I am limping.

To make it worse, my wobbly, awkward hobble makes the other parts of my body ache. Which means by bedtime I am an aching mass of tension, and feeling very sorry for myself. And I don’t get a massage or even a little sympathy. Instead, as soon as one of the kids starts screaming, for water, or a pee, or a monster in the bed, I am met with a sudden suspicious stillness next to me. Yes, if you close your eyes, don’t let your eyeballs twitch, regulate your breathing, add a gentle snore and a muscle spasm or two, I might believe you are asleep. Except nobody can sleep with the shouts reverberating down the hall, and you will ask me what was wrong, as soon as I get back to bed.  Without fail.

But let’s discuss husbands and selective hearing another day. It is an inexhaustible topic and we could be here forever. (I have just googled “bobbit”.)

I was asked to speak at my daughter’s School Open Day on Wednesday evening. So I thought it best to dress up to create the right impression. I was going for young and fun so I tugged on my white Versace jeans, a shirt and my platform heels (I NEVER wear heels) and teetered off to the school. I gave my talk, which by my watch lasted less than a minute – a full A4 piece of paper is deceptively quick to read – and listened to everyone else waffling on, in comparison to my speed reading, before I figured it was appropriate for me to leave, this involved some sidling I admit.

So, I hustled and teetered off to the car, paying no attention to the lack of outdoor overhead lighting. My foot disappeared down a hole, cunningly covered with lawn and I gracefully pirouetted “a over t” landing with my full weight, and considerable momentum (maybe it seemed faster because I was higher?) on my knee. I rose after taking a moment or two to curse under my breath, dusted off my grass stained jeans (a gift from my older sister, so yes, really Versace) and gathering my dignity, limped to my car, significantly slower than previously. Which is a shame as it has since come to light that I was spotted, slinking off you understand. I have been avoiding the Principal.

It would be ok if it were an isolated incident. But like my 4-year-old son, I still seem to be finding my feet and learning to judge distance and space and size. Unlike my son, it gets harder to pick myself up. But nothing a slobbery kiss and a bit of vampire blood (Gentian Violet) can’t fix.

Eventually.

I spent most of my life in Mutare even though I was born in Bulawayo and I am now a permanent resident of Bulawayo. This places me at a distinct advantage: I am very familiar with both the Shona and Ndebele worlds. There are a lot of things that both sides do not know about each and wild assumptions that damage relations are made.

Considering the history of Matabeleland: The slaughter of about twenty thousand people, there is always suspicion between Ndebele and Shona and a number of times I have to pull two warring sides apart as I happen to see things in a clearer light than a person who is exclusively Shona or Ndebele. I have a friend who believes every Shona person in Matabeleland is an enemy, planted in Matabeleland as part of the Gukurahundi agenda (the total disempowerment of the Ndebele people by flooding the region with Shona people and making sure that Ndebeles do not get any opportunities).

I cannot say for sure that the Gukurahundi agenda does not exist, but I believe individuals should be judged on individual merit not broadly based on the sins of a few mad people who did not have the people’s mandate to do what they did.

When my friend suggested that I happen to get opportunities because I have one leg in the Shona world and the other in the Ndebele world I knew the Shona-Ndebele thing had gone too far; I happen to have worked abnormally hard and continue to do so to get to where I am.  The so-called Gukurahundi agenda is now being used by lazy people who do not exploit opportunities as a crutch.

Whilst it is important to address past and current injustices, we have to remember that were we come from matters less than where we are going.

So often we are hit by a barrage of bad, bad news leaving us wondering where does all the good go? We asked Kubatana subscribers to email us their experiences of what’s positive about Zimbabwe. Here’s what we got – enjoy!

My Zimbabwe is about all the unemployed young people who make it happen, against the odds, and do it with innovative style.  It is the young woman, pictured recently in a weekly publication, who needs to make a living to raise her daughter but is unable to afford a babysitter.  So everyday she takes the toddler with her to work and places the girl in an enormous cardboard box.  While the mother sells her wares at the corner of a busy city street, she keeps an eye on her child who frolics about in the safety of her makeshift playpen.

Despite the harsh economic conditions and the uncertain political future, Zimbabweans still have the spirit of ”Ubuntu”. My Zimbabwe is a country in which women came to assist during our bereavement in early March in Bulawayo. They cooked for others on a fire in the blistering heat, washed all the plates and still had the energy to go back and do their household chores. The men braved the evening chill to keep my brother and cousins company. These people were saying to my family: ‘‘we cannot reverse your loss but we are here for you, we share in your grief.”  It is this spirit of ”Ubuntu” that makes me proud to be Zimbabwean. No matter how bad things may get, our neighbours and others around us are there for us, they give us shoulders to cry on. The mere feeling of belonging makes each day easier to bear.

My Zimbabwe is the young man who offers me his seat in a bus from Kwekwe to Harare because I am pregnant and he stands all the way to Kadoma. It is the police officers and the eyewitnesses, both men and women, who rush to the scene of the accident without protective gloves to assist the injured before the ambulance arrives.

It is a politician who decentralised education from the scenario of the pre-Rhodesia era by establishing day secondary schools to equip black children with literacy. My Zimbabwe is a local legal practitioner who defended the hairstyle which those pre-independence, half pint advocates said was illegal to sport when attending the House of Assembly. Let’s face it, constitutionally; a hairstyle is of no importance in the House.

The women who in their diversity tirelessly contribute to family, community and national development despite being marginalized, embody my Zimbabwe. They always ensure that there is food, water, love and care at home even in times of power and water cuts or any social, economic and political crisis.

It is a country where the literacy rate is very high meanwhile teacher wages are some of the lowest in the region. From tattered uniforms in rural areas, we produce internationally recognised graduates yearly.

My Zimbabwe is the street vendor in Victoria Falls who wanted to pay me for the airtime I didn’t need and was trying to give to her. The political leader who had the courage to try to work with the people who had beaten him close to death. The people who voted for change in 2005 and 2008 when they knew they could suffer for their stand for freedom in their country. And apart from all that, my Zimbabwe makes the best cakes in the world in the Vumba.

It is the people in Gutu South whose families were decimated at an attack during a pungwe in the 1970s at Kamungoma Farm.  (More than 50 were killed in one night.) They have kept on going, with their physical and emotional wounds, without asking for compensation or sympathy from anyone, let alone the government. They took it that the liberation struggle was for us all.

It is a woman called Precious Nyamukondiwa who runs a small organisation in Chinhoyi. She and her colleagues have gone a long way in assisting people living with HIV/AIDS. Their work has long gone unnoticed while affected and infected little children have been taught ways of positive living. It is Mai Zenda, a volunteer at Felly’s Orphanage at Stodart Hall in Mbare. Felly’s orphanage is a place where orphans in Mbare are fed one meal a day. These orphans live with their relatives who are too poor to feed them. Mai Zenda currently cooks for an average of 69 children from Monday to Friday all on her own. If there is no relish, she goes to Mbare musika to ask on behalf of the orphans. She has been a volunteer there for 4 years for no income. Mrs Zenda is determined to support these children as best she can.

My Zimbabwe can certainly look bleak on the surface but a closer look shows a myriad of rainbows. It is a place where black people have discovered the value of entrepreneurship. Everyone is thinking of how to set up a business whether informally or formally. We have started changing the colonial mindset where we were groomed to be worker bees that strive for someone else.

My Zimbabwe is the once a year visit to Honde Valley in the Eastern Highlands. Eating bananas, roasted maize cobs, pineapples and mangoes in my grandparents homestead.

It is a place where you can send children to school on their own and not have to worry about kidnapping and abuse. A place where they can go about visiting their friends and being children without having to grow up too fast for their age.

My Zimbabwe is a place where we have time to stop talk and enjoy meeting friends and family in the streets because we still hold relationships dear and understand the value of maintaining them.

This article was co-authored by Zimbabweans believing in the positive: Thandi, Yeukai, Cherish, Sally, Peter, Ethel, Farai, Donald, Chirikure, Tabitha and Nomqhele

I was in Gwanda the weekend when the anti-petitions roadshow was in town with “party youths” in full swing enjoying alfresco rides in party trucks busy risking life and limb. I found long distance commuter omnibus drivers mad as hell as they had been forcibly removed by police from their usual pick-up points because – the drivers were told – they were interfering with people who were heading to the open space where the signatures were being collected. As we sat in the kombi impatiently waiting for it to fill up, the irascible driver could not stop complaining about “how unfree” Zimbabweans still are despite independence. Siyahawula elizweni leli. Abantu laba bafuna senzeni nxa singafuni ukuyasayina? Akusamelanga sisebenze? (We are suffering in this country. What do these people want us to do if we do not want to go and sign? Are we not supposed to work?) . . . the driver complained and it went and on and on. Then one chap who had been silently sitting, lost in his reverie suddenly said: Ungatshiswa lilanga usiyasayinela ukuthi omunye umuntu ahambe amzweni? (How can anyone stand the scorching sun just to sign something so that someone may travel overseas). That was how he understood all the ruckus about petitioning America and Britain to lift sanctions “that are hurting ordinary Zimbabweans.” It somewhat captured the mood among some people about this latest crusade to garner the support of ordinary folk ahead of elections. And obviously it would be asked if the people of Matebeleland who have suddenly become favourites of Newsnet vox pox understand the gibberish they are made to utter on national television about how sanctions are affecting their lives. The other day a bloke in Plumtree speaking in SiNdebele spoke about the removal of sanctions as if they were something that had been left at the border that needed urgent removal and one couldn’t help laugh out loud but still be ashamed at how the intelligence of rural folk was being mocked by the anti-sanctions lobby. It suspiciously looks like these Newsnet hacks simply persuade these obviously unsophisticated folks to stand in front of the camera “and say anything against sanctions” but the result is clumsy propaganda. You come to understand that old cynicism that if you tell a lie for a long time you sure end up believing it to be true, and many wish to be around to see the anti-sanctions propaganda turned against its sponsors.

Much has been made in the media over the weekend of the so-called unofficial coup dethroning Our Dear Leader and postulating that in fact it is the security forces who are really in charge of the country. In an exclusive interview with the daily News, the Prime Minister is quoted as saying:

In our bilateral meetings, I have discussed the issue of violence and implored Mugabe to deal with elements in the security organs. His response has always been that we don’t condone violence.  If he doesn’t follow up, it’s either he is in charge or not in charge. That leaves me with a question: Is he part of a conspiracy to undermine the government or his people are defying his instructions?”

It would be very convenient for both parties if Mugabe weren’t in charged wouldn’t it? They would both be exonerated for their failures in upholding their promises to the people of Zimbabwe, to stop the violence and resolve the current political stalemate.

Elizabeth Taylor’s (RIP) funeral ceremony last week started 15 minutes behind time; she said she wanted to be late to her own funeral. Read more