I’ve just read the City of Harare’s Special Investigations Committee’s report on City of Harare’s land sales, leases and exchanges. It’s a shocking tale of corruption and abuse of power “by officials, unscrupulous business people and cunning politicians,” carried out over a period of years at the highest levels of municipal and national government.

The report implicates high profile personalities such as businessman Philip Chiyangwa, former Harare Mayor Sekesai Makwavarara and Minister of Local Government Ignatius Chombo in illegal and unauthorised deals in which they misappropriated City resources for personal gain.

As a subscriber who has read it said:

I don’t know whether the Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) or Harare Residents’ Trust (HRT) are alive, because if they were, the Harare Land Scandal would have triggered a MASSIVE piece-full [yes, I didn't get the spelling of peace wrong] uprising against the system by now. Our activism is DEAD. Check out the attached report and if you don’t cry, you’re not of this planet.

Read the report now, and send your comments to CHRA and the HRT, and cc info@kubatana.net

The Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, Advocate Eric T. Matinenga wants to hear from you. We’ve opened up the phone lines to take your questions on the Constitution. Phone in now to 0914 186 280 up to 7 and leave a message with your question for Minister Matinenga.

You can also text your question to: 0914 186 280 or email your question to: constitution@kubatana.net

Between 1 May – 31 May phone back and listen to Minister Matinenga answer questions from around the country.

Questions can be in English, Shona or Ndebele.

For a wide selection of articles, reports and other information on the Constitution please visit Kubatana’s special index page on the Constitution

You might also want to check out:
-    Lovemore Madhuku on Constitution making in Zimbabwe – Read and listen
-    Waiting for the Constitution – Rooftop Promotions – Read and listen
-    Artists and the Constitution – Mindblast public discussion – Read and listen
-    Report back – Sexual Orientation and the Constitutional Process Indaba – Read more
-    Helping Zimbabweans to understand and write their own Constitution – in English, Shona and Ndebele – Read more

When the year began, two women suffered miscarriages after they were beaten up by police in the border town of Beitbridge.

They were suspected of being prostitutes, apprehended and then they were assaulted to the extent of losing the pregnancies they were carrying.

Perhaps they were prostitutes, perhaps they were not but one thing is certain – when we live in a society that insists on pushing some of its members to the margins by discriminating and stigmatizing them – it is inevitable that we increase the vulnerability of such individuals.

Their exclusion and ostracism serves no purpose other than making them easy prey for those in position of power and who would not hesitate to abuse that power.

Yet for the greater part, there is a tacit approval of these violent acts because they affirm the prejudices of our society, they are premised on the moral judgments people make about women who prostitute themselves either through overt means by selling their bodies in return for money or those who covertly prostitute themselves by acquiescing to be the mistresses of married men for economic gain.

Addressing at a two-day regional conference hosted by SAfAIDS on a series “changing the river’s flow examining the HIV/Culture confluence”, Jason Wessenaar the Project Director of Siyazi Counselling and Testing Project made the very astute observation that while culture helps us to make sense of the world around us by giving people a sense of identity and belonging, it also governs human behaviour.

So our intolerances, our prejudices and our bigotry are a reflection of our cultural beliefs and our interpretation of what is appropriate and what is unacceptable conduct.

Remarking on the limitations of culture, he pointed out that, “culture is a tool that can be used to empower or exclude, exploit and control” members of a society.

What we cannot tolerate reflects what our deep-rooted convictions and beliefs are, yet using Wessener’s observation that culture is a lens we use to view the world, as a premise, how do we then know that what we perceive as reality is in fact so and not just a consequence of the lens we are using to view it?

We push women to the margins, increase their vulnerability, ostracize them and give them an “otherness” such that they have no choice but to engage in more risky behaviour – pushed to the limits, their desperation will drive them to the extremes.

Whilst we bemoan the prevalence of small houses, of women engaging in long term relationships with married men, of men having multiple concurrent sexual relations – we need to find out why and how women avail themselves to these relationships.

One lady remarked in response to my column, “No girl grows up dreaming of one day becoming a small house, not one. But I know there are many boys who grow up dreaming of one day having a small house.” So when one would seek to interrogate what happened to that girl, who never dreamed of becoming a small house? How did she get here? What are the circumstances and situations that led her down this path?

The thing with culture is that it makes us not think about our behaviour or attitudes, it makes us not examine our beliefs, we take them for granted, we take for granted that what we think, assume of life and our perceptions of reality is accurate, altruistic and infallible.

“Culture is a lens we use to understand other people we interact with, and this often leads to us judging, imposing, discriminating and labeling,” noted Wessener.

I submit that the girl who never to be a small house, an appendage like the rose on a man’s laurel – grew up and found that she couldn’t clothe her own back, couldn’t fill her stomach, couldn’t afford a roof on her head and had no prospects whatsoever.

So she decided to pawn herself off to any man who so much as asked, married or not – where did society fail her or did she fail herself?

Did all these small houses and prostitutes fail themselves?

I think not.

I think women who are empowered make choices that are not harmful to them or that impinge on their sense of dignity.

I identify lack, as the key reason why small houses exist, why prostituting oneself becomes an option for most women. Something other than payment of lip service needs to be done to empower women, to elevate their status and to work towards addressing the gender imbalances inherent in our culture.

Whatever else society may label these women – the truth is that we as a society are all diminished by their continued humiliation or coercion along sexual lines.

As we continue to push them to the margins, we increase their vulnerability, we increase their desperation and ultimately we push them to the limits and possible over the edge.

There are not so many women besides Mbuya Nhenda and a few women mentioned in our history. Allow me to introduce you toVenia Magaya. This woman should not only   be put in history books but she should be given hero status in the community and the country at large. She led to the reformation of our inheritance laws that stipulated that only a male heir is entitled to his fathers property even if there is an eldest child who is a girl.

Based on our culture, the section 23 of the inheritance law says a girl child cannot inherit her father’s estate because she is a woman. Only in the absence of a male child can she be an heiress. However this section was amended after Venia lost a case against her younger brother who later sold the house thereby leaving her destitute.

Venia’s father died in 1999 and was a polygamous man with two wives of whom Venia was the eldest from the first wife and her brother the eldest from the second wife. Venia was recognized as the heiress in the community court by virtue of being the first child but the provisional court refused her the right to have her father’s estate. Yes that’s right it became a human rights issue because it was her right to be the heir.

And as such I would encourage people yet again to make sure during the constitution making process that we get to make sure that there is a clause that will say that no customary law is above a person’s human rights. This heroine died penniless and homeless. Had it not been for her to push the matter forward to the Supreme Court such loopholes in our governance structure could not have been realized and thus the inheritance law was amended from saying that only the male child is allowed to inherit.

This however is not the end of the road because section 23 still exits and is still in play today. For us to make sure it is not put into practice and better still, it does not exist, we need to make sure to include that in the constitution. What made Venia lose the case before the Supreme Court is that it looked at what the supreme law of the land says about her situation? The constitution being the supreme law did not back her up at that time because it did not have a clause that says nothing takes precedence over any human rights.

Thank you Venia for at least being instrumental to some change in women’s lives. It is up to the living woman, man and every father to make sure their daughters are not discriminated against upon their death. And I urge all to seriously consider writing up wills to ensure the future of their children.

To Venia, I salute.

Kubatana recently received the following press statement from Voice of Democracy on the subject of the (alleged) forthcoming New Zealand cricket tour to Zimbabwe:

There is a fine line, as the international community knows full well, between supporting democratic change in Zimbabwe and collaborating with a dictator. Zimbabwe’s Minister of Sport, David Coltart, seems to believe that New Zealand has an obligation to play cricket in Zimbabwe (New Zealand Herald, 23 March 2010). We disagree. New Zealand should stick to its principles, ignore Coltart, and shun Zimbabwe’s dictatorship.

In his article, David Coltart repeats a claim he made in December 2008 that going into government with Robert Mugabe was the ‘only viable non-violent option’. This was untrue then – as it is now. As one commentator wrote, the MDC had a ‘fistful of options’ for peaceful democratic change which were squandered when they reinstalled Mugabe to the fullness of his abusive powers.

Coltart then adds insult to injury by making such disingenuous claims that Zimbabwe’s Inclusive Government has “made remarkable progress in the last year” and that the political agreement “is gradually being implemented in its entirety.” This is not remotely true, which is why the European Union renewed its targeted sanctions against those members of Zimbabwe’s government accused of gross human rights abuses.

Indeed, if Coltart listened to himself he would be hard-pressed to recognise the lawyer who opposed human rights abuses in Zimbabwe for the last 27 years. It seems incredible that he now claims that there has been a “massive downturn in the number of human rights abuses” when ZANU(PF) is busy reestablishing the very bases in rural areas that unleashed such horrific violence during the June 2008 presidential elections.

He claims that maladministration and racism in cricket is being addressed, when the same top officials who were responsible for that corruption, racism and abuse of power remain firmly in place. It is all the more painful when he lauds cricket’s collaborator-in-chief, Heath Streak. Our heroes are Andy Flower and Henry Olonga who forfeited their cricket careers because they took a principled stand against the dictatorship.

Coltart is right in one respect: if the New Zealand team decides to come to Zimbabwe they will be welcomed with remarkable warmth and friendliness by our patron of Cricket Zimbabwe – Robert Mugabe! Dictator 1: New Zealand 0.

I have heard rumours of Members of Parliament who visit their constituencies only to campaign during elections. They are never seen, or heard of again. These are the same parliamentarians who last year refused to take vehicles from local company Willowvale Motor Industries – which could have used the boost in sales – and instead opted to import vehicles from various sources; no doubt duty free. This little exercise carried out in the name of ‘allowing our MPs to fulfil their duties’- one of which I presume is regularly visiting the people they represent – cost the taxpayer US6million.

At present 80% of our population is rural earning less than US$100 per month, well below the poverty datum line. It is this 80% of our population that was used to justify buying ‘all terrain’ vehicles for MPs. Meanwhile, the International Red Cross estimates that approximately a third of Zimbabwe’s population is in need of food aid.

With the Constitutional hullabaloo that is engulfing the nation our honourable parliamentarians are carrying out consultations with the people. Both Houses with a combined membership of 276 have adjourned to do their civic duty until mid June. Parliamentarians are being paid US$300 per day in addition to their regular government salaries and privileges.

Lets say that these consultations began after Easter. And let’s be generous and give our parliamentarians the weekends off. That would mean that they should be in consultations with us, ‘the people’, for approximately fifty-four days.

Now multiply 276 honourable members of parliament by 54 days living on 300 dollars a day . . .

Call me crazy, but that seems to be a hefty price to pay for the privilege of having my Member of Parliament give me what I hope will be a ‘non partisan’ explanation of constitutional issues. Even if taxpayers aren’t the ones to foot the bill for the consultations, surely the parliamentarians themselves should question their right to demand so much money. But I suppose that would suggest that our politicians are actually in politics to make a tangible change in Zimbabweans lives. Plainly speaking, they’re in politics because politics in Zimbabwe is a business. It has nothing to do with the electorate. Having an electorate simply legitimises the presence of white-collar criminals in parliament and government.