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Archive for the 'Activism' Category

The Art of Cowardice

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Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 by Bev Clark

Rejoice Ngwenya takes on both the Diaspora, suggesting that they return hom to help fight fascsim, as well as the xenophobia perpetrated by South Africans who should concede that they are a “brood of insecure, spineless cowards.” Read Rejoice’s latest article below:

Considering the new wave of xenophobic attacks against black Zimbabweans, some black South Africans now have to concede that they are a brood of insecure, spineless cowards.  I have literally grown up with these cowards, lived with them in exile, conferenced, drank and shopped with them in their fancy boulevards and arcades. Under that veneer of happy-go-lucky hypocrisy, their limited intellect seethes with nothing but venomous contempt for other Africans, especially us Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Zambians and Malawians.  You encounter sales assistants in South African shops and all you see is contemptuous hatred in their eyes, spite for your money as they peer suspiciously at it as if it has been puked by a dragon. Even when I check into five-star hotels at Rosebank, I have to grope around for ideal seating while the receptionists scurry around for attention of Japanese guests in anticipation of a miserly tip. I guess we need to appreciate that their Ubuntu deserted them as a result of three hundred years of plunder and mental abuse by the Boers.  To them, anything white is God-sent. But I have good news for the enlightened few:  it is only an insecure, good-for-nothing pea brain that would kill someone solely on the basis of ethnicity. Just like Hitler, Amin, Stalin, Bokassa and Sadam Hussein, Paul Kagame, ZANU-PF hooligans in June 2008 et al – xenophobic South Africans are a pathetic excuse for humans.

The 1-7 August 2010 week, I hear, is national science week in that country, but sad to say, xenophobia is not rocket science, otherwise there would have been a genius from some village high school in Tlokoyandou, Limpopo Province,  with a perfect wonder cure. Unfortunately, it is neither a medical condition nor physical deformity, but plain stupidity.  I guess I am asking for too much to expect an average primary school dropout from Soweto to notice how the world has moved ahead riding the wave of human diversity. Sadly, there are millions of such second grade humans in that country, from the dry lands of Limpopo to the shores of The Cape. These idle minds are too busy worrying about where to get their next glass of home-brewed bear; pondering which Shabeen will be first to play the next big Kwaito [local house music]song, instead of creating own jobs. Their obsession is what Zimbabwean stud lays which South African woman, and what sort of punishment matches the ‘transgression’.   If they had a morsel of intellect, I would remind them that the world’s best civilisation – United States of America – is a potpourri of ethnic diversity.  If Americans had continued agonising on how to perfect Adolph Hitler’s poisonous doctrine of Aryan purity, they would still be living in tin shacks and using bucket toilets in Harlem like South Africans do in Khayelitsha!  Good gracious me, which planet has these clowns tumbled from?

Considering that in the 1990s, scores of Zimbabweans lost their lives and property harbouring parents of these social rejects, the blame lies purely on the African National Congress’s [ANC] political ideology of false promises. But unlike our own Marxist-Leninist dunderheads in Harare, true ANC cadres no longer beat up those who do not agree with them. The remnant legion of Zimbabwean-haters thrives on a mentality of cowardice and fear, and then convinces equally gullible neighbours that poverty is caused by African aliens. The net result?  Xenophobia.

Fear and cowardice are the twin evils of African politics. Here in Zimbabwe, after thirty years of violent repression, a typical Zimbabwean will not say much against political order or any system for that matter without glancing over their shoulder. The consequences are devastating. We have become so accustomed to service delivery abuse that mediocrity and compliance are now in the DNA our social behaviour. Zimbabweans wait for someone to say something, and they join with a ‘we knew it all along’ chorus. Fear and coward mentality!

This reminds me of a Mr Dzikamai Mavhaire, a close ally of Robert Mugabe who, at the height of ZANU-PF’s one party state euphoria in the 1990s, bravely defied all political odds and said something to the effect: “Mr Mugabe must go; he should give way to new party leadership.” There was hue and cry from his delusionary party, but he became an instant cult hero in the ‘democratic movement’.  As you read this rebellious treatise, twelve million Zimbabweans of progressive political ideology would want to show Mr Mugabe the flashing political exit, but we have had absolutely no clue on how to go about this noble democratic exercise since 1985. Villagers have been pummelled into prostrate submission while urbanites are routinely reduced to dysfunctional robots that worry too much about day to day survival at the expense of long-term political wisdom.

At petrol service stations, councils, churches, schools, public buses – Zimbabwean citizens are abused, but the most they can do is to wait and see, hoping that the next day will bring better tidings. Grocery supermarkets compel us to buy merchandise we do not need because they stock no loose change, and we take this punishment without so much as twitching an eyebrow. Are we cabbages or what! No wonder South Africans and Tswanas trample on us – we have learnt – or rather more accurately, ZANU-PF has taught us to take a beating with a smile. In the crowded lounges of London, Washington and Sidney, Zimbabwean Diaspora cower behind superficial self-reassurance that it is impossible to return home and rid ourselves of the myopic scourge of ZANU-PF politics: “ Hee bakithi, sizophindela njani ekhaya uMgabe esabusa?.”  [“How on earth can we return to Zimbabwe during Mugabe’s reign? ].

My advice to the ANC government is that xenophobic attacks on my countrymen are not an illusion, but direct result of false promises of jobs and housing. But those assaulting Zimbabweans will have to wait another hundred years before a government can deliver jobs. Governments do not deliver, they devour. For my fellow citizens in Alexander, Kya Sands, Soweto and Westham  – I say swallow your pride, rid yourselves of fear and return home to fight against fascism. The battle is about to be won.

Constitutional outreach

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Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 by Bev Clark

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition have been holding constitutional community meetings around Zimbabwe. Their latest meeting in Hwedza saw participants raise the following issues:

1. Right to education: citizens must be able to hold government to account in terms of delivering quality and affordable education.
2. What is a young person-? The recommended age is between15-35 years although there was a discussion on raising this age to 18-35 years.
3. There should be equal opportunities for male and female youths.
4. The terms of presidency should be limited to two.
5. Number of  parliamentarians should be limited.
6. The government should ensure that perpetrators of violence are brought to book.
7. Are there any guarantees that the people’s views will be respected?

The MDC needs to grow some balls

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Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 by Bev Clark

The Information & Publicity Department of the Union for Sustainable Democracy (USD) suggests in a recent press statement that the Mbare Chimurenga Choir must be banned. Or alternatively that the MDC should “grow some balls” and stop Zanu PF jingles from being played on Zimbabwean radio. Hmmm. But radio is state-controlled even though the Generally Pathetic Agreement (GPA) was signed a long time ago.

It also occurs to me that Zimbabweans in general need to grow some tits and balls because it appears that a good many of us continue to pay licence fees, and thus help fund Mugabe’s media.

Here’s the full statement from USD:

Mbare Chimurenga Choir song must be banned

The Union for Sustainable Democracy calls on the Unity Government to prohibit the blatantly partisan music of the Mbare Chimurenga Choir from being aired on state radio and television. Without any doubt, the song Nyatsoteerera is intentionally provocative. Playing it on ZBC stations goes against the object, spirit and purpose of the Global Political Agreement that promotes bi-partisanship over partisanship.

In our country’s current sensitive and fractious circumstances, it boggles the mind how a party to the inclusive government can arrogantly seek to promote and perpetuate disunity and do so with such breathtaking impunity disguised as giving effect to the legacy of our liberation struggle. Even worse, how could such a song ever be regarded as an ‘expression of nationhood’? It is clinical madness!

It is calculated to provoke and belittle well-meaning individuals such as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai while scandalously and desperately trying to give life to a dead and now decomposing party. Such behaviour cannot be defended and must simply be stopped in the national interest.

There is ample evidence that ZANU PF entered the Government of National Unity only to retain a hold on power and never out of a genuine desire to work collaboratively in the national interest after decades of mismanagement.

Whereas the Unity Government has afforded Tsvangirai’s MDC some opportunities to mend things for the benefit of the country, the advent of the Unity Government has provided Mugabe’s ZANU PF with much needed time and resources to regroup and, having secured themselves in a somewhat politically acceptable position, they are now gradually dispensing with the services of the MDC and, in typical ZANU PF fashion, they are doing so with breathtaking arrogance.

The MDC must accept its share of the blame for this resurgence of ZANU PF. Since joining the Unity Government they have adopted a largely impotent stance that has made it easy for Mugabe and ZANU PF to disregard any idea of a real partnership.

It seems that many in the MDC have become compromised and have, regrettably, taken their eyes off the ball in large part because they have tasted the privileges of government office. Zimbabwe needs committed, pragmatic parliamentarians who will concern themselves more with getting the job done than with just being in politics for its own sake.

Because the Mbare Chimurenga Choir’s commercial, jingle, song – whatever label one chooses to attach to their composition – continually regurgitates the divisive and patently false mantra that President Mugabe and his two deputies, John Nkomo and Joyce Mujuru, are the ones running the country and that the MDC are nothing more than junior partners, it must forthwith and in the national interest be prohibited from airing on our public broadcaster ZTV as well as on our public radio stations.

In the meantime, the MDC needs to grow some balls.

Econet doesn’t Inspire

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Friday, July 23rd, 2010 by Bev Clark

Rejoice Ngwenya in his latest article entitled the 3G Revolution That Never Was reckons that Zimbabwean corporates like Econet are taking their customers for granted. Read more from Rejoice . . .

One of Zimbabwe’s leading transnational blue chip telecommunication companies, ECONET, is once again promising the local market a miraculous transformation of the country’s Information Communication Technology [ICT]. For several years, the ambitious Strive Masiyiwa-owned enterprise has been trumpeting molten corporate lava on new 3rd Generation platform [3G], spending thousands of dollars in the process to seek attention from habitually technology-averse Zimbabweans. A massive excavation along Zimbabwe’s main trunk road is now been backed with more promises of memorable fibre optic 4G revolution.

If customer satisfaction was measured per capita of advertising and promotional ad spend, ECONET would probably be running out of space on the human utility scale! There are those who argue that a proliferation of ninety base stations in ninety days to support a two million plus subscriber base is the ultimate symbol of success, not to mention high share prices, exciting dividends and healthy bottom line. Others also insist that a company that has a hundred square metre full colour billboards at every major intersection in every major town is a symbol of marketing excellence. No doubt there are similar such experiences across the length and breadth of the African continent. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that market dominance is a precursor to customer satisfaction; rather, it evolves into irritating monopolistic behaviour.

The global corporate graveyard is littered with big spend ventures whose customer satisfaction index – for want of a term – is no higher than the intelligence quotient [IQ] of the cockroach hiding in a dark corner of your laptop case. At one time, it was impossible to send short message services [SMS] on Fridays through the ECONET network, let alone make a call. Their engineers, as expected, had a perfect explanation. Subscriber rates, they mourned, were literally controlled by business-hostile central government regulators, so much so that the use of local Zimbabwe dollar currency rendered sustainable service delivery impossible. The market accepted the explanation, and waited with abated breadth for the day when the nervous ZANU-PF government would allow use of ‘foreign’ currency in local transactions. I remember – ironically with a tinge of trepidation and amusement – that my account was arbitrarily ‘converted’ to pay-as-you-go for reasons only known to the late Egyptian Tutankhamen. My and every account holder’s protests fell on deaf, highly-paid electronic ears.

As fate would have it, we are almost two years into the multicurrency use, but I am yet to experience a ‘phenomenal rise’ in service delivery. When wireless internet provision became fashionable, competition from ‘fixed’ broadband pioneers like Zimbabwe Online ‘inspired’ ECONET to go one up by introducing the mobile 3G ‘dongle’ connect card internet browsers that were billed to take Zimbabwe business a notch up in regional ICT competitiveness. As expected, these promises were bankrolled with expensive promotions and fanfare, and those like me whose survival solely depends on mobile web-based activism, fell to our knees and showered praises to the galaxies. As it turns out, the prayers were premature.

Many months after I and perhaps thousands of other techno-freaks fell into the 3G promotional trap, we are still to experience the beauty of the ECONET ‘inspired’ ICT revolution. Compared to US1 [one United States Dollar] per thirty minutes that ‘fixed’ broadband service providers charge in public internet shops, or the US20 or so dollars levied for a miserly 100 megabytes, I quickly moved onto the USD25 per month unlimited access offered by ECONET’s miracle dongle. This was a gigantic error of judgement, on my part.

For the ten or so months I have been ‘hooked’ to this much heralded 3G system, I can access my internet only an average of two hours per week. On several occasions, I have met my colleagues-in-despair at ECONET HQ, seeking answers from arrogant, stoned-faced young technicians more interested in showing off their latest i-tuners to bamboozled school girls. I have tried to scream, but my voice chokes with anger, and I can only have just enough energy to wobble down the stairs with nothing but a bruised ego.

In the past few weeks, my misery has been incremental, as expected, compounded with a perfect explanation from ECONET that the fibre optic project is ‘interfering’ with our access and that all will be well once the cables are buried! To date, I have probably lost a couple of exciting activist deals due to my lack of communication, never mind the mental stress of dealing with a technology beyond one’s control. Sometimes, as I do now, I feel local ECONET engineers should be rounded up and thrown into an ICT dungeon filled with archaic Olympia typewriters, Moss code, telex, Gestetner machines and discarded valve-type black and white television sets where their reputation can assume a comparative semblance of respectability – that is if they survive drowning in volumes of black duplicating inks, scarlet correction fluids and used machine oils!

The question essentially is: why do ‘successful’ corporates take us customers for granted? Toyota International had a rude awakening, so did British Petroleum. I call it corporate stupor. At a certain stage, the blue chippers get drunk and choke in their own success, paralysed by exciting financial results and moribund with self praise that only immunises them from customer sensitivity. I cannot recall how many cars Toyota had to recall, or how many millions litres of oil BP has so far spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but my wish is that companies like MTM or CellTel waltz into the Zimbabwe market to give these overzealous chip-on-the-shoulder  players like ECONET a f*****g whipping. Just perhaps, perhaps I might be able to open my Yahoo without having to sing the Khoisan desert anthem 100 times over in Latin. I am a stickler for free market competition, even if I have to lose a network I have been hooked since July 1998. Thus I am agitated by market dominance that has manifestations of monopolistic behaviour. Ninety base stations in ninety days my black a**! Jeeper’s creepers, just give me only one base station in three hundred and sixty five days that WORKS and we will be lifelong pals, Mr Masiyiwa!

Constitutional outreach is cosmetic

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Thursday, July 15th, 2010 by Bev Clark

Here’s another reason why state-controlled media should be boycotted. Below is an email we recently received from a Kubatana subscriber living in the south of Zimbabwe.

I’m aware that Kubatana’s correspondence with the public ended on 31 May 2010 but since COPAC has postponed outreach dates for Bulawayo, then this petition still applies. This is a plea on a personal level and petition on behalf of millions of people in Bulawayo and the South-South Western part of Zimbabwe who have no access to newspapers or simply cannot afford them.

For the Constitution making outreach programme to be meaningful to Zimbabweans, you will agree that we need to be constantly educated and informed on issues that affect us with regard to the laws of the land. In my view, radio is the cheapest, most effective medium of mass communication with the broadest coverage reaching even the simplest man on the street. With this in mind, please allow me to detail my grievance against ZBC.

Since 3 April 2010, there has been a breakdown in transmission of SFM radio and National FM Radio in the above mentioned areas. This was after an initial breakdown from 29 February 2010 to 1 March 2010 which was rectified after 3 days.

SFM airs programmes on the judicial system, parliamentary affairs, sexual reproductive health, education, religion, arts, politics, sports, business and finance, agriculture and mining, etc. These programmes have platforms for comment and debate besides the fact that they are educating and informative. It is therefore clear that such a radio station is vital for ALL Zimbabwean citizens to be well-informed and knowledgeable enough to make meaningful contribution during the constitution-making outreach programme (especially the urban citizen).

In my personal capacity, I have made serious attempts to have the SFM management to address this issue but to no avail.

* On 1 March 2010, I texted Hilton Mavise, Shift Head of Montrose Studio FM. He ignored the message.
* On April 21, I called Mrs. Nonceba Mkandla, the Area Manager for Bulawayo based at Montrose Studio. She said she had done all she could to prompt her superiors to address the issue to no avail. She said the problem was from Transmedia and TelOne faults. She even gave me Minister Webster Shamu’s two mobile saying the issue should be taken to him. Obviously neither of the Minister’s numbers was ever reachable.
* On May 7 2010, I called Rodney Rwende, the Shift Manager of SFM in Pockets Hill. Without bothering to hear what my problem was, he claimed his phone battery was low and gave me his superior’s number instead.
* On the same day, I called Simon Mkhithika, Head of SFM. He said he was aware of the problem. He was not any more helpful than the others but instead blamed the problem on some mysterious POLITICAL issue regards broadcasting that had been offset by Jonathan Moyo.
* I have called the engineers at Montrose and the radio presenters and the majority were rude, contempt of our plight and downright bureaucratic to protect their superiors.
* I have tried to reach Allen Chiweshe, Head of Radio Programming for ZBC on both his mobile and landline, to no avail. From this true information, it is clear I have gone out of my way to find numbers and call for rectification of the problems to no avail.

This led me to the conclusion that ZBC SFM is deliberately ignoring the breakdown in transmission to keep us ill-informed regards the pertinent issues that could equip us to make meaningful contribution to the new constitution. Besides that, ZBC continues to demand radio and TV license fees from this region despite their awareness that we have no access to either SFM or National FM. The licence fees are equivalent to those paid in Harare and Northern Zimbabwe although clearly this is grossly unfair as the capital has access to ZTV channel 2 at no additional cost. Is it coincidence that the languages targeted by National FM (e.g. Tonga, Venda, Sotho, Nambya, etc ) are spoken by people mainly found in the parts of Zimbabwe affected by the breakdown? I think not since ZBC (has not bothered to address this problem) regards these as minority people in Zimbabwe.

Why hasn’t ZBC at least spoken to us to address this problem via Power FM, Radio Zim or ZTV? Should we be silenced and accept ZBC’s excuse that the problem is Transmedia and TelOne’s baby when the problem affects its paid-up licence holders who will soon be expected to make contributions to the COPAC teams? Would it not be better for ALL willing Zimbabweans to be heard at a discreet but national radio level first, before the smaller, face-to-face platforms of the COPAC outreach reach them? Should this evil of clear regionalism, tribalism and sabotage of the constitution making process be ignored? Should our right to information and service provision for something we pay for be demanded? Should incompetence and corruption regards this issue be politicised?

Why is it when it comes to radio and TV transmission, Harare and its surroundings is never affected but Bulawayo has perennial problems including this current and on-going problem? Should sanctions be blamed on an issue that never affects Harare but makes it a mockery to say Bulawayo is the second-largest city? Do Cuthbert Dube and his fellow ZBC Board members even know about this issue since they have ensured that there is no clear platform for complaints regards faults and breakdowns of the service they chair? Does Happison Muchetetere, CEO of ZBC care about this problem and is he aware of its impact on this historic constitution making process on Southern Zimbabwean citizens?

We would sue ZBC if we had the means and know-how to do so. But then we are just ordinary citizens who are simply petitioning for this problem to be resolved and for us to be heard.

Mugabe controls the media

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Thursday, July 15th, 2010 by Bev Clark

This is why Zimbabweans shouldn’t pay their TV or radio licences and why companies shouldn’t advertise on state-controlled media:

Information and Publicity Minister and Zanu (PF) political commissar Webster Shamu has ordered all Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation four Radio stations’ Disc Jockeys and the two television channels to play some Zanu (PF) propaganda jingles he produced for at least twice an hour per each DJ’s shift. The launch of the propaganda jingles is believed to be in preparation for a possible election next year. More