Fun under repression

Back in the day when I was much younger I often went to Luna Park when it was over near Glamis Stadium. I loved it. It was always a huge treat. Recently I was delighted to see the return of Luna Park. Its return can’t really be described as triumphant; it’s much diminished compared to it’s former days of full glory. But nevertheless, it’s back and still fun. These days Luna Park is at the corner of 7th and Herbert Chitepo in Harare. It shares the dusty piece of land with weekend soccer games and daily security guard training exercises.

Last Saturday a friend and I pulled in and decided to have a ride on the Shells. I was interested in the ferris wheel but in case of any kind of malfunction I wanted to be close to the ground. The ticket booth has a casual scripted sign on it that says Rides at your own Risk.

And the rides aren’t that cheap either. US$3 for 3 minutes on the Shells, for example. Anyway, we bought our tickets, got on and were flung around, screaming at the top of our lungs, like we were ten again.

Here are some excerpts from an article by Xan Rice writing for The Guardian Weekly. His piece is about the Kenyan government of national unity, how the government has done well for itself, while the poor eat “air burgers”.

Sounds a lot like Zimbabwe.

Evans Akula lost his Mercedes but got the message. During a late-night carjacking in Nairobi a few weeks ago, the assailants asked the Kenyan MP: “When will you people give us the new constitution or the jobs that you have promised?” The question encapsulated the main concerns in Kenya today: the urgent need for political reform and accountability, and the growing struggle of the mwananchi, or common man, to get by.

Poor people skip meals, eating “air burgers”, as the local saying goes. Government attempts to help the poor have been half-hearted at best, reflecting not only lack of money but a skewed sense of priorities. In the recent budget, finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta revealed that the projected revenues for this year would not even cover the state’s running costs, which went up steeply when Odinga and Kibaki nearly doubled the number of ministries to reward allies with seats.

To save cash Kenyatta announced that no government official would be able to drive a vehicle over 1800cc – the local Mercedes dealer quickly advertised several models at 1796cc – but several ministers said they would ignore the directive.

Seems like a sensible idea to me.

The reluctance of governments and international organisations to donate funds directly to the Zimbabwe state as presently constituted, as opposed to making laudable donations to non-governmental organisations, is understandable. But why not appoint one of the top four auditing firms represented in Zimbabwe to receive and manage all funding from governments and international organisations? Read more

Ten kilometres out of Chegutu the melancholic sign post for none other than “Madzongwe Road” tells a story in itself. It is the road to our farm. The sign is bent and faded and tired looking. Maybe it looks a bit like us. If the Prime Minister were to turn off here, the first white-owned farm he would come to belongs to Retief Benade. This farm, like every other, is also under siege. There is no chance of police assistance for the farmer here as the invader is a senior policeman himself. What else can one expect in what has become a police state? Mr Benade realised he would not win. In desperation, last month, he sold his entire beef and dairy herd of a few hundred animals, including his breeding cows. They did not go to another breeder, they went for slaughter. No one buys breeding herds in countries where investments are not protected. Breeding herds are long-term investments – phenomena that have become obsolete in the Zimbabwe of today. Mr Benade has taken his expertise to Zambia. To go elsewhere in Zimbabwe would be asking for trouble. The farm invasions are wide-spread. That is the undeniable truth.

Read Zimbabwean farmer Ben Freeth’s request that Morgan Tsvangirai wake up and speak the truth here

In our weekly Kubatana email newsletter we asked our subscribers to tell us what they think of our politicians going on fund raising trips when revenues from our natural resources are corruptly (mis) managed.

We received some interesting response. A subscriber called Miles suggests that we need a complete overhaul of how we do things in Zimbabwe rather than adopting this piecemeal approach we have to fixing our broken country.

Check out some of the response we got . . .

Yes of course our first step should be getting our own house in order first, but that would require brave actions from a lot of Zimbabweans and I’m afraid the will amongst the masses just isn’t there. I worked in the 2002 elections as a security man for Harare Central Constituency. I had flown out from the UK and volunteered to do a job which no one else wanted.There were a lot more Zimbabweans who just put their heads under the covers and hoped the whole awful situation would just disappear, there are, percentage wise, very few people like Jenni Williams and members of WOZA who are prepared to demonstrate with a physical prescence, rather than the masses who just blog sites like the  Zim Times and moan incessantly “why isn’t anyone doing anything”. Mugabe and his gang, which now should probably include many opposition members as well, should be overthrown by the people as soon as possible. Everyday we put off the inevitable showdown is a day which we give to the Chefs to hide their assets and benefit from Marange. Zimbabwe requires a new Leader; a man whose sole remit is to place the needs of the people before anything else. A person who will lead by example. The ZNA needs to be re-entitled the Zimbabwean Army of Reconstruction and all weapons to be replaced by tools to help rebuild the infrastructure. All members of the Youth League to attend re-integration classes and proper counselling before being allowed back into the community. All Foreign Bank Accounts of all citizens to be repatriated to Zimbabwe and a thorough audit of their origins to be determined. A Truth and Reparation Council to be established. Zimbabwe will never take a step forward until reparations are made to those who have suffered by the perpetrators of that suffering. It is shameful that people like the Mujuru family sell ten tons of Congolese gold whilst their bretheren starve. The times of Mammon must cease, Greed cannot continue and Violence cannot prevail. The time for a Massive General Strike must be now .The people must take to the streets and say “Enough and no further. Chinja Maitiro”. But are you brave enough Zimbabwe? Are you brave enough? Somehow I don’t think so and if that is the case you deserve all you get! – Miles

I found the HRW report incisive and your comment important in terms of grounding the discussion in our reality at home and in engaging the rest of the world. I think we should start moving beyond abusing our resources through such privatization of public funds as is shown in the diamonds case. This is a strategy that unaccountable regimes get donor funds and parade it as conditional and meager to address our challenges while robbing the family kitty behind barricaded walls. We need more information on other sectors so that we can strengthen domestic demand for change financed slowly, transparently and incrementally towards a democratically defined and shared future. – Kudzai

Do you think there are any diamonds left in Marange. I doubt very much. What about gold fields? Do we have any left? How about recovering money already looted by this mining? It does not cost anything only political will. Lets all work together to make this country better for future generations. Remember we  (SIT  UNDER A SHADE TODAY BECAUSE SOMEONE PLANTED A TREE MANY YEARS AGO) so lets stop the rot and all will be fine. All it needs is political will. – Wellington

I’m feeling rather ragged this morning after a night of tossing and turning.

I guess reading The Economist’s Book of Obituaries at 10pm didn’t help, but nor did the 4 gunshots at 11:23 or a suspected attack from a tick or other associated pet vermin between the sheets at 12:01. After shining my mobile phone torch between my legs and other interesting places and getting the all clear on the vermin front my mind settled back on Zimbabwe. I started thinking of Tom Soper, a young man recently severely injured in a car accident. It seems like, at this stage, he’s paralysed from the neck down. He’s 37, a husband and father of two. I don’t know the full circumstances of the accident but what I do know is that the traffic lights at the intersection where the collison occured had not been working for some months. Of course working traffic lights don’t mean no accidents but they certainly help make our roads safer. Over the last several years we’ve experienced a devastating failure of infrastructure and service provision and delivery in Zimbabwe. Non-working and malfunctioning traffic lights might seem a low priority on our long list of Things To Get Working Again but when you give a moments thought to Tom Soper and the many other people who have been injured or killed on our roads, traffic lights become a much more serious issue.

I get more than uptight when I think of Zimbabwean MPs demanding US$30 000 car loans when in the majority of cases a US$10 000 car would do the trick except perhaps for Mr MP in Binga. Because in order for us to get things working again in Zimbabwe we all need to be watching our behaviour, monitoring our greed, and instilling fiscal responsiblity in our lives – MPs included. How about some of the money for these oversized car loans going to getting our roads safer?

And of course those of us living in Harare realise that there is ONE traffic light that absolutely never malfunctions. It’s the one on the corner of 7th Street and Tongogara Avenue. I mean what would the guards at State House do if that particular intersection became congested and mayhem ensued like at numerous other spots in the capital city – they wouldn’t know which way to point their bayonets.