In response to our email newsletter yesterday, here are some comments on the state of affairs in the City of Harare:

The roads at Warren Park D area are terrible especially from the Pfukwa Shopping centre down into 139th  Street. The roads have been like that (pot holes) for more than ten years now and one wonders what is happening? Is it because the people who stay there are not human like any other people, say those who stay in Borrowdale? Or is it because the cash people from that area pay for amenities is value less (Zim Kwacha) as compared to the USD paid by those who stay in Borrowdale? Please . . . the City Council should follow in Jesus Christ steps for not being a separator of people because– nobody is superior to others. Zimbabwe is an Independent country so there should be fair play and EQUALITY FOR ALL !

I totally agree with the sentiments expressed on this network regarding services offered by the city fathers. Although they have bought trucks to collect refuse in most suburbs the individual homes are not being provided with polythene bags that help to hold the litter before the trucks arrive which come once a week. This could be done by giving the housing assistants the polythene bags as they deliver the monthly accounts especially in high density suburbs. The other way would be to tender refuse collection to communities in the suburbs who are able to determine as and when collection should be done rather than once a week. Monitoring can then be done by health committees within the same suburbs. Reports on how each sub –contractor is performing will be sent to the respective officials for further monitoring and recommendation. This will ensure that each suburb is in charge of its health issues.

Human rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, pictured above, was honored for her outstanding contributions in defending human rights, people’s freedoms and promoting peace in Zimbabwe at a recent event held by the NGO, Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe.

This weekend I read one Jonathan Kadzura’s article in the Sunday Mail titled: Time to reclaim what is ours. He was rightfully bemoaning the fact that opportunities for growth of local businesses by local people were increasingly shrinking because of “petty so-called international investors” who have invaded our retail industry. According to Kadzura, we are in a really pathetic situation where this has seen foreigners sell our very own orange crush (Mazoe) to us at astronomical prices. I agreed with him until a few paragraphs later he started waxing lyrical about the nobleness of the indigenization drive that our “educated but colonized minds” don’t seem to be interested in upholding, but that is another story. Talk about having one’s own stuff sold to you at astronomical prices, I was reminded of an incident that happened with my cell phone last Friday.

I was on my way to a popular lodge in Glen Lorne for a meeting when I stopped briefly at Town and Country supermarket for a few supplies. Flustered and in a major hurry because I was already 15 minutes late, I never realised that I didn’t have my cell phone only until I was getting ready to settle for the meeting.  I searched everywhere, from my laptop bag to the car until that panicked feeling you seem to get especially when you can’t find your phone set in. I immediately borrowed a phone and dialled my number; meanwhile I was listening hard for it in the car. For a long time, it alternately rang continuously, was engaged or the call was rejected. I started to really panic, but I kept dialling.

Eventually, a man’s voice came on the phone and my mind suddenly went blank. What do you say to someone who evidently picked up your phone? Did I drop it or he nicked it off me? In that same moment, I managed to squeeze in a thought that this was probably just one of those annoying cross-lines that have recently become a regular accompaniment to dialling Econet numbers. Somehow I managed to mumble that I was looking for my phone and I would like it back please.

What followed was a conversation I am bound to remember for a long time. He acknowledged that yes he had my phone, provided his name and address and said I should know he was just an honest man, simple man – a security man at that and he had done me a huge favour. He was therefore requesting that I bring a monetary reward for it. Nothing less than $20, he said.

Cleary, the man underestimated my ability and capability to thank him sufficiently and therefore sought to lay out terms well in advance. My next thought was; what kind of a Good Samaritan was this who demands ransom for the return of my phone?

Initially, I didn’t know how to react. Obviously, my phone – a Sony Ericson W350 was worth a whole lot more than $20 and certainly, I was grateful that the man had been honest enough to give it up. But for him to demand payment for it was just something else. I mean, I think if one has been humble enough to recover somebody’s property, they can extend that humility to waiting for that person to offer a reward as and when they feel like, and for an amount they are comfortable with. In the end I just thought to give him the money and get it over with. However, because I couldn’t leave my meeting, I gave the details to my partner and asked him to go and get the phone, and of course, remember to carry $20. Less than an hour later, the police had somehow been involved and I found myself in a position where I had to provide evidence that the man had indeed demanded payment. Knowing men and their big egos, a dispute had somehow erupted between my partner and the Good Samaritan, with the former insisting that he shouldn’t have demanded any specific payment but should have just waited to be rewarded accordingly. The police had it that according to the law, if one picks up valuable property like a phone; they are supposed to hand it in at the nearest police station. It is also illegal to demand a reward for recovering lost property. They called it solicitation. The police were particularly interested in this case because, from their reasoning, it was important to discourage such behaviour to avoid situations where people nick valuables off others only to demand payment for their safe return. By this time the man had realised the folly of what he had done and handed over my phone, claiming that he had just been joking. Clearly in bad taste.

Later on I went back to my meeting and left the police dealing with the issue. No sooner had I started settling back in did I receive a text message from someone claiming they were the phone-picker’s employer. They were essentially accusing me of being an ingrate who let the police loose on an innocent old man who had jocularly asked for money for a drink. Well, first of all I had nothing to do with his ending up at the police and secondly, the man had demanded payment and prescribed an exact amount too. However, I just texted back and told her she could go to hell for judging me and that next, the police would be coming for her for harassment. But then again, under any circumstances, does it make any sense to pay heavily for what is already yours to someone else who somehow managed to get their hands on it?

Just come back from two trips to Eastern Highlands. Tolls both times, both ways. Now, I’ve seen a newspaper that says, “$15 million has been collected. Toll booths built. Roads paved.”

The only pavement I have seen laid is the rumble strips at the approach to these toll booths.

No potholes have been filled, edges maintained. I haven’t seen a new sign, or even new road markings painted.

Strikes me the whole scheme is job creation. New employees, or old employees now able to sit outside. And new places for the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) to sit and do nothing (which they do so well).

And I see ‘new’ things (who sold them those?). E.g. caravans, road cones, porta loos, solar panels.

Can someone show me, (not tell me), the point of this exercise? Not verbage – aims, objectives, uses, plans – but actual things? What has been done aside from collecting $15 million?

In Africa, a woman writer is a revolutionary. In writing, the woman writer abdicates the role of being the silent spectator and dares to speak.

In patriarchal Africa, a woman speaking up or speaking at all is a revolutionary, going against the grain, intruding into the space otherwise reserved for her male counterparts – the space to define reality, to critique what is, to celebrate or to denigrate, to demand an audience where one would otherwise be denied.

For every woman who writes, presumes that she has an audience and that in itself – is a radical idea. A woman writer presumes that what she has to say is important, that her view and her voice matters and in writing she claims this space – the space to both speak and to be heard.

So when I write, who is going to shut me up?

The act of writing requires audacity, tenacity and above all, a commitment to one’s work, passion and destination.

To many; writing is an end in itself but to me, writing is a tool, a weapon I wield in a world that does not ordinarily afford women a voice. So of necessity, my writing is mostly protest.

In fact, I believe that my work is more political than it is artistic. It is political in the sense that it challenges the status quo. It is political in the sense that it interrogates social stratification.

It is political in the sense that it examines the power relations that obtain within society – relations that are largely determined by who has resources and who lacks them.

It is political in the sense that it scrutinizes who has choices and who has none, who has options and who has none, who has a voice and who is denied one.

So I write to protest. I write to disagree.

I write to simply state that I think otherwise. I write to flip to the other side of the coin.

In my writing I identify myself as a feminist. I do not make apologies for it. Because feminism as an ideological position reaffirming what I identify with – the pursuit for social justice for women in a world where patriarchy legitimizes the conditions of our subjugation.

When I left work at 2pm on Friday I carried some work home with me. You see, l foolishly intended to do some work over the weekend. Foolishly, because like most Zimbabweans, l live with the reality of load shedding. Some have it worse than others. Like most Zimbabweans, the electricity goes when it goes and comes when it comes. According to the ZESA schedule, I was not supposed to have load shedding over the weekend, but at noon on Friday, it was lights out in my neck of the woods. It remained lights out until Saturday at about 3 pm. We had electricity all of 30-40 mins before it was lights out again, throughout the rest of the day and into night. Sunday morning came and went with no electricity. It only came back at about 3pm on Sunday. Needless to say, I could do no work; I was busy fretting about the putrefying veges and leftovers in my fridge.

I have relatives living in peri-urban Gweru. This used to be a thriving farming community before the farmers were “liberated” of their farms. These farmers would deliver tank loads of fresh milk to Dairibord, among other produce. Now of course that doesn’t happen anymore. The merry (in a manner of speaking) band of stragglers who resettled on some of these farms struggle to produce enough maize to feed themselves from one season to the next. Of course, the region is not a good maize growing region. But that’s another story. The story is that for the few remaining dairy farmers, the power outages have really hit them hard. On a typical day, it’s lights out at 5.30 and back in the evening or as late as 10 pm. How is anyone expected to maintain any level of productivity when you don’t have electricity for the main and productive part of the day? Think of the wheat farmers who cannot irrigate their winter wheat crop because there is no power. To think this is a story that is being repeated even as our long comatose manufacturing industry tries to sputter to life. It is being repeated in hundreds of thousands of homes where young people are trying hard to study for their “O” and “A” Level exams. It is being repeated in the hospital wards, labs and theatres where doctors and nurses are failing to give patients proper care. I would imagine the story is the same in the mining industry. As for business, you would be well advised to have your office in the CBD. Go 2 km out of the CBD and you are fair game for power cuts. It seems ZESA is determined to kill off what few businesses remain viable after the last ten years of madness in Zimbabwe.

What I am not hearing in all this talk of power (the political kind) is any talk of an energy plan. The truth of the matter is that the sub region is heading for a power crisis (of the electrical kind!). I hope for all our sakes, someone is alive to this reality or else we are doomed to be a nation of noisy, air polluting generators. City of Harare it would seem, has woken up and smelt the er…sunshine. They have started installing solar traffic lights. So how about streets lights to stop the muggings?

And who says, we should only have one power utility company in Zimbabwe?