To celebrate Dambudzo Marechera’s posthumous 59th birthday this year, Zimbabwean writer, editor, and anthologist, Ivor Hartmann (administrator of the official Dambudzo Marechera fan page on Facebook – endorsed by The Dambudzo Marechera Trust – with over 5,000 fans and the only consistently updated web page solely focused on Marechera), will be compiling an anthology entitled and themed Remembering Marechera. It will consist of essays, reviews, short stories, poems, etc. that follow the title/theme.

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Maybe sell some of Chombo’s houses or farms acquired by Zanu PF chefs? Or swing a bit of cash from diamonds towards salaries? Turn in the Mercs and Prados and buy more modest vehicles? Quit the trips and stay home for awhile?

Zimbabwe’s fiscal cupboard remains bare and the unity government will struggle to meet its wage bill for public sector workers in January 2011, finance minister Tendai Biti told the inaugural Global Poverty Summit in Johannesburg on 19 January.

“For the month of January we have only collected US$64 million and we are supposed to pay $101 million [public sector wage bill]. Where we are going to get the money to close the gap? I don’t know. I have made it very clear that we can only eat what we have killed and no more or no less.”

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Vanilla Moon is using their coffee shop as a venue for a Blood Drive.

Date: Friday 28 January 2011
Time: 9.30-15.30
Venue: 8 Seagrave Road, Avondale (on 2nd Street, after 24hr Vet, 2nd Rd to your right)

For smaller companies, this is a great way to be involved in the community!  For larger companies, contact gbvuma [at] bloodbank [dot] co [dot] zw to organise a Blood Drive at your premises.

Blood donation is done on a voluntary basis.  The greatest payment you can have is knowing that you have helped save a fellow human being’s life.

Below are the requirements for one to be able to donate blood:
- at least 16 years of age,
- weigh at least 50kg,
- be of general good health.

Don’t know your blood group?  This is the perfect way to find out, after donating twice you will be informed of your blood group, free of charge!

What this simply means it cannot be business as usual. We now more than ever need City Mothers, City Sisters and City Youths because the City Fathers have failed to prove the mantle of real fatherhood. Maybe let’s shout out for the real fathers to come out and arise. Real Fatherhood comes with responsibility, responsiveness, sensitivity, caring and presence at each & every nook, mishap, or need in the community/family of the urban environment.
- Eddington, Harare

How many factions does the MDC as we thought we knew it now have, that is adding from the mudslinging that has followed the elevation of Welshman Ncube who elbowed out Mutambara?

Is this not yet another tragedy of African politics that pretenders to the throne turn against each other and take their eyes off the prize, that is unseat an unpopular democracy? Small wonder then that frustrated analysts and kosher opposition politicians are always quick to say Zanu PF has mastered the game and creates these spoilers to enfeeble what would have been the party that forms the next government. So, when elections are eventually called be sure to see 20 or even 50 parties emerging from the woodwork to claim their place in the ballot as has been seen elsewhere in Africa. They are quick to call it democracy but it is rather more of multiparty elections than multiparty politics because, outside election season they hibernate and are known only to their spouses. But still that’s a big MAYBE.

Now with the numerous MDCs who will fight it out with other unknown political outfits, who can write Zanu PF’s epitaph?