Mulumba is a UK-based contemporary artist.



photo CREDIT © Aurore Vinot


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FATHER MUGABE: UNMANNED UNTITLED
UNKNOWN (an apologia, by Lt. Joe Negro)





FATHER





MUGABE



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FATHER MUGABE: UNMANNED
UNTITLED
UNKNOWN



In Celebration of the Gifts Bestowed: AN APOLOGIA by Lieutenant Joe Negro



My Dear Father, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe,


Words cannot express the glory of your biblical achievements.

Your blazing vision is sustenance for humankind.

Your strength and poise: beacons of hope.

Valiant and selfless, you celebrated and preserved our God-given riches.

You were the noble enabler of divine dreams.

The reincarnation of our collective psyche. Our moral arbiter.


With your revolutionary sword, you single-handedly defeated our demons; taught us to forgive, and to turn enemies into friends.


To your loud trumpet, through thick and thin, we marched for prosperity of land and citizenry.


How proud I am to call you Father.


Grateful for the gifts you’ve given us.

Our soaring warrior spirit. Our smiling rebel soul. Every man a homestead stretching across a thousand abundant acres.


The drone of ceiling fans.

The smoke from cooking fires. The smell of millet beer. Sadza in the palm of our hands. The grasses of the veld waving in the breeze. Orgies of Chimurenga freedom music and euphoric dance.


All this you gave us.


And so, my dear Father, I trust you will forgive the trepidation with which I write this letter. After all you have sacrificed, how magnanimous to relinquish thirty-seven years of power with nothing but a whisper, and Grace.

Like many on planet earth, I have waited for news you will commence your well-earned rest with bated breath. Indeed, what progeny would not be elated to see their Father kick back after nearly a century of service to his children?


Need We ask more?


Your fortunate Son,


Lt. Joe Negro


Ps. My dear Father, time a premium given the late hour of your generous gesture, I have taken the liberty of preparing a modest holiday to assist you in taking full advantage of this momentous epilogue to your illustrious life. Considering your closeted penchant for all things British, and your fondness for Her Royal Majesty, Elizabeth the Second, in particular; I have hired a pretty red Volkswagen for the two of you to ride around town.

Enjoy your leisure, and enjoy a bit of laughter, and a catch up.

Not only is The Queen excited to see you, but you will be well pleased to learn she is black, so you may sit easy and appreciate her glory.

Regale one another with tales of the greatness of former times, as I regale my siblings with the triumphs of our Father, who art in transit.​



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WHITE PAPER ON FOREIGN SONGBIRDS



CHANCE AND GARDEN WALLS



Dear Donald,


Hello!


I’ve been mulling over your predicament.


I wouldn’t presume, except that we left on good terms in Helsinki. I know not many do.

Big.

I guess the advice I found for you was passed to me through the great grand-nephew of Mr. Mao.

He told me of the scourge of the songbirds. The Great Sparrow Campaign. A true history. Truly.

I guess you are more of a pupil of the Russians, but I’d say look into it. They might have something on Discovery, or A&E (do they stream?) or History (though they’re ate up with colourized Nazis)? All the Mao books are thick, or stupid, so I wouldn’t suggest dividing your VERY IMPORTANT time with reading. TLC?

In a nutshell: Mr. Mao had a protracted obsession with the scourge of songbirds. He tasked all the efforts of his ancient/new-born nation with the netting of the little birds.

He succeeded. The soils were cleansed of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow blight.

Yellow sun. White clouds. Right songs. I think that he was right; and, I know that you are right.

If the birds had been allowed to flit in and out of a stable nation, they may have carried influential foreign tunes, and diseases. Very unfair to the Chinese.

As a man of tall compassion, and deep concrete footings of empathy, you stand against the genocide that was inevitable when the fowl invaded, except for the lateral thinking of a business man/CEO/building developer/President. Your birds will never come into danger. The birds in your garden will sing good songs, unpolluted. They’ll never have to peck at intrusions, and nits. The violence won’t get over the high wall, necessary to be wiped from the good land. VERY WISE …


“At dawn one day last week, the slaughter of the sparrows in Texarkana began, continuing a campaign that has been going on in the Southland for months. The objection to the sparrows is that, like the rest of the atmosphere’s inhabitants, they are hungry. They are accused of pecking away at supplies in warehouses and in soy fields at an officially estimated rate of four pounds per sparrow per year. And so, divisions of Minutemen have deployed through Southern streets, their footfalls muffled by rubber injection-moulded footwear, and behind them, ICE bio-terror experts with butterfly nets, and pellet guns. Students and civil servants alike, in athleisure, and schoolchildren carrying pots and pans, with their lids, and quick American reflexes, quietly took up their stations. The total force, according to NPR, numbered 3,000,000, broadly, with Texarkana putting up 3,000 in their well-held territory.” Your people can avoid the taxing work, and prevent this familiar solution, if you can just raise The Wall to a reasonable height.


…..I think your wall can keep safe the songs of the good American people, if you build it high enough. Consider it, please; and, know I know you’d have come to this conclusion without me, so I need no credit.


Loyal!


Lieutenant Joe Negro



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MY BEST. SERIOUSLY!





Dude!


We must be friends! You sound supremely cool. I saw you are fat, and that’s okay.

Your robes. The glitter. Getting away with murder. I rub my hands and salivate. I understand all the tingly bits… Many of my uncles are exactly like you. I give them love, and the love comes right back.

Also, I have this friend, Kim. You might know him. This guy throws mad parties… mad I tell you! You have to elbow in. Anything you want. It comes apart at his joints.

Hurry up getting back to me. We’re going to throw shit down! You will love me.


Yours truly,


Lieutenant Joe Negro


p.s. If Muhammad will not come the Lieutenant, the Lieutenant will come to Muhammad.


from the desk of the Lieutenant*



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A PERSONAL NOTE (not for public consumption) TO MY SUPREME FRIEND





My Supreme Friend Kim,


I am so distraught, you will not believe.

This morning, sat at my desk, minding my business peacefully, I perceived a fly buzzing crazily behind the blinds.

It immediately drove me insane.

I stormed the window for a reconnaissance, in a mind to smash the thing, where instead I was met by a fair-sized bee zipping up and down against the glass.

I didn’t stop to think.

I flew to the kitchen. Armed myself with two Big Value Pack, fast-acting RAMBO Insecticide Sprays. Jetted back to the window, and let loose on the bee.

I mean, you should have seen me.

I was a mad man.

Spraying and spraying. Straight in the face, and this crazy bee just kept going, buzzing erratically. The bloody thing wasn’t going to give up. In my rage, I lifted a pillow and whacked the beast. It fell to the floor and I watched it squirm and wriggle in poor circles, frantically fluttering its kinked wings at a last bit of hope.

Then it hit me.

I looked up.

What have I done?

It’s a bee. A fly okay, but a bee? It would not have bitten me. All it wanted was out. Why had I simply not opened the window?

I looked down.

The crazy fucker was still bobbing about, so I leaned into my best squat position, and drove my heel into its abdomen to end the misery.

It was so evil.

All day I have been mortified by my behaviour.


Anyhow, apologies for dropping this on you, but I feel much better already.

Only you get this.


Your Devoted Friend,


Lt. Joe Negro


p.s. Am in Switzerland next weekend. My trunk’s tight this minute. Got any spare change kicking about? Going to hit our old stomping grounds and boogie.

Remember them?

Good times.........


from the desk of the Lieutenant*



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OBIT LEAK!





I must sound the alarm!


My dear friend Vladimir is no longer the man whose soul I saw, all those years ago!


I am standing with my confidante and (now dry) drinking buddy, in the showers, at Bohemian Grove; and, as the owls hoot, and “W.” paints my feet in simple, effortless watercolours, he has just shared with me the news of another body double usurper.

I have copied the text of the original censored obit, from 2014, below. I am heartbroken, and I hope you will help me spread the word.

It is the off-season, here at the retreat, so I am not available for remote media appearances (skeleton staff here); but, given the current climate, I doubt I’d be given a mic for this news.


I make my own...



The Times of Saint Petersburg

26 March, 2014


Putin Dies in Bed Under Gelding


Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, 7 October, 1952-26 March, 2014


"eщё и истчо…"

-Cathrine II


Vladimir Putin, pioneer of Eurasian Surrealism, and for more than half a century one of the best-known and most bitterly contested figures in equine husbandry and politics, died yesterday in his bed, in Moscow, of a crushed heart. He was 61 years old.

The guy had been institutionalized for treatment of "the trots" three times since late November and been barred from wearing a shirt since catching his sleeve on a saddle horn in 2004.

Putin will have a permanent place in the history of equine husbandry, alongside his stated influences: Alan Strang, Kenneth Pinyan, and Yekaterina Alexeevna (Catherine II). When still in his 20's, and in competition with some of the most gifted riders of the day, he made an inventive and enduring contribution to Eurasian Surrealism. Alan Strang and Kenneth Pinyan, to name only two, were at the top of their form at the end of the 1990's. But it was Vladimir Putin, with his meticulous and persuasive visions of a man turned inside out, who brought home to the public at large the full potential of Eurasian Surrealism.

More than anyone else, he made his audience believe that horse-sense could make the best sense (and the most memorable sense, too). Master Hoofer to friends and enemies alike; as he grew older, Putin became known to an even larger public as an inveterate irritant, a tease who never gave up teasing, and a cosmopolitan who made "Su casa es mi casa" mean something in international politics again.

Putin had the pleasure of the company of Bob Geldof and Jamie Foxx at his last birthday, where Foxx trotted out his Ray Charles impersonation for a rendition of Georgia on my Mind. It was reported by Foxx' management that Putin afterward said: "I've only made five mistakes in my three lifetimes."

He was a master of what was once called ''the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing,'' and it was a pleasure of which he did not tire. With Andrei Arsenyevich, he produced two Eurasian Surrealist films, ''Un Cheval Crimea'’ (1999) and ''битвазвезда Потемкин'' (2003), which will live in the history of outrage.

In a letter, set to be released in the coming days, he has reportedly called for the annexation of Kazakstan, in order to outlaw the consumption (for food) of horses.


He is survived by his beloved stallion Orlov Khrenovsky.



Sent from my iPhone



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MULUMBA





artist@mulumbatshikuka.com