I sing the song of the Matebele,
I sing the song of the tortured, butchered, marginalised and ostracized,
I sing the song of the hopeless,
It is the cry of the downtrodden, weary, and abused,
It is the voice of the Ndebele people.

My muffled voice wails from the deep dungeons of the Great Shangani River where my king’s story ends.
Deep in the dungeons, I cry for recognition and inclusion yet no one seems to take notice.
Every time I make an attempt to claim my position, to claim recognition and identity I am labelled a tribalist and a sell-out.
Every time this happens I am drawn back to self pity and self hatred.

My pain has been worsened by the Son of Bona
The Son of Bona tortured, brutalised and killed my clansmen simply because they were Ndebele.
Since then he never looked back.
He has made sure that my people are marginalised and peripherised.
Now he has made it worse by refusing to let go the reigns of leadership.
My cry is now so deep such that its tears can fill an ocean.
It is this deep because I see myself and my clansmen buried in poverty and swallowed by doldrums of history.

My cry has grown to be a cry of the people of Zimbabwe.
This is because the bitterness is no longer the Ndebele one only but a bitterness of everyone in Zimbabwe.
Son of Bona, you have destroyed our beautiful land, you have destroyed our pride as a nation.

I cry for the departure of the Son of Bona.
Son of Bona, Zimbabwe has had enough of you.
Son of the Bona, you cannot offer us anything that we can believe in.
Give others a chance to lead; Zimbabwe is for all of us.
Farewell, Son of Bona, Zimbabwe will be a better nation without you.

Since Monday, queues that are miles long
have filled the streets outside banks
waiting to draw the maximum allowed – equivalent to US$2 per day

People are unable to buy food
or to get to their jobs or their rural homes

3 million Zimbabweans
- families that were once self sufficient robust farmers
now stand on the edge of starvation

these are our people
skilled and powerful
gentle and loving and patient and resourceful beyond belief
brought to their knees

. . . and still they battle for power at the top

from in here,
we begin to understand
that this is not just about saving lives
- for we may not be able to do that

in the last 2 weeks I have sat in circles and listened to stories
from faces grey and worn and desperate
for their parents
and wives and children
out in the rural homes without food
‘eating fruit and roots of indigenous trees’
‘what will become of them?’
‘we have no news’

the evidence is already before us
as we begin to hear of the deaths

we are outside the limits of our power to help

what is it that we are able to learn at this time?
apart from bearing witness
to how amazing we are
as we negotiate this space
with dignity and respect
and wait for our voice to be heard
above the clamour for power and wealth

waiting to emerge from old wounds
wearing new wings of hope

An underground movement that calls itself People to People distributed, or rather littered, Harare’s streets with flyers over the weekend carrying a message rebuking the Reserve Bank Governor for printing substandard bank notes in the form of the new $20 000. Aside from detailing how the $20 000 note has no tight security features and is probably being replicated, the flyers also mention that some shops and vendors are not accepting this note as legal tender. The flyer also demands reasonable withdrawal limits and reasonable policies to curb inflation.

I started hearing complaints about the $20 000 note last week and indeed, it is of poor quality and appears to have been printed on something like bond paper. It also doesn’t have raised font or the silver security strip and watermark that have been the usual security features. But until today it has been possible to transact with it. First it was the hwindis (conductors). They are no longer considering the $20 000 note as legal tender. Unfortunately for them a lot of us had that note and we’d gone such a distance that either dropping us all off or taking us all back to the taxi rank would have been a loss either way. The hwindi eventually capitulated on taking the notes muttering under his breath that as soon as he can he will deposit the money in a bank.

While it is commendable citizen activism the flyers may spark alarm and despondency. The flyers were strewn all over the city from taxi ranks to shopping centres such that those who initially hadn’t closely analyzed the $20 000 note are all going to start shunning it. Now this is a disaster because that’s what the banks are churning out and one cannot exactly consider the option of re-depositing because of the hassle getting it in the first place and there is no guarantee of getting 10s next time. In any case, who wants to deal with tellers who are always on go slow and probably orchestrate the formation of the long bank queues in order to work overtime to reap the benefits?

When bearer cheques were first introduced in 2003 people blasted them for their insulting poor quality and very existence but not to the extent of actually not recognizing them as legal tender. If the people lose faith in the national currency, it spells disaster. One of the fundamental principles of a good economy is that the people have confidence in it. Most Zimbabweans know the security features of the US dollar better than their own money. In fact, they can tell a fake from a real one and actually know which year that country printed new notes.

It is nauseating to think that some people can just play games with a country’s whole economy and get away with it. What will it take for the man who sits at the helm of our central bank to admit failure and resign?

It really is a shame. The Shona version of the People to People flyer concludes by saying: Nderipi zita idzva reBhanga guru renyika? Rinonzi Zeroes Acre! Loosely translated: What is the new name for country’s central bank? It is called the Zeroes Acre! Indeed.

Without hope life has no meaning or point. Hope is now Zimbabweans most important positive attitude, the basis for all the others. We hope for a political settlement and agreement of some sort from these two major political parties.

Wherever you are, be it in the bus, internet café, beer hall, church, office, or shop people are hoping to see food and bread back on the table again, hoping for the best. And hoping for a better Zimbabwe!

No one expects these talks of power-sharing and cabinet posts to fail. People all around are struggling to make ends meet. But people are still chatting, sharing, assisting and encouraging each other to be stronger hoping that this political impasse is a passing phase.

This time its the whole nation in crisis and not only  individuals like the days of Murambatsvina. Together we will conquer and together we will win, we must rally under the spirit of oneness.

I was walking one morning, when it started to rain. I recall feeling a raindrop, and I considered whether I had been the first to feel the initial one or had the privilege been given to someone else. Every storm must begin with a single drop of rain. And so it is with every worthwhile movement . . . it begins with an idea that is too simple to be taken seriously . . . and then comes the storm.
~ Marco Caceres

Greetings in Shona usually go something like this; “Makadii?” (How are you?) The answer usually goes; “Tiripo, kana makadiiwo?” (We are well, if you are also well). Infused in this greeting is this society’s ethos. The recognition that our destinies are intertwined. That no person is an island. That we belong to the human family. That each person has responsibilities not just to themselves, but to the community to which they belong. That you are what you are because of others. Hunhu, ubuntu.

Last night l was in my office on Selous Ave working late when something happened that is symptomatic not just of the serious decay in this country, but perhaps also of the reason why as Zimbabweans we have not risen up and done something about our mess. It was about 8:45pm and all was quiet in this area of the Avenues, when a sudden scream rang out. It was a woman screaming for help. There was terror in her voice. Although such screams are common place in the area around Selous Avenue/ Livingstone Avenue/ Third Street going towards Fourth Street, as people fall prey to the thieves and robbers who haunt the area, they are still shocking and frightening when they happen. We all ran out of the office to look out. What normally happens (and l use the word normally advisedly) is that because it is so dark, (on account of there being no street lighting), you hear the agonised screams of a person as they succumb to the thieves, long before you see them running for dear life.  You peer into the dark but you cannot see the victims until they come to a lit up area near one of the offices. And so it was that last night we heard the screams of the woman long before we saw her. She was screaming for help and it appeared to us that the thieves were still in pursuit, shouting as they went after her. So loud were her screams that she drew the attention of a number of people who were in nearby offices. People were calling out to her to run towards the light. Hearts were pounding as we waited for her to emerge from the night. We were gratified to see an armed police officer who had been checking the nearby Beverley Bank ATMs for cash, emerge and run towards the screams. And then he stopped short. The woman emerged into the lit up area, as did her accosters.  They were about three police officers who were roughing her up. She was screaming that they were hitting her as she came up to the armed police officer who was her would-be rescuer. She kept asking “why are you hitting me? Why are you hurting me? What have l done?” She was clutching her handbag to her chest and there was real terror in her voice.

As they came to the lit up area where people had gathered, the police officers pulled back a little but continued roughing the woman up, pulling and shouting at her. All this without arresting her. The would-be rescuer was at a loss as to what to do l guess, given that these were his fellow police officers. He did not ask what was going on and he just started trailing after them as the three went off, still assaulting the woman. The three of us who had been watching this tragedy just stood impotently, consumed with a mixture of guilt, fear, helplessness and despair.

The security guards went back to their posts, muttering that she was probably a prostitute. The implication being therefore that she deserved whatever abuse the police officers were subjecting her to. Other people went off, muttering and wondering what she had done. Again the implication was that she must have done something to deserve the abuse, otherwise why would the police be doing that? 

No one problematised the role of the police. No one said that even if she had broken the law, the police should have arrested her and taken her into custody, not assaulted her like criminals. There were three of them; they could have done that easily.  Even if she was a commercial sex worker, that still did not give the police the right to rough her up as they were doing.

Now, l do not know the facts of the story. I do not know what she had or had not done.  I do know however that the police take an oath of office in which they swear to uphold the laws of the country. If someone is suspected of committing an offence, he or she should be arrested and taken into custody. As far as l could tell, the woman was not resisting arrest. One is therefore left wondering why the police were behaving as they were. I have my theories as to why, but will not go into them.

The guilt we felt at not having intervened kept pulling at us long after her screams had fallen silent, we kept wondering how she was, what had happened. We questioned whether they were real police officers or they had been thieves dressed as police officers.  We wondered perhaps if they had tried to proposition her and she had rejected their advances and therefore the assault and harassment was retaliation. We wondered if perhaps they had tried to steal from the woman and were roughing her up to facilitate this. (One certainly hears enough stories in which police officers are implicated in criminal activities) They were certainly not behaving like officers of the law as they assaulted the woman. 

Our guilt arose from the fact that we had kept silent when we should have spoken out. We had stood back when we should have stepped up and stepped in. We were relieved that it was not us and we were safe. We felt sorry for the woman but that was not enough to compel us to act.  We were afraid that the lawless louts would turn on us. We were afraid perhaps of the inconvenience, so we sacrificed the woman to her doubtful fate. We were after all working late because we had to. Getting ourselves involved would have meant that we would lose valuable time getting embroiled in a messy and dangerous argument with the apparently lawless police, or so we told ourselves.  The irony is that the incident so disturbed us that we could not continue working.

Our response l think is part of the problem we have in Zimbabwe. We all know what’s wrong and what’s right but no one is willing to do what it takes for the common good. The shelves are empty, but as long as l am managing to put food on my family’s table, who cares that my neighbour’s children are going to bed hungry? As long as l can access cash through various means, who cares that someone has been spending days and nights outside the bank waiting to withdraw their paltry money. We look at them, we feel sorry, we despair but we are relieved that it is not us standing in the baking sun as we go about our business. We do not intervene. We do not speak out when we should.  As long as l is managing, it is enough. Hatisisina hunhu. We have lost our ubuntu. That which makes us members of the human family.

I hope as the Prime Minister and his two deputy prime ministers are inspecting their swanky new offices in Munhumutapa Building, they are thinking of ways of healing our community and restoring our values.