Read Ethan Zuckerman:

We need to recognize activists who don’t use technology. He offers the story of Alaa Abdel Fatteh, a celebrated young activist who’s active both online and offline. Evgeny notes that his parents are seasoned Egyptian dissidents. “Alaa spent five weeks in jail, his father spent five years,” but Alaa got more attention because he’s a blogger. “This doesn’t mean that cyberactivism is not important, but that we tend to fetishize it.” More

Bhekumusa Moyo is a talented young Zimbabwean writer. Here are his reflections on the impact of HIV in the small border town of Beitbridge:

The sex worker in a developing town in a developing nation

Beitbridge is characterized by a hive of activity and business ranging from formal to informal, legal to illegal. Life is fast and the cost of living is double that of other towns like Harare and Bulawayo. One is either robbing or is being robbed. One is either bribing or is being bribed. One is either selling sex or someone is buying.

I have followed closely the life of Chido who has been in the sex industry for 23 years. She is being called by her first name even by young boys of her son’s age. Her life has been revolving around being fucked and sucking from sex hungry men. I met her at Kalahari Sports Bar. She is 39 though she looks younger because of skin peeling creams.

Narrating her ordeal, she quickly demanded beer as we talked. Like many young women who end up hooked into the evil net of the world’s oldest profession, she came into the business not by choice. She was on her way to South Africa. On her first quest to cross the border via the Vembe crossing spot which many border jumpers use, she met the horror of her life, which transformed her to what she is today. She was raped in exchange for favors to cross the river. None of the rapists managed to get her across the river until one Mpisi (a man who escorts border jumpers across the Limpopo River), took her to Baghdad Squatter Camp in Beitbridge. Baghdad was situated by the Beitbridge long distance bus terminus back then. It was destroyed during Muramatvsina invasions, as it was a breeding ground for all crime and ill activity.

The man introduced her to Mai Tinashe who was the aunt of the prostitutes in the area. That is how she came to surrender her life to the twin devices of sex and booze risking her life to HIV. Now she doesn’t even give a damn.

At 18, she had her first child with a Zambian truck driver. A year later the affair with the Zambian ended as he changed routes and all contact was lost. There was no one to support her. The option that was always there for her was the obvious. She continued putting herself at risk as a way of supporting her child.

She remains earning her income, reeling under different sizes of men and enduring the penetration of all sizes and shapes of shafts. Her life is surrendered to the grave. She speaks of her clients as fools. On the subject of HIV, she shows no remorse. Straight faced she told me to fuck off because anytime, anyone can die. She says death is death.

During our discussion, a couple of things came up. The subject of making prostitution a legal profession was top. This, she says, will make all players safe, the client and the service provider. She says that parents who do not love their children, ignoring them and exposing them to conditions that disturb their minds, cause moral decadence.

It was around midnight. She looked me in the eye and said “How about us tonight? $50 only. “  I said “no”. She insisted. I told her that I was only 23, two years older than her son and asked her what she thought of this. She said pussy is pussy, whether from a granny or schoolgirl and she accepts any stick that comes her way, for a price. I gave her $30 and we parted ways.

Beitbridge is at risk because of HIV. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says that there are almost 8000 prostitutes in the border town. A lot needs to be done before the town is wiped out.

By Bhekumusa Moyo

Bhekumusa is a civic activist, a poet, researcher and freelance writer based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and can be contacted on bhekumusamoyo [at] gmail [dot] com

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (CiZC) in their Daily Catalyst newsletter reported that:

Senior Criminal Intelligence Organization (CIO) and Criminal Investigation department (CID) officials in Mutare, together with the Manicaland Provincial Governor, Christopher Mushowe today, 19 April 2011, issued a joint order to the Mutare Municipality demanding that they pull down a 3×12 billboard in Mutare which was erected by CiZC. The billboard was erected under the Abasha POSA campaign aimed at supporting the POSA Amendment Bill, which sailed through the Lower House late last year and is currently stuck in the House of Senate.

According to Senior Town Planner for Mutare, Mr Simbi, these officials made it clear that the billboard was “too political” for their liking and as such had to be pulled down. They further argued that the advertising company, Ad Industries, which erected the billboard, did not follow the required process of seeking approval from the town council, which is the norm when a new message is to be posted.

Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa goes Inside/Out with John Makumbe, author, political scientist and commentator

Full interview with John Makumbe here.

Describe yourself in five words?
Bold, courageous, unflinching and very happy to be myself.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
To receive Jesus Christ as my personal saviour.

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done?
I bought my wife a car – a Golf – for two hundred dollars. I drove it home and she didn’t like it. The vehicle could go into reverse at any time, even when it was moving forward. It was a surprise gift. She drove it and it was big trouble.

What is your most treasured possession?
My salvation.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
I think to belong to ZANU PF as a member. I’ve been dying to say that! I think you have to be absolutely miserable to belong to ZANU PF as a member. People like Jonathan Moyo need their heads examined.

Do you have any strange hobbies?
I love watching game . . . animals. Last week I was at Chengeta Lodge in Selous. They have captive lions and I was fascinated by the power they have.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
I wish I were a little taller than I am. I would be happy to be as tall as Obert Gutu, and then I would smash Patrick Chinamasa.

Interviewer: why do you want to smash him?

He’s an idiot. He comes quite close to Jonathan Moyo, but at least he has the decency, when I have a quarrel with him, and we see each other out somewhere he still comes to say hello. Jonathan when he is angry with you, when he has quarrelled with you, it’s permanent and forever.

What is your greatest extravagance?
I’ve just bought myself a Toyota Harrier for $10 000 and I could have bought myself a cheaper car and bought a car for my daughter with the money that would have been left. But I don’t believe in buying children cars. I believe children must be helped to get a driver’s license, my daughter got hers yesterday. She had to go to Kadoma after failing here [in Harare] four times because she would not pay a bribe. I told her I will not pay a bribe; I’m the former Chairman of Transparency International. Now when she works and gets money then she can buy a car.

What have you got in your fridge?
I don’t have a fridge here in the office. At home we have two or three goats, we have polony, duck. I think we also have sausage.

What is your greatest fear?
My greatest fear right now is that Morgan Tsvangirai might be killed. There’s been already a threat; in fact it came from the soldiers. That’s my greatest fear because I do not think we will have someone who is as easily popular with the voters as Morgan. Tendai Biti and Elias Mudzuri are very good, but they are not at the same level of popularity as Morgan.

Interviewer: are you familiar with the Wiki Cables? What do you think of the assessment Dell gave of Tsvangirai when he said he would be a good candidate to effect change but would not make a good leader after the change?

It’s rubbish. Utter rubbish. He is a change oriented man. Dell didn’t spend enough time with Morgan; he didn’t look at Morgan’s track record at ZCTU. He is a highly consultative person. That is what makes a good leader. He will manage the change not because he is skilled in managing it, but because he will put skilled people around himself to help manage the change. If Morgan were not like that he would be where he is today. ZANU PF has done everything they can to get rid of him.

What have you got in your pockets right now?
My keys for the office and some tissue.

What is your favourite journey?
I love flying to Johannesburg. I’m a voyager so sometimes SAA puts me in business class.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Jesus, and my wife. My late father, he was amazing. I wish I could be what he was.

When and where were you happiest?
When I was on sabbatical leave in the US, where I was guest lecturing at Michigan State University. We were very happy. We enjoyed ourselves. The snow was everywhere, my daughter and I used to ride bicycles in the snow for hours.

Interviewer: What are the students there like as compared to here?

Our students are angels. In terms of performance, we have stars. In the US you get some of the dullest students, they can hardly write a straight sentence. We always preferred to use multiple-choice questions, even for tests. In the US you work for money because as they pass you know that they know nothing.

What’s your biggest vice?
Sugar.

What were you like at school?
I was very naughty. I used to be in trouble almost all the time. I was stubborn and for some reason I knew about rights already, and I would insist on my rights so I would get punished. Because I’m albino I grew up being insulted by guys and I started fighting when I was pretty young. After a while guys would still insult me but they would do it while running away. I was intelligent at school, very intelligent. I’ve never failed a class.

What are you doing next?
I’m taking your photo.

I’ve just been reading about Facebook and Twitter being blocked in Uganda. Museveni is worried about new media helping people to organise protests in response to state repression and economic hardship. I’m pretty sure that Mugabe wouldn’t feel a move like that was necessary in Zimbabwe. People don’t protest here, no matter how much we get kicked in the teeth. Reading Peter Godwin in the New York Times, I have to agree that the pressure from neighbouring states helps to turn up the heat on dictators. Neighbours can’t ignore wide scale protest. But they can ignore silence. Which is what Zimbabweans are very good at. We’ve had stolen elections, detentions, torture, mind blowing inflation and food shortages. We didn’t respond. Will we ever? What is certain is that SADC, the AU and Showerhead will continue to ignore the crisis in Zimbabwe because we let them.

I’m reminded of a quote from Viktor Frankl; What is to give light must endure burning.

Here’s Godwin’s latest:

Making Mugabe Laugh

Barely was Laurent Gbagbo, wearing a sweat-damp white tank top and a startled expression, prodded at rebel gunpoint from the bombed ruins of his presidential bunker in Ivory Coast, than Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this conclusion: His ejection, more than four months after he refused to accept electoral defeat, sent “a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and around the world. They may not disregard the voice of their own people in free and fair elections, and there will be consequences for those who cling to power.”

Zimbabwe’s 87-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, who began his 32nd year in power this week, must have chortled when he heard that one.

The parallels between Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe are striking: both were once viewed as the singular successes in their respective regions, the envy of their neighbors. Both Mr. Gbagbo, a former history professor, and Mr. Mugabe, a serial graduate student, are highly educated men who helped liberate their countries from authoritarian regimes.

Both later clothed themselves in the racist vestments of extreme nativism. Mr. Gbagbo claimed that his rival Alassane Ouattara couldn’t stand for president because his mother wasn’t Ivorian; Mr. Mugabe disenfranchised black Zimbabweans who had blood ties to neighboring states (even though his own father is widely believed to have been Malawian).

The two countries have also been similarly plagued by north-south conflicts. And when they spiraled into failed statehood, both leaders blamed the West, in particular their former colonial powers – France and Britain – for interfering to promote regime change.

Finally, the international community imposed sanctions against both countries, including bans on foreign travel and the freezing of bank accounts that have largely proved insufficient.

But here’s where the stories crucially diverge – why Laurent Gbagbo is no longer in power, while Robert Mugabe, who lost an election in 2008, continues to flout his people’s will.

The most important point of departure was the sharply contrasting behavior of regional powers. The dominant player in West Africa, Nigeria, immediately recognized the validity of Mr. Ouattara’s victory in United

Nations-supervised elections, and worked within the regional alliance, the Economic Community of West African States, to unseat the reluctant loser. But Zimbabwe’s most powerful neighbor, South Africa, played a very different role. Instead of helping to enforce democracy, it has provided cover for Mr. Mugabe to stay on.

Partly this is due to what is called “liberation solidarity.” Most of the political parties still in power in southern Africa were originally anti-colonial liberation movements – like those in South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola – and they tend to abhor the aura-diminishing prospect of seeing any of their fellows jettisoned.

It is also because South Africa eyes the Zimbabwean opposition – which morphed out of a once-loyal trade union movement – through the suspicious lens of its own trade union movement’s contemplation of opposition politics.

As a result, instead of supporting the Zimbabwean opposition in 2008, Thabo Mbeki, then the South African president, bullied it into a power-sharing government of national unity headed by Mr. Mugabe. This democracy-defying model has threatened to metastasize into the mainstream of African politics; that same year it was also applied to Kenya, where a unity government was set up to end post-election bloodshed. When Mr. Mbeki was deputized by the African Union to broker a solution in Ivory Coast, that was the Band-Aid he reached for – but it was rightly rejected by Mr. Ouattara.

Of course, the other crucial difference is that in Ivory Coast, the dictator’s ejection came at the hands of men with guns. The northern rebels moved on Abidjan. The United Nations peacekeepers, trussed by restrictive mandates as always, nevertheless protected Mr. Ouattara until the French expanded an airport-securing operation into something altogether more ambitious. They basically prized Mr. Gbagbo from his bunker, though to avoid bad postcolonial optics, they brought the rebels in to make the final move.

In contrast, for refusing to plunge the country into a civil war, Zimbabwe’s democratic opposition has been rewarded by the international community by being largely ignored.

Next month, a group of southern African nations will discuss Mr. Mugabe’s continued resistance to agreed-upon reforms intended to pave the way to free elections. Either South Africa must get Mr. Mugabe to honor them, or it must withdraw its support for him. If it won’t, then the international community needs to push South Africa out of leading the negotiations, and engage more directly.

Zimbabweans need help if their voices are to be heard. If the United States wants to prove that Mrs. Clinton’s words were more than empty rhetoric, it should begin by pressuring South Africa. Otherwise Zimbabwe’s hopes for freedom will founder, even as Ivory Coast regains its stolen democracy.

Peter Godwin is the author of “The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe.”

Source

I was immersed
in working a poem
when an emergent business man
whom I shared a park bench with
received a call
a business call
I presumed.
He borrowed the pen
I was scribbling with
I lost a verse
he got an order.

- I Lost A Verse by Julius Chingono

Read more about the launch of Together, poetry by Julius Chingono and John Eppel. You can also watch a video of John reading Broke Buttock Blues.