A few years ago Kubatana started our series of Inside/Out interviews. The interviews are short and sharp and are based on a set of random questions, some flippant, like what’s in your pockets right now, to more serious stuff like, who inspires you?

Quite often people tell us that they Love these interviews because they allow for a different perspective on people; that they both amuse and give pause for reflection.

A few people that we’ve approached for an Inside/Out interview have point blank refused. Is it a case of over sized NGO egos refusing to slip their suits for awhile I’ve wondered?

In any case, our information assistant Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa recently had the pleasure of interviewing the completely fabulous and amazing Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002). Mary and six international women leaders are visiting Zimbabwe to support and strengthen women’s role in governance and in the constitutional review process.

Apparently when Mary was asked to have some fun with our Inside/Out questions she was more than willing! Here’s what Upenyu had to say about her experience of interviewing Mary:

I had heard of Mary Robinson spoken of in lofty intellectual tones, as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Ireland and an intellectual. While conducting research in preparation for my interview, the image I had formed of a stern staid woman who took herself seriously was cemented in my mind. With her considerable academic and political achievements, I thought, how could she not be? The Mary Robinson I interviewed was none of these things. She was earnest and forthright in her answers, taking time to think carefully about what I asked her before she answered.  I found her to be warm, and a person who truly believed in what she was doing, and in the women with whom she is working. The Inside/Out interview reminded me that she was just as human as I was, sharing the same fears, like the loss of family members, as many of my other interviewees.

Kubatana will be publishing a full interview with Mary soon but in the meantime here we go Inside/Out with her.

Inside/Out with Mary Robinson
28 April 2010

Describe yourself in five words?
I am an activist.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
I’ve received a lot of good advice – I didn’t always take it. I think it’s to develop my whole potential.

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done?
I once went to a party of an American friend, disguised in a wig and a big bosom. I got away with it for the whole evening.

What is your most treasured possession?
This ring that my husband gave me on our fifteenth wedding anniversary and we are now in our fortieth year. It is very old and its a flower. If you are free you have it the other way around. It dates from 1770; we were married in 1970. He’s a very sentimental man, my husband, I’m glad to say.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
I think the invisibility of people who are suffering terribly, whether they are suffering because of poverty or they are torture victims.

Do you have any strange hobbies?
I like walking; when I’m in Ireland I walk a lot in the woods around my family home.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
My hair. I don’t have good African hair; I have to keep putting curlers in it.

What is your greatest extravagance?
I’m not a great shopper, so my greatest extravagance is books. Right now I’m reading a novel about the Spanish civil war.

What have you got in your fridge?
That’s my weakness. You see it’s my husband who knows more about what’s in the fridge.

What is your greatest fear?
That something terrible could happen to an immediate member of my family. I’m a grandmother and I have four grandchildren. Family is very precious.

What have you got in your pockets right now?
Tissues.

What is your favourite journey?
Going home. Crossing Ireland to County Mayo, my mood instantly lifts. I’ve been outside Ireland now for five years in Geneva, working for the United Nations, and seven years in New York. At the end of this year I go home. I’m looking forward to that. I have very strong local agricultural reference points, and that’s very important when you’re trying to understand land issues. Being Irish I have a particular understanding of land issues because we had to fight the colonial power, which was Britain, and assert our Land Rights.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Like many people its Nelson Mandela. Being one of his Elders I’m part of a group that he brought together. He’s an extraordinary man. Archbishop Tutu is another favourite of mine. Also a lot of women that I’m encountering, including Nyaradzai, I’ve learnt so much from her.

When and where were you happiest?
I am happiest in my own home with my family.

What’s your biggest vice?
I would say the preoccupation with self. If somebody is in political life, they have an ego.

What were you like at school?
I was a tomboy with my brothers. I was very active in school; I wanted to be involved in things.

What are you doing next?
I am going back to Ireland and I will be creating a foundation on Climate Justice.

Empowerment. Gender Equity. Gender mainstreaming. Youth agenda. These have all become buzzwords without a real meaning. They represent lofty paper ideals but seldom translate into any qualitative or quantitative transformation. Zimbabwe, like Africa is faced by a multitude of problems, none of which can be solved by catchy slogans and high visibility, low output awareness campaigns. When the dust of the road shows has settled and the last echo of the slogan has faded away, we find that the problems have not gone away.

I feel that our biggest problem as a nation is that we won’t allow ourselves to think beyond a certain point. In the eighties and nineties, education was all the rage. Before the present educational crisis, we boasted of having one of the highest literacy rates on the continent. Yet, we are at the very bottom of the heap socially, economically and politically. It is very clear that education alone does not solve problems. It seems that we have become a nation that is too educated to take risks. When the economy was plagued with hyperinflation and subject to the whim of the Reserve Bank Governor, the educated fled and became another buzzword, economic migrants.

A new millennium brought with it new buzzwords like globalisation, and development. Now, Aid has become big business. I would wager any amount that the non-governmental sector rivals any government in being the biggest single employer. NGOs do work that is often necessary. They fill in the gaps that governments so often miss, because of corruption and mismanagement. Regardless, they are founded on the principle of giving without requiring the receiver to do any work. Aid creates dependency, nowhere else is that more obvious than right here at home. It has been almost ten years; Zimbabwe has had a healthy NGO sector for longer than that, yet we are no closer to our development goals than when we started.

In truth, our problem from the beginning has been a lack of creativity and innovation. Yes we have a large skill set, yes we are highly educated, but without creativity and innovation we are a nation of donor dependent employees, not proud self-sufficient employers. Solutions must come from us, not via Western Union money gram or another donor funded feeding scheme.

A recent report from the Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) mentioned that the Mayor of Gweru has recently bought himself a spiffy new car, presumably with council funds. With political representatives like this who needs a government?

The residents of Gweru have raised an outcry at the insensitivity and lack of prioritisation that has been displayed by the City Council in purchasing a top of the range Toyota Prado for use by the Mayor. Residents have said that the Gweru City Council had been crying foul about its bankruptcy and yet they have managed to buy an expensive car while service delivery suffers. Gweru has been hit by acute water shortages and during the few days that residents get water, the water is usually not clean. Council has attributed the poor water quality to lack of money to buy water treatment chemicals. The roads in the city have become a nightmare and death traps to motorists as they are infested with deep potholes.

Dale Dore writing for the Voice of Democracy takes Graca Machel in his sights after she suggested that Britain should keep quiet on the situation in Zimbabwe. The “situation” by the way is actually a crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans need food aid, the formal employment sector is crippled leaving the majority of Zimbabweans with no hope of finding a job, while power and water supplies are erratic. The list of ZANU PF made ills that plagues Zimbabwe is endless. Dale Dore reckons that countries like Britain, with their helping hand of over 1 billion in aid, should be given the freedom to criticise and comment on countries that, amongst other things, consistently put their citizens on the bottom of the list when it comes to treating them right.

Here’s Dale for you:

Ignore Machel: Turn up the volume for violence-free and fair elections

On behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable people of Zimbabwe, the Voice for Democracy applauds and says a big ‘thank you’ to Britain. Despite every provocation and insult from the Zimbabwean government, and because of Mugabe’s utter disregard for his own people, the British government has given Zimbabwe over $100 million in humanitarian assistance last year: from health care and education to providing water, food aid, seed and fertilisers to the poorest households. Since Independence in 1980, Britain has given Zimbabwe over $1 billion in aid.

Yet Britain continues to be unfairly censured from a most unexpected quarter. The Elder’s Graça Machel has told Britain to ‘keep quiet’ and let SADC deal with Zimbabwe (The Guardian, 16 April 2009). We ask Machel: What has SADC, and South Africa in particular, done for the Zimbabwean people? It has kept quiet. For a whole decade it has refused to restrain a brutal and dictatorial regime that has bought nothing but violence, ruin and misery to its own people. In one election after another, SADC and South Africa have sanctioned violence-stained and rigged elections that have maintained Robert Mugabe in power. South Africa has taken an obtuse pleasure in defending Mugabe’s malevolent government while Britain and its allies in the United Nations were trying to isolate and restrain it.

Let the truth be told. If Britain has acted as ‘big brother’ – as Machel avers – it has been to care for and feed Zimbabwe’s hungry and destitute. It has been to protect the people of Zimbabwe against its bullying leader by supporting human rights, democracy and the rule of law. And what have SADC and South Africa done? They have sided with the bully. They allowed Robert Mugabe to sit at the high table of Presidents even when they did not recognise his election to office in June 2008. It was SADC and South Africa that pushed through an undemocratic inclusive government that handed back power to their despotic ally to continue his gruesome handiwork. It is they that have insisted that Zimbabwe must sort out its own problems, knowing full well that Mugabe’s only methods of negotiation is with an iron bar and through the barrel of a gun.

If anything, the Voice for Democracy believes that Britain has been too soft on those SADC countries which it supplies with huge amounts of aid. Britain and its allies in the European Union and the United States should be exerting much more diplomatic pressure on SADC and South Africa to ensure that violence-free and fair elections bring about a democratic transition in Zimbabwe. If Machel wants Britain to keep quiet then SADC and South Africa must bring an end to the brewing state-sponsored violence that will inevitably erupt during the run-up to elections. We are watching and waiting.

Chiredzi is a small town in the south of Zimbabwe. We’re kept informed of the situation there by a Kubatana subscriber who sends us regular updates. Here’s one of his latest:

ZANU PF are hijacking NGO project meetings, hospital meetings, and cattle sales in the Zaka, Mwenezi and Chiredzi constituencies. Project leaders have been interrogated by CIO officers and now have to advise them where and when the gatherings take place. The project leaders have been instructed by the CIO that when the CIO appear at these gatherings they must leave so that they the CIO can address the people. It has come to light that ZANU PF are having a problem getting people to come to their own political meetings and that is why they are hijacking other gatherings and forcing the people to listen to there angle of politics and threats.

Commercial business in Chiredzi has take a significant down turn as they only get electrical power one day a week, this includes all the butchers and supermarkets, which means a shortage of fresh bread, meat and milk.

The local townships are all overcrowded with people who have moved in from the communal areas to try and find work and food; this has caused crime to increase dramatically in the area.

Sometimes when a person is confused and they don’t know what they want – I usually say, “Well, if you don’t have an idea what you want, at least tell me what you don’t want.”

The same goes for those facing some kind of inner struggle, identity crisis or such dilemma – I often tell them if they don’t know who they are, at least they ought to know who they don’t want to be.

The things we negate often are a reflection of what we instinctively embrace as our values, extol as virtues and they are indicative of our deeply held convictions.

I believe a scrutiny of our cultural beliefs, of the things we were socialized to reject will always be reflective of what we consider to be normal, acceptable and appropriate.

So our intolerances are a reflection of self – a reflection of who we are essentially.

Bigotry often derives from our revulsion towards that which is inconsistent with our belief system; it is like a knee-jerk reaction to that which contradicts our worldview or our interpretation of the world.

Anything that does not align with our own prejudiced perception is like a smudge marring the lens we use to view our world and we seek to obliterate it so that we may continue to enjoy the same view we are accustomed to – the status quo upheld.

The homophobia that currently informs the discourse on homosexuality in Zimbabwe is a case in point, reflecting the deeply ingrained cultural and social beliefs of what manhood entails – for what repulses many is not lesbianism but rather gays.

For a man to sleep with another man is almost inconceivable to most people and to those who can conceive of it – it is like an abomination.

And as a collective people pride themselves in holding on to these prejudices, tacitly condoning hate speech and other abusive reactions that have been central to the backlash created by the debate on homosexuality.

Of late, the media has been awash with reports of pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church – narratives of how young boys have fallen prey to unscrupulous members of the clergy who fail to curb their ‘appetites’ and resort to feeding off the proverbial flock.

The allegations also point to a systematic cover-up by sections of the church’s leadership to shield the perpetrators, silence the victims and protect the all-important image of the church.

The Pontiff, having been so vocal on the issue of condom use, reinforcing the church’s unyielding anti-contraceptive position has been rather subdued on the subject only recently making a show of weeping with the victims of abuse – a gesture many feel is contrived.

It worries me that these attitudes are prevalent even in our own societies, that perpetrators of child abuse or molesters will find a sympathetic audience in our society – and probably will be regarded as being a lesser ‘evil’ to homosexuals.

The culture of silence is one that is deeply ingrained in families and society insists on sacrificing the individual (especially a child) in order to protect the status, image and standing of the collective (especially the family and clan).

There are many who would abhor homosexuality more than they do child molestation and abuse – it is the nonchalance towards these victims that serves as an indictment to our conscience as a society – we are worse than the monsters we seek to protect through our silence.

For our silence is acquiescence, it trivializes the pain and trauma of the abused, diminishes them and diminishes us as a society.

Whilst it may be argued (as it often is) that it serves “the greater good” to sweep such cases under the carpet and retain confidence in the sanctity of religious institutions and the authority of male figures in families, our culture of silence makes hypocrites of us – for we constantly defend the status quo, refusing to interrogate our long held convictions.

If our intolerances essentially reflect who we are – then the same goes for the things we do tolerate, the things we turn a blind eye to and those heinous deeds we excuse under the guise of protecting the ‘image’ of institutions and persons of authority.

To identify what you believe – it may be necessary to know what you do not believe. I do not believe that there is any institution (religious or otherwise) worth preserving at the cost of the wellbeing, security and preservation of the rights and dignity of children the world over.