Lately the debate about women’s rights has been taken to greater heights than ever before. It is historically evident that women have been oppressed mainly on the basis of their physical weakness, which was mistakenly assumed to overlap also to mental capacity. As a result they have been treated as mere observers in a male dominated world. Or as mere commodities; for example, a young girl could be exchanged for food or cattle. People with wealth ended up having many wives, some as young as their grand daughters.

Giving birth to a boy child has been regarded as enlarging the family, whereas giving birth to a girl child is seen as enriching the family through cattle, food or any form of wealth that would come out of lobola. Even the terminology speaks for itself, “Mukomana anoroora, musikana” meaning that the act is not reciprocal. Rather the boy child is the object whereas the girl is the subject. Just like the relationship between a boy and the ball in the sentence, “The boy kicks the ball.”

Today’s world drives us to a new dispensation – that of equality. A free world for all. How can this be valid where marriage demands payment from one side of the pair? In my view payment of lobola removes that balance which we strive to achieve in a relationship.  Despite the amount of noise made about human rights, women are literally reduced to mere commodities and given a monetary value. One pays that much for an educated woman, the other pays that much more for a moneyed women and so on. Yes it is our culture, but is it not the same culture, that we should blame for its ills of disregarding women? If it is merely a cultural token, why does it differ depending on the social status of who is getting married? In as much as we are moving out of the era of unbalanced oppression towards women, our approach lacks practicality as we still hang on to cultural practices that can promulgate inequality right from the first day that people are married.

And from the women’s side, many are convinced that payment has to be made to their family before they are married. I once asked a lady if she would agree to exchange vows without any payment made. In response she asked me why I wanted to be ‘given” a wife for free. To me she reduced herself to a mere commodity rather than an equal partner.

My argument here is simple. Lobola payments minimise the gender equality we want to achieve when people enter their marriage without a balance. When the wife is ill treated, she is slow to take any action because someone paid for her. Even her parents will look at the matter considering that they received something from the Mukwasha. With lobola in place, and pressure to be equal, I foresee a time when men will not be committed to a relationship. Rather they go the “hit and run” way where they impregnate and go free again with no responsibility and no risk.

ZimRights recently engaged in various consultative meetings around Zimbabwe to get grassroot views on the constitution.

According to the feedback they received, Zimbabweans “have expressed concern over the president’s term of office” while registering other demands, such as:

- No one over the age of 60 should be President

- Each President should serve a maximum of two five year terms

- A President’s age should not be less than 40

- Every person who gets into office must first declare all their assets

Sounds reasonable except in Africa where scared old men cling to power.

Have you ever heard the type of poetry that gives you goosebumps and sends you unexpectedly into a trance; the type where you just have to laugh in disbelief that anyone could come up with such lilting lyrics and resounding imagery?

I just had that experience at the ‘House of Hunger’ poetry slam – the competition where young poets and spoken word artists take to the microphone to show off their skills.

One participant, who calls himself Mugmumopus, stands before the crowd and recites a satirical poem about politicians and their many hypocrisies:

“I am a vegetarian, but meat is what I like eating in the dark,” he says, ploughing into the many double standards that political leaders offer.

Another poet tells so vividly about listening to some jazz on a kombi ride into town, how the bass beat elevates him into another world where he’s dreaming awake. As he recites the words, his eyes are shut and he wears a smile of ecstasy. You can’t help but get swept up in his dream.

Lazarus, the eventual winner, tells us in the opening line of his piece that he doesn’t write poetry but that rather, he recites notations of God’s thoughts. Everyone buzzes in anxious wait for the rest of his poem.

This is the South African edition of the ‘House of Hunger’ poetry slam, held every last Saturday of the month in Johannesburg. According to the slam coordinator, Linda Gabriel, the competition began in September, taking its name and philosophy from the ‘House of Hunger’ poetry slam that has been running at the Book Café in Harare, Zimbabwe for many years.

But looking at the astounding quality that the South African edition has to offer, it is almost too depressing to mention the deplorable state that the Zimbabwean version of the contest is now in.

I had the opportunity to be in Harare at the beginning of February to witness this sad state for myself.

Imagine a poet coming before an audience to recite a Valentine’s Day poem from his hardcover exercise book and stating the following:

“Valentine’s Day is a day commemorated on 14 February every year; It is a day when lovers exchange gifts of flowers and chocolates…”

That is NOT poetry, but rather a boring oration on the facts of things.

Another poet came to the microphone to deliver a nauseating piece in which every line had to end in ‘-tion’, so that we had ‘nations’ using Ambi ‘lotion’; we had ‘interpretations’ of ‘colonisation’ and ‘privatisation’, and every other such line that you can think of. The poem would have been clever if it had made more sense. But sadly, it was all a jumble of hopeless words.

Dambudzo Marechera, the poet and writer, after whose acclaimed novel the slam is named, must be turning in his grave.

I say this because I know what quality the Zimbabwe ‘House of Hunger’ slam has offered in the past.

At the height of the nation’s political turmoil, the ‘House of Hunger’ became literally that – a house where hungry souls converged to feed each other with words of anger and encouragement; a symbol of protest where performers such as Godobori, Comrade Fatso and Outspoken held the crowds in awe with their incisive thoughts and clever rhymes.

I will never forget one poem by the spoken word artist known as Upmost in which he described getting off the kombi from the city centre to Borrowdale because the conductor had decided to charge whatever fare he wanted.

A solitary figure, he chose to get off and walk the long journey home because he wasn’t prepared to feed into the system of greed that had heightened the anarchy and strife in Zimbabwe.

Today, none of those poets still perform at the slam.

And no one expects that they should have to. A new crop of poets and spoken word artists should have sprung up to carry on the mantle.

But sadly, it seems the new crop didn’t receive the all-important nutrients to ensure a useful harvest.

Instead, they are completely clueless about what makes good delivery of poetry. Elocution, emotion and entertainment are all seriously lacking.

For the sake of the future of poetry in Zimbabwe, I hope that those with the experience and expertise begin to sow back to the youth of our nation. It is only that way that we can sustain art initiatives and be sure that young people comprehend the great reverence with which the arts must be approached.

I am raising my hand up. I hope you’ll join me so that together, we can do something for the sake of the future.

My aunt’s 12 year-old daughter was recently cornered in a secluded little room by the caretaker of their block of flats where they stay in Avondale. He tried to rape her. Thankfully she managed to escape unscathed, but she is still reeling from the effects of the trauma associated with that experience.

My family has gone through a frustrating episode over this and probably writing about it is my way of dealing with it. Attempted rape in my book and the book of our law is a criminal offence that is (or should be) punishable by long imprisonment. The mother reported the case to the police who at the time swiftly acted and condemned the caretaker to the cells. Less than 48 hours later, the man was back in the yard, going about his business and acting like all was normal. This was quite baffling and it soon became apparent that a few palms had probably been greased.

Realizing the danger of having this man lurking around his victim and the other children, the residents committee unanimously decided to relieve him of his duties as caretaker. But at the moment, the man is not only carrying on as if nothing has changed, he has also harassed the chairperson of the residents committee and slashed her maize crop after she served him with a letter of dismissal. He has also threatened my aunt with unspecified action. In short, the man is a dangerously loose canon and I shudder to think of what he is capable of doing. My aunt has tried going back to the police who have informed her that the assailant paid an admission of guilt fine and could not be detained outside certain ‘specific’ charges. I know it must be devastatingly traumatic for her because the man who fondled and groped her child is still around perhaps promising more, and nobody seems interested in doing anything about it, especially the police.

In a desperate move, my aunt has approached numerous local child protection organizations; a lot of whom have not been able to do anything much for her either because they claim to be overwhelmed.  While I appreciate that obtaining justice for an abused child is not an automatic process in Zimbabwe, it is still quite disheartening that none of these organizations have taken a real interest in dealing with this particular case. My relatives have literally been tossed from one organization to the other and the kid has probably suffered even more trauma from having her case rejected from all sides. Meanwhile she lives in real fear of the moron that tried to rape her.

A few weeks ago, a dejected father whose daughter was raped by a school’s grounds man attended one of our monthly thematic discussions, which focused on abuse in schools. His story was also very sad because the grounds man was being permitted to continue working as normal, lurking around all the small children as the case was still being deliberated on. The father could not obtain justice for his child too, thanks to a lot of red tape and the perennial bureaucratic processes one has to go through to get closure in such cases. His daughter was also denied a place at a nearby school in Marimba because the headmistress said she did not want any ‘problems’. I have heard of several more cases like these – where the perpetrator gets off scot free. It is sad to note that a lot of the organizations representing children’s rights in Zimbabwe are toothless bulldogs who really aren’t doing much on the ground except justifying their existence sufficiently enough to extract rent from the next donor. I know that sounds really accusatory, but people like my aunt and the man whose child was molested by a grounds man and the children themselves, are meant to be amongst the intended beneficiaries justifying the existence of such organizations and their programming.

So if organizations that purportedly work to represent children’s rights are constantly too busy and keep referring cases to each other to no avail, then I guess they are not doing enough. And I don’t know what’s even sadder – that they are too overwhelmed (which says a lot about the levels of child abuse in the country) to pay attention to some cases or that for most of them, they feel that their hands are tied and they cannot actually do much outside what our callous police dictate.

It is my hope that one day, our social services, child protection civic society and the court system may actually work and function to protection our most valuable asset as a country – the children. Probably there is a need for a coordinated response that achieves real impact among these organizations so that the constituents they serve are clear of where to go when in need. In other countries, when a child tells an adult that he or she has been sexually abused, it is taken seriously and a lot is done to protect that child from even seeing the person while the case is being investigated.

I look forward to the day when no matter how complex a case is, or how busy they are, no abused child will ever be turned away from a child protection organization.

The issue of sexual orientation is one that affects everyone. It cuts across all human barriers such as race, religion, gender and socio-economic standing. The right to live one’s sexual orientation; freedom from discrimination, harassment and stigmatisation as a result of this are therefore rights and issues of concern for everyone.

In various discussions with friends, I have found sexual orientation to be an emotional and contentious issue. What I think people fail to realise is that while the majority of the human population is heterosexual, that does not make heterosexuality ‘normal’. Thus making homosexuality abnormal. I have found that many people regard homosexuality as a choice,  or something one does to get attention. This is evidenced by the many misconceptions surrounding homosexuality such as people being gay because they have not met the right man or woman; being seduced into being gay and that gay people were sexually abused as children. A look to our closest genetic relations in nature, Bonobos (a species of Chimpanzees), will show that even when survival is the key drive, they do still display homosexual behaviour. Moreover, the Human Genome Project gave rise to evidence of a gay gene. Meaning that homosexuality is not a choice.

A friend and I were in Harare city centre on Sunday lunchtime and decided to have a toasted sandwich at Meikles Hotel which, I think, has  5*s. But after sampling both their toasted ham and cheese sandwich and their service, I reckon they’ve slipped a notch or 2. You’d expect something a bit delicate and classy (even if its a toastie) in a 5 * hotel but what got served up was anything but. I’m wondering if the lack of tourists to Zimbabwe have contributed to letting the standards in our hospitality industry slip. Perhaps they’ll get kicked into shape with the thought of potential revenues coming in from the World Cup 2010. If standards across the board, and that includes the rehabilitation of Zimbabwe’s infrastructure like roads, traffic lights, street lighting, water provision and refuse removal, don’t get revved up then Zimbabwe isn’t a very attractive base for tourists and teams to use. Perhaps this is a good time for Zimbabwean citizens to lobby or even, (gasp) protest, for an improvement in our living conditions because usually the men in power don’t give a twaddle about stuff like this. Going back to Meikles, they could learn a thing or two from a small unpretentious 3 * hotel in the Avenues that serves up cheaper and more tasty sandwiches. There’s also no worry about indigestion brought on at the Meikles by a prominently displayed presidential portrait.