The Kubatana team went to a public meeting last night in Harare. The speakers: four men. The moderator: a man. The audience: over 100 men, and maybe 30 women. Audience members who asked questions: Men again. Why are there so few women panelists and moderators at public meetings organised by civil society in Zimbabwe? What can be done to ensure that more women attend these meetings, and participate in them?

The Kubatana team was in Johannesburg recently for MobileActive08. As we moved around the city, we spoke with taxi drivers about the ANC split, Xenophobia, Zimbabwe, and other issues.

Here are a few snippets of our conversations:

Troublemakers, they kind of respect the taxi drivers. For other people, they have no respect. But for taxi drivers, they kind of leave us alone. They know we can make our own violence.

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People must tell the truth. It will heal other people. Actually, that will teach people to learn, and forgive. Otherwise, when it’s not done, I will see a Shona person, and think you’re a part of Mugabe. You killed our people. You know, things like that. But if there is TRC [a Truth and Reconciliation process], then I think people will be able to see, okay, fine. This is what happened. Let’s forget about it.

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You’ll never get a settlement in Zimbabwe. You know why? Because they’re making too much money. They’ve got 25-tonne trucks travelling up and down from Zimbabwe to Jo’burg and Jo’burg to Zimbabwe everyday. With all the food in it you want to eat. All the appliances you want to buy. Those people are my customers like you sit there. I ride them to the trucks. I fetch them from the trucks. It’s completely shocking.

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There is no such thing as a Rainbow Nation. You must know where you come from and know where you’re going. If you’re a Zulu you’re a Zulu. If you’re a Xhosa you’re a Xhosa. Now (interim president Kgalema) Motlanthe is more of a rainbow person. He can socialize with anyone. Which is not right. We need someone who is either a Xhosa, or a Zulu.

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You know that woman that they say Zuma raped? It’s untrue. She was involved with Zuma for a very long time. Zuma was actually planning to marry her as one of his wives. So, they blame the Intelligence Minister. That might be true, that he tried to convince that lady, to pay her money so that she can threaten Zuma. That’s what she did! Those questions were asked in court – and she couldn’t manage to answer them. There were police outside, she had a phone, and there was a house phone. And you wake up in the morning, take a bath, make food, fry eggs, you eat, make phone calls. You know? The door’s unlocked. And you come up later and say you’ve been raped. Why didn’t she go out and report at the same time, when police were outside Zuma’s house. Besides that, she should have called. Or wake up in the morning and go and make a statement at the police station.

As the SADC troika jetted into Harare yesterday to try (unsuccessfully) to make some headway in the stalled talks, a variety of different Zimbabwean civil society organisations gathered to protest the delays and demand a resolution of the country’s political crisis.

Read about some of these actions here:

• Riot police descend on women protesters – Women’s Coalition
• Police ruthlessly crush protest by youth activists – Youth Forum
• 23 injured, 7 arrested and 4 abducted after a ROHR demonstration – Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe
• Image Gallery – Restoration of Human Rights Zimbabwe demonstration

Zimbabweans are speaking out. It’s time SADC also took a stand on these stalemated negotiations.

I sing the song of the Matebele,
I sing the song of the tortured, butchered, marginalised and ostracized,
I sing the song of the hopeless,
It is the cry of the downtrodden, weary, and abused,
It is the voice of the Ndebele people.

My muffled voice wails from the deep dungeons of the Great Shangani River where my king’s story ends.
Deep in the dungeons, I cry for recognition and inclusion yet no one seems to take notice.
Every time I make an attempt to claim my position, to claim recognition and identity I am labelled a tribalist and a sell-out.
Every time this happens I am drawn back to self pity and self hatred.

My pain has been worsened by the Son of Bona
The Son of Bona tortured, brutalised and killed my clansmen simply because they were Ndebele.
Since then he never looked back.
He has made sure that my people are marginalised and peripherised.
Now he has made it worse by refusing to let go the reigns of leadership.
My cry is now so deep such that its tears can fill an ocean.
It is this deep because I see myself and my clansmen buried in poverty and swallowed by doldrums of history.

My cry has grown to be a cry of the people of Zimbabwe.
This is because the bitterness is no longer the Ndebele one only but a bitterness of everyone in Zimbabwe.
Son of Bona, you have destroyed our beautiful land, you have destroyed our pride as a nation.

I cry for the departure of the Son of Bona.
Son of Bona, Zimbabwe has had enough of you.
Son of the Bona, you cannot offer us anything that we can believe in.
Give others a chance to lead; Zimbabwe is for all of us.
Farewell, Son of Bona, Zimbabwe will be a better nation without you.

When the AU was formed in 2002 as a successor of the OAU, one of its main objectives was to achieve peace and security in Africa and to promote democratic institutions, good governance and human rights. It was also going to promote and defend common African positions on issues of interest to the continent and its peoples.

The Zimbabwe crisis is just the latest indication of why we must place no confidence in the ability of either the AU or its young brother SADC to handle regional problems as well as sail this continent onto the path of development. Their inaction on Zimbabwe is shocking and appalling to say the least and it smacks of both lack of will and incompetence.

Mugabe derives his spunk from the indifference and silent support of his peers. Ejecting him from the AU and verbally condemning his actions would probably have made some difference in his behavior or at least lessened his confidence. But only a few leaders like the late Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, Botswana’s new President, Seretse Khama Ian Khama and lately, Kenyan Prime Minister, Raila Odinga have dared to be vocal about Mugabe’s self-imposed government and have even called for his and Zimbabwe’s suspension from the AU. The rest of the whiteheads especially in SADC have been inexplicably maintaining what Odinga calls a “diabolical conspiracy of silence bound by personal misdeeds and complicity in refusing to condemn their neighbors,” especially Mugabe. The same culture of impunity is what nurtured the excesses of the continent’s infamous dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko of the DRC and Uganda’s heartless Idi Amin under the banner of predecessor OAU’s founding principle of respect for national sovereignty.

In trying to understand why the AU and the SADC are toothless bulldogs barking endlessly from the periphery, Odinga postulates that African leaders are an old dictators’ club that have an inherent fear of criticizing each other. This is because, as Mugabe so rightly put it at the Sharm el Shaik, Egypt AU summit, they too have skeletons rattling in their closets.

It is thus not surprising that the AU has failed to put the people of Zimbabwe first and to stand up for democracy. In an ironic joint statement, the AU/SADC pledged “As guarantors of the implementation of the agreement, both AU and SADC will spare no effort in supporting its full and effective implementation.” What have these two organs done in the face of Mugabe’s latest unilateral declaration of cabinet? Again, as was the case in Kenya, the party that should have rightly taken over power is being forced by regional pressure to concede to an increasingly unworkable compromise deal and endless mediation processes by an inefficient go-between who insists on a concept of quiet diplomacy that only he understands. Recently, in response to a legal application filed against it by the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum two months ago, SADC has for the first time acknowledged that Mugabe should not be recognized as a legitimate head of state. But the organization rejected the demand to refuse to allow Mugabe and his government to participate in future SADC activities. Its excuse was that former South African President Thabo Mbeki, the SADC appointed mediator, was able to facilitate a power sharing deal to end Zimbabwe’s political crisis.

What ‘African’ common position are the AU/SADC defending when they fail to condemn errant dictators who hold whole starving nations to ransom in order to protect selfish interests?

In its thirty-nine year history, the OAU could only be judged as an abysmal failure. It failed to challenge any major dictator on the continent and stood idle while civil wars, ethnic conflicts, poverty and disease ravaged ordinary Africans. Its only success was in preserving the notion of sovereign borders in Africa. Wole Soyinka once described it as a “collaborative club of perpetual self-preservation.” The AU is the new OAU under a different name: its membership is the same and there are no new institutions to suggest that it will be any more effective or less selfish than its predecessor.

As a pan-African organization, the AU must be willing to stand up to African dictators and military rulers that have been the real causes of bloodshed and poverty on the continent. So far the AU has failed in this mission: Mugabe is still a revered charter member of the AU and it has failed to recognize Morgan Tsvangirai as the country’s rightful elected leader. If we start to question the complacency of the AU, we start to ask, why was it tolerable that a tyrant lost an election, imprisoned, killed and molested those who dared oppose him, then proceeded to reelect himself to the presidium, and no action was taken?

The AU has failed the people of Zimbabwe by its unwillingness to deal effectively with the political crisis that was single-handedly constructed by one dictator. For months they have insisted on mediation and dialogue when decisive action has been called for. The AU has failed too often or remained inert when it should have acted, and its internal procedures are often agonizingly inadequate for the challenges it faces in problem countries. For far too long, and with immensely destructive consequences, the AU has downplayed the dimensions of crises in various African countries and the urgency of large-scale humanitarian intervention. This is particularly true of the situation in Africa’s largest country, Sudan with the longstanding and ongoing conflict in Darfur that stretches as far back as 2003. Look also how dictators recently bulldozed their way into leadership in Kenya.

The AU has only been good at issuing statements. The AU’s fine words at the moment are little consolation to Zimbabwe’s hungry, oppressed people. Once more, like its predecessor, the AU is set to fail the people of Africa.

When Robert Mugabe opened Parliament last month, he was jeered and heckled by the MDC’s Members of Parliament. Some thought this was a positive sign – an act of defiance on the part of a long-suffering opposition party. A few people, however, thought the MDC was stooping too low in a childish act of name calling.

The exchange was shown once on national television before the state broadcaster yanked that part of the footage. But CNN got a copy of it, and the clip has since been posted online. In our email newsletter yesterday, we sent people the link to the footage, and asked them for their feedback.

So far, the responses have all been positive, for example:

There is nothing wrong with that kind of behaviour. Mugabe after stealing the vote several times, beating and murdering his own people, how can he expect people to respect him. People have been oppressed for very long and that is the only platform they had to express sentiments from their constituencies.

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Fantastic. They reflected the exact sentiment of the people they represent. That is their mandate is it not?

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Jeering and heckling in Parliament is the stuff of lively democratic debate the world over and a test of the temerity, wit and strength of the representatives. And puhleese, they have the arrogance to puff up and bluster about the heckling whilst our equally important honorable Members of Parliament are being hauled off and clapped in irons and being subjected to the degradation of our ever so proud government’s filthy prison cells. Pride comes before the fall. The critics of the heckling are also past masters of equally derrogatory behaviour in Parliament – they must now step up and get ready for some of their own medicine and prove their worthiness to the people of Zimbabwe – or are they all a bunch of wimps?

Watch the footage here or here and email info [at] kubatana [dot] org [dot] zw to let us know what you think.