“Don’t chase my devils away, because my angels may flee too.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Our Tree of Life Partners circle held special significance for us this month:
We stood together in a silent circle
remembering all those people across the planet
who had endured this terrifying experience

There were over 50 of us and more eighty percent are survivors of torture

We are a diverse collection of Zimbabweans who represent rural and urban communities
the women who are the farmers, look after the children, sell the vegetables on the side of the road
community leaders and elders and officials
street-smart young city kids
youth groups
church representatives

These victims of violence are the facilitators and organizers
who now own and use these workshops in their communities

and they are held together with one intention
to bring healing and peace

We passed the stone round the circle with a question -
‘What have you seen over this last year that has inspired you?’

‘We have now had workshops with our headmen and chiefs – we no longer have to worry about security’

‘We have been commemorating UN day in Support of Torture Victims lighting candles and having prayers in churches across Harare so many people have come’

I spoke of Sehlewle, sitting next to me:

When we met 8 years ago in South Africa
she had fled Zimbabwe after being terribly tortured and beaten
the bones in her leg irredeemably broken

A frightened young woman in terrible pain
living in a foreign city cut off from her community
She came to one of our first Tree of Life workshops.
and finally got to tell  her story in a circle she felt she could trust.

Now she is back home, and still facilitating with us
Last week, with Mike, she ran a Tree of Life workshop for the first time in her home town Bulawayo
They sat in circle with the old warriors of the nation
the former freedom fighters
and helped them tell the stories they had been holding onto for over 20 years.
They said it was just wonderful
and they have been asked to come back and run more!

I sit in a circle surround by people who have not just learned to survive
they have become creators of peace in their communities.

It has been 9 long years since the first Tree of Life Circles
and we have struggled through all sorts of adversity
but now it has found its time…
something is changing and we are no longer intimidated

when we confront the fear in ourselves
and join hands across the divides of separation that have held us in isolation
we become masters of our own destiny
we begin to see ‘peace’ emerging

the work begins at home

“Do married men have affairs for the bad sex?” asked Rielle Hunter, mistress to then US Presidential hopeful John Edwards when she appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight. Morgan took a pause before he continued with the interview. Apparently according to Hunter who has written a book on her scandalous affair with Edwards which produced a child, she had the best sex of her life with Mr. Edwards, apparently explaining what drove the relationship. Yet it was a relevant question with resonance in Zimbabwe, many thousands of miles away, where the so-called small-houses have become a virtual cultural phenomenon, with purists mourning the morally straight and narrow ways of our forefathers. Are these extra-marital relationships always about sex, great or otherwise? You listen to pub tales where grown men find the pub as some kind of refuge from what they see as henpecking back home. It’s clear then that some men take to the bottle, while others take to extramarital relationships to deal with whatever is happening on the home front, yet there is no doubt that a lot of explanations that emerge seem to be solely based on common-sense street-based sociology which has done nothing to understand the growth and acceptance of what other researchers say has become a major springboard for HIV/Aids.

A young preacher who this year returned to the motherland after spending five years of Bible school in Mauritius said to me the other day that when he left Zimbabwe, he had never heard such a term as “small-house” and it had to be explained to him recently by fellow churchmen what it meant. He seemed genuinely lost, and all I could think of was, “well, my friend, you’ve been away too long.” The fact that the preacher appeared dumbfounded that small-houses had become common-place, accepted even, it did point to a need to better understand what drives this “small-house” business without haughty moralising. But then, there are many out there who see everyman as a potential candidate for Cheaters the television show. Others go an extreme extra mile and see everyman as a potential rapist!

Yet I find myself having to ask whether indeed it is all about sex, whether great or mediocre, or something else. Years ago NBA superstar Dennis Rodman had a fling with Madonna, and he made sure he told the tabloids about it: “I thought she was gonna be an acrobat, not a dead fish,” or something to that effect. Another Hollywood wise crack was asked by a hack who thrived on the salacious what he expected from a woman he took to bed. The hack must have expected a blow-blow breakdown about acrobatics and such, but the Hollywood guy responded: “Nothing, she must just lie there.” Ergo, why do men keep having extramarital affairs, is it about the great sex as some would have the world believe? In developed countries, some have explained it off as a sign of mid-life crisis, I wonder then in a country where life expectancy for men is under forty, when does mid-life set in?

Visualise us

A sit-in protest in Bulawayo by members of the Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) in Bulawayo led to the arrest of 100 of its members. The protests were organized to push for devolution of power, an immediate release of the constitution and expose the disrespect to the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo whose statue is still to be put up in the city.

The police in Bulawayo arrested over 100 members of the Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) pressure group, as they conducted a sit-in protest on Wednesday calling for the immediate release of a draft Constitution. According to WOZA, many members in custody were handcuffed, which is a violation of women’s rights protocols.

Over 100 members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) are in custody at Bulawayo Central Police station, many are handcuffed in violation of women’s right protocols. Riot Police ran wildly around the Main Street and 8th Avenue intersection on orders of their Officer Commanding Bulawayo who was present to demand they arrest members.

Lawyers have been denied access on three separate occasions. Those in custody include WOZA leader Magodonga Mahlangu, three minor children who are not members of WOZA and 3 breastfeeding mothers in custody. WOZA national coordinator Jenni Williams was not arrested.

Ten protests were due to start at 11am Wednesday 27 June 2012 but Riot police had already arrested 40 members and by-standers by 10:30am. Only 3 of the ten protests made it to the sit-in location will be the road surrounding the space where the memorial statue of late Joshua Nkomo should be.

Four additional protests were conducted after 11:30 am marching from the Statue to the Bulawayo Central Police station. Riot police were deployed to refuse them entry into the police station and threatened to beat them before dispersing them from handing themselves in.

Read more here

Watched Zanu PF chief doctor of spin Rugare Gumbo in last night’s news bulletin talk about Daniel Shumba’s bid for a “prodigal son” return to the higher echelons of the party he cursed for poor governance and lack of democratic principles a few years ago.  Shumba left the party after seeing what every other Zimbabwean seemed to notice, that this party Zanu PF was no place for progressives. And his chosen way to make himself heard? He formed his own political party, the United People’s Party.

It’s crazy why people who seem better off and can lead productive lives as private citizens minding their own business always seem to think entering gladiatorial politics is the way to go, their own contribution to the betterment of humankind. Of course not many Zimbabweans even know Shumba formed a political party of his own, and it just became one of those outfits that make very forgettable appearances in the run up to elections and quietly disappear soon after. Think such parties as the African National Party, Peace Action is Freedom for All and others in between.

And now, Daniel Shumba has once again rekindled his courtship with Zanu PF, only to be told he must line up like everyone else and join from cell level and then work his way up. And this for a guy who was once a Zanu PF provincial chairperson! No favours here comrades, we don’t forget that easily. And yes, he must first publicly announce that he has disbanded his political party. I cannot even start to imagine what is going in this guy’s mind after what Gumbo told the nation on national telly. And in classic Zanu PF-speak, Shumba “expelled himself” from the party!

Surely Shumba must have shoved it and went on with his many businesses, than subject himself to such humiliation, first at the
2008 ballot back then when he had to launch a constitutional court application to contest and now at the hands of Zanu PF itself. I suppose Shumba’s flaw is that, like many other ill-informed Zimbabweans, the future of Zimbabwe lies with Zanu PF, those types who are obsessed with being members of this party of the miserable past simply because it offers them unbridled avenues to self-aggrandisement. Everyone knows this by now, but then for Shumba to be told that he must re-join the party as an ordinary card-holding member ought to be yet another lesson for all Zimbabweans Africans that there is life beyond politics. But then he did once say that forming the United People’s Party was a joke. Yeah right, look who’s laughing now!