White Man Crawling

An Act of Terror

42 An Act of Terror A baker’s dozen of the more committed ZANU-PF Women’s League were gathered on the stoep of a palatial farmhouse in the Mazoe Valley. The farm, once a highly productive citrus estate, was now used as a weekend retreat by five hundred pounder Amai Pretty Karigamombi-O’Dare. She could shamble, just, but she required the assistance of two powerful bodyguards to lift her into and out of sitting or reclining positions. Her friend, present at this meeting, and wife of the Minister of Spare Parts (Pretty’s husband was only a Governor) had ceased walking, but she could still roll and, occasionally, slump. Her name was Lovely Bumbu-McBhambuDzvova . The lightest woman there, wife of the Deputy Minister of Workshops, Conferences, and Heroesplushes, weighed in at a pitiful three hundred pounds. To her shame, she could still walk. Her name was Loveliness Vandzihwa The purpose of the meeting was to help the government sort out its fuel crisis. Food was not a problem. Witness the boxes of Kentucky Fried Chicken and chips that were strewn all over the stoep. Sweetness Chamupupuri had brought out this favourite food of the Women’s League in her husband’s army helicopter. The pilot had been sent back to Harare with orders to bring out more of the same, plus as many crates of coca cola as the helicopter could carry. No, food was not a problem, especially since the government’s Operation Murambatsvina had made available to members of the Women’s League, Youth Brigade, police, army and other patriotic groups, fruits and vegetables, seized from filthy vendors, at give-away prices. But fuel was a problem, especially now that even members of the Politburo had to leave their Mercedes Benzes at home and seek, shudder, public transport! The idea came from another half-tonner, Graciouslady Zvambarara-Boomdeeay, wife of a senior CIO operative who may not be named. They had all listened with reverence to the Minister of Fuel Procurement and Vaseline suggesting exciting alternatives like peanut butter, ethanol, and oil from coal. To help them listen with reverence they swathed themselves in metre upon metre of cotton, printed with 43 portraits of our beloved Leader. These bolts of cloth could prove dangerous. Wasn’t Pritty O’Tititi expelled from the Women’s League for not noticing that one of her portraits was upside down? And wasn’t Donalbain ‘pump my tyres’ Pombera disappeared for having one of hers in the vicinity of her jumping castle? Graciouslady got the idea after a drumstick binge, which built up so much gas inside her that she levitated two centimetres above her waterbed. When the gas began to escape, shifting her laterally and then bringing her down to earth, so to speak, she realised its potential as a source of energy for driving tanks, armoured cars, and bulldozers in the government’s mission to purge its cities of those ungrateful human maggots, the poor. She it was who designed the plastic gas bags called Vhuvhuta, which the Minister of Fuel Procurement urged the people of Zimbabwe to utilize. At collection points all over the country, modified bowsers were ready to receive gas manufactured in the stomachs of patriotic Zimbabweans. Peasants were encouraged to eat more cabbage, whites to eat more baked beans, and ‘coloureds’ and Indians to eat more savoury meatballs. And for the nouveau riche, Kentucky Fried Chicken with chips soaked in tomato sauce, and lashings of Coca Cola. The women at the gathering on the stoep of Amai Pretty’s farmhouse had volunteered to test a more efficient method of collecting the gas. The experiment was conducted by Joint Operations. The women were attached by means of flexible plastic tubes and rather ticklish grommets to a petrol bowser; and while they chatted away about what geniuses their sons were and what ladies their daughters were; what fun they’d had in Sun City and the Seychelles; how ungrateful their servants were; which part of the chicken they liked best; how their favourite food of all was chips, the greasier the better… while they chatted and chewed and sucked and shrieked, they manufactured gas and passed it on to the bowser. That was when the Act of Terror was perpetrated. No one knows for certain who was behind it, except perhaps the only surviving member of those heroic Women’s Leaguers gathered, that fateful day, on Amai Pretty’s stoep: Percy Ndanga D’ndichiri Fitzkudya-Smith...