Downtown Harare on Valentine’s Day was livened up the vibrant sistaz and bruthaz of Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). Saturday shoppers and the odd tourist (we saw TWO, imagine, I felt like rounding them up and putting them on exhibit because they’ve become so rare) milling around Unity Square were treated to the sight of three converging groups of WOZA demonstrators. WOZA gave out plastic red roses and fliers to passing motorists, flower sellers, ice cream vendors, street cleaners (we’ve got a couple of those as well) and pedestrians. Without exception the WOZA literature was gobbled up by members of the general public who seldom get to see anything besides the state-controlled crap that’s put out by the GNU. In fact, on Saturday morning WOZA chose the front steps of the Herald House as their site of struggle. No doubt their choice was guided by the need to condemn the daily diet of propaganda that the Herald produces. The WOZA demonstration lasted about 15 minutes. I kept on expecting the riot police armed with their “tiger” and batons to storm the gathering but they didn’t. A big pom pom to WOZA for continuing to demand meaningful democratic change in Zimbabwe and for testing freedoms like the right to protest peacefully.

Shona is a term that was introduced in the 1920’s and was originally used to refer to the Karanga by people who didn’t know any better. The term evolved over time and was used to refer to the various Bantu groups who had settled on the Zimbabwe Plateau and whose languages belonged to the Shona group of languages.

Standardized Shona, based on the Karanga and Zezuru dialects only came into existence in the 1950s. Taught in schools throughout Zimbabwe Standardized Shona while preserving the shona language has managed to cause the death of major and minor dialects. Those spoken by handfuls of people like the Tonga or Kalanga are quickly disappearing. Even the major dialects of Karanga and Zezuru are not what they were, say twenty years ago, parts of speech and the various subtle nuances that made them unique are dying with each passing generation. Worse still Standardized Shona is being diluted by English.

A people’s cultural identity is deeply rooted in their language and its use. Arabs speak their Arabic with pride, and have even adapted the format of the printed word to their own needs with books, newspapers and even computer keyboards made to suit. The French have a reputation for the zeal with which they preserve the way their language is spoken, right down to the accent. And in the US of A the very minimum requirement for having a satisfactory sojourn there is that you must at the very least ‘speak American!’

We, however, appear to have lost ourselves. Our primary language of communication is English, for business, at home, in school and even sometimes in art, we insist that to be heard one must speak a language that doesn’t belong to us. Academics and pseudo-intellectuals have devoted long hours to research and debate over how colonialism is to blame for our loss of language, passing the blame to another. Yes it happened, and in many ways our minds are still colonised. But that doesn’t mean that we are helpless. At some point, we have to take responsibility as a group and as individuals. More than that we have to own our identities. The histories of our various peoples, our languages and even cultures are being lost to time. The relevance of what is passed down from parent to child through oral tradition is lost to a generation that has assimilated foreign cultures and values. The education given to that generation so that they will find their place in a globalized world comes at the cost of their language and culture. The world as seen on television appears to be moving towards a sort of cultural uniformity. How will we live with ourselves without that which makes us, by our own tradition people?

On Saturday I went to Miss Tourism. I went there for two reasons.  One – to watch the pageant live because I have only ever watched it on television. I must say I was impressed with the décor, the lighting and the sound was up to the note. Except for the time sho! The programme started around nine and that did not go too well with me. Fortunately I had a great bunch of people around me so the time sort of moved fast. Two  – I did not pay for the ticket, it was given. Call it bragging or whatever but it helps to know people in high places. If I had not been given the ticket I was probably going to wait at home and hope against hope that ZESA stayed on and our broadcaster shows us the live happenings. So I dolled up and headed for the Harare International Conference Centre. The girls on stage disappointed me with the outrageous answers they gave the judges. You see I had hoped that somehow it was going to be different with me watching live that these girls were going to answer meaningfully. My thought was maybe the television gives us what is not so true but I heard it all with my own ears. One girl was asked what she thinks about domestic violence and I quote “domestic violence should be fought agenest because it causes other people not to have self confidence”. I cringed at that statement. Who does not know what is involved in domestic violence especially in our country. She should have spoken on how it separates families and that it should attract a heavy fine on the perpetuators, and how it is still happening in this day and age and how our mothers are still telling us “that there is no house without smoke so we should deal with it, that’s how men show their love”. Anyway that’s a topic for another day. The lady representing Masvingo was asked if you were asked to give a tour of your hometown where would you take me and why. She said I would take you to Heroes Acre or something that disturbing. I had come to a point of thinking that the statement beauty without brains is getting old and over sung. Clearly I am wrong.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a cartoonist like Zapiro in Zimbabwe, a newspaper like the Mail & Guardian and a media environment similar to South Africa where people can shout it out like it is.  If Zuma’s got that shower head, I’d like to see caricatures of our chef politicians walking around with diamonds for balls.

Greenwood Park is just a stone’s throw away from State House where Mugabe lavishly welcomes an array of visiting dignitaries, albeit a dwindling one and most often the usual suspects. For many years Greenwood Park represented respite for kids and adults living in Harare’s central Avenues district where living a life in apartment buildings can bring on claustrophobic misery. I know this because I spent most of my adolescence growing up in a flat on Montague Avenue, which later became Josiah Chinamano.

Lately I’ve been spending some time in the Avenues again. The gorgeous, sequined skirted commercial sex workers that trawl the Avenues at night brighten up the place and provide a welcome distraction to the piles of garbage mounting in alleyways, street corners and even in some of the front gardens of apartment buildings. A small exaggeration perhaps, but thinking of the “dinosaur” sized shark that recently made short work of the Zimbabwean in the sea in Cape Town, last night I saw a dog sized rat sprint across the road in front of my car.

I don’t brake for rats.

My tour of the Avenues has also taken in Greenwood Park. The other day I included it on a run I was doing. The grass is knee high, rubbish litters the place, the swings and other pieces of playground equipment are broken. But still, irrepressibly playful kids try and find some fun messing around on what’s left. There are still a few worse for wear park benches around and about but their occupants are a mixture of the unemployed, the hungry, the  sad and those that are just plain scary. How safe are these kids I wonder?

Mugabe’s motorcade regularly sweeps by this playground whipping up very little dust in its wake because 7th Street is one of the few well maintained and groomed streets in our capital. Go figure – it leads to the little man’s mansion. Mugabe would do well to ask the battalion of street sweepers who keep his immediate periphery neat and tidy to expand their mandate and make good this park that was meant to provide a safe solace for the people of the Avenues.

But the majority of Zimbabweans, myself included, don’t expect much from Mugabe besides more misery while he and his cabal of chefs continue to look the other way.

Presidential Motorcade

Masi, Jamu and I
wave our hands to the President.
The windows of his limo are tinted
and are always closed.
The motorcade travels fast
but Masi and Jamu say
the President waves back.

We wave our hands
every time the motorcade passes
in the hope it will stop
to drop a coin.

But we hear
the chauffeur does not know
the ‘Give-way’ sign
nor the ‘Stop’ sign.

- Julius Chingono, Zimbabwean poet

The constant hoopla around Zuma’s polygamy really is getting exhausting; with journos shifting attention to what he is up to each time they are suffering the diary draught. It has become nothing short of selling tabloid headlines. Can’t they get it through their thick heads? The man said it loud and clear – much to the indignation of feminists and gender activists – it is his (Zulu) culture, and the problem with most of us is indeed “thinking that our cultures are far more superior to those of others”. What Zuma is doing is to be expected, those are some of the hazards of having a clown for a president.

My bone of contention is; are the women involved in all this being oppressed? Have any of them been forced into marriage by this lunatic? Are not the majority of them young, pretty and educated but found jostling amongst themselves to be the next best lady? Do they not make public appearances next to the imposing Zulu President all smiley and beaming with self-importance and contentment?  Why are they being made to look like the victims? I mean so what if he has just fathered his 20th child and married his umpteenth wife? Though old-fashioned, the man can afford it for Pete’s sake and it is clearly not illegal in his country? In any case, those children are lucky at all to be born of the President of the most powerful country in Sub Saharan Africa.

I agree the man has a strangely colossal libido, is possibly a paraphiliac, a fool and whatever else the media choose to label him, but I think the fascination with Zuma’s polygamy deserves nothing more than the attention of National Geographic to ‘Africa’s Strangest’. The media are having a field day and the feminists have developed a serious bone to chew, yet the Swazi King Mswati leaves the most polygamous green with envy and for him, marrying is an annual exploit. His father before him had 70 wives by the time of his death too.

If anything, the only sad thing I find about Zuma’s actions is the fact that he claims he loves all his women equally. I feel a certain amount of pity for his first wife, the rotund (read solid) MaKhumalo – who clearly looked unhappy alongside her husband during his inauguration as President of South Africa. It is common knowledge that this woman rarely appears in public, let alone at the arm of her husband. One could almost guess what was going through her mind – probably that her being taken along for this auspicious occasion was just for show: Zuma, the family man who respects his first wife. God only knows he would have preferred to make that grand appearance with one of the younger ‘trophies’ as the young men here would say it.

This – my colleagues is the battle of the ” Desperate First Wives”, and they are all vying for the title of first lady. From the South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to the youngest (and currently prettiest) wife Nompumelelo Ntuli, I can tell you, none of then went kicking and screaming to their Umshado wesiZulu (Zulu wedding). New word on the street has it that Zuma has impreganted another youngling, and she is none other than businessman Irvin Khoza’s daughter! I daresay the media spotlight must beam on these women; they are the bigger fools for embarrassing themselves and allowing themselves to be treated in this way. Who are they, what makes them tick, what made powerful people like themselves fall for this man? Just what was it for each one of them – wealth, fame? Trust me; that would make interesting reading and ‘news’ for a change.

The way Investigative Zim sees it is that; either South Africa is reinventing the concept of political morality and public responsibility among its leaders, or something is seriously wrong with the presidency and the nation just hasn’t woken up to it yet. I shant say more.