In the beginning the Party created the Freedom Charter. The country was without reform and whiteness was upon the face of the mining deeps. And the spirit of the Party moved across foreign waters, waiting.
And in 1994 the Party said let there be light, and there was light. And the Party saw the light, and that it was good. The Party divided the light from the darkness and decided not to charge the darkness, because it would have been unsporting to book a Nobel Peace Prize winner for crimes against humanity.
And the Party called the light democracy and the darkness racism and poverty. The evening and morning were the first day and the people cried Amandla! and Mandela danced for joy, although he creaked while doing it.
And the Party said let there be a firmament in the midst of the political quicksand, and let it divide the just and the disciplined from the despotic and the brutal, and it was so. And the Party called the firmament Parliament. And the evening and morning were the second election. And it was good.
And the Party went among the poor and downtrodden, and gave them peak caps and T-shirts, but it also gave them houses and running water and electricity and hope. It spoke of equality and difficult choices and transparency and an end to history. It showed a glimpse of a country not on its knees, but settled into starting blocks. It spoke a mean game.
And then one day the Party stopped speaking. It chose instead to spread the word through lengthy tracts of online text. The sound of voices and of singing waned and the clicking of keyboards and mouse-buttons waxed, and it came to pass that the Party discovered newsgroups and chatrooms. Soon news had become but chatter and chatter was the only news.
And at length the Party asked how a syndrome could cause a virus. And it spoke of the grasses and of the herb-yielding seed and of beetroot, and the Party said that it was good. And it heard no protest, for it is difficult to get a word in edgeways when you’re being buried vertically in a pine box while officials notch up another one to tuberculosis and cerebral malaria.
And then the Party said let there be lights in the firmament of heaven, caused by the afterburners of Swedish fighter jets. And it brought forth great submarines in the waters and the Party blessed them all, telling the economically anointed to take these suitcases full of unmarked dollar bills and multiply them, and fill your illfitting suits with love handles, for lo, I am starting to think we might just have hit the jackpot here.
And when the questioners questioned, the Party said put a sock in it and spoke of protecting airspace (from all those supersonic ZimbabÂÂwean suicide pigeons massing on the border). And the Party explained and explained and failed to understand that it had all been said before by a Mr Goering, who spoke so eloquently of guns and butter.
And the Party made two great lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night. It also made the stars. The greater light it called the SABC and the lesser light it called Snuki Zikalala; the stars were anyone Snuki deemed touchable, and who didn’t mention the thieves in Parliament. And all day and night they sparkled and shone, lit up by the flashes of the stun grenades shot at poor people demanding that the Party make good on the promises that had won it power and wealth.
And at last the Party said see, by our idolatry, by our silence, we have made a man and he shall continue to have dominion over the sand lice of the Earth and the locusts and vultures of the air, and over what cattle are still standing, and over all the territory of Zimbabwe, and over every creeping thing that creepeth, its belongings and children tied to it with string, towards Beit Bridge.
And whenever the man shall walk into a gathering of SADC delegates, they shall all cream their shorts for him and clap like it’s 1933 in Moscow. (And the Party made a woman, also, by taking from another man a bit of liver, but this needs more evidence: the internet, maybe, Mr President?)
And on the seventh day, in the 13th year, the Party rested and saw that its creation was good. Nobody else saw it, mind you, but they were not important, being racist investigative journalists, liberals, black lickspittles, Westerners, homosexuals, medical doctors and ambitious women who failed to work as part of a collective. Especially the ambitious women. Those … women!
So much for Genesis. The Exodus, southward, is under way. But what about a new testament? Is there a reformer in the house? Any stables in Bethlehem? Bloemfontein, then. Walter? Oliver? Nelson? Anyone?