Munyaradzi Gwisai of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) and the five others who have been charged with treason finally went home yesterday afternoon, 17 March. They had been in police custody since 19 February, and were granted bail on 16 March.

Read more in this statement from Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights

On the evening of Thursday 17 March 2011, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Antoneta Choto, Tatenda Mombeyarara, Eddson Chakuma, Hopewell Gumbo and Welcome Zimuto, were eventually released from remand prison following their successful bail application the previous afternoon.

The first to be released was Choto, from Chikurubi Maximum Women’s Prison. After a lengthy delay, her 5 fellow detainees walked out of Harare Remand Prison accompanied by prison guards and their lawyer, Alec Muchadehama. Families, friends, lawyers and media practitioners were gathered outside the gate to witness their release just short of one month after they were initially detained.

Munyaradzi Gwisai of the International Socialist Organisation (Zimbabwe) and the 5 other treason charge detainees were granted bail yesterday. The High Court judge presiding commented that the state’s case was ‘weak,’ and set bail at $2,000 each with stringent reporting conditions. They are to face trial for treason.

However, the six remain in police custody as their supporters are struggling to raise the $12,000 required to secure their release.

They are urgently appealing for funds to pay bail and allow these detainees to go home. Last night was their 26th night in police custody. Their families are suffering in the absence of their loved ones.

Contact solidarity [at] freethemnow [dot] com if you are able to contribute to the bail fundraising appeal.

If you’re living in Zimbabwe and have good experience in communications and media, why not try for this . . .

Communications Support: Training and Research Support Centre
Deadline: 25 March 2011

This work is being implemented in the Training and Research Support Centre.

Aims: The aim of the consultancy is to provide support to communications work to the training and research activities of the organization, and specifically to:
i. Produce specific written training materials
ii. Participate in relevant meetings to support the development of communications materials including at community level
iii. Produce simplified or target-specific information and media materials from technical reports produced by the organization
iv. Redesign or reformat existing materials and reports produced by the organization to be suitable for policy, technical and community audiences
v. Provide mentoring, skills and peer review support to personnel in the organization to improve the quality of reports produced.

The work will be part time for about 5-10 working days per month over the period April-October 2011. It is envisaged that there will be additional work in April/May (about 20 days) and in July (about 20 days).

Qualifications of the consultant:
- Graduate or Masters level qualification in a field of relevance to communications and media sciences
- Proven experience for at least five years in communications work with technical, official and/ or community audiences
- Proven ability to design and produce communications materials (reports, briefs, leaflets, posters, DVDs) for a range of audiences, from policy and technical to community level . Proven writing skills
- Ability to use electronic and internet communication

Time period: A part time contract between April 1 2011 and October 30 2011, with options for renewal. The work will be based on outputs / deliverables and the consultant will organize their own time.

Conditions: Specific deliverables and their timing will be set in the consultancy contract and the consultant will organize their work schedule independently to meet these time frames. The consultant should have access to his/her own laptop and internet/ email communications, although facilities at TARSC may be made available on an ad hoc basis during the consultancy. The fee payable to the consultant is negotiable.

Applicants: Applicants should submit electronically to admin [at] [dot] org

- A letter outlining the skills and experience offered to this work and an indication of the expected daily fee rate.
- A full CV
- Two samples of media and communications materials on which the consultant was lead author.

The successful applicant will be notified in end March for interviews and the contract is projected to commence in beginning April 2011.

By the end of my graduation day from Zimbabwe’s National University of Science and Technology (NUST), the 22nd of October 2010, all I could say was this was one of my best days ever! Just to see my siblings, relatives and friends with these huge smiles because I had made them proud made me feel like a little princess. I felt honoured to have His Excellency President Robert Mugabe cap me. I couldn’t even hide my smile when I heard him say, “Congratulations”. However, in the midst of celebrating and having fun my mind went back on a journey 5 months ago.

Monday the 31st of June 2010.

Exams were scheduled to start on that day at 9.00am. As usual students had spent the whole month, week and the weekend preparing for papers they were going to sit for. Not known to them was the fact that they weren’t going to do so. As students approached the examination hall, to their disbelief they were told that ‘only students with zero balance statements’ for their accounts were allowed to enter the examination room. Which meant one had to have cleared all their fees.

Students were baffled. I mean there was total chaos. Per semester fees range from $315 to $815 depending on the programme and whether one is in the convectional or parallel class.

A very few ran to the bursar’s office to collect their statements. I remember that only 10 students wrote their exam for a department in my faculty that had an exam on that particular day. Of the 10, many confessed that they only managed to enter by mere luck because the guard did not closely look at their statements. A few also managed to get in one and half hours late for a three-hour paper.

The majority, who did not make it into the examination room for their exams, stood by the entrance gate hoping for a miracle of some sort to take place. When they realised that nothing was going to happen, as the university’s authorities and security insisted they were not going to enter, they cried. It was so pathetic to see them and others, myself included, who did not have an exam that day cry at university. As final year students we wept, these were our last exams before graduating and we did not want to have our stay prolonged at the university.

All the time spent at university – for some four to seven years (depending on the programme) – seemed to be going down the drain just when you could smell the coffee.

Here’s a bit of background on fee paying at university.  For final year students the situation was bad. In the first semester fees had to be paid in Zimdollars and in the second semester dollarisation had taken place which meant we had to pay fees in foreign currency. That we did. However, when we got to campus to commence our first semester for our final year we were told that semester which we had paid Zimdollars for had been dollarised which meant we had to pay US dollars for it! The case was taken to court and the university authorities requested that students bring receipts showing payments made in Zimdollars together with their registration forms. Some students had lost their receipts and upon going to their respective departments to get their registration forms, some departments resorted to playing hide and seek with the papers.

I didn’t have an examination that day, but still my first exam was on Tuesday the following day at 9.00am. I got my statement from the bursar’s office stating that I owed the university US$485.00 which meant I had 24 hours to get that money and pay. You cry but you reach a time when you realise that tears won’t bring you anything. My parents are late, so I had to get in touch with my sisters and a few immediate relatives. They were all similarly shocked and ran around, but still they weren’t going to be able to get the money to me before 9.00am the following day. Luckily for me I was renting a house with first year students, my younger brother included, and their exams were scheduled to start two weeks later and because they were first years they were not implicated in the Zimdollar saga. Thus I borrowed money from them and also from a friend. I went and paid the balance before the exam with borrowed money, which meant I was in debt.

The following day police were all over campus and this was really intimidating. As I got my ‘zero balance statement’, I made my way to the examination room. A room, which is usually full, was literary empty. It was painful to see that the candidate, who sits behind you or in front or beside you, did not make it. I felt the coldest breeze pass over me not only because the room is exceptionally cold but also from having fellow students absent. We waited for nearly an hour hoping that other candidates would join us but only a few joined in after that hour had passed.

When it was time to start writing the exam, I realised my mind was blank. This was because instead of preparing for the exam the previous day, I had spent my time worrying and in tears. I had also spent my time visiting relatives around town, ‘begging’ for money. I had spent the day recounting the few notes I had and rechecking my statement to see if any miracle had taken place. I had spent the day with my phone in my hand, calling this person and the next.

Thus on my graduation I was over the moon not only because I had managed to endure the sleepless nights of reading and working on a dissertation, but because I had managed to sit for exams. Its sad to know that some students had to defer their studies because of the very short notice we were given to clear the fees balance.

I not only left the university on graduation day with a BSc degree but also with survival skills.

This moving statement from ZINASU for International Women’s Day shares some of the challenges facing women in tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe:

It is now common knowledge that in Zimbabwe there is an upsurge in enrolment. Which is not bad in itself but the problem comes when the welfare of the students is forsaken, to be particular the female students who are the most vulnerable as compared to their male counter parts. When I say the welfare of students I refer to issues relating to accommodation, availability of food, a conducive learning environment, access to sanitary wear etc

Since 2007 the halls of residence at the University of Zimbabwe have been closed despite the high court ruling to open. Accommodation therefore is a nightmare for all students at the oldest University. The undergraduates have been reduced to live like rats in off campus residence where they pay full rentals per head.

As a female you will never escape paying with sex, the lecturers will be waiting for you. Abusive lecturers demand sexual favors for you to pass your courses. As you move to industrial attachment the bosses will be waiting for you no attachment without sex, no report without sex, no assessment without sex. If only we can go back to the era where industries would bid to get a student on attachment the incidences of sexual abuse will be reduced. How do we get there when only a few people own the means of production and we have a corrupt government.

Read more

It’s that husky voice that I will always remember first.

That and the love story that I saw playing out between Shingie Chimuriwo and Fungai Tichawangana over the years.

The last time I saw Shingie and Fungai was late last year before I left Zimbabwe for the UK where I am currently studying. Shingie and I hadn’t seen in each other in a long time and we chirped on and on for a while about life and some of the controversial articles I had been writing (and there are always many!). She was, as always, amazingly forthright and self-assured; never one to back down from a hard argument and so fully supportive of free expression.

Fungai, my namesake or ‘sazita’ as we call each other, kept hovering about her asking her if she needed something – more food, a jacket, a seat – anything to make her more comfortable. Their love was like watching the characters of an epic romance movie peeling off the silver screen and taking human form. They loved so easily and naturally; so beautifully that you could see the vivid shades of their emotions light up when they were together. They were and still are soulmates.

Ever since I have known Fungai, there has always been Shingie.  I remember how she would come to many of our poetry workshop sessions held on cold and unfriendly winter evenings back in 2005. I remember how in 2009, Fungai went on a hunger strike after the Norwegian embassy denied him a visa to go and visit Shingie as she studied in the European country. His brave and unshakeable love for his woman saw ordinary citizens as far afield as the Americas taking the time to lobby their own Norwegian embassies to take action. It was awe-filling to see a man so committed to the cause of love.  It was even more special to see the happy pictures of the two in Norway when he eventually got his visa.

Something urged me to add Shingie as a Facebook friend last month. And on February 25, we became FB chums. Somehow, we’d managed to keep fairly up to date without relying on status updates and pokes and other things, but I was compelled to add her onto my list of FB Friends. We never did have a conversation in the 19 days that we were ‘Friends’, but on 16 March at 7:57 pm, I saw an FB notice flicker at the bottom left of my page. I had written a status update congratulating a mutual friend for winning a South African journalistic award. The status update I had written read, “I’ve just got to show off that I have got cool trail blazing friends! I am surrounded by GREATNESS!”

At 7:57 pm, Shingie’s finger hit the ‘Like’ tab and a message flickered at the bottom left of my Facebook page conveying her action to me. I am told that she had her car accident at 10pm; the fatal accident that killed a beautiful woman in her prime.

When I learnt of Shingie’s death, I kept looking at that status update wondering how someone who’d liked something could then be involved in a horrible crash just two hours later and be dead within a few more. I wanted to rewind time to the moment that she’d liked the update, wished I could have found her on chat and said, “Ndeipi.” Maybe if I had, we would have had a short conversation and she might have been running five minutes later and perhaps things might have turned out differently.

But who are we to know what life holds?

I will not question or challenge God’s will. He knows His own ways. But I thank Him that I have the honour of a thought, however ephemeral, from Shingie in her last few hours on earth. I am thankful for this potent message, painful as it is for I was having a horrible week of self-doubt and pain. Shingie has reminded me, through that flicker of her fingers that life is still with me, that my lungs drink in air and that I am still here to make a difference to this doubtful and painful world, that I am surrounded by GREATNESS, as I myself observed in writing that status update.

I am thankful for Shingie and for that lesson that she has left with me.

We will cry in the days to come. But we will celebrate too for Shingie is a woman who leaves behind a rich legacy of selfless deeds.

Thank you Shingie. And thank you Shingie and Fungai for the amazing story that your lives together tell.

I hold you in my heart filled with love and respect for both of you.