The Chant of Savant

Wednesday 25 April 2018

Letter to Tundu Lissu; please don't go back home

Dear Tundu,
I am happy to note that you are improving after some betes noires wanted to kill you.  I am writing this open letter not to diss or teach you the right thing to do. Although our media, and possibly people, seem to have forgotten you, I still remember you though with pangs and twangs due to what befell you as an innocent person. This is because, it seems, the attempt on your life has been treated as a normal criminal act while it actually is more than that.  You once said; this was a political assassination which isn’t new in our country. To me, condoning any form of injustice is as good as committing it. It is indescribable cowardice, mainly when this textbook cowardice is collective and systemic. The full-on attack on you seems to have been condoned or ignored for the peril of others to follow. Since the attempt on your life was made, four people have already lost their lives in mysterious circumstances while the powers that be sit and look as if this is not one of sacrosanct duty, to protect the lives of their people.
Today, I want to advise you not to go back to Tanzania after recovering. For, if you do, those who wanted you dead and those they used will ruthlessly assassinate you as long as the motive[s] behind the horrid attempt on your life is still raw and real so to speak. After you are done, they’ll purr and congratulate themselves. Their attempt on your life wasn’t a mere goof off or just an accident. If you’re an ethical john, I’d have advised you to jump the ship and join the ruling party.
 Thank Lord you survived. However, it is naturally a few and far between for a normal mortal to survive the hail of bullets like the one you survived. Those who wanted you dead are still at large and watching after the powers that be either failed to arrest them or negated its sacrosanct duty to the citizen. We live and die once. The leave God bequeathed you must not be squandered or underestimated. These ruffians mean business, dirty and serious business.  Although your assailants are known, they’re still referred to as unknown people. Aren’t they really people or beasts that are supposed to be in hellfire burning for their sins?  How can the powers that be, with all sorts of investigative machinery, fail to know and apprehend such criminals if there isn’t anything fishy? Had they tried to overthrow the powers that be would they still be unknown really? Who’s fooling who hither?
Unknown people are now a force within another. They recently killed Ben Saanane, Daniel John and Godfrey Luena all the members of the CHADEMA not to mention Aquiline Akwilina who’s allegedly killed by trigger-happy police.  Looking at and into such macabre assassinations and the status of the victims, Tundu, believe me or not; hate or love me my brother; they’ll finish you off. If the trio is the fish of normal sizes, then you’re a whale not a shark. If the victims were a danger to those who killed them, then you’re a disaster to these ruthless cowards. Believe ye me.  Chinese proverb has it that “a wise man makes his own decisions; an ignorant man follows public opinion.” It is very sad when one follows the opinion of the public that seems to have ignored him not to mention its willingness to become the part and parcel of crimes against others. I know; many would want you to go back home in one piece to continue with what you love most, politics. You once avowed that you’d go back home and continue with the struggle. This is noble. However, your life is the noblest comparably.
Can I remind you of the doyens that lost their lives thanks to the politics of death? Who are you compared to the like of Edward Sokoine and Horace Kolimba whom were sokoined and kolimbered respectively? Despite being in the upper echelons of the ruling cabal, the powers that be failed them miserably the same they failed you. What’ll happen to you in the eyes of such political cannibals who cannibalised those of their own?
In a nutshell, if your mother’s still alive, plus your dear wife, of course, methinks, they’re the ones who can tell you what to do. Shall anything occur, they’re the ones to suffer most grimacing with anger and griefs. Therefore, don’t dance with death my friend.
I know; you know. Political giants such as the late Oliver Tambo former South African National Congress Chairperson, Samora Machel of Mozambique, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and many notable people who fled their countries in order to fight for their liberation. Sometimes, you need to retreat in order to advance not to mention to go to exile in order to go back home in one piece and pick up where you left.
Source: Citizen, April 26, 2018.

No comments: