I used to be one of those women who would turn her nose up whenever politics was brought up thinking, “what a waste of time, I’ll focus on gender issues and advancing the interests of women.”

I have had occasion to change my mind about politics and the discourses of governance and decision-making in the highest echelons of power.

In fact, I would go so far as to say I have set my mind firmly on pursuing politics as an overarching goal in my activism career.

Once I realized the influence that politics has on my life and its bearing on the choices availed to me as a woman, as a youth and as an African, I became convinced that being a woman must of necessity require one to be a politician.

I figure if politics determines what I can afford to eat, what kind of bed I can sleep on, what kind of shelter I can call home, what kind of lifestyle I can lead (power-cuts, water-rationing and all) – if politics can impact on what kind of clothes I can afford to wear or the kind of educational and career opportunities availed to me – then clearly politics is exactly where my head needs to be and precisely where my heart should set its sights.

If politics determine what kind of future my children will have or the kind of road I must travel on daily and the texture of my journeys (bumpy dusty roads, potholes and all) then I figure politics is exactly where I need to be.

If politics will determine which embassy will shut its door in my face, if politics can deny me the chance to see the world beyond the borders of my nation, if politics has the power to detain me within the confines of my continent – then to change the narrative of my life and to exceed the limitations imposed by my nationality (tainted by bad governance, skewed politics and all); I must delve into politics.

If politics determine what laws will govern my conduct and which laws will legitimize my oppression – then by all means I must become a politician to change the status quo from within and not from without.

If politics can give immense power to a minority and perpetuate the discrimination and marginalization of certain sects of society – then I should be a politician to use the same vehicle to turn the tide of social injustice.

If politics can determine the quality of my life and my fate when I ail (no drugs in hospitals and no health personnel and all) as well as the kind of burial I am likely to get from my well-meaning but financially stunted nearest and dearest – then politics is my business.

If politics determines my diet, keeping the best brands just out of my reach so that I have to be content with the ‘no-name’ average products (with local industry struggling and all) then clearly, politics is where I need to be.

If politics influence the kind of security afforded to me and my property as a citizen (with underpaid cops and corruption being the order of the day) then I have to be a politician or be doomed to a life lived according to the dictates of others.

If politics gives one the voice, to speak on behalf of others then politics is my kind of brew – for no one speaks for me; I will speak for myself and if need be, I will speak for those on the receiving end of life’s endless tragedies and political intrigues.

A woman’s place is in politics. A woman’s business is to shape a tomorrow brighter than our own past and greater than our present circumstance.

So I sold my soul to the ‘dirty’ game of politics for if it is a game then I refuse to be a casualty, a pawn and a bystander caught in the middle and paying the price for decisions made without my consent or footing the bill for events sanctioned without my permission.

So hear me when I say, politics is my business for I would rather pay the price of being one than suffer the penalty of standing on the sidelines while others recklessly play God with my life.

I feel patriotic these days. And before the feeling wanes and recedes into the indifference that often informs the limited involvement of young people in anything important in this country- I think I should speak up.

For in keeping silent I perpetuate a grave injustice to those of my kind – the youth of Zimbabwe.

Combined with these patriotic sentiments are the sentiments of Deborah Meier that I happened across the other day. She wrote, “There’s a radical – and wonderful – new idea here… that all children could and should be inventors of their own theories, critics of other people’s ideas, analyzers of evidence, and makers of their own personal marks on the world.  It’s an idea with revolutionary implications.  If we take it seriously.”

I can trace my blossoming patriotic sentiment to the three weeks I spent cooped up at the University of Ghana with two and a half dozen young women from 21 African countries and to the fact that in nearly deliberation Zimbabwe was used as a reference point for one bad thing or another.

It is one thing to daily hear Zimbabweans speak negatively of their own country, to listen to them and join them in denigrating their own country but quite another to listen to outsiders take similar liberties.

Indeed it is the one thing that will make you defend your country without stopping to examine your reaction but simply because it is your country, your home and ultimately it is who you are – Zimbabwean. It is also what will force you to scrutinize the condition of your country and how other people have come to perceive you as a people.

By omission or by commission every Zimbabwean is responsible for the leadership we have and for the mess we’re in.

Whether through indifference, greed or fear – we’re all guilty of allowing this great land to sink to its knees.

I have joined on occasion, when I could muster the breathe, in the mud-slinging, bad-mouthing, finger-pointing and hurling of insults directed at those in power and those aspiring to be in power. I say on occasion because for the greater part, I simply have been too nonchalant to even care.

Perhaps, that is the real problem for me and the youth, we have believed that we are too weak, too young to be of any consequence and in believing this fallacy we have sought refuge in nonchalance.

It doesn’t help too that there is so much romanticising about the past that we always feel that our unavailability to be drafted into the liberation struggle automatically makes us less qualified to have a say in the running of our country.

I mean if there is one thing ZANU PF has perfected it is the art of using its formidable credentials as a revolutionary party to bring the Zimbabwean electorate and youth to heel with a cocktail of nostalgia, sentimentality and the incessant reminder of the insurmountable debt of gratitude owed to them by every citizen who lives in a free Zimbabwe.

The MDC, on the other hand; wisely discerning that they cannot do much to beat the revolutionary party card that ZANU PF loves to draw – have made it a point to totally ignore the liberation struggle and by doing so attempt to rule Zimbabwe and its people outside the contexts of our history rendering them rather superficial.

I will not strain self trying to untangle the relevance (or lack thereof) of the splinter factions that are now a ZAPU pulled out of ZANU and an MDC pulled out of an MDC-T; too much ink has been spilled de-bunking these political specimens.

However, if the youth hope their participation in the nation’s politics to be meaningful; this is the political menu of parties that is availed to them.

One that is stuck in the past and bogged down by its distrust of young people and new ideas then another with a vibrant youth visibility but suffering from the acute deficiency of denial and a tragic refusal to own Zimbabwe’s liberation history (without which they would not enjoy the very autonomy that allows them to aspire for political power).

I have opinions about Zimbabwe, I have thoughts about the conditions of Zimbabwe, I have theories and hypotheses about what is wrong with this country and about why we are where we are today.

I have no idea how long I have held these views but they must have been simmering in me, stewing for a long time because when I was in Ghana I said, for the very first time, in a lecture room full of strangers what I thought.

And I was surprised by the vehemence with which I leapt to defend my beloved country, astonished by the passion with which I narrated the course of events that had brought us to this present miserable condition and even more shocked by the utter convictions with which I spoke.

I was amazed that I cared that much about Zimbabwe; surprised that I cared at all for over the years the pretence of at indifference has become second nature to me such that I began to believe that it was normal.

How dare we sit, fold our hands and watch the demise of our country as if we had another spare Zimbabwe stashed somewhere to live in as soon as this one folds up and inexorably crumbles?

For in the years to come, many who hold the reins of power will succumb to the inevitability of death and we shall inherit nothing but the shell of what once was.

I believe that Zimbabwean youths have been sidelined for too long and that perhaps we must come to a definitive age-range of what it means to be a youth in this country.

It bothers me no end that a person on the wrong side of 30 should strut around as a youth leader or presume to speak on behalf of young people in this country.

Moreover it bugs me terribly that young people have been willing to be used as arse wipes by those who aspire for political office only to be discarded after the elections and flushed into oblivion.

But I want to believe that the tide is turning. That the youth will be reckoned with, that we will be ignored no more, sidelined no longer and never again patronized.

As we enter the UN International Year of Youth running under the theme “Promoting Dialogue and Mutual Understanding” – I fervently hope that the would-be election candidates of 2011 and beyond will get off their high horses and engage young people as equals because we are not going anywhere.

The International Year of Youth is our chance to declare categorically that as Zimbabwean youths, we are here and we are not going anywhere. This is our country of birth and we have as much right to live and prosper in it as anyone else.

Many prisoners incarcerated in Zimbabwe’s prison cells are suffering from a lack of food, clothing and medical attention. A recent meeting with a community activist who visits a central Harare prison each week made it clear that prisoners need our help.

Here are two requests:

1.    Old ice cream or any other plastic containers are desperately needed as makeshift plates.
2.    Many prisoners do not have any shoes. If you have old shoes, especially size 7 and up, please consider giving them a new home.

If you can donate one, or both of these items your help will be very gratefully received. Please contact Kubatana via our web site to find out more and get details on a drop off point.

Read community activist Theresa Wilson’s account of assisting Zimbabwean prisoners here

If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
~ Bob Hope

Eat Out Zimbabwe has posted an inspiring write up by Theresa Wilson, who has been helping prisoners at Harare Central for the past year and a half. Wilson shares some of the challenging and humbling observations of her work:

St George’s College has now been involved in helping at Harare Central Prison for almost eighteen months. The school has formed a prison committee, made up of six members of staff. On a weekly basis Father Freyer, the resident priest at the school and Mrs Theresa Wilson, a teacher at the school, visit the prison with all important goods for the plus or minus 1300 inmates imprisoned there.

There is no section which we have not visited now and the conditions, although not as desperate as early last year, are still concerning. The prisoners are tightly packed into the cells and they are still all sleeping on the hard concrete floor. The prison was initially built to house about 700 prisoners, full capacity. On our last visit there, there were 1400 prisoners and I measured a cell by pacing – about three and a half metres by three and a half metres, in which seven prisoners were to sleep, they could hardly even fit sitting up. The corridors, with cell blocks on either side, have even been made into makeshift cells, with very little air streaming through. A ‘single’ cell, of about a metre and a half wide, housed three men.

Oddly enough, those with the so called biggest individual space are those in death row who have a cell to themselves, however, this is no consolation for them as one cannot even open ones arms out to full extent when measuring the width of the cell. The condemned prisoners stay in this tiny tomb for 23 hours a day, with one hour to shower, exercise and receive their food. The only reading material they are allowed are bibles, of which Father Freyer has sourced for the 54 prisoners there. There has not been a hanging, the method of execution in Zimbabwe, for three years now, but on each door is the prisoner’s name, his weight and height, measured to be strung up when the time comes. Many of them have lived like this for over ten years. It is a privilege to even be allowed within this area, and we go into the heavily secured “B Hall”, the doors are individually and laboriously unlocked and we have a few seconds interaction with these men. They are often the most grateful for our attention, as the non-judgmental shake of a hand and enquiry as to their well-being is usually more appreciated than the goods we bring them.

The International Red Cross continues to provide soap, oil and beans for the prisoners and Prison Services provides mealie meal, their staple diet. We have been supplementing this with fruit, whatever is in season, usually apples, oranges or bananas. Boiled eggs are a popular alternative, given in the holidays when the College kitchen can boil the 1300 required to give to all of them. Toilet paper is also a necessity and we try to bring them at least a roll a month, hardly sufficient, but provides a scrap, literally, sometimes, of dignity. The St George’s students have collected old ice-cream containers and old 2 litre juice containers for the prisoners. These serve as their plates and cups for the sadza and water, which they take into their cells to consume. We are presently encouraging a ‘shoe drive’ at the school, whereby students bring old trackshoes or slops for the prisoners to wear.

When we provide the food for the prison, we make sure that we take it to each and every inmate, a process that usually takes about two and a half hours. This is to ensure that all the prisoners get their fair share and goods are not stolen in the process.

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Theresa Makwara, pictured above, is the programme manager of Zimbabwe Parents of Handicapped Children Association (ZPHCA). She recently came into the Kubatana office to receive a donation of second hand clothes sent to us by a well-wisher in Japan.

If you would have told me that I could co-author a book in my mid-twenties a decade ago, I would have laughed you off and told you you were mad!

Ask anyone who knew me as a teenager what I was like and they’ll probably tell you they are a bit surprised I have made something half-decent of myself since.

I was always the moody reclusive one who simply hated everything about me – from my height to my weight to my teeth to my feet to my soul. Nothing looked or felt good. Nothing about me seemed loveable – at least to me.

And I didn’t believe I had a vagueness of brightness in my future. Just take this entry into one of my old diaries that I earthed up recently:

Sunday August 20 2000

Time goes by. Hours turn to days which turn into weeks, months, years. Then eventually, you realise how everything is one day going to be a speck of nothing in history. What’s the whole point of this melodrama?

I continued the next day to say,

I can’t just base my life on delayed gratification and wait my turn in the Good Fortune’s Queue. There’s no future for a person who sees no future in their future.

It’s funny how I proved myself wrong because though I didn’t believe in a future for me, I did wait in that Good Fortune’s Queue and have made it to today to some place where I can say with affirmation that I AM going somewhere – and that that somewhere is to the top!

So what changed within me, you ask. At which point did I draw the line and decide that I would be someone and do something?

I can’t answer that question with any certainty because there was no line drawn, no unequivocal decision made.

A series of events – which at first seemed tragic – somehow led me to today where I can look back and say, “Ah, yes, that had to happen to get me to today!”

What are those events?

The most important has to be the collision between the spectacular fall from grace of the Zimbabwean economy and my ending high school. While everyone else’s folks were able to send them to South Africa, Australia, the UK and the US for a sound university education, I had to stay behind and wade through a new culture of learning and living that was far removed from my pristine private school education.

I had to learn to queue for money, bread, milk and text books; to save up my devaluing spending money to check information on the Internet; to catch the slow-chugging uncomfortable train between Bulawayo and Harare on semester breaks and lastly (and most unpleasantly) to share communal bathrooms in a dingy YWCA hostel where the scampering rats in the roof kept me company on the late nights I stayed up to read.

I often felt like giving up and saying it was too hard for me, that I was too fragile, too broken to keep fighting. And there were tears and thoughts of giving up for I didn’t see the future in my future.

But somehow I didn’t give up, hardly knowing where the fight back could possibly take me, hardly believing that I could ever catch up with all my former schoolmates whose lives in the photos I saw of them seemed so much more of a joy to live than my much tougher version.

And slowly, things began to open up. Slowly, I began to surprise even myself – the hardened sceptic who had preached doom over my own life. Slowly, the words that I wrote and shared began to resonate with life and recognition among people I could never have believed read them.

Perhaps my most startling revelation was one fine Wednesday morning in May 2007, when as an intern on university attachment, I received an email from an organisation based far off in Uganda telling me that I had won an Africa-wide award for HIV and AIDS communication for the articles I had been writing about the epidemic in my part of the world. Just remembering the moment, I can feel the same knot of incomprehensible excitement tighten within my belly.

My prize was to finally leave Zimbabwe, after 23 years of never having seen anything but this one nation, to get on an aeroplane for the first time in my life and fly off to Sandton in South Africa to stay in the Hilton Hotel and attend fancy does and tour some of the must-see places in Gauteng.

Call that a quadruple shock and delight to my system!

And now, I cannot even condense what has happened in my life in just three short years since that adventure.

A lot of it is unbelievable, indescribable, magical.

There’s no future for a person who sees no future in their future.

I wrote that once with my own hands. I spoke negativity into my own situation yet in many ways I said something so very true.

There is no future for a person who sees no future in their future.

When I couldn’t see the future myself, God saw it for me instead. I have no doubt that it is He who has picked me up on the many occasions that I have fallen and broken. And He hasn’t done this for only my benefit.

He has done this so that I may be an example of what can come from the humblest and most improbable of beginnings, of what can flower from an unyielding bud.

Today, I hold a book in my hand – a book of some of the poems that I wrote in my deepest despair and fears about the world, a book of many poems that define me today as a woman who knows what I want and where I am going.

There is a future for me.

And that’s because finally, I see a future in my future.

See a future in your future too, and flower wild and uncontainable.

And yes, enjoy the sunflowers in your eyes.