At face value, there is a painting of prohibited vending,
but a finer portrait speaks of a real return of brutal biases.
The irate residents of Bulawayo are clear on the sad, sick issue,
they do not mince their words and minds about the ensuing conflict.
They know better than to call them vendors, for political invaders
have captured and inflicted their spaces and once-sanitary streets.
The raiders’ really rank filth reigns supreme in the residents’ backyards
as man-made mad manure permeates the victims’ peripheries and kitchens.
The leaders of the residents stress that the invaders are rude untouchables
since they are a vicious brainchild of the big, bigoted, ravenous deplorables.
As law unto themselves, the raiders run roughshod and seize bays, allot them
to their lot, while the Bulawayo City Council struggles to keep order in the CBD.
The streets are a horror, a ticking political and health time bomb and a haven
for drug- traffickers, political prostitutes, charlatans, villains and beneficiaries.
The Fifth Avenue echoes the brutality of the Fifth Brigade, a dogged malice
that still haunts and sickens Bulawayans ,albeit in diverse, divisive forms.
