For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong, there is a boy tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable. For every boy who is burdened with the constant expectation of knowing everything, there is a girl tired of people not trusting her intelligence. For every girl who is tired of being called over-sensitive, there is a boy who fears to be gentle, to weep. For every boy for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity, there is a girl who is called unfeminine when she competes. For every girl who throws out her E-Z-Bake Oven, there is a boy who wishes to find one. For every boy struggling not to let advertising dictate his desires, there is a girl facing the ad industry’s attacks on her self-esteem. For every girl who takes a step toward her liberation, there is a boy who finds the way to freedom a little easier.

Poster from CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective

This morning four of us piled into a car and went to observe a Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) gathering in downtown Harare. They wanted to deliver a petition to the Zambian Embassy requesting SADC to get more energetically involved in helping to solve the crisis in Zimbabwe. I thought that WOZA’s tactic of getting people to witness their event in order to provide factual and independent accounts is a good one. WOZA initiated their march at the UNDP building and they had reached Julius Nyerere Way when a bakkie full of riot police arrived to “put them in order”. What interested me was the behaviour of the police; they didn’t seem terribly excited or keen on beating the WOZA women. One of the women taken away was Jenni Williams, WOZA’s tireless co-ordinator.

I’ve been reading various news reports and articles by Zimbabweans that emphasise the need for Zimbabweans to go and vote in huge numbers in the presidential run-off. Of course a very high turnout of opposition voters will make it more difficult for Mugabe to steal the election, but steal it he will. In which case I wonder if the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has a post election strategy in place this time. We are likely to see a re-run of the last election when the MDC claimed victory but failed to convert their win. As I’ve written before, the liberation of Zimbabwe will only happen when Zimbabweans and the leadership of the MDC realise that we have to do more than vote and hope that the international community will come to our rescue.

Working out a post election strategy is not easy in a dictatorship, but, whether we like it or not, we have to.

Public actions like WOZA’s today give me some hope. But their actions need to be multiplied and replicated all over Harare and other parts of Zimbabwe to create sustained pressure on the illegitimate Mugabe regime.

At this time the MDC should not be putting their efforts into printing yet another batch of election posters, or fliers. They should be:

- forming resistance cells and collaborating with a variety of pressure groups like WOZA and the NCA to create rolling actions when the election is stolen
- lobbying key business leaders to shut down the country once the election is stolen: banks, fuel providers, taxi operators, teachers, supermarket owners
- bringing the armed forces and police onto the side of justice

It is largely agreed that the majority of Zimbabweans (including members of Zanu PF) and personnel within the armed forces and the police want Mugabe to go. It is a minority that want him in power to further their own corrupt and power hungry agendas. Therefore we need to stretch the regime to bursting point, and burst it will. But only if we refuse to be complicit in our own oppression.

Some Zimbabweans, as well as the MDC leadership have said that they won’t organise protest marches because the army will fire upon civilians. This is already happening in the rural areas and the high density areas where people have been murdered, assaulted and made homeless. If the MDC and Zimbabweans continue to use this excuse for inaction, then it isn’t Mugabe who is oppressing us, it is ourselves.

Power itself is not derived solely through violence. Governmental power is frequently violent in nature, but it is primarily maintained through oppression and tacit compliance of the majority of the governed. Since silence and passivity is interpreted by the government as consent, any significant withdrawal of compliance will restrict or challenge governmental control. Struggle and conflict are often necessary to correct injustice. People’s apathy in the face of injustice implicates them in the moral responsibility for that injustice. (For more, click here)

The liberation of Zimbabwe will be achieved because of a variety of interventions, including:

- creative and courageous leadership in the opposition
- creative and courageous leadership in civil society organisations
- regional pressure
- international pressure
- internal pressure
- the withdrawal of co-operation by ordinary citizens
- the non-cooperation of the business community
- the withdrawal of support for Mugabe by the police and the armed forces

And I believe the most important of these is sustained internal pressure.

I’ve just spent a week in Las Vegas. Not my first choice of destination but an award ceremony took me there. As a Zimbabwean I got a variety of comments, like:

- Zimbabwe? You don’t live there do you?

- What’s in your bag – all your money?

- Ag shame man, how do you cope?

When I checked into my hotel I was charmed by the young receptionist who looked at my passport, and then at me, and exclaimed:

No Way! When I was at high school my friends and I used to talk about where we wanted to visit and I always said Zimbabwe because it sounded cool and I didn’t know where it was.

Hmmm.

Then at a clothing store when I handed over my ID, the sales assistant said she’d quite like to live in a place like Zimbabwe. But she changed her mind when I said that there wasn’t a Starbucks.

One of the aspects that I found difficult traveling as a Zimbabwean was how I became so identified as Zimbabwe the country and all that’s wrong with it. Whilst it is certainly appropriate that horrified looks accompany any mention of Zimbabwe, because of the truly appalling situation here, I’m looking forward to the day when our country isn’t headline news because of violence and sadness.

The vast amount of email that I came home to revolved around the high levels of violence that we Zimbabweans are experiencing. The violence is being orchestrated by Zanu PF. But in The Standard published on 25th May, there’s a full page advertisement placed by the ruling party which says that Mugabe’s fist is against white imperialism, not against Zimbabweans. Apparently, according to Zanu PF, “support comes from persuasion not from pugilism”.

The kind of persuasion that cuts off a person’s lips, and cuts out their tongue? This is what was inflicted on Tonderai Ndira, a Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) activist who was abducted, tortured and murdered recently.

I’m lucky enough to get copies of The Guardian Weekly, now and again. Unfortunately not on weekly basis but that’s ok. They’re given to me to read by a friend of a friend who subscribes. Reading the letters section of an old copy last night I came upon a letter that referred to Mugabe saying that he echoes the description of Macbeth towards the end of Shakespeare’s play:

“Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands / . . . / Those he commands move only in command, / Nothing in love; now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.”

The writer of the letter reminds us that Macbeth dies unloved by anyone, even by those who gave him “mouth-honour” and “curses not loud, but deep”.

Having finally gotten so fed up with my local banking hall because it never has power, is never online, seldom has cash and always allows the police and military to jump the queue, I called their public relations department. The guy I spoke with was charming and concerned and cheerfully told me told me that I was justified in complaining because my branch is rated second worst in the entire country. Top bad spot goes to their branch in Chivhu, I was told. When I raised the issue of our army and police bullies and said that his staff need some help in telling them to wait their turn, he said that when we come “eyeball to eyeball with a soldier we crumble into jelly’ . . . quite right I said, but What Are We Going To Do About It? I could visualise him sitting at his desk in Borrowdale slowly shaking his head, as I am mine.

The likes of the Bob arse licker, Caesar Zvayi, are particularly nauseating to the likes of me who receives and processes a vast amount of human rights information from all over Zimbabwe. The reports, photographs and documentaries that Kubatana.net has published bear witness to the post election brutality that Zanu PF is responsible for. As I write this I’ve just heard that injured MDC supporters taking shelter in a church in one of Harare’s high density areas have been rounded up and taken away by Mugabe’s police force. Zvayi accuses Biti and Tsvangarai of being shrill. Whilst he’s right that there isn’t “genocide” in Zimbabwe, there is, as the BBC described it, “electoral cleansing”. We are getting reports from all corners of Zimbabwe describing horrific cases of post election violence.

Zvayi, one of the state-controlled Herald newspaper’s most poisonous pens, goes on to say

What is more Zanu-PF has been on the ground since March 29 while the MDC-T leadership have been gallivanting on a purported “diplomatic offensive” which appears to have backfired spectacularly because, apart from Levy Mwanawasa who has apparently never recovered from that horrible accident that nearly claimed his life, no other sane African leader bought Tsvangirai’s wild claims.

Certainly Zanu-PF has been on the ground since March 29 beating peoples heads in; this is Zanu-PF’s tried and tested method of election (pre and post) campaigning.