WOZA has just announced the release of the four members detained over Independence weekend, following their demonstration and attempt to hand over a petition to ZESA.

According to their statement, whist in detention, these veteran activists witnessed the worst conditions they have ever found in Zimbabwe’s jails:

The four WOZA members arrested on Thursday outside ZESA headquarters, Jenni Williams, Magodonga Mahlangu, Clara Manjengwa and Celina Madukani, have finally been released from police custody after spending five nights in cells. The Attorney General’s office refused to press charges against the four women due to lack of sufficient evidence. The women did not appear in court as defence lawyer, Harrison Nkomo, spoke directly with the Attorney General’s office. Officers from the Law and Order Department at Harare Central had tried to force the women to pay ‘admission of guilt’ fines on Saturday to ‘buy’ their freedom. WOZA will now being suing the Zimbabwe Republic Police for wrongful arrest and detention.

The four women endured hellish conditions in the cells – the worst that these veteran activists who have been detained on numerous occasions have ever seen. All women require medical treatment for a rash all over their bodies and diahorrea due to the filthy conditions and flu symptoms from the cold conditions. Their bodies also ache from being forced to sit and sleep on cold concrete for six days.

The corridors and floor of the female cells were covered in urine and human faeces due to blocked toilets and only sporadic water supply. The women were also initially subjected to verbal abuse from police officers until the nonviolent activists refused to accept the abuse. By the end of their detention however, many officers were supportive. What is clear is that police officers also have to work in these inhuman and degrading conditions.

The human rights defenders can also testify to the large-scale corruption being practiced in the cells. Bribery is rife; with bribes being paid by prisoners to secure their speedy release from the horrific conditions. The sale of mbanje (marijuana) is also commonplace.

WOZA is relieved that the four women have finally been released and would like to thank all friends and supporters that phoned the police station or communicated their support. Jenni, Magodonga, Clara and Celina appreciate the solidarity. Nonetheless, WOZA would also like to express outrage at their detention for six days in horrendous conditions when police officers knew that there was insufficient evidence. This malicious harassment of human rights defenders is continued evidence that very little has changed in Zimbabwe despite the formation of a unity government over a year ago and the conciliatory words of the President a few days ago. The insistence of ZESA employees that the peaceful activists be arrested will also be remembered. It appears that the electricity provider would rather have its paying customers arrested than dialogue with them about their concerns. This arrogant behavior is further confirmation that ZESA is not interested in providing a service to Zimbabweans but is only interested in taking advantage of their need for a basic requirement.

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.

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

Should we take the invitation of the North Koreans to camp in Zimbabwe as an insult? Should we forget that the military ‘strategies’ of the Koreans is what wiped out entire villages.

Who is my enemy here? Is it the Koreans who trained sadistic ‘soldiers in the art of killing and maiming. Or is it perhaps the Zimbabwe ‘government’ – read Zanu PF or better still read Robert Mugabe, who unleashed the violence to begin with.

What will happen if a Korean ever decides to ‘invest’ in Matabeleland? Will he suffer for the sins of his fathers? Or should a son suffer for the sins of his father. Who is my enemy here, the Koreans or Mugabe?

Is Roy Bennett an enemy of the black Zimbabwean? Is he answerable for the sins of his father who destroyed schools that were being  built for black children? Should David Coltart apologise for being in Smith’s police force?

It might seem as if I am asking silly questions, but these same questions and more will always be a stumbling block to a united Zimbabwe. If such a thing will ever exist. We should ask the difficult questions and get answers; satisfactory answers.

Are the Shona and the Ndebele enemies? Is an Ndebele guy who supports Dynamos a sellout? Is an Ndebele guy who marries a Shona woman a sellout? Should we look the other way and spit on the ground if someone addresses us in Shona in Matabeleland? Is there a Shona project to colonise Matabeleland and destroy the very core of Ndebele customs, languages and identity?

Who is my enemy? Is it the Shona policeman deployed in Tsholotsho or was he just deployed there? Is he part of the Shona supremacy movement, an agent, thoroughly briefed on how to go about creating the Republic of Mashonaland? Is the British journalist or human rights campaigner genuine or just here to make sure the British maintain their economic stronghold on Zimbabwe?

Is it as simple as Mugabe being a dictator and the whole charade being about unseating him? But he has killed less people now than he killed in Matabeleland in the eighties? Or is Ndebele blood a lighter shade of red than Shona blood?

I have done enough asking for today and I demand answers?

Who is my enemy?

A few weeks ago I got a rare opportunity to go on a field trip with an international humanitarian assistance organization working in Buhera, Murambinda. This is one place that has hit the headlines because of a measles outbreak wreaking havoc in that area. A few kilometers off the main road, health centres are accessible only by travelling along uneven dust paths that field vehicles have, over time, carved out. Travelling like this in the back of a 4X4 Landcruiser is a lot like being in an army squad-car; an experience so jarringly bumpy that by the time you reach your destination, your insides feel like they have haphazardly re-arranged themselves along your internal torso. But this is nothing compared to the kilometers that women and children in Buhera have to walk barefoot in the parched plains under the baking sun to reach the nearest health facility.

The fields are pitifully without any maize; a few sorghum stalks litter most of the space.

Day two on an active measles case finding mission, we took to the dust road on our way to Muzokomba  – one of the villages where several outbreaks had been reported. We passed an extraordinary figure of an old woman who at a distance looked like a scarecrow perched precariously on a tree. As we drew closer, I noticed that the old woman was dressed mostly in rags. She had made a makeshift shaded seat – something akin to a hammock, only not as comfortable. The makeshift shelter is called rindiro or watchtower. Her thin frame was sitting alertly upright, and cross-legged, her eyes blankly staring into the distance. Pathetic pieces of crockery lay underneath her seat, and a small pot was cooking something foul smelling a few meters away. She was watching over her meager sorghum crop, protecting it from baboons. You could literally count the number of stalks littering her small field. The field workers explained that this was common practice; villagers just have to do this or else starve.

And I thought I had problems.

Apart from watermelons, sorghum is about the only crop that thrives in the harsh Buhera climate. As we drove further, two small boys sat in their own rindiro, at a time when they should be in school. I wondered if they stood a real chance of intimidating an adult baboon…

At the end of this tour I came to the conclusion that if for any reason organizations like MSF, Goal and Red Cross offering various forms of humanitarian assistance in Buhera decided to cease operations in Murambinda today, they would be responsible for thousands of deaths in that area. I also found the devotion and hardwork of the field personnel touchingly dedicated. Active case findings mean following the grapevine for leads on where the disease is resident. It is about coaxing the largely indifferent women at the clinics for more information and leads. It is about driving for many kilometers following the leads supplied and when you find sick children, you seek permission from their guardians after which if granted, means bundling mothers and children in the back of the truck and taking them back to the nearest measles clinic.

Certain sects of the Vapostori religion are the most uncooperative. As soon as they spotted the measles medical team vehicles approaching their homesteads, women literally scurried for the hills to hide their children therein. Field workers have recently been forced to carry out physical inspections of huts and under beds as religious parents go out of their way to avoid ‘sinning’.  They have to use a variety of tactics ranging from coercion and intimidation to begging in order to obtain the cooperation of guardians to get sick children treated for measles. The team I travelled with had a directive they moved around with – which had been written by one of the chiefs, demanding that all villagers get their children immunized and treated for measles and that those refusing to do so will be committing a crime prosecutable under the law as a criminal offence. The directive also highlighted that any parent who denies a child treatment, resulting in that child’s death would be charged for murder and incarcerated.

On average, seeking permission to treat measles patients takes anything between 30minutes to an hour per household – of first making small talk, coaxing and sometimes begging. This is the kind of work that is the preserve for really patient fieldworkers. I kept thinking to myself, damn stupid people – this disease is claiming the lives of their children in droves, and yet someone has to drive all the way just make that realization apparent to them and convince them to seek treatment for their children. The dynamics of religious hegemony are something we will never understand. At one homestead, the head was adamant that no child of his would be immunized or receive ‘Western’ medical treatment. In such cases, field workers have no choice but to leave medication behind and hope against hope that the parents would administer it to their sick children. A lot of the times, teams have returned days later to check on the children and found funerals in progress. That is just the way it has been.

I managed to speak informally to some of the mothers detained at a clinic in Muzokomba, and they intimated that sometimes, they really want to seek treatment for their kids but their husbands just won’t have it. One or two were clearly not happy to be at the clinic because it went against the grain and spirit of their religion, which believes strongly that if God created people, only he should then be responsible for treating the sick among humankind. Moreover, the insurmountable distances villagers have to travel on foot to reach the nearest clinic greatly contributes to the disinclination to seek medical attention.

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.