A Kubatana subscriber recently emailed us his Letter to Zimbabwe. Our mailing list is pretty big, but not That Big. But Mathias Makozhombwe makes an awful lot of sense. It makes me think of that quote that suggests that the people who should be running the country are driving taxis and cutting hair. Here’s Mathias on what he wants for Zimbabwe.

I feel the need to talk about Zimbabwe, and share my thoughts. We need to elevate our game and stop the rot that has plagued this beautiful nation. It’s a well-known fact that Zanu more than sold us short, so I won’t dwell much on that because you know the lot. The question my brothers and sisters is how do we move forward, break free from the shackles of poverty, violence, misrepresentation and institutional tribalism?

How do we break free, stay free and never return to this unbearable situation of perpetual abuse of power? How do we differentiate the real from the fake, cheap talk from real talk? I don’t have all the questions or answers but these are issues that we need to consider when signing up for any future situations. The word I hear a lot is change; sure enough that’s a start, but not good enough. We need SMART change, a set of objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic and Time Bound.

For clarity Zanu not only failed, they were a major catastrophe. Now as we stand up, speak up and unite for the sake of peace, it is important to note that there can be no peace without equality, and there can be no sustainable progress and stability without well-considered policies that have been debated at every level, with the Policy Makers and Implementers held accountable through effective regulation.

So when these political types in suits with stripes knock on our doors and ask for our votes, it’s our responsibility to demand accountability. For over 25 years the War Vets have held the nation to ransom. The nation owes the debt for their sacrifice, but when you cheat, steal and kill the very people you sought to liberate the debt owed to you becomes null and void.

My message to Mugabe, Chihuri and the gang, your days are numbered, you are way past your sell by date and judgment day is on the way. To Tsvangirai, Biti and the team, you have huge task ahead of you, and failure is not an option. You need to deliver, if or when you assume full power of Government. For now less whining and more action.

To my fellow Zimbabweans we are at a cross roads; the battle for freedom, equality and long term prosperity is only in it’s infancy. It is up to us whether we sink or swim, lose or win, die on our feet or live on our knees. I am not Dr King but I do have dreams. I am just an ordinary man who believes that one day peace and prosperity will return to Zimbabwe, and that all Zimbabweans will have equal opportunity and be judged not by the colour of their skin, tribal descent or sexual orientation, but by the nature and quality of their moral fibre.

In the green-filtered sunlight through the closing canopy
the rain washed garden sparkles with joy

Today
people standing on the freezing streets of Copenhagen
hold candles of hope for the planet
whilst the world leaders haggle about responsibility
in warm lit rooms

candles burning on the streets
for a belief in a planet and a spirit of caring that is wider than themselves

This has been a long year in Zimbabwe
walking the steps of survival
at a time when the work of healing and community building and empowerment
has been handicapped by lack of funded support
and the stark reality of giving up /closing down
has had to be faced
or to try to continue their work
holding on to the web of good intentions

For the last months of this year,
in the face of disaster
the Tree of Life was held in place by a web of love
of witnessing and donations from individuals from all over the planet
who dared  to care . . .

without them we would have lost our step

to all those people we would like to express our deepest gratitude
for caring about something that is wider than yourselves

With these donations we are able to keep the rural workshops going.

Over dinner on the weekend, the conversation turned to how different this year has felt from the past few.

Of course, the difference is tinged with a mixture of relief and frustration. Economically, the relief of stable (even if high) prices, and goods (even when unaffordable) on the shelves has made the basic day-to-day requirements of getting by more predictable – but at the same time has made for a more expensive – and therefore even more tenuous – existence for many.

Politically, the negotiated settlement has left Zimbabweans increasingly outside a decision-making process that is run by politicians for their own interests. A recent report by the Research and Advocacy Unit condemned the constitution making process as “make believe politics,” in which the citizenry is increasingly left out. People spoke of an unfortunate fatigue with and disengagement from politics.

We spoke a bit about what “real change” would look like for each of us, a bit like the “what would you like in a new Zimbabwe” idea. One person spoke up immediately, and adamantly, against presidential portraits. For him, a new Zimbabwe would be one in which people took the portraits of Mugabe off their walls, and never put them back. He recalled being in China some 10 years ago, and seeing Mao’s official portrait redone as a table mat – simply, subtly and tastefully captioned with the words “I didn’t change. But China is changing.” He recalled his surprise at seeing something so controversial so openly displayed. Mugabe – and the rest of our politicians – might not be changing. But Zimbabwe is changing.

Someone once asked whether I thought women could ‘ever’ be equal to men. I told them that I did not think women could ever be equal to men because as far as I was concerned women have ‘always’ been equal to men – they were just conned into thinking otherwise.

The very fact that the matter could be subject to debate, dispute and indeed controversy points to how a people can be so indoctrinated as to miss the truth that is staring right in front of them. Can there be anything more ludicrous than relegating one group of people to subservience just because they don’t happen to possess the right anatomy?

How then have we managed from one generation to the next to perpetuate, authenticate and reproduce the same patriarchal attitudes and values that disempower women and privilege men?

Even in the most glaring inequalities and the most ghastly social injustices, we are led to believe that a woman’s inferiority is a natural consequence of having been born female – that it is ordained by some deity or divinity.

So to challenge the status quo, we are forced to commit the great unforgivable sacrilege of pointing out the fact that women folk are oppressed by a system that rests solely on the idea of male supremacy. Those of us who have the temerity to point out what is so obviously wrong with the status quo are treated with hostility by the very women we would hope to liberate for even a captive starts to believe that their captivity is the will of God and having made peace with it – they become reluctant to believe anything to the contrary.

Years and years of internalizing patriarchal values have created in us a deeply ingrained belief in our own ‘inferiority’ and the spaces we have been given to occupy suddenly seem appropriate and natural to us – we feel we have no right to aspire for more.

And who is more enslaved than the person whose chains bind the mind and whose shackles tie the soul?

For the things we imbibed in our childhood become so much a part of us that to conceive of breaking them seems unnatural – yet we can never be free until we start to question, to query, to prod, to interrogate, to inquire and if need be – to challenge, to reject and even to rebel against those beliefs that would keep us caged by our anatomy.

We have believed a lie, we have lived a lie and we have fallen victim to the greatest con of all time – we have believed that our womanhood obscures our humanity. I would rather be a human being than a woman any day – because womanhood is a social construct – a figment of some man’s imagination, a prescription derived from the sexist ideology that places people’s biological make up above their humanity.

Before I toe the line – I demand to know who drew it. Before I measure myself against any yardstick – I demand to know who carved it.

Before I stop myself at any boundary – I demand to know who set it. Before I confine myself to any space – I demand to know who created it.

For if we are to be free we must know the answers to the questions and we must be the answers; for too long we have not cared to know the answers for we have not even been allowed to ask the questions.

So now we, those of us who have been told we suffer from the ailment of too much schooling, constipated and ruined by ‘excessive’ education – we who are not afraid to desecrate the shrines of silence our mothers erected – we question the status quo.

And the sound of our voices is like a thing of shame – that we should have the audacity to ask questions and the nerve to demand an answer – we are a generation hell-bent on calling culture’s bluff.

The pigeonholes of stereotype can no longer contain us; in our minds we carry the resolve that we will not be our mothers’ daughters.

For our mothers bestowed upon us so narrow a path, so limited a scope of choice and so silent a voice that we could not speak up and be heard.

We believed the myth of male superiority, bowing before the tyranny of patriarchy and accepting miseries and misfortunes with the stoicism of cows standing in the rain.

So we chose to be feminists because feminism is the radical notion that women are people too and that patriarchy is nothing more than male supremacy posturing as ‘culture’.

And in the years that have gone by we have gradually come to realize that we suffered needlessly from internalizing the doctrine of one group of people seeking to protect the privileged status quo that was their due merely by having been born male. Simply by being taught two different sets of catch phrases – we grew up marginalized, relegated and subjugated.

The oppression of women rested firmly on the greatest con there ever was – it rested on the fallacious belief that women were ‘natural’ subordinates of man and lesser beings.

out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing
there is a field
I’ll meet you there
rumi

Last week the Tree of Life held workshops in the granite rocks of Mutoko
sheltering from the October heat under Mahatcha trees
as they dropped their ripening fruit into the circles

30 people had walked from their homes 1 to 2 hours away
all from the same community
headmen, councillors, community leaders and activists
victims and the perpetrators together in the same circle

victims who had become perpetrators
and perpetrators who had become victims
brother against brother
father against son

a community who have been carrying the brunt of political conflict and social upheaval in the centre of their families

but in this place
where they told their stories
they began to speak of something different
of their need to stop the violence
and to reconstruct their lives
to see beyond fear
into the eyes of their brother, neighbour, friend
and recognise that peace was more important

(there was even the space for humour
as one man said to the person who had burnt his house and stolen his chicken.
“the house I can understand – but my hen?
did you think she had a vote?”)

and when the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about
rumi

The trouble with trying to be clever is that you run the risk of idiocy. This maybe complete nonsense, or it could be a good blog. Let me know.

A very long time ago, before I was born anyway, Bob Marley came to Zimbabwe and sang ‘Get up stand up’ in front of thousands of Zimbabweans. Locks bouncing, his backing band doing their very best to keep up with his energy, Mr. Marley gave our country a soundtrack. The atmosphere was electric. Anything was possible. We had gone from telling all the mothers ‘No Woman No Cry’ to ‘Stirring it Up’ in the ‘Uprising’. But the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ had returned and this was a new beginning. This, after-all, was the new Zimbabwe. For a few hours that night, there was no black, no white, no man, no woman, no child, just Zimbabweans. For a little while that night, and even after that, we were all one, united in singing ‘Songs of Freedom’.

Independence came, and went, but we were ‘Jammin’ together. Our President was hailed as a one of the great African Statesmen, a ‘Legend’. Zimbabwe couldn’t be prouder. Some of us had settled into a wonderful way of life. The ‘Sun is Shining’ we thought, as we happily braaied and drank Castles. Then the cracks began to show. All of a sudden the people started murmuring that we needed to ‘Stir it Up’ once again. The ‘Exodus’ of the best and brightest began in earnest, the word ‘Survival’ on their lips.

They left; the skilled, and the unskilled. Going to ‘Babylon by Bus’. And we who remained ‘Caught a Fire’ and became ‘Soul Rebels’. They resisted the lies, the bribery and finally the violence, quietly. ‘Time Will Tell’ we said. Those who dared rise up, ended up in the ‘Jailhouse’, while more and more people began to hum the notes to ‘Trenchtown Rock’. Abroad, the Diaspora yearned to know the ‘Real Situation’ and often they were told it was ‘War’.

‘So Much Trouble in our World’, quasi-fiscal became another word for instant impoverishment. Zimbabwe was weary, and hopeless, until the Global Political Agreement was signed. Until then we thought we had been ‘Waiting in Vain’, but, our ‘Redemption Song’ seemed to have been written at last.

Bob Marley died in 1981, a few months after we celebrated the first anniversary of Zimbabwe’s Independence. His music still lives, as do the people of Zimbabwe.