By Munhamu Pekeshe

OUR small group of 10 had a whole luxury bus to ourselves as we drove from our lodgings in Pretoria to the airport.
We could all afford to have window seats to ourselves.
The bus took a route that passed through lush purple jacaranda upmarket residential areas.
Everyone remained silent as if in meditation.
The neighbourhoods were dominated by security gates and jacaranda trees.
Nearly every other tree had a white poster with the same advert, but different phone numbers.
Mai Maka broke the silence with, “Ende zvekuno zvakaoma asikana.”
We all burst out laughing.
She was not referring to the jacaranda trees or the high security walls.
These we also have in abundance back home.
We all knew she was referring to the adverts.
Every tree advert was offering male organ enlargement, service only a telephone away.
The ice had been broken and the group now engaged the subject in discussion. Did anyone believe such nonsense?
The number of adverts surely must attest to brisk business.
Had any of the males in the group secretly tried the recipe?
Was this a potential paper for the lancet medical journal on medical breakthroughs?
For our media was this potential news for a rare piece on African success?
The subject was eventually abandoned, arguments still inconclusive.
Several months later, Zimbabwean pastors have made me revisit the bus talk. What is a bigger miracle; the advertised wonder in Pretoria or the promises from a prophet’s prayer on the poor, poorly endowed chap from Namibia?
Or when ‘holy milk’ oozes from a pastor’s organ?
How amused would be Jealous Mawarire and Reason Wafawarova ?
I found their recent exchange in the public media hilarious.
When a vendor claims they have powder or a capsule that can make one’s organ add a few centimetres, such claims are loudly dismissed by the public and consigned to silence by the media.
Even by those of us who had a go at the mumvee prescription while herding cattle.
But when a prophet publicly claims similar results, like few months of uninterrupted organ growth, media houses go into overdrive to report on these heavenly gifts.
As we saw in the sickening report about one pastor who claims his organ oozes holy milk.
Sorcery is an ancient subject.
Kings used to stage sorcery competitions from where they would choose the best magicians in the best interests of the kingdom.
A kingdom without royal sorcerers, varoyi, was a poor and weak kingdom.
These constituted the Ngoma Lungundu of a nation.
Not having them was akin to being a modern nation without scientists, inventors. Over time in many parts of the world sorcery gave way to art of illusion and military science.
Illusion is a great art handed from generation to generation in parts of India, east and west.
It is based on myriad ways of tricking the mind through sensory deception.
When I was in Grade Five in Unyetu we spent one afternoon mesmerised by the magic of a guy from a neighbouring village; he would drill a thick thorn through one of his fingers with no blood to show for it.
All night I could not sleep.
The following morning I had finally decoded half the art; I could do the same drill on my finger provided no one was watching.
For the half act I still made off with plenty of nzviro that day.
That was until my act crumbled the next day and I was exposed as a nzviro fraudster.
Everyone was doing it, it was magic no more!
Years later, but still in the 1970s, in Mutare, I watched, for a cent, a man do magical acts.
We called him ‘Abracadabra’ since the magician always chanted the word ‘abracadabra’ during his acts.
Breathtaking stuff it was… cutting off his tongue and putting it back, making a boy lay an egg, converting newspaper pieces into Rhodesian dollar bills etc.
When he asked if anyone doubted these acts, I still promptly raised my hand.
He then threatened to turn me into a pig.
I dared him to do.
He started making preparations that included abracadabra incantations whereupon my sister broke into uncontrollable wailing.
I either chickened out or withdrew from the challenge; otherwise I could be a pig.
Today not a day passes without news of great sorcery of some prophet god fathered somewhere in West Africa mesmerising a miracle crazy nation.
The other day I was on my way to Marirangwe whereupon I noticed the section of the new road opposite Zindoga had become another Mbare terminus.
Great sorcery was at work, I reckoned.
Whereas elsewhere sorcery is now a work of art here it is a matter of faith.
It is that faith that drives whole adults mow grass, cow style, as some congregants were made to do by their pastor recently in South Africa.
Or the lack of revulsion when a pastor claims his organ oozes holy milk.
Today’s faith has created a nation of zombies.
I maybe a heathen in the eyes of some of these magicians, but Mwari of Matonjeni never had us stoop this low.
Mwari, God, as we have understood him this side of heaven for centuries, was mainly concerned with fertility of land and people and the great act was in getting the heavens to wet the land.
Every August we began the rain prayer season.
We were blessed with good rains, worked hard, got bumper harvests.
With bumper harvests we had the food and security to multiply.
We cherished maguta.
We cherished makorokoto.
At a much lower level sorcerers and n’angas operated, attending to lower level issues.
Now we abandon farms to watch the Namibian chap’s organ grow.
Could these be the signs of the times?