Padare Discussion: Beyond organized hypocrisy – practical ways of working with men and boys to achieve gender justice in Africa

When: Wednesday 22 May 2013 from 530 – 7pm
Where: Book Café, 139 S.Machel Avenue / 6th Street, Harare

Speakers
Tapiwa Manyati, Sonke Gender Justice South Africa
Fredrick Nyagah, MENKEN, Kenya
Catherine Githae, MENKEN, Kenya
Hubert Lubambo Mashiriki, COMEN
Josephat Mutale, Zambia led prevention initiative

Moderator – Virginia Muwanigwa
Discussant – Professor Ezra Chitando

The Wednesday 22 May discussion is presented in partnership with Harare arts and development organisation Pamberi Trust. Pamberi Trust and Padare have enjoyed a long relationship working together in nation building over the years, and maintaining a high profile for ‘the gender agenda’.

The discussion is free, and all people are welcome.

I find it strange that the two MDCs actually invest time in trashing each other when the matter at hand is obvious.

The spat has inevitably sucked in ordinary Zimbabweans who have taken to social media platforms with angry reactions on whether or not the two must play Voltron and combine their forces against Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF.

But you wonder where that anger will get us, and already, some cynics say most of the most vocal people are the same folks who have never bothered to vote! And they have unwittingly voted for Zanu PF, isn’t it said that bad governments are chosen by people who don’t vote!

In the spirit of multi-partyism, it could well be “may the best man win” as it is obvious that these political gladiators are not about to kiss and make up, and if Zanu PF triumphs, then they should start asking themselves serious questions about their relevance to the people’s long yearning for a “transition to democracy.”

But then you can’t talk sense with any politician.

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw

On Friday I visited the Harare Children’s Home. The home is for children who were abandoned or abused. It also offers a safe place for newborn children. They try to train the children as much as possible so they can sustain themselves when they are older and have to leave the home. Boys can only stay to the age of 10 and girls to the age of 20.

When I arrived I was offered a tour around the home and was struck by the warm atmosphere in the home. I was shown all the various projects being carried out by the home, including one that particularly caught my attention, their garden project. The home grows vegetables in their garden, some of which are used in the kitchen for the children, but the rest are sold to the public, to raise some money for the home.

I was told it is a very successful project but the main problem is finding a market for the vegetables. People do go to the home and buy vegetables directly while the older girls at the home sell some on the side of the road.

So if you are looking for some delicious looking vegetables, grown with love and intention, then I recommend a visit to the children’s home, where you can find the vegetables you are looking for as well as help out a good cause.

Where? 2 Daventry Rd, Eastlea, Harare

A report by the Mass Public Opinion Institute titled “Elections and the Management of Diversity in Zimbabwe” which is part of an Africa wide project under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for African together with the UNDP is one of the latest that does not place much confidence in the country’s electoral processes.

The report, first begun in 2011, is part of the Africa Governance Report launched in 1999 when the Economic Commission for Africa launched its project on “Assessing and Monitoring the Progress towards Good Governance in Africa.”

Like many projects before it that elicited inputs from Zimbabweans as diverse as “experts” and the “common people”, the MPOI report, among other things, found that 45 percent of the respondents “thought the judiciary is hardly independent of other branches of government.”

Up to 62 percent of the respondents “either disagreed or strongly disagreed” with the statement that “the composition of government and leadership represents all segments (of society) and (its) diverse interests.”

That is damning by any standards.

It raises questions about the role of elections in people’s lives and their ability to choose their leaders.

That many Zimbabwe have given up on voting is already known not only from Afrobarometre and Freedom House but also from our daily interactions with colleagues and strangers, yet as we approach this year’s elections, these issues become pertinent as political parties campaign to persuade their supporters not only to register to vote but indeed vote.

What then is the use of exciting the masses with the mobile voter registration exercise then when the same people have lost faith in the electoral processes?

One telling response came from a respondent in Bulawayo who said “Zanu PF does not consider the views of the people, not even those of its own party (supporters).”

Such attitudes from political parties mean many potential voters will need a lot of convincing that Zimbabwe is a representative democracy where the “people’s voice” matters.

The logic is simple really: why listen to a politician asking for your views when his mind is already made up that once you vote him into office, you will see him again at your doorstep after five years.

The interaction of politicians and voters surely has to be much, much improved from the criticism that emerged for example with the March referendum where critics say party supporters were merely instructed to vote “YES” without even knowing what they were voting for.

Besides that, a report like that of the MPOI only adds to a heap of work about Zimbabwe that has failed to nudge the country towards good governance.

Virtually every corner of Zimbabwe has huge challenges concerning access to clean water, and despite all talk about the country committing itself to meeting its MDG targets with 2015 fast approaching, it is quite a statement to hear a woman ask the Harare mayor, “can you tell us if the water in our taps is safe to drink!”

The UN says you cannot separate water from all the Millennium Development Goals, it thus has to be asked that in a country where water has become such a very emotional issue because of its regular absence in our taps, what then does this say about the country meeting all the eight MDGs?

But then, this question is rhetorical as it is on record that we are off the mark on many of these fronts.

I was given a jolt, recalling that water treatment chemicals have been hard to come by for big cities such as Bulawayo, and for someone to pose that question, “can you tell us if the water in our taps is safe to drink?” says a lot about the downward spiral of service provision in this country in the past decade.

The occasion was a Quill Speak at the Ambassador Hotel and it was themed “The water supply crisis in Harare – what is the solution?”

The Harare mayor, 59 months on the job he said, attempted to provide insights into the mother city’s water headaches, but like many public officials in this country never seemed to have anything new to say other than what has become a well-worn motif: we don’t have the money.

Someone asked where then the mayor expects to get the money, and it was then that for me he provided a useful insight about what has gone wrong in this once romanticized “great African hope” back in the euphoria of 1980.

Council could raise funds for its service provision obligations such as the ever-snowballing water sector migraines by issuing municipal bonds, but this last happened in the 1990s before the dollar crashed in 1997, the mayor explained.

It is explained elsewhere “municipal bonds are securities that are issued for the purpose of financing the infrastructure needs of the issuing municipality.”

But in a country where everything has been blamed on the voodoo economics of Zanu PF, municipal bonds also became a victim; simply meaning that local authorities could not sustain themselves, raise their own revenue outside payment of bills by residents.

Yet resident associations have criticized these municipalities of trying to run their cities with money collected from bills, which is an impossible proposition.

It explains why virtually every council in this country is broke, with residents being forced to live with the reality of disease outbreak right on their door steps.

We only have the 2008 cholera outbreak as a painful example, which Sikhanyiso Ndlovu claimed back then and without any hint of tongue-in-cheek was part of a biological-chemical warfare unleashed by Zimbabwe’s enemies, when everyone else knew its genesis.

Another lady asked the Mayor why she should bother paying her bills when she hardly gets any water, a question that has been asked everywhere but has not elicited any convincing response from the local authorities.

It is a telling indictment that amidst all these questions, Zimbabweans find themselves being part of the 783 million people UN Water says do not have access to safe drinking water, and these are people living not in the rural outback, but in the city of Harare!

We have all heard the bad effects of drinking Coca Cola, how it will rot our teeth and poison us, but then again, so will most soft-drinks, and in fact, most processed food. However, it is not just the drink itself that is getting flack at the moment, but also the actual company. Recently the Coca-Cola company has had a lot of problems in a multitude of countries over their environmental and social implications on the respective countries it is based in. They are accused of doing terrible damage to the environment and having a dodgy work policy. I even have a friend who refuses to drink any Coca-Cola product, not because it is bad for her, but because she wants to boycott the company altogether.

However, it is difficult to point fingers so quickly, because although there are a lot of issues with Coca-Cola deals, such as the current law suits in India, their policies are not all bad. Coca-Cola does support some significant causes, such as “Fighting for an AIDS free generation”; a project in collaboration with other companies like Nike, Girl and Converse. Their aim is to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child by 2015. They also are one of the biggest sports sponsors, sponsoring major events such as the FIFA world cup. It was also the first commercial sponsor of the Olympics in 1928.

As with most big commercial companies, Coca-Cola does have problems with corruption and dodgy policies but overall one of its biggest problems seems to be its connection with the United States, in modern colonisation. The idea of “Coca-Colanisation” had been brought up in many parts of the world, accusing the United States of colonising countries with big corporate companies such as Coca-Cola.