After facing years of persecution and harassment, members of the Church of the Province of Central Africa in Zimbabwe can now pray with both eyes closed after winning property ownership in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe. The highest court of appeal in Zimbabwe has ruled that rightful ownership of Anglican Church assets belongs to the faction led by Bishop Chad Gandhiya and the CPCA.

Part of the Judgement delivered by Justice Omerjee at the Supreme Court reads:

“When one leaves a club one does not take its property with him or her. It has long been established as a salutary principle of law in this area of property ownership that when one or more people secede from an existing Church, they have no right to claim Church property even if those who remain members of the congregation are in the minority.”

Now what that looting and plundering has been put to a halt what remains to be seen is whether the ex-communicated Bishop and his followers will face the same fate of beatings and teargas by the police as they conduct services at the gates of the properties they once seized.

Zanu PF has helped Tsvangirai gorge on the perks of power to get him fat like a pimple ready to be squeezed. Motorcades, mansions, women, trips abroad. The Savoy Hotel, one of the most prestigious hotels in London is his most recent accommodation of choice. Tsvangirai may well, at this time, be a better choice than Mugabe. But he’s showing some serious signs that he’s learning some really bad habits, really quickly.

{Note to customs at Harare International Airport: please search Morgan and Elizabeth like you do all of us ordinary folk and make sure to charge them duty on their UK shopping}

An eight-track poetry album entitled All Protocols Observed was unpacked yesterday by Zimbabwe Poetry for Human Rights at a Food for Thought session hosted by US Embassy Public Affairs section.

Though you can dance to it the tracks on the album address some of the serious challenges affecting our country. From the accumulating dirty debt, to ravaging HIV/AIDS as well as politicians abusing their mandate to represent the people. The messages on the album are straight to the point as no one can dispute the fact that every problem in the country so far has been addressed with an “Operation” or a “Commission” of some sort as highlighted in track 5 of the album “Ma Opareshoni nema Komishoni”. Since Independence a lot commissions and operations have been set up to respond to something or other. From Operation Murambatsvina that demolished people’s houses because they were deemed illegal structures to Operation Zuva Rabuda/Sunrise, which resulted in the slashing of many zeroes on our local currency.

The album can be accessed from Zimbabwe Poetry for Human Rights free of charge and the group is encouraging people to share it so that it reaches a wide audience. Poetry is a powerful tool to provoke thought.

Many artists have been silenced in Zimbabwe for speaking out too loudly about the injustices faced by ordinary people. The work of Zimbabwe Poetry for Human Rights has not been easy as their recent performance in Kadoma was met with resistance when youths from ZANU-PF shut down the event and accused the group of spreading regime change messages.

Toindepi – Where are we headed? is a short sixteen minutes documentary directed by Tenford Chitanana. The film won the Documentary Short Film Award at the Silicon Valley African Film Festival held in California, USA. The documentary focuses on the day to day hardships faced by young people in Zimbabwe after Operation Murambatsvina left them homeless and jobless. The film is a reflection of the shattered dreams of many young people in Zimbabwe who are struggling to make their presence felt in a society where decision-making is done by the elite and powerful. Operation Murambatsvina took place in 2005 leaving many young people wallowing in poverty as their sources of income were destroyed resulting in many resorting to crime and prostitution for survival.

I was watching Hardtalk the other night. Stephen Sackur was interviewing William Ruto one of the presidential candidates in Kenya’s next election. Ruto and one other candidate are both currently facing charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague regarding alleged fanning of election violence in 2008. The next Kenyan election is March 2013 and many people are anticipating that it will be very violent. Which got me thinking that Mugabe’s decision to call an election in March in Zimbabwe is fairly cunning. Comparisons are odious but the violence that rocked Kenya’s last election made Zimbabwe’s look pretty peaceful. All eyes will be on the Kenyan election which will mean Zanu PF will have a lot of room to exercise their creative interpretation of the polling process.

On our run on Sunday, my friend and I passed a number of women in bright yellow t-shirts, with a photograph of Mugabe in the centre. The effect on us was telling, and discussing it afterwards, we wondered if it was part of a strategy for the elections, most recently being punted for March next year. Because the t-shirts, actually, were not “political,” in the formal sense, at all. If you looked closer, you saw the words “Zimbabwe Women’s Football” and “Chief Patron” wrapping around the photograph. But how many people would look closer? If my friend and I were reluctant to stare, for fear of sending some wrong signal and getting ourselves in trouble, how many others would give t-shirts like that a closer look? And, even if you do get a closer look, what better way to get out the message “we’re in charge” than by circulating a variety of innocuous, non-political t-shirts, with Mugabe’s face on them.

Anyway, perhaps we gave Zanu PF far too much credit, but they are historically good at the use of propaganda and information, and we decided that it could well be part of their election strategy. The strategy, we figured, would be largely around the need for Zanu PF to win a “free and fair” – read internationally recognised and accepted – election. If they can’t win an election under those circumstances, they’d probably be better off trying to cling to the Government of National Unity. So we thought maybe we were in for a Zanu PF that was less formally threatening – and instead relied on people’s residual fear, and any inroads they may have made through the GNU, if surveys like Freedom House’s are to be believed.

But then we read that Zimbabwe’s Energy Minister, Elton Mangoma of the MDC, had been arrested, detained at Harare Central, taken to Bindura, turned back, and returned to Harare Central, and eventually released with a warned and cautioned statement, all for supposedly saying “Mugabe Chifa, Mugabe Chibva” (Loosely translated Mugabe die, Mugabe go) at a rally in Bindura earlier this year. Mangoma was arrested twice in March last year for charges of abuse of office.  In one case he was acquitted, and in the other charges were dropped before the case went to trial.

Today’s arrest of Mangoma is the sort of “bad old days” behaviour of Zanu PF that makes people roll their eyes at any talk of a “free and fair” election. If they are hoping to lull people into voting for them – and having the election legitimated internationally – they’d better tone down the hamfisted intimidation tactics choppers.