A party meeting in informal settings. A club of some sorts. The party comrades are drinking whisky, except the party president, who is drinking fruit juice.

WALTER: It was humiliating comrades. I had to sit outside whilst that boy Tsvangson held meetings with all those western diplomats. Damn the imperialists. Who do they think they are?

BOB: Look at the big picture comrade: Isn’t Tsvangson busy telling the British that I am indispensible and irreplaceable. A few months ago he was telling the whole world that the country could only be revived if I vacated office. That boy is so spineless it is hilarious.

PATRICK: But shefu, they are still campaigning for the removal of Gideon from office that could seriously harm our financial standing. Those people campaigning for the removal of Gono don’t realize that whatever he did was under our instruction and calling for his removal is tantamount to calling for our own removal…

BOB: They would love to see us go comrade, they would very much love that. But with Tsvangson doing all the PR work and rigorous fundraising. We are very much safe in our positions. I wonder what the boy will say come elections time: MUGABE MUST GO.

JOSEPH: At in the meantime, we don’t have to pretend we give a damn about the land. We might not even have to cry crocodile tears over mass graves in Chimoi.

They all laugh long and hard.

To be continued . . .

Despite indications to the contrary by MDC in government, on the 17th of June 2009 ZANU – PF politburo in Harare issued a communiqué endorsing the so-called Kariba Draft Constitution as the basis of consultations on the new constitution-making process.  The position taken by ZANU-PF is the clearest indication yet, that the former ruling party has no intention of embracing a genuine people-driven process and that it already has set positions on what it wants to see in a new constitution, that is, views expressed in the Kariba Draft, a document crafted by a few male lawyers on a luxury cruise boat on lake Kariba.

ZANU-PF has shown its true colours, and, in so doing, has vindicated Dr Lovemore Madhuku – Chairperson of the NCA – who repeatedly warned that government cannot and must not be trusted with constitution-making. Currently Zimbabwe’s executive wields too much power to all for a genuinely people-driven and democratic process to take place; much of the power, de facto, is vested in the office of the president of Zimbabwe – Robert Mugabe. As a matter of fact, one of the catalysts and driving factors for the initial call for constitutional reform was the need to strip the executive of the monstrous powers it currently enjoys.

Sadly, many did not heed Madhuku’s call, perhaps because the MDC had endorsed a parliament-led constitution-making process and had assured the nation (through constitutional affairs minister Eric Matinenga) that the parliamentary process would be genuinely as inclusive as possible and would not use the Kariba draft as a basis for consultations. I understand even donors abandoned the NCA and shifted their support to the government process. Now, even before the process gets underway, ZANU-PF, first, seeks to postpone consultations, and now, decides as politburo, that a particular draft must be used as a basis for all consultations. I wonder what MDC’s response to this will be.

But clearly, these developments underline the need to approach this new government with great caution and not to rush to abandon civil society initiatives simply because MDC is now “in government.” Rather, the international community should continue to support and strengthen civil society, especially local organizations like the NCA, so that they continue to keep government in check and to be the conscience of society. With the MDC in government Zimbabwe desperately needs stronger and not weaker civil society organizations.

ZANU-PF and MDC should not proceed with consultations on the new constitution without taking all major stakeholders on board. If government pushes ahead with its version of consultations based on a Kariba draft that is widely rejected as illegitimate there is a real risk that we will end up with the same result constitutional referendum result of February 2000; an outright rejection of government arrogance by the people and a resounding no vote to rubberstamping undemocratic government initiatives.  We should learn from the past so that we do not have to wait for constitutional referendum results to get the message which is already loud and clear.

With some in the MDC (collectively) desperately defending and sanitizing disastrous ZANU-PF policies and practices, the need for an independent voice linked to ordinary people on the ground becomes even more urgent. What with utterances like ones made by Arthur Mutambara to ZBC in response to a fair and balanced assessment of the human rights situation in Zimbabwe by Amnesty (that the human rights situation remains precarious and reforms progress has been woefully slow) that “Amnesty International is hallucinating! And has no moral authority. ”

Well, need we closely examine Mutambara’s own moral authority to speak for the people of Zimbabwe as their Deputy Prime Minister? Need we recall how he lost a parliamentary seat to a little known MDC activist in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza? Is it hallucination to observe that WOZA women are being beaten and brutalized by police? Is it hallucination to note that MDC Director-General, Toendepi Shonhe is languishing at remand prison on trumped up and ludicrous perjury charges? Is it hallucination when four journalists are denied their fundamental right to cover a COMESA summit in open defiance to a directive by the Prime Minister and a valid High Court order?

Evidence is there for anyone to see that all is not well in the new power-sharing government. Why should anyone pretend otherwise? All these leaders want to hear is that Zimbabwe’s inflation came down from 500 billion percent to 1 percent in a day, a pyrrhic victory if you ask me, because it means little to mothers in Budiriro who no access to US$ government international trips travel and subsistence allowances. Suddenly, literally in the twinkling of an eye, the truth and call for justice, which for long defined MDC’s struggle, has become quite inconvenient. Demands to end impunity are inopportune, they should be swept under the carpet lest they upset His Excellency and scuttle the deal, which we are constantly reminded is the only game in town. We are being short-changed by our leaders, we deserve better.

The mistake that we Zimbabweans risk making is to assume that, since the language of democracy, human rights and good governance was on the lips of our leaders yesterday, then those values remain forever embedded in their hearts, making it virtually impossible for leaders with the surname Democratic Change, to be undemocratic. Nothing can be further from the truth. Words are cheap; deployed to win support when it is convenient, but soon abandoned and forgotten. That, I am told, is the game of politics.  On that note I end by quoting from a speech made by Robert Mugabe to the people of Zimbabwe on 17 April, 1980, on the eve of our independence “As we become a new people we are called to be constructive, progressive and forever forward looking, for we cannot afford to be men of yesterday, backward- looking, retrogressive and destructive…Our new mind must have a new vision and our new hearts new love that spurns hate, and a new spirit that must unite and not divide.” I rest my case.

I’ve been watching the unfolding events in Iran with quite some envy. The protests following what is regarded as a stolen election are impressive, more so because they’re taking place in Iran which is consistently described as repressive. Footage being shown on major news channels show what riot police are like the world over – vicious and uncompromising. Yet, 6 days on, protesters are still going out onto the streets making their displeasure known and felt, and forcing the Iranian authorities to display their repression in all its ugliness. Really, we Zimbabweans have no excuse for our apathy and our victim mentality. The lament that we’d be shot or beaten if we protested over our (many) stolen elections has become a pitying whine. People have been and are protesting repression all over the world yet we cower in our littler corner of the world. If we’d behaved differently; if we had taken the courage that sustains us in our homes whilst we “make a plan” quietly suffering the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe, and used that courage to spill out onto the streets in the vast numbers that despise the small dictator then we’d be experiencing something quite different from this odious, half baked political arrangement that we currently have. As John Githongo, the Kenyan corruption buster recently said . . .

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.

Over the course of two years I attended nearly one hundred events in Harare where I intently listened to the incisive words of poets, fiction writers, spoken word artists, musicians­artistes if you like.  My ears and my mind soaked in poignant ideas thoughtfully assembled into analysis.  I felt the ways these engagements facilitate deeper understandings of both the beauty and pain which is Zimbabwe.

There was also something else that caught my ear.  Once performers have microphone in hand, so often they are all about their sisters and brothers.   And in all the possible combinations.  Women thank their brothers for supporting them.  Men praise the work of their sisters.  To express gratitude in these ways perhaps signals a sense of camaraderie, belief in the power of collective voice.   In fact, comrade was used almost as often as brother or sister.    My comrade, my sister, your words make me think.

Sister and brother usage also extends beyond opening salutations.  Often a piece is dedicated to a brother or a sister.   This is for my brothers out there in the diaspora who want to come home.  This is for my sisters struggling to get by.   The dedication again speaks to a connection.  To say I understand what challenges you face, my brother, my sister.  And I want my work, and what I say, to be part of what helps to overcome these challenges together.

Proceeding into the work, sisters and brothers are again everywhere.  Words trace and piece together what brothers and sisters experience.  Hardships, aspirations, successes, and a life course bound up in so much.  To lay bare the unfolding stories, ideas and individual experiences are made known by presenting sisters and brothers in dialogue.  Sometimes the conversation is to question the actions of another.  My comrade, my brother, I am a sister who sees the hypocrisy of your ways.  Other times, the conversation is to reflect and inform.  My comrade, my sister, I am a brother seeking freedom.

What I find interesting is that these are references to brothers and sisters who are simultaneously factual and fictional.  Or more there’s a play with words leading to emotive loss being expressed.  The sister and brother and the hardships they experience exist (fact).   Space free of suffering for the brother and sister does not (fiction).    It might seem that I’m reading too deeply into common speak, use of brother and sister.  I mean is there anything significant in how often people say:  Hey, how are you?  But no.  I think there is something much deeper going on with all the factual and fictional brothers and sisters floating around in the intellectual and creative airwaves.

I was telling someone the other day that collective organizing is untenable in Zimbabwe.  So what choice is there, but the individual.  To be one.  And to focus on them.  A brother.  A sister.  Each one a factual marker of the challenges so many individual people actually experience.   Each one continually thanked, referenced, and written about.   Each one central to expressing the hope that facts become fictions.   A yearning for factual markers to not represent spaces of suffering.  Spaces which today are largely fictional.   It’s a factual/fictional play on words expressing an extreme sense of loss of what used to be.  A time where one didn’t have to speak of their sisters and brothers in pain.  A time where the collective had more voice and more power. An attempt to commandeer words (brother and sister) in an effort to turn reality around.  To hope for and make suffering, not factual, but rather fictional.

Ok maybe this sounds like a wacky line of thought.  But listen carefully, not only to how much brother and sister are used, but also consider what emotions are going on when used.

Recently I was at a function in London when, upon introducing myself as a Zimbabwean, someone ventured to ask me a question I have become very much accustomed to now, ‘so, what has changed with this new government?’ In response I explained that as far as I was concerned, there had been no fundamental change in political direction and that the levers of power remain firmly in the hands of those who wielded power in 1980 and as such, we are not really in a new political dispensation as yet. The person who asked the question was clearly unimpressed, he pointed out that in fact he had information that ‘a lot of positive changes’ had taken place in Zimbabwe and cited the so-called miracle reduction of inflation from 231 million percent to just 1.1 percent as an example some of the positive changes that are not being highlighted. He then noted that Zimbabweans in the Diaspora and international media have a tendency of reporting only negative news on Zimbabwe because, he quipped, ‘good news does not sell.’ It appears this is a generally held view among some international observers which I wish to address in greater detail here.

Well, I do not see how my grandmother in Bikita would take comfort in the miraculous reduction in inflation because she still does not have access to foreign currency. The switch-over to use of foreign currency which cured inflation in one stroke may be significant to political elites but certainly makes little difference to ordinary men and women in Zimbabwe who continue to suffer. It is like focusing on improving working conditions for those who are employed when 94 percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed!

Personally, and I am confident many other Zimbabweans share this view, I desperately desire to hold great hope and optimism that Zimbabwe’s future is bright and that political change has come. I want to be able to proudly tell the world that Zimbabwe is open and ready for business. I want to tell anyone who cares to listen that my country is a beacon of democracy and persuade investors to rush to Zimbabwe and do business with my countrymen. It is my wish that l should tell the world that violence, human rights abuses, police brutality and repression belong to the past. Unfortunately, sadly, that would be untrue; I would be telling blatant lies if I were to lay claim to such things. Creating false hope and false images of change does not bring the desired change to Zimbabwe.

It appears to be that the desire to be ‘positive’ about Zimbabwe and project a positive image of Zimbabwe may have led some of our erstwhile colleagues who now occupy high political offices to massage the truth and polish the rough edges of reality in their presentation of the situation in Zimbabwe. All of a sudden, themselves victims a compromised and corrupt court system, because they are now part of government, they believe there is rule of law and that their colleagues who face various politically motivated charges must face trial by ‘impartial courts.’ One minister from the smaller MDC faction, when asked why farm violent farm invasions were continuing unabated responded, ‘government is broke, we do not have financial resources to deploy police to stop the invasions.’ Was this not precisely the same political excuse given by the police in 2000 when farm invasions began?

Clearly, but for reasons as yet unclear to me, many former advocates of rule of law and democracy who are now in government have become shameless liars quite ready and comfortable to sing from the same hymn book with those who once persecuted them.

Being frank and truthful about the minute changes that have taken place in Zimbabwe does not make one a pessimist. My great hope and optimism for Zimbabwe lies in the hope that there are many who will realize that the struggle for democracy and good governance does not end when one gets a seat at the high table; that is precisely when the struggle begins. Only the truth will set our leaders free, and, in the same vein, set us all free.

I recently discovered that I needed about US$400 to have my name changed to MGCINI NYONI, the name my father gave me. My father disappeared in the early eighties during the Gukurahundi madness. I was only about three or so. Along with thousands other Ndebele people he was hunted down by the notorious Korean trained fifth brigade. He was not a dissident like other thousands of people lying in mass graves somewhere. In some cases bellies of pregnant women were slit open by sadistic soldiers. Armored vehicles ran over the hands of school teachers as they lay on the ground. Entire villages were shot and killed, their homesteads burnt down because they did not know were the dissidents were. After the disappearance of my father, mother remarried and we assumed the surname of our stepfather. I know she meant well, may her soul rest in peace (we buried her mid last year). Thanks to Mugabe, I’m now an orphan. My family will have to go hungry for several months for me to be able to afford changing my name. Shouldn’t Mugabe pay for it and compensate me for the disadvantages I grew up with because I did not have a father who had been killed by forces sent by Mugabe to do some ethnic cleansing. His crime was belonging to the Ndebele tribe.