Matonga is at it again. There he was shooting his mouth in the government mouthpiece, the Herald of June 07 that “All NGOs have been ordered to apply for new registration permits as part of measures to clamp down on the incidences of civil society meddling in the country’s politics ahead of the June 27 presidential run-off.”

This in direct contradiction to what the former minister of Public Service, Labor and Social Welfare, Mr Nicholas Goche issued in a letter calling for the suspension of all ‘field work’ by PVOs. One can almost imagine Matonga confidently making his announcement with that annoyingly wide and pompous Cheshire-cat grin of his.

This is at a time when most Zimbabweans are in desperate need of food aid and ARV treatment, clean water and other services provided by NGOs. But some Minister just wakes up one day and decides all NGOs are banned from conducting humanitarian work, ironically at a time when the outgoing president is attending a summit discussing various food security issues including the fight against hunger. That thousands will probably die from hunger or needless lack of medication seems irrelevant. What is important is to thwart potential underground activities by NGOs to support the MDC under the banner of carrying out humanitarian aid.

NANGO (an association of Zimbabwean NGOs representing over 1000 members countrywide) convened an emergency meeting with PVOs to discuss implications and the way forward on June 09, 2008. A representative from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) gave a preliminary legal position that the letter is not legally valid, as the Private Voluntary Organizations Act does not empower the Minister to suspend an NGO’s operations.  Also, section 10 of the Act, cited in the letter, empowers the PVO Board, not the Minister, to take action to de-register an NGO. Whatever the legality of this instruction, it is a political reality.

There is also the question of whether Goche has any right at all to be issuing such statements. If cabinet was dissolved just before March 29, he and his colleagues must therefore be operating from the perspective that since their outgoing president is still operational; they too can continue to execute duties as before.

It is fast becoming a sad reality that the regime is refusing to go and will employ any means possible to ensure they stay in power. It is another sad reality that this is not the first time such careless, baseless announcements have been made each time the government feels threatened about something. Another sad reality is that we have a government in place that simply has this ‘thing’ against people helping other people, even when humanitarian assistance is non partisan and is inclusive of their Zanu-PF people. Never mind that humanitarian workers’ sole mission is to provide assistance to any people in need.

It appears that most members of civil society have chosen to distance themselves from solidarity with other directly affected PVOs, under the misconception that only humanitarian field workers in food distribution are being targeted. Some do not realize that the regime has a plethora of some uneducated overzealous agents who are prepared to start maiming and killing to enforce the directive, legal or not. Much as we find for instance that Mr Goche’s announcement is legally null and void, we are also confronted by the fact that there is no respect for the rule of law in this country.

I caught the words of one representative from ZLHR that it may be in the best interests of PVOs to just comply with the directives, even though this may imply that they concede that their existence is illegal. He gave the example of the Daily News and the fact that the paper lost its case against the MIC because it failed to comply with the law simply because they disagreed with it. The wise move was to first comply then later challenge whatever they disagreed with. The lawyer suggested the same for PVOs in the current situation.

So if this was a death sentence, first die then appeal?

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.”

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.

Dear Mr Mbeki

You made a famous speech at the beginning of your presidency about being an African. You also launched an ambitious and laudable project for the African Renaissance. Your place in history was guaranteed before you even started but your recent history of “No Aids, No Crime and No crisis” has only served to visit a torrent of ridicule on the man who is meant to represent the new African leadership.

From your pronouncements over the last few years, it is clear that your version of the African Renaissance meant that you were going to choose to work to banish all forms of stereotypes regarding the African man. Unfortunately, you have been so eager to do so that you have probably reinforced the very stereotypes you were working to dissolve. In fact, you have actually worsened the image of the black leader in the eyes of the world giving opportunities to newspapers like the Washington Times to label you a “Rogue Democrat.”

Instead of working to immediately acknowledge the severity of the AIDS pandemic and rape in South Africa for instance, you spent more time arguing against the perceived sexual tendencies of black people. AIDS is a world wide phenomenon! In Sudan, instead of rightly criticising the Khartoum regime for the state assisted genocide in their country, you chose to attack Winston Churchill for his adventures there ages ago! Then of course, there is “no crisis Zimbabwe.” While respected moral leaders like Desmond Tutu were loudly criticising Mugabe for being “the caricature of the African dictator” you were busy labeling him a coconut. You, as an African leader, have clearly not been “up to the task” in the Zimbabwean crisis!

Is it possible, then, Mr Mebki that you have taken your obsession for the African renaissance to such ridiculous levels that you are not willing to criticse Africans for the things you so desperately no longer want them to be guilty of in the eyes of the world? Are you going to sacrifice the children of Africa on the altar of convenience that wishes to restore the status of the African in history’s opinion? Did Idi Amin not exists much in the same way that Hitler did? Are Israeli atrocities in Palestine not comparable to Sudanese atrocities in Darfur?

Mr African, where is your sense of “I am because we are?” Where is your Ubuntu? History will not remember you for NEPAD. It will record you as the bright eyed renaissance man who was so obsessed with liberating the world of its image of Africa and Africans that he forgot the moral standards required for Africa to shed that very image. Your legacy will be that of intellectual, political and moral complicity in the deaths of AID patients, scars of crime victims and terrified citizens terrorised by their own governments in their own countries while you blamed the west and played with conspiracy theories. I, too, am proud to be an African, but not your kind of African.

I’ve had the lyrics of a typically heavy and raucous Rage Against the Machine song in my head – Take the Power Back.

The rage is relentless
We need a movement with a quickness
You are the witness of change
And to counteract
We gotta take the power back
Yeah, we gotta take the power back

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has extended until 31 July the date by when the Presidential run off must be held. However, given the timings of other outstanding by-elections, it is anticipated that they could be announcing the date of the runoff soon – and that it might well be in late June.

Regardless of the date of the runoff, it will be just one more stolen election unless we figure out how to stop election fraud and thieving. While the MDC is planning its runoff campaign, it should also be planning its take power campaign – how does it not just declare victory, but convert that election victory into taking power.

As Zimbabweans, we also have to start taking our power – from the politicians and unelected ministers and military authorities who are running the country instead of the democratically elected parliament.

A subscriber recently sent us this suggestion for a symbolic action people could do to stand up for ourselves and reclaim our power – and our country.

I suggest that people start being proud of the Zimbabwean flag, I bought five small flags in the form of a brooch for myself and my friends. I am wearing it everyday. The ZANU PF politicians monopolise the flag and other national symbols. Lets have the flags on our desks and be proud of OUR COUNTRY Zimbabwe.

A Stand Up (for) Zimbabwe Campaign has been formed, and is calling for an International Day of Action on 25 May. They are encouraging people to hold local actions to show solidarity for those affected by post-election violence.

It is envisaged that on this day there would, for example, be protests and assemblies outside offices of the Zimbabwean government, like embassies; outside offices of SADC, the AU and the UN calling for stronger action; outside offices of those individual governments which have roles to play in resolving the crisis (specifically southern African governments). All such protests and assemblies might be marked, for example, by a few minutes silence in which all those assembled stand in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe. But the campaign can also be carried out through other activities: through asking congregations assembled at places of worship to rise and stand in solidarity with those beaten, tortured and killed in the post-election violence in Zimbabwe; by asking those gathered to watch sporting events to do the same.

Find out more about how to make sure your local action is part of this campaign here

Email us your ideas taking our power back to info [at] kubatana [dot] org [dot] zw or SMS +263 912 452 201