In a Kubatana newsletter in June we asked our subscribers to state what they believe to be the most serious political issue in Zimbabwe today, and suggest a solution. Please read the submissions below and let us know which one tops Your list.

1. Inability to consider the impact of one’s actions and how this affects others, the environment and future generations.
2. Consider the impact of my actions on a daily basis and to teach this by living it out in my life.

1. The social or political issue in Zimbabwe is that leaders stay in power too long. They know that they have cases to answer to and that the law will catch up with them.
2. To have new broom and have all new leaders and I am sure from this you will have a country with actual laws.

1. The only serious or critical issue in Zimbabwe is governance. Once this country is properly governed all the shortages of everything required for a person to live a common life will disappear.
2. What is required is not only the change of government but a democratically elected government with a democratically minded leadership. All I can say is that the shambles we are in at the moment is caused by mismanagement. Zimbabwe is rich but where our natural resources are channelled is a mystery. All the government arms are corrupt so unless we appoint dedicated and dynamic leaders in all government institutions we will become poorer and poorer when our country is rich with natural resources which require committed people to manage.

1. I am convinced that the most serious political issue in Zimbabwe is greed. All our political leaders tend to forget their past promises in pursuit of self aggrandisement. Had it not been for greed, our dear comrades from the MDC could nave quit this malfunctioning inclusive government. But because they still have porous backgrounds to fill the Mudzuris are being quite bitter about being called under performers.
2. I think the most practical solution is to have a leadership code that determines what those in power should own and how much money they earn.

1. I consider the Constitution Making Process to be the most serious social or political issue in Zimbabwe. We can only come up with a meaningful constitution if it really represents the needs of the people of Zimbabwe. However, one is bound to question its credibility if the outreach phase is marred by violence.
2. The three principals should facilitate campaign awareness programmes to stop violence during the outreach programmes. In addition, the legislators should not stifle the process by demanding exorbitant allowances. Finally, the sample should be representative for validity and to avoid bias.

1. Zanu-PF
2. Trials

1. The most serious political issue is the Dictatorship of Zanu-PF.
2. This can be solved through the unity of the people standing up and speaking with one voice.

1. I think the most serious political issue in Zimbabwe is the probability of having free and fair elections.
2. The only major step to solve the problem is coming up with a constitution that that gives a platform for free and fair elections.

1. The most serious social or political issue in Zimbabwe is leaders who cling to power regardless of their failures to rule the country.
2. The practical steps I would take to address the issue is to highlight to them the areas in which they have failed.

“If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.” Keith Richards

Zimbabwean activists and journalists should explore using the much talked about WikiLeaks web site as a conduit for exposing the corruption and profiteering of those in power in Zimbabwe. Apparently WikiLeaks receives an average of 30 classified documents every day from sources around the world. Read this extensive interview with Julian Assange, the inspiration behind WikiLeaks.

A couple of weeks ago I published a blog about Africa’s Old Men and how they insist in staying in power for so long. In a print publication we re-published this blog and asked Zimbabweans to text us their suggestions as to why these old men don’t, or won’t, take early retirement.

Here are some of the text messages that we received:

Dictatorship keeps african leader in power for so long. They use guns and the army to put fear in people.

African leaders stay in power due to undemocratic methods they use to rule their states.

They kip in pwer 4 so long becoz they are 2 greedy and ful of coruption.

Afraid to be arrested greedy cruel uneducated etc

AFRICAN LEADERS FEAR THAT ONCE OUT OF POWER ICJ WIL AREST THEM THEY KILED TORTURED IMAGINE HOUSES DEMOLISHED ZIMBABWE

African leaders keep in power for so long because of (i) Power hungury & (ii) they don’t respect the voice of us unpriviledged poor and the majorite.

African leaders keep in power for so long becaz they are all dictators and they fear to answer cases if the leave the office.

Many afrcn leaders abuse public offce and as a result they fear to resgne and wil hold on to power even if it means starving or killng their people they d.nt mind.

African leaders stay in power coz they are all dictators. Most of them comited crimes of genocide so they hang on 2 power 4 fear of possible persecution.

Of all the heart-wrenching scenes I witnessed at the 18th International AIDS Conference, the most disturbing had to be on the last day when the Conference volunteers went about the exhibition halls rounding up mountains of abandoned books, brochures and flyers.

“It’s all rubbish now,” I gasped to myself as I watched whole piles of materials disappear into vast recycling bins.

The chatty teenage volunteers, donned in bright yellow T-shirts, probably thought nothing of it. But I thought differently.

What a waste.

The amount of money spent in producing and shipping those things to Vienna is a figure I don’t want to even try to imagine, lest I become even more upset than I already am. I was a culprit too, leaving a tall stack of books on my hotel room bed as I tried to weigh out (figuratively and literally) which would be most useful to take back home. Feeling horribly guilty about abandoning the materials, I considered leaving the housekeeper a note to say not to throw away the books and instead hand them out to friends and family. But something told me that a ‘first world’ country with a decimal  HIV prevalence figure might not take too much interest in books around reforming sexual and reproductive health rights policy in the patriarchal global south.

Maybe they might. But I thought against the idea and did what many people did in hotel corridors, lobbies and at airport check-in desks these past few days.

I dumped the books.

I had never been to one of these big HIV conferences before but went into the experience with a healthy dose of scepticism (not wholly premised on the fact that people dump stuff of course, since I’d heard about that before).

One of my strong beliefs was that a gathering of 20 000-odd people (19 300 participants, to be exact) with 248 sessions, 127 satellite meetings, 279 Global Village activities, 151 exhibits, 19 plenary sessions, 18 special sessions and enough daily sponsored after hours parties featuring copious amounts of free booze – all happening in 6 days – would lead to excited chaos and eventually, apathy.

In a post mortem on the Conference, the international agency, Oxfam, called it a disappointing conference whose tone was set by the host nation, Austria, when it indicated  that it would not contribute a single cent towards the replenishment of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria(GFTAM).

According to a presentation made by Paula Akubigizwe of the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA), the 2010 Conference delegates’ collective presence contributed an estimated total of 45 million Euro to Austria’s GDP – a figure that was equivalent to 20% of the total GFTAM Round 9 allocation to southern Africa for the response to all three diseases.

I don’t need to point out the irony for you.

I also don’t really need to point out the irony in the fact that the next conference takes place in Washington DC, moving further and further away from the hotbed of HIV which unequivocally remains sub-Saharan Africa. (Out of 18 such events held, the 2000 Durban Conference represents the only time the Conference has ever taken place in Africa.) I was simply appalled by the conversation I overheard among a group of men who each proclaimed they had been to at least three or four of these conferences and yet, had never so much as attended a single session.

What?!

We really need to think about what we are doing here, what real response and responsibility means to each one of us on a personal level. But here are my questions.

Do these big conferences actually work or are they simply glorified talk shops? Should we even be contemplating having a 19th and a 20th and, God forbid, a coming-of-age 21st International AIDS Conference?

The course of the epidemic remains very region-specific so that talking about condom negotiation to women in Sweden can be about as meaningless as talking about harm reduction to a group of Zimbabweans. Yes, it’s important to know all of this information, but on a practical level, it mostly remains useless.

And while we heard at the Conference about the alarming growth of the HIV pandemic in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, particularly among injecting drug users and sex workers, we forgot that two-thirds of all people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa; women who get HIV by merely having sex with their husbands and babies who are born with no chance to reach their fifth birthday.

But this isn’t sexy enough.

And so we’ve taken to catchy phrases like ‘treatment as prevention’ or the edgy sounding ‘Treatment 2.0’ coined by UNAIDS. According to UNAIDS, the new Treatment 2.0 platform – which includes HIV testing scale up and strengthening community mobilisation as some of its pillars -  can reduce new HIV infections by one-third if treatment is provided to everyone who needs it.

But that’s what makes it more sexy than practicable.

I don’t need to tell you how many countries are falling short of providing universal access to anti-retroviral therapy (ART) for people whose CD4 counts have dipped below the 200 threshold.  Thus the 2009 World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations to up CD4 thresholds to 350 for treatment initiation for people with HIV remains a pipe dream for many.

And in many parts of the world, the thought of initiating people who aren’t even already infected with HIV onto treatment is a mere fantasy.

But let my scepticism not completely override the successes scored at this year’s Conference. South Africa, once the joke of the global response to HIV and AIDS proved that it has well and truly shaken off its demons and come to the party. No better proof of this could have been given than by the standing ovation afforded to Health Minister, Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi in one of the plenary sessions when he admitted that the task ahead was comparable to climbing Mount Everest, but needed to be carried out anyway. And also, a breakthrough in microbicide research with the CAPRISA 004 trials. With 39% effectiveness in reducing a woman’s risk of becoming infected with HIV, the female condom might soon be finding company with another female controlled device. Admittedly, the trials are still in the preliminary stages but when one of the key researchers, Dr. Quarraisha Abdool Karim, smeared a little of the clear odourless gel onto my palm, I felt like I was literally holding the future in my hand.

But the real winner?

That is unquestionably Austria and the historical city of Vienna, whose people largely went about their way oblivious to the impact that a gathering of HIV scientists, campaigners and programmers would have on the nation’s future.

Wouldn’t it have been so much more of a meaningful impact, I wonder, if we’d actually taken the conference somewhere that really needed it?

It is unfair that the HIV and AIDS pandemic has a face of a woman. I heard this statement at a discussion that I was in and it hurt me a lot. I know that women especially in Africa are the most infected by the virus but to hear that being said my heart tore apart. To think that every time HIV and AIDS is spoken about the image given to it is a woman’s face. In most cases it is the man who brings HIV and AIDS in the home. With men being socialized to think that there are the bulls and bhuru rino onekwa nemavanga aro encouraging men to have multi partners. The majority of women living positively are infected by their male partners, why then is the woman the most discriminated?

I do a lot of running and on my way through Newlands Shopping Centre over a week ago I ran past a very badly leaking water pipe. The road running through the shopping centre had become a river.

I sent a text message to the Mayor of Harare, Mr Masunda, asking him if he could send someone to attend to it as soon as possible. A week later, the pipe was still madly spewing water. It is important to point out that this shopping centre, along with the majority of Harare, suffers from crippling water cuts. So I sent another text to Mayor Masunda asking for an emergency number to call so that the problem could be fixed. I didn’t receive any replies to my text messages – yeah, he’s a busy man I know – and in the meantime I heard that the leak was over 3 weeks old and that the BP petrol station attendants had tried, in vain (understandably because they’re not plumbers), to fix the leak with pieces of black rubber. The petrol station had asked the city works department to come and fix the leak but it seems like they haven’t put this problem on their list of Things To Do.

What are we to make of this? Shop owners and residents of Harare pay their rates; motivated citizens report problems and yet the City of Harare, knowing that the provision of water is an essential service, allows major water leaks to remain unresolved for weeks at a time.