Have you made any new year’s resolutions was one of the first things a colleague asked me when we officially opened for the year?

I told her I was still thinking about it as I do not want to commit myself to things I will never get around to doing. This is true so far as ‘serious’ or ‘real’ resolutions are concerned. I mean, I have made a couple of ‘silly’ resolutions that don’t necessarily make you feel bad if by the end of the year you don’t achieve them, like learn to bake for instance. I’ve already made my first tray of muffins (or were they scones?). Soft inside but hardish outside; couldn’t figure what they lacked and where the hell do you get cinnamon? My other resolution is to factor in more board games. I’ve already purchased a game of Monopoly and boy am I enjoying it! I happen to have a couple of ‘serious’ resolutions lingering in the back of my mind, like vigorously pursuing an Mphil and getting myself more organized in my work or improving my technical skills. But achieving the simplest things in Zimbabwe can be a Herculean task. Nothing is simple anymore.

From these little resolutions, it looks like 09 for me is about confronting and overcoming challenges. Put mildly, it’s about doing things I have never done. If only embracing bigger challenges at a national level was as simple.

I have several other ‘silly’ and much easier to achieve resolutions like buy and actually wear a dress at least once this year. Cut down on (cough) chocolate. I will also try not to yell at my neighbor’s noisy brats when they sing and play catch along the corridor on Saturday morning while I clutch desperately at the straws of a well deserved lie in. If not to stop the rascals from nudging my satellite dish in retaliation, then to avoid developing a coronary or any other stress related disorders. Sigh. Somebody might wonder why those ‘silly’ things are resolutions at all. Well, just to enjoy the little joys of life I say. I resolve to try and do a lot of that this year, and relax a little more. So far I’ve discovered that lying on an airbed and watching my fish swim endlessly in their glass tank is such an uplifting and liberating experience. They lead such a simple life; eat. shit.

A family member or two have phoned with a few suggestions of New Year resolutions for me. Please try and tone down a bit Natasha we don’t want another Jestina.

And, by the way, when are the wedding bells?

Last month my to do list was long like there’s no tomorrow.  It was full of errands mostly associated with preparing to pack up and relocate myself back in the US.   In Zimbabwe, seemingly simple to do items like get cash, pay bills, get mixers for cocktails, etc. can take amounts of time which are unfathomable.  At least (after the frustration and exhaustion) some humor can be found.  Like how I nearly had a temporary Zimbabwean husband, for the purpose of getting Tel One to accept a third party cheque as payment.

And sometimes it’s not so much humor.  More that it can be enlightening, the little nuances of how moving through a to do list plays out.   After completing a to do item in Eastgate Mall, I found myself frozen amidst people bustling this way and that way.  I was wanting to follow the Eastgate routine I had established.   An exit route geared toward stopping in specific shops to see what was on the shelves and/or if there were good deals.  But, no reason for the routine because it’s not like I needed to fill my suitcase with basic goods as part of returning to the US.  My frozenness lasted a good many minutes.  Then the strangest thing happened.  There was a magnetic force which sucked me into the shopping routine.  Nothing good at Chipos Supermarket or the zhing zhong shops.  But in Clicks, my gosh good golly, they had more shampoo, conditioner, and liquid bath soap than I had ever seen on a single Zimbabwean shelf.  Fairly priced to boot!  A gold mine!  Without skipping a beat I was strategizing how much I needed to buy and which scents would be the most soothing.   Once I realized buying was not needed, I thought to myself:   Shame I’m leaving Zimbabwe with all these good bath products available.  A different kind of humor playing out here.  Humorous that I became so well trained with my shopping routines and strategies.  And curious that I found it easier to be emotional about leaving behind a gold mine of bath products and much harder to express my feelings about leaving behind my work, colleagues, friends and all the ways living in Harare enriched my mind and my heart.

One more thought about to do lists.   Seems that Mugabe started 2008 with a small voice which got bigger and bigger as he moved through a carefully calculated set of to do items.   A few of the items that got ticked off the to do list include:  manipulate voters roll, ignore elections if not victorious, blame problems on west, use herald as mouthpiece, eliminate opposition, take grace shopping, ignore agreements, brainwash youth, keep all power, pay military, dictate.  Me and a whole lot of millions of other people are ticked off about what Mugabe’s 2008 to do list included.  Looking for a fresh list for 2009 with items such as:  share, play fairly, food aid for all, return to rule of law, downsize motorcade, get kids back in school, admit cholera is problem, pay civil servants fair wages, be realistic about hyperinflation, enforce one person one farm policy, involve all in constitutional revisions, take foreign aid yet remain sovereign, fade into distance, transition to peace.

I’ve been reading Padraig O’Malley’s Shades of Difference. It uses the life of Mac Maharaj, who according to Nelson Mandela, “ran the ANC’s underground in South Africa,” as a lens through which to discuss the anti-apartheid struggle. O’Malley introduces each chapter to set the historic or political context of that section of the narrative, and then Maharaj recounts a few years of his own autobiography. It’s clear, well written, and I’ve been so grateful for the insights that a story of that struggle can lend to Zimbabwe during ours.

I’m currently in the early 1980’s. Mac has served his 12 year sentence on Robben Island, after his conviction in the Little Rivonia Trial. And he’s escaped South Africa to rejoin the struggle outside the country. Meanwhile, the ANC’s progress has been slow. Frustrated by the pace of reform, and forced ever-deeper underground by the apartheid regime’s policies, the ANC is increasingly attracted to the strategy of armed struggle – despite its failures. In his introduction to Chapter 10, O’Malley credits the United Democratic Front (UDF)’s civil disobedience campaign with greater effectiveness than the armed struggle organised by Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) (Spear of the Nation). This despite the fact that it was 11 years from the formation of UDF to South Africa’s first democratic election.

Here are some excerpts:

The opposition to the tricameral parliament led to the creation in 1983 of the anti-apartheid United Democratic Front (UDF), a broad, non-racial grouping of about 650 affiliates with a total membership of more than 2.5 million who collectively put the emphasis on mass mobilisation and protest politics.

Meanwhile, the ANC had become addicted to the idea of armed struggle. The more it failed, the more the ANC pinned its hopes on guerrilla warfare and armed insurrection. The ANC’s armed struggle failed by almost every yardstick.

The post-1963 generation grew comfortable in exile. With no secure base from which to launch attacks on South Africa or to infiltrate operatives, getting MK cadres into the country was a disheartening process. There was no existing political underground in South Africa with which the exiled ANC could easily communicate. One estimate put the number of formal structures inside the country at fifty, the number of members at two hundred – hardly the makings of an adequate network.

As we start a new year – and thinking about Bev’s blog yesterday about the MDC’s need to rethink its strategy – I’ve been reflecting on O’Malley’s comments on the ANC in the 1980s – and what lessons we can learn for our situation today. If we replace the ANC with the MDC, South Africa with Zimbabwe and armed struggle with elections and negotiations, the paragraphs above sound eerily similar to what we are experiencing today.

The more elections and negotiations fail, the more the MDC wants to try them. The MDC’s structures are weak, and constantly under assault from the ruling party. Not exactly a recipe for success.

But discussing things with some colleagues yesterday, we realised – the objective of the MDC isn’t to oust the regime. The objective of the MDC, as a political party, is to win elections, get elected to power democratically, and to govern the country with the majority it has won. So, then, why are we surprised that they focus on elections and negotiations. I may think that’s a naively narrow strategy – since when is that small dicktator gonna share power equally just because we’ve politely requested that he play nice? – but it’s the strategy they’ve chosen. It’s even more naïve of me to expect otherwise from them.

Rather, thinking of Maharaj and O’Malley again, it’s time to take Natasha’s advice. Instead of looking for the MDC to restrategise, let’s look at how civil society can restrategise. The MDC wants to lead Zimbabwe’s democratic transition. But it’s not willing to lead the campaign to make the country ungovernable, so that the regime has no choice but to transition. If South Africa is anything to go by, it’s time for Zimbabwe’s UDF.

Now seems to be the word of the moment. Kubatana subscriber, Sophie Zvapera, wrote to Kubatana sharing a short story about her sister and a new year resolution . . .

I phoned my sister’s seventeen-year-old daughter to wish her a merry christmas and a prosperous new year since they were visiting the rural areas and I was not going to be able to talk to her till after new year. She was excited to go and see her nana and I asked her whether she had already made her new year resolution. I wish I had not asked! She said all she wanted was to study hard and pass her A levels this year and find herself a place in some university somewhere outside Zimbabwe where she can do her studies.

Then I cried!

I cried because my sister’s daughter was going to this mission boarding school and at the end of last year she was sent back home before schools closed because there were no teachers, no food, the school fees that we were paying in zim dollars were not even enough to buy a loaf of bread. Therefore there was nothing that the school could do except to send all the students back. I started thinking of all the other children who have the same resolution as my sister’s daughter and who cannot go to school as the term starts because they cannot afford to pay private college fees in foreign currency. Here is a whole generation whose hopes and aspirations have been shattered by a group of Mugabe’s thugs. They are thugs because they have stolen our children’s future yet they claim to be governing or whatever they call it because the people voted them into office. Which people I ask? How many of all these school and tertiary going students’ future have these politicians quashed, trampled upon and thrown into the dust bin all for the sake of political power? What happened to the concept of investing in the youth for they are tomorrow’s future leaders? What legacy are we leaving for our children?

So while I am still wiping my tears I will put my request to the political leaders for the new year. This political bickering, grandstanding and media statements will not bring back the lost years for our children neither will it arrest or correct all the things that are wrong in this country. So for the sake of Zimbabwe please put people’s interests first and foremost and rescue the global political agreement from wherever it is and come up with a government that will take the country forward. This does not require Monthlante, SADC, AU, UN, Britain or America just us Zimbabweans can do it if there is the political will to do so. How long can we continue to have all these abductions, murders, cholera, starvation, HIV/AIDS and all the deaths before all you politicians say the people have suffered enough?

It is now or never.

Eddie Cross keeps on writing, optimistically at that. Where oh where does he find his eternal spring of MDC fervour from?

Of course it depends on who you’re speaking to. Some disillusioned MDC activists have been lamenting the party’s collective lack of intelligent strategising and their lack of any kind of consistent pressure bearing activism. Of particular concern was the MDC’s lethargic response to their cadres being abducted by Mugabe’s henchmen. Especially insulting was Tsvangirai’s late in the day threat to abandon any participation in The Talks unless the abducted people were produced by 1 January 2009. Where’s his sense of urgency and immediacy? Like can he spell the word NOW.

Apparently 12 MDC activists are still missing. So Mr T, what are you going to do about it? Flip flop, again?

The majority of Zimbabweans are unanimous that the MDC must not agree to a junior role in a new Government but if the MDC hasn’t realised by now (that word again) that Zanu PF are leading them around by the nose (some say pricks, with the occasional stroke to keep them engaged), then they are more foolish than any of us ever imagined. They might have a “road map” regarding how they will eventually govern Zimbabwe (according to Eddie), but they are certainly way off track on the getting rid of the old man side of things.

Mugabe is so entrenched that we need a battalion of super strength bull dozer’s to dig him out, many of them driven by 57 cm high tokoloshes. Talk certainly isn’t going to do it.

Eddie Cross also tells us that

Mr. Tsvangirai has received his passport – that was finally extracted from the Registrar Generals hands and taken to Gaborone by the South African Ambassador and handed to him by the Ambassador on Christmas day.

That’s an Ambassador too many for my liking. But now that he’s got his new passport perhaps he can come home and finish the job.

An encampment of MDC MPs in Unity Square with Tsvangirai at the helm, until all abducted activists are returned and released, might be a good place to start.

Granted, not as comfortable as exile in Bostwana though.

It’s the first working day of the New Year and I’ve been checking out the emails that have come in over the holiday. One of them suggested various ways to work off all that Fruit Cake. I smiled because if you’re Zimbabwean you don’t have to do a lot of working off of any excess. Simply because there’s not a helluva lot to consume in the first place. Take my Christmas Eve dinner for example: bacon, eggs and Jack Daniels. I was lucky to inherit Jack from a friend who left the country recently.

But one of my favourite emails came from Lionel who says some useful stuff . .

It has been a hard year for all but I wish you all a very happy new year and a prosperous one at it too. Let us hope that all parties concerned really begin to think of all the people of our country and not just their petty power grabbing techniques. A new beginning means everyones participation, as we have all learned, a country does not run on politicians only. They need people to do the other very important tasks, like teaching, doctoring and sweeping the street. No job is menial and as Africans we must get out of the habit that only degrees count. There is a man there with a lot of degrees but what has he done? The rest is history. Now you all have a good day and we will catch up in the New Year.