Nelson Mandela said, “And later when we felt that we now have quite a solid support among the masses, we then decided to select 6 laws which we felt were most oppressive. We would define these laws and deliberately go to jail and not pay fines in order to focus attention on the repressive policies of the (apartheid) government”.

Mandela and his colleagues intelligently and consciously engaged in strategic non-violent civil disobedience.

Here is a man, at the height of political repression of the blacks by the apartheid regime when everyone was pondering whether to weigh a fully-fledged war against the government; he stood strong and wise and opted for a non-violent civil disobedience strategy. This is the profound level of wisdom and temperance, which unfortunately has been misconstrued by some of our impatient political ‘pundits’ in Zimbabwe as being too lenient. This is a clear attempt to brainwash and keep everyone in check and under the authorities feet. These politicians know that if Zimbabwe becomes very politically conscious of what Mandela did, the same things that he did may be applied against their corruption and evil and torturous politicking. These are men who have seen how Mubarak was deserted by his own security people, doing what Henry David Thoreau suggested, “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”.

Mandela has brought this lesson to Africa that it is the duty of the people to give a moral check, in the most non-violent ways possible, to the actions of a government.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

I see there is a lot of excitement ahead of elections about worthy and unworthy candidates. This is normal in any contestation of worldviews, especially within our political space here in Zimbabwe where divergent views for some mean kung fu kicks to the head of the interlocutor with whom you don’t agree.

What I find curious is that 33 years after independence, enters into public debate the issue of “qualifications” for those aspiring for public office. It tells a more profound story that meets the eye. When did Zimbabweans realise that this is what will solve their problems?

Critics have, not surprisingly, trashed such calls as breeding some misplaced elitism in the arena of public service as they the critics imagine it.

That this country has one of the highest PhDs per capita across the African continent and has still been steered down an abyss is a no brainer.

What is curious is that while people “obsess” about qualifications, they are the same people who will tell you that the real world only responds to intelligent behavior that is not gleaned from devouring tomes whose value to human development and understanding the universe is questionable.

But that’s a criticism we hear all the time, and it reads like that old aphorism that people who say money isn’t everything are usually people who don’t have the money themselves!

Money is everything, some have retorted, and if we are to conflate the two, money and education, another logical fallacy quoted elsewhere becomes relevant: that a rich man can never be wrong, and therefore you have no reason taking a poor fellow’s opinions seriously!

That is how Zimbabweans have tended to develop their own knowledge systems in the cruel world of the 21st century, but it remains to be seen if the real world has been successfully manipulated by the literati so to speak to make it a better place.

And of course this being Zimbabwe where there is always emphasis to push one’s chest out and claim one academic degree or another, some have said anyone who speaks ill of “educated leaders” wants the country to be led by dunces.

And that tells you the level of “education” the people in this debate have! Isn’t it ironic?

I am currently developing a Ward 7 (Harare City Council – Strathaven, Avondale, Alex Park, Gun Hill) directory, so people who live here can also buy and play here. It’s about building community, getting to know your neighbours. I walk from shop to church to police station to school to sports club to next shop, and get the contact details for public consumption.

I am amazed at how many places, mainly shops, but even a hospital; do not want to give out information.

“What do you want to know for?”
“Why should we tell you?”
“We can’t give that information out”
“What will you do with it?”

Is this the legacy of thirty years of democracy? That Zimbabweans are so mistrustful that they will not tell the public what the phone number of their shop is? Do they believe ‘Big Brother’ is watching them with CCTVs, Internet devices, etc? Is there some conspiracy I am unknowingly a part of by gathering their (not even private) information?

Or do Zimbabweans simply mistrust their government (unity or otherwise), and have such fear of the ‘authorities’. Most public establishments have a posted on the sign board outside on the street – which is why I have gone in to talk to them – but they are afraid to let anyone take any details. Has the government grown so far away from the people … a favourite phrase from so many liberation speeches of the 50s and 60s, (from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address)? We want a “government, of the people, by the people, and for the people”. And what have we got? A government of elites, by elites, for elites; we have ‘Representatives’ that do not drive or walk the same streets, do not buy in the same shops, do not have children in the same schools, do not see the same doctors, as us.

Or do I look like a Nigerian spammer? Is it just me they don’t trust? Why is there such fear, belligerence, refusal, denial, and hostility, towards giving the community information that will make them find you, come into your shop, and buy something?

It is no surprise really that Mugabes in the form of the head of state’s nephews have over the years fashioned themselves as above the law. Hey, this is African politics, the right surname can get you places, you know!

This does not help matters in trying to fight the fires of accusations of Zanu PF being essentially anarchist, and we only have to recall the dreadlocked one “invading” a bird sanctuary and ominously promising that he will be back after the “law” extended its arm and forced the “occupiers” to retreat.

Now we read that the former football administrator nephew of the president walked into a Chinese company (how dare he?), declared that he was the new head honcho, changed locks and expected to live happily ever after.

Yes just like that.

This is just but another reminder that the country has to wean itself from the odium forcibly visited on it by people who firmly believe they must “eat” from this anarchist’s trough, gorge themselves before Zanu PF disappears from the country’s political radar.

Surely they must be seeing this as imminent despite all that propagandist baloney that all signs point to extend rule come elections, why would there be this brazen economic anarchism on the eve of poll?

One indigenisation exponent actually once told a public meeting that Zimbabwe will not always be caught in this political and economic circus, therefore people must move in for the kill now – i.e. capitalise on the lawless expropriation of mines, companies, farms etc.

Something worth imagining is that while the lawyer of the Chinese firm Leo Mugabe was envying said Leo was “applying laws of the jungle”, and the courts have ordered the anarchist to “immediately and forthwith” return any documents, offices and office keys and any other such effects to the Chinese firm,” would the ruling have been this favourable had it not been a Chinese firm under siege?

Not anticipated by many, it looks like Zimbabwe’s new constitution has ushered in an era full of uncertainty and insanity. Call them radical thinkers or progressive minds or just disruptive minds; all these minds are contributing to the political circus of Zimbabwe. Just like in any circus, if a show starts to lose the audience, the producers quickly change the script – something that I think producers of Zimbabwe’s political circus should do.

The debate hosted by Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition yesterday on the recent Constitutional judgement exposed political weaknesses all round. It also exposed the habit of just issuing out press statements without action, which has been long been adopted by civic organisations.

The circus really began when the courts ruled in favour of the private citizen who had filed the lawsuit and ordered that elections be held by 29th July.

The panic and lack of strategy exhibited by the opposition parties in response to this ruling made me realize I was not the only one who one lacks knowledge of the constitution. The same constitution we endorsed without knowing its contents is now coming back to haunt us.

Caught napping again, Zimbabwe’s opposition parties began to scurry for cover, taking defensive positions. Among the noted defensive lines is the issue of “reforms”. On this one I would side with the progressive minds at Bumbiro house. These guys have been calling for these reforms for ages but nobody listened only to be labeled disruptive minds by those who now eat at the high table in Parliament. For how long will the nation wait for reforms and the continued mediation of President Zuma? I don’t think even Mr Zuma will have the power to reverse the decision taken by the courts but will just tell the GPA principals to hold free and fair elections.

The nation has been in election mode for some time and the continued backtracking by the opposition has been giving arsenal to ZANU-PF’s campaign strategy. The reality is that the so-called free and fair conditions being called for by Civil Society and opposition parties will not happen in the short timeframe given by the court.

So where is the plan “B” if there is one?

From the The Telegraph:

Hay Festival 2013: NoViolet Bulawayo returns to her homeland

I am a proper jumble of emotions as I make my way from the Ethiopian Airlines plane into the arrivals lounge of Harare International Airport. It is only a brief distance, it being a small building, but the 13 years I’ve been away from home makes it feel like the longest and most difficult walk I can remember. Part of what weighs on me is that the way I had imagined this day, the way I had played it over and over in my head, the way I had fantasised it years and years ago, was different. Like, over there, on the second floor where family and friends wait to greet their loved ones, would be my father, my Pops, chest swelling with enough pride to make him explode, waiting to welcome his daughter. And with him of course the whole mkhamandolo – all his surviving nine children and their children, the extended family, some of the sons and daughters of my grandfather and his four wives, all my people, drunken on pride and joy – weeping like they’d wept that December 31 1999, when I left, but this time tears of happiness, of course, shrieks of laughter all over, handshakes and hugs, songs and stories.

But then the reality is nothing like I had imagined. In reality I walk alone like a true prodigal. I am coming like some disaster: unexpected, unawaited. Not a single soul at the airport could tell you my name if you paid them. Besides Knockout Thabs, my best friend from high school who is picking me up from the airport, nobody knows of my return. My homecoming will be a surprise – the whole surprise thing being something I never knew before I left Zimbabwe and have picked up during my stay in the US, like so many foreign tendencies that now make up my identity. Oh how it ticked me off, the surprise thing, when I first moved to the US: surprise birthday parties, surprise present, surprise trip, surprise this and that. So unnecessary, so pointless, trying to catch me off guard when you could just come right out and tell me upfront so I am prepared.

And yet, here I am. Tired of the broken promises I suppose, after promising to come home and failing for years now because of one thing or another – finances nixing plans, my papers not secure enough to get me in and out of the country, or the unstable situation at home making it a bad time to visit – I have decided, out of guilt, to simply show up. It doesn’t feel like a bad decision, and having left home when I was a teenager, I feel so grown up doing things on my own terms like this.

I have never been to Harare airport before and so I do not recognise anything. Still, I am terribly aware of the wave of humanity around me; airport workers at various tasks, eager-eyed people looking out for their loved ones, travellers like myself and outside, a congregation dressed in white, perhaps waiting for an important church person. ‘My people, these are all my people,’ I want to scream, perhaps from the shock of being back home, perhaps from the joy of seeing the familiar rhythm of doing things; the poetry of the body, expressive faces, the thing without a name that speaks of home but I would never be able to explain. When I see a sign in Chinese, testament of course to the growing Chinese presence in Zimbabwe, I am a bit surprised, but still, I cannot help but laugh. This is a subject I treat briefly in my novel We Need New Names, and because my child characters – Darling, Chipo, Bastard, Godknows, Stina and Sbho – have been such an intimate part of my life for the past four years, to the point of almost becoming real, I find myself wondering what they would say if they were here with me.

I join the line for returning residents and not too long after, the young desk attendant stamps my passport and says, ‘Welcome home.’ I remember some of the port of entrees I have gone through – in the US, where I now live, the UK, Canada – always the questions, the scrutiny, and my awareness that I am an outsider. This is perhaps why, when I get my passport back, I hold it like it is the most precious thing ever; hold it like it is alive. Welcome home.

We enter my city at dawn, a time of returning witches. In the back of the car, my sister Bo and her youngest son, a nephew I have never met, are passed out from sleep. Bo lives in Harare and so we surprised her first. She refused to stay behind when we proceeded to Bulawayo.

‘I haven’t seen you all these years, I’m not staying behind,’ she said, leaving her children and young nieces and nephew by themselves as her husband was out of town.

I squint into the lightening darkness at the sign that welcomes us to Bulawayo, my heart breaking and joyous and disbelieving. My blood stirs when we pass familiar streets, though I’m surprised by the trash. Because Knockout Thabs has never seen me cry I work hard to maintain a straight face while he drives to my sister’s house in Cowdray Park, where I will wait for a while because I do not want to wake my father so early in the morning. Inside, though, I am a drumbeat of anguish, inside I am a river of tears. Dearest Zim, you beloved country, you’ll just never know how I’ve cried for you in the 13 years I’ve been gone.

In my hometown the roads are the first indication of the country’s hard times. I dance in my seat as we hit pothole after pothole after pothole, while my brother-in-law, Luke, navigates his car from his Cowdray Park neighbourhood to New Lobengula, where my home is. I do not quite know yet that this road situation is normal for the townships, so at first I politely abstain from passing comments. I do not, after all, want to sound like I’m looking down on my city. But when the potholes continue and it sinks in that they are a normal part of the drive, I cry out in frustration. Luke offers apologies, but I cannot tell if it’s for my discomfort, or the potholes. He talks about how bad the roads are, something I have heard before from friends who have visited, but apparently hearing and experiencing are two different animals. There seems to be no disappointment or rage in Luke’s voice as he says, ‘It is what it is; the potholes are here and life goes on.’

I will notice the same attitude with the water and power cuts that occur on just about a daily basis. There are no outcries when these happen, which strikes me as strange because years ago power cuts made us pour out into the streets to voice our displeasure. Now, instead of outcry, firewood is brought out and seamlessly replaces the stove (thankfully my father has a generator that powers everything else, though I cannot help but think of those who are without), and buckets of water line up in the kitchen and small passage leading to the lavatory. I am in Rome and must do as the Romans do, so I have to take a bath in a bucket, which I quickly adjust to because it is after all how I did it all those years ago. But it’s flushing the lavatory with a bucket that eventually gets to me. With the extra people who come to our house because of my presence it just seems I am constantly flushing after kids who probably have better things to do than lift buckets.

Save for my aunt Mildred, who keeps reminding me that I am wasting water, my family looks at my lavatory flushing with quiet amusement. If I were to read their eyes I would see that once upon a time they, too, were busy with buckets, concerned with keeping the lavatory flushed at all times. But that was a few years ago when all this was new. Now, they are not fazed; even the children are not fazed, no. They do not complain about the water and power cuts, the day-to-day challenges; their generation was born into it, this is their normal. What would be abnormal is the Zimbabwe of my childhood, of running water and spraying ourselves with hosepipes and flicking lights and blaring radios all the time and… No, they wouldn’t understand; that Zimbabwe is terribly gone.

The weight of the 13 years of my absence shows most markedly on my father’s 74-year-old face. In all that time I’ve seen him only once, when he came to the US to visit while I was an undergraduate. He stayed with his sister, my aunt, in Michigan and, because I was away in Texas for school and living on campus, I was only able to fly to Michigan and see him over one weekend. I have listened to him age over the phone, his robust voice going just a bit quieter over the years as he relates the various sicknesses of old age, the way the country has and is unravelling, among other things. The day I arrive home to surprise him he is at his cousin’s funeral. Because of his age, and a heart issue he has been having, it is decided that it may not be healthy to surprise him as I have done with everybody else. Yes, you don’t want to shock an old man to death, my sister says in a joking tone.

Later, he arrives, half panting from heat and the long walk; my father, the old man. My own siblings too are ageing, but it’s on the bodies of their child­ren that I really begin to see the marks of time. The kids and toddlers and babies I left behind (a little over a decade ago) have blossomed into adults and teenagers, and occasionally, like an old woman failed by memory, I have to ask, ‘Who is this, who is this one now?’ Some of the children even have children of their own, something that doesn’t cease to baffle me.

But if I am shocked by the fact that kids have their own kids, then other people are shocked by the fact that I am still yet to have children. My family, obviously, because they are in my life and we are in constant touch, do not express much concern, but other people do. On my way to the grocery store a neighbour introduces me to his three or four grandchildren before he says, ‘How many do you have and did you leave them in America?’ It is a question I encounter over and over like an accusation, until I am stunned, and then annoyed, by the implication that without children I am not enough.

New Lobengula, my neighbourhood, is mostly red-brick houses carefully lined like loaves of bread. People with means have renovated their originally two-roomed houses and added additional rooms to accommodate their families. A lot of houses have remained the same, but I hardly recognise my home. It was already renovated to begin with, but more work has been done to it. In fact, they were digging a foundation when I left, and the house I grew up in is no longer there, replaced now by one I cannot really connect to. Part of me feels sad for the loss; if I were blindfolded and thrust inside I would have been lost for sure, but I’m still grateful to see pieces of furniture from back then. There is the weird wardrobe I shared with my sister, with the little shelf where I stacked my books including the ones I stole from libraries because I could not afford to buy new books but still wanted to own some. The display cabinet where we kept glassware that only came out when we had visitors. The round dining table with the chairs we did not sit on. These are things I know; they connect me to my past and I’m grateful they have been spared.

Sometimes I will escape the home I cannot remember and take random walks in my neighbourhood. Thirteen years on, New Lobengula looks pretty much the same, though it takes me a while to adjust to the landscape. At the same time there are changes that I wish hadn’t happened; the grocery stores where I used to shop, from whose corners naughty boys used to catcall and make me both confused and excited, are gone and have been replaced by new ones. Like most things in the area, it is not an upgrade; the shelves are not as well stocked as I remember them from before, the meat at the butcher’s is discoloured from the power cuts that affect the fridges, and I generally cannot relate to the mood in the stores. Later, though, I will find that the shops in Bulawayo city centre are much better, comparable even to the ones I am now used to in the US. The currency in use in Zimbabwe at the moment is the US dollar, alongside the South African rand, and so in a way I am pleased to be able to use my US dollars. Still, I am confused by the prices, how a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, a pint of milk, beer and a Coke can all cost the same price, for instance. And when I get my change back it is so dirty that I am almost afraid to touch it. Zimbabwe may use US dollars but it cannot print the currency, and so the low-denomination notes will change hands and change hands and change hands until you want to tell George Washington to take a bath.

Yet another change I cannot get over is that faces and people I do not know confront me in my neighbourhood. It is a strange feeling; whereas 13 years ago I could never walk New Lobengula without bumping into a familiar face, without stopping to chat, without anybody yelling my name, now I may as well be a ghost. It is a fact of life, I suppose, people come and go, faces change, but because I have fantasised about reuniting with loved ones and friends, the realisation that I am a stranger in my own streets breaks my heart. When I stop by my best friend’s home, her sister tells me she has moved to the next town where she lives with her husband. From our tight group of high-school friends, she is one of the few who have remained; the rest of us are scattered in the US, Britain, Botswana, and mostly South Africa. The majority left during the ‘lost decade’ when the country was falling apart. The Zimbabwe we know and Facebook about is the beautiful ghost of this new country that is right now defiantly belching in my face and daring me to say something. In the stench of its accusation I wonder what kind of animal we would be looking at if we had stayed, all of us, if our only option had been to face and fix the country instead of take flight. In the stench of its accusation I am left guilty, because now that I am seeing things with my own eyes, I know just how much my family suffered; a reduced standard of living, poor access to health care, lack of jobs and many other things that made life hard for them.

The throb of house music in the morning, this beat-based music that has come from South Africa and somehow nudged out the kwaito and other sounds of my youth. It has occupied houses and taxis and streets and teenagers’ cell phones. It provides the soundtrack to the hustle and bustle of township life – kids walking off to school, girls and women bent double, their brooms mauling the earth and raising dust, touts calling out for customers heading off to town, rotting guavas falling on to the ground, people exchanging morning gossip, my father telling me one story or another as we stand by the gate and watch New Lobengula emerge from its slumber. Later, at my party (for what is a homecoming without a party?) the same house music rips from the stereos on the veranda where kids congregate and dance confusing dances that I cannot begin to imitate. Once or twice I will leave the living room and go to the DJ, a quiet boy in his teens, and ask him to play a song, to play Brenda Fassie or kwaito or anything old-school just so I can be at home on the dance floor. The DJ nods and I wonder if he knows what I am talking about.

When the DJ eventually honours my request, I charge on to the dance floor and dance like I will be rewarded with the country I know, brought back from wherever countries go when things fall apart. My sister and aunt and brothers-in-law and friends and some of the older kids join me and we move in a delirious frenzy of limbs. The shock of my surprise visit has worn off but the happiness stays; we will all be infected with it for the whole week I will be home. My father sits on a chair, next to my mother, half watching the muted TV, half watching the dance floor, and perhaps wondering if it indeed is his long-lost daughter he is seeing. It is a question everyone is always asking me, as if they are drunks coming to their senses. ‘Is this really you? I still cannot believe it!’ I can only grin back sheepishly; I too cannot believe I am home at last. Around us Brenda’s voice wails from the sound system, and I wail with her with my body. I wail for the time I have been gone, for all that’s been, for the family I am now reunited with, for the country I love.