Mandebvhu Talks “Zimbabwe”…

I’ve had it with elections. Zimbabwe has been in election mode since 1999. No fundamental change seems to come from any of it. So I am changing tactics. I have looked at everyone’s manifesto for 2008 and it’s all same old hot air. I am tired. But I am still going home to vote: this time for the man who will rev my engine. Yes, I am voting for a presidential candidate who I can bear to look at for five years. We have three presidential candidates, Bob, Morgan and Simba. This whole nonsense in Zimbabwe of calling the leader of a two-person party “the President” is what gets to their heads. Three years ago I parked my car outside Harvest House (MDC HQ), only to be shooed frantically away by a rather aggressive pimply youth: “Get away, that’s the president’s parking spot.” I wondered why Bob needed yet another parking spot, but I discovered this is what they call Morgan. Similarly, Arthur Mutambara had barely led his MDC faction for five seconds when I heard a friend in his party say: “Let me talk to the president first.” As another friend put it in utter frustration, when a country has three presidents and none of them can end this mess you know you are f*$%*d! But I digress, back to the line-up.

Bob

Bob is just too ancient. Despite guzzling Lucozade and obsessive exercising, he has become terribly unattractive to look at. Not that he ever was, with that little Hitlerite moustache. Saville Row suits - or is it now Shanghai flea-market row? - won’t make him look better. As they often do on terribly old men who can’t behave their age, the suits look oversized and ostentatious in the middle of such poverty. Around election time though, Bob dons those awful Mobutu-style shirts with his mug all over them. I will never forgive Bob for foisting this style of dress on women in his party. Somehow the tailors who make those clothes always manage to get his picture smack in the middle of a woman’s ample bosom, or worse, on equally ample buttocks. Though it must be said there is something quite satisfying about squashing that face as one sits down after being forced to attend a long rally in the 37-degree heat of Muzarabani. Failed governance aside, Bob as a man is quite frightening. His tendency to bang tables like Nikita Krushchev doesn’t say “come closer”. Neither does his foul mouth. Seven university degrees just haven’t bought him good manners. The most important reason I am not voting for Bob is the way he never acknowledges his wife in public. Notice how he often leaves Grace a few steps behind. Granted Bob was born in the days when men had to walk in front of their wives so they could protect them from lions, but now?

Morgan

Let’s look at Morgan. A president should dress well, so Morgan please lose the ugly cowboy hat. Morgan just hasn’t got the message that those hats are so… thuggish, so tacky. They don’t do anything for us girls. They make short men look like ducks with a disability. By the time the man emerges from under that hat - after talking interminably on his cellphone - I, for one, will have lost any inclination to listen to his economic plan. Those hats breed cowboyish unilateralism; we saw it with George W, Jonathan Moyo and now Morgan. Coupled with the Papa Doc routine that Morgan and his security men have now adopted, my heart just sinks. He will arrive at a rally in a convoy of 4×4 vehicles - a statement of the party’s values if ever there was one - with a dozen or so young men hanging out from open doors, wearing dark flea-market shades. Dreadfully unattractive. These same tontons macoute will proceed to shoo the poor working masses out of the way. Even some of us who still regard him as our “Comrade Boycott”, former chair of the NCA (National Constitutional Assembly), are too scared to come anywhere near the tontons. Morgan has an equally foul mouth, especially at his rallies, and in Shona. There is something quite crass about a president “shouting,” as we say at home, like that. Thankfully some of Morgan’s rough edges have been smoothed by a glammed-up wife. Susan looks ever so refined thanks to facial treatments from Theresa Makone, Morgan’s mate’s upwardly mobile wife. But, like Bob, Morgan always forgets that Susan is right beside him. Not a touch. Not a smile.

One who got away

I am so sorry Arthur dropped out of the presidential race. If nothing else the fellow knows his Pierre Cardin from his Yves St Laurent. I am sure he took the grooming and sartorial elegance module at university. Oh, and our prof can use power point! I don’t think Bob can turn on a computer. Can he? Every time he goes to donate computers to schools he always stands a safe distance from the critters. Arthur so loves his laptop. Takes it everywhere. His presentations might lack substance, but they are so well accessorised his audience is always agog. Sadly there is not much electricity in Zim these days, so he has to resort to his student politics ways of shouting - too stridently. Perhaps it is a good thing Arthur has dropped out, he needs to grow up a bit. The last thing Zimbabwe needs is a Thabo Mbeki. Too much book is not good. Look at where Bob got us having “eaten so much book”.

Simba

The man of the moment is Simba. I for one don’t care how many gallons of ZANU PF milk he was reared on. I will ignore that his manifesto barely talks about women’s rights. I just want his picture hanging in my office for the next five years. Who doesn’t want to walk into a government office and be greeted by that smile? Those funky little glasses just do it for me. Arthur, please pass on to Simba the power-point skills, and I am sold. And he ate just the right amount of book. Simba speaks calmly. Diplomatically. As a president should. He acknowledges his wife, Chipo. Since that day he lovingly held her hand as he went into Parliament to present his first budget as minister of finance, I just knew this man was going to go far. At his campaign launch the message I got was, this is my partner and we share a life. My big problem with Simba is his so-called backers, who love the Morgan-like big hats. Their looks and their politics just scare us girls off. Lose the men with the hats and big tummies, they are bad for your image and your future, Simba. On the plus side Simba has so far eschewed the convoys and the insignia with his visage and other undesirable paraphernalia on women’s anatomy. Long may it stay this way. Ideologically, the men on that ballot paper are interchangeable. So technically, Bob has nothing to be afraid of. There is no regime change in the offing, just a photo change. I am voting for the man whose looks and habits I can live with for the next five years. At least when he messes up, I have set the political bar so low it won’t matter. After 27 years of the ugly and ancient one, give me a younger and better-looking man, in a PINK shirt. Got ticket, will vote.

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The destruction started from day one but the Zimbabwean people have trusted the lions to live with goats in the same cage without checking. By the time we started to notice that some goats were missing, nothing really was left.

This is why I am demanding as a citizen the involvement of the people in the government’s business. It helps for checks and balances. They are using all these dirty tricks we are seeing today towards elections just to protect each other.

These ZANU PF thugs are all together because they know what they have stolen from us. Vote for either of them and see how they are going to press for the last drops of our blood. Again, there is no independent ZANU PF in this world. Makudo ndemamwe kuuya kwemuridzi wemunda anotaurirana.

Many people were in the country months or years before corruption flames erupted to the ordinary citizens for survival. So in actual sense Mugabe has forced people to be corrupt because their pockets have been eroded for too long.

That also covered ZANU PF but the heat has increased each day and people are demanding why this all happened. Let us demand the truth and get the answer now than latter it sounded all fine then until the thugs swept everything for themselves and people couldn’t just afford anything.

Today Zimbabweans are scattered all over the world including Zambia and Mozambique. Smith must be weeping in his grave looking back into the former bread basket of Southern Africa’s potential to be very far today.

Many Zimbabweans in the country are traumatized mentally and emotionally because of the pain they are going through. We really need to recover and the process to achieve that is very necessary right now than latter.

We need a gradual awareness of ourselves as a people. We can only start to be aware of ourselves as a people of a country by exposing what really happened since 1980.

This is when I think the Zimbabwean people especially from Matabeleland can see, feel, and have faith in the process of change and rebuilding. This will also be a catalyst for a healing process.

I picked Matabeleland because the region has been marginalized by ZANU PF from day one. This is not time for Mashonaland, but Zimbabwe as a country.

ZANU PF leadership which includes all those who are trying to stand tall helped to destroy our solid culture. The destructive culture that was set up by ZANU PF has destroyed our society and families.

We don’t have a society that we had yesterday before Mugabe came. We don’t have the family that we had when we teamed up with Mugabe to fight Ian Smith.

Why did Mugabe kill that after he has used us? If there are few who are still being used by Mugabe they must know that it is not taking them far from now. Run to the shelter before it rains.

We just need to be processed altogether so we can enter into a new Zimbabwe. Africanism is okay but if it is used by leaders to benefit themselves on the expense of the majority, I say it is an evil weapon used by these African leaders to blame the West when it is their fault. This must stop and people must step up for that to happen.

It is widely known to be a true fact that Zimbabwean life style from top to bottom is unmanageable. No matter how hard working Zimbabweans can be, it remains a fact again that living is not just working.

Zimbabweans are enduring life if not living it. This is why I say time is now to make the change and only those in the country can do it through the ballot in large numbers.

Re-identification of our origin must be part of the rebuilding process in order to make the change. Zimbabweans must surrender Mugabe’s instillation of corruption into our culture.

By so doing we will be regaining trust within ourselves as a society that has been derailed of its solid culture by a single minded dictator. We need each and every citizen to have the willpower that will invigorate the building momentum in the country.

It is willpower within a society that can bring people together and rebuilding of trust within the destroyed society. New leadership must ignite this and must have open door policies if not closed up like we have lived up with for the last 28 years.

As a people, we need to know each other and understand ourselves in order to be a solid society unlike what ZANU PF has made us to be so divided of a people.

The division is just benefiting them as corrupt leaders because divided people are not powerful enough to face their leaders. We must make our own destination otherwise we will always be put in this predicament we are facing today in the country.

Let us make our own era that is for the benefit of all of us and giving ourselves a position to make decisions in our own country as a society.

This new era of setting our own pace as a people will begin our experience to built new behaviours, and detach ourselves from Mugabe’s corrupt instillation into our society. We will be in a new era of caring for each other and nurturing our own building process as a new society.

Since Zimbabweans have already started the journey in September 1999 of regaining their country back from the renegades of ZANU PF, we have faced many problems.

These problems include such as the world’s worst inflation, 80-90% unemployment, rampant killings of activists and oppositions leaders, infiltration of ZANU PF CIO’S into our party, and last but not least mushrooming of little Mugabe’s.

These little Mugabe’s have been trying to kill the people’s party but not this time around. This syndrome of little Mugabe’s has been studied closely and time is now that they must be buried together with their old aged master.

The bag of tricks must be empty by now as we see the running around of ZANU PF thugs denying their god of corruption. Those who are running away now and try to stand tall to take over from their master have done so too late.

Re-integration is encouraged but the truth reconciliation must be in place in order to thoroughly investigate what transpired in ZANU PF for the past 28 years. Such an exercise will motivate all Zimbabweans scattered all over the world to go back home and help to rebuild our country.

A true new Zimbabwe must be seen comfortable and welcoming to all Zimbabweans. The powerless who also are the majority must be given the chance in the making of a new Zimbabwe.

Leaders of the new Zimbabwe must break the secrecy barrier if Zimbabwe is to come back home. Trust, accountability, and transparency must be our first step after the elections.

Nicholas Nickson Mada
US based activist

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Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe looks older and frailer than I remembered him from photographs and film footage. He moves slowly and is thinner. He leans on the right arm of his chair for support as he speaks. As someone who campaigned against apartheid during my student years, I am slightly in awe of the hero of the liberation struggle against Ian Smith’s white minority regime as he peers at me through thick glasses. I feel like a student undergoing an examination by an eminent professor. The president is notorious for keeping people waiting and I think we have done quite well to see him by 9:15 a.m. this rainy Tuesday, December 6, 2005, after only fifteen minutes in an anteroom of the presidential palace in Harare. I know this will be one of my most difficult missions and meetings ever.

Nearly three years earlier, my predecessor as UN relief coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, a more polite and diplomatic envoy than me, had been kept waiting for hours in the presidential antechambers before being lectured for an hour about UN shortcomings. This time, probably because of the international publicity surrounding my mission, we do not have to wait and it seems I will be allowed to speak uninterrupted. It is a unique opportunity to speak truth to power. Zimbabwe was called “the jewel” and “the bread basket” of Africa after its liberation from white minority rule in 1980. The economy, the infrastructure, and the educational system were among the best on the continent. Twenty-five years later it is synonymous with economic collapse and political repression. It started at the end of the 1990s. Large and productive farms were nationalized and white farmers were forced to hand over their estates to ill-prepared veterans from the liberation struggle and political activists from Mugabe’s party, the Zanu PF.

The need for land reform in a country where a few white colonizers had claimed the best farming land is indisputable. But reform was brutally enforced in the worst possible manner for the farmers, the agricultural sector, and the population at large. Production plummeted, the black farm laborers lost their jobs, and little food made it to the markets or to foreign exports. A country that had had a large food surplus could not feed itself, and had to rely on foreign emergency aid and remittances from the growing number of Zimbabweans who have to leave the country to make a living. As both domestic and foreign investors fled the country, a general breakdown in the rule of law fueled the economic crisis. Mugabe’s government was however undeterred and continued to fund ambitious public programs that principally benefited the political and tribal groups that supported the government. To cover the enormous state budget deficits the National Bank was instructed to print additional money that created inflation, and later hyperinflation. Today the Zimbabwean economy is arguably more mismanaged than any other in peacetime.

I am primarily going to discuss the massive homeless problem Mugabe has created almost overnight through his “Operation Restore Order,” a brutal eviction campaign that began seven months ago. I spent hours yesterday walking among some of the seven hundred thousand destitute and homeless people who are living under makeshift plastic sheeting or in the open after being evicted from shantytowns across Zimbabwe. The evictions were not only particularly brutal and chaotic in the way they spread throughout the country, but profoundly political, turning out many who did not support the government party and leaving urban areas to regime supporters who would like cleaner and leaner cities and less competition for jobs. Those evicted were not only among the poorest and most vulnerable in the country, many were sick with AIDS or tuberculosis. I saw and spoke to dozens of families who had lost everything when their tiny “illegal” brick houses were bulldozed, or their small vending shacks burned and torn apart by security forces in an operation that began in May.

The presidential office is smaller and nicer than the grotesquely oversized staterooms that so many African presidents preside in. As planned, I start our discussion by describing the shocking scenes I saw in the slums of Hopely Farm, and the Whitecliff and Hatcliff suburbs on the outskirts of Harare. I explain that we need to discover how we can most rapidly and effectively help with food and shelter for the homeless. President Mugabe carefully enunciates each syllable in his academic English as though addressing someone who does not speak his language. He is immediately on the defensive. While acknowledging his awareness of “a problem,” he seems intent on downplaying a situation that has scandalized the world with its callous indifference to human suffering. His most outrageous comment comes as I try to impress upon him the urgent need for emergency shelter for the thousands of families with children who are at great risk with no shelter, no food, and no income. The UN is willing to supply tents immediately as a short-term answer to the problem.

As I press, the tenor of Mugabe’s calm, lecturing tone rises. There is a hint of barely repressed anger as he says, “We do not feel comfortable with the term ’shelter.’ Shelter has connotations of impermanency and we build for permanency.” As I seek to return to the need for immediate action he is clearly angered. “Keep your tents, we do not need them. Tents are for Arabs!” Stunned, I ask him to repeat what he said. “We want to give real houses to our people. Tents are for Arabs,” he says again. It is a phrase that in its absurdity will reverberate through my office. “We may have an accommodation problem,” Mugabe continues, “but the 700,000 figure is exaggerated. People can be sheltered by their families.” He embarks on a semantics lecture, suggesting the term “shelter” sends the wrong meaning: “The word connotes impermanency. We want permanent housing here. In terms of humanitarian needs it is not even as bad here as in South Africa. The South Africans have sent delegations here to learn from our housing programs.

“When I was a boy herding my godfather’s cattle and it rained I looked for ’shelter’ where I could find it - under a tree or in a nearby hut. That is shelter. You can provide food if you want to and build permanent houses with us, but not provide ’shelter’ in the form of tents.” It is one of those situations when you do not know whether to cry, laugh, or shout. With the UN resident coordinator Agostinho Zacarias and my OCHA colleagues Agnes Asekenye-Oonyu and Hansjoerg Strohmeyer, I am failing to get the head of state to admit the gravity of the situation in his country - that his people are in desperate need of precisely the things we offer. Through the UN agencies, the International Organization for Migration, and excellent local and international NGOs, we can help meet acute emergency needs. But instead of saying “How can we help you help our people,” the man wants to lecture me about the shortcomings of official UN terms and concepts!

I try to explain that there is no money for any form of more permanent housing since the donors are reluctant to help even with temporary shelter. They regard Zimbabwe’s problems as the direct result of Mugabe’s evictions, and his agricultural and economic policies. “Donors will only pay for temporary shelters. They think it’s indefensible that there are no tents allowed. Disaster victims accept tents in Louisiana, Florida, and in Europe. Why not here?” I ask. “The UN is politicized,” Mugabe says. “You want to provide an image of refugee camps here. Our attitude to tents is negative.” Nodding from the nearby black leather sofa in Mugabe’s small, white-walled office are the permanent secretary of the President’s Office and the ministers of foreign affairs and defense. It is difficult to know whether he believes what he is saying because the nodding ministers never seem to tell him what he does not want to hear.

The UN is politicized, Mugabe says, because it is dominated by Britain and its stooges - among whom I, a Norwegian, am soon lumped. Mugabe is particularly angry with the UN because a field visit several months earlier by Anna Tibaijuka, the African head of UN Habitat, our organization for urban issues and housing, had first alerted the world to the full extent of Zimbabwe’s housing disaster. He suggests that Tibaijuka would be better advised to visit Nigeria, which has a far greater “cleanup” program under way than Zimbabwe. “It is clear to us that the UN is being used by Britain for political purposes,” he repeats. “That is why we are sensitive to your own presence.” Mugabe’s body language and that of his ministers express their profound skepticism about the motives behind the UN’s work in Zimbabwe. Mugabe speaks slowly. “We are beginning to lose confidence in the United Nations and even the secretary-general.”

Urban renewal campaigns and removal of unauthorized buildings and squatters take place all the time all over the world. I had, however, called Zimbabwe’s eviction program “the worst possible thing at the worst possible time” when it was at its brutal height in May, June, and July. I had no interest in castigating the government of Zimbabwe. Apart from protesting against apartheid, I supported our Scandinavian assistance to the liberation struggles against the white minority regimes of both Rhodesia and South Africa. But we have to tell the truth about what is taking place in the country that President Mugabe rules. I lean forward, seeking eye contact, and try again: “The purpose of my mission on behalf of your fellow African, Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is to discuss how we can more effectively contribute to meet humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe. The challenges here are, as we all know, daunting: There are more than three million who need food assistance. There are one million orphans caused by AIDS.”

“We are willing and able to assist the people if we know whom you will cover and if you will do more to enable the work of the humanitarian organizations. We are less effective here than in most other places due to all the restrictions on our work. We use tents in the emergency phase for the homeless in Europe, America, and Asia. Tents will only be one of the ways we would like to provide shelter to the most needy of the hundreds of thousands who are homeless. I saw thousands yesterday who have nothing. Your government housing programs are small and still not completed. Those who live under plastic sheeting or out in the open want the tents that we can provide.”

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Howzit

I normally wouldn’t use this page for comment, but feel obligated to do so today.

I receive a weekly newsletter from Bulawayo that updates people on events there.

Is there any other country in the world that the people have set up a “pot hole” watch, where the President helps himself to the coffers of the Reserve Bank, where bread costs ZW$1.7 million (which is virtually nothing really - but if you don’t have the ZW$1.7 million…), where first aid and medical assistance in any description is out of reach of all but the rich and well-heeled?

Where the country is more often than not blanketted in darkness as the government hasn’t bothered to do planned maintenance on the Hwange power tations, where Kariba Dam wall is in danger of collapsing for the same reason?

Where running water and electricity are just memories of a distance past?

Where every activity you may attend is viewed with suspicion and a watchful eye by Mugabe secret police… where going to church is in danger of becoming a thing of the past as Police raid the services to weed out those who are not pro-Mugabe?

Where the few people that do work (under 20% of the population) walk to work as they cannot afford the bus fares, fuel for their cars, or cannot afford the servicing or repair bills?

Where children do not go to school because their parents cannot afford the fees (when I went to school in Rhodesia school fees were unheard of - and I received a government education) - where the simple, but necessary items - like ladies’ tampons - are just plain not available, unless you have a back account full of money that reads like the account number?

Telephones sometimes work, and computers, if there is power, struggle under dial-up access to the internet, and a few have a very slow broadband connection, but all these activities are reportedly monitored by Mugabe scum… although I don’t believe that.

It is everything and more - akin to the stories we read when I was quite a bit younger from behind the iron curtain.

This is the 21st century for Pete’s sake! When is the international community going to actually do something progressive - something that will actually result in some good coming to the wonderful people of Zimbabwe - instead of sitting on their hands and moaning about things that matter not in the grand scheme of things?

I hang my head in shame…

At least I try to do something by writing my thoughts on the internet! More than many of the leaders of some Western democracies have done…

Rant over.

Take care.

‘debvhu

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I consider myself a progressive human being and a good citizen. I grew up going to church. Although I may not necessarily be labelled a “good Christian,” I do believe in the value of some moral and Christian standards.

In that way, I believe in forgiveness, we all do wrong and need to be forgiven at some point, but we should never lose the lesson in the process.

This concerns one Zimbabwean citizen, Jonathan Moyo, PhD, a distinguished professor of political science turned politician.

I see the opposition is trying to bring together all anti-Mugabe people under a united front for election purposes. Please do, because it is all necessary, but I write to cry that please don’t include Jonathan Moyo. Hell, No!

I have nothing personal against him as a person, but I can’t forget what he did to us.

1) Who could have known that in Zimbabwe, state media could become so polarized, so propaganda spewing to the extent of rivalling the Soviet Pravda?

2) Who could have thought that ZTV could be so anti-people, pro-ruling party and predictably monotonous? ZANU PF is not a democratic party, never was. But they had some elementary pretence to democracy that they even let state papers expose some government scandals, until Jonathan came onto the show.

3) Here is a man who showed Mugabe how to control what citizens hear, think or see.

4) A man who hated democracy to the extent of bombing the Daily News! And then tried to close all independent papers, introduced Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act under the draconian Public order and security act and later brought Tafatawona Mahoso and company into a phony organization called MIC.

5) Now he wants to join hands with everyone to see ZANU PF out? Excuse me? He was a chief persecutor of the opposition, now he wants to be an ardent or zealous opponent of the former!

6) He is an educated fellow, very learned, full of double standards, hypocrisy and very stupid too! FYI, Jonathan Moyo does not disagree with ZANU PF in any way; he just failed to get what he wanted from it. For him to be given another chance through the opposition is like forgiving the now late, notorious robbers Chidhumo & Masendeke, who dramatically escaped from lawful custody, then employ them as prison officers at the same Chikurubi Maximum Prison because they know ‘prison issues’, no matter from what different angle. Hell no!!

7) “Jonho” tried to decimate the opposition when he was in power, now he wants not only forgiveness, but a platform to resuscitate his political fortunes from. He was the brains behind Mugabe’s 2002 controversial win, so let him go back there. If he is not wanted, it is not MDC’s responsibility to bail the man out. We may have forgiven him, but we will never forget! The guy is not as bad as you think, he is far worse. The opposition should be careful who it invites to this coalition, because they may lose a lot of public confidence. Do they want to challenge Mugabe on principle, or are they just another power hungry gang who want to use any avenue available to get into power? It becomes difficult to trust such people. Look at what Kibaki has just done.

Chinjai Maitiro enyu aya!!!

Masola Wadabudabu.

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