If you had not heard already the National Youth Programme is going to be reintroduced under the GPA. My question is, can these centers facilitate a youth friendly environment for full participation, especially of young women. With this weak coalition government and economy do we really need this now? I think these centers should only be reopened when they ensure that they are gender sensitive and enhance a culture of learning unlike the military style designed institutions. If these centers are going to be reopened then, as the youth, we should advocate for an independent National Youth Service Commission to be put in place after the amendment of the National Youth Policy. This commission and not the inter ministerial Committee should be responsible for the formulation of the national youth service policy.

I mean hey, do you teach anybody to be patriotic or should it be instilled in us to be so? I don’t need to be trained as a soldier to feel patriotic. The National Youth Programme must be based on a shared national vision. But here is the bigger question: is Zimbabwe really prepared to have this programme again seeing that the national healing and reconciliation programme has still not reached its peak. Why open up the wounds of the people who suffered under the youth militia by reopening the same centers that taught the youth and groomed them to cause so much harm and pain. What do you think any person who had a loved one killed or maimed by these youths is going to feel after hearing that our country is still manufacturing these weapons of pain?

Before these centers are reopened the matter has to be taken to society. The minister needs a vote of confidence from parents and the youth themselves given the magnitude of alleged abuse by the so-called recruits and Zimbabweans in general who suffered under the militarized programme. Can the national budget sustain this programme given more urgent issues faced by the inclusive government such as constitutional reform, social service delivery and economic growth based on a productive and not consumptive economy?

As youth we need a non-partisan national youth service and the policy implemented should comply with the standards of the international association of national service for best practice. I think the government should temporarily postpone the reintroduction of the National Youth Programme and instead utilize the transition period to put in place measures that will ensure the programme does not carry the negative perception from the past. My bat is for the programme to be implemented fully, the government has to identify what the youth need; not what it needs and force it on the young people.

Rejoice Ngwenya wrote an “independence special” for Kubatana which I share with you here:

Your City, My Land

Conte Mhlanga and Daves Guzha are two of the best playwrights in Zimbabwe. One resides in Bulawayo, the provincial capital of Matabeleland that took the biggest brunt of Zimbabwe’s post-independence ‘genocidal’ human rights violations in the 1980s. The other is based in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, the seat of one of the most brutal and senseless government in modern history. Both men are my friends, having met them last year at a regional arts workshop.

I am so impressed by their history of protest activism. Once in a while, their ‘play houses’ are visited by the proverbial men in dark glasses who want to glean anything off their plots that vaguely pokes fun at our very own ageing dictator Robert Gabriel Mugabe. My view is that there is no play or work of art worth its salt if it makes no reference to the liberation of Zimbabweans from ZANU-PF fascism. This may sound really negative; indeed, oppression of citizens is a negative force. Those like Mhlanga, Guzha and I who have the courage and rare opportunity to say our opinions, we might as well have fun doing it – messages full of laughter, tell me about it!

And so during that workshop – in a spontaneous feat of bravado – I foolishly committed myself to contesting for the ‘best playwright of the year’ and promised to deliver a gem to Conte and Dave. Mind you, the nearest I ever encountered playwriting was only reciting lines that were shoved at me by Bev Parker, my ‘old’ lecturer at United College of Teacher Education. Some things are easier said than done!  The title of my play was simply going to be Assegai Technology with a curiously named main character Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life – a sophisticated, enlightened but unorthodox, crude and jovial middle-aged cell-phone addicted dictatorial president of an African country called Haraland.  He is obsessed with this compulsive and paranoid idea that someday, King Bengula who died one hundred years ago in Bengula Province south of his country would lead an insurrection to challenge his authority.  Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life is afflicted by this recurrent dream that King Bengula will incarnate through Team Impi – four rebels based in Bengula Province to spearhead this rebellion. He claims that a fellow dictator Yoom Shin Sha of an Asian country called East Kora, has promised him portable guns with rubber bullets laced with radio-active material to suppress the rebellion. Problem one: Haraland has no money to pay for the guns, but his wife owns a diamond mine which he can persuade her to give away to Yoom Shin Sha in exchange for the guns. Problem two: The mine is located in a national game reserve, so the East Koraian also wants to have a licence to hunt the endangered rhino! Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life tells Yoom Shin Sha to wait until after the elections. Yoom Shin Sha promises or claims to have delivered the contraband even before the elections, but of course he is lying.  Problem three: Team Impi are all geniuses of different professions who are designing an advanced model of a Bengula assegai that bounces off bullets to the sender, much like an Australian boomerang! In the play, all this ‘conspiracy’ is only seen and heard from conversations that Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life has on his cell phone with both Yoom Shin Sha and ironically, Team Impi.

Just as I am about to finish this play, I read a report of a massive land scandal at Harare Municipality – Daves Guzha’s local town and am immediately inspired to write another play I will aptly title  Your City, My Land. I want its plot to be less painful than Assegai Technology. The main character will be named Leapfrog – a young black policeman who retired from active service in 1980 to work as a security guard for a rich white banana wholesaler based in a town called Haracity. The banana man had never married, and has no children so when he passes on; he bequeaths one of his many double-storey houses to his loyal askari – Leapfrog. The house is too expensive to maintain, so Leapfrog approaches Comrade Zvamahara – a Member of Parliament from his rural village to rent the house. For almost twenty years Leapfrog continues to work as a guard-cum-messenger in a real estate company, until he is enlightened to sell his house to start an own estate agency! But there is problem. Comrade Zvamahara had deliberately forged the lease into an agreement of sale, so all along, Leapfrog thought Comrade Zvamahara was paying rentals, yet he was receiving monthly instalments!

Luckily, Leapfrog had befriended a man named Makoini, an experienced housing officer in Haracity who helps him win his case against Comrade Zvamahara. It is through this friendship that Leapfrog and Makoini ensure scores of Leapfrog’s relatives are clandestinely registered on the housing waiting list. He retires from formal employment to concentrate on developing and selling the housing and industrial stands issued to his relatives. On realising that Leapfrog is getting wealthy, Comrade Zvamahara sends an emissary to convince Leapfrog to enter politics so he can ‘one day take over as member of parliament’ of the village. The two men make more money and get more property through Makoini, but when the latter retires from Haracity, the only ‘gift’ he gets from Leapfrog and Comrade Zvamahara is a motorcycle! Makoini is so distraught and heartbroken. In a feat of diabolic rage and vengeance, he sells his story to a local weekly newspaper called The Insider and reveals the transgressions of both Leapfrog and Comrade Zvamahara. Just before the two are arrested, they escape to Zambezia, a neighbouring country.

I only hope that either of my playwright friends Conte Mhlanga or Daves Guzha will accept    Your City, My Land and perhaps, just perhaps I might join this elite team who indeed are worthy members of Zimbabwe’s protest theatre hall of fame!

Rejoice Ngwenya, 16 April 2010, Harare

Last week I had the privilege to witness WOZA trying to hand over a petition to the management of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) at their headquarters at Megawatt House on Samora Machel Avenue in Harare.

I say privilege because there are very few organisations, activists and members of the public in Zimbabwe who are brave enough to put themselves on the street and demand a better Zimbabwe, be that in the delivery of justice or basic services.

The gathering of WOZA men and women was peaceful, good humoured and vibrant. The crowd that came around to witness the proceedings all agreed that Zimbabweans are reeling under the utility charges and poor service that they are receiving. As one of our bloggers, Dydimus Zengenene, rightly points out this week, ZESA’s charges might be in line with regional tariffs but our salaries are woefully inadequate to cope with the demands being placed on us.

In the meantime the chefs of Zimbabwe, ranging from Mugabe, to the ZESA hierarchy itself, to the champions of the indigenisation bill, are all pretty comfortable in their plush homes lit by generators.

The leadership of WOZA were arrested and spent Independence weekend in jail. This is an OUTRAGE.

Zimbabwe must allow for peaceful protest – full stop.

You probably weren’t a part of the WOZA protest at ZESA last week but it’s pretty certain that you’re affected by poor service and high electricity charges.

So, here’s something you Can do . . .

Action: Email the ZESA public relations department and tell them that:

a)    ZESA management must lobby for the immediate release of the WOZA leadership

b)    ZESA management must meet with WOZA to listen to, and discuss the issues being raised by Zimbabweans

c)    ZESA management should issue an apology to WOZA for not welcoming them and hearing their concerns

Email: pr@zesa.co.zw

The Minister of Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs, Advocate Eric T. Matinenga wants to hear from you. We’ve opened up the phone lines to take your questions on the Constitution. Phone in now to 0914 186 280 up to 7 and leave a message with your question for Minister Matinenga.

You can also text your question to: 0914 186 280 or email your question to: constitution@kubatana.net

Between 1 May – 31 May phone back and listen to Minister Matinenga answer questions from around the country.

Questions can be in English, Shona or Ndebele.

For a wide selection of articles, reports and other information on the Constitution please visit Kubatana’s special index page on the Constitution

You might also want to check out:
-    Lovemore Madhuku on Constitution making in Zimbabwe – Read and listen
-    Waiting for the Constitution – Rooftop Promotions – Read and listen
-    Artists and the Constitution – Mindblast public discussion – Read and listen
-    Report back – Sexual Orientation and the Constitutional Process Indaba – Read more
-    Helping Zimbabweans to understand and write their own Constitution – in English, Shona and Ndebele – Read more

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.