According to an article published on www.africanliberty.org, “Rejoice Ngwenya simply rejects Mugabe’s cohorts anthem of western sanctions being responsible for starvation in Zimbabwe.” Instead, Rejoice demands that Africans stop blaming others for self-inflicted misery.

Robert Mugabe’s brutal thirty year-old reign in Zimbabwe, compounded by a frenzied ten-year mutilation of property rights, is once again on the cover page of the country’s annals of food insecurity.  The pillaging, plunder of strategic commercial farms and national resources by privileged political elite has over the past decade emaciated our country’s productive capacity. At the epicentre of this carnage is central bank governor Dr Gideon Gordon who masqueraded as the benevolent bankroller of the curiously named ‘farm mechanisation program’ that mostly looted NGO funds to prop up Mugabe’s plummeting political fortunes.

To rub salt to injury, habitual ZANU-PF choirmaster Dr Joseph Made, now head of an apparition termed ‘ministry of agricultural mechanisation’ has been spewing brain-damaging propaganda via the Mugabe-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. He trumpets the discredited theory that ‘illegal Western-imposed sanctions’ are to blame for all our harvest misfortunes.

Progressive Zimbabweans know that white farmers were evicted overnight from their properties with no time to pack, and then whole villages frog-marched to vast tracts of arable land that now lie fallow. Confronted with high-value assets but no expertise, these Mugabe foot soldiers looted the once profitable farms, unplugging irrigation pumps, uprooting pipes and stripping electrical fittings for quick disposal on the black market. Now, in a show of award-winning naivety, Joseph Made tells the world that ‘resettled farmers fail to produce because Western-imposed sanctions limit their access to equipment spares’. He must think we Africans are daft!

The Red Cross and World Food Program predict patched lips for Zimbabwe’s legion of rural citizens in 2010. Ironically, sophisticated farmer and MDC agriculture minister-designate Roy Bennet faces the hangman’s noose for a yet-to-be-substantiated terrorism charge while his counterpart, Tendai Biti conspires an epic cap-in-hand safari in search of food aid. My question: if ZANU-PF moguls are hoarding multi-million US dollar diamond mine claims in Marange, why would a sensible government want to further burden suffering citizens with more debts?

The cause of inevitable starvation is not all about scrappy weather patterns and as ZANU-PF apologists would like to claim, ‘illegal sanctions’. For almost a decade, Gideon Gono and Robert Mugabe poisoned our minds with a false doctrine that ‘Government is God’ so much so that dependency became habitual. Now that a more sustainable fiscal management and national accountability system is in place, ZANU-PF’s seemingly eternal pool of benevolence has evaporated. In any case, for all the so-called investment in farming that Gono spearheaded, there is nothing to show for it except a ‘ministry of mechanisation’, de-forestation, the first lady’s Gushungo Dairy Estates and two million vulnerable citizens!  Zimbabwean villagers stare starvation in the eye, yet there is a cruel twist to fate linked with this plot.

It was in the year 2000 that Robert Mugabe and his militant gang of ‘war veterans’ dismantled organised farming. To achieve their sinister political motive, they exploited idle village idiots, wherefore this rhythm of destruction was replicated in subsequent elections, causing internal and external displacement of millions of Zimbabweans. Ironically, these Jurassic ZANU-PF outcasts and their families also now face starvation. Arguing from a pedestal of high moral ground, the Tsvangirayi half of government cannot worry only about the welfare of their supporters, even where most beneficiaries of free land, free fertiliser, free seed and free fuel were ONLY ZANU-PF activists. The machinery of patronage, running right from the president’s office through to provincial governors, district administrators, chiefs, headmen was and still has ZANU-PF imprints. Former military officers control the Grain Marketing Board to compliment this toxic cycle of patronage. Remember that in all election years, Mugabe used to ‘ban’ NGOs from rural areas, claiming that food humanitarian agencies were ‘advancing a regime change agenda!”

Now here is my rationale. In Somalia, Uganda, Sudan and DR Congo, food relief is known to be routinely ‘hijacked’ by insurgents either for re-sale or personal use. More often than not, these are the same clowns responsible for food insecurity in those regions, but are first in handout queues when peace prevails. Now that Morgan Tsvangirayi and Tendai Biti are – to use ZANU-PF lingo – in ‘control of food relief’, Mugabe supporters are screaming ‘murder!’ and yet those are the same marauding gangs responsible for causing the current food production deficit in the first place! My humble submission is that these shameless citizens and members of their families should not be allowed within a fifty-kilometre radius of ‘MDC or NGO-sourced’ food distribution. Instead, Gideon Gono and Joseph Made must be hauled before a court of law to explain how the so-called ‘farm mechanisation’ and the freebies doled out since 2000 have added zilch to our country’s strategic food reserves. What we see, however, is Mugabe and his cronies persistently refusing to allow an official land audit in the hope that this gigantic fraud called ‘land reform’ will remain confined to a sealed black box.  I want to ask: of what use is a land revolution if all it produces is mass starvation, a tattered country reputation, few wealthy political elites, broken families and half a million displaced farm workers?

So what am I saying: the cruel reality is that everyone who participated in the plunder and destruction of Zimbabwe’s food productive capacity must not taste a single morsel of food relief. Those who are in the current echelons of governance like Made, Gono and even Mugabe – must be subject to a Parliamentary enquiry to explain why millions of US dollar investments in free agriculture inputs over the past ten years have failed to yield sustainable food surpluses. The sanctions story will be excluded from the repertoire of defence. It is not only an excuse of small minds but an insult to our intelligence. Community-based organisations and progressive activists can identify ZANU-PF collaborators who beat up, maimed and exiled villagers, publish names to inform them that they will not receive anything from an MDC-inspired humanitarian effort. Just for once, we Africans must learn to be responsible for our actions and refrain from time-worn scapegoats.

From one of Kubatana’s subscribers living in Glen Norah, Harare:

My dreams for Zimbabwe are to see a transformed nation. A nation where rule of law exists. A nation united and growing to be Africa’s power house. My dream for Zimbabwe is to make Zimbabwe the breadbasket that it is supposed to be. It is to see a Zimbabwe with freedom of expression and democracy. I mean real freedom, not talked freedom. To see the politicians respecting the human race; not treating them as their stools to stand on, and only to throw them away. – James

Spot the difference . . . this is exactly what we’ve been through, and are still experiencing in Zimbabwe. If only it were as simple as civil society and trade unions standing up.

Below is a letter printed in Business Day:

TS Eliot perfectly sums up our gloomy state of affairs: “we are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men … shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion … this is the dead land, this is cactus land”.

If Nelson Mandela was our nirvana, the new leadership is our nadir. Despondency and gloom have replaced hope. Greed and plunder have taken over from selflessness and servant leadership. Without any skill, education or hard work, one can accumulate millions in a week, more than Raymond Ackerman did in the first decade of running Pick n Pay.

Your green and gold political membership card is more precious than a university degree or values. If you are connected, a phone call to a well-placed minister will open doors for you. Talent and competence are irrelevant. State institutions are paralysed by inept leadership and infighting.

It is twisted irony that the new rulers praise apartheid monsters such as PW Botha for their leadership. Spare a thought for his victims. Like his predecessor, Adriaan Vlok, our current police minister is smiling, as the blue light brigade harasses poor citizens.

Sixteen years ago, Africa looked up to us for inspiration — today we are Africa’s cartoons.

Be warned: these are the first signs of post-colonialism blues that destroyed most of Africa’s young democracies. This is our Damascus moment. If we do nothing — we go the Zimbabwe direction. Zimbabwe is a state of mind and not a place.

Please do not blame Julius Malema for milking the system. It is not his fault. All he did was rent out his name to interested parties. Our flawed democracy was designed to benefit the elite and not the masses.

Yesterday it was Thabo Mbeki ’s group to enjoy the fruits of liberation. Now it is Jacob Zuma ’s turn. Moaning will not help. Every comrade wants a taste of the state honey.

Like cancer, political decay has spread to all parts of our body. It is sad for the African National Congress — the party of Sisulu — to be seen defending the looting of state resources.

Lord have mercy on us if our leaders cannot separate what is legally right but morally wrong. Do not look to President Zuma for answers. He is part of the problem and a pawn in the game. Our democracy and our future need defending from our leaders.

The media, civil society and trade unions must stand up. Our loyalty should be to the constitution, instead of to leaders. Building democracy is hard work. We cannot afford to be complacent.

Dr Lucas Ntyintyane
Cape Town

Savemore is a vendor in Harare. He says that selling roasted mealie cobs helps him pay for school fees for his siblings as well as the rent and food. His dream is to buy a car so that when the maize season is over he can buy fresh vegetables and sell them around the city. Because he has to put in long hours to make money to support his family, Savemore doesn’t think that he’ll get to see many soccer matches during the World Cup. Being proudly African, he hopes South Africa will win.

Rejoice Ngwenja rocks.

Kubatana.net recently interviewed him and you can read and listen to his views on a variety of critical issues in Zimbabwe on www.kubatana.net

In the meantime, below we carry an article by him entitled Scorpion in my Shoe, published by www.africanliberty.org

Thanks to Robert Mugabe’s reign of record-breaking incremental destruction, my country is struggling to redeem itself from the abyss of infrastructure collapse, so much that even hardcore urbanites like me have to make do with irritating wood smoke just to have a warm plate of sadza [Zimbabwe’s staple maize meal paste].    And that was without additional injury to the back breaking exercise.   A week ago, I was stung by a small black scorpion on my big toe as I chopped firewood to beat Zimbabwe’s notorious power outages.

The sting, while irritating, passed off just like any other experience of living in modern-day Zimbabwe under the Jurassic governance of the primeval ZANU-PF.  Thinking back, I imagined that Morgan Tsvangirayi was persuaded to take Robert Mugabe into his political boot, wherefore the old trickster settled at some dark corner until MDC fell into a stupor of artificial comfort.  But now, Tsvangirayi has been inevitably stung while he least expected.

Instead of focusing on the business of building high yielding relations, Mugabe continues to conspire evil against our nation hiding behind questionable legalism.  According to a recent Zimbabwe Situation news online report, “…. Mugabe is entitled under the law to assign functions to ministers, [but] he still has to consult his partners in government on the allocation of the ministries, according to the GPA”.  In complete defiance of this noble proposition, Mugabe unilaterally takes it upon himself to strip MDC-held ministries of essential powers.

Apparently, the biggest challenge confronting Tsvangirayi is not the quality of Zimbabwe’s coalition government, given that most such arrangements are products of large-scale compromise.  Agreements are made on the basis of partner credibility, honesty, consistency and transparency – traits which ZANU-PF is not exactly endowed with.  Most progressive analysts will agree that Tsvangirayi knew exactly the nature of the partner he was committing himself to, that is why he needed to have a comfortable stock of antidotes to deal with Mugabe’s chicanery.   More importantly, ZANU-PF is a completely discredited partner, headed by one Robert Mugabe who comprehensively lost the March 2008 Parliamentary Election, only to be ‘salvaged’ by an equally discredited one-man masquerade in June of the same year.

According to Professor Arthur Mutambara, the Global Political Agreement [GPA] is the only source of Mugabe’s ‘presidential legitimacy’.  In fact he would have proceeded to add that had SADC taken the right decision to call for a more organised, African Unity-supervised presidential re-run, Mugabe would now be confined to overdue retirement at his Zvimba rural home.  It therefore is astonishing by what authority Mugabe cherry-picks ministerial responsibility, if it were not that he is of a tyrannical genre obsessed with power.  I have argued time and again that our Zimbabwe government is too big and expensive, hence the shifting of ministerial powers would, on any other day, have little impact on service delivery.  And yet if you really put Mugabe’s juggling under the spotlight, he is only interested in ministerial adjustments that entrench his hegemonic hold on political power.

What is left now is for both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi and his deputy, Arthur Mutambara to place an inexpensive political device that should shatter once and for all, Mugabe’s life-presidency ambitions. Both MDC cadres must come out of their friendly accommodative shells and tell Mugabe to fulfill all the provisions of the GPA. This is the opportune time for both men to stop making excuses for the aging dictator and embark on three-dimensional activism. The more sensible side of government – MDC – must promulgate statutory instruments to licence all applicants for radio stations and newspapers.  The democratic parties must dispatch all ambassadors, governors and appoint deputy minister for agriculture Roy Bennet.  Morgan Tsvangirayi and Arthur Mutambara must repeal all anti-democratic laws while all pubic appointments not sanctioned by the GPA must be nullified, including that of attorney general Johannes Tomana and central bank governor Gideon Gono.

The gist of my argument is that Robert Mugabe lost the election, thus has no moral high ground to play god.  Five million Zimbabweans have given both MDCs the mandate to govern, so the one-man political dance of the discredited Robert Mugabe has no authority or legitimacy to give five million voters a single sleepless night.  If both Tsvangirayi and Mutambara are weak, they should immediately hand over their power – Nigeria style – to more capable members of their parties.  This weakling image of subservience they are portraying does not augur well with our expectations.  It could also endanger their 2012 electoral standing in their constituencies.  Mugabe’s unpopular mandate expired in 2000, so any compromise on the part of Tsvangirayi and Mutambara is blight on the noble fight against ZANU-PF fascist dictatorship.  Luckily, we now know there is a scorpion in our boot.

And then again, the wonderful Nyemudzai trumps the ugly t-shirt. We spotted her walking up the steps of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe to celebrate the International Women’s Day events. Way to go girl . . . walking the streets of Harare with funk and fabulousness.