On Kubatana’s home page we feature an article entitled Conversations with Christopher Mlalazi. Christopher is a talented Zimbabwean writer and theatre producer. We’ve just had word from him that one of his plays will be featured in this year’s Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). Here is some news from Christopher and a teaser from the play called Election Day.

I have just returned from the Harare International Festival Of The Arts workshops on writing and directing for theatre, where I developed one of my plays titled ELECTION DAY, which will be premiered at HIFA 2010 (April), under the HIFA-DIRECT project.  The play is going to be directed by Eunice Tava, a seasoned actress and director.  The cast is still yet to be selected, but that is Eunice’s baby.  The play ELECTION DAY is an adaption of one of my short stories which was first published in the 2004 Edinburgh Review, and then was later published in my short story collection DANCING WITH LFE; TALES FROM THE TOWNSHIP, which won the 2009 NAMA AWARD for BEST FIRST PUBLISHED CREATIVE WORK, and was also given the Honourable Mention in the 2009 NOMA AWARD FOR BOOK PUBLISHING IN AFRICA.  Please find below a teaser from the play, and if you can, please come to HIFA 2010 to watch it. We are also looking for opportunity to show the play around the world after HIFA, and if you think you can link us, please be welcome.

ELECTION DAY

Scene 1

Enter the Director Of Vote Counting, Juda.  He is dressed in a suit and is entering a toilet.  He is also holding a clipboard with papers on it. He goes to the urinary, and pees with his back to the audience.  As he is peeing, enter Twenty walking stealthily and casting looks over his shoulder.  He is also dressed in suit and tie.  He comes to a stop beside Juda. Twenty is not peeing but is standing facing the audience.

Twenty:           How goes it now?

Juda:               It is even worse now Twenty.

Juda stops peeing, closes his zip and turns around to face Twenty.  He quickly writes on a piece of paper and hands the paper to Twenty.  Twenty quickly looks at the paper.

Twenty:           O God no!

Juda:               And don’t say you got that from me, this is highly confidential information.

Twenty:           I won’t Juda, and thanks.

Twenty takes some money from his pocket and hands it to Juda.  Juda quickly takes the money and puts it into his pocket.

Juda:               The paper too, if it falls into the wrong hands I might get into serious trouble.

Twenty:           Of course Juda.  Of course.

Twenty hands the paper back, Juda salutes Twenty, then both men exit in different directions.  Twenty’s walk is dejected.

Scene 2

A stage with two sofas and a side table with a telephone on it.  Enter His Excellency, Poka Oka Ndiseng.  An elderly man in his sixties, he is dressed in a jogger short, old fashioned vest, and carries a golf club.  He heads for the telephone, takes it and quickly dials.

Ndiseng :        ( Into the telephone) Twenty?  Can I please see you, thank you.

Enter Twenty, still in suit and tie. He is Ndiseng’s personal advisor.   He bows before  Ndiseng.

Twenty:           Your Excellency.

Ndiseng:         (Pointing at one of the sofa’s)  You may sit.

Twenty sits down on the sofa, but on the edge.  His right foot is beating a rapid tattoo on the floor. Ndiseng looks at this foot.

Ndiseng:         Relax, Twenty.

Twenty’s foot stops tapping, and he wipes his forehead with a hanky.

Twenty:           Mmh!

Ndiseng:         Just relax, Twenty. And why do you look as if somebody has just walked over your grave? Just look at you!

Twenty:           Your Excellency. Things are very bad outside,

Ndiseng:         (Points a warning finger at Twenty) Eh! Eh! Eh! What am I always telling you Twenty?

Twenty:           But this is the truth your Excellency!

Ndiseng:         Please don’t exaggerate.

Twenty:           I am not exaggerating!

Ndiseng:         Do you know your problem my dear comrade? You panic very easily Twenty, just like a cowardly dog. (Ndiseng mimes action of a dog barking) WOOF! WOOF! WOOF behind a fence, and if you pretend to pick up a stone it flees away with its tail tucked between its legs.  I don’t need women around me Twenty. I need men with balls of steel.

Twenty:           I am not panicking your Excellency, Comrade Ndiseng.

Twenty wipes his forehead with his hanky again.

Ndiseng:         Then why are you are sweating like that? Or maybe you have forgotten yourself and you think state house is a bush in the rural areas and you are squatting behind it defecating?

Twenty:           The ballot counting is almost finished your Excellency, there are only five ballot boxes left uncounted, and the opposition is leading us by a very wide margin.

Ndiseng:         Is that so?  Of course I didn’t know that. And thanks for the information. If you are telling the truth, then we must clap hands for them.

(He leans the golf club against the sofa and claps his hands, a wide grin on his face)

They really are trying aren’t they?  Bravo!

(He claps his hands again.)

And by how many voters are they leading us now, Twenty?

Twenty:           Three million votes so far your Excellency, and the remaining five ballot boxes only contain one million.  We have lost.  Everything is crashing down on us!

Ndiseng:         (Bursts out laughing) Ha! Ha!  Ha!

(Still laughing, he points a finger at Twenty)

And you are now shitting in your underwear!

(Makes noise of farting)

Bhu!

(He laughs again, then smiles)

Stop being paranoid my dear personal advisor.

(His voice hardens)

And to use your own words – it is you who will crash out of my elite team if you do not show strength.  Anyway, why should you be frightened of the election results if I may ask?  After all, it is not you who is losing, but me, Cyclone Ndiseng, to use my favourite guerrilla name.

(pause)

Or is it because you see your meal ticket vanishing should that happen?

Twenty:           It is not like that your Excellency -!

Ndiseng:         Let me tell you something for nothing Twenty.  This is not a children’s game we are playing here.  This is not dance around together in a sally weather tissue tissue we all fall down.

(He swings his hands in mime of a children’s dance as he says this)

It is a game of heroes.  Men who are larger than life.  Now, tell me my terrified friend, did you read comic books when you were growing `up?

Twenty:           (Perking up)Yes I read them your Excellency. Kid Colt, Spiderman, Superman, Tin Tin)

Ndiseng waves his hand at Twenty in dismissal

Ndiseng:         No, not that crap.  There is another one that you have left out.  My favourite.

Twenty:           You mean Wonder Woman?

Ndiseng:         No, not that lesbian.

(He suddenly flexes his muscles, his face twists in effort)

The Incredible Hulk!  You!

Twenty:           (Smiling)  The Incredible Hulk!  I love that one!  He is my hero!

Ndiseng:         I am the new Incredible Hulk of this continent Twenty.

(He whispers to Twenty, his face screwed up in excitement, and his fists bunched)

And do you know why?

Twenty:           (Shaking his head and whispering also) Why, your Excellency?

Ndiseng:         Because I am going to be the first president of the United States Of Africa of course!  And that day is around the corner.  Just mark my words.

He suddenly flexes his muscles, and roars like Hulk.

Ndiseng:         The Incredible Hulk!

He roars like Hulk again, grabs Twenty and trips him to the ground.  Twenty rises up, exhibiting signs of fear.  Ndiseng roars, grabs Twenty and trips him to the ground again.  Twenty lies on the ground, and Ndiseng struts around the stage roaring like The Incredible Hulk, and flexing his arm muscles.  He goes back to Twenty, who still lies on the ground.  Twenty cringes back in fear.

Ndiseng.         (Offering Twenty his hand and laughing) Get up Comrade Minister!  Get up! Woooo! You look so undignified lying on the floor like that.

Twenty:           I am scared of  Hulk, your Excellency.  He is so powerful!

Twenty takes the offered hand and rises to his feet.  He brushes himself down, then sits down on the sofa again..

Ndiseng:         That is the lesson Twenty. Never worry, nobody can defeat the Incredible Poka Oka Ndiseng, blood descendant of the great King Oka Ndiseng 1, slayer of lions, conqueror of mountains, who smiled and the moon melted and beautiful maidens swooned.  Who can defeat such a man Twenty?  They can’t, not even with all the assistance of their fucking Nagasaki bomb, but, this is not what I called you in here for.

Twenty:           Yes your Excellency.

Ndiseng:         I want you to go and write a speech for me.

Occasional Kubatana blogger Fungai Machirori recently posted a very interesting comment on a health listserv in response to an online conversation about who should take responsibility for HIV prevention. I kind of thought it was a no-brainer. Individuals should of course. But then again there are men involved and condoms and men in general go together like Mugabe and Democracy.

Here’s Fungai for you:

Ensuring power to every “i” Fungai Machirori

Last year, South Africa developed a remarkable graphic to accompany its World AIDS Day campaign message: a graphic consisting entirely of a myriad letter “i”s that together made up the shape of South Africa’s map.

The tagline that accompanied the graphic read “I am responsible. We are responsible. South Africa is taking responsibility.”

What each of those little “i”s stood for was a South African; an individual taking responsibility for adopting health-promoting behaviours that would ultimately yield the collective national responsibility needed for an effective response to the urgency of HIV and AIDS.

I give this example because I feel it is particularly relevant to the topic at hand – whose responsibility it is to prevent HIV.

I believe that only once every individual is able to identify himself or herself as that “i” with the highest levels of self-efficacy, or confidence in one’s own ability to take responsible action, can we realise a significant change to the emergency that is the HIV and AIDS pandemic.

Building that self-efficacy encompasses creating a range of competences, from the basic ability to understand what HIV and AIDS are, to comprehending the implications of HIV infection or re-infection, as well as the benefits of preventing such infection, all the way to being able to overcome the many barriers that may exist as impediments to positive behaviour change.

Make no mistake, this is no easy process. Because we are all individuals of differing backgrounds and circumstances, our competencies, and the rates at which these can be developed will differ.

What levels of self-efficacy will a 16-year-old girl given to her sister’s widow as a replacement wife (knowing well that her sister died of a long and mysterious illness) have to demand an HIV test even if she knows about the virus and its effects, but is bound, by family tradition, to become this man’s wife without questioning?

What self-efficacy can a baby, still in his mother’s womb, speak of if his mother never receives antenatal services and does not discover her own positive HIV status until after her baby is born and already infected?

How then do we ensure power to every “i”?

A blanket approach to HIV and AIDS programming is definitely not the right way. Insensitive messaging that fails to take into consideration that we are all at different levels of literacy, understanding and openness about the collective and individual impact of the pandemic is more detrimental than helpful as it only achieves the churning out of impersonal, and therefore, inaccessible content.

Some people still just need to hear the basics – what HIV is, how it brings on AIDS, how it is transmitted and how it is prevented.

And messages and programmes for these individuals need to be tailored in an attractive, interactive fashion that eliminates pedagogy by welcoming debate, discussion and personal negotiation.

Also, we need to stop thinking only in conventional formats because quite honestly, far too many of the information-rich booklets and CD-ROMs dished out generously by well-meaning organisations are NOT being read or utilised.

I remember looking on in horror as a neighbour used the pages of an HIV prevention book I had given him to get a fire going in his backyard.

Noticing my anguish, he apologised but told me that there was no other practical use for the book beyond the one he had found.

“Thankfully, I have toilet paper,” he joked.

I went away wondering how many other people might feel this way about Information and Education Communication (IEC) materials that they feel have no resonance with them.

We need to be doing things differently, dynamically and determinedly all the time within an environment that is constantly changing, but at the same time staying very much the same.

Also, we need to think creatively about how to overcome the many socio-cultural and economic barriers to information dissemination and knowledge assimilation; how to jump over those internal walls that cement ideas within people’s minds that saying “not yet” or demanding a condom during sex is taboo and unforgivable; how to ensure that we are catering to communities and societies and individuals at their points of need, and not at the points that we estimate on their behalf; how to be relevant.

In short, how do we ensure that when an individual makes a decision that can have an impact on the state of their health, he or she is fully equipped with the artillery of internalised practical and practicable information?

At the same time as we seek to answer this question, we must focus attention on the dire need to strengthen our HIV service delivery systems to the point where people can access the different prevention, treatment, care and support packages that they require in an efficient, effective and professional(in terms of the health service providers) manner.

Our role as programmers, advocates, researchers and role models is two-fold: firstly, we must take personal responsibility for our own behaviours ensuring that they are positive and health-promoting.

Too many jokes abound about how any workshop that involves HIV programmers and advocates degenerates, after hours, into a ‘sex shop’.

This is the unfortunate badge of embarrassment that many associate our sector with, particularly as it identifies us as obvious hypocrites who subscribe to the mantra, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Only once we are right in our own ways can we strike a cord with our audiences so that we may pass the mantle of responsibility on to them, to capacitate them to answer emphatically, whenever asked whose responsibility it is to prevent HIV, that indeed it is “i”.

Imagine if we could draw out a map, not just of South Africa, but of every nation in our region from the pledge made by every “i”, every person putting their hand up to say, “I am responsible to prevent HIV”.

This map would certainly mark the beginnings of a new Africa.

The European Union (EU) will lift sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and his top allies only after the Zimbabwean leader and his former opposition foes fully implement a power-sharing agreement signed in 2008, a group of British parliamentarians said in Harare on Monday according to ZimOnline.

Sounds about right.

We need more people like Rejoice Ngwenya in Zimbabwe. People who are willing to say it like it is. Here is Rejoice’s latest article:

Many people who have expressed contrarian views on the wickedness of Mugabe , like yours, have only one slight problem – they won’t swap citizenship with me! We liberals in Zimbabwe [and there a miserly few of us] do accept that Leander Starr Jameson and his paymaster, Cecil John Rhodes, galloped across our fore fathers’ land and shot their way to the Deeds Office in 1890.  Rhodes’ remains are now at Matobo Hills, a world heritage site that is part of our revered National Parks.  Guess who was forcibly evicted from there in the 1900s? My mother’s grandfather and his entire clan!

But you see, we, modern black Zimbabweans, are more civilised, albeit poorer than the Pioneer Column. If a criminal rapes my daughter, I won’t bring myself to rape his sister, wife or girlfriend, No!, for this will reduce me to his level of satanic mentality. The object lesson here, my friend, is that Mugabe first accepted, at his inaugural speech, 18 April 1980, that our history needed to be corrected, but in a civilised, law abiding way. This meant that the second and third generation of white landowners who had acquired their farms ‘legitimately’ – and done so well to make Zimbabwe a net exporter of grain, flowers, fruits and tobacco, needed to be integrated into the ‘new civilisation’. So between 1980 and 2000, Mugabe had all the opportunity of ‘equalising’ the situation, because, and get this straight, the government owned more land than all private citizens combined. The ‘willing buyer/willing seller’ clause worked well as thousands of ‘comrades’ [especially Joshua Nkomo's fighters], took up land offers and produced.

Of course many ‘villagers’ were crowded and cramped in Tribal Trust Lands, but they were damn good farmers too! When Mugabe’s political clock ran out, and the Movement for Democratic Change was formed, Mugabe lost the February 2000 constitutional referendum and accepted ‘defeat’. By the way, at that time, I was chief rapporteur and convener in Professor Moyo’s Constitutional Commission. When we took the first draft to Mugabe, it contained a ‘willing buyer, willing seller clause’, but Mugabe actually refused to accept it arguing that free land was the only thing his government could offer. We went back to plenary and Jonathan Moyo, like most senior officials in the Commission, vowed that he would resign if Chief Justice Chidyausiku changed the property rights clause.

The Chief Justice changed the clause, Professor Moyo did not resign, but I resigned and joined the Election Commission. Professor Moyo was lured with a big pay check to ZANU-PF as publicist. Now notice that the Commercial Farmers Union saw the alterations and they then put their full support behind MDC. Mugabe knew the danger of their political support to opposition, so he vowed to ‘destroy them’. John Nkomo, Cephas Msika and Dumiso Dabengwa – the remnants of Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU [but now integrated in ZANU], publicly refused to support the land invasions, but Mugabe and his thugs showed them the middle finger.

Mugabe’s ‘land reform’ is not about equity and justice, it is revenge. Mugabe had previously murdered, in cold blood, 20 000 [twenty thousand] of my tribesmen in Matabeleland in the 1980s, and I was prepared to forgive him. But when he plundered property rights and his cronies took six – ten farms each, displaced 500 000 farm workers and completely annihilated commercial farming, I made up my mind that I would oppose him all the way to my grave.

We know that in the past five years, three ‘land audits’ have been carried out but the results have not been published.  Mugabe’s cronies are the ONLY beneficiaries to land. Gideon Gono, the rabid so-called Central Bank Governor, has been doling out expensive farming inputs to party activist and friends since 2007, but our country is on the brink of famine because Mugabe’s cronies were just interested in plundering produce and not making their own.  Last month, the GNU agreed to start another land audit, but Mugabe’s chief farm henchman, Joseph Made, says we can’t have a land audit now because it’s ‘too early’. “New farmers have not had an opportunity to produce because of American and EU sanctions.” You tell me, what are they hiding? Why have they not produced anything in ten years?

So my friend, I don’t know, and don’t really care which planet you come from – Mugabe has reduced me and my citizens to beggars. His thugs have plundered everything. There are three million Zimbabweans, black Zimbabweans, suffering outside our borders. The other ten million can no longer feed or employ themselves – because there is a direct relationship between property rights vandalism and productivity. I am in Zimbabwe, was born here and lived on both sides of our history. I know what I am talking about. When Ian Smith was opressing me, my father could send eight children to college and feed them. There is not a single day people had no running water in Harare, or electricity, because Ian Smith was organised. Mugabe’s brand of politics – unforgiving, vengeful, Marxist-Leninist paranoia destroyed my country. I’d rather have a factory to manufacture cars than a piece of land to grow corn. Mugabe wants to turn ten million citizens into subsistence farmers – nonsense – his days are gone. History will judge him. No credit must go to him.  No credit goes to a man who has presided over a murderous regime. No credit, whatsoever. If the devil buys you lunch, it’s probably spiked with snake venom. What credit can you give Idi Amin, Mobutu Sseseseko? What credit can you give Adolph Hitler?

To term my letter a spitting image of colonial detractors is sure proof that there are many people out there who have bought into Mugabe’s political decoy. Mugabe is a lunatic who experiments with people’s life, a modern day Dracula. The man is extremely cruel, his generosity and benevolence are used as bait for votes.  But I do appreciate that there is things you do not know about our situation.

Back in 2006 Kubatana featured the art of Josiah Bob Taundi, a Zimbabwean interested in depicting everyday life in our country and how politics affects how we live our lives.

Just recently Josiah launched his own online gallery which we enourage you to visit. See more here.

Josiah describes himself as:

a self-taught artist from a piece of earth called called Zimbabwe, south of Africa. I’m inspired by people in their different circumstances. They could be happy, sad or confused. I love colour. Africa is a land of living colour. But I try to be as true and realistic as possible. I don’t paint nice pictures to solely please the eye of the beholder. My motivation to paint is to communicate an important message. It may social, political or economic. I’m a commentator and encourage debate around real issues affecting the human condition. I paint intensely after long hiatuses.

John Mutumburanzou wrote to Kubatana recently, sharing his views on GNUs, and the new way of doing politics in Africa:

The obsession and deliberate automated habit by contemporary statesman, political brokers and mediators buttressed by multilateral institutions like SADC, AU and the UN to form coalition governments (also erroneously referred to as Unity Government or Government of National Unity) in each and every troubled state in Africa is astonishing and mind boggling to say the least.

Since the formation of the coalition government in Kenya it seems the echoes of the chorus are reverberating throughout Africa.  First, it shows that Africa direly lacks the statesmen of the yesteryears who had the guts and courage to speak out against their fellow African brothers who are fond of abusing power and who trample on citizen rights willy-nilly.

Secondly, the yesteryear authority of such multilateral institutions is fast eroding and lost into abysmal oblivion. Put plainly, their lack of authority gives credence to the assertion that international law is an ass. It is not an understatement that a Chief’s Dare in traditional Africa is better that a club of expensively dressed men and women acting on behalf of and for SADC, AU or UN and more so masquerading as mediators.

There seems to be a sudden irresistible and invigorated rise, on the political horizons of Africa, of a form of system of governance which is fast substituting elections as a way of coming up with and legitimising governments in Africa. The electorate, it seems, do not matter any more in as far as deciding who is to lead them. Leaders of troubled and so called hot spots in Africa are chosen, on behalf of and for the electorate in those respective states, in posh hotels and flamboyant mansions, more often than not, situated miles away from the respective states and the majority of the citizenry.

Indeed, coalition governments brought about through this political methodology are tantamount to legitimised coups in modern 21st century Africa. The coalition governments formed in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and more to come are in the political intensive care unit. The lack of democratic culture and egregious intolerance in modern African society continues to haunt such systems of governments with consequences horrendous and too ghastly to contemplate. At most in these political arrangements, the principals to the governments just buckle to immense international pressure and signed the deal without a real commitment to make it work leading to festering tensions and acrimony that will gnaw the government and in the process, kill it softly.