Ifefe is a hill situated in the Matopos National Park.  The Ndebele word refers to one of our most beautiful birds: the Lilac-breasted Roller or “blue jay.”  According to Sir Robert Tredgold, the name is “probably a reference to the colouration of the hill.” The story goes that Mzilikazi, first king of the Amandebele, was the only one allowed to use the feathers of this bird for titivation; consequently it is also known as Mzilikazi’s Roller.

Not to Ifefe, but to a smaller eminence nearby, known as Ifefe Encinyane (Little “blue jay”) do we go to experience transcendence.  We picnic in the late afternoon at a point with a 360 degree view of the horizon. The crystalline granite hill encrusted with yellow, orange and silver lichen, upon which we sit, is about two thousand million years old

We have the world to ourselves.  We are waiting for the moment when the setting sun meets the rising moon: their size is equal, their radiance is equal. The light of consciousness merges with the light of instinct.  We sip our wine on the threshold of time and eternity.  We are neither male nor female; we are perfection.  Like salt dolls walking into the ocean*, we lose ourselves together with the world.  The experience is beyond meaning.

*This analogy is Ramakrishna’s

It’s 15 days into the “First 100 Days” of implementing the Short Term Economic Recovery Programme, and government hasn’t even released the plan of what it’s considering in the short term – much less implemented any of it.

The MDC is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they know that public confidence depends on them making some tangible headway in Zimbabwe’s economic recovery. On the other hand, governments like the US are refusing to give them the financial support they need unless there is rule of law and respect for human rights.

The latest report from the International Crisis Group supports the MDC’s calls for “humanitarian aid plus.” This would see Zimbabwe getting aid for education, health care, civil servant salaries, and infrastructure projects. But, given the stance the US is taking at least, it seems unlikely Zimbabwe will get the support it needs any time soon.

Ambassador James McGee said recently:

It is illegal under the existing laws of the United States to pay salaries to civil servants – we call it budget assistance. I cannot pay a secretary for the Ministry of Health or an economist in the RBZ, I would go to jail for that. What we are trying to look at is other ways of helping the government of Zimbabwe like revitalising Harare Central Hospital. The government itself will have to pay its civil servants and I hope it will be able to generate money to pay its civil servants. Read more

African countries have been approached to assist Zimbabwe, but most have limited funds themselves. If the interim government can’t stop the latest wave of farm invasions, and demonstrate a dramatic turn around in civil liberties, it will be difficult to persuade the US and EU to provide “humanitarian aid plus.”

Meanwhile, the RBZ’s dirty laundry is also coming out – Gono has admitted to raiding the bank accounts of private companies and international NGO’s for foreign currency. But, he swears, that’s all in the past – “Let bygones be bygones,” he says.

When will the interim government start demanding higher standards – and acting on some of its promises?

On the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) website they explain this year’s theme:

Enlightenment is the striving for and achievement of greater knowledge and understanding, the process through which we ‘see the light’

I have just one issue. I cannot see the lights on Julius Nyerere Avenue and Parklane Street. Could the organisers liaise with the City of Harare to have the street lights fixed on Julius Nyerere Avenue and Parklane Street? We cannot have “enlightenment” without light and l sure do not relish being mugged while l go in search of enlightenment in the Harare Gardens. So how about it HIFA organisers? How about some corporate social responsibility which makes your venues safer for your public?

I’ve been following the battle for control of Zimbabwe’s telecommunications portfolios with interest. For years, communications has been a tightly regulated and strictly controlled space. Politically that has made a lot of sense – adds a certain credibility to the “Big Brother is watching” threats that keep the population in check. And economically it’s made a bit of sense – in the short term, at least, monopoly means profit.

So I was pleased and impressed when the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology was created, and allocated to the MDC. But, unsurprisingly, Nelson Chamisa had hardly taken office when the tussle over control over communications began. First, Webster Shamu, Minister of Media, Information and Publicity tried unsuccessfully to assert his control over telecommunications. Then Robert Mugabe announced that he was “redefining” things, taking the Department of Communications out of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, and putting it in the Ministry of Transport, (Communication) and Infrastructure Development – run by former Minister of National Security Nicholas Goche.

As Denford Magora put it recently, through this “realignment,”

Mugabe has taken TelOne, the phone company, Netone, the cellphone company and the regulating bodies for the communication industry out of the ambit of the MDC. Which means that Nelson Chamisa is now a minister in charge of shops that sell cellphones, phone shops and computer shops. Even the matter of the Internet has now been taken out of his hands.

So, I could understand Chamisa being upset. According to the Zimbabwe Independent, he’s threatening to resign unless his ministry is combined with Goche’s, and the two co-chair it. The article reports “Chamisa is also said to be prepared to stay only if the administration of the Interception of Telecommunications Act (sic) was removed from his ministry, leaving the original portfolio as it was.”

Wait a minute. Where is the principle here? Where is the commitment to democratic values that the MDC purportedly stands for. If Chamisa was going to resign unless the Interception of Communications Act was repealed, I would be impressed. But he’s happy for ICA to continue, so long as he’s not responsible for it?

Reading the Zimbabwe Independent this weekend, I got the sense that Chamisa wasn’t frustrated that the liberalisation of Zimbabwe’s telecommunications sector was being thwarted. He didn’t seem outraged that the potential to open up access to information to a range of Zimbabweans might not be realised. They didn’t quote him as expressing concern that Zanu PF control over telcoms would mean continued surveillance of activists’ communications. Rather, he just doesn’t want to feel demoted – and he doesn’t want to lose his ministerial position.

When hell closes down for repairs, the devil goes to Beit Bridge for a holiday.  I think he has a timeshare on the old railway bridge; it’s government property, but when you’ve got contacts in high places, anything goes – for a song.  From this colonial relic he encourages the crocodiles to eat border jumpers.  He is in friendly competition with the Ministry of Home Affairs who is training selected crocodiles to become customs officers.  Why crocodiles? I asked one of the trainers: because they always have a welcoming smile for the tourists.

You can sense the devil approximately 60 kilometres, going south, from the border township.  Suddenly you are in cactus land: thousands of dreadful thorny eruptions, indigenous to hell (kaktos Beelzebabelaas), which makes T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land seem like a Disney theme park.  Then there is the ten year old detour, which reduces even off-road vehicles to instant rattletraps.  The new stretch of tarred road, shorter than the detour, is almost as bad.  When will Zimbabwean civil engineers learn that tarring a road is slightly more complicated than icing a cake?

That stench, which causes you to gag, and wind up your car windows, is the devil’s incense.  The rotting corpses of cows and donkeys, rammed into oblivion by Formula One juggernauts, are paving the way to the god of bad intentions.  You can’t miss him: he’s coloured red, he has a forked tail, a huge willy, and he carries a ZANU PF stroke MDC membership card.

The township itself is a masterpiece of incompletion: half-built shops, half-built restaurants, half-built garages, half-built intersections, half-built homes, half-built human beings.  But the worst place of all is the border post (and it’s now just as bad on the South African side).  From street kids specialising in hub caps to the very highest officials specialising in shifty wheeler-dealers, you will find yourself in a gallimaufry of criminal activity over which only the devil could preside.

Here I am in Doha, Qatar with my jacket on inside a spectacular building on the Carnegie Mellon campus. I’m seated amongst hundreds of others listening to elevator music whilst we wait for Bill Gates to give his keynote address to the ICTD 2009 participants.

This gathering has brought academics, inventors, practitioners, entrepreneurs, media, local business and royalty together to talk tech and development. Thanks to contributions from a variety of sponsors including IDRC, Qatar Telecom, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, IBM and the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science a large number of us have had travel and accommodation costs paid to facilitate our attendance.

Freedom Fone has been allocated a demo space at the venue which has been a great opportunity to share our ideas, motivation and passion for do it yourself interactive voice response deployment with visitors and participants to the conference. Although still in its alpha version, our demo software provides a useful visual and audio experience to help people understand what we’re doing and where we’re headed.

Freedom Fone demo ICTD009, Doha

Postscript: Bill Gates was scheduled to visit the demo stands after his address but was sadly whisked away behind the scenes by the royal queen sitting in the front row!