Imagine making monthly pension contributions for six years and when you try to claim your pension from your insurance company you get a $20 bill on the spot as a once off payment. I was reading with great concern an article published in The Herald of 9 November 2012 on the feud between pensioners and insurance companies. Pensioners in Zimbabwe continue to suffer in silence as insurance companies reap big. The economic meltdown orchestrated by the hyperinflation environment of the 2008 era gave insurance companies some reasons to get away with it. To say that contributions were wiped out by inflation without considering value of the policies pre-inflation era somehow is tantamount to day light robbery. Some of these insurance companies invested in immovable assets, which appreciate in value and for the record, these insurance companies’ own most commercial buildings in city centers and they charge exorbitant rentals.

The paltry payments are not even enough to foot the transport bill for an ordinary person traveling from Gwanda to Harare, where most of these insurance companies are located, to make a claim. With no source of income, and having reached retirement age, most pensioners are left with no option but to accept the peanuts on offer from the insurance companies. This daylight robbery also left depositors penniless when banks failed to account for depositors’ money after Zimbabwe began using the American dollar; up to now it’s still a blame game between commercial banks and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

The three Counselling Services Unit (CSU) staff who were arrested Monday in Harare and transferred to Bulawayo have finally been released on bail. They’ve been charged with causing malicious damage to property, and now have to report at Harare Central weekly pending trial.

A Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights statement reports:

According to State prosecutor Marlvin Nzombe, the three CSU representatives together with some unidentified individuals smeared some MDC graffiti on an information centre located in Mpopoma high density suburb in Bulawayo 07 October 2012 in contravention of Section 140 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. The State claimed that the CSU senior staff members inscribed the words “MDC” and “MDC Chinja Ndizvo” on a bill board and on a durawall surrounding the information centre.

Seriously? Three nights in detention over some graffiti. And graffiti that the people you’ve arrested clearly had absolutely nothing to do with?

Let me get this straight:

You raid my office, intimidate my clients, threaten us with tear gas, steal my computer, find some spray paint I bought in July, decide this MUST be the VERY SAME SPRAYPAINT used in Bulawayo in October, arrest me, lock me up for three nights, move me to Bulawayo in an open truck, handcuff me, take my glasses, and finally release me.

Whereupon I have to pay you $100, give you my passport, and am obliged to come see you in town every Monday for who knows how long.

All because someone in some city more than 350 kilometres from where I live sprayed some graffiti that you don’t like. Where is the recourse here? You mess me around for no apparent reason, and I have to pay you for the privilege of it?

Honestly. Even as I write it, it doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t believe it if you read it in a book or saw it in a movie. So why do we let our police force indulge in such absurdity?

Two chaps from two totally different backgrounds found themselves back in Zimbabwe in the past couple of weeks.

One was a guy who toiled at the once glorious and well paying NRZ but left the misery of unpaid labour and headed for South Africa a couple of years ago. The other, a wise guy who has seen the world as a journalist, public relations guru, university lecturer and everything else in between and went to Botswana looking for a piece of that Khama wealth.

When the NZR guy came through, he had on his mind returning to his former job seeing he was missing home rather too terribly. He has some job in SA and looking at him, I thought he must be better off than he was back in the day as a railwayman.

He looked fit, his skin was “ruddy” and was generally clean, leading me to conclude that the grass sure must be greener on the other side. But here he was saying he had in mind settling back home and living the rest of his life to the fullest.

He made rounds to meet up with erstwhile work colleagues to get the pulse of what has been happening, who died, who got promoted, who left the country, who ran off with somebody else’s wife, you know the usual stuff old friends talk about.

That’s when his dream of a blissful return to the motherland disappeared.

His NRZ buddies told they hadn’t been paid literally for years and were only continuing with the humiliating and tedious trudge to work because they had nowhere else to go. If you quit this job, where the fuck are you going to get another one seeing it is only the streets doing the hiring? Bulawayo industries have become ghost towns, everyone who is unemployed is selling something, what are YOU going to sell? Thus it was decided that it was better to continue going to work for no pay because one day a miracle would happen and the NZR would give them a year’s salaries in back pay!

If only that were not the apotheosis of naivety.

You see, the railwaymen did not have to tell him he was better off in a foreign land: he could tell this himself, and all the dreams of working for the prosperity of his country disappeared. And so it was that as I write, he is buried in his work somewhere in South Africa working for that country’s prosperity!

Now, to the other fella from Francistown, Botswana.

This chap says he wanted to contribute to the growth of the Botswana economy by registering his outfit as a legitimate potential contributor to the GDP, but Batswana red tape got him steaming through the ears.

He says he was told it was difficult to see how his proposed business would contribute to the Botswana economy, and in frustration, he shook the dust off his sandals and returned to Zimbabwe, rather reluctantly it would appear.

And now back to the motherland, he has to start afresh and chase the American greenback by meeting all sorts of characters he never imagined he would ever meet. Because American greed has landed on these shores and claimed permanent residence, this chap has a lot of navigating to do before his fiscally immoral compatriots fleece him of his hard earned cash and get him on the move again, this time: DESTINATION UNKOWN.

Granted, this chap would rather share his skills with our neighbours where the pickings reportedly come in bucketfuls, but as the Fates would have it, he finds himself right where he started. Yet the two chaps present two narrative strands that converge somewhere on the rainbow. These are patriots who, all things being in order, would earn a living here, watch their children grow, watch them bring forth grandkids and just enjoy being sons of the soil.

But yet here they are as grown men running around chasing the Devil’s coin all over the show like horny cockerels chasing after pullets. There is a lesson there. You figure it out.

Heads of Civil Society Coalitions will address a Press Conference at 12.00 noon today in Harare at the ZimRights offices.  The leaders will speak on the arrest and continued detention of Counselling Services Unit Senior Programmes Officers, the behaviour of the police in this and other cases and the disruption of CSU’s critical and lawful activities.

Contact details for further information are as follows:

Irene Petras: Chair: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum / Executive Director:
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights
Tel: +263 4044 213

Abel Chikomo: Executive Director: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
Tel: + 263 7722 60664

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum: Landline:  +263 (4) 250 5111
Contact: Abel Chikomo or Programmes Co-ordinator Blessing Gorejena

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights: Landline +263 (4) 76085/
251468/705370/705641
Contact: Irene Petras or Kumbirai Mafunda

This statement from the Counselling Services Unit (CSU) draws attention to and requests solidarity to protest police abuse of power and harassment:

Fidelis Mudimu, Zachariah Godi and Tafadzwa Geza have just spent their third night in the police cells, two in Harare Central and last night in Bulawayo Central Police Station, after an unwarranted transfer to Bulawayo. They were transported on the back of an open pick up truck, registration ACD 6377, with no protection from the sun, despite the temperature reaching 33 degrees in Harare. They were then moved to Bulawayo from Kwekwe in a twin cab ABI 3608 and arrived at 18h00. They were not interviewed by the police, but immediately detained in the police cells on a detention order which had been prepared in Harare.

The following facts of the arbitrary raid and arrest and detention need highlighting.

Counselling Services Unit is a lawfully registered medical clinic providing non-partisan counselling and referral to all victims of trauma.

On Monday 5 November, the clinic was threatened with violence and normal services were disrupted by the invasion of the clinic by 12 uniformed and non-uniformed police officers, including members of the Bomb Disposal Squad and an Information Technology expert. The clinic was surrounded by armed riot police who threatened to fire tear gas into the building, which is also occupied by other tenants. Patients awaiting services were left unattended for 4 hours while the police demanded and forcibly accessed confidential medical records. They removed a computer which contains confidential client information and client records. No further booked patients were able to enter the building to receive treatment.

Counselling Services Unit adheres to the Environmental Compliance requirements for health facilities, following the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health. The guidelines require separation of cleaning materials for areas of ablution and areas of food storage and preparation. The cleaning utensils are clearly marked using spray paint, and the paint is stored on the premises in the work area of the janitor. It is not hidden or stored secretively and was purchased in July 2012. CSU have handed the receipts of purchase of three 250ml cans of spray paint from the local hardware store to the police. The police fixated on the finding of this paint and refused to listen to any explanation. With no further investigations, 5 staff members were arbitrarily arrested and transported to Harare Central Police station for further questioning. 2 staff members were released 2 hours later, and 3 have been detained since then with no warned and cautioned statement and no indication of charges. The removal of the 3 staff to Bulawayo after the required time for a court appearance and the further detention order with no defined charges or substantive evidence of illegal activities constitutes serious and illegal harassment.

Counselling Services Unit is deeply concerned about the protracted course of this situation and the non-adherence to the law by the arresting officers. CSU is concerned about the safety of Fidelis Mudimu, Zachariah Godi and Tafadzwa Geza.

We would request solidarity and protest on the following fundamental issues of this series of events:

1. Disruption of medical services to victims of trauma, and the unwarranted terrorisation of patients awaiting services
2. The illegal access to confidential patient medical records
3. The unwarranted deployment of armed riot police to the offices creating alarm and fear to the other tenants of the building and surrounds
4. The illegal removal of a computer, which is not covered in the search warrant which stated a “search for material likely to deface any house, building, wall, fence, lamp post, gate or elevator without the consent of the owner or occupier thereof”.
5. The removal of confidential medical and legal records without permission of the patients to whom they pertain.
6. The arbitrary selection of staff for arrest with no concrete evidence of any crime having been committed, particularly in Bulawayo where CSU has no clinic.
7. The illegal detention and transfer of senior staff to Bulawayo without formal charges, and exceeding the time limit for appearance before a magistrate with formal charges.

Work in and for Zimbabwe. Help grow our nation. Check out the vacancies below. If you’d like to receive this sort of information, as well as civic and human rights updates, by email each week drop us a note saying “subscribe” to info [at] kubatana [dot] net

Please note that the job vacancies we carry are related to the NGO and civil society sectors only.

Field Officer: Local NGO
Deadline: 16 November 2012

Location: Mashonaland West Province (Kariba)

A local Non Governmental Organisation is looking for a mature individual to fill in the following position that has arisen within the organisation. The position is for seven months starting in January 2013 and ending on 31 July 2013.

Summary of Duties and Responsibilities
-Mobilize communities and beneficiaries
-Offer extension for both livestock and crops to project beneficiaries
-Organize field days for both crops and livestock
-Manage and offer technical advice to demonstration plots for crops and livestock
-Monitor the distribution process at participating agro-dealers
-Collect vouchers from agro-dealers for payment by FAO
-Organize and run small livestock fairs
-Coordinate and liaise with Agritex, Department of Veterinary Services and Department of Livestock Development and Production
-Produce weekly reports
-Consolidate weekly reports into monthly reports to be submitted to head office

Qualifications and Experience
-Diploma in Agriculture or equivalent
-At least 2 years experience in a similar or related position
-Good communication skills and ability to mix with people from different backgrounds is a distinct advantage
-Clean class 3 driver’s license
-Experience in organizing small livestock fairs
-Good report writing skills

Email applications and CV’s to: matenda [at] fctz [dot] org [dot] zw

Child Protection Specialist: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Deadline: 30 November 2012

Vacancy Notice No. 2012:30
NO-C Level, Fixed Term position
Based in Harare
For Zimbabwe Nationals only

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world’s leading children’s rights organization would like to hear from you. For 60 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS.

Purpose of the post
A unique opportunity has arisen for a qualified and experienced individual who will have ample scope to directly impact women’s and children’s rights in Zimbabwe The successful candidate will be reporting to the Child Protection Specialist and accountable for effective engagement in child sensitive social protection policy and programme dialogue with the Government including the development of a social protection policy framework that is child and HIV/AIDS sensitive. This also includes implementing a national child-sensitive social protection programme of social cash transfers to the poorest and most vulnerable children and households.

Key activities/ result areas for this post include
-Effective implementation of the NAP II / Child Protection Fund (CPF) monitoring and evaluation framework in line with agreed targets and timeframes.
-Ongoing, established positive liaison with the Department of Social Services (DSS) on the implementation of the NAP II / CPF, including coordination structures.
-Monitoring state budget resources for child and social protection.
-Ensuring the NAP II / CPF communication strategy is regularly updated and implemented.
-Routine output monitoring conducted linked to the NAP II / CPF activities.
-Regularly collate, analyse and present data on the reach and impact of the NAP II/CPF on children and families for UNICEF and other stakeholders.
-Support Government to implement a national case management system linked to the delivery of social cash transfers to ensure children affected by violence; exploitation and abuse receive timely and quality support and care services.
-Other activities related to child and social protection programming and policy advise as needed.

Minimum Qualifications and Experience Required
-Advanced University Degree in Social Sciences, law, child development or a related field.
-At least five years of professional work experience in the UN or other international development organization/ private sector, national government.
-Demonstrated analytical ability, and the capacity to develop strategies while working under pressure.
-Specific programming expertise related to child and/or social protection an asset.
-Demonstrable project management and coordination skills.
-Well – developed communication skills (oral and written).

If you have experience of working in a similar capacity, meet the above profile and want to make an active and lasting contribution to build a better world for children, send your application letter together with resume quoting vacancy notice number to the following address.

Human Resources Manager
(Vacancy Notice No. 30: Zim-2012)
UNICEF, 6 Fairbridge Avenue,
P O Box 1250
Belgravia, Harare

Or email: hararevacancies [at] unicef [dot] org

Only short listed candidates will be contacted.

UNICEF is committed to gender equality in its mandate and its staff. Well-qualified candidates, particularly women are especially encouraged to apply.