders free, and, in the same vein, set us all free.

I recently discovered that I needed about US$400 to have my name changed to MGCINI NYONI, the name my father gave me. My father disappeared in the early eighties during the Gukurahundi madness. I was only about three or so. Along with thousands other Ndebele people he was hunted down by the notorious Korean trained fifth brigade. He was not a dissident like other thousands of people lying in mass graves somewhere. In some cases bellies of pregnant women were slit open by sadistic soldiers. Armored vehicles ran over the hands of school teachers as they lay on the ground. Entire villages were shot and killed, their homesteads burnt down because they did not know were the dissidents were. After the disappearance of my father, mother remarried and we assumed the surname of our stepfather. I know she meant well, may her soul rest in peace (we buried her mid last year). Thanks to Mugabe, I’m now an orphan. My family will have to go hungry for several months for me to be able to afford changing my name. Shouldn’t Mugabe pay for it and compensate me for the disadvantages I grew up with because I did not have a father who had been killed by forces sent by Mugabe to do some ethnic cleansing. His crime was belonging to the Ndebele tribe.

“There is life beyond politics and I hope with a bit of luck to experience that myself,” said British Defence Secretary John Hutton on announcing his resignation from the government of Gordon Brown on June 5, 2009.

And these are the same British chaps lampooned over the years by the Zanu PF cabal, the same Africans who have chosen politics as a career where wild riches are amassed beyond their wildest dreams. Take them out of the political office what do they have? Kind of reminds one of Africa’s career politicians doesn’t it? Once one is elected into office, you are in it for life. And this obsession is exactly what has fed or fanned political violence as unpopular leaders stoke the emotions of poor people and refuse to leave office and therefore politics.

For some reason they can never pursue other interests outside gladiatorial politics, those who left without putting up a fight have for example been appointed to mediate in some of the world’s hot spots, yet those who came after them have seen no reason why they should leave and pursue other interests.

Thank God for those nations who continue resisting attempts by idiotic leaders who seek to rewrite their constitutions in a bid to extend their rule as if that itself is informed by having done a swell job. On the contrary. They still want to amend constitutions even though the people they claim elected them into office are fed up and seek fresh minds to steer them away from perennial poverty.

So what do these career politicians who seek to amend constitutions and those who lose elections do? They unleash their supporters and the security forces on their perceived opponents to “quell unrest” and the blood on the streets thus defines African politics as informed by their unwillingness to make themselves useful elsewhere other than the realm of politics. It is a crying shame. Wacko Jacko sang about blood on the dance floor: these politicians have blood on their hands but they continue dancing! D for dancing ministers, right?

Within Zimbabwe’s context, it is interesting that the people who presided over the country’s ruin are celebrated for their education and insist on being addressed as such – remembering of course that some of the PhDs are honorary. So one would imagine they would easily find use elsewhere where no punches are thrown and no verbal WMDs are hurled.

Yet because they have destroyed all sectors of gainful employment, they find that they too will never find “proper” jobs outside active politics so they stick it out in bloody politics come hell or high water and urge supporters to cudgel anyone who chants a different political slogan! That is the odium African politics carries in its baggage thus we see that drive to personalise whole nations as leaders refuse to leave office and declare themselves life presidents – as if there was ever such a thing. But then African politicians typically live by that old dictum: make hay while the sun shines. And they sure do.

For me, nothing can be more revolting than ‘men of God’ taking the Lord’s name in vain. In Zimbabwe there is a curious breed of ‘men of God’ who are shamelessly peddling ZANU-PF propaganda in the name of God. There is a cadre of ZANU-PF activists who masquerade as Christians and purport to preach virtues of forgiveness, national healing and peace when in fact all they are doing is covertly convey ZANU-PF messages to an unsuspecting clergy. This is unfair; it is only fair that l reveal to the public, for the avoidance of doubt, that these so-called Bishops and pastors are agents of the regime.

For those familiar with Zimbabwean politics l know already you have in mind ZANU-PF activists like: the dubious but prominent churchman, Reverend Obadiah Musindo (a convicted rapist who once described Mugabe as a ‘Black Moses’ and denounced MDC in his prayers) who heads Destiny Africa Network; yet another convicted rapist and ZANU-PF supporter, Madzibaba Pastor Lawrence Katsiru of the apostolic sect who terrorized Marondera in the cause of ZANU-PF; Madzibaba Nzira, also a convicted rapist who at one time “prophesied” that Mugabe was Zimbabwe’s rightful ruler; and die-hard ZANU-PF supporter, Mugabe praise singer and war veteran, disgraced Bishop Nolbert Kunonga who was excommunicated for the Anglican Church. In August 2005 Kunonga appeared before an ecclesiastical court facing numerous charges of bringing the church into disrepute including by bringing militant ZANU-PF politics to the pulpit.

Apart from these, we have more subtle and smooth supporters of ZANU-PFs disguised as churchmen, one of whom is Bishop Trevor Manhanga, who, of late, has been actively supporting embattled Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono. At a funeral of Gono’s brother, Bishop Manhanga reportedly said there can be no national healing if people continued to call for Gono’s departure. In a recent opinion piece titled “Time to end the blame game,” claims that for Zimbabwe the real issue is not for Gono and Attorney General to go because next people will call for Augustine Chihuri, Perence Shiri, Happyton Bonyongwe and Constantine Chiwenga to go as well and finally for Mugabe to go. And according to Bishop Manhanga getting rid of these liabilities would be tragic and disastrous for Zimbabwe.

Interestingly, in a piece calling for the blame game to end, Manhanga immediately assigns blame to ‘those outside our borders,’ for orchestrating calls for Gono and Mugabe to go. And he states with finality that, ‘It will not happen.’ This ZANU-PF activist-cum-man of cloth then, in feigned piousness, lectures that now is the time for national healing and declares that it is time for all of us to be magnanimous.

My direct response to Bishop Manhanga is that for Zimbabwe, the past is the future. There can be no going forward without addressing the sins of the past and without holding to account those in ZANU-PF who have killed and maimed hundreds in Zimbabwe. What national healing is possible without justice? If Manhanga and his handlers think that Zimbabweans will forget how they were butchered and persecuted merely for expressing a different political view then he is in for a rude awakening. If Manhanga thinks that Zimbabweans will not see that under his church robes his is putting on a ZANU-PF t-shirt then he will be shocked to discover that his true identity and relationship to ZANU-PF is not so secret.

It feels me with outrage to read utter rubbish about national healing and moving forward from a so-called Bishop who did not lift a finger when human rights and MDC activists were being abducted and tortured in broad daylight. Talk of hypocrisy. Which Bible is Manhanga reading? Does the Bible not say in Amos 5:24 ‘Let Justice run down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream?’ And did Jesus Christ not condemn his kind when he said, ‘Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.’(Matthew 7:15).

Bishop Trevor Manhanga, please, do not insult the collective intelligence of Zimbabweans by propagating ZANU-PF propaganda disguised as gospel news and thinking we will be fooled. That will not happen. The tribe of political activists abusing the church pulpit must know that we will unmask them and engage them as they truly are, that is, ZANU-PF puppets and stooges.

Now is the time for patriotic Zimbabweans to come together and demand justice and accountability from those who hold political office. Now is the time to demand that the inclusive government delivers justice and bread to the people. We do not eat the presence of MDC in government, what we want are results on the table. We do not give flaming flamingos if MDC has a minister in charge of home affairs, what we want is change in the conduct of the police and tangible evidence that they now respect people’s rights. Otherwise of what use is it that Giles Mutseyekwa of MDC is co-minister in Home Affairs but MDC and human rights activists are being tortured, persecuted and harassed by police?

In Service to My Conscience and My Country . . .