An excerpt from a report by the Harare Residents Trust:

Burial fees

The residents argued that if the government of Zimbabwe made land available for free under the land reform program then why should a dead corpse be made to buy land from the City of Harare?

The Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network launched an observation report on the voters roll. In April 2010, ZESN undertook an audit to assess the quality of Zimbabwe’s Voter’s Roll. The research project sought to test the accuracy and completeness of the voter’s roll and to make recommendations for a cleanup of the voters roll.

In his remarks during the launch, Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network Tinoziva Bere said:

The people of this country and everybody concerned about the Voter’s Roll ought to have access to it, freely and easily. And any exercise in improving it or cleaning it, ought to be done publicly.

Observation of the Voter’s Roll was conducted using three tests: a computer test, a list to people field test and a people to list test. A systematic analysis of data obtained from these tests provides critical information about the quality of the voters than can inform efforts to improve the voter registration in Zimbabwe. Among the findings in the report were the following;

-    The list to people test revealed that 41% of registered voters were no longer residing at the address on the voter’s roll.
-    97% of respondents have not transferred to reflect the change in residential address against the 3% who had transferred to new wards.
-    More males (52%) were registered compared to females, who constituted 48% of the registered population. Population statistics for Zimbabwe indicate that women constitute 52% of the population. -    The computer test shows that only 18% of those registered to vote are youths aged between 18 and 30.

Among the recommendations ZESN makes to government and the Zimbabwe Electoral commission are the following:

-    Increase the transparency of the voter registration process such as deletion from the voter’s roll as the process is currently out of public scrutiny and the criteria for deletion is left to the Constituency Registrars
-    Voter education drives to inform citizens on the procedures for registration, transferring, objections, making claims and deletion of dead voters
-    Continuous maintenance of the Voter’s Roll is important to ensure that voters that have become ineligible to vote, for example by death, are removed in order to prevent over inflating the voter’s roll -    Voter registration must in it’s entirety be integrated into one office of ZEC and ZEC should have total control of voter registration and maintenance of the voter’s roll to ensure greater accountability for it’s state
-    Prioritise young people in the issuance of the national identity card to increase the numbers of young people who register as voters

In closing the launch, Jestina Mukoko of the Zimbabwe Peace Project said:

“I hope the media will note that ZESN has opted not to refer to the voter’s roll as being in a shambles but that they want to critically look at the various issues.”

I am very happily proven wrong about the Zimbabwe Republic Police and their responsiveness to an attempted take over of Kuimba Shiri and Lavon Bird Gardens at Lake Chivero this weekend. This morning, I claimed that the police did nothing, but according to article by AFP this afternoon,

Zimbabwean police drove out scores of so-called war veterans and supporters of President Robert Mugabe after they declared themselves new owners of several tourist resorts, a minister and media reports said Monday. The seizures on Saturday near Lake Chivero, west of the capital Harare, were ostensibly part of Mugabe’s land reforms, launched in 2000 in what he described as a bid to correct ownership imbalances in the former British colony. But Minister of State Jameson Timba said the latest confiscations were illegal and he had called in police to put a stop to them after he received pleas from the businesses’ owners. “They were moved out yesterday by riot police,” Timba, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which is in a power-sharing government with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, told AFP. “There were about 200 of them. Fortunately there was no damage to property.” Police could not be reached for comment.

Read more

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. He was only 35 when he died, but in his comparatively short life, he managed not simply to help what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo gain independence from Belgium, but he inspired an idea.

Lumumba’s political career was not very long. He was Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo for almost three months before he was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis, and then murdered. The exact details surrounding his death are not clear, but the Belgian government and the CIA were implicated. In 2002 the Belgian government formally apologised to the Congolese people for Lumumba’s murder.

Lumumba is an African icon because he stood steadfast in his belief that the African people had a right to determine their destiny without interference. At Congo’s Independence, the Belgian monarch made it clear in his remarks that he expected Belgium to play a leading role in the Congo’s future, and Lumumba stood defiant in the face of Imperialism:

‘No Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it is by struggle that we have won [our independence], a struggle waged each and every day, a passionate idealistic struggle, a struggle in which no effort, privation, suffering, or drop of our blood was spared. We will count not only on our enormous strength and immense riches but on the assistance of numerous foreign countries whose collaboration we will accept if it is offered freely and with no attempt to impose on us an alien culture of no matter what nature’.

Lumumba understood then that while Congo, as did other African countries subsequent to that, had achieved political independence, it was yet to gain economic freedom. It was because he was a threat to colonial interests that sought to maintain their economic relationship with postcolonial African countries that Lumumba was enough of a threat to be assassinated. More than anything Lumumba struggled against “an institutionalised relationship between Africans and Europeans,” in all it’s forms, which facilitated the exploitation of Africans and their resources. As he did then Lumumba represents the idea of unencumbered self-determination, the idea that Africans can truly be free.

In an article titled Lumumba’s ideals and the symbolism of his life, Lyn Ossome writes:

Today due to greed powered by its own African neighbours, who under the watchful eye of the United Nations continue to fuel ethnic conflicts and amass far too many civilian casualties, the country lies in political, economic and social tatters. The paranoid miscalculations of the U.S. and its allies during the Cold War cost Africa many inspiring leaders and perpetuated conflict in a number of countries that have paid long and hard, among them Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, and the DRC. In Sudan, a long civilian war robbed Southern Sudan of its economic soul for more than two decades, and the semi-autonomous region that stands poised to secede from its northern counterpart today is one that is desperately clinging to the hope of Pan-African solidarity and visionary, steadfast leadership. At the contentious heart of its secession lies its enormous mineral wealth, caught within the same cross-hairs of imperialist interests and intervening African interests against which Lumumba struggled until his death.

After a long Christmas and New Year break most schools in Zimbabwe opened on the 11th of January 2011. A hike in school fees was reported in most schools especially private and some government schools. It is that time of the year when you hear stories of school children being turned away for non payment of fees.

When I was in school my former school head used to say this on the first day of classes: “If you did not pay your school fees go back home and tell your parents that we need that money now!!”

It sounded harsh to the ears of the parents, especially mine. But since it’s now an offense to turn away children for not paying school fees most school and college heads have come up with some enhanced community relations skills in order to keep their image clean. This has helped the school heads in terms of public relations. They have toned down the language so that when you hear it you won’t fume like how my parents used to do.

They now tell students to go back home and collect receipts as proof of payment.  It sounds diplomatic and very kind but after you’ve let it sink into your head for a while it’s still the same as hearing that your child has been turned away for not paying fees. When I heard my little cousin telling me that she was told to go back and collect receipts that’s when I realized that it’s now simply a matter of manipulating words to get the message across.

Just imagine if you had not paid school fees for your child where on earth are you going to get the receipts from?

Zimbabweans have been urged by the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray, during the Martin Luther King Day commemorations to emulate Dr Martin Luther King Jnr where their voices are heard in a non-violent manner. Read more here. It is true that we need to use non-violence to bring change and address areas of injustice in Zimbabwe. I believe every Zimbabwean has a little ‘Luther’ living in them but the environment around us is not conducive.

Take the example of men and women working with WOZA and MOZA. In 2010 83 members were arrested while they were having a peaceful march to mark International Peace Day. In Bulawayo two were arrested during a public meeting with the Competition and Tariff Commission to present views on ZESA. In Mutare two women were arrested a day after a peaceful protest.

Mr Ray, like Dr Martin Luther Jnr, has an ‘I have a dream…’ for Zimbabwe that is. The dream that was instilled in the 1990s when the government promised, ‘Education for all by the year 2000′, ‘Housing for all by the year 2000′ and ‘Health for all by the year 2000′. I still feel this can be achieved some year, say 2020. But my question today is how then do I gather 10 people to listen to my dream and not be picked up for being a public nuisance? I don’t just want to use my voice, I also want to do silent acts that bring change to Zimbabwe, which I so much love and I am so proud to be Zimbabwean. Like Rosa Parks, I want to remain seated for the cause of my plight. But I’m rather scared to give up my life like the vendor in Tunisia.