“What I know is that at times we move three steps forward and five steps backwards because of the nature of the inclusive government. It is very difficult because we are pulling in different directions and the results translate to nothing.” Morgan Tsvangirai, who was secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions before forming the MDC in 1999, speaking at Workers’ Day celebrations at Gwanzura Stadium.
Source: Daily News

I was really pleased to see the Parliamentary Monitoring Trust (Zimbabwe) telling it like it is … their focus in their recently published Parliamentary Monitor is on Members of Parliament who don’t attend Parliamentary sittings.

According to the PMTZ, Heneri Dzinotyiwei, MDC-T, Budiriro hasn’t shown his face at 26 sittings. Whilst Jonathan Moyo, Zanu PF, Tsholotsho North has been missing for 31 and Jameson Timba, MDC-T, Mount Pleasant has been absent for 29 sittings.

Are there legitimate reasons for this high level of non-attendance? Where do ordinary Zimbabweans access information like this which will help them make informed decisions when an election comes around? It’s important that we vote according to performance. When ordinary people don’t do their jobs properly they get fired. Let’s fire MPs that renege on their duties.

Here’s an excerpt from the PMTZ’s bulletin:

Then as chance would have it, my mom attended a wedding in Harare and she came back complaining that she had seen very big houses. “And why would people build such big houses, covering this whole yard,” she said waving across our big rural yard. She then said that she had been told that politicians lived there. “This has made me realise that we vote them so that they become rich. As such, I will not vote again. I will get into the ballot box to spoil my vote. I will mark 3 times, I know how to do it as we were taught to vote.” The reasoning in my mom’s argument was an eye opener. The intellectuals may continue to argue it is going to be difficult to get that vote out. Maybe the two intellectuals were wrong. They may have been arguing in the abstract. But for my mother, it was a resolution she could have made. We may have apathy. Or more spoiled ballots. The two may be a result of lack of voter education. But using my mom’s argument, the spoilt papers are not out of ignorance but a protest.

Subscribe to the electronic version of the Parliamentary Monitor by emailing: pmtzimbabwe [at] gmail [dot] com

A guy whose opinions I always respect posted a Facebook comment on Independence Day apparently pissed off by what he said was an obsession with negativity among Zimbabweans scattered across the globe as they reflected on what April 18 meant for them.

Turns out the many sons and daughters of the soil, from the “children of the war” to the “born frees,” the sentiment was that there was little to celebrate considering that the independence had spawned blood, sweat, tears, frustrations, broken bones, broken homes and hobos.

These are folks who left the motherland in search of “better lives” elsewhere. And of course these are compatriots who continue fighting for their right to vote by the authors of their misery who know too damn well that the political preferences of these millions lie not with the founding nationalist but elsewhere. For these political elites, political oblivion is a certainty if the Diaspora vote is allowed.

Thus it was that over this past weekend some young men spoke (“obsessed”) about hardships, never mind the setting: they were attending a lavish wedding of a childhood friend who could afford that kind of luxury “because he was in the Diaspora.” A young man in his late 20s, early 30s thereabout said: “I wish independence had come in 1994.” Obviously this was in reference to South Africa, seeing the young man getting married was working in SA and for him to be able to have a wedding in Bulawayo with a limousine and all that glitz was ample proof that South Africa still afforded the average Joe stupendous economic opportunities. But you still just have to point to the unending contradictions: the SA economy is still in the hands of “white capital,” and you only have to listen to Julius Malema, yet it is still affording young black men like the wedding guy a dream life seeing his fairytale wedding back home in Zimbabwe.

This wedding guy obviously has no concern about Julius Malema’s politics, never mind still the ubiquitous poverty that continues to stalk South African citizens which Malema likes to point at in what others see as his radical political views.  Meanwhile, back at the wedding, another young man said: “Independence should have come last year, then things would still be swell and we would all be working!” Talk about a harsh indictment for the nationalist fathers who are touting youth economic empowerment among other unorthodox means that employ such things as cudgels and sjamboks as what will bag them the coming polls.

At a time when the populist clarion call is the stripping of the country’s wealth by whites and the need to return of that wealth to indigenous peoples, young jobless youths obviously are yet to buy that. And one can actually recall some old grannies being heard yearning for the white years, and this time is it young men long accused of being born-frees with no appreciation of the sacrifices the nationalist fathers made who are seeing beyond the rhetoric. You have to hear the sentiments from young people from Matebeleland especially and all the talk about young economic empowerment concerning who is really benefiting from this whole exercise. It certainly isn’t them. Yet the exchanges at that wedding do tell us that someone sure is out of touch with this demographic despite the tunes being beamed on national television penned by born frees in celebration of masimba kuvanhu.  If a thirty-year old young man, because of his dire economic circumstances, can curse the placing of indigenous resources in the hands of a fellow black man in the name of political and economic independence, then surely the MDC-T folks who are telling Saviour Kasukuwere to slow down are not speaking out of turn.

After all, Zimbabwean seems to know where the country’s wealth has gone since 1980 and the latest efforts are but attempts to up the self-aggrandisement ante.

According to the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition’s Dewa Mavhinga, the Zimbabwe Constitution Select Committee (COPAC) has submitted its first draft of the Constitution of Zimbabwe to the Management Committee. This follows the release of several “unofficial” drafts in February and March of this year as part of Zimbabwe’s ongoing Constitution-making process.

Mavhinga writes:

Please find attached the First COPAC Consolidated Constitution Draft which the COPAC team today (30 April 2012) submitted to the Management Committee. There are a number of issues that have not been finalized which the Management Committee is expected to deal with including on citizenship, land, structure of government devolution, number of MPs, among others. Notably, the draft constitution retains an executive president, retains the death penalty, but only for aggravated murder, prohibits gay marriage, abolishes to post of Prime Minister and removes prosecuting power from the Attorney General who becomes only a legal advisor to president while a new National Prosecuting Authority is created.

On the question of gender parity in Parliament the Draft gives with the right hand but takes with the left when it acknowledges 50 – 50 representation but provides that Parliament shall not be rendered unconstitutional by failure to meet the 50 -50.

As civil society we are studying the draft closely with a view in the near future to convene a national civil society all stakeholders conference on the constitution. Earlier today COPAC Co-Chair Douglas Mwonzora of MDC-T addressed Civil Society Leaders at Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Offices where he presented the Draft with a commentary on it.

View the COPAC First Draft

I watched a piece of journalistic buffoonery last night on Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s Economic Forum and wondered who approves this kind of crap to make it to people’s living rooms. By its very name, the programme discusses economic matters but here was this fat guy with apparent breathing problems inviting Zanu PF’s chief of spin to talk politics! This guy who must be standing in for the amiable Billet Magara asked what I figured gotta be some of the dumbest leading questions to come from the mouth of a journalist. Instead of using the opportunity to quiz Rugare Gumbo why his political party has a proclivity for ruinous economic policies, he asks questions such as “do you think voters will realise the mistakes they did last elections by voting for the MDC?”; “Reports say there is factionalism in your party. How true are those reports?” and it went on and on. I’m like “what the kcuf”? What has this got to do with “Economic Forum?” And this is a programme supposedly made not by ZBC hacks but by independent producers! Independent of critical thinking! So much for intelligent journalism.

In our last Kubatana newsletter (subscribe by writing to info [at] kubatana [dot]  net) we mentioned some very cool street art being done by activists in Nairobi. You can check out the article here. And then we got an email from Margret who shared some photographs of the Nairobi graffiti with us. So thanks to Margret for joining and contributing to the conversation. As she said in one of her emails to us, there are such endless examples of how consciousness is created through info activism.

Go on, make your mark.