Given the political posturing and harassment which seems the norm in Zimbabwe these days, it’s easy to wonder what difference any of us can make.

But two pieces of recent news have left me encouraged by the opportunities for small change, at least, and have renewed my conviction that speaking out does matter.

Firstly, Parliament has reconsidered sections of the General Laws Amendment Bill following concerns raised by the public and during the Portfolio Committee review stage. Specifically, sections that would have changed procurement regulations to reduce the power and autonomy of local authorities, and changes in copyright laws which would have restricted the ability to copy and share national legislation have come under scrutiny. As such, Parliament has agreed to rewrite the legislation to omit the problematic sections.

I was also encourage to see a recent report from the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) which demonstrated the power of their complaints mechanism.

According to VMCZ:

MISA-Zimbabwe filed a complaint with the MCC over a Redds advertisement carried in the Standard Newspaper of 06 March 2011. The advertisement showed the posteriors of four women each holding a bottle of Redds. MISA-Zimbabwe said the advertisement objectifies women. After a complaint was lodged with the MCC, Delta beverages withdrew the advertisement and apologised to MISA-Zimbabwe.

Speaking your mind, voicing your concern really can make a difference.

Subscribe to the Veritas and SAPST mailings to stay informed about events in Parliament, and use the VMCZ complaints mechanism to air your concerns about the media.

They go through harassment, torture and some of them are subjected to domestic violence. They forgive, motivate and inspire so that there is always unity, love and peace. In order to be recognized in the society they put in twice the effort than men do.

Everyday we read stories of women who are doing a lot for their families, community and for the country but very few are getting the recognition they deserve. Every man needs a woman for support. Its either she is your wife, girlfriend, sister and the most important of all “mother”. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I have been thinking what I can do for my mother. She deserves the best especially for everything I have put her through. It’s a terrible experience for a mother to see her son in prison with leg irons. With high blood pressure and sugar diabetes she managed to endure the long court sessions and the visits each day to prison. Instead of crying she always had this smile of hope on her face and it gave me courage and strength.

So to every man out there . . . if you have a wife do something for the mother of your kids and if you have a mother spoil her on Mothers Day because these women deserve to be happy. Show some love on Mothers Day by doing something simple, like the laundry, or take care of those naughty kids at home just for a day. Even a cup of coffee will do wonders.

I smell. I’m tired and itchy and fed up. So I know, I’m not in the most friendly and approachable of moods.

I’m smelly and itchy and fed up because there hasn’t been any power at home since Friday night. A wind storm crossed some lines, the power went, and that was that.

I went to the ZESA offices on Saturday morning to report the problem, and the friendly and efficient customer service person there assured me that they were already fixing another problem in my suburb, and they’d get onto my problem straight away. “Your power will be restored today,” he told me with a confident smile.

On my way home late Saturday afternoon, I saw the ZESA truck driving out of my suburb – and I was sure they’d been to the house and sorted out the problem.

So you can imagine my devastation when I got home to find the power still out. I heaved a sigh, and figured no matter, I’m sure they’ll come tomorrow.

When they still hadn’t come by Sunday night, I was less equanimous in my attitude.

I phoned them on Monday morning, and was again assured that they had my report on file, and that someone would be coming to fix things that day. I held my breath and resisted the temptation to phone the house every hour, to find out whether they had come to fix things yet.

I came home on Monday to find the fridge door still swinging proudly open, a sure sign that ZESA hadn’t come yet. When there’s no power, I’ve found the refrigerator is better conceptuatlised as a cupboard. Pity about the spoilt perishable goods which were inside it.

It hasn’t helped my mood any that winter is here, and I’ve been running a lot, so a hot bath or a boiled kettle would really be most welcome. It hasn’t helped that the power’s been out so long that my freezer is also starting to defrost, soaking through the newspapers I’ve put out on the kitchen floor, and leaving me with a second new cupboard – this one filled with rotting pets food. And it doesn’t help that there also isn’t any municipal water either, so the taps are dry. I’ve been through every jug of stored water in the house just to try and wash my face, brush my teeth, and flush the toilet (once in four days).  I guess the good news is that even if there was electricity, I still couldn’t have a hot bath.

So yes. My temper is frayed.

I went back to ZESA this morning to follow up on my report. I didn’t get a reference number the first time, because the attendant was so confident I’d have my power back on Saturday, I didn’t bother. Now they’ve lost my report – never mind that I phoned again yesterday. It’s so old, it’s in a different book.

My stinking underarms were further aggravated by the customer service person there today, who appeared just as  frustrated as I am. I outlined my case in plaintive detail. I explained how I pay my bills each month and do my part to help them, but I expect better service for my monthly payments. He pointed to the person seated next to me, who works at a clinic in a high density Harare suburb. They also haven’t had any power since Friday. You can imagine what this means for their work as a clinic. He’s also been coming to find out what the story is. But, the attendant told me, the problem is transport.

“I have a book of over 50 faults that need to be fixed. I have ten artisans sitting waiting to attend to these faults. But I have no trucks. Look around my yard. There is one truck to attend to all these problems,” he told me, slapping the report book on his desk.

Basically, if I had an open truck, I could load a ladder and technicians into it, take them to my house, they’d fix the fault, and I could drive them back to the depot. But without a truck? All I can do is wait.

Had I known that Saturday drive by was the last I woud see of the ZESA truck in my suburb, I would have hijacked it and driven it back to my house.

As tetchy as I’m feeling for the lack of power, he is clearly even more embittered by his powerlessness. He’s been working for years, and likes doing his job. He wants to resolve things for people. He hates seeing ZESA employees just sitting at the depot unable to do their jobs either. But without transport to carry the ladders, equipment and technicians to the job sites, what can he do?

His irritation was palpable, and I tried to diffuse things. “How can we help you get more trucks,” I asked him.

“It’s a national problem,” he responded. “Go to any other depot in the city and you’ll find the same situation. It’s not even a secret. I don’t even mind telling you about it. Everyone knows transport is our biggest problem.”

I am stunned by the injustice of it. If you have a truck, or access to one, you can get your fault fixed within a day. If you don’t? You have to wait until the “round robin rotation,” as he put it, makes its way to your place. There is no sense of triage or prioritisation based on need or severity or duration of the fault. The high-density clinic doesn’t get any special treatment. Instead, if you already have resources (like an open truck) you’re rewarded with more resources (access to a ZESA repair team).

The employee I spoke with blames the ZESA leadership, and he mentioned the recent detention of energy minister Mangoma. As a coordinator faced with a striking lack of vehicles, he isn’t surprised by the corruption charges. If the minister weren’t corrupt, he intimated, surely ZESA would have more vehicles? He’s frustrated by what he sees as the politicisation of what should remain strictly professional – the provision of an essential service to ZESA customers.

I don’t know enough about the Mangoma case to know whether the allegations have any merit. Before his arrest, he issued a press statement outlining challenges in the energy sector, including ZESA. He described himself as “particularly allergic to corruption, greed and patronage.” He appealed for transparency and accountability for the sector, and pledged that he would fight corruption across his ministry.

Certainly, it’s difficult from the outside not to view the issue as one more based on political grievances than any substantive charges. But if this is the view of the Minister’s own employees in companies like ZESA, Mangoma’s problems will extend far beyond the courtroom.

And whilst of course I can sympathise with the frustrated ZESA employee who just wants to do his job, I also just want a bath. I’m thinking about taking my smelly clothes and rotten pets meat to Chaminuka Building, headquarters of the Ministry of Energy. But if depots across the country lack the basic resources they need to work efficiently, I have a feeling even my stinky running vest might not do the trick.

I came back to the office after a run on Tuesday afternoon, to find a bakkie loaded full with oranges waiting for me.

We’d gotten an email last week from a farming couple who, among other things, grow novas (naartjie / orange cross fruits). They were selling them to raise funds for Just Friends, which runs a feeding scheme for the elderly in need. Each month Just Friends puts together food packs and distributes them to 110 pensioners in need. The farmers were offering to donate $1 off of every $6 pocket of oranges. We signed up for 20 pockets, thinking we’d deliver them to other organisations in need across the city, to further extend the donation.

We offloaded the 20 pockets into the back of my Nissan March – and I watched as my little car sank lower and lower to the ground.

“Don’t worry, the farmer delivering them told me – the pockets only weigh 12kgs each. That’s only 240kgs we’re loading into your car – that’s like three or four adults.”

Hmmm. It’s not often I cram four adults into the boot of my supermini sized vehicle.

Meanwhile, we’d barely made a dent in the bakkie load – and it had been standing firmly on its four tyres the whole time. We joked that I’d be fine driving the pockets around town, as long as I didn’t come across any potholes. Like yeah right, where in Harare are you going to drive pothole free?

The next morning, I found my car windows fogged up and my steering wheel sticky with the sweat of 2,000 oranges. The car smelt sweet and ripe and full of promise.

I wiped the windows down and set out with a friend to deliver the fruit.

Our first stop was a home for orphaned children in Harare. When we got there, we learnt that they currently support 96 children, ranging from infants to teenagers. We opened the boot to reveal 20 pockets of oranges – but then had to tell them to offload six.

The matron was thrilled and grateful for the donation, but in the face of 96 children needing three meals a day, suddenly I felt less than generous. The caretaker who helped us offload the sacks of oranges said “just six?” and the matron seemed chagrined at his apparent ingratitude.

“How can you say ‘just six?’” she chastised him. “That is six more than we had before.”

But the exchange gave me pause for thought – what is the English expression that allows you to specify a quantity without running the risk of seeming grasping or operating from a position of scarcity? Just six. Only six. They are both accurate phrases which help to explain that out of a larger total quantity you are to take a portion of the whole. But when more is always better, how can taking fewer not seem inevitably less satisfying? And when you have 96 children to look after, surely wanting more oranges rather than fewer makes perfect sense? I comforted myself by thinking well, if there are 100 or so oranges in a pocket, at least these children each get an orange a day for the next week. We asked them what else they needed and they said “Everything.”- Laundry soap, bathing soap, dish soap, salt, mealie meal, meat, beans . . . the mind boggles at the logistics and coordination required to feed 96 children three meals each day.

Our next stop was the local church, which runs a weekly food support service for low-income residents in the area. The woman at reception was friendly and efficient – we drove round to the back and offloaded our pockets right into their storeroom, which was already filled with sacks of mealie meal, beans and kapenta. Each week, volunteers come and decant the larger bags into family sized-packs before distributing them to the people who come.

We donated the balance of the oranges to a group which supports prisoners in remand. I felt kicked in the guts to realise how insignificant even our 7 pockets of oranges was in the face of the enormous need in our prisons. There are currently 1400 prisoners in remand – if there are around a hundred oranges in each bag, that’s barely one orange each for half of them. I thought back to the bakkie that delivered the fruit – you’d need to fill that entire bakkie with supplies and you probably still wouldn’t have enough for one meal for 1400 people.

Prison conditions in Zimbabwe were particularly bad during the shortages through 2008, but they have reportedly improved in the past two years. However, even with the improvements, prisoners – even prisoners on remand who have yet to be convicted of any crime and may well be unjustly imprisoned – do not feature high on budget allocations, or on most Zimbabweans’ list of those deserving of support and attention.

On the weekend, the Sunday Mail featured an article headlined Inmates go for four years without eating meat. Reportedly, detainees “at Harare Remand and Chikurubi female prisons were beginning to show signs of malnutrition.” But not all of the comments on this article were sympathetic of the detainees’ plight.

If a children’s home looking after 96 orphans struggles to find everything they need, what more 1400 remand prisoners who do not garner the same instinctive public support?

The need out there is enormous. Delivering our 240 kgs of novas made my car lighter, but left my spirit conflicted by the size of the problem compared with our small efforts to address it. But I suppose it’s like that Robert F Kennedy quotation:

Each time a woman stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

The nova fundraiser generated over $500 for Just Friends. The farmers are now also selling navel oranges to raise funds for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (minimum order 10 x 10kg pockets for $60, delivered directly to your location in Harare). I recently heard Patricia Glyn estimate that only 3% of charitable donations in the world go to animal welfare. So buy some novas or navel oranges for yourself and others – and make a difference to your community.

To find out more, email gandboys [at] zol [dot] co [dot] zw

Hand made crafts on sale at a Zimbabwean market.

Since attending a SAPES Seminar last year where Jonathan Moyo presented on the topic NGOs, Donors and Zimbabwe’s Transition, I’ve harboured a deep suspicion that he is in fact an evil genius the likes which have only previously been seen in comic books as the antagonist to some super naturally inclined being, and mere mortals, like myself, don’t stand a chance against his superior intellect. Today Professor John Makumbe confirmed my suspicions:

I think he is insane. He has the capacity and the intelligence to expose the reality of ZANU PF, but he goes beyond that and makes ZANU PF more evil than it actually is. Instead of accepting ZANU PF, you are revolted by it as a result of what Jonathan Moyo has done to it. He has transformed it into a monster, literally. He is an intelligent guy, a brilliant guy…but anything he does, if he’s doing something good he will do it so well, if he’s doing something bad he will [also] do it well! When he loves, I think he loves fully, and when he hates, he hates totally. That’s Jonathan.

I never forget when he became Minister of Information and Publicity and the journalists were screaming… and he said ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet!’ and for sure, he banged them left right and centre.

If he is not managed, Jonathan Moyo will very easily ensure ZANU PFs demise … complete demise.

Obviously, I’m intrigued. If you are reading this Mr. Moyo, won’t you grant me an interview to either confirm or deny my suspicions?