We have heard it all before about artists attempting to justify touring despotic regimes claiming their art seeks to bridge differences – sometimes if not always  very bitter and inviting international disapprobation – and all that crap.

From Olympians participating in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Vorster’s apartheid South Africa and other international sporting events, examples come aplenty, and imagine men and women of conscience claiming “well, sport is a uniting force among nations, this is our contribution to bringing different peoples together!”

For local sportsmen, artists, musicians and other kosher cosmopolitans, they no doubt have a hell of a time time explaining themselves about being part of any event from Olonga and Streak’s cricket to Mtukudzi’s Swazi jaunt “boycotted” by other “big names”.

Mutukudzi claims he is a man just doing his job by going to perform in despotic Swaziland. Well, indeed he is. Africa’s remaining absolute monarch also claims he is also just doing his job cracking down on unionists!

But for many artists and ordinary people alike, the question appears to be: “do these boycotts change anything?” And it is that logic that no doubt informs the indifference of many artists and sportspeople despite these prominent people this time wearing the hat as conscientious objectors being able to keep up the heat bad presidents.

Only a while ago, a group of yuppie South African girls were debating among themselves whether they should hit the road and visit Swaziland and have a real weekend blast. However, as one of them wrote, their consciences were burdened  by the awareness that where they were destined to enjoy their “girlie outing,”  the natives [the Swazi] themselves were being clubbed for staying away from work, opposition politicians being hounded, their universal human rights being generally trampled upon by the increasingly despotic monarch. Thus it was, ” can we dance the night away well knowing outside these walls a mother is missing her son, a wife her husband, an activist denied her right to speak her mind?”

It then obviously is a question of conscience if a “respected” chap like Tuku [once referred by some with a twisted sense of humour as Zimbabwe's own Michael Jackson] is to be understood by his determination to be part of a crowd that only soon harps – as much as our own – “see, international artists are coming here to shame the lies and lies of the western press about the alleged despotism of our dear leader.”

Is he [Tuku] not the same guy who has – unlike Mapfumo – refused to say there is something wrong with the men and women he lionised and penned many a liberation war soundtrack back in the halcyon days of nationalist fervency? But it sure looks like it’s about the bread and the butter first and human rights concerns later, and he could well be retorting, “fuck you, I don’t eat human rights.”

Only a few nights ago, Tuku Supastar was on the telly courtesy of some ZTA shindig telling the nation that journos must not obsess with the negative! Looks like he knew what was coming!

Surely his PR people should know better.

“What happened in Egypt is sending shock waves to all dictators around the world. No weapon but unity of purpose. Worth emulating hey.”

- Vikas Mavhudzi’s post on Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Facebook wall. Mavhudzi is facing charges of posting offensive messages (Source: Mail & Guardian)

At a OSISA brown bag discussion on the role of new media in the pro-democracy struggles in southern Africa on Friday, one participant discussed a current tactic in use by organisers in Swaziland.

He explained that they have launched a cultural boycott, along the lines of the one which deterred artists and athletes from travelling to South Africa during apartheid.

As he described it, a number of artists had already agreed to boycott the Bushfire Festival held over the weekend, including Baba Caiphus Semenya. However, he noted that Oliver Mtukudzi was billed to perform at the festival, and activists had been unable to get in touch with him to advise him not to come. He informed the meeting that Semenya had been tasked with appealing to Tuku directly to encourage him to join the boycott. However, he said, he knew Tuku was a democrat, and he had every confidence that he would heed the boycott call. He said a separate event in South Africa was being planned, to support the artists who had honoured the boycott with a different source of performance revenue.

But a statement released on Tuku’s website Friday afternoon shared that some Swazi activists had allegedly “threatened to harm Tuku with unspecified action” if he performed at the Bushfire Festival. On his website, Tuku said:

“Those who are threatening my life actually need healing themselves and I will ensure my music heals their anger and help them think properly. That is the purpose of art. Music must be a remedy in times of strife and artists must be given a chance to fulfill that obligation.”

He explained that he would be performing at Bushfire as planned, and that:

“The threats don’t deter me from doing my job as an artist. I have a responsibility to help heal where there is conflict. I must unite people where politicians are dividing us. It’s the business of politicians to separate people, as usual, and I am not surprised by the threats. All my life my music has promoted love, peace, tolerance and human rights and must be viewed as such. Thinking otherwise would be unfair.”

Radio VOP reported that Tuku performed on the weekend to around 15,000 people.

Whilst musicians may indeed be able to unite societies and create spaces for dialogue instead of conflict, I can understand the value of a cultural boycott. Amongst other things, it denies a government the revenue, and legitimacy, that international events can provide. The success of the South African example has inspired others to take a similar stance – for example in the Israeli / Palestinian conflict.

As Desmond Tutu said:

Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel.

In fairness to artists, it’s important that calls for a boycott be clear and consistent. In this case, there was some back-and-forth about whether the boycott was still on, which the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) dismissed as an attempt by the Festival organisers to misinform people that the boycott had been lifted.

Certainly, threatening someone’s safety should they come and perform falls more in the category of blackmail than persuasion.

But activist organisations like the Swaziland Solidarity Network insist the boycott is on, and will remain until Swaziland is democratised. For years, Zimbabweans have asked others in the region to support our efforts to democratise. With artists like Caiphus Semenya, Professor, L’Vovo Derrango, and Deep House DJ Black Coffee supporting the Swazi boycott, what will it take for artists like Tuku to follow suit?

When I told my father I wanted to be a journalist he looked at me in shock and said, ‘But women journalists are loose…are you telling me that this is what you want for yourself?’ Never one to back down from a fight, that conversation ended in a fierce argument. My mother knew better than to intervene. I couldn’t understand how my father, with whom I watched Christiane Amanpour on CNN and Haru Mutasa on Al Jazeera, and who would sit with me and critique interview and reporting styles could possibly believe that journalism amounted to prostitution.

Having been in the field for a while now, I understand his position. Zimbabwe’s women journalists, more than women in any other profession, I think, suffer intolerable harassment and discrimination. It comes with the job. It really doesn’t matter which medium or establishment a woman works for, sexual harassment appears to be an industry standard. Scant attention is drawn to the sexual scandals that plague Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings; I suppose it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. In 2009 numerous interns and women journalists filed harassment complaints against the then News and Current Affairs Manager Tarzen Mandizvidza and Reporters Manager O Brian Rwafa. A female respondent to a Gender Links survey regarding women in Zimbabwe’s media observed, ‘Where issues of sexual harassment or sexist language are concerned, women who raise these issues are often not taken seriously and in particular case of harassment, male bosses sympathise with those accused of harassment and at times try to underplay the charge at hand.’

This is aptly demonstrated by ZBH CEO, Happison Muchechetere who, at the time threatened to fire the women and labelled them ‘prostitutes’. ZBH sexual harassment issues are ongoing. This month the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists Secretary General, Foster Dongozi, told The Zimbabwean that there were escalating reports of female journalists being harassed on the job, especially at the state broadcaster where bosses were allegedly sexually harassing female reporters for roles as news readers.

New players in the media industry have also adopted the practice of objectifying and discriminating against women. Recently, Sokwanele reported that young female college graduates have lodged complaints that they are being asked on dates by some of the editors of the newly licensed media houses if they want to be employed.

The issues plaguing women in media are not confined to sexual harassment. A 2009 study conducted by Gender Links as part of the Glass Ceilings: Women and Men in Southern African Media Survey found that although half of Zimbabwe’s media houses had gender parity targets, there were six times as many men as women in Zimbabwe media houses surveyed. This is surprising considering that women constitute the majority of media and communication studies students. The survey also found that men were more likely to be given higher remuneration and better working conditions than women.

Moreover, while women in Zimbabwean media houses are under-represented in most areas of work, (constituting 17% of editorial departments), they are found in higher proportions in support roles in areas considered “women’s work”. These include advertising and marketing (40%) and human resources (58%).

Fed up with this state of affairs, female media practitioners issued a statement this year in March, demanding an end to these unfair practices. Again very little notice was paid to it by the media in general, almost as if in collusion. The media is very quick to point out the failings of the government, but is selectively shortsighted when its own practices are corrupt and degrading.

Is apathy Zimbabwe’s worst enemy?

Tendai Marima’s Mail & Guardian Thought Leader blog makes some very good points. You can read some excerpts here:

Stories of villagers being terrorised by soldiers patrolling the diamond fields of Marange in eastern Zimbabwe are enough to scare off any revolutionaries dreaming of a Chimurenga-style uprising. But it’s not only the very real obstacles of violent repression that could prevent Zimbabweans from fully catching the protest fever currently doing the rounds on the continent and the Middle East. The nation suffers from a grave illness: apathy.

It’s difficult to cite books or social scientists diagnosing this to be the Zimbabwean condition but personal lived experience suggests this is the case. To an extent, academics like Brian Kagoro and Glen Mpani, who have explored the reasons for Zimbabwean passivity and indifference, confirm this. In their respective works, both researchers argue that the post-colonial condition of political apathy has its roots in decades of living under a one-party state. The multiple interlocking burdens of living under an increasingly authoritarian, economically regressive regime have resulted in a population which “normalises the abnormal” as a coping strategy. In other words, it’s become so normal to hear of opposition members being beaten and jailed that it’s hard to be concerned. Indifference makes it easier to be dismissive and say “it doesn’t happen everywhere”. Because of this standard response, its sometimes difficult for the “law-abiding” rich and poor to connect their economic woes to the absurd imprisonment and torture of someone or the shortage of medicines and medical expertise in hospitals.

…

If any lessons are to be learnt from the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions by Zimbabweans, it is that dictators can be overthrown by the people; security and stability be damned. But before any fantasies of popular uprising or ousting Zanu by the ballot can be organised by serious activists and non one-hit wonder online revolutionaries or used as campaign rhetoric by a formidable opposition party (yet to be seen) Zimbabwe needs a zenga zenga revolution, to remix Gaddafi’s words.

A revolution of conscience in every city, every street, every house, every village and every hut. Zenga zenga; every nook and cranny must be cleansed of the viral strains of apathy that allow evil to flourish and culminate in an inability to equate human rights with the right to pursue prosperity and live in a relatively stable country. If Zimbabweans truly want a change in the status quo or “no other but Zanu, but without the violence” as some desire, then it begins with this critical mass realisation. Legitimate desires for stability and prosperity can never justify indifference towards the unjust persecution of another Zimbabwean. Just as the apolitical urban middle and working classes deserve to live in peace, so too do the villagers of Marange. As do praying parishioners. And White Zimbabwean, Zimbabwean Indian and Nigerian traders and business owners harassed in the name of indigenisation. As Zimbabwe continues to discover the highs and lows of 31 years of independence, may the spirits of past liberators bless her with the realisation that indifference to the suffering of others can be cured at the church of born-again humanitarians by St Conscience, the Empathic One.

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Does our president ever stay in his own country? Silly, but well, it has been asked before, and I am asking it again this week.

A few years ago he was panned for trotting the globe, traveling the world and cartoonists had a field day as he was saddled with the unflattering sobriquet that borrowed the name of that well-travelled explorer Vasco da Gama.

Today our president “arrived” from Nigeria where he had gone to witness the swearing in of President Goodluck Jonathan. A few days ago he had “arrived” from Addis Abbaba, “arrived” from Namibia, “arrived” from Uganda, a few days before that “arrived” from…

Of course as “Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief” who wants the best of everything without regard of that starving Makokoba, Madlambuzi, Mhondoro granny you would expect this.

Yet Biti has already complained about the country ill-affording the “pleasure trips” of government officials with the poor taxpayer bearing the costs.

Of course it predictably will be claimed that the Dear President travels on official state business or whatever, but then we all know about other presidents who skip any jaunts and have made less foreign travel one of the defining  matrices of their tenure.

I liked it when Karikoka Kaseke – for the first time perhaps – opened his mouth and spoke sense when he complained recently that it is unfair to expect the impoverished taxpayers who will never in their lifetime board a plane to continue bailing out Air Zimbabwe when it is rich people who travel by air. And by rich, you just have to read “government officials!”

If we are to count the trips “His Excellency” has made since the beginning of 2011, keeping in mind of course the “medical tourism” to Asia, you have to seek Biti’s opinion about the justification of these travels.

Perhaps Biti might as well retort, “why ask me? Ask him!”

But we ask, how much have the taxpayers forked so far as we hit the half-year mark? The Singapore trips alone are already known to cost the taxpayer USD3 million according to press reports. Go figure.