Psychology Maziwisa, wrote to the editor of Zimbabwe Democracy Now suggesting, among other things, that “ZANU PF is an oppressive movement that the people of Zimbabwe must now be liberated from.” Read the full article below:

If there is one myth that must be resisted, and resisted with all the contempt it deserves in 21st century African politics, it is the desperate and unwelcome myth that a liberation movement, however much loathed, can unashamedly claim to have an inherent and unqualified monopoly over the governance of a country and that any dissenting voice, no matter how genuinely disillusioned, is a political charade whose only intention is to perpetuate a colonial past.

It is a calculated and arrogant way of pursuing politics and any leader who uses it as a justification for clinging to power at that moment turn themselves into tyrants. Honestly, they will have only themselves to blame if anyone raises the middle finger at him!

At the very least, it is an insulting myth. Insulting because it presupposes that the people of Zimbabwe are so naive they needed Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Gorge W. Bush, Barack Obama and the wider international community to tell them that the government of Robert Mugabe can no longer provide the very basics of life. Yet any other responsible government,anywhere in the world, would ungrudgingly consider it to be fundamental to good governance to provide food, health, education and personal security.

We did not need Tony Blair to tell us that scores of innocent, vulnerable fellow citizens were tortured and killed simply and only in order to secure allegiance to ZANU PF. The people of Zimbabwe do not recall Tony Blair standing by as his security officers mercilessly pounced on opponents. Nor do they recall Gordon Brown looting our country of its resources and stashing them away in huge individual off-shore accounts. Thanks to the targeted sanctions that will not be going anywhere anytime soon (delegation or no delegation), some of those monies have been rendered indefinitely inaccessible to those who have stolen them.

Nor was it George W. Bush who hired the North Koreans to train the notorious fifth brigade with a view to killing, torturing, raping and humiliating anyone who seemed suspicious: men, women and even children. It was not Barack Obama who bulldozed the only form of shelter many Zimbabweans had and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Indeed, since millions cannot afford a television set, many in Zimbabwe will die not knowing what Blair, Brown, Bush and Obama even look like.

The truth of the matter is that it has become increasingly questionable whether there is much difference, if any at all, between the political system of Ian Smith which ZANU PF managed to ‘liberate’ us from and its replacement.

The terrible circumstances under which the people of Zimbabwe have been made to live are all part of the sad proof that life under a liberation movement is not necessarily better than life under colonialism.

Indeed, in Namibia, SWAPO (a former guerrilla movement that led the country to independence in 1990) has been at the centre of gross human rights violations and in a typical fashion has managed to downplay its extent. It was SWAPO that imprisoned thousands of its own members in dungeons in southern Angola in the 1980s allegedly for spying on behalf of South Africa. Despite it being a basic requirement of justice that people be proven guilty before they can be deprived of their liberty, these people were not even brought before a court of law to be fairly tried!

For ZANU PF, like SWAPO, violence has become the automatic and standard response to dissent.

In South Africa, the ANC is unlikely to lose support any time soon mainly because it is viewed by millions of South Africans as the party that brought liberation to that country – and correctly so. The liberation movement syndrome is as much alive there as it is — not in Zimbabwe — but within ZANU PF for they have now become their own supporters. The difference between ANC and ZANU PF, however, is that while the former has enjoyed legitimacy since 1994 derived from free, fair and credible elections, the latter has constantly and consistently stolen the ballot and stolen it at monumental cost for the people of Zimbabwe.

When ANC members depart from accepted standards, they are swiftly and openly rebuked. Indeed when Julius Malema attempted to be a little Mugabe, President Jacob Zuma effectively cautioned him: Not in South Africa my boy! He described Malema’s behaviour as “unacceptable”, “totally out of order”, “against ANC culture” and deserving of “consequences”.

A single party — be it one with liberation roots or not — is more than welcome to rule for millions of years provided it has the genuine consent of the masses to do so. That is the basic idea behind democracy. ZANU PF does not, cannot and will never again have this sort of consent from the people of Zimbabwe.

To borrow the lyrics of the much revered and my most favourite international music icon Akon, what contemporary Zimbabweans are fighting for is, ‘….a free, uplifting world’. Clearly, that world is not achievable under a ZANU PF government. It has not been for the last three decades.

For a single group of people to hold an entire nation to ransom is no longer a welcome way of doing politics in today’s world. It is unwelcome because it results in a political landscape that does not offer citizens real and credible means to express themselves as the sovereigns of a constitutional, parliamentary democracy.

The only thing that distinguishes the traditional war of liberation from the current struggle is that, while we fought against Ian Smith and his alien allies yesterday, today we are fighting against one of our very own. It is a fight, however, that we seek to conclude through democratic means. Never shall we resort to the use of force in order to attain our freedom. Force, violence, intimidation, abduction and foul play are all tactics of the enemy. To resort to violence in this struggle would be to demean our freedom.

Let us continue fighting the good fight in the best way we can: peaceful demonstrations, gatherings, petitions and the myriad of other democratic mechanisms. We are our own liberators. The silver lining for us is the unfailing reality that everything with a beginning comes to an end. One thing Robert Mugabe cannot escape is the never-faltering ticking of the passage of time – and his time is evidently running short now.

A liberation movement is not one that liberates its people and then, with fiendish pleasure, proceeds to oppress those very people for three decades and counting. It is one that genuinely seeks to free the people from the vice of repression — whether that is repression by Ian Smith or by Robert Mugabe. Accordingly, it can no longer be open to ZANU PF to regard itself as a liberation movement. If anything, ZANU PF is an oppressive movement that the people of Zimbabwe must now be liberated from.

Psychology Maziwisa, Interim President, Union for Sustainable Democracy

When the year began, two women suffered miscarriages after they were beaten up by police in the border town of Beitbridge.

They were suspected of being prostitutes, apprehended and then they were assaulted to the extent of losing the pregnancies they were carrying.

Perhaps they were prostitutes, perhaps they were not but one thing is certain – when we live in a society that insists on pushing some of its members to the margins by discriminating and stigmatizing them – it is inevitable that we increase the vulnerability of such individuals.

Their exclusion and ostracism serves no purpose other than making them easy prey for those in position of power and who would not hesitate to abuse that power.

Yet for the greater part, there is a tacit approval of these violent acts because they affirm the prejudices of our society, they are premised on the moral judgments people make about women who prostitute themselves either through overt means by selling their bodies in return for money or those who covertly prostitute themselves by acquiescing to be the mistresses of married men for economic gain.

Addressing at a two-day regional conference hosted by SAfAIDS on a series “changing the river’s flow examining the HIV/Culture confluence”, Jason Wessenaar the Project Director of Siyazi Counselling and Testing Project made the very astute observation that while culture helps us to make sense of the world around us by giving people a sense of identity and belonging, it also governs human behaviour.

So our intolerances, our prejudices and our bigotry are a reflection of our cultural beliefs and our interpretation of what is appropriate and what is unacceptable conduct.

Remarking on the limitations of culture, he pointed out that, “culture is a tool that can be used to empower or exclude, exploit and control” members of a society.

What we cannot tolerate reflects what our deep-rooted convictions and beliefs are, yet using Wessener’s observation that culture is a lens we use to view the world, as a premise, how do we then know that what we perceive as reality is in fact so and not just a consequence of the lens we are using to view it?

We push women to the margins, increase their vulnerability, ostracize them and give them an “otherness” such that they have no choice but to engage in more risky behaviour – pushed to the limits, their desperation will drive them to the extremes.

Whilst we bemoan the prevalence of small houses, of women engaging in long term relationships with married men, of men having multiple concurrent sexual relations – we need to find out why and how women avail themselves to these relationships.

One lady remarked in response to my column, “No girl grows up dreaming of one day becoming a small house, not one. But I know there are many boys who grow up dreaming of one day having a small house.” So when one would seek to interrogate what happened to that girl, who never dreamed of becoming a small house? How did she get here? What are the circumstances and situations that led her down this path?

The thing with culture is that it makes us not think about our behaviour or attitudes, it makes us not examine our beliefs, we take them for granted, we take for granted that what we think, assume of life and our perceptions of reality is accurate, altruistic and infallible.

“Culture is a lens we use to understand other people we interact with, and this often leads to us judging, imposing, discriminating and labeling,” noted Wessener.

I submit that the girl who never to be a small house, an appendage like the rose on a man’s laurel – grew up and found that she couldn’t clothe her own back, couldn’t fill her stomach, couldn’t afford a roof on her head and had no prospects whatsoever.

So she decided to pawn herself off to any man who so much as asked, married or not – where did society fail her or did she fail herself?

Did all these small houses and prostitutes fail themselves?

I think not.

I think women who are empowered make choices that are not harmful to them or that impinge on their sense of dignity.

I identify lack, as the key reason why small houses exist, why prostituting oneself becomes an option for most women. Something other than payment of lip service needs to be done to empower women, to elevate their status and to work towards addressing the gender imbalances inherent in our culture.

Whatever else society may label these women – the truth is that we as a society are all diminished by their continued humiliation or coercion along sexual lines.

As we continue to push them to the margins, we increase their vulnerability, we increase their desperation and ultimately we push them to the limits and possible over the edge.

I am sure at some point, just like me, you have been wondering if there is a women’s movement in Zimbabwe. Don’t you worry. I went to this discussion and there was a lot said about the women’s movement. Yes it does exist and it is fully functional. There is going to be a DVD that shows how the women’s movement began before independence and how it continued after independence and the issues it looked at. For example, after independence women fought against Operation Chinyavada. In 1983 women were not meant to be out doors after a certain time or they would be arrested and picked up as prostitutes. If they did not have their IDs they were just arrested. So women came together and said they wanted equal freedom to roam just as men. After that about 25 women organizations were formed addressing issues on gender, gender violence and many other issues pertinent to women. At first there was confusion between children’s issues and woman’s issues, women were placed together with children and were viewed as minors. Again women came together and said “No” we are not children. The women’s movement usually arises in response to serious dissatisfaction on the current course of public policies. If women are not happy about a certain issue they can come together and rally for that particular issue. They could be five women or more on the streets rallying and they constitute a women’s movement. In most cases if these women’s movements challenge and address issues in the government, then the movement is likely to face resistance, as it challenges the status quo. So if you have question on whether the women’s movement is effective, or what the future of the women’s movement in Zimbabwe is, you must look out for the video that is currently in the making. Hopefully all these questions will be answered and more women will be encouraged to take part in the movement and get their views heard.

Chinua Achebe has been heralded as the father of modern African literature. He is best known for his book, Things Fall Apart. In his book, The Education Of A British Protected Child, published in December 2009, Achebe offers some interesting and often hilarious insights into the complexities of of culture and colonialism. In this excerpt from the book, Achebe writes about the difficulties of finding children’s books that are not offensive or condescending towards Africans for his oldest daughter.

I was at an entrepreneurship course and I learnt something that I think can be applied in all aspects of life, be it in business, your everyday relations or the way you want to go about in life. It is so bad to let life just float away without putting value in it. My sister always says put value in it. For example when you sing – how much is each note worth? If you are going to speak to people how much are they going to draw from you? Today I want to add value to you by giving you a few pointers that I got from my two-day workshop.

If you want to be a good negotiator you must know how to say No. Yes you can say No for a lot of positive reasons. Saying No as a negotiator opens a door for more negotiations, it helps you to know more about your counterpart and it helps you to modify your position accordingly. So Yes I am going to show you ways how you can say No positively!

You can say

1.    Not here
2.    Not you
3.    Not me
4.    Not now
5.    Not that much
6.    Not that little
7.    Not again
8.    Not that
9.    Not ever

These positive No’s’ give you time in any place that you are in to take time and weigh your options. You can quickly say yes and find out that you have devalued yourself or perhaps you have over valued yourself. When that happens you either lose out on a potentially good business deal or you might be viewed as that person always saying yes and wanting to be everybody’s friend.

Its okay to say No just say it in a more tactful way and you will be amazed how many positive days you will have.

Children deserve their rights of expression, association, education and care among others. However countries differ in how they balance a child’s rights and the parents’ and caregivers’ rights to discipline in the name of protecting and nurturing.

Parents and caregivers, including teachers, who constitute elders in society, have some degree of control over children. However for the control to be enforceable there is supposed to be a degree of conventional allegiance on the part of children. In Shona culture any elder has the right to control and discipline a child based on the saying: “Mwana ndewe munhu wese” – meaning a child belongs to everyone. At the same time children are obliged to respect and obey elders in society. This is meant to ensure that children are put under control irrespective of the presence or absence of their parents.

This form of communal responsibility over children has a basic assumption that “every elder is equally responsible and caring for all young children”. It is not surprising therefore that in some communities, if an elder disciplines a child, the parent is not quick to get angry unless there is evidence that the child has not done anything wrong or unless the punishment is excessively abusive. This trend has changed in modern societies, with parents claiming responsibility of their own children and claiming all rights. Governments are also gradually reducing even the parents’ rights. For instance, beating children by parents or caregivers is illegal in many countries.

This does not come without a reason; there is general understanding that the “Mwana ndewe munhu wese” adage does not hold water anymore. There are abusive elements in contemporary society, robbers, rapists and kidnappers among others. Obviously one cannot cede rights to discipline a child to everyone in such communities.  Some parents have also joined the abusive element by raping, killing and harassing their own children.

Does this however justify the stance that teachers and parents should not discipline children? Children are being increasingly protected against abuse, however children happen to abuse the rights, in a manner that apparently threatens their safety and future, yet parents, teachers and other caregivers are continuously having little or no powers to foster discipline.

We are looking forward to the government, youth organisations, and parents to properly define how far we should take the right to discipline, balancing children’s rights as well as fostering the authority of parents and caregivers in a bid to ensure the necessary allegiance in environments like schools and other communities.