I watch local news on the telly all day every day, and there is a worrying trend that misfits the GNU that makes a mockery of the role being played by other coalition colleagues. We have known for a very long time from Zanu PF that deputy ministers are not allowed on the Round Table when cabinet meets. Thus some people asked why we get an acting minister, a chap who already superintends another portfolio when there already exists a deputy minister who would by some people’s interpretation logically be expected to watch the gate when Mudenge for example is attacked by a bull. Yet this is given its improper perspective when you watch the news on national television.

From the ministries “led” by the MDC-T you get their deputies waxing lyrical about policy issues when in another place and time it is the minister as the top dog who would be grilled by the journos. But then we get these Zanu PF deputy ministers appearing on TV with alarming frequency you wonder if there is some kind of conspiracy to silence the other coalition voices and present very biased picture that it is these Zanu PF apparatchiks who are steering the troubled nation to placid waters. Thus it is that you get Udenge the deputy minister of economic planning gracing the television screen, Dokora the deputy of education oozing policy machismo, Bimha the deputy of industry and commerce going on and on about what I would rather hear from his boss. Why then not have other deputies like Gift Chimanikire and others if there is nothing wrong with the trend adopted by the news hacks? Good question that! Perhaps the Zanu PF officials are considered more telegenic, but then that’s highly debatable!

But then it is obviously about politics as usual – why show viewers the faces of ministers from parties that want to return the country to white-rule where blacks will once again be banned from walking on CBD sidewalks? Makes sense doesn’t it? We saw it even when there was this major launch of the schools IT project where the only story that emerged from IT Minister Chamisa was him apparently extolling the old president for initiating the schools computerisation programme. But I do feel like that guy who in a very dark night is busy winking at a girl he saw before the lights went out!

“The things you own end up owning you.”
- Tyler Durden

Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century, died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was 82.

More from the New York Times

Growing up our elders might have had a worse of life than us in terms of availability of resources to use within the family. They used to sleep in a ‘common room’ as in the boys and girls sleeping together in a room not necessarily a bedroom but it could be in the kitchen or the lounge. Today families have a boy’s room and a girl’s room with some being privileged enough to have a bedroom for each child in the family. Our elders ate well and still do, all the wild fruits and vegetables that most of us in the younger generation have never tasted. And thus they have lived longer, and some are still counting their years.

Are we necessarily better off than our elders? Us youngsters love the fast life, the fast foods and we tend to cut our lives short and die before we can even watch our own children grow or even hold at least one grandchild. In my, I feel we are a whole lot more miserable despite having all this and that. We face each day with uncertainty, we just keep our fingers crossed for a better tomorrow. Our elders smile more often than we do. We walk in the streets with lots of burden on our shoulders from failed relationships to unemployment to lack of resources to trying to make a decent living on our own. Our elders seem to be cheerful and take each day as it comes despite some of them being the only surviving guardians of their grandchildren.

I was taken through this comparison journey at a Food For Thought Session at the US Embassy Public Affairs Section on Tuesday in commemoration of women’s month. The presentation was held under the theme, ‘When I was young’ / ‘Wisdom from grannies diaries’ and was facilitated by DefZee. The panel consisted of two elderly women. Looking at the elderly women who were on the panel I could see the generation gap but at the same time I felt like we are the ones losing out. One of the elderly woman actually said we called them ‘PO Box’ while we call ourselves ‘.com’- to illustrate that they are old and we are the new thing. But sadly while we are the new things with .com technology we tend to miss out on a lot of important things in life.

Our elders proposed and dated in a different manner than we do today. They wrote letters and each time they had to see their loved ones they had to have a third person present at their meeting. They never went out on dates. Instead they went to a ‘tete’ to approve of the relationship and to counsel them. Their advice to the young ones was that it would be of benefit to us if we stick to some of the morals and values they had in their relationships. For example no sex before marriage and being faithful to our partners. In conclusion, they encouraged the youth to pray to God because He gives hope and strength in the midst of all adversity.

The news from Senegal – elections were held against the incumbent. He lost. And he has left office.

Try as he might to stay, the people want him gone, and he is gone.

He changed the Constitution to say no third term, and then stood for a third term. Which he was legally entitled to. His first term in office, when he changed the Constitution, did not count against the two term limit. So said his court. So he was quite correct, he could stand.

Understand; correct is a legal term. It means legal or illegal under the law. Things are correct or incorrect, according to what is written in the statutes. Right and wrong though, are moral terms. Some things are right, and some things are wrong. We know these things if we look inside ourselves. Things like murder, theft, adultery. They are wrong. We ‘know’ that. They are also against the law, which makes them incorrect, but we know they are wrong.

So, the sitting President of Senegal ran for election, which he was correct to do. However, he was wrong. And the people told him that. They had the ability, and they had the power, to say “no”. And they did. And he left. That is democracy.

Next door, in Mali, there is a coup. The army supplanted the elected government, in order to give themselves the power and resources to fight the Tuareg rebels (fellow Malians). However, it seems from reports that while the army was looting in Bamako, the capital, the rebels took some towns in the north! So you have to wonder, why did they really stage a coup? This army captain and his buddies. While they do not have the strength to fight the Tuareg, they also do not have the brains to keep themselves from stealing.

Either way it seems democracy is the best answer. While it certainly is not perfect, it certainly has it’s short-comings and faults, democracy is the best course. Even if it is only ‘least worst’. Even if the only reason is you cannot blame yourself for what went wrong. Under democracy you make the decisions, you make them work, and you live with the consequences. Under democracy, you cannot blame or find scapegoats amongst the political elite, the captains of industry, the securocrats, foreign capital, etc. It is you. You run your country.

Once again, the sun has moved north across the equator
painting rainbows on the thatch through the crystal in the A-frame

it is the coming of winter,
the nights begin to carry the first memories of the cold dry season
but still it rains

2012 …

the wobble in our planetary axis
returns us to the same place we visited a 26 thousand year ago
the completion of some galactic cycle

and our solar system sails through the equator of our galaxy
in the slow timeless turning of the universe.

leaving us
to give meaning to the movement
doom or salvation?
or just the speeding up of everything that we know?

- because movement there is!

the global mind connects across the planet
through twitter and blog and skype

What is it we are thinking?
what are we seeing as the potential of this extraordinary experiment?
as we increase in our numbers and expectations
and economic planning
-  busy borrowing from the future

have we lost connection to the place we began
the home which has supported our lives?

travelling blind into this new turn of the cycle
as if severed from the fire of our being

but cracks appear in the edifices of our belief systems
and the knowing-unthinking darkness born of our killing and greed

threads of survival?
a sense of holding?
a creative connection emerging alongside this chaotic crumbling?

New life continues to be born this morning
as if into an emerald
glowing with the luster of yesterday’s rain
flowers like fractals of rainbows
sung into being