Jacob Goldstein shares a great photograph from Zimbabwe’s talented Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi in his blog about washing US$ notes to get them clean. Increasingly the filthy US$ notes that we’re handling look like they harbour a million diseases.

Rejoice Ngwenya on civil society, free media, party politics and political vuvuzelas . . .

The vivacious Violet Gonda is a Zimbabwean journalist of persona non grata in her country simply because of being a rare breed of courageous radio broadcasters willing to take on a rogue state. Such is the paranoia in Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF regime that broadcast laws that deliberately prevent alternative opinion are entrenched in the legislative DNA. The positive spinoff of this scenario has been a proliferation  of shortwave and internet broadcast stations spanning the globe, the most popular being VOA Studio 7 news based in Washington DC, Voice of the People in Botswana and Violet’s own SW Africa radio in England.

On many occasions, Zimbabweans and gullible Africans have been made to believe that vice and toxic rumour is embedded in such alternative viewpoint. In more ways than one, it is for this reason that ZANU-PF refuses to take the Global Political Agreement forward, claiming as long as Morgan Tsvangirayi’s MDC does not influence closure of such stations, Mugabe will refuse to cooperate. Bulls eat grass, but the fresh results of their digestion are unpleasant to the eye. Had there been a more family-friendly term to describe the product of this biological process, I would have had no problem labelling ZANU-PF opinion.

Ironically, Violet Gonda and her friends do not want to live in forced exile, because of family commitments back in Zimbabwe. But as long as they face arrest, and as long as the broadcast regulations outlaw alternative opinion, we Zimbabweans at home will continue to tune in to VOA Studio 7, Voice of the People and SW Radio for REAL news. What we know is that MDC have no chance in hell to influence closure of these stations. That makes me feel good!

But it is not all diamond that glitters from these alternative airwaves – at least according to MDC Professor Mutambara’s sympathisers. There is consensus amongst his supporters that most if not all external broadcasters have taken a position to support Tsvangirayi’s formation at the expense of all other progressive forces of democracy. Their argument is that in the haste to rid Zimbabwe of the curse of authoritarian dictatorship, these broadcasters paint anything or anyone who takes a side that opposes Tsvangirayi as anti struggle.

They continue that MDC Tsvangirayi failures are not sufficiently interrogated, while only the opinion of analysts who have something negative to say about Mutambara are given undue prominence. For example, the best news item that can ever emerge from rural Matebeleland is when councillors from Mutambara defect to Tsvangirayi’s party. Such news, Mutambara’s people argue, takes precedence over the antics of Theresa Makone, Tsvangirayi’s new home affairs boss who is related to Mugabe’s political hit man, Didymus Mutasa. The two are currently on the front page for attempting to sprout habitual ZANU-PF property rights violators form prison. ZANU-PF, who term alternative studios ‘pirate radio stations’, amplify Tsvangirayi’s internal party struggles, reminding readers that Ms Makone is the same woman whose husband ‘controls’ Tsvangirayi via what they call MDC’s ‘kitchen cabinet’. At one time, Ms Makone was accused of displacing the MDC women’s assembly leader in order to exert more influence on the party’s strategy. And all this – Mutambara’s people argue – does not receive airplay on ‘pirate’ radio stations.

As a regular contributor to these useful and value-adding radio stations, I attempt to present balanced opinions. Freelance analysts like me do not influence editorial policy, but we need to pitch our commentary from an objective perspective. I have no sacred cows. More importantly, Violet Gonda would not be able to influence what I say, but she would be in a position to decide what to publish depending on her editorial slant. For example, in one of SW Africa Radio Friday night programs called Hot Seat, Tony Reeler, director of Research and Advocacy Unit [RAU] commenting on Professor Arthur Mutambara’s position in government, tells Ms Gonda: “So he’s there by grace and favour of the Agreement but not by any other ground.”

A more mundane interpretation of this cryptic statement is that Mutambara is not in the coalition government by virtue of electoral credibility, but that he is the president of a [MDC] minority party with few seats in a remote part of Zimbabwe. Obviously with Zimbabwe’s first past the post electoral system, it would have been unthinkable to have the professor in government. Herein lies the need for progressive ‘pirate’ analysts to offer objective radio commentary.

My angle would be that the GPA brought into government hundreds of worthless politicians from all three sides. Morgan Tsvangirayi himself has on several occasions expelled councillors and recently reshuffled ministers. Accusations of corruption, underhand deals and inefficiency have plagued his party, while neutrals argue that even himself as Prime Minister, is guilty of soft-padding Mugabe in international foras. Observers insist that incomes, infrastructure and public facilities are only marginally better than before the coalition, while power blackouts hound an industry struggling to emerge from recession. The human rights sector is disastrous, with no single conviction of ZANU-PF zealots who murdered, maimed and raped innocent citizens in June 2008. His critics argue he has failed to reign in on rogue elements raiding commercial farms including those properties protected under regional bilateral agreements. Therefore to diminish Mutambara’s role in government without a rub off on Tsvangirayi’s personal political reputation is an impossible feat.

Mr Reeler himself is a product of a decade old struggle against dictatorship, a flag bearer of a contingent of brave human rights defenders that have survived determined ZANU-PF antagonism and intimidation. In this noble group of principled citizens one finds peace campaigner Jestina Mukoko, lawyer Irene Petras, constitutional expert Lovemore Madhuku and countless other civil society activists. But unlike Arthur Mutambara who has risen from mere student activism to national leadership, I and Reeler have little other than political vuvuzelas to show for our rhetoric.  My point is simple. This is no time to denigrate each others’ value propositions. If civil society was half as effective as its loud voice, Mugabe would have abandoned ship in 2002.

One of the good things about the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper is Dusty Miller and his restaurant reviews. I like that he calls a spade a spade and doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym (one of Zimbabwe’s many dysfunctions). The majority of Zimbabwean restaurants are overpriced and mediocre which is what he pointed out in his last review of Millers Restaurant in Borrowdale.

In another gruelling review, this time theatre, Susan Hains writing for The Standard newspaper gave The Importance of Being Earnest a bashing. She made some good points I think. I saw the play and also wondered about the choice of music. When I heard the first bit of music I got excited thinking that the play would be seriously re-worked but instead it wasn’t and the music seemed inappropriate. I’m surprised the reviewer didn’t mention having an issue with the accents which I thought were all over the place. Disagreeing with Susan though, I believe that a great deal of work went into rehearsing and staging the play; it wasn’t “thrown together”.

The audience the night I was there provided both respite and frustration. In front of me a lumber jack look a like sat with a big bag of Frittos on his lap for most of the play and continually delved into the bag, crackling and crunching his way through the production. To the left of the lumberjack a very fat school boy nosily chomped his way through a Pascal milk chocolate bar. And behind me two old geezers talked about the play being rather too high brow for them; that they were pleased they’d had a few toots before the show and were glum when they realised it only ended at 930pm and that they’d miss the second half of the evening’s football match.

Here are some general writing tips from some successful writers. And here are some more

1. Ernest Hemingway. Use short sentences and short first paragraphs. These rules were two of four given to Hemingway in his early days as a reporter–and words he lived by.

2. Mark Twain. Substitute “damn” every time you want to use the word “very.” Twain’s thought was that your editor would delete the “damn,” and leave the writing as it should be. The short version: eliminate using the word “very.”

3. Oscar Wilde. Be unpredictable. Wilde suggested that “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

4. Anton Chekhov. Show, don’t tell. This advice comes out of most every writing class taught. Chekhov said it most clearly when he said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

5. EB White. Just write. The author of Charlotte’s Web, one of the most beloved of children’s books, said that “I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”

6. Samuel Johnson. Keep your writing interesting. “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”

7. Ray Bradbury. Learn to take criticism well and discount empty praise, or as Bradbury put it, “to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”

8. Toni Morrison. Remember that writing is always about communication. “Everything I’ve ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.”

9. George Orwell. Orwell offered twelve solid tips on creating strong writing, including an active voice rather than a passive one and eliminating longer words when shorter ones will work just as well.

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.”

11. Anais Nin. “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”

12. Truman Capote. Editing is as important as the writing. “I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”

13. Maurice Sendak. Keep revising. “I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished … do I begin the pictures.”

To provide Kenyans with a fair constitution, a panel of experts used 47,793 words. To derail it, someone secretly added two. The attempted sabotage occurred at the official government printer, which was producing copies of the proposed constitution ahead of a national vote on the law in August. The document had been praised for guaranteeing basic freedoms. But in a move that has caused public outrage and prompted an inquiry involving the attorney general and intelligence chiefs, someone at the printing plant was able to add the words “national security” to a key clause on fundamental rights. Nearly 2,000 copies of the altered constitution had been published by the time it was discovered. “It was an outrageous act, unbelievable,” said Otiende Amolo, a Kenyan  member of the committee that drafted the new laws. “The addition of those words meant that all rights could be abrogated in favour of whatever was deemed ‘national security’.” Though President Mwai Kibaki  has ordered a police investigation, the saboteur, widely assumed to be an individual or group opposed to the proposed constitution, has yet to be publicly identified.
- Xan Rice, The Guardian Weekly

Any honest analysis of the MDC post September 15, 2008 would indicate that apart from unsuccessfully declaring unilateral appointments by Mugabe as ‘null and void’ the MDC as we have known it over the years: courageous, confrontational, uncompromising and proactive has become alarmingly ineffective and compromised. Indeed, there might just well be some justification for the view that many in the MDC have become ‘comfortable’ in government and are more focused on enjoying the privileges of office than on challenging Mugabe and ZANU PF.
- Psychology Maziwisa