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.

According to today’s Herald, the Registrar General’s office now enables one to access the passport application form online, fill it in, print it out, bring it to a passport office – and get an SMS when it’s ready for collection.

Today, our attempts to access the Registrar General’s website have been intermittently successful – Suggesting that perhaps they’re getting more hits with the launch of this service than their server has capacity for. But we were able to get to the online form, which looks like this:

I did think to myself – “But I’m not Patience. Can’t I be Amanda whilst the form is downloading?” but other than that, I can’t complain.

I could fill in the form on their site, print it locally, and could take it to the passport office and submit it in person if I wanted to apply for a passport.

According to The Herald, the fee for using the online form will be $33 – less than the standard $50 charge, and you’re spared the step of having to queue up just to get the form. So all of that certainly sounds more convenient than the current system.

So, will it really work? Who will be the first to try it? If you do, let us know!

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.

Last Sunday in Harare East I noticed women wearing bright yellow t-shirts with Mugabe’s face on them. Members of a soccer team, with Mugabe as patron. Is this subtle election campaigning? Getting Mugabe’s face out there in a benign way but all the while reinforcing his party’s position. The MDC could learn a thing or two.

Have you noticed that work on the Harare Airport Dualisation Project (read “dollarisation” – the folks who got that contract are doing well for themselves) seems to have stopped. The poor home dwellers lining the Airport Road in Hatfield have gates fronted by gravel and dust coating everything. Imagine when (if) the rains come. Mud madness.

A late night visit to Avondale Police Station. A broken window. Demoralised staff who looked like they couldn’t care less.

Services which citizens of a nation are supposed to get from local authorities as a basic right have become a privilege.

In almost every town in Zimbabwe citizens are bemoaning poor service delivery – from dry taps to dark nights caused by load shedding. Mounting complaints fall on deaf ears. Recently it was reported that City of Harare’s wage bill has doubled leaving little revenue going to service delivery.

For decades now the Zambezi water project (now Zambezi water pipe dream), which is supposed to help solve Bulawayo’s water woes, has not produced positive results even when the Movement for Democratic Change took over the Ministry of Water. Residents of Bulawayo recently had to resort to the so-called “Big Flush” and Councilor Thaba Moyo was quoted saying, “The big flush is meant to take care of areas that would have been placed under water rationing. Residents will be asked to systematically flush all their toilets so that sufficient water will be deposited in the system in order to get rid of the material that would have dried up and blocked the system.” I just can’t imagine residents trying to beat evening traffic to reach home so that they can comply with the 7:30 pm Big Flush directive.

Service delivery problems are even affecting smaller towns like Gweru and Masvingo.

Try to imagine a growing town like Chitungwiza with no independent water supply of its own having to rely on City of Harare for supply of this precious basic right which sometimes gets disconnected for non-payment.

Soon it will be raining and heaps of gravel will be dumped along the roads to patch up pothole riddled partly tarred roads. This exercise of patching tarred roads with gravel has not done any good to the roads as the potholes have increase to ditches making the roads impassable during rainy season.

And, instead of just starting with putting the pre-paid meters in households somebody didn’t do his/her job right at Zimbabwe’s power distribution company ZESA by wasting money ordering millions of bulbs to save electricity which residents only receive less than twelve hours a day.

In the words of the Kubatana community:

The Fix It sticker that I have is too small to stick where there is water running just opposite the Southerton police station. There is now an artificial river yet there are people without water. My heart bleeds. – Kubatana subscriber

I am writing to you because I don’t know where else to write. Please is there anyone out there who can remind ZESA that when people pay bills in full they deserve electricity. Its so disturbing that the power cuts in ZIMRE are almost unbearable. We pay more than 100usd dollars but nearly every day we have no power. Would it be better for not sending bills if they cannot supply any electricity.
- Kubatana subscriber

As residents of Hatcliffe we’ve had it to the bream. The City of Harare has completely failed us as they have failed to deal with the shortage of water for over a decade now. The situation has worsened as most wells and boreholes have dried up in the past 2 months resulting in people having to rely on contaminated water for house hold purposes. If possible we would like to hear what the mayor thinks about this and how he wants us to react.
- Kubatana subscriber

The whole of Harare is a death Trap. We are all too meek and mild to do anything about it. One day we must all stand up and fight and get ALL this Government out. – Kubatana subscriber