---

A big, bigoted and bare fiasco and farce.

How is it not a genocide, Charumbira?

Do you ever empathise and sympathise?

Is it by virtue that you didn’t lose a relative? 

Or that your clan or community was intact? 

Anyway, who has ever cared or been concerned? 

Are you going to be so conscienceless,

deceitful, careless and heartless that

your disgraceful and drivelling denial

possibly prospers in burying, brutalising,

deleting, discolouring, distorting and duping

historical evidence: facts and figures forever?

 

How? At least try to get real, if not sleek!

How is it not a genocide, Charumbira,

when the myriad shallow graves are in grief,

when the innocent were slain in great numbers,

in a deliberate way and with the aim or intent

to destroy that nation or group in whole or part,

when the scale and facts speak for themselves,

when the apt terminology and definition exist,

when the helpless victims and the survivors

are still nursing genocidal , psychological

emotional and social scars and wounds?

How can you have genocidal victims

and survivors on one hand,

and on the other, no genocide?

Charumbira ponder Ubuntu. Repent.

Cruel , crude lies like these tend to haunt. 

That you don’t grasp the right classification

does not only qualify you to be disqualified,

but it also behoves the world and peacemakers

not to stand by as you seek to demolish the word

from usage for the fear of heinous crimes perpetrated

by those who wanted to rout innocent and unarmed souls.

The truth is that it is a genocide, it will never be anything else.

I mean you and your mean partners in crime know and fear it. 

You can wish and try as much as you want:

the bitter truth is that now the world knows

about the Gukurahundi genocide and the pranks,

dismal delays and denials of the Gukurahundists,

beneficiaries and their circles of friends and fans.

If anything such a blatant statement that is devoid

of decency, direction, honesty and truth has bellied you

and your partners in crime that this ‘process’ has nothing

to do with truth-telling, healing , closure, human rights,

and the plight of the survivors and relatives but is a skewed,

unsympathetic and sick sham that has everything to do with

the protection and perfuming of the powerful perpetrators,

the privileged heirs, toadies and backhanders of the system,

and the eternal evaders of justice, truth-telling and transparency.

Why are journalists barred from covering the hearing sessions?

Deputy president of the Chiefs Council,

the chief truth that is that you clearly coasted

away from the bitter truths and cohesion,

yet this stage-managed trickery and foolery

is supposed to be cohesive and truth-telling, right?

By the way, when, where and how did the chiefs,

who are traditional leaders, get the capacity and jurisdiction

to carry out this mammoth task befitting of an international

independent tribunal? Are these community leaders not compromised

as beneficiaries of the system? Where is the authority of the Constitution

in this fracas? How is this charade victim-centred? Is this not a set fiasco?

Do you expect a sincere rightist, victim or survivor to buy into this sick scam?

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Ndaba Sibanda is an author  of 32 published books of different genres, sizes and persuasions. He is a three-time Pushcart prize nominee and a Best of Net nominee.  Sibanda is the author of Cabinet Meetings, The Immigrant With A Difference, Notes, Themes, Things And Other Things, The Gushungo Way, Sleeping Rivers, Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing, Football of Fools, Cutting-edge Cache, Of the Saliva and the Tongue, When Inspiration Sings In Silence, The Way Forward, Sometimes Seasons Come With Unseasonal Harvests, As If They Minded: The Loudness Of Whispers, This Cannot Be Happening :Speaking Truth To Power, The Dangers  Of Child Marriages: Billions Of Dollars Lost In Earnings And Human Capital, The Ndaba Jamela and Collections and Poetry Pharmacy. His work is featured in The Anthology House, in The New Shoots Anthology, and in The Van Gogh Anthology, and A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Poetic Intersections. Some of Ndaba`s works are found or forthcoming in  Page & Spine,  Peeking Cat, Piker Press , SCARLET LEAF REVIEW , Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the Pangolin Review, Kalahari Review ,Botsotso, The Ofi Press Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Deltona Howl, The song is, Indian Review, Eunoia Review, JONAH magazine, Saraba Magazine, Poetry Potion, Saraba Magazine,  The Borfski Press, Snippets, East Coast Literary Review, Random Poem Tree, festival-of-language and Whispering Prairie Press. Sibanda has received the following nominations: the national arts merit awards (NAMA), 2016 Mary Ballard Poetry Chapbook Prize, The Best of the Net Prose and the Pushcart Prize.