Comments on: Cry freedom

By: MediaChannel.org

MediaChannel.org — Tue, 01 May 2007 16:50:40 +0000

[...] Meanwhile Natasha, who took an urgent trip on a “chicken bus”, describes the experience: From the back of the bus a loud, desperate voice started singing something that sounded gospel. The voice belonged to a disheveled blind woman being led by a similar looking girl most certainly less than 10 years old. The two were struggling to make their way to the front of the bus, begging each passenger for money. [...]

By: Global Voices Online » Zimbabwe: more arrests, regional neglect, and Western duplicity

Tue, 01 May 2007 13:07:00 +0000

By: Simbiso

Simbiso — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:16:05 +0000

You are right Natasha that the Zimbabwean is suffering and most of the time it is because their poverty is the collateral to somebody’s loot. This is how the world is strucutred, in fact, the market economy is meant to concentrate the world’s wealth in the heands of a few and shove the rest of humanity into sordid poverty. Beggars, paupers and slaves are a by-product of obscene wealth. Thing is it all begins with the lack of will to distribute wealth laterally. But it is not too late to challenge the status quo, if only the diver and the passangers on the bus to Gweru including yourself Natasha decide to change their destiny as a people

in solidarity

By: Tinashe

Tinashe — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:13:54 +0000

The ‘white person’, the ‘coloured’ is regarded as the “other”. Their belonging and identity is seen as not only a threat to being ‘Zimbabwean’ but they are considered economically/socially ‘advantaged’. The street language always denotes the ‘white person’ as the ‘murungu’ meaning broadly ‘rich, important, bossy and not part of us’. This is a relic of colonial subjugation which has been perpertuated by the government, but the shift in ‘murungu’ to refer to anyone who is rich and ‘well placed’ is interesting because here is an identity category historically reserved for the ‘whites’ that has been lifted to refer to almost anyone with some ‘importance’.

In the streets maybe social class is really understood.

By: Pamwechete

Pamwechete — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:42:51 +0000

Sounds and smells exactly like the way I remember them.LOL
There is this one beggar who used to board the bus between Kadoma and Chegutu, in 3-4 years that I plied the route I invariably bumped into him. Initially I used to give him something until I realised that, it was his occupation