Increasingly what you find on the streets of villages, towns and cities in Zimbabwe is irritation with the Government of National Unity. Yes we might have stocked shops. Yes the useless Zimbabwean dollar has gone. Yes schools have re-opened albeit in a stop/start fashion.

But the real issues – the issues that will turn Zimbabwe into a democracy continue to go unaddressed by both the MDC and Zanu PF. The MDC don’t have any real power to make fundamental changes in Zimbabwe and Zanu PF have no intention of coming good.

All they can do is talk, and talk and talk. And that’s why people are getting irritated.

I was pleased to see Gerry Jackson of SW Radio Africa take our politicians to task for focusing on the non-essentials like pirate radio stations. As she says, get real guys! And stop wasting time.

But then again talking isn’t hard work and it always comes with a swanky lunch and some fine wine.

Here’s Gerry . . .

A news report on Thursday quoted Welshman Ncube saying that the talks which began on Monday focused on “western sanctions against Zimbabwe, pirate radio stations and government appointments including those of the attorney general and reserve bank governor”. While another report said ZANU PF wants ‘the MDC to rein in its supporters in western capitals running “pirate” radio stations’.

Guys – please – get a grip. We’re not controlled, owned or are even members of the MDC. They can do nothing to have us closed down. Our broadcasts on shortwave and via the internet are completely legal and we want nothing more than a free, peaceful, democratic Zimbabwe. And yes we do believe that Zimbabweans have an absolute right to the information that has been denied them for so many years.

Perhaps I can remind you of the fact that in 2000 I challenged the government’s broadcasting monopoly in the Supreme Court and won the right to set up the first independent radio station, on the basis that freedom of expression was enshrined in Zimbabwe’s constitution. But Robert Mugabe used his presidential powers to have the station shut down after just 6 days, ignoring his country’s own constitution and courts of law.

Get rid of the appalling broadcasting regulations which were introduced in response to this court ruling. Allow myriad broadcasters to apply for a license, register as many as you can. Those that are any good will survive, the bad ones will go the way of all bad media. Get some decent newspapers on the streets, allow as many community radio stations as you can cram onto a waveband.

If you want to get rid of radio stations broadcasting into Zimbabwe – free the media. Really free it. It really is that simple. Discussion over, now will you PLEASE start talking about the real issues. You have a population that’s desperate, investors ready to throw money at Zimbabwe the minute there is a guaranteed return to the rule of law, respect for property rights, an end to the political intimidation and the massive human rights abuses – and Gono and Tomana really do have to go.

I was driving past Oriel Girls School in Harare today. There’s a trench being dug outside the school and along the length of Harare Drive. Girls were arriving at school under the predatory gaze of groups of male trench diggers.

This is a common sight in Harare – the tongue hanging out, insult calling Zimbabwean male that women have to avoid or suffer on a daily basis.

In her blog called Women of the world unite! Sokari Ekine comments on the variety of abuse that women endure on the streets and in their homes. Let’s hope that the men of the world will also unite to put paid to gender based violence.

Ethan Zuckerman writing on his blog My Heart’s in Accra got me interested in a New York Times article entitled Taint of Corruption Is No Barrier to U.S. Visa. Apparently Teodoro Nguema Obiang, the agriculture minister of Equatorial Guinea and the son of its ruler, has a $35 million estate in Mailbu, California.

Ethan reflected as follows

As the New York Times reported this weekend, the strong evidence that Obiang is systematically looting his nation’s treasury hasn’t prevented him from getting US visas and visiting his estate several times a year. So why does Obiang get to play in Malibu while Robert Mugabe is forced to live it up in Hong Kong? According to the US State Department officials quoted in Ian Urbina’s New York Times story, the answer is simple: Zimbabwe doesn’t have oil, while Equatorial Guinea does.

Amanda and I have just returned from Dar es Salaam. We were on the road with Freedom Fone.

Last Tuesday it was 9 degrees at 9am in orderly Johannesburg and 28 degrees with sweat inducing humidity at 7pm in chaotic Dar. After negotiating the jam-packed arrivals hall we smiled in relief when we discovered John holding up a torn piece of cardboard with Freedom Fone scribbled on it. We couldn’t speak Swahili and he couldn’t speak English but we made our greetings and jumped into his car for the ride of our life to a lodge off the Old Bagamoyo Road in Michokeni B.

Dar was thrillingly alive, jumping with activity of all kinds. Flashing past us . . .

Two guys on a bicycle. One of them had a goat draped over his knees. A beggar with buckled legs dragged himself through an intersection, craning his neck to ask for money from people in cars. He wore slip slops on his hands. The storm water drains on the sides of the roads were full of water breeding malaria and other diseases. Little boys’ trawled homemade fishing lines through the muddy ditch water hoping for a catch. We saw a young man fill a water bottle from the litter-strewn canal, and we hoped that he wasn’t going to drink it.

The next day we met up with Bart, Margaret and Lilian the Farm Radio International (FRI) crew who we’d come to train to use the Freedom Fone software.

FRI is a Canadian-based, not-for-profit organization working with about 300 radio broadcasters in 39 African countries to fight poverty and food insecurity. FRI has partnered with Freedom Fone to engage our software in the support of small scale farmers in Tanzania. FRI have established 5 listening communities attached to 5 community radio stations in varied locations in Tanzania. These community radio stations broadcast programmes that assist farmers in achieving better yields as well as helping answer questions related to the various agricultural challenges they might be experiencing. FRI is currently exploring the use of information communication technologies (ICTs) to complement and extend the usefulness of radio broadcast programmes.

They selected Radio Maria, a Christian radio station based in Dar es Salaam, to deploy Freedom Fone. FRI’s listening groups with Radio Maria have expressed a particular desire for information about raising chickens. Local chickens are an excellent income source for small-scale farmers, as they have low input costs and high demand and a ready market. However, many farmers experience high chicken loss due to poor management: not keeping the chickens safely, feeding them properly or looking after their hygiene sufficiently. Better information helps farmers lose fewer chickens, and thus make more money out of them. FRI’s Freedom Fone deployment will draw on this desire for more information about chicken management, and their broadcast programme called, Heka Heka Vijijini (Busy Busy in the Village), will be adapted into short segment audio programmes using Freedom Fone software.

FRI also intends to use Freedom Fone in Ghana . . . stay tuned!

out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing
there is a field
I’ll meet you there
rumi

Last week the Tree of Life held workshops in the granite rocks of Mutoko
sheltering from the October heat under Mahatcha trees
as they dropped their ripening fruit into the circles

30 people had walked from their homes 1 to 2 hours away
all from the same community
headmen, councillors, community leaders and activists
victims and the perpetrators together in the same circle

victims who had become perpetrators
and perpetrators who had become victims
brother against brother
father against son

a community who have been carrying the brunt of political conflict and social upheaval in the centre of their families

but in this place
where they told their stories
they began to speak of something different
of their need to stop the violence
and to reconstruct their lives
to see beyond fear
into the eyes of their brother, neighbour, friend
and recognise that peace was more important

(there was even the space for humour
as one man said to the person who had burnt his house and stolen his chicken.
“the house I can understand – but my hen?
did you think she had a vote?”)

and when the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about
rumi

Thursday 8 October is a day that I will remember this year with bitter memories. This is what happened on the night of October 8. I was coming from a neighbouring township with my mzukulu at a round 2015hrs, and as we were about to cross the street that joins the two townships, a speeding car suddenly stopped in front of us. An armed cop apparently dressed for peace keeping duty in Kosovo jumped off the back of the vehicle with the agility of a ninja. He approached gun in hand, and boy was I stunned.

“Get in the car now!” he barked without giving us a second to understand what was happening. I obviously tried to protest, and the enraged cop further barked: “You are the people who go about raping women and killing them.” I thought, this is becoming surreal. Maybe I’m dreaming. Is this the Zimbabwe we want? There is GNU for Gods’ sake and should we be subjected to this treatment, I mused in the privacy of my thoughts – and under the cover of the dark night that managed to camouflage my obvious rage.

We were then shoved at the back of the truck where about twenty bitter men sat huddled like those miserable illegal immigrants trying to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar. “I was picked up when I was coming from church. Look, here is my Bible.” “I was picked up right in front of my house.” “I was picked up when I was giving way to the police car.” Their grumbling went on and on, and one female cop who proved to have been particularly miffed by something that some guessed had nothing to do with carrying out her duties went into action.

She liberally lashed her sjambok above our heads in the dark and I saw grown men wince in pain. “You think because I am a woman I cannot use this sjambok on you?” she snarled. Soon we were at the Nkulumane Police Station. I told myself, we are leaving this wretched place soon as we explain we were on our way home as law abiding citizens, but then I was to learn later rather painfully that you cannot reason with an unreasonable man – or worse yet cop. Soon, were told to line up. As we were led to the holding cells, the baton stick was again recalled and each of us got pretty violent and very painful lashes on our buttocks. I actually asked one stupefied cop to add more as he had no clue what the hell he was doing and for what reason.

These cops did not bother to tell us why our rights were being violated like that. Then we were told that anyone who did not want to spend the night in the filthy cells must pay USD5! For what? Are we living in a police state and not aware of it? Wrong question! As we were pushed into the cells, a visibly – and understandably bitter guy said: “I am not paying for a crime I did not commit you can bet on that.” Then the cop said something I still recall today and wonder what the hell he was talking about: “So you think you are the Prime Minister? You will rot in there if you think we are here to play.” He spoke in Shona and appeared aggrieved by something which only some seer and someone blessed with ESP could have deciphered. I wondered like everybody else where the Prime Minister fit in here and in what context. But then it has been said the GNU has many enemies! The cop just let the sentence hang and it was up to the crowd to fill in the gaps. Spend the night in the cells we did, 20 of us.

I wondered about my two young boys back home. They were obviously waiting for their dad to tuck them in, but they were to spend the night with their young minds wondering where the old man was. Talk about feeling like an absentee dad! In the morning, we were asked if we had the money to pay a fine. Again back at the “charge office” we were subjected to more ridicule. So we were being offered our freedom, but we had to tell the cops what we had been arrested for. “You tell us, isn’t you are the one who arrested us,” I said to the cop who sat on a high bar seat literally feeling high and mighty.

“If you do not know why you were arrested then we are returning you to the cells so you can wait for the cops who arrested you to tell you why you were arrested. Or even if you still insist you did not do anything, we throw back in the cells so you can go to court and plead your case.” I instantly hated the guy. He was enjoying it, and in his own warped mind he was doing us a great favour by offering us an option to pay a fine. I wondered: is this the Zimbabwe the GNU is promising us? It certainly isn’t the Zimbabwe we want. “So you think you are the Prime Minister” those words kept ringing in my angry mind. “We cannot just accept your fine when you do not know what you are paying for,” the cop reasoned. To a cut a long story short as I was increasingly being infuriated by someone, others in the cells had already called a “Border Gezi graduate,” I said fine we were arrested for public drinking. That seemed to rile the cop.

“We are not playing here. We will throw you back in the cells until you tell us why you were arrested.” “Okay,” I said. “We were crossing the street about a hundred metres from here (meaning the police station) when we were picked up and thrown into the cells.” “Okay then. You were arrested for loitering.” Boy was I stunned! Then my nephew asked what I still think was a clincher. “So there is a curfew then?” “Huh?” the cop was baffled. What the heck is he talking about? I saw it written on the bamboozled cops face. “So there is a curfew then,” my nephew repeated. “Huh?” Turns out he did not know what a curfew is! “Asivanhu havatshavumidzwa ukuhamba ebusuku?” the young lad asked, lacing his broken Shona with Ndebele. It was only then that the cop responded, but only to expose the nature of the intellectual aptitude of these people tasked with protecting law abiding citizens. Another guy on the other side of the counter asked: “So the curfew is that no one moves around after 9PM?” “Even 8PM,” the cop replied. And we all burst out laughing despite our circumstances. So as you may imagine, we parted with USD10 and for what? I still do not know. But I did tell the cops who rained that sjambok on my buttocks: “God bless you.”

Even as I write this I have difficulty sitting as my backside is still painful. It also got me thinking about something: when you are assaulted or mugged, doctors always ask for a police report before they treat you. Now, I was sjamboked by cops, who do I get the police report from for me to get treatment? Great country ain’t it? But then this is not Europe or the States where you can sue these cops and expect to be awarded damages. After all, these are the same chaps who over the years have literally got away with murder. For me the least I can do is tell the world about it. Perhaps we are living a lie under this GNU animal. These are times we are living in when so many of us had imagined police brutality was confined to the pre-GNU years. Two weeks later I read in the Chronicle newspaper (Wednesday 14 October 2009 p.2) that the country’s Number One Cop Augustine Chihuri had urged promoted officers in the Midlands province to respect human rights. I laughed bitterly.