Political activist and commentator Rejoice Ngwenya recently sent this through to us. If you know someone who was killed during the Gukurahundi, email rngwenya [at] ymail [dot] com

In the 1980s, a decade of so-called ‘economic growth’, I and four million other Zimbabweans of Ndebele origin lost friends, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters in an orgy of political madness that cost the lives of more than twenty thousand people of Matebeleland and the Midlands.  Repeated attempts by courageous Christians, progressive political parties, civic activists, sympathetic regional and international organisations to get the government of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF to acknowledge the massacres have failed.

Now that the organ of national healing – whatever that means – has been accorded a status to pursue the Gukurahundi issue as a good case for ‘reconciliation’, I propose that everyone in Zimbabwe who knows someone whose life was wasted by the cruel bayonet of the notorious Fifth Brigade send names to the e-mail address below so that I can forwarded them to this ‘organ’ as a first step in seeking redress, with eventual incarceration and prosecution of all perpetrators. Contact rngwenya [at] ymail [dot] com

Just thinking about the blog I wrote about the City of Harare and their lack of alacrity in fixing water leaks . . . our office block was without water for the whole afternoon. When I went into the loo before I left for home it smelled as if someone behind one of the closed doors was doing an almighty crap. But instead some of the toilets were nearly seat high in toilet paper and poo. Meanwhile downstairs in Libbys there was a festive big crowd of men watching the Brazil/Zimbabwe game. The sound effects were really great, lots of gasps, and sighs and cheers. I’m wondering about the other effects . . . a bunch of guys who have been drinking for a few hours and the non-working toilets . . . where will they pee? Maybe up against their own cars like I watched a reveller do late one night last week.

Downstairs at Libby’s restaurant, football fever is alive and well. People of all shapes and ages and sizes are streaming in to watch the Brazil-Zimbabwe World Cup warm up match being played in Harare as we speak.

But unfortunately, the facts behind the match provide a demoralising reminder of the business side of the sport. As The Telegraph reports:

Cash-strapped Zimbabwe, which struggles to pay its teachers and doctors, had to fork out 1.8 million dollars to the Brazilians to get them to play in Harare, financed in part by corporate donations.

We sent out the following text message to our subscribers asking what they thought of this.

Kubatana! Fly the Zimbabwe flag today. Go Warriors! While civil servants get peanut salaries Zim pays US$1.8 mil to get Samba boys to play here. Wot do u think?

Many were less than impressed. The first messages we’ve received are below:

As one of the civil servants, that’s inhuman we are really suffering togther with our kids strikes have proved fruitless

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Desperate theives

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Good it  reliefs stress at times.
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I think vanofanira kupa mari ma civil servants inotenga
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I wonder what exactly the country is set to benefit from playing Brazil when we wont be at the WC. Maybe someone else knows?

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I ws deadly embarassed too by dat

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If i say they are mentally disturbed it’s mockering them.Ngatiti ndibaba vanosiya mumba musina hupfu vachindosasana

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Its inhuman

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It’s not fair. Wait til elections are here. It’s time for change.
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ITS TERRIBLE
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Nonsense.they.don’t.think
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Not fair. What do we gain frm that game. Chasing history wl civil servants wallow in poverty.
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That’s crazy!

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The authorities are cruel and shameful. It was even more demeaning that they chose to give the servant time to watch da game yet they don’t have to spare

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The move is worth the money!
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They must strike and pasi nehurumende yeuori

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Unrelistic & Outrageous

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Wasteful gvt

One of my earliest childhood memories was being hit by my brother. I was watching television and because he was bored he decided to pick on me for sport. Prior to this I remember my parents always stepping in, saying he shouldn’t pick on girls because they can’t fight back. For them, and him, girls were weaker, lesser. That day, I suppose he thought it would be safe as there wasn’t an adult in the in the same room as us to defend me.

He hit me one too many times, and, being my father’s daughter, I ran to tell. My father was tired, probably from the noise and from work. He was short and exasperated in his reply.

“Hit him back.”

I remember seeing the expression on my fathers face. He couldn’t understand why I had not thought of this myself.

I am the oldest child in my family, and, for many years I’ve wondered why I let my brother carry on as he did. Even at that young age I had the authority to stop him. More than that, I was physically able to stop him, but I didn’t. It wasn’t until my father said to hit him back, that it occurred to me that I could.

That moment was the beginning of a change in the way I saw myself as a woman. Empowerment and equality are not concepts that easily occur to a seven year old, but in that moment, I experienced both. I was not weaker, I was not ‘just a girl’, I was equal to the one who was hitting me. I was equal enough to hit him back.

Empowerment for women should not start when they are adults. It is too late then to undo a lifetime of being made to think that one is weaker in mind and body. To try to undo the work of well meaning but misguided parenting, and social and cultural indoctrination when girls have become women and boys have become men has little effect on present and future generations. Men and women will continue to live as their parents did. They will raise their children the same way they were raised. As adults they seek the security and common identity that are provided by their parents traditions.

Empowerment for women begins when they are girls. Before women are distinguishable from men. Before either knows that they are different from the other.

I do a lot of running and on my way through Newlands Shopping Centre over a week ago I ran past a very badly leaking water pipe. The road running through the shopping centre had become a river.

I sent a text message to the Mayor of Harare, Mr Masunda, asking him if he could send someone to attend to it as soon as possible. A week later, the pipe was still madly spewing water. It is important to point out that this shopping centre, along with the majority of Harare, suffers from crippling water cuts. So I sent another text to Mayor Masunda asking for an emergency number to call so that the problem could be fixed. I didn’t receive any replies to my text messages – yeah, he’s a busy man I know – and in the meantime I heard that the leak was over 3 weeks old and that the BP petrol station attendants had tried, in vain (understandably because they’re not plumbers), to fix the leak with pieces of black rubber. The petrol station had asked the city works department to come and fix the leak but it seems like they haven’t put this problem on their list of Things To Do.

What are we to make of this? Shop owners and residents of Harare pay their rates; motivated citizens report problems and yet the City of Harare, knowing that the provision of water is an essential service, allows major water leaks to remain unresolved for weeks at a time.

Zimbabwean cool drink vendor, Memory Murinda, is motivated to work as hard as she does in order to provide for her children. She wants to make sure that they eat, wear clothes and go to school. Her day starts at 7am and can end as late as 8pm. Business is good when its summer because she can serve up to 200 thirsty people a day.

The challenges are many in her line of her work. “Some people have juju (magic) money . . . one minute you think you are holding a $5 note from a person and the next moment when they leave, you find out its only a dollar.” Not only does she deal with people who have juju money but also some customers are rough. Just like in any working place where you meet people on daily basis, the customer is always right and you just have to accept it.

I cannot believe that Memory is talking to me with all the drama around us in Zimbabwe where you are in fear of being labeled this or that, and everyone has an agenda. I am really surprised that she agreed to speak with me without requesting payment. She is easy going and she reveals a lot to me about her life and what made her take the step of going out into the world to fend for herself.

And so, I ask her a very daring question. Daring because often people do not want to realize their own value. So I say, what difference does your occupation make to the people of Harare? And this lady replies with a lot of self worth saying that people would die because a central part of being a vendor is taking care of people, and without vendors, people would struggle to buy products.

When I asked her about strikes she said, “Strikes are not good because if they happen most of us who are single parents are worried about being fired. I think that employers, to avoid strikes, must give their employees good working conditions and salary increases at the appropriate time.”

Her face brightened when I asked her if she had any funny experiences related to her job. With laughter in her voice she said that a lady once left R5 change with her and came back the following day saying that she wanted her US$5 back! Memory asked the lady how her money could have grown over night?

Memory told me that the situation in her home made her desperate for a job. One day she just went to Lyons and asked for a job but they turned her down. But because of the situation at home she kept going back until there was an opening.

I asked Memory what her biggest wish for Zimbabwe is? She said that wants people to respect one another – especially the people in government. She said if they respected us we would not have so much unemployment and we would have better working and living conditions.