I’ve been following TechZim’s coverage of issues surrounding the registration of a .co.zw domain. The process is unnecessarily laborious and complicated and it opens up those who would register a Zimbabwean domain to exploitation by ISPs, who in many cases bundle their comparatively expensive hosting products with the domain registration. As a result a number of businesses and web portals register generic Top Level Domains (.com, .net. info etc). It is not possible to overstate the importance of hosting Zimbabwean business and content on the .co.zw domain space. That space is a national resource, and belongs to all Zimbabweans.

In an interview, founding editor of TechZim Limbikani Makani had this to say:

The big problem is that it’s all unclear. No one knows, and the few people that do know are the ISPs that do the registration. The truth is if you go to a registrar with your paperwork, they will register you. The problem is that they don’t make this information (registration requirements) available. Either they don’t have the resources, they don’t want to or they’re afraid. Afraid that if this becomes something that just anybody can do something negative might happen, or the resource that they’ve been feeding from might disappear, or it might get into the wrong hands. Because of that they’re afraid to just let go. I think they can let go. Is it too expensive? It’s actually not. ZISPA doesn’t charge the ISPs for domain registration at all. What they charge is a membership to ZIPSA which is $30, which is nothing to a big organisation like Utande or ZELCO. Unfortunately, there is not enough information out there about domain registration. The ZIPSA website has been updated in several years. ZISPA can immediately improve that. Secondly they can make the entire process simpler. They’re not making enough of an effort to make the informatio0n available to everyone.

I think many Zimbabweans feel the same.

This is a banner from Occupy Durham, building on the momentum generated from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

We’ve walked the whole day and we’re not even in Mutare. The Inn on the Vumba hasn’t had power since 6am. I feel a bit like we’re doing a black out to black out national tour.

By 9pm Bev is lights out. Not that I can blame her. These days are long and hot and tiring.

This journey is hugely challenging. Taxing on the mind as well as the body. You have to think about something other than what you’re doing as you go. If you actually felt what your body was really feeling? You’d just stop dead.  But at the same time, I’m loving it. I find myself saying “I couldn’t be happier,” several times a day. And each time, I mean it.

Read the birthday adventure walk diary here

View the photostream here

11.40am
the thermometer on the verandah reads 32.7 (humidity too low to measure)
we still have to get to 2.30pm before it will stop rising…

Last week I paid a visit to Tel-One (our land line provider)
I parked in the shade and watched a few bemused and disbelieving people
stumble down the old steps clutching a large yellow book

Inside there were no queues
or bustle
just the guy entering and re-entering your ID number slowly into the computer
in 10 minutes I too was floating down the worn PO steps
I too was clutching a 2011 Telephone Directory
(last one was issued 2006 – all hope of a new one was lost years ago.)
with  yellow pages:
that reassures that all the electricians, plumbers, panel beaters etc. who disappeared off the map
have indeed re-emerged
(it is a comfort to find Mediocre Business Merchants still listed in Kaguvi Street)

even more………

I also held a paid up receipt for US$65 confirming that within a week
a ‘splitter’ would come and split my land line
and we would be connected to the internet via a fiber optic cable
for a small monthly fee of 30$
imagine
– a gateway into the 1st world – wherever it is – and no-one else seems to know!!!!

(this is an added comfort as the satellite broadcasting BBC and NPR seems to have dropped out of the sky lately and radio addicts like Mel and me feel as if we have lost a good friend.)

Internet – in the house!

no longer will I saunter off next door, computer under-arm
through the coffee trees and the vegetable garden
to perch on a rock under the masasa trees to down load my email

A friend or ours arrived here a few years ago with all her goodies packed in zip-lock bags
as she saw us pounce on them with whoops of joy she said in the nicest way
‘you Zimbabweans are so easy to please’

Since we moved into American currency so much has changed:
we now get zip-lock bags and Thai green curry paste and South African crackers
even if there is no change under a 1dollar note

We cross the edge in small steps
first the outdoor fire under the fig tree
then a gas ring
then a spare water tank (for when the power is out and the borehole stops working – municipal water failed years ago)
later came an inverter – so we can watch a video / listen to music
then a reading light in the lounge

Mel took us our latest step over the edge
by fitting lights above our gas plate and kitchen sink
(low power – connected through the inverter to a battery)
No longer is there the same rush to get all the candles lit when the power goes out whilst cooking supper

And I wonder
will we lose our ability to flow, to make a plan, to ride the waves?
our need to connect to one another to know what is going on
our creative spirit born of living on the edge?

It’s all so much more convenient…
having a telephone directory that works

Last week several Zimbabwean media sources reported the storming of a police station in Gweru by a crowd demanding to beat up three women suspects. The women allegedly had been sexually abusing men, and were arrested when they arrived at an accident scene asking to retrieve an estimated 30 condoms from a car that was involved. Reportedly, there is no legal basis for their arrest. Zimbabwean law does not recognise the rape of a man by a woman, and possession of used condoms is not illegal. In fact their continued detention based on suspicion of raping men is a violation of their constitutional rights. The women have only admitted to being sex workers.

Media outlets have been no less prejudiced on this matter than the police. Reportage of the case cannot be called unbiased, and could be termed salacious. One online publication even trawled Facebook, and published images of one of the suspects.

Comments on the Herald’s article pages include:

Ngavapiwe life sentence with hard labor, Izvezvi tichanzwa kuti they are out on bail and then they have gone into hiding! Please protect us and our children from such vampires
No bails just kills them

Speaking at the police station in Gweru one man is quoted as saying: ‘We are shocked with what is happening in our society where men are now being sexually-abused by women. But how can they make a living through such acts?’

And that’s exactly the point of the outrage. It is not that one human being sexually violated and exploited another human being. It is that women did this to men. Of the countless rape cases reported in the media, none, not even ones involving infants have sparked such an emotional reaction.

There is still a stiffer penalty for stock theft than for rape. Judges still hand down ten-year sentences to rapists and then suspend half of it for good behaviour. Never mind that in some cases the rape is premeditated, and accompanied by aggravated assault and threats. Sometimes the women and girls who are raped are married to their attacker. Yet there is no outrage. There are no elders protesting that this is not our culture and pleading for a return to sanity and traditional values. No outraged mothers and fathers baying for the blood of those who would rob their children of their innocence.  No men demanding the safety of their wives, sisters or daughters.  No mothers declaring ‘Not my child: enough is enough!’. No women’s groups and NGOs demanding that lawmakers stop deliberating on the importation of left hand vehicles and turn their attention to this more pressing issue.

Shame.

Sometimes something touches you so deeply that finding the words to express that experience is impossible. That’s how I feel about Poetry Africa at Book Café. I would like to write about the defiance in Xapa’s performance of HIStory, the beauty of TJ Dema’s articulation of womanhood, or even the happiness we in the audience felt as Didier Awadi performed in French because of the joy we could plainly see in his face. I don’t think my words would be adequate. So I’m going to share Harare, whose performance by Chris Abani moved me to tears.

harare
chris abani

his thoughts shed tears for what his people
have lost
Chirikure Chirikure

Downtown Harare. Pavements and nice trim
islands feel like the white Africa it used to be.
Its fading beauty arrested in the late seventies
feels like Lagos in the fade of colonialism.
–
But Yvonne says: Butterflies are burning.
Here.
This is kwela.
–
In the Quill Club, black journalists hold court,
say, Bob uses this land as his
private safari. The kudus are
nearly extinct. They play pool, chafing
against the government. We could be in
The Kings Head in Finsbury Park; a cold
London night. And the locals complaining
over warm pints about the native problem.
–
The still young woman smoking
a pipe against the wall of the museum
was once a guerrilla. Says, The men here fear me.
She knows all about killing.
Also about blowing smoke rings.

This is kwela.
–
In a market adjacent the poorest township
I finger useless trinkets, displaced as any tourist.
All the while ogling valuable-in-the-West
weathered barbershops signs
that I am too afraid to ask for.
–
Everywhere people wear cosmopolitan selves
but tired, like jaded jazz singers reconciled to loss.
Hats are perched at that jaunty angle that makes you
think that all washed-out things, like Cuba, are cooler
than they are. Is this kitsch?
–
And everyone says: The trouble with Bob is…
And this is kwela.
–
In the Book Cafè, a vibrant subculture:
Art, music, and poetry are alive and well.
Rich whites slum with African: for a moment
we all believe it is possible. This. Here. Now.
–
A Rasta in Bata shoes does the twist
to a Beach Boys tune played by
a balding white man in a night club.
This is kwela.
–
The older white farmer in the five-star hotel
still calls this country Rhodesia.
Says, No offense, but you bloody Africans
can’t run anything right.
I have him removed.
–
It was not always so,
and still I have questions.
Yes. Yes. Even this
is kwela.