In Africa, a woman writer is a revolutionary. In writing, the woman writer abdicates the role of being the silent spectator and dares to speak.

In patriarchal Africa, a woman speaking up or speaking at all is a revolutionary, going against the grain, intruding into the space otherwise reserved for her male counterparts – the space to define reality, to critique what is, to celebrate or to denigrate, to demand an audience where one would otherwise be denied.

For every woman who writes, presumes that she has an audience and that in itself – is a radical idea. A woman writer presumes that what she has to say is important, that her view and her voice matters and in writing she claims this space – the space to both speak and to be heard.

So when I write, who is going to shut me up?

The act of writing requires audacity, tenacity and above all, a commitment to one’s work, passion and destination.

To many; writing is an end in itself but to me, writing is a tool, a weapon I wield in a world that does not ordinarily afford women a voice. So of necessity, my writing is mostly protest.

In fact, I believe that my work is more political than it is artistic. It is political in the sense that it challenges the status quo. It is political in the sense that it interrogates social stratification.

It is political in the sense that it examines the power relations that obtain within society – relations that are largely determined by who has resources and who lacks them.

It is political in the sense that it scrutinizes who has choices and who has none, who has options and who has none, who has a voice and who is denied one.

So I write to protest. I write to disagree.

I write to simply state that I think otherwise. I write to flip to the other side of the coin.

In my writing I identify myself as a feminist. I do not make apologies for it. Because feminism as an ideological position reaffirming what I identify with – the pursuit for social justice for women in a world where patriarchy legitimizes the conditions of our subjugation.

When I left work at 2pm on Friday I carried some work home with me. You see, l foolishly intended to do some work over the weekend. Foolishly, because like most Zimbabweans, l live with the reality of load shedding. Some have it worse than others. Like most Zimbabweans, the electricity goes when it goes and comes when it comes. According to the ZESA schedule, I was not supposed to have load shedding over the weekend, but at noon on Friday, it was lights out in my neck of the woods. It remained lights out until Saturday at about 3 pm. We had electricity all of 30-40 mins before it was lights out again, throughout the rest of the day and into night. Sunday morning came and went with no electricity. It only came back at about 3pm on Sunday. Needless to say, I could do no work; I was busy fretting about the putrefying veges and leftovers in my fridge.

I have relatives living in peri-urban Gweru. This used to be a thriving farming community before the farmers were “liberated” of their farms. These farmers would deliver tank loads of fresh milk to Dairibord, among other produce. Now of course that doesn’t happen anymore. The merry (in a manner of speaking) band of stragglers who resettled on some of these farms struggle to produce enough maize to feed themselves from one season to the next. Of course, the region is not a good maize growing region. But that’s another story. The story is that for the few remaining dairy farmers, the power outages have really hit them hard. On a typical day, it’s lights out at 5.30 and back in the evening or as late as 10 pm. How is anyone expected to maintain any level of productivity when you don’t have electricity for the main and productive part of the day? Think of the wheat farmers who cannot irrigate their winter wheat crop because there is no power. To think this is a story that is being repeated even as our long comatose manufacturing industry tries to sputter to life. It is being repeated in hundreds of thousands of homes where young people are trying hard to study for their “O” and “A” Level exams. It is being repeated in the hospital wards, labs and theatres where doctors and nurses are failing to give patients proper care. I would imagine the story is the same in the mining industry. As for business, you would be well advised to have your office in the CBD. Go 2 km out of the CBD and you are fair game for power cuts. It seems ZESA is determined to kill off what few businesses remain viable after the last ten years of madness in Zimbabwe.

What I am not hearing in all this talk of power (the political kind) is any talk of an energy plan. The truth of the matter is that the sub region is heading for a power crisis (of the electrical kind!). I hope for all our sakes, someone is alive to this reality or else we are doomed to be a nation of noisy, air polluting generators. City of Harare it would seem, has woken up and smelt the er…sunshine. They have started installing solar traffic lights. So how about streets lights to stop the muggings?

And who says, we should only have one power utility company in Zimbabwe?

On Zimbabwe’s Heroes’ Day two weeks ago, I had the great embarrassment to be among some South African friends. As the news on SABC – South Africa’s national broadcaster – came on with a report on the event, everyone in the TV room hushed down and turned up the volume. Anyone who was still talking was given a glowering eye which meant, “Shut up!”

And so the report came on. And there he was – our 86-year-old president – telling everyone in the west to go to hell in a speech delivered at the hallowed Heroes’ Acre where all the ‘patriotic’ sons and daughters of the soil are laid to rest. There was even a shot of a few ardent supporters holding up a banner that read, “To hell, hell, hell, hell!”

I cringed.

My South African friends laughed.

And then the sadness came over me.

Zimbabwe is the joke of southern Africa – if not even the world! People everywhere tune up the volume on their televisions and radios to listen to the rantings of a man so uniquely obsessed with Britain and the US that it makes for what I can only describe as verbal masturbation. After all, he did once tell Tony Blair to keep his England while he kept his Zimbabwe!

Now, the reason I am writing about this all is because a good friend of mine, Delta Milayo Ndou, recently posted a quite fascinating commentary on her blog about the role that Zimbabwe’s youth has to play in rebuilding our woeful democracy.

Because, so often, Zimbabwe’s young people are excluded from discourse around reform, we remain clueless and disinterested. We flock to other nations with better infrastructure and opportunities for self-actualisation, thereby leaving our own nation barren and desolate. I remember quite vividly a television jingle – shot around 2003 when the land reform was still in its strength – that showed a group of young people in a twin cab  dancing and singing about their future being “this land of ours, our Zimbabwe”. I was 19 years old then and believe me, no amount of propaganda could have ever made me interested in picking up a hoe and planting anything!

So as Delta questions, how can we ensure that Zimbabwe’s youth indentify with this nation’s future?

Well, since I began with the example of Heroes’ Day, let me continue with it. For as long as I can remember, Heroes’ Day has always been an event about honouring people who died in the liberation struggle; about guts and gore and guns and corpses.

Heroes Day has never been about ordinary people. Instead, it’s almost always been a guilt trip with people being made to feel like they should be eternally grateful because the ‘freedom’ that they now enjoy is founded upon the death of someone who heeded the liberation maxim that stated Tora pfuti uzvitonge (Take a gun and rule yourself).

Now, that was more than 30 years ago. And appreciative we are. But progressive we also are. When a hazy picture of some liberation hero competes with the hazy idea of success for a young person, trust me that the latter will win out.

You can’t keep Zimbabwe’s youth interested through guilt and propaganda that doesn’t speak to any of their aspirations! It will not work.

Why, I ask, is the definition of a hero so narrowly defined anyway? Should one have died for their nation to be defined as such? Should one get the 21 gun salute to simply qualify?

Heroes abound among us – living and dead. My heroes include people like Oliver Mutukudzi who have put Zimbabwe’s music on the global map; Haru Mutasa who has shown other young black female Zimbabwean journalists that they can make it onto the international media platform; sporting legends like Kirsty Coventry, Peter Ndlovu and Benjani Mwaruwaru who have dazzled the world – all the while making us proud to say “Vana vedu ivavo!” (Those are our children!)

Other heroes are entrepreneurs like Strive Masiyiwa, Nigel Chinakire and the late Peter Pamire who have all shown that age should never be a deterrent to being financially successful and prosperous.

But Heroes’ Day doesn’t appreciate that. Its symbolism is too deeply entrenched in war and victory and what ZANU PF has done for Zimbabwe.

It is too much engrossed in the past to resonate with our youth who are flooding out of Zimbabwe’s border posts because of their disenchantment and disillusionment with the way this amazing nation called Zimbabwe is treating them, as well as everyone else.

Thirty years is a very long time to continue to laud past efforts.

And don’t get me wrong – the British and Americans still remember their war heroes too. But they also provide space for emerging leaders in different fields – look at the way living legends get knighted by the Queen of England or how getting a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is such a prestigious thing for Americans.

Do we have anything similar? Do we have well-recognised national accolades or awards that are instantly recognisable?

Of course not. If your remains aren’t interred into the Heroes’ Acre, you just aren’t really a hero of any kind.

New heroes have been born since 1980. And while we remember the old, let’s also celebrate the current ones.

If we don’t get Zimbabwe’s young people excited about Zimbabwe, then who will rebuild our stumbling nation?

The solution I offer is to do as a popular South African song instructs – make the circle bigger. Only by applauding the good works of heroes that our young people can actually identify with can we ever hope to get them interested in building on the legacies of so many great Zimbabweans.

I am not saying do away completely with the old. Absolutely not! I am just saying we need to increase the options – across all sectors and within all fields.

Zimbabwe urgently needs a redefinition of what a hero is. And for me – and many others – the real heroes of my time aren’t the people who lived and died before I was born. They are the people I see myself in; the people I stencil my future against because of their singular focus on an unsubstantiated dream that could only become real through self-belief and faith in the elements.

I therefore call loudly – and without inhibition – on the establishment to take the time to seriously ponder celebrating Zimbabwe’s new heroes.

After your hard work
Carry your condoms
And place them in a bin

Sign writing on a wall in Harare, Zimbabwe where street level litter includes broken beer bottles, beer cans and condoms. Men just wanna have fun.

There is lingering talk about forgiveness, healing, truth and reconciliation, all centred around the violent nature of politics that has defined Zimbabwe’s elections especially in the past decade. This politically-motivated violence has been widely documented with people whose homes were burnt, their families killed during orgies of violence rightly complaining that the perpetrators are still walking the length and breadth of the scorched as free men.

As the country approaches another election within the next two years, the violence that has come to characterise political campaigns is already being reported, this time inspired by the constitution outreach programme, and this without any efforts having made to “make peace” with aggrieved victims of past political violence. It is within that scope that this country has placed itself on the path of cyclical violence with perpetrators rightly knowing that nothing will happen to them. After all it is quite straight forward: if you go unpunished for a perceived crime, what will stop you from repeating it? Talk about literally getting away with murder, Zimbabwe presents scholars with innumerable case examples! And we have seen it since 1980 anyway with the Gukurahundi massacres as known architects and the foot soldiers f the troubles have never been taken to task about their role.

Issues around forgiveness and healing are likely to elude us as long as there is no political commitment on the part the leaders who presided over the killing and torture of innocents, and we are guaranteed that angry emotions will be part of our individual and collective psyche for a long time to come. I listened to a man who all along had been enjoying his beer until someone muttered something about the futility of a truth and reconciliation commission and something about how the dead must be left to bury the dead. The man literally wept, saying he never knew his father as he was killed during Gukurahundi and – while he had been enjoying the beer among them – said how much he hated the Shona. Everyone went silent, for how would anyone pacify a man who has so much anger in him? This is a guy who walks and talks each day as if everything is normal but deep there hidden from the rest of us, he harbours and carries such hate and hurt.

This becomes a strong case for the open discussion of what evil has been spawned by political violence and the need for a truth and reconciliation commission so people can move on with their lives. Yet some people in their wisdom think the past can take care of itself by natural processes of time and have been arrogant to calls for a naming and shaming of people behind the raping and killing of wives and mothers since independence. The question for many is that what really can be expected from the people who are accused of heinous political crime and still control state apparatus that would in essence be in charge of letting the law take its course? So does the nation wait for that epoch when they are no longer in government and then they are tracked and shot down like rapid dogs?

But then some will argue that then this goes against the principles of restorative justice but conform to the dictates of vengeance instead, thus justice must be delivered in the here and now so that victims like the man cited above may know peace in their hearts. African politicians have tended to exhibit traits that seek to place them above the moral barometer of normal beings as they use both illiterates and literati to commit the basest crimes, but turn and say the charges are all conspiracies by political opponents: Charles Taylor, Mobutu, Idi Dada Amin, Baby Doc Duvalier – all their stories read the same and the tragedy is that even as we journey into the 21st century, we find ourselves having to make the same excuses made by these evil black brothers. It is invariably always someone else who is not power who is blamed for the atrocities! But with the nature of Zimbabwe’s politics whose popularity contests have largely been defined by clubs and cudgels as weapons of persuasion, we are no doubt in for another round of calls for national healing after lives have already been lost when all this can be averted by heeding the calls for restorative justice.

SOUTHERN AFRICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY SERIES

Fortnightly Seminars Series on

POLICY DIALOGUE PROGRAMME

Thursday 19 August 2010
5pm – 7pm SAPES Seminar Room
4 Deary Avenue, Belgravia, Harare

NATIONAL INTEREST, NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND NATIONAL HEROES; DEFINITION, STATUS AND FUNCTION?

Presenter: Obert Gutu, MP and Deputy Minister of Justice, Government of Zimbabwe

Discussant: Ibbo Mandaza, SAPES Trust

Chair: Cyril Ndebele, Former Speaker, Parliament of Zimbabwe

ALL WELCOME

SAPES Seminar Club Membership Forms available at seminar.

NB.  $10 entrance fee is charged for non-members.