The SADC Troika Summit of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation met in Livingstone, Zambia yesterday. The Summit was chaired by Rupiah Banda, President of Malawi, and attended by the heads of state and government of Namibia, South Africa Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The purpose of the meeting was to consider the political and security situation in the region, in particular the republics of Madagascar and Zimbabwe.

On Zimbabwe, the Summit received the report on the political and security situation in the country from President Jacob Zuma. He was commended for the frankness with which the report was presented and also on the work that he has been doing on behalf of SADC.

The Summit noted with disappointment the insufficient progress in the implementation of the GPA, and expressed its impatience with the delays. It also noted with grave concern the polarization of the political environment, characterised by a resurgence of violence, arrests and intimidation in Zimbabwe.

Among the resolutions made was a commitment to the full implementation of the GPA and another to the immediate cessation of violence, intimidation, hate speech, harassment and any other form of action that contradicts the letter and spirit of the GPA.

The Troika Organ also resolved to appoint a team of officials to join the Facilitation Team and work with the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC) to ensure monitoring evaluation and implementation of the GPA.

While it is heartening to see that Mr. Zuma’s candid report on Zimbabwe was endorsed by the Troika, previous meetings of regional heads of state and government have made similar resolutions on Zimbabwe without them being translated to reality.

Both the President and Prime Minister have made repeated calls for an end to violence and intimidation with no effect. In fact, the violence has greatly increased. In an article published in Newsday on 22nd February 2011, co-Chairperson of JOMIC is quoted as describing the Committee as a “toothless bulldog” with no legal or statutory powers to implement its resolutions. It will be interesting to see how and if this will change with the appointment of SADC officials to the Facilitation Team.

For those of us less than talented in the sporting arena, night golf is a welcome relief from critical eyes. If you’ve tried teeing off in broad daylight in front of the clubhouse, you’ll know what I mean. The pressure, your hands start to sweat, you mutter to yourself “head down, watch the ball, eyes ON the ball!” And then you keep looking over your shoulder as you do a semi-jog, as opposed to a full sprint or a walk – more conspicuous and involving greater hip movement – after your ball, hopefully down the fairway, but inevitably not.

I get totally put off by any sign of water. It doesn’t matter how near, how far, how off to the side, how small, I will find it or hit my ball in the entirely wrong direction JUST to avoid it. I also just dribble it off the tee box (thereby really falling short of the water).

Anyway, night golf is for those who don’t own golfing outfits to match their Callaways. You can encourage your caddy (it is best to pay for one if you don’t know the course – distance and direction becomes an issue even for the most geographically-savvy) to levy fines against you when you do something wrong. This includes hitting fresh air instead of the ball, what I call the “practice swing” (my son always blames on the wind, bless him), or landing in the water – lucky the balls glow.

Remember to get your cooler box from the bar. Each player gets a free six-pack to start (a word of advice, take an extra 2 per person and don’t forget your shooters for spot fines) and then merrily stumble and sing (and swing) your way round nine holes.

Normal golf rules apply. Treat the course, your surroundings and fellow players with due respect. And please pee before you start – white buttocks in the moonlight are made for target practice!

If you’re not much of a golfer, you might consider packing a towel and a change of clothes in case you have to go swimming to retrieve your ball. While eau-de-swamp seems to deter mosquitoes, it doesn’t do anything for the rest of us. And if you’re hoping to hit the town afterwards, and get lucky – make use of the club’s showers!

Next date for night golf at the Borrowdale Brooke is Friday 13 May. Come dressed ghoulish (or pay a fine) and book early – they are always over subscribed.

This homeless Zimbabwean man is rumoured to be insane and has lived in and around the Pomona area for several years. In his hands he holds a 750 000 Zimbabwe dollar note, last used in 2005. Although he keeps to himself and seldom speaks to anyone, both residents and vendors try to steer clear of him.

I am limping.

To make it worse, my wobbly, awkward hobble makes the other parts of my body ache. Which means by bedtime I am an aching mass of tension, and feeling very sorry for myself. And I don’t get a massage or even a little sympathy. Instead, as soon as one of the kids starts screaming, for water, or a pee, or a monster in the bed, I am met with a sudden suspicious stillness next to me. Yes, if you close your eyes, don’t let your eyeballs twitch, regulate your breathing, add a gentle snore and a muscle spasm or two, I might believe you are asleep. Except nobody can sleep with the shouts reverberating down the hall, and you will ask me what was wrong, as soon as I get back to bed.  Without fail.

But let’s discuss husbands and selective hearing another day. It is an inexhaustible topic and we could be here forever. (I have just googled “bobbit”.)

I was asked to speak at my daughter’s School Open Day on Wednesday evening. So I thought it best to dress up to create the right impression. I was going for young and fun so I tugged on my white Versace jeans, a shirt and my platform heels (I NEVER wear heels) and teetered off to the school. I gave my talk, which by my watch lasted less than a minute – a full A4 piece of paper is deceptively quick to read – and listened to everyone else waffling on, in comparison to my speed reading, before I figured it was appropriate for me to leave, this involved some sidling I admit.

So, I hustled and teetered off to the car, paying no attention to the lack of outdoor overhead lighting. My foot disappeared down a hole, cunningly covered with lawn and I gracefully pirouetted “a over t” landing with my full weight, and considerable momentum (maybe it seemed faster because I was higher?) on my knee. I rose after taking a moment or two to curse under my breath, dusted off my grass stained jeans (a gift from my older sister, so yes, really Versace) and gathering my dignity, limped to my car, significantly slower than previously. Which is a shame as it has since come to light that I was spotted, slinking off you understand. I have been avoiding the Principal.

It would be ok if it were an isolated incident. But like my 4-year-old son, I still seem to be finding my feet and learning to judge distance and space and size. Unlike my son, it gets harder to pick myself up. But nothing a slobbery kiss and a bit of vampire blood (Gentian Violet) can’t fix.

Eventually.

The first time I heard about sanctions, back in 2005, I thought it was a lie fabricated by Gono et al to justify his heavy handed printing of currency and the resultant inflation as a necessary evil.

No one can deny that this worked in the favour of those with connections and in high office to profiteer off the situation without regard for the plight of the general mass of Zimbabweans. My resentment was always especially directed at ministers and such who casually drove past me in their government issue air conditioned Benz as I stood in a round-the-block queue waiting to get my money from the bank for the Kombi home.

Later in the evening, they would be on ZBC news, well dressed and rotund, emphatically telling a ragged, sinewy audience just in from their drought-stricken fields that ‘we live in poverty because of sanctions”… some of us more than others.

Last week a newsreader on radio was saying that hospitals and are ill-equipped because of sanctions and let loose a diatribe about the effects of poor health care on Zimbabweans. There was little mention of the facts: diagnostic machinery has fallen into disrepair because the companies that sold it to us cannot or will not honour their service agreements because their home countries either make no effort to encourage trade with Zimbabwe, or at worst actively discourage it. A little while ago Natpharm declared that they had run out of stocks for the Malaria TB programme in the height of the malaria season. Again without reference to the fact that the programme is largely funded by the Global Fund, which is heavily influenced by the US government and has for several years rejected applications by Zimbabwe for funding of this and other programmes because of mismanagement by the government and the effects of ZIDERA.

Much has been made by the government of ZIDERA. But the strategy of speaking the name of its demon possessor fails government again. They do not explain that while the act does makes provision for targeted sanctions against individuals, it also empowers the US to use its voting rights and influence (as the main donor) in multilateral lending agencies, such as the IMF, World Bank, and the African Development Bank to veto any applications by Zimbabwe for finance, credit facilities, loan rescheduling, and international debt cancellation. This basically means that the Government of Zimbabwe is not only broke but it is in massive debt, following not only from the governments own over expenditure, corruption and mismanagement but also from the structural adjustment programmes it was ‘encouraged’ to implement by the IMF and the World Bank in the 1990s.

For the ordinary Zimbabwean this means that the government is unable to carry out it’s essential services. It is unable to bring electricity to rural houses, fix potholes in the roads, supply clinics and hospitals with drugs, build dams or increase the capacity of the water delivery system. This in turn means that we have places in Zimbabwe that saw better times in the stone age, and health crises such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and cholera will always be a rainy season away.

Land reform may have been successful, but there is no way to protect people from random acts of nature. In times of drought, such as this year, sanctions mean that the government cannot buy maize to feed its own population. Even without an act of nature the government is unable to fully support farmers as is the policy in more developed countries.

The anti sanctions propaganda fails to explain how exactly sanctions affect the average person living an ordinary life. Our government in its poor application of propaganda fails to understand that they have educated their population beyond their simplistic reasoning, and the contradictions and omissions in the information they liberally propagate on the state broadcaster are not lost on us. Reading Marko Phiri’s blog on the views of the people in Gwanda, I am not surprised to find that many people understand the sanctions to be merely about travel bans.

I spent most of my life in Mutare even though I was born in Bulawayo and I am now a permanent resident of Bulawayo. This places me at a distinct advantage: I am very familiar with both the Shona and Ndebele worlds. There are a lot of things that both sides do not know about each and wild assumptions that damage relations are made.

Considering the history of Matabeleland: The slaughter of about twenty thousand people, there is always suspicion between Ndebele and Shona and a number of times I have to pull two warring sides apart as I happen to see things in a clearer light than a person who is exclusively Shona or Ndebele. I have a friend who believes every Shona person in Matabeleland is an enemy, planted in Matabeleland as part of the Gukurahundi agenda (the total disempowerment of the Ndebele people by flooding the region with Shona people and making sure that Ndebeles do not get any opportunities).

I cannot say for sure that the Gukurahundi agenda does not exist, but I believe individuals should be judged on individual merit not broadly based on the sins of a few mad people who did not have the people’s mandate to do what they did.

When my friend suggested that I happen to get opportunities because I have one leg in the Shona world and the other in the Ndebele world I knew the Shona-Ndebele thing had gone too far; I happen to have worked abnormally hard and continue to do so to get to where I am.  The so-called Gukurahundi agenda is now being used by lazy people who do not exploit opportunities as a crutch.

Whilst it is important to address past and current injustices, we have to remember that were we come from matters less than where we are going.