Recently the Prime Minister announced a cabinet reshuffle. He said the main reason for doing so was to regain the people’s confidence in the new administration amongst the electorate by addressing weaknesses in the party. Ministerial reshuffles are not anything new on the political front. This move might serve to confirm three basic points, 1. That rumours of fissures in the MDC party are real. 2. The MDC has not performed per expectation in the GNU. 3. The party is not hesitant when it comes to addressing serious issues.

The prime Minister did not talk about the reshuffle as firing anybody – he chose to call it a redeployment of the people: “…within the party to strengthen and add momentum to party programmes.” However Fidelis Mhashu, one of the axed ministers, speaking on ZTV expressed surprise at the reshuffle and said that he was shortchanged and he feels demoted.

Putting politics aside, the axing of Engeer Mudzuri is worrisome. Unless the party does something to paint him white, his career has been tarnished. Before assuming the ministerial post, Engineer Mudzuri was also uprooted from his Mayoral post that he had democratically occupied. It was Chombo’s axe that saw Mudzuri controversially replaced by a commission led by Sekesayi Makwavarara at the helm of the town house. The move was interpreted by many as a more politically inclined issue than a professional performance one. As a result Mudzuri was an MDC hero, who through the firing from the council office, had proved to be a real threat to the ZANU PF bigwig Chombo, the then Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing.

Complaining on the suspension of Mudzuri the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said:

“The arbitrary suspension of Mudzuri represents a double standard in the application of authority by the Minister of Local Government. While other local authorities continue to suffer under poor service delivery, similar action has not been adopted. Indeed, the whole country is a victim of mismanagement and poor service delivery, and yet not a single member of the executive has been fired. Hospitals are largely dysfunctional, as are schools, colleges and universities. There are rampant food, fuel and foreign currency shortages. Surely if service delivery were so important, the entire government would have been fired by now”

Now that Mudzuri has failed to escape the first axe of his trusted Master, Morgan Tsvangirai, does this confirm that Chombo was right when he said Mudzuri is incompetent? The two consecutive firings are a bad mark on the engineer’s curriculum vitae. The MDC has to take appeasement action towards its Party’s National Organizer, otherwise his professional sheet will not be clean.

Social and political commentator Rejoice Ngwenya believes that the right to property ownership should be enshrined in Zimbabwe’s new Constitution. He writes:

Property ownership – whether it is land, trademarks, brand names, patents, and works of art or literature – needs title in order to realise real market value. Ownership is not just a historical fact of life, but also a right whose spinoffs go well beyond the individual. It is about self-confidence, wealth creation, identity, legacy, inheritance and economic growth.

Make property rights part of the Zimbabwe Constitution today. Let’s go down in history as being the first country in developing Africa to enshrine private property in the Bill of Rights. If you do not agree with my ideology, let’s talk about it!

What do you think? Leave a comment here or contact Rejoice directly on rngwenya [at] ymail [dot] com

After 37 nights in custody, diamond whistle-blower Farai Maguwu, director of the Centre for Research and Development, has finally been released on bail. According to VOA news,

Maguwu’s release comes just two days before members of the Kimberly Process and the World Diamond Council are to meet in St Petersburg, Russia, to discuss certification of diamonds from Marange. Kimberly members failed to reach consensus last month on certifying Marange gems amid allegations of human rights abuses.

Coincidence?

From Angus Shaw in Harare, here is an inspiring article on the Positive Ladies Football Club:

Soccer is a life saver for HIV Positive Ladies

DOMBORAMWARI, Zimbabwe — For members of the Positive Ladies Football Club, playing soccer is much more than just a way to have fun.

All its members are women infected with the virus. In this impoverished district outside the Zimbabwe capital, having an outlet and a bond with teammates has helped the players keep up their spirits as they fight the disease and the stigma that goes with it.

And now is a special time for the club. It fields a team known as the ARV Swallows which will compete in a tournament in neighbouring South Africa while the World Cup is being staged.

The Swallows have already triumphed in one local women’s league, and they’ve kicked stigma and prejudice off the field at their home ground at Zinyengere government school, about 20 miles southeast of Harare, said Ivy Choga, a nurse with Medecins sans Frontieres, or Doctors without Borders, the international medical humanitarian organization.

In this southern African nation, where nearly a quarter of the adult population is estimated to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, people with the disease were long shunned in local communities. Infected women were banished from families.

“They were hidden away and getting very sick. Families were planning burials,” Choga said.

In Domboramwari, or Stones of God in the local Shona language — named after the district’s bleak landscape of granite rocks — the “Positive Ladies” on Saturday were helping a group of their members prepare for a trip they once never dared dream of.

The Swallows are competing in a 5-a-side tournament of HIV positive women in South Africa scheduled July 2 and organized on the sidelines of the World Cup by Doctors Without Borders from its HIV treatment projects in southern Africa.

They will be led by coach Jonas Kapakasa, a former goalkeeper in a Zimbabwe club side.

“Everyone is very excited. We’re ready to show what we can do,” Kapakasa told The Associated Press.

He said he cancelled practice on Wednesday after a child of one of the Swallows became ill. Teammates rallied around to help get the child to the district hospital.

“It was a real team effort,” he said. “I’m so proud.”

AIDS groups have warned that foreign funding for life saving medication is diminishing. The so-called “Halftime” tournament in Johannesburg calls on international donors not to cut back on antiretroviral funding when the fight against the disease is only half over.

“Imagine the referee stopping the match against HIV/AIDS halfway through. … Nobody calls it quits at halftime,” Doctors Without Borders said in a statement.

In this arid Zimbabwe district, with regular power outages and no electricity at all in some parts, unemployment and food shortages are acute. Players in the Swallows grow and sell their own vegetables, some make basic handicrafts and artificial flowers from grass and scrap materials and others receive food handouts from independent charities. They receive their medication from the Dutch branch of Doctors Without Borders.

Annafields Phiri formed the team in 2008 after a Harare businessman launched a women’s football league to promote his skin and hair care products.

Choga, the nurse, said regular exercise strengthened the women and helped them throw off years of depression, discrimination and isolation. Singing and dancing goes along with their practices three times a week.

There have been injuries on the field, but neighbourhood skeptics who now turn out to support the Swallows had learned more about the risks of HIV infection from unprotected sex, often a taboo subject in Zimbabwe — and how the risk from cuts and bruises is minimal, Choga said.

Defender Nyarai Bengina, 33, said being diagnosed HIV positive in 2006 was the saddest time of her life. Seeing her drawn body, wracked by tuberculosis and near death, neighbours had taunted her to take poison to end it once and for all.

Now the beaming, smiling mother of three will soon be enjoying soccer in Johannesburg and rooting for Argentina.

“We’ve got our lives back,” she said.

The most oddly soulful of Ms. Hilltout’s images are of objects: the homemade balls fashioned by children from plastic bags, old socks and rags, tied up with string or strips of tree bark. Some children inflated condoms — commonplace and free on a continent beset by AIDS — wrapped them in cloth to make them heavy, then in plastic bags to seal them and finally bound them in twine. These ingenious, improvised balls bounce like real ones for a few days before the air escapes.

Jessica Hilltout jumped into her father’s 1976 VW Beetle and travelled across Africa to capture images of grassroots football. Read more

Jacob Goldstein shares a great photograph from Zimbabwe’s talented Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi in his blog about washing US$ notes to get them clean. Increasingly the filthy US$ notes that we’re handling look like they harbour a million diseases.