I suppose we have all become accustomed to, and to some extent, accepting of, the torrents of water gushing freely from broken municipal pipes or streetlights that are lit at midday. Perhaps we might grumble about this wastage to friends and family but let’s face it, we are not known for doing much else. We are certainly not going to hold a march against it, or even pen a letter of complaint. Blatant wastage of limited public resources is a given and many of us have resigned ourselves to it.

What I do find a bitter pill to swallow is wastage on a smaller scale, done by individuals, within our homes and in our daily lives. I’m referring to situations where security lights and water sprinklers are left on for the whole blessed day! A look at the piles of refuse littering our open spaces reveals shameful amounts of discarded food and clothing. And I know you are all familiar with that idiot driver who burns fuel speeding at 120km/hr to the red robot just ahead. I find this behaviour especially disturbing because I recall the dire times Zimbabwe has recently emerged from. We’ve been through commodity shortages, endless queuing, power cuts, water cuts, etc. Given our first-hand experience of being without, one would think that people would be more appreciative of what we now actually have. Good sense would advocate for conservative usage of our limited resources especially since we are not out of the woods yet.

Pop psychology does provide some explanation. Apparently, when societies emerge from situations of deprivation – à la Zim 2007/8, the Second World War, Communist regimes – there is a tendency towards one of two forms of reaction. People have been observed to become either ultra-economical, like the survivors of the Second World War, or else, like China’s new nouveaux riche, they develop really extravagant tendencies. (Closer to home, remember the stories of how our previously disadvantaged war veterans lavishly spent their compensation money). In light of this I’m more related in spirit to the WWII survivors, who would also probably be irked by my neighbour’s 24-hour flooding of his lawn.

My neighbour, whom I suspect might be a relation of a billionaire Chinese, may ask, “What’s my extravagance got to do with you? It’s my water/car/floodlight/ etc and I’m paying for it with my own money!”

This is true and I am definitely not questioning the right to use it, or the ability to pay for it. What I am trying to do is to appeal to humanity and an innate need to live for something more than you. We don’t live alone; we have to be mindful of our neighbours, countrymen and fellow Earthlings. Our individual actions will have an effect on the next person, directly or indirectly, immediately or eventually. Personal efforts to conserve our limited resources will ultimately provide a better life for all beings on the planet, human or otherwise.

So, if we find wastage by public bodies reprehensible, why don’t we question what happens in our own homes? While we can’t come together to stop the waste by the powers that be, surely each of us can switch off a light, close a tap and drive more slowly? Ultimately our individual actions to use limited resources more conservatively will combine to achieve a greater good. Now, that’s a civil action that I think most politically inactive Zimbabweans can civilly engage in!

“Ah! Ndozvinoita varume . . . (That’s what men do)”

When confronted with a cheating spouse, this is what women tell each other. Tradition advises that every man at some point in his marriage will cheat, and then it is up to the woman to forgive, tolerate it, and move on.

The Standard recently published an article charging that “Extra Marital Affairs Derail AIDS Fight”. In it, Pyke Chari from Action said that extra marital affairs threatened to reverse progress made in the fight against the HIV pandemic.

Action conducted a research study in 11 countries including Zimbabwe Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa, which found that married couples are now the group with the highest infection rate, because of the widespread prevalence of extramarital affairs. Presenting the findings, Chari said, “In all countries, the polygamous mindset was prevalent.”

I’m sure polygamy made sense in the days of yore. It amounted to cheap labour. Africans had no concept of the ownership of land, so a man could till as much land as he was able and as apportioned him by the chief. The more labour a man had, the more land he could cultivate, the more crops he reaped, the wealthier he became. Not only that, but having always been biologically weaker, women and children needed men for protection from predators like lions, cheetahs and other men.

Why is it then that an ancient tradition and attitude rooted in a society that has since changed drastically has not evolved with that society? What is most baffling is that the very people it turns into victims perpetuate it.

We live in an age where women are educated, and as a consequence financially independent. Where even though there is still progress to be made a woman may own property, vote, and sell her skills and labour to work and accumulate her own wealth.

Women don’t even need men to have children!

Yet the attitude that a woman is nothing without a man prevails. And because of that attitude women settle for bad and potentially life threatening behaviour. Because of it married women find themselves unable to negotiate safer sex or regular HIV testing, lest their husband leaves them for someone more docile.

Until women collectively realise that it is they who determine how they are treated, that men need us as much as we need them, that it is possible to feel whole without being in a relationship; then multiple concurrent partnerships, polygamy, AIDS and STIs will continue to exist. And men will continue to cheat.

There are very many reasons why men cheat, but the biggest one is because women allow it.

There are times when it is undeniable that Zimbabweans are a menace to themselves. Now those of us who reside in the Diaspora have got a bad reputation. Where once we were hard working, educated individuals capable of working anywhere in the world, we have quickly turned into global pariahs.

Zimbabweans are committing fraud in America and in the UK, evading taxes and even being jailed for knowingly and intentionally infecting people with HIV, all the while using Robert Mugabe as a scapegoat.

Take for instance the case of Gamuchirai Nhengu an 18-year-old Zimbabwean contestant on UK talent search reality show X-Factor. She made headlines a few months ago when she made it through several rounds of judging and even won praise from the mercurial Simon Cowell for her singing.

Gamu and her family now face deportation. She and her two brothers were allowed to stay in the UK as dependents of their mother while she studied nursing. But the visa ran out and the family’s application to remain in the UK was rejected. It turns out the deportation order was issued as a result of an investigation by the Home Office into £16,000 in benefits wrongly claimed by her mother, Nokuthula, reports The Sun. Nokuthula, received benefits and tax credits for her children, but her visa rules strictly forbade her from any state payouts.

This was followed by Gamu conducting a tearful interview with a Scottish newspaper in which she claimed that she and her family would face a firing squad if they returned to Zimbabwe.

“I’ve been in the public eye now and people there know I’ve fled [Robert] Mugabe’s regime. They will punish us if we go back. They’re going to know where we are; we’re going to be very unsafe. People have been approaching our family members; we think they could be working for Mugabe. And we know how brutal he can be. I would be in danger, it’s blatantly obvious. My family would be in danger.”

Gamu has even been quoted as saying she regrets being on the show as it drew attention to herself and her family.

Gamuchirai Nhengu is a child, whose sole claim to fame is mediocre success on a British reality show. What does she or for that matter her mother know about Roberty Mugabe’s brutality? They didn’t go to the UK as asylum seekers, they are economic migrants, hoping to take advantage of a generous welfare state.

She is a Zimbabwean child seeking to manipulate the image of Zimbabwe as a country in which total chaos exists and in which no one is safe, to justify her mother’s illegal actions. What is worse is the readiness of the British public and even Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop to believe her. It may be lazy thinking to accept her word without the slightest critical examination of her claims; but what else can one expect when Zimbabwe has been reduced to a single despotic individual who is demonised in the media. Their comprehension of the complexities of Zimbabwean politics is superficial and informed by racist thirty-second television spots selling ring tones that depict Mugabe as an incompetent bespectacled hairy, black baboon.

We cannot deny that political violence exists in our society. Even today two years after the 2008 elections, when there is a semblance of stability in the country, we still have incidents of political violence. This situation was and is painful for many people, not least those directly affected. Gamu’s claims diminish the struggle by all those working to make this country a better place, and they are a slap in the face for anyone against whom actual violence was perpetrated.

My recent visit to Nyanga left me wondering if we still have a pleasant and refreshing atmosphere in the eastern highlands. The evergreen mountainous places of Nyanga are now characterized by smoke caused by veld fires. Lately there has been an upsurge in uncontrolled burning in both urban and rural areas causing massive amounts of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.

People are starting fires for no apparent reason. If you travel from Harare to Beitbridge and from Mutare to Harare both sides of the roads are burning. During this time of the year some people in farming areas are burning their fields in preparation of the new farming season. Due to the fact that firewood is now being used as a substitute for coal when curing tobacco most farmers who cannot afford to buy coal on the local market resort to cutting down trees. Most of these trees are indigenous trees, which take many years to grow.

In recent years Zimbabwe has been experiencing droughts and floods in some parts of the country, mostly being caused by changes in weather patterns and also global warming. It does not make sense for one to start a fire, which destroys hectares of land in pursuit of a buck.

In Zimbabwe we have the Ministry of Environment and Tourism and also environmental management agencies that can assist in information dissemination and advocacy for best practices on managing our environment. A lot has to be done in educating our folks both in the rural and urban communities on the effects of global warming and climate change. The Government needs to take issues of climate change seriously and provide a budget to assist local authorities and agencies

The time to act is now or else we will find ourselves importing timber, or even grass for thatching. I am a Zimbabwean who loves an open-air braai but I don’t want to be seen coming from the north of the Zambezi or the south of Limpopo with a truckload of charcoal and firewood for my braai.

Lets not wait for the worst to happen to convince us that the climate really is changing. And we all have to do something about it.

From the Mail & Guardian, here’s a bit of beautiful writing for you from the Malawian poet, Frank Chipasula:

I will pierce the silence around our land with sharp metaphors/And I will point the light of my poems into the dark/nooks where our people are pounded to pulp

Mona Eltahawy writing for The Africa Report discusses the power of new media in an article called Facebook Against Faceless Authority. Here it is:

Khaled Said was not the first Egyptian to be brutally beaten by the police. What was unprecedented was the number of Egyptians who have protested police brutality since the 28-year-old businessman died on June 6 – up to 8,000 at one silent protest in his hometown of Alexandria alone. On July 27, the two policemen initially connected to his death stood trial on charges of illegal arrest and excessive use of force. If convicted, they face three to fifteen years in prison.

Social media – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs – were central to organising those protests and to bringing together activists and many ordinary Egyptians who turned out to demand justice for Said. Around 3.4 million Egyptians use Facebook, meaning that Egypt has the largest subscriber base in the Arab world and 23rd-largest globally. One of the many Facebook groups launched in Said’s memory now has almost 250,000 fans.

Social media have connected Egyptians and amplified both the voices and the courage of those who want to protest against President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for 29 years.

Across the Arab world, these forums have given a voice to the voiceless, providing a platform for the most marginalised to challenge authority, be it political, social or religious.

Long ignored by the state-owned media, young people and women are using the Internet to reach those who had been most eager to ignore them.

In Saudi Arabia, which fuels most of the world’s cars but bars half of its population from driving, women’s rights activists have used Facebook and email to collect petitions against the driving ban. One of the activists, Wajeha al-Huwaider, posted a video on YouTube of herself driving as she narrated an open letter to the Saudi interior minister.

In Lebanon, Meem – a group of lesbian, bisexual and transgendered women – uses a website and Twitter to offer shelter and support.

The desire to take on both the current regime and the old guard of their own movement compels young Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt to blog. One of them, Abdelmonem Hahmoud Ibrahim says that he started his blog Ana Ikhwan (I am a Muslim Brother) “so that I can show my true self”. The desire to express oneself and to circumvent censorship has created a thrilling equation in the Arab world: one person + the Internet = one very angry president.

Regimes throughout the region intimidate and arrest bloggers, which begs the question: what do all those rulers, in power for so long, have to fear?

Back in Egypt, young people who have known no other ruler than Mubarak and who realise that any one of them could have been Khaled Said, seize the chance to challenge the state and its once-absolute ownership of the narrative.

The majority of the Arab world is younger than 25 years old. The power of answering back – that is now the power of social media.