The Asiagate scandal has been top news for the past week in the daily papers. The publicity given to this story sounded like this scandal just popped out all of sudden with the visit by Sepp Blatter, world soccer governing body FIFA president. To think of it, these acts of corruption and bribery actually happened a year and some months ago and nobody said a thing about it. It seems like the custodians of sports in this country had their attention diverted to the jostling for positions to govern the Zimbabwe Football Authority (ZIFA). Every wanna be sports writer in this country has made a name out of this story in the past month.

One of my work mates asked me what this “Asiagate” thing was all about. I had no specific answer to that question but only to say “it’s a bunch of soccer crooks that went overseas on match fixing tours and soliciting bribes”. I had no guts to call them soccer players/ officials because what these people did is a disgrace to the nation. The manner in which the report on the Asia tour was produced is scandalous on its own. There is now finger pointing and blame shifting even involving media personnel. But the most surprising thing is that the mastermind of this scandal was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison in Finland yet here in Zimbabwe it is still just news with no arrests. One may suggest that perhaps the people involved in this story are all overseas like the guy arrested in Finland but take a casual visit to town and you can bump into one of the fellows. Since no arrests have been made it really looks like the media reports were just for publicity in preparation for the visit by Sepp Blatter.

Having spent much of my adult life thinking about my language and culture, I felt both comfort and dismay in reading Thembi Sachikonye’s article for Newsday Losing our way:

Sure, we need to ask ourselves whether there is anything wrong with being swallowed up in a cultural tidal wave, participating willingly in the elimination of difference and diversity, and taking up another people’s way of life, another people’s language, and another people’s values in the name of progress, education or sophistication. And I am hoping that when we have asked ourselves these questions we will end up with an answer we can all live with.

We cannot redeem our cultural failures without a concerted and consistent effort. We cannot right our wrongs without first acknowledging that there is a problem, and then working hard to fix it.

This translates to a daily consciousness of how we communicate and conduct ourselves around those we want to influence. It means carefully filtering the influences we subject our children to.

I think is time for a cultural renaissance. We must begin to have a different and more meaningful understanding of our culture and languages and with that a more concerted effort towards preserving these. We cannot continue to wax lyrical on the opportunities allowed by globalisation, the emergence of technologies and media that are more inclusive. Yet when faced with the challenge of putting these tools to utilitarian use, we balk.

As a people we cannot continue to brag about how educated we are, but when we truly examine where all that education is going, what good it does us as a nation, suddenly there is silence. Where is the wiki on Zimbabwean history language and culture written for and by Zimbabweans themselves? Why aren’t more Shona and Ndebele books available in audio and as mp3 downloads? I want to read more histories by and about Zimbabweans that are without a political agenda, and watch well-written films that are entirely in vernacular and subtitled in English. We as Zimbabweans have to prioritise our cultures and languages. We cannot afford to wait for someone to create a grant that will specifically allow us to do so.

United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Dr Charles Ray failed to address a group of youths after Zanu (PF) hooligans besieged the Kwekwe Theatre, the venue of the meeting carrying placards denouncing the envoy. The Midlands Youth Dialogue, organised by a non-governmental organisation, Zimbabwe Organisation for the Youth in Politics (ZOYP), is a platform where youths from across the political divide can engage and deliberate on issues that affect Zimbabwean youths.

It is high Zimbabwean youth desist from violence of any sort that is politically inclined. Many youths are unemployed even the educated ones with degrees, but never has there been a day that they have took this to streets to call for jobs. Rather as youths we tend to divert our efforts to political fights and cause violence on behalf of our political leaders whom we follow. We forget that they have had their share of life and this is our share too and we should enjoy it together in unity and not spoil it by being violent.

It makes no sense in reality to be given beer and some cash to sustain you for a day so you can go and cause violence and yet for the remaining days you go with nothing. We don’t need to be used by those in power If they need to fight let them do so. Rather as youths we should focus more on pressing developmental issues.

As youth we should spend time working on realising our own dreams come to being and be torchbearers of the kind of future we hope to see in Zimbabwe. Being violent for whatever reason does not help us in any way, it leads to loss of life and focus.

On Monday 18 July, Chronicle newspaper reported that Defence Minister “Munagagwa” [that’s how his name was spelled right there in the front page] had declared that the Gukurahundi debate was a closed chapter, accusing “the private media and leaders of other political parties” of “engaging in cheap politics” and “trying to reverse efforts by the national healing organ by opening the Gukurahundi wounds.”

Predictably perhaps, the minister said the Unity Accord signed by President Mugabe and the late VeePee Nkomo “brought the nation together, bringing an end to the sorry chapter of Gukurahundi.”  Then on Thursday 21 July the same paper (Chronicle) carried a story with the headline “Gukurahundi issue sparks fierce debate.” The report was based on a public hearing convened by the Thematic Committee on Human Rights and the Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal, Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, and members of the public spoke their mind about the “Gukurahundi killings.” You have to ask the Minister what his opinion is about this seeing Gukurahundi obviously remains a very open chapter, and it was not the private media nor was it “other political parties” that opened the Gukurahundi book. It was “ordinary” residents who “demanded that the committees should review the political disturbances of the 1980s, popularly known as the Gukurahundi episode,” Chronicle reported.

We know “Munagagwa’s” government colleague Moses Mzila-Ndlovu still has a lot to say about these ’80 atrocities and is not about to let the matter die a natural death. But then that’s Zanu PF’s idea of government of the people, for the people, by the people. Zanu PF speaks and you listen, never the reverse.

Looks like the Gukurahundi chapter remains very open and will not wished away mate. But then the minister’s insistence is perhaps understandable because activists here have fingered him as one of the architects. Sorry Cde. Minister.

According to Julius Malema being poor means not being able to own means of production. He made these comments in an interview on SABC after a public outcry over the ANC Youth League President’s 16 million rand house he is building in Sandton, South Africa. Among Malema’s properties in South Africa includes a mansion in Limpopo province and he drives C63 Mercedes-Benz AMG. Not so bad for a poor man! Malema claims he has acquired these assets using his monthly salary from the ANC. And he is a representative of the poor people?

According to the Oxford dictionary poor means “lacking sufficient money to live at a standard considered comfortable or normal in a society” … so one wonders whether Julius’s society consider him to be poor with this kind of a lavish lifestyle. If Malema’s definition of poor is true then, for South Africans, what it means is that Mzansi has poor rich people living in mansions.

We all love it when technology makes our lives exciting, that is perhaps why mobile phones have been changing in shapes and sizes with stunning speed ever since these wonder gadgets were introduced to us back in the day. You can easily recall the “bricks” we used when Strive was granted his licence after “Father Zimbabwe” intervened. It’s kinda laughable now if you think of it. It wasn’t long of course before funky handsets became the vogue and them who had the bricks became very self-conscious about answering their phones in public as they feared ridicule from those who felt they were keeping up with cell phone technology.

One can list all kinds of phones that had their very fleeting 15 minutes of fame, the razors, the flip phones, and one can even recall some folks who seemed to think they were up the ladder of funky because of the ringing tone of their mobile! The “camera phone” became for some a “must have” as folks became fascinated with the whole idea of snapping away on your phone and sharing the pictures with the world. Then came this whole thing about 3G-enabled phones and some considered it the zenith of cool and are “Facebooking” in public as testimony to others that they are Zuckerberg-types therefore the definition of savvy.

I have heard from people who rushed to purchase what they back then considered expensive phones now claiming they do not need those phones after all: a phone that can receive calls and send messages will do just fine and you wonder what changed. Maybe they just got broke and can’t afford the smart phones of 2011. Yet there is a trend that has emerged rather with lightning speed that is pushing the boundaries of social and cell phone etiquette. And this is not the kind that speaks at the top of their voices in kombis about some phony multi-million dollar deal they are negotiating. But of course many users have obviously welcomed the advancement of mobile technology that has enabled these to be multi-media devices where you can record and also store music, movies, pictures etc. and they are using these utilises to the fullest.

However, it is the music part that pisses me off. These gadgets have given wannabe entrepreneurs immense business selling “memory cards” and this has become some kind of godsend for “music lovers.” Without consideration to other people’s space, this music is being blasted from mobile phones in all kinds of places you can imagine. I have seen and heard some of these people play music from their cell phones while in a kombi ride full of passengers. That these things come with earphones is of no consequence to these people. Looks like the logic is: the louder the better. Imagine sitting in a long kombi ride next to someone playing their favourite sounds, and I saw the other day a young woman actually singing along in kombi full of passengers! Boy was I pissed off. But what can you do? Tell the clown to turn that thing off? You can imagine the response. I remember when there was this excitement about “people’s radio,” you know, those walkie talkie-like wireless radios some chaps carried around with them everywhere, beer halls and even soccer matches where they would listen to the commentary of the match they were watching! It was just irritating, but those radios somehow disappeared from our faces and now we have these cell phones. OMG!

I imagine I am not the only one terribly irritated by this. We all love mobile technology but do we have to shove it in other people’s faces? You just have to recall those situations where people “refuse” to switch off their mobiles during a funeral or church service. It just is the definition of uncool. Around 2001 just the time the cell phone craze was gripping the nation, I recall a friend telling me his girlfriend actually asked him to call her during class so everyone could drool when they saw her phone as she answered it! You see she was doing some course whose classes were after hours so it presented an irresistible opportunity to show other working types just what she was made of. Yes my friend, there are people like that there. But puuuuuleeeeez, turn off the music!