A cautionary tale (Part 3): The people, supreme leader, the iron sheets

It is rather stupefying. The iron sheets are still talking. Why? How? The questions tumble uncertainly out of the people.

Forgive the people if they sound pessimistic and ungrateful. That their collective voice is shaking the expensive tables laden with cheap stolen iron sheets is unusual. The people have many times ranted themselves hoarse over the vice grip of corruption but their rants are normally ignored or swatted away.

So, forgive the quislings. They are not used to this attention. The supreme leader from his gilded hilltop fortress remains unruffled while making sympathetic noises to placate the cries of the people. From his magnificent perch in the clouds high above the land, he has a revolutionary bird’s eye view of the land.

The view of the land is limitless and unspoiled – unlimited by the vagaries of time or the narrow-mindedness of his people, so infantile in their vision, he fondly refers to them as grandchildren/ bazzukulu.

When he deigns to set foot on the ground, he constantly surprises his revolutionary origins. Once, as he powered through the east of the land in his luxuriously long convoy, the supreme leader gazed through his bulletproof window at a world of poverty.

From the plush comfort of his armoured vehicle, the supreme leader wondered to himself, “How do these people live through this sort of poverty?”

The people marvelled for the nth time at the supreme leader’s mastery of deflection. The supreme leader perhaps uses that good shea butter from the north. That good shea butter keeps him so oiled that nothing sticks on the supreme leader. That buck that should stop with him simply slides off him.

Mbu the supreme leader is apparently rather annoyed with his crop of iron sheet-reinforced leaders. Leaders he has previously defended as lowly fishermen and fisherwomen. Perhaps just the right calibre to further the regime’s commitment to incompetence and corruption.

Why else would he discard merit when appointing leaders? Didn’t the supreme leader, seeing how the land reeked of corruption, proclaim he would walk corruption out of the land? He walked off those calories much to the amusement of corruption.

Hasn’t the supreme leader routinely spearheaded prayers petitioning the heavens to descend and do the hard dirty work of uprooting corruption from the land? The prayers as unrepentant as the birds that refused to fly when the religious leaders of the land summoned them to fly corruption out of the land.

Do you not recall the anti-corruption madam who took to her job with gusto proposing fanciful things like lifestyle audits?

The supreme leader tolerated her fancifulness only to publicly admonish her for lacking patriotic discretion. Did the anti-corruption mistress not understand that lifestyle audits would force the corrupt to hide their loot beyond the land?

He corrected her, told her it was good for the land that the corrupt should maintain their loot in the land. The logic is sound because incest is a thriving family enterprise.

Did the supreme leader not throw up his revolutionary hands in the air – not because he was in a rap music video – but in tired frustration over the corrupt? As he waved his hands ‘from side to side like he just don’t care,’ he announced that his avenging offspring would not be as forgiving of corruption.

Meanwhile, this avenging offspring operates from the bosom of the finest corruption in the land, and yet tweets profusely about how his movement will kick corruption out of the land.

The people wonder how the avenging offspring will uproot the very essence of his father’s yellow movement and, therefore, his very own existence. Sardonically, they laugh, musing to themselves, “Are we mad? Do we look mad to you because you christen us ‘baazzukulu’?”

Yes, the people are mad. Even the official figures have pronounced the madness of the people. A second minister is in police custody over the abused iron sheets. This minister, when cornered over his part in the abuse of the iron sheets, branded the iron sheets ‘evil.’

He performed an exorcism – removed the iron sheets from his animal shed. Alas, the exorcism failed. The animal shed minister has now spent a few nights in jail awaiting his next court appearance. As he stews in jail, the madness of the people manifests.

From the dusty muddied village of the animal shed minister, his people cry foul. Dramatically, they beat their thin chests shrieking, “Our minister is now detained but we must stand with him and devise means of getting him out of custody.”

Forgive this madness. The people hate corruption – at least they say they do. The people want the soft life with all its trimmings but abhor the hard road leading to the soft life. The hard road includes giving up their thieving relatives. The madness of the people is in step with the agile deflection by the supreme leader.

What do you get when you wrap the people and the supreme leader in the talking iron sheets? A delectable rolex that tastes suspicious, is hard to swallow, and will certainly lead to intractable chronic constipation.

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The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu.