TWO young men from the neighbourhood gave the man a knowing ‘big-up’ sign as he set the car in motion.

He returned the sign out of courtesy.

They were in their graduation gowns and wanted a lift to town.

The man let them in.

Referring to their dressing he asked: “What is the big event?”

The answer dawned to him even before they opened their mouths and he immediately regretted giving them the lift:

“We are going to join the peaceful protest in town. Can you imagine that it is three years since we graduated and we still have not yet found work?”

The man said: “I can imagine.” 

And then he asked: “What did you do at university?”

“I did Peace and Governance Studies and he did Entrepreneurship,” was the response.

The man’s sister had done ‘Peace and Governance’ too and he knew it was a prescribed foreign-sponsored programme and conspicuously devoid of the local history content necessary to give the flaunted objectives organic or contextual relevance to the Zimbabwean experience.

Youths were toi-toing mumaraini rallying everyone to join the march to the peaceful demo in town.

At the open grounds on the road to town, a man and woman had been mugged during the night. 

The man lay stiffened in death in a pool of congealed blood. 

The woman lay bruised and half-naked, lips moving inaudibly and eyes imploring the crowd to help.

Marchers to the peaceful demo joined the onlookers clicking away at their cell-phones and posting the gruesome images across the world.

Had anyone called the police or ambulance?

Someone asked what the police or ambulance emergence numbers were.

Nobody seemed to know.

A kombi (commuter omnibus) emblazoned with the words ‘Jehovah Jireh’ pulled up and a hwindi (tout) peered over the crowd and called the mugged woman ‘a prostitute who had gotten what she deserved’. 

He thought he was being tough.

The marchers to the peaceful demo were left shell-shocked.

And then they went back to filming the dying woman with their cell-phones.

The mugged woman’s lips stopped moving.

Her eyes closed.

And when they were sure that the woman had breathed her last, they proceeded to the planned peaceful demo in town.

Some rowdy youths started forcing some of the onlookers to join the march to the planned peaceful demo in town: “Are you happy with what is happening? Are you happy with the economy?”

The commuter omnibus with the foul-mouthed tout stopped to load passengers in the middle of a junction and blocked traffic in the process. 

Someone in the jam called out: “Can you not see that you are blocking traffic? Move out of the way and let us pass!”

The tout hurled an obscenity at the complainant and waved him away. 

The traffic jam grew. 

Two touts riding the rear bumper of the commuter omnibus shouted: “City Copacabana!”

A big man rushed to board the commuter omnibus. 

The foul-mouthed tout cleared the doorway for him to enter.

The big man did not enter. 

He grabbed the foul-mouthed tout by the knap and belt and tossed him into the dirt and trampled on him in a blind rage.

The commuter omnibus driver shot off at breakneck speed.

The sudden take-off threw the two touts from the bumper onto the tarmac.

The violent man of peace left the foul-mouthed tout crawling on all-fours, bleeding and howling like a mad dog.

The touts who had fallen from the bumper of the speeding commuter omnibus were struggling onto their feet when the violent man of peace caught up with them

One of them pleaded: “Please mudhara wangu tatokuvara kare inga wani.”

The man of peace let them limp away.

Commuters caught in the traffic jam created by the unruly commuter omnibuses cheered the violent man of peace as he returned to the truck he had left in the jam.

The foul-mouthed tout was crawling on all fours away from the road.

A woman waiting for transport to work walked up to the battered tout and kicked his bottom and other commuters cheered her.

“These buggers think they own the road. They think they are the law. Tsvatu waro!” she said.

The rowdy youths forcing people to join the peaceful demo stopped singing and cleared the way for the violent man of peace.

Half of their conscripts deserted the march and followed the big man ‘bigging’ him up.

In the violent big man’s wake traffic eased at the junction.

The marchers to the peaceful demo got to the junction just as a truck was stopping to drop vakadzi vemusika (market women) and their merchandise.

The leaders of the peaceful march to the peaceful demo in town pulled the truck driver from his seat, took his keys, slapped and kicked him around.

The women’s baskets were turned up-side-down. 

The peaceful marchers fought over the sugar cane, the fruits and the nibbles. 

The vegetables were trodden underfoot. 

The distraught women were forced to join the peaceful march.

The truck driver escaped through the speeding traffic.

The marcher who had confiscated the truck keys got into the driver’s seat and started the truck. 

He fumbled with the gear lever. 

The truck heaved and he frantically turned the unfamiliar wheel with unfamiliar hands. 

The truck turned towards the crowd of marchers to the peaceful demo in town.  

The marchers screamed and dashed for their lives.

The truck was side-swiped by a speeding gonyeti (haulage truck)’s trailer turning it on its side in a ditch. 

The marcher’s leg was trapped by the door as he tried to escape.

He wailed for help.

The other marchers did not immediately come to his aid. 

They first filmed the spectacle.

During the confusion, the market women and a host of other conscripts to the peaceful demo escaped.

Meanwhile, the husband of the woman who had been beaten-up by her friend’s house maid was not angry that his wife had been beaten up.

He had tried to stop her from interfering in other people’s domestic affairs and had been ignored.

He had watched her going out in combat mode mobilised into the NATO alliance of her other two friends

And then he had again watched her return in deflated mode.

He did not ask her what had happened. 

He already knew.

Some mischievous neighbour had filmed the fight and thrown the clip onto the neighbourhood Group WhatsApp platform as ‘Breaking News’.

When the woman walked in and tried to pretend that nothing serious had happened, the husband had played the clip on loud. 

And then he had heard her uncontrollable sobbing behind the bathroom door.

He had himself decided not to leave the house until he was sure the peaceful demo was indeed peaceful.

He was watching CNN and they were talking of budgetary constraints hamstringing all-inclusive health care in the US.

He thought that the implications were a far cry from what the opposition leader had told his followers in Zimbabwe. 

He had spoken of having met the beleaguered US President Donald Trump and secured the promise of US$15 billion, which amount would be used to build spaghetti roads, airports to airlift farmers’ produce from rural areas, buy bullet trains to improve travel and then to turn hospitals into luxury resorts. 

Unlike the budgetary constraints facing the American sponsors of development in Zimbabwe, the only problems the new opposition government would have to contend with would be dealing with people faking illness in order to enjoy life in hospitals.

The supporters had loved it.

To be continued…