Yesterday, I debated whether or not to blog my phone call with the Zimbabwe International Film Festival (ZIFF). On the one hand, it felt rude and insensitive and reactive. On the other hand, I was reminded of one of Bev’s favourite Michelangelo quotation, which often inspires our work: Criticise through creating. That is, the notion that it is through speaking up, not keeping quiet, that we inspire change or improvement.

Having just received the programme via email, with a request to put it up on the Kubatana website, I’m pleased I spoke up. It might have been more frustrated than constructive, but at least we know have the programme to share.

Download the Zimbabwe International Film Festival (ZIFF) 2010 programme here and make sure you take in some quality international films throughout the coming week.

We’ve received this post from poet and broadcaster Soneni Gwizi about the rights of disabled women:

Zimbabwe is caught up in the transition of writing a new constitution that “will” or should cater for all, particularly now in this inclusive government we are in. I am disturbed with the lack of effort from stakeholders particularly the government. They are not seriously including persons with disabilities at  decisions levels.

It is very sad that the visual and hearing impaired ( blind and deaf ) persons are sidelined due to communication barriers, they use a different communication medium due to the nature ot their disability, the braille and sign language which is not used in public meetings. I am aware that there is a lot of talk and suggestions that they must include all persons but let the truth be told, there is very little action taken on that statement.

Let us consider persons with disability with respect, dignity and allow their own voices to heard so that they can also live and be accepted in our communities.

They may not chant slogans and throw teargas at your buildings ( which they are capable of ) but they have a Right Too!

My voice, my right

They say lets unite and write a constitution with one voice
A voice that declares my rights
Unity means agreement, harmony, and union
It must represent the voices, needs interest and the rights of women, men,
and children of all types of back ground.
Is my right and voice being heard?
Are my needs considered?
For my needs and rights are different from yours society!
Do you not know?
I have struggles and challenges beyound mother nature!
Do you not understand that a constitution is one of the highest laws of a Country?
For years and years i have been trying to tell you Zimbawe,
That my rights and your are different,
You have always made me small in your eyes!
You have silenced my voice,
In your agender i appear like a cloud!
Here today and gone tomorrow.
Why do you ignore my voice and my rights?
Why do you undermine my intelligence, my gender, my disability, my right
Why?
I am just a disabled woman you voice!
Hey i am not just a woman,
I am intelligent, brilliant citizen of this nation.
My voice has to be heard and chronicled in the laws of this nation.
The journey has been too long my sister, my brother,
Hold my hand and lets walk together,
After all we are fighting and voicing for one thing which is,
FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM!
The right of a woman!

In Africa, a woman writer is a revolutionary. In writing, the woman writer abdicates the role of being the silent spectator and dares to speak.

In patriarchal Africa, a woman speaking up or speaking at all is a revolutionary, going against the grain, intruding into the space otherwise reserved for her male counterparts – the space to define reality, to critique what is, to celebrate or to denigrate, to demand an audience where one would otherwise be denied.

For every woman who writes, presumes that she has an audience and that in itself – is a radical idea. A woman writer presumes that what she has to say is important, that her view and her voice matters and in writing she claims this space – the space to both speak and to be heard.

So when I write, who is going to shut me up?

The act of writing requires audacity, tenacity and above all, a commitment to one’s work, passion and destination.

To many; writing is an end in itself but to me, writing is a tool, a weapon I wield in a world that does not ordinarily afford women a voice. So of necessity, my writing is mostly protest.

In fact, I believe that my work is more political than it is artistic. It is political in the sense that it challenges the status quo. It is political in the sense that it interrogates social stratification.

It is political in the sense that it examines the power relations that obtain within society – relations that are largely determined by who has resources and who lacks them.

It is political in the sense that it scrutinizes who has choices and who has none, who has options and who has none, who has a voice and who is denied one.

So I write to protest. I write to disagree.

I write to simply state that I think otherwise. I write to flip to the other side of the coin.

In my writing I identify myself as a feminist. I do not make apologies for it. Because feminism as an ideological position reaffirming what I identify with – the pursuit for social justice for women in a world where patriarchy legitimizes the conditions of our subjugation.

On Zimbabwe’s Heroes’ Day two weeks ago, I had the great embarrassment to be among some South African friends. As the news on SABC – South Africa’s national broadcaster – came on with a report on the event, everyone in the TV room hushed down and turned up the volume. Anyone who was still talking was given a glowering eye which meant, “Shut up!”

And so the report came on. And there he was – our 86-year-old president – telling everyone in the west to go to hell in a speech delivered at the hallowed Heroes’ Acre where all the ‘patriotic’ sons and daughters of the soil are laid to rest. There was even a shot of a few ardent supporters holding up a banner that read, “To hell, hell, hell, hell!”

I cringed.

My South African friends laughed.

And then the sadness came over me.

Zimbabwe is the joke of southern Africa – if not even the world! People everywhere tune up the volume on their televisions and radios to listen to the rantings of a man so uniquely obsessed with Britain and the US that it makes for what I can only describe as verbal masturbation. After all, he did once tell Tony Blair to keep his England while he kept his Zimbabwe!

Now, the reason I am writing about this all is because a good friend of mine, Delta Milayo Ndou, recently posted a quite fascinating commentary on her blog about the role that Zimbabwe’s youth has to play in rebuilding our woeful democracy.

Because, so often, Zimbabwe’s young people are excluded from discourse around reform, we remain clueless and disinterested. We flock to other nations with better infrastructure and opportunities for self-actualisation, thereby leaving our own nation barren and desolate. I remember quite vividly a television jingle – shot around 2003 when the land reform was still in its strength – that showed a group of young people in a twin cab  dancing and singing about their future being “this land of ours, our Zimbabwe”. I was 19 years old then and believe me, no amount of propaganda could have ever made me interested in picking up a hoe and planting anything!

So as Delta questions, how can we ensure that Zimbabwe’s youth indentify with this nation’s future?

Well, since I began with the example of Heroes’ Day, let me continue with it. For as long as I can remember, Heroes’ Day has always been an event about honouring people who died in the liberation struggle; about guts and gore and guns and corpses.

Heroes Day has never been about ordinary people. Instead, it’s almost always been a guilt trip with people being made to feel like they should be eternally grateful because the ‘freedom’ that they now enjoy is founded upon the death of someone who heeded the liberation maxim that stated Tora pfuti uzvitonge (Take a gun and rule yourself).

Now, that was more than 30 years ago. And appreciative we are. But progressive we also are. When a hazy picture of some liberation hero competes with the hazy idea of success for a young person, trust me that the latter will win out.

You can’t keep Zimbabwe’s youth interested through guilt and propaganda that doesn’t speak to any of their aspirations! It will not work.

Why, I ask, is the definition of a hero so narrowly defined anyway? Should one have died for their nation to be defined as such? Should one get the 21 gun salute to simply qualify?

Heroes abound among us – living and dead. My heroes include people like Oliver Mutukudzi who have put Zimbabwe’s music on the global map; Haru Mutasa who has shown other young black female Zimbabwean journalists that they can make it onto the international media platform; sporting legends like Kirsty Coventry, Peter Ndlovu and Benjani Mwaruwaru who have dazzled the world – all the while making us proud to say “Vana vedu ivavo!” (Those are our children!)

Other heroes are entrepreneurs like Strive Masiyiwa, Nigel Chinakire and the late Peter Pamire who have all shown that age should never be a deterrent to being financially successful and prosperous.

But Heroes’ Day doesn’t appreciate that. Its symbolism is too deeply entrenched in war and victory and what ZANU PF has done for Zimbabwe.

It is too much engrossed in the past to resonate with our youth who are flooding out of Zimbabwe’s border posts because of their disenchantment and disillusionment with the way this amazing nation called Zimbabwe is treating them, as well as everyone else.

Thirty years is a very long time to continue to laud past efforts.

And don’t get me wrong – the British and Americans still remember their war heroes too. But they also provide space for emerging leaders in different fields – look at the way living legends get knighted by the Queen of England or how getting a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is such a prestigious thing for Americans.

Do we have anything similar? Do we have well-recognised national accolades or awards that are instantly recognisable?

Of course not. If your remains aren’t interred into the Heroes’ Acre, you just aren’t really a hero of any kind.

New heroes have been born since 1980. And while we remember the old, let’s also celebrate the current ones.

If we don’t get Zimbabwe’s young people excited about Zimbabwe, then who will rebuild our stumbling nation?

The solution I offer is to do as a popular South African song instructs – make the circle bigger. Only by applauding the good works of heroes that our young people can actually identify with can we ever hope to get them interested in building on the legacies of so many great Zimbabweans.

I am not saying do away completely with the old. Absolutely not! I am just saying we need to increase the options – across all sectors and within all fields.

Zimbabwe urgently needs a redefinition of what a hero is. And for me – and many others – the real heroes of my time aren’t the people who lived and died before I was born. They are the people I see myself in; the people I stencil my future against because of their singular focus on an unsubstantiated dream that could only become real through self-belief and faith in the elements.

I therefore call loudly – and without inhibition – on the establishment to take the time to seriously ponder celebrating Zimbabwe’s new heroes.

South Sudan is scheduled to have a referendum in January 2011 to decide whether they want to remain part of Sudan, or become a separate nation.

According to Elizabeth Dickson, writing for the Foreign Policy Blog:

South Sudan is utterly unprepared for independence. . . Many Sudan watchers are already labeling it a “pre-failed state.”

But the South Sudan National Anthem Committee has already launched a competition for submissions for its national anthem. Hip Hop artist K Deng is among those preparing an anthem.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.
~ James Fenton