I don’t care about the colour* of the foot pressing on my neck – I just want to remove it.
- Wole Soyinka

* gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation (fill in the blank)

Growing up, an interesting predicament always befell my family. We lived next door to a family, highly prolific in gardening; and to show for their obvious passion, they had a yard abundant in flowers in kaleidoscope bloom, as well as all kinds of fruit and vegetable that could whet every visitor and passer by’s appetite, guaranteed.

One of their most productive exploits was the tall mango tree that grew in the backyard. Every year, the family was assured a harvest of juicy red-yellow fruit from it, heralding the arrival of summer.

And this is where the predicament came in.

Because the tree literally hunched over the low Durawall that separated our properties, a fair share of the harvest often fell into our yard.

Now it’s not that our neighbours didn’t try to avoid this happening. Often, I could spot the gardener on a stepladder doing his damndest to fish the fruit hanging in our territory with some form of hook or walking cane. But inevitably, a few mangoes were always missed and when their time came, they would fall daintily onto our patch of the world.

Each time that this happened, we were never sure what to do.

Should we get a bowl and gather that sweet juicy windfall, or return it to its ‘owner’?

Who was the owner anyway – the person who’d planted and nurtured the tree, or the one who benefited from its yield?

That is a scenario we can ponder for several minutes, hours even.

And the only reason I use it is because it perfectly mirrors a question posed by a few fellow Zimbabweans as we recently tried to rationalise the sad state of affairs in our nation.

We are all new ‘Diasporans’ – that term used to define Zimbabweans living and working out of the motherland – and were pondering the irony of our situation.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, completely educated in-country, we are all now externalising the collective wealth of our knowledge to live and work in South Africa.

I believe that this is the saddest of all fates of the political and economic meltdown of our nation. We can bemoan the fact that all of our valuable natural resources, like gold and platinum and granite are being externalised to ‘friends’ in the East. But nothing is as precious to a nation as its pool of skilled persons.

Nothing shows more evidence of a robust social system (that includes positive socialisation at familial and educational level) than a capable, committed and diversified workforce.

And to prove the quality of Zimbabwe’s workforce, let me offer an example. Many of the young professionals Zimbabwe has recently produced have been trained under a plethora of trying circumstances which include a crippled economy that has led to endless academic strikes (by university and college lecturers, and teachers alike) and therefore limited learning; as well as hardships among scholars trying to raise fees for their education

The fact that even with all these factors working horrendously against them, Zimbabweans can compete with professionals trained at far more renowned institutions than the few semi-reputable (at least for now) institutions that the nation has is a testament to the great resource that is Zimbabwe’s people.

But boasting aside, there is a predicament in this scenario; much like the one I set out at the beginning of this piece.

Just like the neighbour who receives a windfall from a tree that he hasn’t planted, so do foreign nations who harvest the fruit of the Zimbabwean crop. This isn’t to say that this is a bad thing, but with the current state of socio-economic affairs in Zimbabwe, it is an unfortunate thing.

Zimbabwe’s soils are fertile for nurturing capable intellectuals and professionals – but not for retaining them. Instead, they are often forced to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

So the question remains, the question that we few Zimbabweans found ourselves asking ourselves that day.

Who owns our output – the nation that has nurtured us, or the one that benefits from our yield? Who ought we plead allegiance to?

And as with the mango tree and its fruit, this is a scenario we can ponder for several minutes, hours even.

This is just one of the powerful photos from the recent ZimRights photo exhibition, Reflections. Despite Zimbabwe’s inclusive government, and claims of “progress” in opening up Zimbabwe’s democratic space, this exhibition has faced numerous challenges. Read and see more here.

Unhu or ubuntu has become popular even informing the philosophy and values behind a free open source operating system. Sadly there are very few people who live this philosophy on a daily basis.

In a recent interview with Professor Mandivamba Rukuni. He described what motivated him to write his book Being Afrikan:

I realised, after having been highly educated and being in the development field, that not much of what I’ve achieved has really made a difference to the people that I serve. Most of the people in my extended family are still poor. I realised that it was a false progress, I’m a professor, but it’s only good for me. I realised that there’s no developed or advanced society in the world that achieved that status by abandoning their history, abandoning their culture and then borrowing somebody else’s as a basis for development.

He went to say that African culture is built on three pillars, the first of which is Ubuntu, or in Shona Unhu.

The philosophy of unhu or ubuntu is described in Shona by the saying munhu munhu nevanhu; or in Zulu umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. The literal English translation is ‘A person is a person with other people’ or ‘I am because we are’.

In his book Hunhuism or Ubuntuism, co-authored with his wife Dr Tommie Marie Samkange, Zimbabwean historian and author Stanlake J.W. Samkange, highlighted the three maxims of unhu / ubuntu, namely:

1.    To be human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others and establishing respectful human relations with them.
2.    If and when one is faced with a decisive choice between wealth and the preservation of the life of another human being, then one should opt for the preservation of life
3.    The king owed his status, including all the powers associated with it, to the will of the people under him

Archbishop Desmond Tutu described unhu or ubuntu as:

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

This last year was one of magic and challenge. Watching the Tree of Life healing workshops begin to unfold at grass roots where people with scant resources began to take up the role of healing their communities. Seeing the integrity and self respect that allows people to carry the responsibility of this healing without reward or recognition. And it has been hard, and many have had to give up – but there has been this strange sense of knowing that ‘we can be better than this – wider than this’.

I have found it both inspiring and hard to watch.

But harder to watch, has been the edge where funder and grassroots activist meet. (The first world and the third world?/ old thinking and new thinking?). The world of checks and balances, of project proposals and programmes, and promises, and signed agreements and collecting receipts for the bus fare to town for the woman who was recently raped. The world of black and white, right and wrong, operating at the slow pace of the last person who has been on holiday, and has had a week to recover.

And seeing what happens to the people working in the  risky places living on a few hundred US$ a month or less – and who are made to wait two and a half months on a three month contract before any payment is made. Who have to leave their accommodation, and take their children out of school, but who carry on going.

This relationship is made all the more unbalanced because it is delivered as a gift from the knowing to the unknowing, from the benevolent to the victims. It is not support for the work of the warriors for peace.

There is no dignity in this!

Walking the grey clouds, wondering where  these two worlds meet.

And then towards the end of this year we began to be touched by magic – when amazing individuals acted with love and trust – and we were held in place by their contributions – and we made it through – to another place where we may get funding.  We are blessed.

Magic doesn’t fit in boxes
it streams in clouds

flowing with our dreams
not  our control

it is not held in place by our rules and regulations
but in  the trust of our common intentions

a place without boundaries
in a web of shared resources

living in a moment
- never re-gathered
soaring  the edges
on outspread wings

magic doesn’t fit in boxes
it comes from circles of love

Allow me to share with you a statement from one of my favourite authors, Anne Bronte, one of the first feminist writers. It reads “Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways”. Ironically the statement was scribbled in her prayer book and one would wonder how such a statement got into a prayer book.  This shows that even in those early times there were strong women who saw that there were many mistakes being made by society that needed to be changed.

Anne wrote her works in the 1840s, a period known as the Victorian era when women were so disempowered. In her novel “The Tenant Wildfell Hall”, Anne questions the societal values and beliefs that gave men so much power over women. The novel portrays Helen’s eloquent struggle for independence at a time when the law and society defined a married woman as her husband’s property. Women were married off at very tender ages to “rich” men. During this period, wealth was highly regarded and women would scramble to get married to rich men. Parents also played a major role in arranging suitors for their children. This probably is what made Anne “Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways”. Anne never married. She died at 29, already labelled a spinster. She also wrote her works under a pseudonym “Action Bell” because women were not allowed to work and her books were published after her death.

As I read through the novel. I could not help reflecting on the life we are leading these days. Is history repeating itself? Will we ever get to the stage where we can totally empower the girl child? These are some of the questions that ran through my mind.  At least we’ve passed the stage where women were not allowed to work, where women were confined to the home; a stage where women were numbered amongst men’s property. I salute women’s rights activist organizations that are working tirelessly in empowering women.

My fear though is that history might be repeating itself in another form. I get very worried with the age at which girl children are getting married. I read an article in The Herald where parents gave away a fourteen year old virgin as compensation for her older sister who gave birth just before her marriage. The suitor intended to marry the elder sister but upon discovering that she was already pregnant by another man, parents offered the younger sister as compensation. Parents have also adopted a carefree attitude towards marriage. They are accepting lobola as a “bribe”if their daughter is impregnated while she is below 16 so that they will not report the matter to the police even though the law says that having sex with a girl under the age of 16 is a crime.

Also, the topical issue these days are about some religious sects that are forcing young girls into marriage under the guise of the Holy Spirit. Are we going back to Anne’s era where girls and women are numbered among men’s property? Have we become so obsessed with marriage to the extent that we accept any suitor as long as that person is able to pay whatever bride price we ask for? Or has religion become a marriage ground where elders can just decide to offer girls to any man of their choice.