The Senate’s adjourned till July. Cool gig hey.

It’s time for all Zimbabweans to get behind Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) and protest the abysmal supply of electricity in Zimbabwe. The responsibility of putting pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) should not fall only on the shoulders of WOZA. What are YOU doing about it?

WOZA’s campaign demands are:

1. Stop cheating fixed meter consumers, we demand prepaid meters.
2. Please provide cheaper firewood, candles and matches, we do not want to destroy our environment by cutting down trees.
3. We are tired of 18 hour power cuts -provide proper timetables of load shedding.
4. Urgently put in place a proper and transparent billing system. Stop sending metered consumer’s estimates, send ACTUAL bills.
5. Create a smoother process of customer’s claims for  compensation.
6. Review recruitment policy and bring salaries to decent levels with our current economic record. Professionalise staff performance and honesty. No more luxury cars we need transformers.
7. We will record the exact hours we receive electricity for the last 2 weeks of May while we get petition signatures which we will take to Parliament and demand they review your monopoly and poor service. You have cheated us for long enough, after we submit our demand to parliament we will organise a RED card Campaign. Be warned POWER TO THE POOR – ZERO service ZERO bill. HOKOYO!!

Support WOZA on the streets. Let’s all protest and demand better services. Enough of the fat cat, co-called liberation heroes living in luxury whilst Zimbabweans struggle in the dark. Email your support to WOZA at info [at] wozazimbabwe [dot] org

ZimRights yesterday published their daily bulletin evoking the political temperature towards a Zimbabwean ‘Election’.  In their bulletin, ZimRights had this to say: “Recent reports have revealed that ZANU PF said that it is prepared to go for an uncontested election even if other political parties refuse to participate in elections – a repetition of the 2008 June run off.” This concurs with The Herald’s headline of today where President Mugabe speaks on elections and says ‘No to polls delays’.

ZimRights asks: “Is Zimbabwe ready for an election in 2011?’ Have we recovered from the trauma o post 2008 elections?’ “Who can guarantee Zimbabweans a free and fair election?’

In an email chillingly entitled It Has Started, a Zimbabwean living in rural Chipinge shared with Kubatana this news:

It has started all over again in the rural areas of Chipinge. You can see some youth running and singing chimurenga songs and you can easily tell that the war is about to begin all over again. We want journalists here in Chipinge. People are being killed without any recognition. We have never had our President Tsvangirai coming to adress people, yet Chipinge is one of the few places with more than 80% real change suporters. Can you be our mouth to our honourable PM.

We forwarded this email to the MDC.

Recently Christopher Hitchens writing on the revolution in Egypt in Vanity Fair suggested that “Egypt is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country.”

Sounds similar to Zimbabwe especially when we see headlines like Zimbabwe military chiefs plot to take power.

Solidarity Peace Trust’s film, Part of the Solution, is a retrospective look at the political events in Zimbabwe in 2001 culminating in the SADC Troika memorandum of April 2011. The short film takes a look at the issue of the manipulation of the COPAC Constitutional Outreach programme and intimidation of villagers in the rural areas. It goes further to suggest that the outcome of the process may not have the people at its heart. The DVD moves on to examine incidents of politically motivated violence, particularly those in Mbare and Downtown Harare involving the youth. In view of the objectives of the Inclusive Government and the Global Political Agreement, these events are disheartening, leaving many Zimbabweans wondering if it is possible that the impending elections will be marred by violence and voter intimidation.

If you would like a copy of this DVD please email your postal address to: products [at] kubatana [dot] net