The Zimbabwean News (2)

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Mutambara goes home

MUTARE - Arthur Mutambara, leader of the pro-Senate faction of the MDC, held a thunderous home-coming rally, punctuated by song, dance and ululation from a crowd that included traditional leaders from the Mutambara clan at the weekend, according to the party’s spokesman.
The rally, held at Nedziwa Business Centre, was attended by the party’s entire senior leadership.
"The Mutambara clan, represented by eight traditional leaders, set the tone for the colourful occasion by performing traditional rituals as they sought to give their son, guidance, moral and spiritual send-off into the world of politics as the MDC leader and the possible messiah who will redeem the people of Zimbabwe out of the socio-political quagmire from which it has been plunged by the Mugabe government," said the spokesman.
Mutambara told the gathering his party would not take away land from the people but would institute a land audit to determine whether the land that was allocated was being productively used to benefit the entire nation.
He also spoke about the split in the MDC, which he said was a necessary evil that had exposed the party’s weaknesses, and said the MDC was ready to fight and defeat Zanu (PF) and create a new democratic government to free the people of Zimbabwe from Mugabe’s tyrannical rule. Staff reporter



Editorial: We salute WOZA and MOZA

This week those incredibly brave women of WOZA were arrested yet again together with their babies and some male supporters. They have been arrested every time they have taken to the streets to prod our consciences about the various issues that bedevil our society.
WOZA has demonstrated on issues that need to be debated and addressed issues such as the astronomical rise in school fees, a new constitution for Zimbabwe, housing, peace, the economy. In fact - all the bread and butter issues that effect ordinary people. And every time the government has mercilessly manhandled them into jail.
Young and old, the women together in many cases with suckling babies and toddlers have been beaten, thrown into prison, denied sanitation, food and water, medical treatment and access to their lawyers.
But they keep coming back for more. They never give up. They even offer themselves for arrest in solidarity with other members, knowing full well the inhuman conditions under which they will be held in filthy, lice-infested, stinking cells, sleeping on concrete floors with no blankets, hungry and thirsty.
We salute these women and are delighted that the men of Zimbabwe, not to be outdone, have at last risen to take their place beside them. For too long, men have taken a back seat while the brunt of Mugabe’s wrath has fallen upon these women.
Thus we salute, too, the formation of MOZA. May their courage match that of WOZA and may they persevere until victory is ours.


Word for Today

Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Saviour. - Habakkuk 3;17


Deep water

An editorial in the Tablet, an international Catholic weekly published in the UK, comments on the absence of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland this year during the annual marching season (July); ‘gradually the old hatreds seem to be diminishing.’ The divisions in the province go very deep but it seems slow but huge progress is being made in healing the rifts of centuries.
And in South Africa people are reflecting on the amazing events that transformed their country from a rigidly divided society into one where freedom and democracy are enshrined in a new order. These are truly extraordinary achievements and in the gloom surrounding Lebanon it is good to know that people can come together and recognize their common humanity.
But they have had to go deep to reach this point of reconciliation. At one point in his mission Jesus tells his followers, ‘put out into deep water’ (Luke 5: 4). It may be a good fishing tactic but it also has symbolic meaning. Sometimes a person has to reach deep within to find the courage to reconcile. There is a passage in Antjie Krog’s book on the South African Truth Commission hearings, Country of My Skull, where an elite Afrikaner policeman, Col. Roelf Venter, one of the notorious Vlaklplaas Five, reaches into these depths:
‘Then I was not sorry because I thought it was right. Now I know that it was wrong and I regret my deeds.’ This sounds very ordinary, but according to psychiatrists Venter has made a very difficult and crucial leap with this statement allowing for a space where change is possible: then it was right now it is wrong. What makes this a psychological breakthrough is that it is almost impossible to acknowledge that the central truth around which your life has been built is a lie. At the risk of the disintegration of your self-image, you would rather keep on denying any wrongdoing.
What makes this account so moving is that Krog, obviously a deeply sensitive and courageous Afrikaner herself, realizes that she has ‘more in common with the Vlakplaas Five’ than with those who tried to excuse themselves saying, ‘we never knew …’
Bitter conflicts show starkly the divisions in humanity and there are countless other lesser ones that are not so clear. There is a danger of glossing over these and leaving their resolution to others. ‘It is not my business.’ Yet it has been said many times, by many prophets and in many different ways: where some are in thrall all are in thrall. This comes home to us in Zimbabwe today. We are a divided society and we need to go deep to discover what is common to us all. Now we prefer old prejudices that shield us from looking into ourselves. But one day it will all be clear. Why not today?



A night with Harare’s working sisters
BY ALEXIO RASHIRAI
It is Friday, 9 pm and Abigail is standing on the side of the road wearing a skin tight skirt, cunningly designed to expose the maximum amount of thigh. A Toyota land cruiser screeches to a halt beside her and a man snaps off the ignition. As the car shivers into silence, the haggling begins. Twenty minutes later Abigail is back with z$2 million in her pocket. The ladies call it road patrol, they hoodwink the police by pretending to be hitchhiking and motorists stop to pick them up.
After dealing with her customer, Abigail looks at her watch it’s time to go to a nightclub. We enter the dimly lit bar and sit in the corner where we are later joined by her friends.
John, Abigail’s second customer of the night arrives. He is scanning the crowd looking for her. He comes to our table and Abigail quickly gives an introduction. She has already warned me: "He does not want me to talk to men."
John, clearly one of Zimbabwe’s nouveaux rich, pulls out a wad of Zimbabwe dollars and orders beers. "What car do you have today?" asks Abigail as John takes her out to conclude their business. Moments later Abigail is back with $5 million in her purse. "John says he is going to a funeral outside Harare, you never know maybe he has gone to another girlfriend," she complains.
Abigail and her friends share flats in the capital and take turns to bring their clients home. Their job has its risks. "Some clients refuse to use condoms and I charge extra money," says Abigail. "That is danger allowance," Anna chips in. But Florence disagrees: "Anyone who refuses a condom I will just say bye because dying of AIDS is painful."
Some clients try to cheat them. "What they do is give you the money here in the bar and take you to their homes. After sleeping with you they demand their money back. If I am going to a client’s home I will leave the money he has given me to a friend," says Anna the veteran leader of the group.
Debra admits: "I will never go to a client’s home again. One day I went with a certain man to one of Harare’s posh suburbs and he paid me good money. Then around 3 a.m. he told me to go. I said: ‘how can I go at this hour?’ and the man said his wife could come home at any time."
Abigail recalls an incident with a jealous wife. "One Saturday my other boyfriend decided to take me for a braai. The car had a puncture so the boyfriend removed the wheel to have it mended. His wife, I don’t know where she came from parked her car beside his and asked me what I was doing in her husband’s car. She grabbed my collar and I removed my stiletto heels and bashed her head. When the husband came she was bleeding," she adds: "He calmed her down but I was with him again the next day."
Debra takes a mirror from her handbag and begins to reapply her make-up. She tells me that it is in the late hours that the "big fish" with money come in. Anna boasts that she is in love with a top government official. "That guy pays, every time he comes from his overseas trips I am given foreign currency. Last month he gave me US$100, but he is very jealous. He does not want me to enter bars and says I should stay at home. I am not used to that," she says.
Debra is not in this business out of choice. She used to work in a supermarket but could not earn enough to support herself. Economic hardship forced her into a life of prostitution, now on a good week, especially at the end of the month she can earn an average of $40 million. "I was decently married," she says. "My husband was retrenched and he went to South Africa to look for a job and it’s now five years. He does not write letters or send money. I am looking after my three children. It’s difficult to stay with children when you are doing this business. So my children are in my rural home with my mother. Every month I go back to give the children groceries. I never wanted to be in this business." - All names have been changed to protect identities.




If we have meaning, we have life
BY DEBBIE JEANS
Having just returned from the fourth talk in London, together with Dr Ingrid Landman, it was time for soul-searching on where we have come and where we stand right now with regard to living in Zimbabwe. The 15-hour flight (we went via Lusaka to get fuel!) gave me time to analyse my thoughts and feelings - to bring them out into the open, to say what I honestly believe about our situation, our decision to stay and even to dare to think out loud about dreams for the future.
Ask us to talk on health, fitness or medical issues ... off we go with confidence in our subject, delivering with conviction, scientific hard facts and figures. Now having been asked to talk to Zimbabweans living outside, on issues of the heart (me) and head (Ingrid) and suddenly we are faced with our core values, stripped of the guises of daily commitments, families to keep us busy or work and social callings which are all too easy to hide behind.
There is the reality in economic terms - horrific. The AIDS stats, the orphans, the tragedy of millions who struggle daily to do what needs to be done to feed the children. Then the brain drain, the broken hearts who are forced to leave the land of their birth, the broken spirits who still live here and strive against overwhelming odds to just "be". And, of course, the irritating and infuriating power cuts, water cuts .... passport queues and the unbelievable demands of simply trying to run a business or keep a job.
Yet, time and again, throughout history it is at moments such as these that we, as human beings, are at our best. Dr Victor Frankel, survivor of four concentration camps, a psychiatrist and neurologist, had the opportunity to study his own obscene situation from within and without. His conclusion was that when we are stripped of all the material, physical and social comforts in life, we are left with the big question: "Who am I, what am I and why am I?"
Ultimately, it comes down to this: if a person has meaning, s/he has hope and s/he has life. When we have to struggle towards a freely chosen goal, we are driven to verbalizing the word "love". In other words, we have to act, to put our own needs aside to ensure the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual growth of another human being, a neighbour, a child, a relative, a friend, a countryman worse off than ourselves. The simple law of nature dictates that this is the only way we can self actualise and become who and what we were meant to be!
In today's first world or in what many of us would describe as the "perfect world" the situation is so imperfect that as much as 60% of clinical depression can be traced to an intrinsic lack of meaning in life! Frankel calls it the "existential vacuum." We may try to disguise this emptiness in the depths of our soul by applying social "band-aids" to our lives in the form of an excess of activities which give us an instant gratification or "high". Material comforts, money, pleasure seeking, shopping, gambling, and any excessive behaviour which keeps us from stopping for a quiet minute to look "inside and deep down."
We try to keep busy, but at the end of the day, and certainly at the end of our lives, we are hit by the tidal wave of that spiritual vacuum. In this chapter of Zimbabwe’s history, this is what I believe we have learned. Our children have seen how we struggle, how we come together to help each other in order to give them a fighting chance. By constantly taking the pain from the past and learning from it, we are passing on the lessons to the next generation. That they may take the baton and move Zim to a higher, healthier and happier place in the future.
Twenty six years have seen two generations of Zimbabweans. Regardless of ourselves and our persuasions, the universal laws and principles apply. Principles of life do not take sides, cannot be "used" and cannot be changed. When we live in accordance with them, we are at peace with ourselves and on purpose with our path. When we live against them, sooner or later we die - morally, ethically, spiritually, emotionally. We become consumed by the disparity and the dark side takes over. We eventually self-destruct.
Never doubt the principles of fairness, integrity, honesty, human dignity, service or contribution and spiritual growth. So make the difference. Stick your neck out, bend down to lift a fallen kindred soul, carry the ones who are too weary to continue. We hold the future in our hands, our hearts and our ability to respond to every moment in a way that builds, upholds, uplifts and supports what is right, good and God's way; no matter the personal pain or discomfort.



Brain drain gathers pace: Employers can do little to keep skilled personnel when salaries constantly lag behind astronomic inflation rate.

HARARE - Amid Zimbabwe's deepening economic and political crisis, the country's skills base is shrinking fast in the face of an exodus that is wrecking its chances of future economic recovery.
The mass departure, mostly to the West and to South Africa and Botswana, has rendered ineffective efforts by both the government and the private sector to prop up the sick economy. Both have sunk billions of Zimbabwe dollars into new skills training - but most who complete the courses quickly depart for a better life elsewhere.
"Some 70 to 90 per cent of Zimbabwean university graduates are working outside the country," said Community Development and Women Affairs Minister Eunice Chitambira at a recent conference on labour migration. She said the heaviest losses were among teachers, doctors, nurses and pharmacists. Most health professionals head for the United Kingdom.
According to the Southern African Migration Project, funded by Canadian and British government aid, more than 50 per cent of skilled Zimbabweans surveyed said they intend emigrating either indefinitely or permanently.
More than four million Zimbabweans, just under a third of the population, have fled into exile since the country was plunged into deep economic and political crisis from 2000 onwards. Some 80 per cent of those who've remained are unemployed.
Figures obtained from the government's Central Statistical Office, CSO, suggest that among the general exodus, some 2600 highly skilled people left Zimbabwe between January and June this year. But employers and business analysts dispute the official figures, saying they are not a true reflection of the real situation. They note that hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans have streamed out of the country unofficially, especially into southern Africa, while others have left on the pretext of going on holiday, never to return.
According to the CSO, 540,000 locals officially travelled abroad last year compared to 375,000 in 2004, and analysts say a sizeable number of these people never returned.
John Mufukare, the executive director of the Employers Confederation of Zimbabwe, said the country's economic and political crisis was the major force fuelling the brain drain. Employers could do little to keep skilled personnel when salaries constantly lagged behind Zimbabwe's astronomic inflation rate, which surged to a record 1195 per cent in May and is predicted by the World Bank to hit the 2500 per cent mark next year.
"The figures of departing Zimbabweans, particularly the unofficial figures which are the real ones, are a barometer of the performance of the economy," said Mufukare.
While the public health sector has been the hardest hit by the brain drain, private businesses have also been badly affected. "Zimbabwe's human capital is simply draining away," said one economist.
An official at international courier service Federal Express, which handles visa applications of all prospective travellers to Britain, said the company had been inundated by thousands of applications. It is believed that more than 3000 Zimbabweans who entered Britain last year alone did not return to Zimbabwe, with most of them claiming to be attending schools in the UK.
Rugare, not his real name, a 26-year-old nurse working in London, said he uses an informal network of friends to send money home, "I rely on them because I do not have proper documentation." He says he sends the equivalent of a minimum of US$142 each month.
Rugare says he obtains three times the official rate on the black market, and there is no doubt that these remittances make the difference between extreme hunger and having food on the table for relatives still in Zimbabwe.
Officially, Zimbabwe is in dire need of any source of foreign exchange since the withdrawal of financial support by the International Monetary Fund. Desperate to tap funds held by some four or five million of its citizens in the diaspora, the Central Bank two years ago launched the Homelink money transfer system, offering favourable interest rates to exiles to remit money home through official channels.
But interest in the scheme has been lukewarm because the "preferential" rate remains far below what can be obtained on the black market, which has almost become the official dealing medium. When Gideon Gono, the Reserve Bank governor, visited South Africa to explain to Zimbabwean exiles the Homelink system he was shouted down at meeting after meeting. One exile, Joshua Rusere, said, "To add salt to injury, Mugabe sends his messenger to ask me to send my money to bankroll his regime when its policies drove me into exile."
There has been a mass exodus of white Zimbabweans, who once numbered nearly 300,000. According to the last census in 2002, there were just 46,743 remaining whites: 10,000 of these were aged 65 or more, and fewer than 9000 were under 15. - IWPR



Zim’s first all-women band
HARARE - Amakohsikazi is Zimbabwe’s first all-women band, put together by the Amakhosi Township Square Cultural Centre (TSCC) under the Women In Arts Project. Besides instrument playing, singing and dancing, the Women In Arts Project combines sound engineering, stage designing and more technical aspects of music. It is a calculated attempt by women to walk into the male-dominated technical fields of arts.
Most arts organizations and musicians don’t give women a chance, believing women are only good as dancing flowers. Amakhosikazi has already released an album, Ukuthandana, and another one is coming. They have toured nationally and are waiting for their break internationally.
Initially the plan was to group together experienced musicians but no one responded to the advert. Amakhosi therefore had to start from scratch teaching the women to play all the instruments.
"Women have been sidelined for a long time making it difficult for them to come out fully and participate in music," said one of the tutors.
Since then, the group has grown in strength and is now celebrated in local music circles. In an age that specializes in digital music, they are one of the few leaders in terms of live music. They recently took part in the launch of the Zimbabwe International Film Festival (ZIFF), backed South African mega star Yvonne Chaka Chaka at the Sports Diner in Harare.
The challenges they have faced include family problems, as they have to raise their families. They also have financial problems and need instruments to practice at home as individuals. Own correspondent



Words tool for liberation

JOHANNESBURG - With words ablaze and dropped jaws the grassroots poetry caravan hit Johannesburg last month. The Heart of Africa and Free Your Mind Publishing, with support from the University of Maryland, conducted a week-long poetry tour of Johannesburg, Soweto, Vaal Triangle and many other townships.
The tour featured two of the USA’s leading spoken word artists, Omi Kongo and Umeleni, top South African poets and Zimbabwe’s own Comrade Fatso. Workshops were lead by the artists, who have all faced obstacles and injustices as youth in the US and Africa.
In addition to teaching the prepared curriculum the touring poets shared their own experiences as testament to the fact that the performance arts can serve as a life preserver in even the bleakest of times. The word will be used as a tool for liberation
Comrade Fatso (Samm Farai Monro) is one of Zimbabwe’s most popular poets, combining poetry with the struggle for freedom. The grassroots poetry caravan included workshops for disadvantaged school children, community performances and outrageous poetry concerts.

The Streets

Walkin’ the streets everyday
No job, no pay
From City to Msasa
Zvikanzi ‘Hapana basa’
How would you feel
If you got a raw deal
No school, no university
No job, no opportunity
Let them come down here
See what it’s like year after year
They put on their cocoa butter
While we spread out in the gutter
Ivovo vane dzimba
Isusu tine Chapomba
Ivovo vanoenda ku Stars
Isusu tinoatengesa
We try to hustle
They call us criminal
We sell drugs
They call us thugs
Asi we struggling to get by
While they sit high in the sky
These Borrowdale crooks, High class tsotsis
Give us dirty looks but they real thieves

They live in comfort ‘cause of our sweat
They live in credit ‘cause of our debt
They drive pajeros and live in luxury
Thanks to the povo thanks to the misery
Asi inzwa ka shamwari
They are few, we are many
Vari madhara, Tiri ma youth
‘Cause the rot can never stop the truth!