“If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.” Keith Richards

Zimbabwean activists and journalists should explore using the much talked about WikiLeaks web site as a conduit for exposing the corruption and profiteering of those in power in Zimbabwe. Apparently WikiLeaks receives an average of 30 classified documents every day from sources around the world. Read this extensive interview with Julian Assange, the inspiration behind WikiLeaks.

Many prisoners incarcerated in Zimbabwe’s prison cells are suffering from a lack of food, clothing and medical attention. A recent meeting with a community activist who visits a central Harare prison each week made it clear that prisoners need our help.

Here are two requests:

1.    Old ice cream or any other plastic containers are desperately needed as makeshift plates.
2.    Many prisoners do not have any shoes. If you have old shoes, especially size 7 and up, please consider giving them a new home.

If you can donate one, or both of these items your help will be very gratefully received. Please contact Kubatana via our web site to find out more and get details on a drop off point.

Read community activist Theresa Wilson’s account of assisting Zimbabwean prisoners here

If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
~ Bob Hope

Some sobering research coming out of Uganda directly links experiences of homophobia with the spread of HIV.

According to AIDSmap, a recent study drew from 303 men living in Kampala, Uganda, who had had anal sex with a man in the previous three months. Some interesting statistics from the study include:

The vast majority (78%) had had sex with a woman at some time; 29% had fathered children; and 16% were currently living with a female partner.

There was often a mismatch between the sexual orientation terms that men most identified with and their reported attraction to men and women:

• Whereas 56% identified with ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’, 70% said they were attracted mostly or only to men.
• 37% identified as ‘bisexual’, but 12% were attracted to both men and women.
• 7% identified as ‘straight’ or ‘heterosexual’, while 19% were attracted mostly or only to women.

Commercial or transactional sex was common: 42% had ever sold sex to a man, and 25% to a woman.

But most worryingly,

The researchers wished to identify the demographic or behavioural characteristics that were most strongly associated with HIV infection. In multivariate analysis, factors such as condom use or numbers of partners were not significantly associated with having HIV. In fact, only two factors were: age and homophobic abuse.

Men aged 25 or over were four times more likely to have HIV (odds ratio 4.3, 95% confidence interval 1.5 to 12.8). Amongst men over 25, HIV prevalence was 22.4%.

Men who had ever experienced violence or abuse because of their sexuality were five times more likely to have HIV (odds ratio 4.8, 95% confidence interval 1.8 to 13.1). Of the whole sample, 37% had been physically abused at some point, 37% had been blackmailed and 26% had been forced to have sex.

It seems from this study that one of the most valuable things one could do to stop the spread of HIV among men who have sex with men is to fight homophobia and intolerance. Promoting human rights means preventing HIV.

Rejoice Ngwenya takes on both the Diaspora, suggesting that they return hom to help fight fascsim, as well as the xenophobia perpetrated by South Africans who should concede that they are a “brood of insecure, spineless cowards.” Read Rejoice’s latest article below:

Considering the new wave of xenophobic attacks against black Zimbabweans, some black South Africans now have to concede that they are a brood of insecure, spineless cowards.  I have literally grown up with these cowards, lived with them in exile, conferenced, drank and shopped with them in their fancy boulevards and arcades. Under that veneer of happy-go-lucky hypocrisy, their limited intellect seethes with nothing but venomous contempt for other Africans, especially us Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Zambians and Malawians.  You encounter sales assistants in South African shops and all you see is contemptuous hatred in their eyes, spite for your money as they peer suspiciously at it as if it has been puked by a dragon. Even when I check into five-star hotels at Rosebank, I have to grope around for ideal seating while the receptionists scurry around for attention of Japanese guests in anticipation of a miserly tip. I guess we need to appreciate that their Ubuntu deserted them as a result of three hundred years of plunder and mental abuse by the Boers.  To them, anything white is God-sent. But I have good news for the enlightened few:  it is only an insecure, good-for-nothing pea brain that would kill someone solely on the basis of ethnicity. Just like Hitler, Amin, Stalin, Bokassa and Sadam Hussein, Paul Kagame, ZANU-PF hooligans in June 2008 et al – xenophobic South Africans are a pathetic excuse for humans.

The 1-7 August 2010 week, I hear, is national science week in that country, but sad to say, xenophobia is not rocket science, otherwise there would have been a genius from some village high school in Tlokoyandou, Limpopo Province,  with a perfect wonder cure. Unfortunately, it is neither a medical condition nor physical deformity, but plain stupidity.  I guess I am asking for too much to expect an average primary school dropout from Soweto to notice how the world has moved ahead riding the wave of human diversity. Sadly, there are millions of such second grade humans in that country, from the dry lands of Limpopo to the shores of The Cape. These idle minds are too busy worrying about where to get their next glass of home-brewed bear; pondering which Shabeen will be first to play the next big Kwaito [local house music]song, instead of creating own jobs. Their obsession is what Zimbabwean stud lays which South African woman, and what sort of punishment matches the ‘transgression’.   If they had a morsel of intellect, I would remind them that the world’s best civilisation – United States of America – is a potpourri of ethnic diversity.  If Americans had continued agonising on how to perfect Adolph Hitler’s poisonous doctrine of Aryan purity, they would still be living in tin shacks and using bucket toilets in Harlem like South Africans do in Khayelitsha!  Good gracious me, which planet has these clowns tumbled from?

Considering that in the 1990s, scores of Zimbabweans lost their lives and property harbouring parents of these social rejects, the blame lies purely on the African National Congress’s [ANC] political ideology of false promises. But unlike our own Marxist-Leninist dunderheads in Harare, true ANC cadres no longer beat up those who do not agree with them. The remnant legion of Zimbabwean-haters thrives on a mentality of cowardice and fear, and then convinces equally gullible neighbours that poverty is caused by African aliens. The net result?  Xenophobia.

Fear and cowardice are the twin evils of African politics. Here in Zimbabwe, after thirty years of violent repression, a typical Zimbabwean will not say much against political order or any system for that matter without glancing over their shoulder. The consequences are devastating. We have become so accustomed to service delivery abuse that mediocrity and compliance are now in the DNA our social behaviour. Zimbabweans wait for someone to say something, and they join with a ‘we knew it all along’ chorus. Fear and coward mentality!

This reminds me of a Mr Dzikamai Mavhaire, a close ally of Robert Mugabe who, at the height of ZANU-PF’s one party state euphoria in the 1990s, bravely defied all political odds and said something to the effect: “Mr Mugabe must go; he should give way to new party leadership.” There was hue and cry from his delusionary party, but he became an instant cult hero in the ‘democratic movement’.  As you read this rebellious treatise, twelve million Zimbabweans of progressive political ideology would want to show Mr Mugabe the flashing political exit, but we have had absolutely no clue on how to go about this noble democratic exercise since 1985. Villagers have been pummelled into prostrate submission while urbanites are routinely reduced to dysfunctional robots that worry too much about day to day survival at the expense of long-term political wisdom.

At petrol service stations, councils, churches, schools, public buses – Zimbabwean citizens are abused, but the most they can do is to wait and see, hoping that the next day will bring better tidings. Grocery supermarkets compel us to buy merchandise we do not need because they stock no loose change, and we take this punishment without so much as twitching an eyebrow. Are we cabbages or what! No wonder South Africans and Tswanas trample on us – we have learnt – or rather more accurately, ZANU-PF has taught us to take a beating with a smile. In the crowded lounges of London, Washington and Sidney, Zimbabwean Diaspora cower behind superficial self-reassurance that it is impossible to return home and rid ourselves of the myopic scourge of ZANU-PF politics: “ Hee bakithi, sizophindela njani ekhaya uMgabe esabusa?.”  [“How on earth can we return to Zimbabwe during Mugabe’s reign? ].

My advice to the ANC government is that xenophobic attacks on my countrymen are not an illusion, but direct result of false promises of jobs and housing. But those assaulting Zimbabweans will have to wait another hundred years before a government can deliver jobs. Governments do not deliver, they devour. For my fellow citizens in Alexander, Kya Sands, Soweto and Westham  – I say swallow your pride, rid yourselves of fear and return home to fight against fascism. The battle is about to be won.

It takes some form of courage for one to admit having done something wrong especially in the face of the wronged. In religious circles, it is believed that it is difficult to please God, yet what he only needs is a mere admittance of having sinned followed by repentance. People are prepared to forego Heaven for the reason that they cannot admit having made a mistake. Today on behalf of all Zimbabweans, I have chosen to be different.

My memory sends me back to times when people from Malawi and Zambia were flocking to Zimbabwe in search of employment. They worked in mines and farms for a living. Most local Zimbabweans looked down upon these people and started calling them names, “mabwidi”, “mabudya”, “maburanyuchi” etc. All these names depicted a people who did not have much wisdom or property. Those who came from Malawi were called maBhurandaya, a term derived from the largest Malawian city called Blantyre. The word as nice as it is was used in contexts, which were usually demeaning and humiliating. Yes it was a source of pride to be Zimbabwean, we were glad to be us and some people envied us.

Then came the era that many people from Mozambique, usually men, illegally crossed through the Tete province into the Northern parts of Zimbabwe. Most of them had no documentation so they sought refuge in the communalities of Rushinga, Mr. Darwin and some came as far as Bindura on foot. They were looking for employment and all they could get were domestic jobs, looking after cattle and goats mostly in exchange for food, shelter and a little money. Many of them have gone back with accusations of theft and rape among other sins. The few fortunate ones got married in Zimbabwe and stayed as our sons in-law. Even though that was legal, the perception with which we looked at these in-laws was demeaning, as depicted in the novel “Akada wekure” where locals would apparently be against the foreigner. These people from distant, usually unknown places were not easily defined as part of our communities. Our sisters who chose to be married to them suffered the same fate. The resilient ones are now part of our communities even though some have since returned to Mozambique.

As events started to unfold, the wheel turned against the Zimbabwean locals. Because of their urban type of lifestyle, without communal homes and usually being employees of big companies, people from Malawi and Zambia are the majority of the first African urban house owners in Zimbabwe. Most of the time we knock on their doors looking for one or two rooms to rent.

The Zimbabwe we all loved turned sour. We started to look for exits out of our motherland to assume the same status that we used to afford our fellow neighbors. In what part of the world don’t you find us? Many of us have crossed to Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa in search of basic food commodities. Some have gone to work as housemaids, and farm laborers in neighboring countries. The word Zimbo has become popular to refer to Zimbabweans that are all over the world today. In South Africa, the term Makwerekwere is used to refer to foreigners, coincidentally the northern part of Zimbabwe comprises a Shona tribe called the Korekore tribe. It sounds like South Africans hate the Shona more than any other foreigners. Zimbabweans living in other countries face the fear of xenophobia.

I am really against the ill treatment of foreigners in countries. In that light I wish to publicly apologize for the demeaning perception that we had of our neighbors during our better days, apologize for the ill treatment that we might have done to some people who were in need. I hope the apology reaches the mailbox of the highest God and blessings will befall my country Zimbabwe.

As state witness
I told the court
that the one saying
they had been beaten
Had done the beating
in Uzumba
I have never been
to Uzumba
They said if I didn’t
say what they told me
I would get more than
broken ribs.
Don’t call me a coward
One held my hand
the other held my other hand
A third crushed a log
into my ribs
A forth crushed my testicles
for good measure
As state witness
I told the court
that the one saying
their buttocks had been burnt
their homes had been burnt
and their wives raped
Were the ones
who had actually done those
horrible things.

- Copyright Mgcini Nyoni