When Bill Gates suggested in his key note address at the ICTD 2009 conference in Doha that the time isn’t right to invest in Zimbabwe quite a few people took him to task. But one has to ask whether the people commenting negatively on Bill Gate’s statement on the Connect Communicate Collaborate blog would actually put their hands in their own pockets and invest in Zimbabwe especially when government entrenched corruption and fraud is par for the course in Zimbabwe.

I have maintained a Forex Currency Account (FCA) with Barclays for 5 years now with of course the usual complaints a customer has: tellers who take their time malingering etc. But this is a first and I have a feeling others could been in this mess. I have been doing regular withdrawals after getting confirmation from both the depositor and Barclays. And then this week I was told my account was OVERDRAWN. For me it was the case of the missing dollars that the legendary sleuth Sherlock Holmes would be well placed to sniff out. Why would a bank allow a client to overdraw an FCA, I wondered? Each time I walk in I ask if I have enough money to withdraw and it is only then that I make any transaction, but then this week, the money I was expecting and which was confirmed by the sender suddenly wasn’t there. The bank appears to have bit off more than it could chew as it took more than what I have! Now I’m told I actually owe the bank! How’s that for a new Zimbabwe. Something is terribly wrong here and I believe this is not an isolated case after reports that the RBZ has been dipping its fingers in the till. - Kubatana subscriber

and . . .

Recently Hivos, a Dutch development organisation, said it was demanding repayment from the Reserve Bank of a total of EUR90,000 which it said has not been accounted for from a total of EUR300,000 taken from its account by the central bank. The organisation has since opened a new bank account in Botswana. Last year, the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria said EUR5.64 million was missing from its bank account in Zimbabwe. The money has since been returned. On 18 April, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, a member of Mugabe’s inner circle, admitted raiding foreign currency accounts. Gono defended the action, saying it was done to save the country from “maximum danger” due to difficulties arising from western sanctions. He also admitted in a statement to purchasing 29 vehicles for three state universities – Great Zimbabwe, Midlands State University and Chinhoyi University of Technology – using foreign currency in expenditures that were outside of the budget. - University World News (UK)

Until the Zimbabwean authorities clean up their act, Bill Gates is right to be skeptical.

As a Business Day article recently pointed out the Zimbabwean Government of National Unity figures that

obtaining international aid is based on a simple premise: after a few hiccups the country’s new unity government is running smoothly, so it’s time the world loosened its purse strings. Most governments with deep enough pockets to matter, notably the US and European Union (EU) members, have refused to buy into this rubbish.

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti is struggling to get the kind of big dollar support he is hoping for to resuscitate the country’s ailing economy.

He’s gotten a few nibbles – this week Zimbabwe secured USD 200 million in credit from SADC, and another USD 200 million in credit from COMESA. The UK has promised USD 21 million in humanitarian aid. Nothing to sniff at – but nowhere near the USD 10 billion plus injection Biti has been shopping around for.

Part of the problem, of course, is the global financial crisis – countries are worried about bailing out their own economies, and aren’t as open to helping out others as they might have been a year or two ago.

Part of the problem is scepticism. The IMF turned down Biti’s request, reportedly citing arrears and financial restrictions.

But most importantly, perhaps, Western governments at least are still under pressure to not give aid to Zimbabwe – until the government stops its human rights abuses, and commits to reform.

Human Rights Watch Africa Director Georgette Gagnon said in a statement today:

Humanitarian aid that focuses on the needs of Zimbabwe’s most vulnerable should continue. But donor governments such as the UK should not release development aid until there are irreversible changes on human rights, the rule of law, and accountability.

Continued farm invasions are getting a lot of media coverage, and are cited as one type of abuse that has to stop. As Tom Porteous pointed out in the Guardian (UK) yesterday, while perhaps less in the public eye, the attacks at the diamond mines in Marange are also a brutal form of human rights abuse. Porteous warns that donors can’t guarantee that aid to Zimbabwe will go to rebuilding the country’s infrastructure to promote basic human rights. Rather, it might still end up financing the forces which actively assault them.

There is much talk of reform in Zimbabwe but, as yet, no concrete action. The process of political change may have started but it is not irreversible. As long as Mugabe’s nexus of repression and corruption remains in place, no amount of development assistance will help solve Zimbabwe’s huge economic problems. And any economic aid to Harare from the UK or other donors will help to feed the crocodiles, just as surely as the blood-soaked profits of the Marange diamond mines.

We’ve just included this poem, by Mgcini Nyoni, in our Kubatana newsletter:

Not Yet Uhuru

A retreat to the falls
by the pot-bellied  ones
As we drown
in sky high
telephone bills
zesa bills utility bills
Government of National Unity
they say
NATIONAL UNITY?
Thanks for your loyalty
My  friend here has a ministry!
Over a glass of imported  vodka
they say how does the new merc go?
Over a cup of black  tea we mutter
How the heck am I gonna  raise a thousand Rands
for  the child’s school fees?
Not Yet Uhuru
we shall sing.

It reminded me of the resolutely unacceptable way that Zimbabweans are being treated by the politicians who suggest that they are “for the people”.

Whilst the formation of the Government of National Unity is spawning expensive retreats and the purchase of new vehicles, ordinary Zimbabwean citizens have to beg and borrow and wheel barrow containers of water from homes that have bore holes, to where they live in daily thirst.

Apartments, houses, offices in the city centre and dwellings in our suburbs do not get water on a daily basis. Our dams are full but the infrastructure to deliver the water and the chemicals to clean the water are lacking.

Mugabe trashes farms and calls on the international community for aid while he lives in the lap of luxury in one of the poshest suburbs in Harare, where he’s got water in his tub and where his lawns are kept quite green.

Sell the fucking cars; stop retreating and get water to the people.

Will the new South African president, Zuma, break into spontaneous dance whenever he delivers a speech to the international community?

So far ( as far as I know), he has managed to keep his rousing rendition of the now out-of-context Umkhonto we Sizwe war cry ‘Mshini Wami’ confined to national fora such as political rallies and other platforms he has been provided to defend his innocence against the many charges levelled against him in the recent past.

The reason I ask is simple. Beyond his amazing agility and moves to rival Michael Jackson in the prime of his musical career, Zuma doesn’t seem to offer much else.

Now, to be sure, I have serious problems in looking beyond the misgivings of a man who claims that taking a shower after unprotected sex with an HIV-positive person can prevent transmission of the virus. That statement will forever stick in my mind whenever Zuma’s name is mentioned to me.

But after all his run-ins, and let-offs by the rule of law, I thought it only decent of me to give him an ear at the last ANC rally held last weekend in Johannesburg.

I will admit that I haven’t listened to many of his speeches, but called the Siyanqoba (We shall conquer) rally, and the last that the ANC held prior to elections that Wednesday,  I expected Zuma to give the  most rousing speech of his political career.

But oh, so drawl and monotonous was he that I dozed off a few times, as I watched. Was that un-emotive expressionless list of promises to make South Africa a better nation really what the people wanted to hear?

And when he promised to fight corruption, I couldn’t help the smirk that instantly appeared on my face. More transparent tendering processes and less misappropriation of public resources?!

That sounded like a page out of a Grimm’s fairytale.

While functional, apart from clever little statements like stating that South Africans ought to “put sport back into our national psyche” in the build-up to the 2010 World Cup, I found his speech drab and quite banal. Nothing in it would give anyone a shiver down their spine, which is what good speeches tend to do.

While he will never be an Obama in terms of his oratory, Zuma needs to start sounding a bit more convincing that he is a changed man and not some reluctant school kid forced to stand up and read his short story to the rest of the class.

His political persona already doesn’t look so good – what with a trail of corruption cases behind him – and other near-miss charges he has managed to worm his way out of.

Speech has power to convince. You only need look at the immortal place that Martin Luther King Jnr holds in history because of his ‘I have a dream’ speech.

And though more sinister, no one can deny the power of Adolf Hitler’s oration in convincing the German masses of the ‘goodness’ of Nazism.

For me, there’s nothing to savour about Msholozi’s political character yet – until, of course, he breaks into that ubiquitous theme song and jumps across the podium belting out “Mshini Wami, Mshini Wami.”

Have you ever noticed how the South African media focuses so intently on this aspect of Zuma in its coverage of him? With dance moves that crisp, he could put many a young man less than half his age to shame. Yes, that forms part of his ‘everyman’ appeal. But that should not become the hallmark of his persona.

Zuma has to appeal to a larger audience than just South Africans who have recently become disgruntled with the ANC and thus see him as the agent of necessary reform.

He has to appeal to regional and global audiences, to represent South Africa, and Africa as a respectable statesman in the mould of his predecessors who include Nelson Mandela.

And sadly for him, he will have to do all of that without the dancing.

For me, my greatest hope for Zuma’s reign is that he can combat the HIV epidemic that is currently wreaking havoc in South Africa and sending shock waves throughout southern Africa. For one who himself peddled gross misinformation about ways to prevent HIV transmission, this would represent the greatest victory in overcoming the very ignorance that continues to kill so many.

I sincerely hope that come May 9, at the presidential inauguration of Zuma, I will become more convinced by this man who holds the hopes and destiny of not only his nation, but the whole region.

I was pleased to see the Media Alliance of Zimbabwe and the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe speak out about an upcoming All Stakeholder Media Conference being organised by the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity.

The conference is themed “towards an open, tolerant, and responsible media environment.” Its objective is “to review Zimbabwe’s current media environment and policies in order to guide the Government’s media policy.” It replaces an event planned for March which Deputy Minister of Media, Information and Publicity Jameson Timba called “the first consultative step by the ministry as it reviews Zimbabwe’s media environment and policies with a view to advising the inclusive government on its new policy.”

But the substance of the two events seems quite different. As MAZ and VMCZ point out, many of the speakers in the revised programme are the same people who have blocked media freedom and opposed liberalisation of publishing and broadcasting over the past ten years.

The 15-minute presentation on “Being seen to be free and fair: Media and electioneering” is hosted by Sekeramayi, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Web 2.0 publishing gets 15 dedicated minutes – under the topic “New media and accountability: The role of ghost sites and blogs.” Way to be progressive, interim government.

How are the same people who closed off Zimbabwe’s media environment, and made it characterised by intolerance, irresponsibility and propaganda going to be the ones to open it up and make it more tolerant and responsible?

There is always something uncharitable said about power whenever one has it in abundance and has the ability to influence things – and human beings. Thus it has been said that if you want something done expeditiously you must know people in high places. Power and influence. You have one, you have both. You have it all. The world in your palm. Where better else than well-connected politicians?

But there are also people in low places who have been known to have power and influence – the type that only gets you and them into trouble with the laws of Man and also the laws of nature as the favours they bestow and their line of work more often than not leave someone dead.

Power-drunk men and women have ruled ruthlessly over bamboozled men, women and children and stories abound about the Central African Republic’s Jean Bedel Bokassa being a cannibal having a strong palate for his opponents. Power to eat others, yes he had it! So imagine while enraged baddies scream “I will kill you,” you have them roaring, “I will eat you!” At least Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s Ngwazi and self-anointed President-for-life let his pet crocodiles do the eating for him. Thus man and beast became no different.

It would be interesting to look at the favourite cuisine of African presidents, as a documentary showed on DStv the other day let us in on the food enjoyed by the two Bushes, Clinton and other past American presidents.

The powerful people that we know and who tend to be held in awe by other mere mortals have for some reason always been politicians. This is despite the truism that politicians are just people after all – very fallible and very mortal like everybody else. Do politicians go hungry? Stupid question! They have a right to eat, and whatever they eat will never be used against them in a court of culinary preferences! And what do we have to say for the powerless that appear by their own peculiar circumstances to have no right to eat? They are the wretched of the earth as Fanon put it.

Politicians tend to see themselves as “the Chosen Ones” (catch my drift?) both omnipotent and omniscient in the fashion of the philosopher-kings lionised, idolised and iconised by the sages of ancient Greece, so imagine someone who by a fluke of nature has been burdened by being endowed with the exact opposite. They are neither wise nor powerful but though they are hungry, they are sure not likely to eat one of their own!

These powerless people could be wise in their own eyes, but within their realm and physical realities have no power to control anything, not even the joystick of a play station if they were handed one. How can they when they are hungry? For them everything becomes heavy, not the type seen in political heavyweights who fail to lift themselves off giant beds! Just look at them trying to get off chauffeur-driven Mercs with their sagging bellies refusing to leave the car!

We know the mysterious power and ability of politicians to erect bridges where there is no river, ability to literally build castles in the air for rural folks, etc, but it is the ultimate powerlessness of a single unemployed mother to control the destiny of her offspring that raises the spectre of human limitation in a universe where political power appears to guarantee one economic utopia and therefore eternal bliss.

Have we not seen how aspiring parliamentary candidates fall over each other and fomenting bloodbaths as they seek to earn the right to represent “we the people” only because that unspoken determination to occupy that space is informed by that yearning for power? People “naturally” associate political power with the control of not only people’s lives but more importantly resources be they natural or man-made and thus becoming an MP becomes for many the ultimate triumph in the quest of all human endevours.

Ultimately one is inclined to rather ask a rather asinine question: what is power if it gives you the right to eat and it goes on to take away the right to eat from the powerless? Crazy world huh? “I can’t talk religion (politics[i]) to a man with hunger in his eyes.”  George Bernard Shaw (1905).

If only politicians could read!

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[i] italics mine.