In the words of Zimbabweans, from different corners of our country . . .

Can someone help As I am writing this mail there is massive killing of people for political affiliation reasons, destruction of houses and ploughing down of crops in Mutambara Gonzoni area. Can anyone please help STOP this wave of political violence.

We have established that there are at least 15 Militia re-education / torture camps situated around Chiredzi, all within a 50km radius: -

One a hundred meters from the Mkwasine admin officers.
At Scott block on Mkwasine Estate
At Kwida village Mkwasine Estate
At Rumera village Mkwasine Estate.
At Benzi Village Mkasine Estate.
At Ngambi village
Three at Ruwari ranch
Old Chiredzi bridge 5km southeast of Chiredzi.
At Fair Range ranch 12km east of Chiredzi
Two at Humani Ranch
Two at Samba Ranch 25km to the North of Chiredzi

These camps have about 30 to 50 real militia youths running them, but increase their numbers by forcing surrounding villagers to join them bringing their numbers up to about 300. This figure changes because many villagers desert during the night and move away into the towns. I have interviewed many of these people who have escaped and they say that demonstrations are held where people are selected and beaten in front of the gathering, most people are against these militia, but are to frightened to resist. At 1.15pm today a crowd of militia gathered at Chitsanga Hall in Tshovani township Chiredzi and captured several people who were perceived to be MDC, they were beaten severely and released. The Chiredzi police were called, but did not arrive until the crowd had dispersed, no arrests were made. I am told that most of the so called militia were people forced there and were very unhappy with what they saw and are now asking the MDC youth to retaliate, saying that they the residents will join them to rid themselves of this scourge. The overall situation is dire here and could explode any day now.

l don’t know about the developments happening in the rural areas where people are being told to make sure they are illiterate on the 27th so that someone will vote for them to be sure that they don’t express their will. To be more specific chiweshe and uzumba where we have relatives who cant come to town because roads will be close from the 25th so that no one comes in or goes out before the voting. l don’t know if any organisation or observers would check on those issues coz its a cause for concern pliz!!!!!!!!!!!!

My impatience hijacked me today. Waiting outside the bank, waiting for a friend, an old man came up to me trying to sell some ballpoint pens. When I say no, he starts on about his poor son with a head the size of a pumpkin. His son needs help. Two years ago it was his daughter with a pumpkin head. Small details. But I snapped and told him I wasn’t interested in his stories. I’m irritated by the mess of this place; by walking past a massive hole in a pavement in a shopping centre. A hole that could swallow a granny. A hole that everyone now uses as a rubbish pit. But we continue, all of us to walk around it. Why don’t we fix it even if we didn’t break it? What are we waiting for?

I am a surgeon with a scalpel for false values.
- Lenny Bruce (1926 – 1966)

I have this great little book called 50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed To Know by Mickey Z. What I like about it is that it investigates a variety of actions and people that have contributed, one way or another, to our collective liberation.

As Mickey Z says in his introduction, “from taking up arms against one’s oppressor to using art and words as weapons of mass instruction, these 50 episodes celebrate a different form of patriotism . . . one based on challenging tradition and taking action.”

So, here’s a bit on Lenny Bruce:

“Lenny Bruce was a revolutionary comedy figure because he brought honesty into a form which previously had been little more than an empty crowd-pleasing truth,” says George Carlin.

To say Bruce revolutionized comedy is putting it rather mildly. His impact extended beyond mere entertainment to alter American culture. Perhaps the single greatest indicator of his uniqueness lies in the fact that many of his classic stand-up bits are no longer funny. His primary topics – religion, politics, sex – are hardly taboo anymore (thanks, in part, to Bruce) and thus his scathing attacks seem tame by today’s standards.

Not so in the early 1960s when Bruce faced the repressive wrath of state power. As a former assistant district attorney admitted some 30 years after Bruce’s death, “He was prosecuted because of his words. He didn’t harm anybody; he didn’t commit an assault; he didn’t steal; he didn’t engage in any conduct, which directly harmed someone else. So, therefore, he was punished, first and foremost, because of the words he used . . . We drove him into poverty and used the law to kill him.”

On June 13, 1964, a petition made the rounds denouncing the legal assault on Lenny Bruce. Signed by a veritable who’s who of the time (e.g. Woody Allen, Richard Burton, Bob Dylan, Dick Gregory, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Henry Miller, Susan Sontag, Terry Southern, William Styron, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg), the petition read, in part:

Lenny Bruce is a popular controversial performer in the field of social satire in the tradition of Swift, Rabelais, and Twain. Although Bruce makes use of the vernacular in his night-club performances, he does so within the context of his satirical intent and not to arouse the prurient interests of his listeners. It is up to the audience to determine what is offensive to them; it is not a function of the police department of New York or any other city to decide what adult private citizens may or may not hear.

Within two years the battle had claimed Bruce. He was found dead in his apartment . . . never to witness the enduring effect of his efforts. “The greatest gift I derived from knowing him and his work was the importance of honesty, in the words and on the stage,” Carlin states. “Lenny made being full of shit old-fashioned.”

Or, as Lenny himself explained: “Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”

Dance your anger and your joys,

Dance the military guns to silence,

Dance oppression and injustice to death,

Dance my people.

- Ken Saro-Wiwa

Watching TV the other night I was horrified to see groups of South African men marching through townships in South Africa brandishing weapons of all descriptions from hammers through to axes, baying for the blood of foreigners living in South Africa. Equally horrifying were the images of members of the South African police force standing back nonchalantly watching victims writhe on the ground in pain from their assault.

These xenophobic attacks are appalling and unacceptable as are the daily high levels of violence that South African women experience in “the rainbow nation”.

Amnesty International, in their 2008 report on the state of the world’s human rights stated the following on South Africa:

High levels of sexual and other forms of violence against women continued to be reported.

According to police statistics, reported incidents of rape had decreased by 4.2 per cent over the previous six years. However, between April 2006 and March 2007, 52,617 rapes were reported. There were also 9,327 reported cases of “indecent assault” – including anal rape and other types of sexual assault which did not then fall within the definition of rape. In December new crime statistics for the period April to September 2007 included 22,887 reported rapes.

Police officials reported to Parliament that between July 2006 and June 2007, police recorded 88,784 incidents of “domestic violence” in terms of the 1998 Domestic Violence Act (DVA). The Department of Justice reported that over 63,000 protection orders were issued by the courts between April 2006 and March 2007. However, the ICD reported in November that of 245 police stations audited in 2006, only 23 per cent were compliant with their obligations under the DVA, ranging from none in Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces to all of those audited in the Western Cape.

Women experiencing violence and service-providing organizations told Amnesty International that while some police facilitated women’s access to protection orders, others referred complainants back to their families, or failed to seize dangerous weapons, or refused to take any steps unless the complainant laid criminal charges first.