So there’s this thing that we Africans do that is a little bit funny, but also actually quite a serious issue.

Let me set the secenario for you by introducing you to the imaginary Mr. Y and his wife, Mrs. Y who will help me illustrate my point.

The Ys are a family who earn enough money from their combined salaries just to get by each month, as well as take care of their three young children. Mr. Y works with an NGO where his pay is lukewarm, and Mrs. Y is a nurse in a public hospital. Her pay is definitely cold.

So you would think that the Ys try by all means to live within their means right?

Far from it!

Rather, they rent out a house in some  plush suburb (though they are three months behind on paying up and the landlord is threatening to take them to court) and their children go to that private school up the rolling highlands where the red-hot fees ensure that Mr. Y can never save enough money to fix that dent on the bonnet of his car.

Speaking of his car, Mr. Y drives a C Class Benz – black in colour, tinted windows with reams gleaming that seem to make time slow down with each revolution of the fine specimen’s tyres.

Oh, and doesn’t Mrs. Y just love to drive that Benz to church on Sundays and ‘humbly’ remind Jehovah’s children how blessed in the blood of Jesus  she is to be in possession of this stunning vehicle.

If only they knew that it wasn’t actually her car, or even her husband’s. Nope. The car belongs to Mr. Y’s brother who’s fled to the UK and entrusted the keys to his most prized possession to Mr. Y. whose old tired jalopy is now hidden from public view, locked up in the car shed.

So you get the picture, right?

This is a story about a family that on first appearance seems to have it all going on BUT is actually living a horrible lie.

What for?

Esteem in the eyes of society, of course. Hey, you gotta show that you’ve done something right with your life and the Ys are just trying to ‘keep up with the Moyos’.

I remember an American friend visiting Zimbabwe once asking me a very interesting question.

“Why do so many African families have this fixation with flat screen TVs and leather sofas ?!”

She just couldn’t get why everyone either had those two items, or was saving up towards them.

It got me thinking.

Why is that so many people own terribly expensive phones, and yet can’t even afford to load air time onto the things every month? Why is it that every woman worth her salt in society owns a microwave or washing machine and often never actually uses them?

Like I said before, it’s all about APPEARANCES. When purchased for all the wrong and misguided reasons, these things become status symbols that people use to say, “I’ve made it, unlike you!”

Such reasoning reflects an innate fear of inadequacy that many of us have. You must have a legacy, you must show up all those people who said you wouldn’t amount to much, you must have something to show for all that suffering you endured growing up in some rural area reading for your exams by candlelight.

It’s really sad that in African cultures, we tend to gauge success by trivial things like possessions. And it’s sad too that so many young people strive for that ideal with such singular purpose that they lose sight of the real dreams for their lives.

Who cares what the neighbours think? They will talk regardless of what you do, or don’t do; own or don’t own. A life lived on behalf of the perceptions of others about you is not your life, especially if you really don’t like leather sofas anyway!

The 2010 soccer World Cup is finally underway, and we see the whole of South Africa as well as the rest of the world united in “World cup fever”.

Prior to the World Cup, South Africa was in chaos, with the murder of Eugene Terreblanche  leader of the AWB, following some controversial “hate speech by Julius Malema: “shoot the boer”.  I believe that the 2010 soccer world cup has helped South Africans to overcome their differences and embrace and share this amazing event together. Many South Africans have put their differences aside and united in support of their nation. The 2010 soccer world cup illustrates how powerful sport can be in terms of uniting people, we have seen this in the past with the 1999 rugby world cup, where Nelson Mandela sported Francois Pienaar’s number six rugby jersey. This event was crucial in transforming South Africa from a divided nation to a unified one.

An interesting article from Slate:

From 1977 to the present, have you had sexual contact with another male, even once? You’ll have to answer that question, word for word, on a donor form if you want to give blood in this country. The form, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration and reaffirmed 10 days ago by an FDA advisory panel, offers three possible answers: “yes,” “no,” or “I am female.” If you check “yes,” you’re done. You’re forbidden to donate blood.

Why? Because, as the FDA explains, men who have had sex with men—known in the blood world as MSM—”are, as a group, at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and certain other infections.” To protect blood recipients from this risk, your blood must be excluded.

Maybe you fooled around with a guy 30 years ago and have spent the rest of your life as a celibate priest. Maybe you’ve been in a faithful same-sex marriage for 40 years. Maybe you’ve passed an HIV test. It doesn’t matter. You can’t give blood, because you’re in the wrong “group.” On the other hand, if you’re in the right group—heterosexuals—you can give blood despite dangerous behavior. If you had sex with a prostitute, an IV drug user, and an HIV-positive opposite-sex partner 13 months ago, you’re good to go.

Read more

According to today’s statement by the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition:

A meeting convened by COPAC yesterday at Parliament ended without substantive agreements on key issues such as coming up with a concrete schedule of activities. The meeting was characterised by a lot of disagreements which resulted in many of those who attended walking out of the meeting. After the meeting, the select committee was scheduled to hold a press conference but due to disagreements among the delegates, the press conference was cancelled.

According to a COPAC official, the disagreements stem from the accreditation of teams and transport arrangements which the select committee is failing to solve amicably. This in turn has pushed further the deployment of outreach teams to Monday 21 June, with the public consultation phase commencing on Wednesday 23 June according to a reliable source.

Patricia McFadden might reckon Zimbabwe’s Constitution making process is less about the substance of the document it delivers, and more about its potential as an opportunity to heal the fractures of our past. But it can be neither substantively or symbolically useful if it isn’t treated seriously, and doesn’t get organised and underway.

I’ve just stumbled across Memory Chirere’s blog.

Highlights include an interview with Brian Chikwava, Reflections on Zimbabwe turning 30, and an obituary for Ruzvidzo Stanely Mupfudza, which features this paragraph:

A week before your death, I bumped into Ignatius Mabasa at an Avondale ice cream shop and he said he had seen you! He said you had talked. And as the kids ran around, licking their ice cream and bantering amongst themselves, Ignatius said you said that you felt that most of what you had written in the past was rather bleak and you were reworking some of your unpublished stories and poems (and novels too) because you now realized that, after all, life was a positive thing. We were impressed and were almost certain that one full volume of your work would eventually come out.

I’ve just been reading Upenyu’s recent interview with Patricia McFadden, and these two parts really stood out for me:

Zimbabwe really needs a constitution, not because it’s going to give the poor rights, but because it’s like a salve, the healing balm after the fractures. It’s a site where people can come together and collectively imagine themselves as one people. To have common identity, we need that so much in Africa.

But constitutions are deceptive because they appear as though they are giving people rights, but there are no instruments that can endow you with a right. You have to struggle for a right as a collective. You have to conceptualise it, you have to imagine it you have to engage with those who control the sites where your rights are located and then you can create the possibility for that right to be not only located in the state and then the state can protect it, but you’ll also have to have access to it.

You can read and listen to the whole interview here