I always read publications by organizations like Harare Residents Trust and Combined Harare Residents Association among others and feel proud of their work as voices of residents in Zimbabwe and feel encouraged by their effort in taking time to meet residents to solicit their views.  However there is one area which is not adequately covered by these constructive initiatives. I wonder if this place,  Ruwa, slightly above twenty kilometers to the east of Harare along Mutare road, has leaders and residents representatives at all?

Ruwa is one of the fastest growing catchment areas of the city of Harare. The area supplies labour mainly to Ruwa industries, Masasa industries well as the city centre. It comprises prominent places like Zimre Park, Windsor Park, Damafalls, and the core Ruwa which people refer to as the “location.”

The three major problems in Ruwa are water, transport and robbers.

Water

Ruwa has a permanent water problem despite having all the infrastructure in place. People usually find water from their taps a day or two before the billing date towards month end. In response to the problem a borehole was drilled in the southern part close to Better Days Shopping Centre but this borehole was last used in November before the onset of the rainy season. A supply of water comes from a pump close to Spur Shopping area. Residents are expected to fetch water from here after travelling distances more or less 2 to 3 kilometers. At the time of writing the pump is not operational as there is reported to be a fault for over a week now.

Owing to the difficulties in getting water, residents have resorted to digging wells in their own premises. These borehole sites are not properly surveyed and given the size of the stands, wells are by default too close to houses, some are even on the wrong side of houses risking the water being contaminated with sewage.  The water is not safe to drink at all. The wells cannot supply water all year round, and during the dry season, they run dry forcing everyone to go and queue for water by the tanks where water is pumped.

Transport

Residents in Ruwa are overcharged by commuters who charge them double fare during peak hours. Residents have tried to resist but they are now gradually giving in. At Fourth Street Bus Terminus, two Ruwa stations have sprouted. The one for those who can afford the double fare and the other for those who can afford the normal fare. For the love of money commuters prefer ferrying those who can afford more, leaving the poor majority stranded by the bus stop waiting for a few large buses which charge reasonable fares. In addition no commuter buses reach into places like Windsor Park. They drop people close to TM store where they have to walk up to about five kilometers to their homes.

Robbers

The whole way from Mabvuku turn off, to well after George Shopping Centre is unsafe for people after dark or towards sunset. Police have at one time camped at Zimre turnoff, where cases of murder are frequent. Now just their tent is left and the police are no more, yet the place remains as risky as before.

At the TM bus stop where people drop to get into Windsor Park, the road has become a hunting ground for merciless robbers who have no hesitation to take peoples’ lives for money. People have been robbed and killed at the place. It is public knowledge yet no action has been taken about it. Darkness remains a dangerous snare for Windsor residents who sometimes have to drop at Maha Shopping Centre to walk across industries for their safety yet increasing the length of the already long distance which they cover on foot.

Faced with these challenges, Ruwa residents are living in constant fear for their lives. Of late a young orphan girl was murdered in mysterious circumstances which the police are still investigating. There has been no media coverage and no talk about it as if it was normal. We call upon whoever has authority to look into this problem as a matter of urgency.

Urban people are leading rural lifestyles yet they pay urban rates and contribute to the urban economy.

Should we take the invitation of the North Koreans to camp in Zimbabwe as an insult? Should we forget that the military ‘strategies’ of the Koreans is what wiped out entire villages.

Who is my enemy here? Is it the Koreans who trained sadistic ‘soldiers in the art of killing and maiming. Or is it perhaps the Zimbabwe ‘government’ – read Zanu PF or better still read Robert Mugabe, who unleashed the violence to begin with.

What will happen if a Korean ever decides to ‘invest’ in Matabeleland? Will he suffer for the sins of his fathers? Or should a son suffer for the sins of his father. Who is my enemy here, the Koreans or Mugabe?

Is Roy Bennett an enemy of the black Zimbabwean? Is he answerable for the sins of his father who destroyed schools that were being  built for black children? Should David Coltart apologise for being in Smith’s police force?

It might seem as if I am asking silly questions, but these same questions and more will always be a stumbling block to a united Zimbabwe. If such a thing will ever exist. We should ask the difficult questions and get answers; satisfactory answers.

Are the Shona and the Ndebele enemies? Is an Ndebele guy who supports Dynamos a sellout? Is an Ndebele guy who marries a Shona woman a sellout? Should we look the other way and spit on the ground if someone addresses us in Shona in Matabeleland? Is there a Shona project to colonise Matabeleland and destroy the very core of Ndebele customs, languages and identity?

Who is my enemy? Is it the Shona policeman deployed in Tsholotsho or was he just deployed there? Is he part of the Shona supremacy movement, an agent, thoroughly briefed on how to go about creating the Republic of Mashonaland? Is the British journalist or human rights campaigner genuine or just here to make sure the British maintain their economic stronghold on Zimbabwe?

Is it as simple as Mugabe being a dictator and the whole charade being about unseating him? But he has killed less people now than he killed in Matabeleland in the eighties? Or is Ndebele blood a lighter shade of red than Shona blood?

I have done enough asking for today and I demand answers?

Who is my enemy?

There is a wide outcry that the charges of many service providers including the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) are unjustifiably high. Responding to public complaints and the issuance of yellow cards by WOZA in Bulawayo over the unfair charges, Mr. Ernest Machiya, of the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), a subsidiary of ZESA, said the authority’s tariffs were justified as they were the lowest in the SADC region.

This is not a new statement, and it’s the only answer that the ZESA ever has. I am sure that the majority of people in Zimbabwe are civil servants taking home between 100 to 200 dollars a month. That person has school going children, who need fees, transport money and food. Power is not the only service to pay for. There is also water, rentals and other rates that are also charged at their own levels of madness. People’s earnings are far below regional levels. Food is very expensive given that we are living largely on imported products. Is there any justification to charge a regional tariff to people who are struggling well below the poverty datum line? Is there any justification to compare normal economies to an abnormal one such as ours. The little that we can afford to pay them has been turned into hefty salaries for themselves without improving the service delivery side. What should come first between awarding above average salaries and improving service delivery?

Despite poor a poor service characterised by severe power cuts, ZESA has no shame in billing its domestic customers amounts close to and above 1000 dollars a month. In some instances it is billing twice a month, a trend that has never been heard of in the history of this country.

During the past era, tuck-shop owners always raised their prices in response to an anticipated increase in supply of money maybe because salaries have been increased. That was simple supply and demand economics. Can ZESA tell us what it is responding to when charging USD2000 to someone with USD150 in his pocket, worse still without any proper supply of services?

Mr Machiya, can you suggest how you expect a headmaster at Mufakose High to pay you say 500 dollars a month only for your power and nothing more, let alone a widow in Budiriro? We encourage leaders of institutions like ZESA to desist from displaying such absurdity. We end up questioning your credentials as professionals and as leaders of socially responsible institutions. Our advice to you service providers is simple, “The issue is not about the regional level, it is about who your clients are and what they can afford.” For South Africans, power charges are a reasonable fraction of the an average person’s salary, the same can be said of Botswana, Mozambique and whichever regional country one can name. The same cannot be said of our dear Zimbabwe. Can you all join us in the campaign for decent salaries for everyone before charging high tariffs. It should be known to ZESA and other companies that the amounts which people are not paying does not constitute an asset in you balance sheet; it is by default bad debt as no one will ever afford to pay up even in a decade’s time.

Showing status has evolved as time has taken its course in our nation. I think it has always been a human need for the creme de la creme to showcase who is who in our society. Even the not so creamy have wanted a ranking in society. For example in the early 1980s if you wanted to see who the city boy was, you could most probably recognize him carrying a big stereo on his shoulders with the volume full blast. You could hear miles away that a boy from the city has come. Unfortunately all those that did not have a radio or the ones who did not want to hear his city music had to suffer the loud volume in silence. All he cared about was upholding status and he did not mind whether all of the other villagers wanted to listen to his loud stereo.

That era has come back now with the phones taking the place of the stereo. But now it’s not about status because just about all of us have phones. There is nothing amazing about a phone, even my 10-year-old niece has one. My question is why should I listen to a Jay Z track talking about getting naked in a public space from another phone. Even if you are playing a gospel song from one of our local gospel artists, it doesn’t give you rope to play it aloud.

Don’t you think it’s a little 1980s for a person to put his /her phone on full volume inside a kombi which happens to be a public space?

Please people do not drag us back to that era. A public space is my space so don’t you violate it by playing whoever you listen to these days; instead, use your headphones! Why should I suffer your style of music in a public space? If we are going to usher this country in a new era where we don’t do things for self satisfaction, where we consider how our actions are going to affect the person sitting next to you, we need to show some Respect. This nation is ready for change and for moving foward. It’s a shame . . .  we have not only stood aside and watched abuse from our leaders, but we have in fact become like them. We have the ‘whatever I want, I get,’ mentality regardless of the next person.

The worst situation that I came across is a little girl who decided to impose her love for Shakira music on me while on the other hand the kombi driver was on some local station. I had to do something. I was not going to let silence be a part of me. I took matters into my own hands and I think that’s what we need in our country. I was not going to be the typical 1980s villagers who did not have the guts to tell Mr. City Boy that, “hey man, we understand you are from town and you are the elite one, but we don’t want to listen to your radio and your songs.”  I said to her please take your volume down or use earphones that’s why your radiophone comes with them.

What am I saying people? I am saying let us consider how what we are doing is affecting the next person. Maybe its still about status. Maybe people still want to showcase that they have a better phone that plays a certain number of songs at a certain volume. Maybe we are still as rank and status obsessed as ever. But if you are sitting next to me and you play your phone aloud I will ask you not to. I will ask you to use you your earphones.

That’s their correct purpose anyway.

A few weeks ago I got a rare opportunity to go on a field trip with an international humanitarian assistance organization working in Buhera, Murambinda. This is one place that has hit the headlines because of a measles outbreak wreaking havoc in that area. A few kilometers off the main road, health centres are accessible only by travelling along uneven dust paths that field vehicles have, over time, carved out. Travelling like this in the back of a 4X4 Landcruiser is a lot like being in an army squad-car; an experience so jarringly bumpy that by the time you reach your destination, your insides feel like they have haphazardly re-arranged themselves along your internal torso. But this is nothing compared to the kilometers that women and children in Buhera have to walk barefoot in the parched plains under the baking sun to reach the nearest health facility.

The fields are pitifully without any maize; a few sorghum stalks litter most of the space.

Day two on an active measles case finding mission, we took to the dust road on our way to Muzokomba  – one of the villages where several outbreaks had been reported. We passed an extraordinary figure of an old woman who at a distance looked like a scarecrow perched precariously on a tree. As we drew closer, I noticed that the old woman was dressed mostly in rags. She had made a makeshift shaded seat – something akin to a hammock, only not as comfortable. The makeshift shelter is called rindiro or watchtower. Her thin frame was sitting alertly upright, and cross-legged, her eyes blankly staring into the distance. Pathetic pieces of crockery lay underneath her seat, and a small pot was cooking something foul smelling a few meters away. She was watching over her meager sorghum crop, protecting it from baboons. You could literally count the number of stalks littering her small field. The field workers explained that this was common practice; villagers just have to do this or else starve.

And I thought I had problems.

Apart from watermelons, sorghum is about the only crop that thrives in the harsh Buhera climate. As we drove further, two small boys sat in their own rindiro, at a time when they should be in school. I wondered if they stood a real chance of intimidating an adult baboon…

At the end of this tour I came to the conclusion that if for any reason organizations like MSF, Goal and Red Cross offering various forms of humanitarian assistance in Buhera decided to cease operations in Murambinda today, they would be responsible for thousands of deaths in that area. I also found the devotion and hardwork of the field personnel touchingly dedicated. Active case findings mean following the grapevine for leads on where the disease is resident. It is about coaxing the largely indifferent women at the clinics for more information and leads. It is about driving for many kilometers following the leads supplied and when you find sick children, you seek permission from their guardians after which if granted, means bundling mothers and children in the back of the truck and taking them back to the nearest measles clinic.

Certain sects of the Vapostori religion are the most uncooperative. As soon as they spotted the measles medical team vehicles approaching their homesteads, women literally scurried for the hills to hide their children therein. Field workers have recently been forced to carry out physical inspections of huts and under beds as religious parents go out of their way to avoid ‘sinning’.  They have to use a variety of tactics ranging from coercion and intimidation to begging in order to obtain the cooperation of guardians to get sick children treated for measles. The team I travelled with had a directive they moved around with – which had been written by one of the chiefs, demanding that all villagers get their children immunized and treated for measles and that those refusing to do so will be committing a crime prosecutable under the law as a criminal offence. The directive also highlighted that any parent who denies a child treatment, resulting in that child’s death would be charged for murder and incarcerated.

On average, seeking permission to treat measles patients takes anything between 30minutes to an hour per household – of first making small talk, coaxing and sometimes begging. This is the kind of work that is the preserve for really patient fieldworkers. I kept thinking to myself, damn stupid people – this disease is claiming the lives of their children in droves, and yet someone has to drive all the way just make that realization apparent to them and convince them to seek treatment for their children. The dynamics of religious hegemony are something we will never understand. At one homestead, the head was adamant that no child of his would be immunized or receive ‘Western’ medical treatment. In such cases, field workers have no choice but to leave medication behind and hope against hope that the parents would administer it to their sick children. A lot of the times, teams have returned days later to check on the children and found funerals in progress. That is just the way it has been.

I managed to speak informally to some of the mothers detained at a clinic in Muzokomba, and they intimated that sometimes, they really want to seek treatment for their kids but their husbands just won’t have it. One or two were clearly not happy to be at the clinic because it went against the grain and spirit of their religion, which believes strongly that if God created people, only he should then be responsible for treating the sick among humankind. Moreover, the insurmountable distances villagers have to travel on foot to reach the nearest clinic greatly contributes to the disinclination to seek medical attention.

Psychology Maziwisa, wrote to the editor of Zimbabwe Democracy Now suggesting, among other things, that “ZANU PF is an oppressive movement that the people of Zimbabwe must now be liberated from.” Read the full article below:

If there is one myth that must be resisted, and resisted with all the contempt it deserves in 21st century African politics, it is the desperate and unwelcome myth that a liberation movement, however much loathed, can unashamedly claim to have an inherent and unqualified monopoly over the governance of a country and that any dissenting voice, no matter how genuinely disillusioned, is a political charade whose only intention is to perpetuate a colonial past.

It is a calculated and arrogant way of pursuing politics and any leader who uses it as a justification for clinging to power at that moment turn themselves into tyrants. Honestly, they will have only themselves to blame if anyone raises the middle finger at him!

At the very least, it is an insulting myth. Insulting because it presupposes that the people of Zimbabwe are so naive they needed Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Gorge W. Bush, Barack Obama and the wider international community to tell them that the government of Robert Mugabe can no longer provide the very basics of life. Yet any other responsible government,anywhere in the world, would ungrudgingly consider it to be fundamental to good governance to provide food, health, education and personal security.

We did not need Tony Blair to tell us that scores of innocent, vulnerable fellow citizens were tortured and killed simply and only in order to secure allegiance to ZANU PF. The people of Zimbabwe do not recall Tony Blair standing by as his security officers mercilessly pounced on opponents. Nor do they recall Gordon Brown looting our country of its resources and stashing them away in huge individual off-shore accounts. Thanks to the targeted sanctions that will not be going anywhere anytime soon (delegation or no delegation), some of those monies have been rendered indefinitely inaccessible to those who have stolen them.

Nor was it George W. Bush who hired the North Koreans to train the notorious fifth brigade with a view to killing, torturing, raping and humiliating anyone who seemed suspicious: men, women and even children. It was not Barack Obama who bulldozed the only form of shelter many Zimbabweans had and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Indeed, since millions cannot afford a television set, many in Zimbabwe will die not knowing what Blair, Brown, Bush and Obama even look like.

The truth of the matter is that it has become increasingly questionable whether there is much difference, if any at all, between the political system of Ian Smith which ZANU PF managed to ‘liberate’ us from and its replacement.

The terrible circumstances under which the people of Zimbabwe have been made to live are all part of the sad proof that life under a liberation movement is not necessarily better than life under colonialism.

Indeed, in Namibia, SWAPO (a former guerrilla movement that led the country to independence in 1990) has been at the centre of gross human rights violations and in a typical fashion has managed to downplay its extent. It was SWAPO that imprisoned thousands of its own members in dungeons in southern Angola in the 1980s allegedly for spying on behalf of South Africa. Despite it being a basic requirement of justice that people be proven guilty before they can be deprived of their liberty, these people were not even brought before a court of law to be fairly tried!

For ZANU PF, like SWAPO, violence has become the automatic and standard response to dissent.

In South Africa, the ANC is unlikely to lose support any time soon mainly because it is viewed by millions of South Africans as the party that brought liberation to that country – and correctly so. The liberation movement syndrome is as much alive there as it is — not in Zimbabwe — but within ZANU PF for they have now become their own supporters. The difference between ANC and ZANU PF, however, is that while the former has enjoyed legitimacy since 1994 derived from free, fair and credible elections, the latter has constantly and consistently stolen the ballot and stolen it at monumental cost for the people of Zimbabwe.

When ANC members depart from accepted standards, they are swiftly and openly rebuked. Indeed when Julius Malema attempted to be a little Mugabe, President Jacob Zuma effectively cautioned him: Not in South Africa my boy! He described Malema’s behaviour as “unacceptable”, “totally out of order”, “against ANC culture” and deserving of “consequences”.

A single party — be it one with liberation roots or not — is more than welcome to rule for millions of years provided it has the genuine consent of the masses to do so. That is the basic idea behind democracy. ZANU PF does not, cannot and will never again have this sort of consent from the people of Zimbabwe.

To borrow the lyrics of the much revered and my most favourite international music icon Akon, what contemporary Zimbabweans are fighting for is, ‘….a free, uplifting world’. Clearly, that world is not achievable under a ZANU PF government. It has not been for the last three decades.

For a single group of people to hold an entire nation to ransom is no longer a welcome way of doing politics in today’s world. It is unwelcome because it results in a political landscape that does not offer citizens real and credible means to express themselves as the sovereigns of a constitutional, parliamentary democracy.

The only thing that distinguishes the traditional war of liberation from the current struggle is that, while we fought against Ian Smith and his alien allies yesterday, today we are fighting against one of our very own. It is a fight, however, that we seek to conclude through democratic means. Never shall we resort to the use of force in order to attain our freedom. Force, violence, intimidation, abduction and foul play are all tactics of the enemy. To resort to violence in this struggle would be to demean our freedom.

Let us continue fighting the good fight in the best way we can: peaceful demonstrations, gatherings, petitions and the myriad of other democratic mechanisms. We are our own liberators. The silver lining for us is the unfailing reality that everything with a beginning comes to an end. One thing Robert Mugabe cannot escape is the never-faltering ticking of the passage of time – and his time is evidently running short now.

A liberation movement is not one that liberates its people and then, with fiendish pleasure, proceeds to oppress those very people for three decades and counting. It is one that genuinely seeks to free the people from the vice of repression — whether that is repression by Ian Smith or by Robert Mugabe. Accordingly, it can no longer be open to ZANU PF to regard itself as a liberation movement. If anything, ZANU PF is an oppressive movement that the people of Zimbabwe must now be liberated from.

Psychology Maziwisa, Interim President, Union for Sustainable Democracy