{"id":1675,"date":"2010-02-22T22:13:15","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T22:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2010-02-22T22:13:15","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T22:13:15","slug":"memories-of-underdevelopment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/memories-of-underdevelopment\/","title":{"rendered":"Memories of underdevelopment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is\u00a0 news<\/a> from The Times<\/em> about Robert Mugabe’s physiology.\u00a0 Apparently, he nods off to sleep every few minutes, even when meeting foreign visitors.\u00a0 (HT:\u00a0 Normblog<\/a>)
\nThe Times article mentions the two main contenders for the leadership of ZANU (PF) following Bob’s always-imminently-predicted-but-never-quite-arriving\u00a0retirement:\u00a0 Emmerson Mnangagwa and Solomon Mujuru.\u00a0\u00a0One would think that the Zimbabwean Vice-President, Joice Mujuru, who is likewise a ZANU (PF) nomenklatura, <\/em>would perhaps also be a contender, but she is\u00a0married to Solomon, so he takes precedence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She is more famous in Zimbabwe under her chimurenga<\/em> name, Teurai Ropa (or Spill-Blood) Nhongo, and for leading a team of guerrilla fighters into battle while pregnant.\u00a0\u00a0 Because she joined the struggle (for Independence) in her teens, she did not finish high-school; to her great personal credit, she completed her O-levels after Independence and while\u00a0a Cabinet Minister.\u00a0\u00a0 In the year she did O-level English, a novel by George Orwell was on the syllabus, leading to her\u00a0infamous stage whisper at the official opening by then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe Institute for Development Studies;\u00a0\u00a0when the VIPs were led to a different (and much better) buffet than that provided for the other people present, she was heard by all to exclaim,\u00a0 “But this is just like Animal Farm!”<\/em>
\nHer husband also had a loud voice.\u00a0 When I first met him, he was calling himself Rex Nhongo, and I did not then know what he looked like.\u00a0 A mutual friend\u00a0introduced us\u00a0using only first names as we happened upon each other buying groceries one evening after work in Twelve Gods<\/em>, a foodstore and delicatessen in the low-density (ie, formerly whites-only) suburbs of Salisbury (as it then was).\u00a0 Making conversation while we stood in the queue, I\u00a0asked, \u00a0“And what do you do for a living, Rex?” <\/em>In a booming voice which scared the living daylights out of the white customers in the shop, he replied, “Oh, I’m Commander-in-Chief of\u00a0the Army, son!”<\/em> Whether intended or not, this statement got the three of us to the front of\u00a0the queue\u00a0immediately.\u00a0 The mutual friend who introduced us is now himself a Cabinet Minister, one of the MDC contingent in Zimbabwe’s Cohabitation<\/em> Government.
\nUPDATE [2011-09-12]:\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>In August 2011, Rex Nhongo’s body was found after a fire destroyed his farmhouse.\u00a0\u00a0 He was 62, and may have been killed or prevented from moving prior to the fire.\u00a0\u00a0 The Guardian obituary is here<\/a>.
\nFOOTNOTE:<\/em><\/strong>
\nNote that in maShona custom, a person may be given or may adopt different names over their life, and may prefer different names at different times or for different purposes.\u00a0 In addition, for reasons of security during the liberation struggle many people adopted noms de guerre<\/em>, so-called chimurenga<\/em> names<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is\u00a0 news from The Times about Robert Mugabe’s physiology.\u00a0 Apparently, he nods off to sleep every few minutes, even when meeting foreign visitors.\u00a0 (HT:\u00a0 Normblog) The Times article mentions the two main contenders for the leadership of ZANU (PF) following Bob’s always-imminently-predicted-but-never-quite-arriving\u00a0retirement:\u00a0 Emmerson Mnangagwa and Solomon Mujuru.\u00a0\u00a0One would think that the Zimbabwean Vice-President, Joice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-history","p1","y2010","m02","d22","h22"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}