Buried Treasure

Buried Treasure

‘Grandpa,’ said Thoko, ‘My teacher is always talking about Judgment Day. She says on Judgment Day we shall all have to answer for our sins. But when is Judgment Day? Is it coming soon?’

‘Judgment Day,’ I explained, ‘comes every five years. In a Christian Nation, it’s the name we give to Election Day. That’s the day when we all make a judgment on the sins of government, and decide whether to throw them out.’

‘My teacher didn’t say anything about elections,’ objected Thoko. ‘She says that it’s the day when all the graves have to be opened.’

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘I was coming to that. You see, bad governments bury all their sins and mistakes in the ground. So the first job of the new government is to find all these graves and open them up, so that the sins of the previous government can be revealed and investigated.’

‘Huh,’ laughed Thoko. ‘You’re just making up one of your stories. When I was a little girl I used to believe all your stories!’

‘You don’t believe your own Granpa!’ I exclaimed, as I picked up a copy ofThe Boast. ‘Look at the front page! Two billion in fifty pin notes, dug up on a farm of former minister Mr Awful Litako!’

‘Good gracious,’ said Thoko, as she picked up the paper. ‘The money was even found in a coffin, down in a grave, with concrete poured on top! What on Earth was he doing? Why bury money? Had he stolen it? Is he a witch?’

‘Nobody knows,’ I replied. ‘Some people say that he believes that money grows on trees, so he planted all this money to grow an orchard of money trees. It was seed money for his development programme!’

‘Silly man,’ laughed Thoko. ‘Seeds can’t germinate inside a coffin!’

‘But he doesn’t know that!’ I laughed. ‘He’s not an educated person like you. He never completed his Grade Seven.’

‘So what else has been dug up?’

‘Graves are being found over the country. Huge graves full of bicycles and motorbikes!’

‘But why bury bicycles?’

‘Some people say that the sinners planned to flee to Malawi before their sins were discovered.

‘Have any other sins been dug up?’

‘Lots of them. The entire Task Force, which is supposed to look for suspicious graves, was found dead and buried.’

‘Wasn’t that against the Constitution?’

‘The Constitution?’ I laughed. ‘The New Constitution was also murdered and buried. The coffin was lowered into a very deep grave and covered with twenty metres of concrete. On top was built a heavy marble mausoleum, which was so large and magnificent that it took eight years to build and cost over seven hundred billion. On it was carved the words Freedom and Justice For All.’

‘And did the former president know about all this?’

‘According to what they have dug up, he never was the president!’

‘What? Has he been dug up? When did he die? Did they find somebody else in the grave?’

‘He’s still alive, so instead they dug up his parents from their grave. And the parents admitted that they were foreigners!’

‘Now I really don’t believe you,’ laughed Thoko. ‘How could dead people have talked?’

‘The police have their methods,’ I replied grimly.

‘But how were all these dirty secrets buried for years without anybody knowing?’

‘The government bought a hundred black hearses from the Chinese government,’ I explained. ‘They would move around at the dead of night, supervised by the deadly Red-Lipped Snake.’

‘So now all of these graves have to be dug up?’

‘Exactly. There are probably thousands of them, and it’s the job of the new PF government to dig up all of them. PF means Pathology and Forensics. All government departments are now fully occupied with digging up the buried treasure, exposing the dirty secrets, re-discovering the judiciary, and investigating and prosecuting the culprits.’

‘But is the entire government supposed to be occupied with all this digging?’ wondered Thoko.

‘Of course. That’s what we elected them to do. That’s what Judgment Day is all about. The whole nation is waiting for the court cases. In the absence of any proper TV station, it’s our only form of public entertainment.’

‘But they can’t be doing this for five years!’ exclaimed Thoko. ‘What about all their election promises?’

‘Once all the exhumations have finished, they have to begin the burials.’

‘Don’t you mean re-burials?’ Thoko wondered.

‘Quite a few re-burials,’ I admitted. ‘Having exhumed the New Constitution, it will have to be re-buried. In fact the Constitution Re-Burial Committee has already been appointed, complete with three bishops to arrange the funeral. Similarly the Barotseland Agreement, having been dug up, and caused a great stink, now has to be quickly re-buried.’

‘But also some new burials?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We already need burials for Windfall Tax, Minimum Wage, Gender Equality and Free Schooling. Even as we speak, the Government Printer is busy producing the funeral notices.’

‘What about More Money in our Pockets?’

‘That has already been buried at somebody’s farm. The next government will have to find out where.’

‘And while the government is busy with all this digging and burying,’ said Thoko sadly, ‘the Chinese continue to dig up our copper free of charge, and bury it in China.’

‘We shall get it all back one day,’ I said.

‘When?’ she asked.

‘On the Final Judgment Day,’ I replied.

…Eating the Money…