This is just one of the powerful photos from the recent ZimRights photo exhibition, Reflections. Despite Zimbabwe’s inclusive government, and claims of “progress” in opening up Zimbabwe’s democratic space, this exhibition has faced numerous challenges. Read and see more here.

ZimRights Director, Mr. Okay Machisa was arrested yesterday, Tuesday 23 March 2010 at Gallery Delta. He was in the process of finalising arrangements for the launch of an art exhibition entitled ‘/Reflections’/. Following the intervention by Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights Mr. Okay Machisa was released from Harare Central Police Station.

At a press conference today, Irene Petras, Director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, described the conditions for Mr. Machisa’s arrest and the holding of the photographs in the following press statement:

The Officer Commanding Harare Central District, *Chief Superintendent G Gwangava,* advised that he had ‘/not approved’/ the launch and gave Mr. Machisa seven days to provide ‘/letters of consent from individuals and organisations’/ appearing in the photographs, failing which he threatened to prefer unspecified criminal charges against Mr. Machisa.

It is ZLHR’s considered legal opinion that the seizure and retention of the photographs by the police is unlawful and unjustifiable, as are the threats of criminal prosecution and the attempts to prevent the invitation-only launch from proceeding.

Such actions are solely calculated to instil fear and paralysis within civil society and to prevent free assembly, association and expression around national events and processes. For too long, civil society has been excluded by political parties and state institutions and actors from participating – as is its fundamental right – in issues around governance, national healing and reconciliation, and other matters which are in the national interest.

For this reason, ZLHR has been instructed by ZimRights to file – and has indeed filed – an Urgent Chamber Application demanding the immediate return of the photographs. The application also challenges the unjustifiable attempt to prevent the launch from taking place today, and the threats to prefer criminal charges, which, in our considered legal opinion, have no basis in law.

Mr. MacDonald Lewanika, co-ordinator for Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition expressed civic society’s concern regarding the unlawful arrest and harassment of civic activists by state security agents. These actions have escalated in the last few months. Other ZimRights officials as well as Mr. Machisa have received threats via cell phone and email. In addition, the Secretary General of the General Agriculture and plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe has also recently experienced harassment and intimidation from state agents. Mr Lewanika stressed that this behaviour was unwarranted and unjustifiable. Crisis In Zimbabwe Coalition is working to bring these matters to the attention of the mediators in the dialogue process around Zimbabwe’s political agreement, including President of South Africa Jacob Zuma. When asked about engaging the Ministers of Home Affairs in this issue he said:

“I think that the question of local remedies in Zimbabwe in situations like this, and this kind of behaviour by the police shows that as a place where you can run to [for protection] they are not an option. This idea of even engaging the Co-Ministers of Home Affairs Mr. Giles Mutsekwa and his counterpart Mr. Kembo Mohadi, is something that even while we do it, we think that that is no way for a country to operate. You can’t ask for ministerial intervention every time that something happens. It shows us that the problems we are trying to deal with are more fundamental than what we are looking at. Which is why this is important. The exhibition itself sought to raise the issues around the conduct of the police services. The police need to conduct themselves in a manner that ensures that such actions [intervention by high ranking members of government] are not necessary.”

ZHLR is currently waiting to hear from the Judge President, and has asked for the photos to be returned. The launch, which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to attend, will go on as planned.

From one of Kubatana’s subscribers living in Glen Norah, Harare:

My dreams for Zimbabwe are to see a transformed nation. A nation where rule of law exists. A nation united and growing to be Africa’s power house. My dream for Zimbabwe is to make Zimbabwe the breadbasket that it is supposed to be. It is to see a Zimbabwe with freedom of expression and democracy. I mean real freedom, not talked freedom. To see the politicians respecting the human race; not treating them as their stools to stand on, and only to throw them away. – James

A week ago a woman gave birth at a tollgate. According to the story the woman was on her way to Gweru Hospital where she had been referred to by the Shangani District Hospital presumably because the district hospital was not capacitated to do the delivery.

But that’s just my deduction.

What was reported is that the woman was already in labor when she caught a ride from a haulage truck driver who was heading in the same direction and when the truck was stopped at the tollgate; she was on the verge of delivering; the truck driver saw it fit to leave her somewhere near the tollgate so that he could rush along and go on his way.

Can’t blame the poor fellow though – he was probably terrified that he would end up being saddled with a new born baby and all the mess that accompanies childbirth moreover, he certainly wouldn’t want his employer to find out that he had turned the company vehicle into a  delivery room.

In any event the woman was unceremoniously dumped on the roadside, where she ‘rolled’ around on the ground, writhing in agony before her anguished cries attracted the attention of the police and Revenue authorities who were manning the toll gate.

With the assistance of these officials, she delivered a healthy baby and remained attached to the infant as none of them wanted to hazard cutting the umbilical cord; they couldn’t decide how many centimeters to cut off from.

In any event, an ambulance from Gweru conveniently arrived with paramedics who proceeded to cut the cord and ferry the woman to hospital where we are told the woman is recovering very well.

The story was written in the light-hearted manner of one telling an entertaining story; the tone conveying a hint of humor because – well it’s one of those stories one can tell knowing they will have an engaged and enthralled audience.

What makes it all the more appealing is that it’s all true and with a nice little ‘happy’ ending to wrap it all up – the baby is safe, the mother is recovering, the officials who were there now have a story they can one day share with their grandchildren and of course, it was suggested that the infant be named “tollgate”.

So all’s well that ends well, right?

Wrong!

It seems to me that this report totally missed the point.

The point is, why on God’s green earth was the woman referred to Gweru in the first place? Why are district hospitals incapacitated and why; with less than five years to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are we still having women’s maternal healthcare being so grossly ignored?

The point is why, in a three decade old independent Zimbabwe, are women giving birth in the open like animals?

And oh, the indignity of it!

Anyone who is well-versed on the subject of the arduous rigors involved in birthing will know that the exercise is excruciating and it is, for every woman a time of extreme vulnerability. There is indeed, nothing trivial about it because of the high risk involved, too many women die giving birth and others die due to pregnancy related complications yet coverage given to these tragic occurrences borders mostly on nonchalance without any appreciation of the gravity of these incidents.

To my way of thinking, the story raises several issues that warrant interrogation and are basically screaming for scrutiny.

One of them is the glaring lack of sensitivity with which the subject is treated – so matter-of-factly and it somehow succeeds in making the woman’s plight almost inconsequential.

Needless to say, gender sensitivity is a notion whose import has largely gone unheeded or has not been prioritized in many sectors of our society – this is just one manifestation of this culture of indifference.

What is even more upsetting is that these attitudes permeate to all other coverage of matters that directly affect women and impact on their health and interests.

There is something wrong with a health delivery system that fails women at a time as crucial as child birth – but there is something inhumane about a society that would condone this by finding the slightest element of humor in what is clearly outrageous.

And of all the things that could be said about a woman delivering in such unusual and inappropriate circumstances; the very least one can do is remember to point out the fact that we expect more of our Government – what with the combined weight of three political parties?

Only serious democrats must have celebrated the parliamentary boycott by more than half of MDC-T legislators on Tuesday 2 March 2010, against their leader’s call for the lifting of sanctions. For one, this incident is pregnant with meaning for our fumbling democracy and besides, the honourable members have a right to react in the manner they see fit.

This understanding could have been marred by the ZBC News reporter who had gone there to cover the story, but decided to give the nation his opinions instead, about the members of parliament involved in the fray. The language used against the legislators was harsh and to the effect that they were useless and did not deserve to be members of parliament.

It is clear this incident has ruffled a lot of feathers. Very few people will realize that it might not have been Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s wish to call for the lifting of sanctions, at least not for now. Even his speech suggests that it is a case of somebody holding a gun onto his head.

Certainly everything proves the matter is not top priority on MDC-T’s agenda. Nobody knows for sure that much has been done in breaking down the old order. There is still a lot of intimidation, and suspicion. What ZANU PF will have to realize though, is that while MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai has played his role, even against such stern rebuke from his subordinates in the Global Political Agreement, it is the ZANU PF party now that will have to do most of the enormous work by providing sufficient, authentic evidence that all the suspicions are false and reports of acts of a criminal nature are without a basis, with guarantees that indeed there is no return to the party’s known terrorist ways.

And above all ZANU PF will have to convince their counterparts in government that they are doing something that deserves MDC-T support in calling for the urgent lifting of sanctions. It is ZANU PF that will have to mollify the aggrieved scores of MDC-T legislators whose memories are still fresh and thus are not ready to see things the ZANU PF way.

And to the honourable members of parliament who were brave enough to walk-out, you have made democracy work for the country. It is important to emphasize the vital point that there are thousands of Zimbabweans out there, who do not feel, like you do, that ZANU PF is tame enough to allow for the removal of the sanctions and for the holding of a free and fair democratic election. A lot more has to be done in stemming the levels of human rights abuse,  still prevalent in our society including giving Zimbabweans a truly democratic environment.

What we need not lose sight of is the fact that those whom we are calling upon to remove the so called sanctions were given compelling, graphic evidence that was used in the crafting of the legislation that put in place the said embargo.

The Government of National Unity will have to come up with an equally compelling dossier of facts that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Zimbabweans are actively involved in the full implementation of the terms of the Global Political Agreement without a fear or favour.

But still, the situation has put a lot of pressure on ZANU PF, to prove to the international community that the party will never sink to the same stinking levels that it sank to in the years leading to the 2008 harmonized elections. ZANU PF will have to undergo a serious public sanitization exercise to rid itself of the stink that has associated with its image, if it is serious about courting the support of the electorate in the next election. For who, in his right frame of mind, would vote for a party that beats up its citizens, maims them, or even kills them for harboring views different to its own.

Unfortunately ZANU PF is not capable of change. The party and its leadership will not apologize to Zimbabweans for what it has put them through since it assumed power at independence, in 1980. It will not apologize to the people of Matebeleland and indeed the entire country for the horrors of the Gukurahundi genocide, not even for the untold human suffering caused by the destruction of people’s homes in the crazy state sponsored Murambatsvina program, or that of the economy or even the orgy of violence millions of Zimbabweans were subjected to in the run up to the 2008 disputed election.

Zimbabweans do not know that these people are sorry, or that they wont let these things happen again. A lot of people are still reportedly being harassed for making public their opinions. Public space is still being used exclusively for ZANU PF propaganda. Corruption and the politics of patronage is still the order of the day. The public is not convinced it is the sanctions that are solely to blame or that we should be crying about. ZANU PF will have to account for the collective administrative incompetence that led to the collapse of the once jewel of Southern Africa. And the party’s elite will have to explain their apparent affluence against the state’s bankruptcy. Somebody must be guilty!

No, we do not know that the Government of National Unity has done enough, in implementing the terms of the Global Political Agreement. As such, we cannot all be seen to be calling for the removal of targeted sanctions whose real impact on the masses remains public speculation.

Rejoice Ngwenja rocks.

Kubatana.net recently interviewed him and you can read and listen to his views on a variety of critical issues in Zimbabwe on www.kubatana.net

In the meantime, below we carry an article by him entitled Scorpion in my Shoe, published by www.africanliberty.org

Thanks to Robert Mugabe’s reign of record-breaking incremental destruction, my country is struggling to redeem itself from the abyss of infrastructure collapse, so much that even hardcore urbanites like me have to make do with irritating wood smoke just to have a warm plate of sadza [Zimbabwe’s staple maize meal paste].    And that was without additional injury to the back breaking exercise.   A week ago, I was stung by a small black scorpion on my big toe as I chopped firewood to beat Zimbabwe’s notorious power outages.

The sting, while irritating, passed off just like any other experience of living in modern-day Zimbabwe under the Jurassic governance of the primeval ZANU-PF.  Thinking back, I imagined that Morgan Tsvangirayi was persuaded to take Robert Mugabe into his political boot, wherefore the old trickster settled at some dark corner until MDC fell into a stupor of artificial comfort.  But now, Tsvangirayi has been inevitably stung while he least expected.

Instead of focusing on the business of building high yielding relations, Mugabe continues to conspire evil against our nation hiding behind questionable legalism.  According to a recent Zimbabwe Situation news online report, “…. Mugabe is entitled under the law to assign functions to ministers, [but] he still has to consult his partners in government on the allocation of the ministries, according to the GPA”.  In complete defiance of this noble proposition, Mugabe unilaterally takes it upon himself to strip MDC-held ministries of essential powers.

Apparently, the biggest challenge confronting Tsvangirayi is not the quality of Zimbabwe’s coalition government, given that most such arrangements are products of large-scale compromise.  Agreements are made on the basis of partner credibility, honesty, consistency and transparency – traits which ZANU-PF is not exactly endowed with.  Most progressive analysts will agree that Tsvangirayi knew exactly the nature of the partner he was committing himself to, that is why he needed to have a comfortable stock of antidotes to deal with Mugabe’s chicanery.   More importantly, ZANU-PF is a completely discredited partner, headed by one Robert Mugabe who comprehensively lost the March 2008 Parliamentary Election, only to be ‘salvaged’ by an equally discredited one-man masquerade in June of the same year.

According to Professor Arthur Mutambara, the Global Political Agreement [GPA] is the only source of Mugabe’s ‘presidential legitimacy’.  In fact he would have proceeded to add that had SADC taken the right decision to call for a more organised, African Unity-supervised presidential re-run, Mugabe would now be confined to overdue retirement at his Zvimba rural home.  It therefore is astonishing by what authority Mugabe cherry-picks ministerial responsibility, if it were not that he is of a tyrannical genre obsessed with power.  I have argued time and again that our Zimbabwe government is too big and expensive, hence the shifting of ministerial powers would, on any other day, have little impact on service delivery.  And yet if you really put Mugabe’s juggling under the spotlight, he is only interested in ministerial adjustments that entrench his hegemonic hold on political power.

What is left now is for both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi and his deputy, Arthur Mutambara to place an inexpensive political device that should shatter once and for all, Mugabe’s life-presidency ambitions. Both MDC cadres must come out of their friendly accommodative shells and tell Mugabe to fulfill all the provisions of the GPA. This is the opportune time for both men to stop making excuses for the aging dictator and embark on three-dimensional activism. The more sensible side of government – MDC – must promulgate statutory instruments to licence all applicants for radio stations and newspapers.  The democratic parties must dispatch all ambassadors, governors and appoint deputy minister for agriculture Roy Bennet.  Morgan Tsvangirayi and Arthur Mutambara must repeal all anti-democratic laws while all pubic appointments not sanctioned by the GPA must be nullified, including that of attorney general Johannes Tomana and central bank governor Gideon Gono.

The gist of my argument is that Robert Mugabe lost the election, thus has no moral high ground to play god.  Five million Zimbabweans have given both MDCs the mandate to govern, so the one-man political dance of the discredited Robert Mugabe has no authority or legitimacy to give five million voters a single sleepless night.  If both Tsvangirayi and Mutambara are weak, they should immediately hand over their power – Nigeria style – to more capable members of their parties.  This weakling image of subservience they are portraying does not augur well with our expectations.  It could also endanger their 2012 electoral standing in their constituencies.  Mugabe’s unpopular mandate expired in 2000, so any compromise on the part of Tsvangirayi and Mutambara is blight on the noble fight against ZANU-PF fascist dictatorship.  Luckily, we now know there is a scorpion in our boot.