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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