This is as morbid as it gets. Bellicose men known for their viciousness on the receiving end of hate vigilantes? You must be joking! This is not a moment of misplaced glee, but someone could not help but wonder whether the reports were true. A sad twist of irony perchance? That particular death – the newsmen from another planet prefer to call it murder – becomes national news because of the political hue of the fallen comrade. The other fella next door is only killed by “unknown people” when everybody else seems to know the face of that hand that rocked the cradle and took a life. Is that what we have become, a nation whose collective conscience has been overthrown by this diabolic callousness and where nonsense is celebrated as sense? A nation that regrets one death and celebrates another? Is that what we have allowed other mortal men to turn us into? Other beloved nations have cried, but ours seems to be on the indefatigable attempt to be the stentorian equivalent of the town criers of yore. But it is the screams of latter day fallen heroes that will ring in the ears of evildoers, driving them insane down to their dark places of repose. “Repose” because perhaps they will make peace with their Maker when that light visible only to people staring that inevitable crossover shines in front of them. And then with clear consciences, the remaining souls tormented by the Devil they knew get that morbid satisfaction. “Vengeance is mine said the Lord.”

My impatience hijacked me today. Waiting outside the bank, waiting for a friend, an old man came up to me trying to sell some ballpoint pens. When I say no, he starts on about his poor son with a head the size of a pumpkin. His son needs help. Two years ago it was his daughter with a pumpkin head. Small details. But I snapped and told him I wasn’t interested in his stories. I’m irritated by the mess of this place; by walking past a massive hole in a pavement in a shopping centre. A hole that could swallow a granny. A hole that everyone now uses as a rubbish pit. But we continue, all of us to walk around it. Why don’t we fix it even if we didn’t break it? What are we waiting for?

I’ve heard a range of comments about the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) opening show Dreamland. Some feel, particularly as the opening show, it should have been more upbeat. Others feel it was important to not hide the realities of Zimbabwe. I had a hard time formulating an opinion because I was in awe the show happened. Everything and every minute of the show were overtly critical of the government.

The one thing that has stayed in my mind is the performance of Dudu Manhenga. She’s a wonderfully talented singer/performer, no doubt about it. But in this case, more what’s been on my mind is song selection. Dudu performed one of my favorite songs – a relatively unknown song from 1988 by American singer/songwriter Toni Childs. If my math is right, I was 23 years old in 1988 – young and naïve. I remember the song as one of the many things which opened my eyes and mind to the world around me. Generally, my interest in music is to know what lyrics mean, the message of the song, and to develop my own interpretations of the words. The lyrics of Toni Childs prompted me in 1988 to research more about the Zimbabwean Unity Accord of 1987 and the violence during the years before. I may have been wrong in thinking the 1988 song was commenting on Gukurahundi. But I can’t help but think at HIFA 2008 the song was selected as a commentary on the ways history unfortunately repeats itself – not always in exactly the same ways – but with the same painful and unjust results.

I found another blogger thinking about this 1988 song and the lyrics are below.

what you gonna do zimbabwae
what you gonna do zimbabwae

zimbabwae is a man who tried
to teach his children what was right
but then there came a time when war
split the family from inside
he said no fighting no more

what you gonna do zimbabwae
what you gonna do zimbabwae

the old man sits and shakes his head
while the multitudes insist
where is the cause of unity
with just one thought there could be peace
men gathered in silence the same

can there be some peace on earth
can there be a love
greater than the world we see
greater than us all
it’s the last station home
it’s the last station home

you ran your heart in those days
when no-one could see days
you want to run in the wind
you want to go back inside
see no more crime in your lifetime
zimbabwae, zimbabwae
no more crime in your lifetime
zimbabwae, zimbabwae

– Toni Childs

Matonga is at it again. There he was shooting his mouth in the government mouthpiece, the Herald of June 07 that “All NGOs have been ordered to apply for new registration permits as part of measures to clamp down on the incidences of civil society meddling in the country’s politics ahead of the June 27 presidential run-off.”

This in direct contradiction to what the former minister of Public Service, Labor and Social Welfare, Mr Nicholas Goche issued in a letter calling for the suspension of all ‘field work’ by PVOs. One can almost imagine Matonga confidently making his announcement with that annoyingly wide and pompous Cheshire-cat grin of his.

This is at a time when most Zimbabweans are in desperate need of food aid and ARV treatment, clean water and other services provided by NGOs. But some Minister just wakes up one day and decides all NGOs are banned from conducting humanitarian work, ironically at a time when the outgoing president is attending a summit discussing various food security issues including the fight against hunger. That thousands will probably die from hunger or needless lack of medication seems irrelevant. What is important is to thwart potential underground activities by NGOs to support the MDC under the banner of carrying out humanitarian aid.

NANGO (an association of Zimbabwean NGOs representing over 1000 members countrywide) convened an emergency meeting with PVOs to discuss implications and the way forward on June 09, 2008. A representative from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) gave a preliminary legal position that the letter is not legally valid, as the Private Voluntary Organizations Act does not empower the Minister to suspend an NGO’s operations.  Also, section 10 of the Act, cited in the letter, empowers the PVO Board, not the Minister, to take action to de-register an NGO. Whatever the legality of this instruction, it is a political reality.

There is also the question of whether Goche has any right at all to be issuing such statements. If cabinet was dissolved just before March 29, he and his colleagues must therefore be operating from the perspective that since their outgoing president is still operational; they too can continue to execute duties as before.

It is fast becoming a sad reality that the regime is refusing to go and will employ any means possible to ensure they stay in power. It is another sad reality that this is not the first time such careless, baseless announcements have been made each time the government feels threatened about something. Another sad reality is that we have a government in place that simply has this ‘thing’ against people helping other people, even when humanitarian assistance is non partisan and is inclusive of their Zanu-PF people. Never mind that humanitarian workers’ sole mission is to provide assistance to any people in need.

It appears that most members of civil society have chosen to distance themselves from solidarity with other directly affected PVOs, under the misconception that only humanitarian field workers in food distribution are being targeted. Some do not realize that the regime has a plethora of some uneducated overzealous agents who are prepared to start maiming and killing to enforce the directive, legal or not. Much as we find for instance that Mr Goche’s announcement is legally null and void, we are also confronted by the fact that there is no respect for the rule of law in this country.

I caught the words of one representative from ZLHR that it may be in the best interests of PVOs to just comply with the directives, even though this may imply that they concede that their existence is illegal. He gave the example of the Daily News and the fact that the paper lost its case against the MIC because it failed to comply with the law simply because they disagreed with it. The wise move was to first comply then later challenge whatever they disagreed with. The lawyer suggested the same for PVOs in the current situation.

So if this was a death sentence, first die then appeal?

I am a surgeon with a scalpel for false values.
- Lenny Bruce (1926 – 1966)

I have this great little book called 50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed To Know by Mickey Z. What I like about it is that it investigates a variety of actions and people that have contributed, one way or another, to our collective liberation.

As Mickey Z says in his introduction, “from taking up arms against one’s oppressor to using art and words as weapons of mass instruction, these 50 episodes celebrate a different form of patriotism . . . one based on challenging tradition and taking action.”

So, here’s a bit on Lenny Bruce:

“Lenny Bruce was a revolutionary comedy figure because he brought honesty into a form which previously had been little more than an empty crowd-pleasing truth,” says George Carlin.

To say Bruce revolutionized comedy is putting it rather mildly. His impact extended beyond mere entertainment to alter American culture. Perhaps the single greatest indicator of his uniqueness lies in the fact that many of his classic stand-up bits are no longer funny. His primary topics – religion, politics, sex – are hardly taboo anymore (thanks, in part, to Bruce) and thus his scathing attacks seem tame by today’s standards.

Not so in the early 1960s when Bruce faced the repressive wrath of state power. As a former assistant district attorney admitted some 30 years after Bruce’s death, “He was prosecuted because of his words. He didn’t harm anybody; he didn’t commit an assault; he didn’t steal; he didn’t engage in any conduct, which directly harmed someone else. So, therefore, he was punished, first and foremost, because of the words he used . . . We drove him into poverty and used the law to kill him.”

On June 13, 1964, a petition made the rounds denouncing the legal assault on Lenny Bruce. Signed by a veritable who’s who of the time (e.g. Woody Allen, Richard Burton, Bob Dylan, Dick Gregory, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Henry Miller, Susan Sontag, Terry Southern, William Styron, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg), the petition read, in part:

Lenny Bruce is a popular controversial performer in the field of social satire in the tradition of Swift, Rabelais, and Twain. Although Bruce makes use of the vernacular in his night-club performances, he does so within the context of his satirical intent and not to arouse the prurient interests of his listeners. It is up to the audience to determine what is offensive to them; it is not a function of the police department of New York or any other city to decide what adult private citizens may or may not hear.

Within two years the battle had claimed Bruce. He was found dead in his apartment . . . never to witness the enduring effect of his efforts. “The greatest gift I derived from knowing him and his work was the importance of honesty, in the words and on the stage,” Carlin states. “Lenny made being full of shit old-fashioned.”

Or, as Lenny himself explained: “Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”