A 9pm meet and greet at Harare International Airport isn’t the most wonderful thing to do on a Saturday night in the city that is permanently politically asleep. But welcoming a babe back in town softens the blow. A bit. The pot holes and dimly lit streets makes the going challenging. I usually try and aim my arrival at any working traffic light when it’s green so that I avoid any wannabe cling-ons. The up-side of making this journey in winter is that the police are nowhere to be found. It’s too cold for them to be out soliciting bribes from motorists en route to the airport. The last time I was stopped, a smartarse Hatfield policeman asked me if I was a man or a woman. My hair might be short and my tits small, but please.

Just past the last traffic lights there’s a whole lot of furniture and other household effects on the side of the road outside a block of flats. I noticed some people curled up under blankets on sofas, their roof a canopy of stars. The Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) recently issued a statement on the spate of evictions in Harare because tenants can’t pay their rent in foreign currency. This has become the latest demand from landlords in Zimbabwe.

When I got to the airport car park the boom was UP. Free parking? Unlikely I thought, so I pressed the ticket dispenser to make sure that I wasn’t being tricked. Nothing came out so I drove in and then I thought I’d better clear things up with the guy at the exit to avoid any arguments and potential penalties for not having a ticket. He was sound asleep with his feet up on the counter. I knocked three times to wake him up. He asked me if there was anyone manning the gate in the absence of the non-working ticket machine and I said no and he said well you’ll just pay the minimum then. Z$300 billion. I asked if I could pay him in old coins. He wasn’t amused.

Inside the airport not one arrival/departure screen showed any signs of life. Not even a faint flicker. Upstairs in the cafeteria a few lost souls propped up the bar. In the display cabinet plastic flowers and fruits outnumbered the few dried out queen cakes. And downstairs the only sign that worked was this little green man marking the exit door. It was right next to a portrait of Mugabe which I thought quite apt.

On the way out I was asked for my ticket.

So I said, the boom was UP, and there was no-one there, so here’s my 300 billion. And didn’t we already Have this conversation? He grumbled an acceptance. And we headed off into town, ready to dodge red lights all the way.

With inflation recording 2,2 million percent and economists like Erick Bloch believing it is over 9 million, the economic situation is so bad and distasteful.

For over 4 months the elected legislators and senators have not yet been sworn in. Fresh farm invasions emerged. Zimbabwe saw a number of activists brutally beaten, raped, arrested, killed and tortured.

The National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) has poor signals, accidents, overloading and inefficient departure and arrival times. Road transport has been hit hard by the high shortage of spares and fuel.

Water supply has been affected terribly and it is difficult to get drugs in health institutions which are affecting health service delivery. Raw sewage invades suburbs and rent is now payable in forex.

Zimbabweans, who were expecting the March 29 elections to give them the Zimbabwe they yearn for, were let down big time.

Soldiers and Zanu (PF) militia forced MDC activists to drink Paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide used for weed control.

Zimbabwe’s education has been seriously compromised under the Mugabe administration, producing a poor standard of graduates. The June Ordinary and Advanced level ZIMSEC examinations are still to be marked due to lack of funds to pay the markers.

Hundreds of political prisoners are still languishing in Mugabe’s filthy prison cells country-wide on flimsy, trumped-up charges.

Making calls through cell phones requires extraordinary patience. The networks can no longer cope because of congestion.

Harare has been gripped by a sudden wave of burning transformers, and the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) puts the blame on vandals who are draining transformer oil.

Hey, all of this is happening and we have only just entered the second half of 2008. Only God knows why?

WOZA’s courage and conviction continue to inspire Zimbabweans – including poet John Eppel who recently wrote a Song for WOZA.

This week, 300 members of WOZA and MOZA (Women / Men of Zimbabwe Arise) marched through the streets of Bulawayo without police interference – a welcome change from the 8 March International Women’s Day protest at which women were brutalised by riot police in Bulawayo. This week’s demonstration is also the first protest since the 28 May protest in Harare that resulted in 14 members being incarcerated in remand prison for several weeks.

According to WOZA, this week’s action aimed to draw politicians’ attention to “bread and roses” issues – bread representing food and roses representing the need for lasting dignity. The protest also sought to test the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) recently signed by Zimbabwe’s politicians to determine whether freedoms of expression and assembly truly have opened up.

Wellington Chibebe, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) has just issued a statement on Gono’s recent monetary policy announcement. Chibebe rightly calls Gono’s efforts a damp squib. He also calls on workers in Zimbabwe to exercise their “right to be heard”. I’d be quite interested to know the ways in which Chibebe expects them to do this seeing as workers legs are so busy being exercised walking to work that there’s not much energy left over for anything else.

Chris McGreal writing for The Guardian describes how Zimbabweans have become involuntary members of “walking clubs”.

“We are lucky to have jobs but the bus fare in one day is more than I earn in a week. So we walk,” Grace Sibanda says. “We walk together because it’s not safe. They wait in the bushes by the road and attack you if you are alone. They don’t want money. We don’t have any. They want my food.”

We all know that the new daily cash allowance of Z$2 trillion won’t keep up with Zimbabwe’s run-away inflation. Sure we might have a few days relief but pretty soon it will be back to square one especially when Gono continues to blame the complete decimation of our economy on “illegal sanctions”.

You can read the full text of the monetary policy statement on Kubatana. Flip an old coin and bet whether Gono’s zeroes come knocking on his window again . . . heads they do, tails they do.

Most parts of Mabvuku and Tafara have had no water for the past couple of months, and with some of the new stands it’s almost a year or two now.

The residents are deeply concerned by the persistence of the water crisis in these suburbs despite the countless assurances by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) that they will improve their service delivery. The residents of Mabvuku and Tafara are worried that the absence of running water is a health time bomb. There is always such a stench coming from the toilets and burst sewer pipes. The persistence of the water crisis simply means the constant exposure of the residents to a health disaster.

At first people used to walk a long distance to fetch clean water for cooking and drinking. Then a couple of weeks ago, I heard somebody offered to have some hand pump boreholes sunk in these two suburbs, none of them is working after only being used for almost a week.

Apart from that, it now appears almost every household in these two suburbs have dug their own wells at their own premises to save time and shorten the distance they would have traveled to look for clean water from relatives and friends living in Zimre Park and Greendale or from unprotected sources, a situation which threatens their dear lives.

The residents are worried and angry to see dry taps and burst sewer pipes everyday. I would like to remind ZINWA that it is not a privilege for residents to get clean water, but rather it is a right.

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