The Sunday Mail advertises itself as Zimbabwe’s leading family newspaper. Their last edition featured an incredibly gruesome photograph of two burnt corpses. Fatalities from a vehicle accident that involved a fuel tanker on Boschoff Drive in Harare. Yes, one might think that the Sunday Mail photographer, Believe Nyakudjara, would have snapped the wreckage of the vehicles, but instead this is what gets dished up. The Sunday Mail’s appalling lack of professionalism and sensitivity must be roundly criticised.

A couple of weeks ago Lungile Mathe was dethroned as Miss Tourism Zimbabwe (Miss Personality). This happened before she could receive her prize money, a car as well as other extras for scooping the top position in the beauty contest. The dethronement came after reports in the press that our beauty queen was offering sex in exchange for money. Whether this was true as reported in the press, or not, I believe the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) boss should have at least made some time to investigate the issue and consult his boss, the Minister of Tourism, before sending a text message firing Lungile.  Mr Kaseke went on to label the queen “a woman of loose morals” something, which I think, was harsh and unprofessional.

When all this hearsay drama was happening the Minister of Tourism was overseas trying to sell the Zimbabwe brand. When he came back the whole issue took a new twist with the Minister telling Mr Kaseke to reinstate the beauty queen and apologise to her and the nation. In the Sunday Mail of June 13 2011, Mr Kaseke said they are now thinking of giving back Lungile her title. But is it going to do any good to the model, the country and even the Miss Tourism as a brand?

One thing the Minister should do is whip his subordinate into line because since the event was a national event one should not wake up and grab a phone texting dismissal messages. Since the tables have turned the ZTA boss is now eating his words.

Yes its coming!

To all you men out there who have been forcing their women to pop those pills before having it, now its your turn to be blamed for being irresponsible when your wife tells you that she is now expecting.  Every time when you hear a couple talking about family planning its always the women’s responsibility to make sure that she doesn’t fall pregnant unexpectedly.

According to MyBirthControlStore.com “a study has showed that male contraceptive will be based on a non-steroidal hormonal medical therapy that will be known as selective androgen receptor modulator. Dr. James Dalton at AAPS, the lead researches has expressed his views on the new male contraceptive development as “the most successful lab research on male birth control pills so far with complete safety and reversibly inhibited fertility with no side effects”.

Clinical trials have already begun in some US and UK labs.

Two UK based doctors, Nnaemeka Amobi and Christopher Smith of King’s College, have spent more than 12 years researching the developing of male birth control pills and they have designed the concept of “dry orgasm pill”. As the name suggests, this kind of pill will be required to take 2 hours prior to sex. It would “dry-up” the male semen without making any changes in orgasm.

While this drug is still on trial it has successfully worked on monkeys. After reading the last part of that research where it talks about “drying up of semen” I almost panicked because of the fear that maybe it wont be reversible. This will be very interesting seeing men in a clinic or pharmacy queuing for their family planning pills and being reminded by your wife at home to take your pills.

Seems like there isn’t a way out anymore guys, it’s now a shared responsibility.

Corruption is easier to define than bribery. Or, there are lot more definitions out there. Transparency International defines it “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”.

Fairly simple. Someone has a position – which has ‘power’ to it – whether it is the check out clerk’s power to ring up your purchases, or make you stand and wait and wait and wait, or it is the passport officer, who “hasn’t got the right paper to make you a passport”, so you can choose between never travelling, or giving over some other paper.

Someone abuses that position – you must make a facilitation payment, or take them to dinner, or buy them a beer.

Bribery may be that facilitation payment (money), or anything else (gifts, information, kissing up, favours sexual or otherwise, a lift, a banana, whatever), given to someone (individual or group). Whatever is given, so long as it is not ‘official’ – so it varies with whoever gives it, it does not get receipted, and/or it is not openly asked for as part of the fee. In this respect, a tip to a waiter or barman is a bribe.

Be that as it may, it is one part of this blog investigation. Bribery may or may not be illegal. It may or may not be standard procedure. It may or may not be expected. One of the things we are curious to find is the who, what, where, when, why, of bribery. This blog investigation is not intended to be judgmental. It is simply intended to get the information out there, so people, be they visitors or local people, know how to act? How much to tip/bribe? When to do it? What is vulgar and not vulgar? When is it expected, and when is it insulting?

From Wikipedia:
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift given that alters the behaviour of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public legal duty.

Or;
The bribe is the gift bestowed to influence the recipient’s conduct. It may be any money, good, right in action, property, preferment, privilege, emolument, object of value, advantage, or merely a promise or undertaking to induce or influence the action, vote, or influence of a person in an official or public capacity.

So, it has aspects. Something is given. All agree. That something may be quite a number of things.

Behaviour is changed (influenced). Or intended to. All agree. You want the barman to notice you and get you a beer. You want the passport officer to give you travel documents. You want the attendant to fill your bike up with petrol. You want to get your property deeds in your name. You want people to vote for you. You need your ‘free’ anti-retrovirals.

Bribery is a crime. Not all agree. But this is fine. We are not going to look at that. We just want to know what happens. How it happens. Why it happens. We want the information out there for all to see. We want examples.

For example, I was run down by a woman who drove through a red light many years ago. My bicycle went under the car, and I smashed her windscreen. With my face. I spent five days in a coma. My mother came form Australia to ‘look after’ her brain damaged son in Zimbabwe.

One activity involved going to the police for report filling, fines, bureaucracy, paper work and those exciting activities (i.e. who was responsible to pay for the brain scan, which seems to have found something). While waiting in the Police officers office, we listened to him lament (it was 1200) about his lunch that was ordered, and how would he pick it up, would we be finished so he could get it before it got cold, etc.? All good questions.

When the husband of the (obviously guilty) driver appeared, it did not go missing on him. He offered to ‘sort out’ the officer’s meal. Things went well for him then. The charge was not ‘driving with undue care’ which carried an obligatory 3 day jail sentence! They paid for treatment, dental work and a new bicycle, but no jail time.

From the examples, we want to know where the bribery happens the most. In medicine (hospitals, doctors and nurses, drugs), with the traffic police, Ministry of housing, Registrar general and travel documents, customs, local government, drivers licences, Emergency taxis and public transport, the courts, prisons, criminal police investigations, political offences, the diamond industry, or where?

We want to know “how much?” Tipping, as it is common, and most see it as legal, is easy. Ten to fifteen percent of the bill. But, how much do you ‘tip’ a ‘street kid’ (anyone of any age or sex, that inhabits the street) who offers to assist you in cheating the city of it’s parking fees? How much do you pay to ‘avoid’ a speeding ticket, after you have, in fact, been driving above the speed limit? What is the ‘fine’ with and without receipt, for not having break down triangles? How much do you pay to expedite a hospital bed? If the bed is supposed to be free, what is 10 to 15 percent?

How much is your vote worth? People offered to vote for me if I would buy them a beer. Now this is quite insulting, considering that many people (over 15 000, but the actual number is definitely unknown) died so that the ‘seller’ had the right to vote. And he was willing to sell it for a beer (maybe $1.00). And how was I to know (voting is secret) whether he voted for me anyway?

Perhaps that is why I lost the last election?

The world arguably needs a new Marx, but it keeps creating Malcolm Gladwells, pirouetting around their flipcharts and ignoring the real problems. More from The Guardian

Got an extreme opinion? Then share it with Rejoice Ngwenya. XO2 is a new e-discussion forum for sharing liberal opinion & life-changing ideas on free markets, effective democracy, property rights, good governance, human, economic and political rights. Email your opinion to epolitrix [at] gmail [dot] com

I’m Neo-Liberal, Like You
Rejoice Ngwenya, XO2 this Wednesday!*

Virulent opponents of neo-liberalism will advance a myriad of ‘empirical evidence’ how this ideology is responsible for Africa’s woes. Central to this diatribe is an argument by leftist ideologues that the continent’s economic decay was triggered by our succumbing to IMF-prescribed ‘neo-liberal’ Structural Adjustment Programs. I have listened with a keen sense of bewilderment when so-called pan-Africans froth at the mouth laying the blame on this ideology even for Africa’s inability to mitigate natural disasters!

According to Wikipedia, neo-liberalism is used “to describe an internationally prevailing ideological paradigm that leads to social, cultural, and political practices and policies that use the language of markets, efficiency, consumer choice, transactional thinking and individual autonomy to shift risk from governments and corporations onto individuals and to extend this kind of market logic into the realm of social and affective relationships.”   So what is it about such pleasant ideology that African intellectuals find revolting? Or it is a case of whenever a political system appears to challenge nationalist dogma; it is easy to blame it in on ‘agents of Bretton Woods institutions’! Whenever habitual critics of liberalism are sobered down to rational debate, one gets horrified that their paranoia is founded on populist conjecture rather than facts. Such critics, given a chance, would slide into gluttonous self-abandonment only equal to those they label as ‘capitalist pigs’!

If you are African, and you consider as repulsive the brand of economic models that sent countries of Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda and Robert Mugabe to the gutter, you are a liberal like me! Liberalism is, at least from a simplistic world view, a natural instinct of true democrats. Those who resent a life of excessive state control, rabid public expenditure and populist subsidies; and who love to choose goods and services in an open market, believing that individual liberties are supreme – are on my side of the liberal ideological divide.

Fine, all types of economic systems are susceptible to failure yet critics of neo-liberalism from ‘troubled’ African countries would rather do exile in ‘liberal’ Europe than ‘socialist’ Cuba. Classical hypocrisy! In South Africa, ANC party hardliners who want to rub hot pepper on political competitors first accuse them of ‘neo-liberal’ tendencies. If you really wanted to be accepted in the circle of the ‘concerned social beings’, the fashionable thing is to label someone a member of the ‘neo-liberal’ Democratic Alliance. Simply because the DA is ‘led by a white’, there is very little effort required to disown us African liberals as agents of ‘Apartheid imperialism’!

In Zimbabwe, liberalism is associated not only with social injustice and collapse of social service infrastructure, but also corporate failure. The ‘hottest’ case at the moment is imminent demise of ReNaissance Merchant Bank largely due to corruptive bad governance. As a liberal, I insist that free market economy laws take precedence and ‘allow’ this bank to close before the contagion of incompetence spreads. Going the ‘Obama route’ of dispensing public funds to bail out blatant greed is blight to liberal ideology.

Adam Haupt, a Mail & Guardian blogger recently wrote: “If it [DA] wants to claim that it has broken with its racially divisive past, then it should take a long and hard look at its own neo-liberal economic policies.” He continues: “The real way to build an inclusive society is to ensure that all people are involved in securing social justice. You cannot leave it to the market to generate a better life for all…”

According to this Haupt school of thought, neo-liberalism is a scenario where heartless free market policies isolate the poor blacks, abandons them to suffer in silence, discarding them to endure the vagaries of white capitalist greed! This is the tragedy with so-called African ‘liberation scholars’. They are purveyors of radical activist paranoia that drives innocent citizens towards leftist dogma with senseless accusations of an ideology they choose to misunderstand.

State-run companies Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, National Railways Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation are basically bankrupt. People of Matebeleland and Manicaland are persistently mourning how Harare has ‘centralised’ every aspect of national governance thus resulting in ‘marginalisation’. If you strongly feel that citizens in those regions be allowed to exploit and distribute their own local resources, you are a liberal like me who believes in devolution.

Human rights activist Elinor Sisulu is quoted:”South Africans must take note from Zimbabwe that media freedom is not just a liberal democratic notion, but a matter of life and death.” Progressive Zimbabweans are mourning about ZANU-PF’s hegemonic hold on public media. Zimbabwe boasts some of the most repressive media laws in the world, with no local private radio or television station. And so if you strongly feel citizens must be free to operate their own local broadcast networks, you are, after all, neo-liberal like me!