According to the latest HRW report, the Government of Zimbabwe “could generate significant amounts of revenue from the diamonds, perhaps as much as US$200 million per month, if Marange and other mining centres were managed in a transparent and accountable manner.”

The Zimbabwean economy is in desperate shape, the government is bankrupt, and MDC leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti have been fund raising in Africa, Europe and the US to try and get some cash to pay civil servants, meet the country’s monthly running costs, and rebuild the nation’s economy.

But why do our politicians have their begging bowls out, when we have national resources like Marange at our disposal? US President Barack Obama recently pledged US $73 million to Zimbabwe. If we were properly managing our diamond resources, we could earn that much in under 11 days. TheWorld Bank has pledged US $22 million – less than four days of potential diamond revenue.

According to the government’s Short Term Economic Recovery Programme, and the 2009 Revised Budget,  Zimbabwe needs at least US $1bn per year just to keep things going – that’s US $83.3 million per month. If the HRW estimate is right, getting some diamond revenue into the national purse would meet these expenses – and give Zimbabwe room to grow, save, invest and develop – not just stagger along hand-to-mouth.

Sure, Zimbabwe needs a lot of money to get back on its feet – Tsvangirai estimates US $8.5 billion. But shouldn’t our first step be to get our own house in order?

Newlands Shopping Centre in Harare used to be a fairly happening kind of place. There was a buzz, parking was hard to find, vendors were hard to side-step – healthy signs of life. These days its pulse is flickering and fading. At least 5 shops, including one of Zimbabwe’s best brand names, Bata, have closed down. The stalwart of Zimbabwean restaurants, The Sitar, now closes on Tuesdays after being renowned for non stop curry 7 days a week. Tracks, the bar/cafe that used to be pom pom full most days has been boarded up for possibly a year. The three telephone booths outside the post office are derelict. Rubbish bins are overflowing and seldom cleared out. Holes in the pavements aren’t fixed and get filled with passer-by debris.

In my office block there’s seldom power from the Zimbabwe Electricty Supply Authority (ZESA). If it wasn’t for the largesse of a major international NGO that installed a generator to service the whole building we’d all be up shit creek. Ground floor shops that used to sell something are closing. One of these shops has had a woman sitting at a desk in the middle of it looking bored out of her skull. Occasionally she sits in the front window – a living but barely breathing human mannequin. A book store has an array of what looks like 1970 Home and Garden magazines for sale; they’ve been laying on the walkway outside the front door for what seems like the last 6 months. At Alberto’s Hairdressing Salon you don’t have to make an appointment anymore. It’s clear that business is slow because often his hair washers and trainee stylists are in the chairs themselves whiling the day away with experiments in all things hair and beauty. A waiter at Libby’s restaurant pulled me aside yesterday and asked me if I had a job for his son who has a degree in engineering; anything will do was the refrain. Meanwhile a young boy who looks no more than 16 has lethargically started to sweep the steps because the two brother janitors who used to clean the place have both died in the last 8 months. Most likely from AIDS but lack of food and low wages clearly didn’t help.

In our own way we try help. We called in The Garbage Guys to try and get a business to clean up because the City of Harare can’t, or won’t. We support local shops. We contribute to funeral funds. We share information. We give out clothes. We join community initiatives to look at ways of stablising power supply.

As I write this email the security guard for our office block is walking up an down each floor ringing a bell warning us that the fuel is running out and the generator is about to be switched off.

It’s not a pretty picture is it? This is the reality on my little patch of ground and there are other far worse examples.

Morgan Tsvangirai has been spouting rhetoric rather than the truth on his recent world tour. How soon before we all start saying that he’s seriously out of touch? A bit like how we’ve been describing his small friend Mugabe for so long.

Momentum in the Constitution Making Process in Zimbabwe is building up. Last week, the Ministry of Women Affairs Gender and Community Development organised a Women’s Consultative Conference which was attended by women from various professional disciplines. The Conference sought to de-mystify the Constitutional Making Process and raise awareness on the steps the process will follow.

I found Honourable D. Mwonzora’s presentation during the Conference very useful to me. It answered a lot of questions I had about the Constitution Making Process. He explained how the process was going to flow right up to the time a referendum is tabled. Of significance is the Select Committee’s (comprises Members of parliament from ZANU PF and the two MDC formations) efforts to ensure a people driven process through Provincial Consultative Meetings through out the country. While the Provincial Consultative Meetings are a noble idea in ensuring that the process is people driven, the general public are not aware of the importance of participation and therefore may not involve themselves. Women are part of this group of people that I fear may be left out in the engagement of stakeholders in different provinces of the country. The Provincial Consultative Meetings are scheduled for 24 – 27 June 2009 and that leaves little time for awareness raising and for women in particular to organise themselves and select their representatives.

One other aspect that may not be clear to many people is the fact that contrary to what has been reported in the media, people of Zimbabwe are going to make a new constitution thus the importance of involving as many Zimbabweans as possible. People are not going to revise a draft that has been worked on by representatives from the political parties. It may be a challenge however, to get people to participate both in rural and urban Zimbabwe as most are worried about bread and butter issues whose effect is directly evident in their lives.

I am particularly interested in women’s participation as this is an opportunity for us to ensure that our social and economic rights are guaranteed in the new Constitution. For us to see change, we need to raise awareness among our female counterparts so that they understand the importance of a constitution and how it affects their lives. This period is indeed an opportunity for Zimbabweans, constitutions unlike leaders are not changed every once in a while.

Nothing could have prepared me, or, indeed I believe, Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his entourage, for the shock reception and outright rejection of his message to Zimbabwean exiles living in the United Kingdom. Like the more than 1 000 Zimbabweans who turned up at the Anglican cathedral to listen to the Prime Minister, by 11am l was already at London Bridge, frantically asking for directions to the famous cathedral, not wanting to miss the opportunity to hear Morgan speak. I saw and greeted numerous familiar faces from home, and eagerly joined a group of women who spontaneously broke into song and transformed the meeting into a rally of sorts. Although invitations to the meetings had indicated that the meeting would start promptly at 12, when the clock struck 1 with evidence that Morgan had arrived, no-one complained.

When the Prime Minister arrived people packed in the cathedral jostled to catch a glimpse of Morgan and his team, and to snap away a photo or two on their mobile phones. The Prime Minister was scheduled to address the people and then have a question – and – answer session, all in time for meeting to end at 3pm. However, just ten minutes into his prepared speech, the Prime Minister was forced to abandone his speech and the pulpit due to jeering and booing from the crowd. The shock treatment of he received was triggered by his bold declaration that the unity government had brought “peace and stability” to Zimbabwe in the last four months. He went on to say, “let me state it here boldly that Zimbabweans must come home!”

His call on Zimbabwean exiles to come home was greeted by an uproar and spontaneous chants of “Mugabe Must Go!” To his credit, the Prime Minister attempted some damage control and said, “I did not say pack your bags and come home tomorrow, but I said you must begin to think about coming home.” But the damage had already been done. He further tried to portray the unity government as a success stating matter-of-factly that schools are open, hospitals have re-opened and, again, my favourite, inflation has come down from 500 billion percent to just 3 percent. In the brief question and answer session that, was also aborted, one woman asked the Prime Minister where ordinary people are getting the foreign currency to buy goods that are supposedly now in abundance in Zimbabwe. If the meeting had not degenerated into utter chaos forcing the PM and his team to leave prematurely, I would have wanted to pose this question to the PM: ” What is happening to MDC Director-General Toendepi Shonhe – who is languishing in remand prison?”

After the shock events, together with fellow Zimbabweans in the diaspora we immediately subjected the meeting to a post mortem to try and establish why events at Southwark cathedral had been so unfortunate. A colleague blamed the PM Tsvangirai’s advisors and speech writers – ” Morgan was not properly briefed,” he reasoned.” “His team should have warned him that people are unhappy with the unity government and they do not believe that MDC is an equal partner.” Another friend ventured, “Well, what do you expect for refugees, asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers who do not wish to return to Zimbabwe? They do not want to hear anyone telling them to go home.”

For me, a more compelling explanation is one that points to a disconnect between messages by the MDC leadership and reality on the ground. It would appear to me that, if the message delivered by the PM in London is taken to reflect the thinking of the MDC leadership, then they are at serious risk of being completely out of touch with general membership and ordinary people. Perhaps to perfectly illustrate my point that the PM’s message is at odds with ordinary members in the party and views of the general public, the MDC has just published resolutions of an extra-ordinary national executive meeting of 23 June where they recommend that “the continued arrests, detentions and human rights violations be referred to the guarantors (SADC and AU)”.

It may well be true that a power-sharing government is the only game in town which should be supported. However, it does no-one any good to sweep critical issues under the carpet just to present a glossy and bright image of an otherwise white-washed tomb. The MDC may be exactly where ZANU-PF want them, doing public relations for ZANU-PF and in the process alienating traditional allies in civil society and slowly but surely chipping away at their membership base. Meanwhile, dubious convictions of MDC MPs are on the rise and the media remains muzzled.

If MDC dismisses the significance of events at Southwark cathedral believing that, after all, these people do not vote, and that the real masses are back home, then may recall the perfect shed well after the storm. There is no need to embellish and paint a rosy picture of a new Zimbabwe evidence is there for all to see that ZANU-PF is still up to its shenanigans.

Hello Zimbabwe!

Soon Kubatana will be launching an audio magazine available over mobile phones and landlines. You add – we multiply! We’d like you to join the conversation and get talking and share your views on various topics. When we launch our audio magazine we’d like to launch it with You . . . members of our very broad and diverse network. So, how about leaving us your opinion on one of the following issues:

Africans are the most subservient people on earth when faced with force, intimidation, power.
Africa, all said and done, is a place where we grovel before leaders.
- Kenyan corruption buster, John Githongo

Facebook / Sexbook
Some people use Facebook to meet sexual partners. In the age of HIV, is this a smart or reckless way of using the Internet?

National healing begins, the newspaper headlines read. But politically motivated arrests and assaults are still happening. What should Zimbabwe’s reconciliation process look like – and are we ready for it?

Be heard: get your digits dialing . . . call +263 913 444 321-4 and give us your point of view. If you leave us a compelling message we might share it with the rest of Zimbabwe so please tell us your name and where you’re from.

The lines close at 4pm Friday 26th June.

Morgan Tsvangirai was heckled off the stage at an address in the UK recently. Many people are saying thats a good thing. Slowly but surely criticism has been building about MT’s glib comments on land invasions as well as his rather too chummy embracing of the man who ruined Zimbabwe: Mugabe that is, in case anyone had any doubt.

Of course I can see why MT is urging Zimbabweans to come home and rebuild the country. We are sorely bereft of new energy and creative ideas, those of us left here have in our many and varied ways, taken a battering. Which is not to say that life in the Diaspora is a bowl of cherries with Zimbabweans working sometimes 3 jobs to keep themselves and their relatives back home afloat on remittances – also known as the Diasporan Pension Scheme.

But asking Zimbabweans to come back home is rather premature in my book. MT might be flush with optimism in his small house position as PM but in reality whilst the supermarkets might be full, the prices are high and the majority of Zimbabweans are unemployed. Schools might be open but they’re teetering on the verge of closure. The media environment is backward and repressive. The list is pretty much endless but MT seems to be ignoring the fact that on the ground, where his feet clearly are not planted, not much has changed.

But at Kubatana we get a variety of opinion of all shades and spirit and I quite liked how passionate Arkmore wrote about MT’s recent booing in the UK. He emailed us a piece entitled Backward Diasporans . . . here’s Arkmore

I was part of the group that attended Prime Ministers address at Southwark Cathedral, London, on 20 June 2009. The Diasporas were not impressive. They are still politically backward.

They viewed the Prime Minister as an opposition leader, and therefore expected him to deliver an opposition speech, which he didn’t. In fact, an MDC rally than a Prime Ministers address was envisioned. He was expected to lambast President Mugabe; denounce state institutions such as the police and the absence of the so called rule of law. In particular, they expected him to say: ‘stay here in the UK; things are still bad in Zimbabwe’. The Prime Minister said none of the above.

On the contrary, he nicely persuaded Diasporas to go home and help in rebuilding Zimbabwe.  Most do not want to hear this. They tend to scratch for negatives and ‘but’ to justify their stay. When the Prime Minister told them basic commodities are now available and schools are now open, they said: ‘but’ they are not affordable.  When he said the security situation in now almost conducive for reconstruction, they said: ‘but’ Dr Mushonga was beaten!

Violence should not be condoned, but whenever there is a transition, there are always unruly elements that oppose it. Zimbabwe, like any other country, is diverse and cannot be expected to be as peaceful as heaven. Recently, there were attacks on Romanians in Northern Ireland, but I don’t think a native Irish could claim asylum in any country because there is ‘no rule of law’ in Northern Ireland. There are situations that can be ‘part of life’ for some time, but would be swallowed by the evolutionary processes. The inconvenient truth is that sporadic waves of violence in Zimbabwe are no longer powerful enough to justify our staying in Diaspora!

Of course, some Diasporas are no longer interested in going back to Zimbabwe. Their stay – visa and asylum applications – is based on ‘violence’ in Zimbabwe. There are also psychological and social challenges.   The Diaspora wave of early 2000, forced many to sell their assets – houses, household goods and vehicles – to obtain capital for new life in the UK.  Expectations were high: well paying jobs enabling asset rebuilding back home, or even double the initial.

This has not been the case. Jobs are not easy to find here. Besides, UK is a capitalist country and what a worker gets is just slightly above subsistence.  How then do we expect someone who sold everything that he or she owned in Zimbabwe to go back empty handed? It’s just embarrassing! Even if they agree to go back, there is no life starting formula.

As the Prime Minister rightly puts it, a revolution did not take off, and the only way out of Zimbabwean crisis is through an evolutionary process, namely the GNU. This may not be easily acceptable to Diasporas mainly because they have participated in and probably read about the Zimbabwean struggle, but many did not and are not feeling and experiencing it.  It has been, and is still, a painful process, with loss of limbs and lives, which challenges us to utilise this rare opportunity.