Zimbabwean writers, poets, sportsmen and women, journalists, entrepreneurs are making Zimbabwe proud. Pity our politicians aren’t doing so as well.

Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled ‘Hitting Budapest’. The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held last night at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Hisham Matar said: “The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles.  Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language.”

NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She recently completed her MFA at Cornell University, in the US, where she is now a Truman Capote Fellow and Lecturer of English. Another of her stories, ‘Snapshots’, was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN/Studzinski Literary Award. NoViolet has recently completed a novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, and has begun work on a memoir project.

Source: Booktrade.info

The Graduation Ceremony of students who got scholarships in the US under the US Student Achievers Program (USAP) was held yesterday. This event was a true personification of Ambassadors Ray’s latest book title, ‘Where you come from matters less than where you’re going”. It is true in the sense that students are academically talented with most of them being head boys and head girls in their former schools, but face financial challenges in furthering their education.  Some have lost both parents, others are heads of their own households and three of them are physically disabled. Despite such backgrounds USAP has afforded them the opportunity to study at top US colleges and universities including Harvard. This resembles the title of the Ambassador’s book; in that one day you may be somewhere great and tell a different story altogether.

The event was graced by the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai and Ambassador Charles Ray. The PM encouraged the students to exhibit the Zimbabwean characteristics of ‘hospitality and hard work’ and to return home. In that same vein the Ambassador urged the students to return to Zimbabwe with these words, “And do return. Zimbabwe needs you and your talent, your open minds and your news ideas, to realise its potential”.

So, where are US$ coins actually accepted for retail in Zimbabwe? I find it interesting that having adopted a multi-currency system as a country – some retailers neither recognise nor accept US$ coins.  Picture this; you want to purchase a product that costs $3, 25. You hand over three US$1 notes to the teller and when you give them a quarter, they look at it, frown and say they don’t accept that but R2 (two Rand) would do instead. I mean what the bollocks?

Ever since I returned from the States, I have been carrying around a wallet full of what I realise now are essentially useless coins here. I just don’t get it. Yesterday evening while making a few purchases at the Bridge Spar, I tried my luck again with the coins. The till attendant looked at me squarely and said it was after 6pm therefore she could no longer accept US$ coins. I demanded an explanation as to what it being after 6pm had anything to do with what choice of coins was acceptable. The till attendant mumbled something along the lines of the shop being unable to give them to other customers as change or ‘cash’ them, whatever that means. I drew surprised stares when I thought aloud that that was one of the stupidest things I had heard all week.

It is bad enough we are not using our own currency, but to have selective use of the foreign currency that we do use is an unnecessary inconvenience. I think it is high time for whoever’s job it is to start working towards a more sustainable currency solution. I mean for how long can a country live under all sorts of speculation. The Short Term Emergency Recovery Programme (STERP) stipulates that the temporary use of multiple currencies terminates in 2012. Then what next? In last week’s Standard, the IMF was quoted in an article as having cautioned the Zimbabwean government against re-introducing the Zim-dollar. They said the country should rather extend the life span of the multi-currency system and also continue using the US dollar till 2014. The IMF Article IV report on Zimbabwe stipulates that the inclusive government has failed to put in place adequate conditions for the re-introduction of the Zim-dollar.

Last year there were speculations that the government attempted to join the Rand Monetary Union (currently consisting of Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho and South Africa). Big wonder what happened to that idea. The media reported that Cabinet for the most part feared rejection. Now I hear old Zimbabwean coins are being purchased for long cash and selling like hot cakes on the streets. I wonder if like in 2008 the RBZ governor might just once again resuscitate old currency. I sure am holding on to whatever original Zimbabwean notes and coins I still have, all together with my currently useless US$ coins.

This year the World Bank forecasted that the economic growth rate in Sub-Saharan Africa would reach 5.3%.  Adding to this positive projection, the Economist published an analysis conducted over the ten years up to 2010, which states that six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies were in Sub-Saharan Africa. For the period 2011-2015, the analysis forecasts that Mozambique, Tanzania, Congo and Zambia will be ranked in the top ten fastest growing economies in the world.

Zimbabwe stands a very real and frightening chance of being left behind by her neighbours. While the core philosophy of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment is to restructure our economy and restore sovereignty to the previously disenfranchised majority, the proposed regulations fall far short of this aspiration. The Research and Advocacy Unit recently released a report titled “Racketeering by Regulation”. Noting political and selfish interests behind the regulations, the report says:

… simplistic interpretations placed upon the laws by the press have fed into the notion that white owned and foreign businesses will soon be dispensed as largesse to the ZANU PF faithful.

… Over the Regulations hover the spectre of the land invasions and the tacit threat that, if a business has not suggested a means by which 51% of the business can be transferred to indigenous Zimbabweans, the business will simply be seized in the same manner that land was taken from white farmers.

The regulations in no way make provision for the key ingredients required for creating wealth and prosperity for all Zimbabweans, being more concerned with expropriating existing capital. Myopically, Mr. Kasukwere failed to craft regulations that create a policy environment conducive to the creation of new wealth, and most especially encouraging entrepreneurship by young indigenous Zimbabweans. RAU’s report is aptly titled. The regulations create an environment that can only foster greater corruption and patronage by those in power.

Our Dear Leader and his government need put in place the right policies and provide the right environment and incentives for capital and businesses to come in, and for the creation of new business by indigenous persons. Government cannot punish foreign investors that already have a presence in the country with one hand, and beg for new investment with the other. It is contradictory and self-defeating. The survival of ZANU PF itself beyond the next election also depends on the success of their present and future policies regarding indigenization and investment. It is an oft-repeated fact that Zimbabwe has a significantly young population that is largely unemployed. It is this section of our society that is eagerly awaiting the disbursement of riches from foreign owned firms.  Only when tangible solutions to poverty and unemployment are delivered will the Third Chimurenga become more than another convenient political rallying point.

We got a lot of response to our featured article last week . . . an article from the Africa Report about Petina Gappah’s efforts to rehabilitate the Harare City Library. You can read it here.

Below, we share with you the opinion of a Kubatana subscriber. He hopes that the library will be re-stocked with relevant books.

Your efforts of trying to resuscitate the functional state of City of Harare library are noble, but be careful not to fall into the ‘ZimPost Office’ fate. The fate of the obsolete. To be relevant your effort should be focused on creating e-libraries as opposed to re-stocking hard copies mostly from donated sources. My experience of these donations is that they are garbage and do not solve our predicament but instead trap the brains of the youth in mental slavery. That kind of reading stuff has created mass exodus of supposed professionals to the Diaspora resulting in Africa becoming a training ground. Good brains are sapped from Africa. The pride reflected by the style of your writing displays that of a lost soul of Africa; there is no pride of the literature that creates the spirit of pan-africanism in your documentation.

Yes as much as there is a need for the library restocking this so called Victorian literature can not equip the African child to think like an African and to develop in a sustainable African way. We need library books that build a strong base for an African child to be conscious of her/his responsibility to build Africa, not to run away from Africa. Library books that liberate an African child from the shackles of euro-centricism to afro-centricism, these books cannot be provided by charity organisations.

Poverty for Africa is mainly caused by wrong literacy. For example you talk of high literacy levels in Zimbabwe that is at 98 percent in Africa, but what is the impact of it? Zero. Even though Zimbabwe is naturally very rich, in our minds we see deep poverty, we run away the moment we get opportunity together with our families. Who will build Africa?

In short your effort is remarkable. I am just expressing my anger in the current and previous Harare City Library (the so called Victoria memorial) for its disservice done to our African child by providing through the literature content, wrong literacy.

Hope your efforts will transform the outlook of the Harare City Library through proper stocking of relevant books such as books authored by Matigare, Chinua Achebe, Walter Rodney, Oswald de Rivero, Samir Amin, Dambudzo, Babu just to mention a few. These books will assist to restore African identity and dignity and place us on the correct roadmap for development.

- Panganai

Just been going through online comments on the death of former Zambian President Chiluba who “died on the early hours of Saturday [18 June] morning.” The comments are from Zambians themselves and you get the sense that politicians do indeed change how the ordinary African folk – despite all the pretence – approach the concept of ubuntu.

Death, we are always told, is a realm where the living remain “too careful” about what they mouth concerning the dead, and it is all somewhat attached to our umbilical origins that “this is not how our forefathers taught us.” If anything candid at all is ever said, it is within private exchanges in pubs, diplomatic circles etc. But when you get it in writing despite being anonymous, you cannot have it any better than that.  It is interesting therefore that this is one of those few interpretations of existence where African Traditional Religion seeks to have common ground with Christian mythology despite criticism of the early missionaries that they saw all things African as inherently demonic. But who cares, we all live and die! Still, hey, you don’t speak ill of the dead, it just doesn’t jell, we all apparently know that: Ask Cont Mhlanga who tried it at the death of Mackey Tickeys but was soon eating his words! Yet over the years, the death of some political gladiators has been met by ordinary folks jettisoning these ages old strictures and speaking their mind about the dead chap.

So it has been with the Zambians concerning the death of the man once celebrated for representing the people’s pro-democracy movement from that anti-colonialist/nationalist time-warp to 21st century popular democracy. It is interesting in itself to note that shift from the traditional form of reader opinions censored in “family newspapers” [way before the advent of online press] has found unfettered expression online, and no doubt no “independent” newspaper would dare publish sentiments that have emerged in the aftermath of Chiluba’s death. Yet it provides many lessons and reminders about other presidents concerning how their exit from this wretched earth will be recalled in their death. For a peek of what Zambians had to say, you can check it out here. You will laugh, you will cry, you will understand the people’s “grief.”

For example one wrote: “Chiluba was a leader, good at first but later treated us like idiots. He became master dilibler, crooke and everything that caused pain to us. Grabbed somebodys wife e.t.c. Thts wht we shud be saying after death no one shud become a saint after death. We need to be real. MHSRP”.

Another added: “Let him meet his maker. he had the opportunity to take this country to great height but he became greedy. he allowed his love of women and money get the better of him whilst pretending to be a born again christian. that is the worst hypocrisy! we will now see all those that he gave money queuing up to sing praises…at the end of the day he was a thief of the Zambian treasury, a husband to Regina, a pain to Vera, a father to Vera;s children and a few others we wont mention. He has gone to meet people like Paul Tembo, Ronald Penza, wezi kaunda, Ngenda the lawyer who all died mysteriously, Levy mwanawasa…his day of judgement is here. jah rule!”

And for us Zimbabweans we just have to throw-back to a week ago for Tekere obituaries, and have to wonder what will be said about his remaining erstwhile comrades. Bad governance, kleptomania, human rights abuses have all bred traits among “ordinary” Africans that have inverted ages-old traditions that orbit around seeking to understand and coming to terms with death – especially that of politicians. One only has to recall how the death of Laurent Kabila was greeted in the streets of this country and the reaction of a chap named Chenjerai Hunzvi before he knew of course that his own end was nigh.

Sad indeed.