Tuesday, November 12, 2013

TANZANIAN PRESIDENT BENJAMIN MKAPA OWNS 11-12

Your Excellency, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania Benjamin Mkapa! Happy Birthday! But I wish to extend in advance my apologies for my mnemonics which, as  you have seen already, delivering an okapi rather than a Mkapa for image.  


I am sure, as you read this you get bewildered because you have never before heard about South African Goodman Manyanya Phiri.  That is not my problem, but it is yours.  The other name for your problem is called ‘fame’ or ‘power’.

You see, you powerful men and women will never know us minions but we all of us know you.


In the Kiswahili Language that you speak I heard them explaining that phenomenon in the following words: “Papa amevuma baharini lakini samaki wadog nao wamo” which in English I was rightly or wrongly told it means: “Indeed the shark rules the oceans; however it has no royal standing without the smaller fishes”.


Goodman Manyanya Phiri is one of the smaller fishes of these African seas and I was amazed to see that you were born today.
I am even more amazed just how you come to define the destiny of my father’s house in South Africa.


You see, Your Excellency and Third President of the United Republic of Tanzania, while you were still Minister of Information and Broadcasting, I rubbed shoulders with you at Ilala Dar es Salaam.  It was on the occasion of our graduation as Tanzania School of Journalism students, and a graduation that was dominated by Tanzanian Scribe (Mr Herald Taghama) and South African Yours Truly.


There was a video that the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania soldiers shot of the event in order to give me some bragging rights that I was once with an African big man like Mkapa.
I came to South Africa in 1994 and gave that one and only copy of the video to my younger brother and his wife to view (Their names are Mr Robert Phiri and Mrs Swazi Phiri).  They spitefully hid that video to this day.  I still struggle to understand what exactly I did to the extended Phiri family to deserve such spite.  However I marvel to realize that Your Excellency was born on this day.
I marvel for a number of other reasons.

REASON NUMBER ONE:MRS GRACE PHIRI-MANGONDE.
I have a sister who was born on the same date as yourself, in all Excellency.  Her first name is Grace.  She now lives in the other world.  I am struggling everyday to escape out of the dragnet she created with her life at my expense.  One of these days I will publish the complex life subsequent Mrs Grace Phiri-Mangonde was.  Suffice it for now to thank the eldest surviving Mangonde for coming to my modicum of rescue over these matters.  Her name is Mrs Sarah Sesi Nkosi-Mangonde.


I like all Nkosi maidens and gentlemen because they are not only royal blood, but they are also my maternal grandmother’s people.

REASON NUMBER TWO:MUISENG ENOCH MASHOALA.
I know marvel South African soccer star Benni McCarthy was born on this day too, but he has looked to me too confused to write anything about.  This is not to say that his boot is confused.  It is just the way the media has once portrayed him in relation to his sense of patriotism to South Africa.  I hope Benni reads this and tries to remedy his public image rightly or wrongly damaged by the mass media. Happy Birthday Benni.


However, to leave aside complex people like the much-admired Benni, I find on this day born someone most crucial in forming my life into what it is today!  He is a very senior security officer in the Republic of South Africa (that I would like dare to name).  Happy Birthday, General Enoch Muiseng Mashoala! Your story has for several times been written about on my blogs.  I love you, General, My General, because I believe you were put by God to cross my life-path, just as His Tanzanian Excellency Mkapa was equally predestined to shape my life as a journalist over and above soldierty.  I thank you both, Gentlemen and senior officers of states Tanzania and South Africa.  And in that respect, let it be remembered that in less than 5000 years ago we were one country from South Africa up until at least Tanzania, with out capital (named Rhapta) situated nowhere else but in Tanzania, if on the banks of the Ruvuma River!  But if today both of you, Mkapa and Mashoala want to raise Phiri’s name (biblically ‘Pharaoh’), PLEASE DON’T! You had better raise the name of God/Allah/Mvelinqangi/Mlenzemunye.  Indeed, my clan name is the oldest royalty in the world and at some stage us Phiris ruled the entire planet, but I as Phiri can never be bigger that our collective maker dubbed ‘God’!


I want to say Thank You, once again! And Happy birthday, Sirs! Maybe I write today to remind both of you, Sirs, that us Africans still owe the world the glorious return to both Ubuntu and the majesty of the land of Zion/Azania whose capital Rhapta was 5000 years ago!



REASON NUMBER THREE:SWAZI PRINCE ZANELE LLOYD NKOSI.
Refusing to derecognize any royal house on earth, I will on this day never forget that it is also the day a maternal cousin of mine was born.  He is per my last records a school principal at Siphumelele Primary School situated in South Africa’s Kaapmuiden.  If my maternal grandmother is a child of Swazi Prince Sigeyeza, the prince descends from Princes Amon Nkhosi who is in turn the son of Prince Gasa begotten by blog authors’s               

Once again: HAPPY BIRTHDYA YOUR EXCELLENCY, MKAPA!

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