Zimbabwe, Africa and the rest of the World’s marginalised population are set to benefit from a great initiative launched by the United Nations which is meant to connect poor citizens to the Internet by 2015.

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So, they are at it again, the capitalist n*ggers [apologies to Chika Onyeani, author of the book by the same name], wearing black empowerment caps but having nefarious self-aggrandising hearts. Someone Tweeted the other day about how Robert Mugabe inspired the spirit of hard work in Zimbabwe, but the twit neglected to mention it is economic mismanagement that inspired the so-called hard work that has earned and turned many into veritable entrepreneurs. We all know that there is nothing like “hard work pays” in Zimbabwe, you just have to listen to the stories of the few men and women still in formal employment who have locked up managers, beaten up company executives because of the unpaid hard work they put in but at the end of the month take mouthfuls home empty promises. It is no wonder then that when you talk to anyone, virtually all poor Zimbabweans have dreams about waking up in the morning with stupendous wealth, and this is writ large when you follow the dogfight emerging from the black empowerment band wagon. Argghh, the pomposity with which some of these capitalist n*ggers speaketh.

You just have to recall the visit to the United States a few months ago where the empowerment crusade was taken, and you could see this former journalist dude speaking as if he had all the answers about anything, yet today a firebrand jailbird is giving it to him claiming missing dosh, thanks to these unsanctioned foreign jaunts. It was US acting President Ronald Regean [he was a former actor you see] whose wisecracks have become stuff of legend who quipped, “Hard work never killed anyone, but I figure, why take the chance.” Exactly. No hard work, just claim your economic birth right as a black Zimbabwean and you got it made. It will be recalled the “deposed” AAG president said it loud and proud that Zimbabwean folks gotta strike now for the indigenisation drive will not last forever, “don’t say we will come home to invest when thing are all right, the time is now,” the Muezzin bellowed from the roof tops. Everyone has come to know all claims to black empowerment in the name of spread wealth to the poor is nothing but a smokescreen for government officials and their associates to strip the land of its wealth. You just have to look at the community trusts created in mining areas that have been riddled with controversy as government officials fall over each other depriving toothless grannies of at their right to tea with milk and bread with butter in their twilight years. And what do you know, these are the same people who still insist it is these same grannies who will vote for them in the next election! Upfumi kuvhanu, perhaps the worst misnomer to emerge in Zimbabwe’s post-independence discourse.

There is nothing worse than a leader without backbone. If Mr Tsvangirai had hoped to go down in the annals of history as a defender of freedom, protector of human rights or as his books and publishers seem to indicate: that guy who finally defeated the Moo-gah-bee regime, he should aspire to lesser goals.

BBC NEWS Africa reports: Zimbabwe’s PM Morgan Tsvangirai in gay rights U-turn. Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has reversed his position on gay rights, saying he now wants them enshrined in a new constitution. He told the BBC that gay rights were a “human right” that conservative Zimbabweans should respect.

Yet last year the very same PM of Zimbabwe, who has been described ‘as a courageous and indefatigable symbol of resistance in the face of brutal repression’ declared that he agreed with Our Dear Leader’s position on the issue, and would not support the rights of LGBTI persons being enshrined in the Constitution.

What kind of leader completely changes position on something so crucial to the lives of thousands of Zimbabweans as their right to practice their sexuality as they see fit?

There is nothing courageous about finally being a part of government and doing nothing to change the laws, then worse, joining the other side in persecuting that minority. And there is nothing admirable about using the pain and suffering of people who have been persecuted by the government that is supposed to protect them to pander to Western media.

Read the GALZ statement here

Sometimes something touches you so deeply that finding the words to express that experience is impossible. That’s how I feel about Poetry Africa at Book Café. I would like to write about the defiance in Xapa’s performance of HIStory, the beauty of TJ Dema’s articulation of womanhood, or even the happiness we in the audience felt as Didier Awadi performed in French because of the joy we could plainly see in his face. I don’t think my words would be adequate. So I’m going to share Harare, whose performance by Chris Abani moved me to tears.

harare
chris abani

his thoughts shed tears for what his people
have lost
Chirikure Chirikure

Downtown Harare. Pavements and nice trim
islands feel like the white Africa it used to be.
Its fading beauty arrested in the late seventies
feels like Lagos in the fade of colonialism.
–
But Yvonne says: Butterflies are burning.
Here.
This is kwela.
–
In the Quill Club, black journalists hold court,
say, Bob uses this land as his
private safari. The kudus are
nearly extinct. They play pool, chafing
against the government. We could be in
The Kings Head in Finsbury Park; a cold
London night. And the locals complaining
over warm pints about the native problem.
–
The still young woman smoking
a pipe against the wall of the museum
was once a guerrilla. Says, The men here fear me.
She knows all about killing.
Also about blowing smoke rings.

This is kwela.
–
In a market adjacent the poorest township
I finger useless trinkets, displaced as any tourist.
All the while ogling valuable-in-the-West
weathered barbershops signs
that I am too afraid to ask for.
–
Everywhere people wear cosmopolitan selves
but tired, like jaded jazz singers reconciled to loss.
Hats are perched at that jaunty angle that makes you
think that all washed-out things, like Cuba, are cooler
than they are. Is this kitsch?
–
And everyone says: The trouble with Bob is…
And this is kwela.
–
In the Book Cafè, a vibrant subculture:
Art, music, and poetry are alive and well.
Rich whites slum with African: for a moment
we all believe it is possible. This. Here. Now.
–
A Rasta in Bata shoes does the twist
to a Beach Boys tune played by
a balding white man in a night club.
This is kwela.
–
The older white farmer in the five-star hotel
still calls this country Rhodesia.
Says, No offense, but you bloody Africans
can’t run anything right.
I have him removed.
–
It was not always so,
and still I have questions.
Yes. Yes. Even this
is kwela.

Not that we care anymore, since it seems he was killed in Sirte, 20 October 2011.

But for a while, (I have just been for a 6 weeks holiday) Zimbabwe was top of the list for him to flee to. Like the tyrant Mengistu before (who I think still lives in my Ward)!

However, in order to be safe, Gaddafi would have to know he was not jumping into the fire (from the frying pan). He would not want to do a Charles Taylor – fleeing his war crimes and taking refuge in Nigeria, which country promised him safety for the rest of his life. But then, two years later, bundled him off to the Hague, where he now sits in prison (although I assume it is better than being hauled from a concrete pipe, beaten and then shot to death).

So why didn’t Gaddafi snivel into Zimbabwe? He had the money, the local contact, bunkers to use?

He did not come here, or attempt to, because, (like all tyrants) he needed to avoid democracy. And he can see that democracy is coming back to Zimbabwe. And even the local tyrants are going to suffer from it in the next two years.

Miracle Missions Trust, a non-profit organisation working on waste management in Zimbabwe is determined to make Harare look better. Over the past months, they have been mobilizing volunteers from different communities, and the Harare city Council for massive clean up campaigns around the city. Last Friday they were in Chisipite busy at work.