ON Monday during our diary meeting I asked you a question: “When you die will you go to the National Heroes Acre?”
Your answer was simple.
And because you were a simple man, you made everything simple.
“Inini manje?” was your response.
If only I knew that Tuesday, the following day, would be a horrible nightmare, I would not have asked.
I am heartbroken Sir.
VaKanengoni you have broken my heart.
You have betrayed me.
You have shaken me to the core.
You know truly well that you left me with unfinished business.
You have left your fellow comrades who thronged the City Sports Centre to meet their patron President Robert Mugabe last Thursday.
There, President Mugabe made a grand entrance that was punctuated by wartime songs.
“Vakuru musazokanganwa kuti Zimbabwe tatora.”
Indeed you never forgot that we won this country.
This is why your life needs to be celebrated.
This is why your aspirations will come to pass.
You made a grand exit on Tuesday.
Painful, but still we will celebrate your life.
Where do I begin to tell this story, your story?
How do I say it?
How can I write about you in the past tense?
Why didn’t you tell me that you were not coming back for our usual chats when we had that conversation around 4pm on Monday?
Why didn’t you tell me that I would not be getting more detail on Tuesday?
Why didn’t you tell me that the call you gave me on Sunday at 18:25 pm was the last of many you gave me?
When will you call me again?
Why did you keep on referring to April during our conversations in your office?
Why was April so important to you?
Did you know it?
That you would depart in April?
Why did you hide it from me?
Why didn’t you prepare me, let me know that April would break my heart?
It is difficult to write this story, to write about you.
A thousand words are not enough.
They can never be.
Where do I begin?
I called you ‘Mudhara Kanez’.
Most of my workmates called you ‘DJ’.
I never really bothered to find out the source of that name or its meaning.
But kwandiri vaiti your old man.
And that’s what you were.
My old man.
Let me try and frame this story around our relationship as you would say.
Ours was a personal relationship.
The reasons were that we come from the same neighbourhood, Warren Park D.
Your wife taught all my siblings at Warren Park Four Primary School.
She taught me briefly when I was in Grade Four.
But in your mind that was not the reason we forged that seemingly unbreakable bond.
You told me the reason.
And I will try to reconstruct the birth of that bond.
On May 11 2011 I wrote my first ever story for The Patriot.
You came from your office and edited it from Knowledge Teya’s desk.
After that you called me to your office.
I was terrified.
You calmed the situation with your infectious laugh, that famous laugh.
“You are a good writer, but try to simplify your stories by doing away with those big words,” you told me.
I did not believe you.
I did not believe I was a good writer.
All I wanted was to be like you.
I tried it during your lifetime.
I failed.
Yet you believed in me.
No one can match your writing.
But there was that one bet I won though.
We had a bet that one day my stories would be published without you adding or removing anything.
I won.
Still I could not match your standards.
No one can and no one will.
Not even Nathaniel Manheru, Dr Tafataona Mahoso and Professor Jonathan Moyo whose writings have inspired me.
Our friendship grew with time, so too did the bond.
I know you deliberately tried to hide it.
That did not succeed.
How about that day a fortnight ago when tears rolled down your cheeks with laughter as Tapiwa Nyati was telling you about how much I loved my sadza.
“Is it true nhai Golden that you eat two plates of sadza?” you asked in typical fashion.
I knew you were selling people a dummy.
Remember that gigantic sadza we had when we went to the ZANU PF Annual National People’s Conference in Bulawayo in 2011?
We laughed about it.
I remember that habit of yours I learnt about tasvika muKwekwe pamakandituma zviya zviya.
I will never forget that cure for flue that you prescribed me in Gweru and it worked.
Oh how our faces looked when we finally got to Bulawayo.
I could read surprise in Teya and Fidelis Manyange’s faces when they finally hooked up with us.
Manyange always talks about that incident.
I am truly sorry that we did not have much time to discuss small issues.
Most of the times we discussed serious issues and ‘updated’ each other.
You always asked about my mother.
You knew she had suffered a stroke.
I have a question for you.
When are you coming back?
When will that gigantic frame of yours loom large in our lives again?
When will you come for the diary meeting and I comment on your dressing?
When will I pester you again for lunch money and ask about mari yetobacco?
You were a father, a leader and visionary.
You were the best, the greatest of them all.
You were, and are, a hero to me.
The void you have left will never been filled.
I have a million words to say.
You know all of them.
You know what is in my heart.
Go well Sir, my dearest old man.
I enjoyed many great moments with you.
Zororai murugare my great old man.
Zvorwadza izvi.