“To all the celebrities – let’s lead the way. Let’s show everybody this is the way life is supposed to be lived.”  These are the words of renowned urban grooves musician, Alexio Kawara’s and they couldn’t be truer.

Researchers say that human beings learn about the world and decide on their values and behaviour by watching others. Logically, people are likely to imitate the behaviour that they associate with success, or successful people and often celebrities are seen as such.

When celebrities are thrust into the public eye, not only their talents, but also every aspect of their behaviour comes under scrutiny.  It is not by choice that celebrities enlist to mould the minds of an entire population; yet being a role model is something that comes with the job, like fame, recognition and $300,000.  Thus, Alexio along with other local and international celebrities, have the power to influence the public by their behaviour…or misbehaviour.

Alexio was speaking at an occasion jointly hosted by the US Embassy and PSI’s New Africa House HIV Centre.  He was one of seven youth celebrities who accepted an invitation to be publicly tested for HIV with Ambassador, Charles Ray.

Alexio went on to say: “We [celebrities] have mistakes and we have temptations. I think our temptations are at a higher level than the other temptations, especially in an industry where you are in the limelight and every lady wants to say something to you and every guy wants to say something to you and to you too.”

This points to the reality that, despite their vast influence, celebrities may not be the best choice for instilling moral values, especially when their ‘mistakes’ and surrender to ‘temptations’ are broadcast and published far and wide.

However, while celebrities cannot control the type of media attention they receive, they can control some things that are made public about them.  And it is highly admirable when they choose to use their fame to achieve something good and meaningful.  That is exactly what Alexio and his counterparts did to commemorate World AIDS Day.  They underwent HIV counselling and testing, observed by members of the media, to encourage young people to know their HIV status.

Reading from transcripts compiled at the occasion by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy Harare, it was commendable to see that these young Zimbabwean celebrities were mindful of their responsibilities as role models.

Big Brother contestant and star of the film ‘Lobola’, Munyaradzi Chidzonga addressed the youth specifically when he spoke at the occasion.

“… I really think as young people we need to start talking about the things that we talk about behind closed doors. This needs to be opened up because, believe it or not, in our generation, it is dangerous to have sex because there are a lot of things that could go terribly wrong.”

Desmond Maringwa, midfielder with Dynamos Football shed light on HIV/AIDS on the local soccer scene.

“I am the President of the Footballers Union of Zimbabwe. We have got a project that we want to do about soccer players as well. We have seen so many have gone the way of HIV and died. Nobody wanted to come forward and do something like this (getting tested). Maybe I am the first one, and I am proud of myself.”

The power of knowing one’s status was musician Edith Katiji’s emphasis.

“In the sort of life that we are living- I was listening to the radio the other day- children as early as 12 are getting sexually active… It might happen due to peer pressure, it might happen through abuse, but what is important is for you to know your status because then you are able to make the decision as to where and how you are going to live your life, how you are going to take care of yourself, or how you are going to plan for what’s ahead.”

For their participation at this World AIDS Day event, I was impressed by the tremendous courage and dutifulness of Edith Katiji, Alexio Kawara, Munyaradzi Chidzonga, Desmond Maringwa and fellow Dynamos Football Club team-mate Washington Arubi, Norman Maroto of Gunners Football Club and television personality, Rumbidzai Mugwira.  It is difficult to live your life in a glass bowl and to never put a foot wrong while you are doing it. But once in a while celebrity can be used to achieve something good for other people and on this occasion I applaud these seven who did just that.

As part of their work in addressing corruption in Zimbabwe, Transparency International Zimbabwe is currently working to promote the ALAC initiative. ALAC (Advocacy and Legal Advice Centre) is an anti-corruption initiative that provides free legal aid services to victims and witnesses of corruption. The initiative seeks to empower citizens to demand accountability and transparency.

Presently ALAC has a mobile legal aid team to assist members of the public to make their reports in confidence. Their mobile unit will be at the corner of First Street and George Silundika Ave in Harare every Friday between 9am and 12pm.

Their offices are located at No. 99 Central Avenue Cnr 8th Street Harare.

They may also be contacted via phone on the toll free number 0800 4276 or email on alac [at] transparency [dot] org [dot] zw.

Transparency International Zimbabwe will also be conducting a march on anti-corruption day 11 December 2010, starting at 8am. The march will be from Julius Nyerere to Africa Unity Square. Please keep checking this blog, or Kubatana’s email newsletter for more information. To subscribe to the Kubatana email newsletter email join [at] kubatana [dot] net.

It is that time of the year when families that had been separated for various reasons come back and celebrate Christmas and New Year as a family. Like most people Christmas time is the time when I want to be with my family enjoying the long missed mom’s Christmas recipes. Every parent wants to be with his/her children during this time of the year. This time of the year reminds of the long trips I used to take a few years ago going to down South Africa or Botswana to buy groceries and goodies for Christmas. If you did not experience this time maybe you were not in Zimbabwe during that time or you were okay (sic). I never enjoyed the travelling but I had to do it so that I could enjoy Christmas.

To those in the transport sector that’s when it will be all smiles because its time to make a killing from those poor guys coming back home to meet loved ones. At least this year there won’t be much money to make since some of the basic products are now back in the shops. When the Home Affairs department went down to South Africa to issue travel documents a lot of noise was made about the process but after chatting with my friend who is in South Africa he said some only got promises of getting the papers in December. With the South Immigration singing the deportation chorus, and here it is the chorus of elections next year, it’s now a situation of being caught between a rock and hard place that is if you are Zimbabwean without a permit and a passport in South Africa.

The exodus of Zimbabweans to the Diaspora in the past few years is mainly due to political and economic challenges and many hoped that things would get better after the signing of the GPA. Last week I passed through Road Port in town to collect a parcel from my cousin in South Africa. At first I thought of how I was going to carry the parcel home because in my mind I was thinking of a big parcel. A year ago when you received something from SA you had to go with a taxi because it had every basic product in it. So when I met this guy (Malaicha) who had brought the package I was shocked to get a sealed khaki envelope. I asked, “Is that all?”  He replied, “Spend it wisely, it was hard earned”.  After reading the postcard that was in the envelope, my aunt was not happy because my cousin had written saying he had decided to stay behind until he gets a work permit before the deadline. I said to my aunt, “You should be happy because at least he sent you cash for Christmas.”  But still, she was not happy.

The reason I later got from my aunt was she didn’t want money but to see if my cousin is in good health. My cousin left Zimbabwe during the peak period of the election fever of 2008. I guess with a postcard stuck on the fridge door she will know that her son is alive and she will go to church on Christmas day and give praise to the Lord.

Kubatana recently received a donation of rubber shoes, plates and cups for a charity drive we were doing to give prisoners some of the basic necessities they were lacking.

It has been over a year since the SABC’s unauthorised documentary about Zimbabwe’s prison conditions aired. Of course when it did, we were all suitably outraged. In response to the public outcry, after numerous letters written to the media and a good salting of international pressure, the President issued an order of clemency in September 2009, which saw the release of 2500 prisoners from Zimbabwe’s congested jails. But a year later that outrage has been translated into very little change in those prisons. In fact, it seems as though enough time has passed for us not to really take notice of it anymore.

More recently, Associated Press reported on the case of a man who appeared in court with his intestines hanging out of his abdomen. The injury was caused when he was shot in the stomach as police tried to arrest him. This report not only reflected badly on the prison services but also the public healthcare services as well. The man had been take to hospital twice during his two month stay in prison, and had returned both times without having been treated.

This morning at a press conference about another outrageous dereliction of duty by government, Amnesty International’s Simeon Mawanza said “the people of Zimbabwe are free to hold their government accountable for its failures.” It is not only up to the government to do something; it is up to individuals, citizens to show and remind the government, even if it is a bad one, of where it is failing it’s people. Our situation will only become hopeless when we give up on ourselves.

As citizens it is our duty to ensure that the lives of prisoners, even those who commit heinous crimes are respected. In this instance our hands are not tied, there is no rigging and there are no threats that prevent ordinary people from doing something.

This list, which is by no means definitive and is in no particular order, is my way of celebrating the achievements of Zimbabweans. These are young people, living and working in Zimbabwe, and making a success of themselves.

Carl Joshua Ncube
Carl is a multi-talented animator, graphic designer, activist and storyteller. His skill lies in telling unusual stories in unusual ways. Carl wrote, directed and animated Zimbabwe’s first ever animated film series Nyami Nyami 1 and 2. He has directed Zimbabwe’s national awards shows including the National Arts and Merits Award and the Zimbabwe Music Awards. Lately, Carl has taken his story telling talent to the stage, in the comedy show ‘Carls Big announcement’.

Prudence Mabhena
She is a young singer, who along with the band Liyana has been featured in the Oscar winning documentary Music by Prudence. Despite having suffered abandonment and neglect in her childhood due to arthrogryphosis, Prudence Mabhena and her band have struggled, and triumphed. Prudence composes music in five languages, and even choreographs from her wheelchair. The film Music by Prudence has become the cornerstone of an advocacy campaign and has been embraced by the UN, Human Rights Watch and the disability community as an unprecedented portrayal advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities.

Fungai James Tichawangana
Founder and creator of Aripano Infinity Fungai James is a digital entrepreneur, journalist and photographer. His mission in founding Aripano Infinity is to tell African stories. In his own words: “I build skyscrapers on the Internet. I take words from my head and put them on paper. I capture life in pixelated moments”. Aripano Infinity’s projects include Online Artist Promotions, Law and Justice in Zimbabwe, Zimbablog and the Zimbojam. Zimbojam is the premier online resource for news and information about Zimbabwe’s burgeoning entertainment industry. Wherever it is, whatever is happening Fungai is usually there with his camera.

Rumbi Katedza
Rumbi has worked extensively in film for the past decade. Her feature films include Danai and the multi award-winning Asylum. She is a writer whose story ‘Snowflakes in Winter’ was part of Weaver Press’ Women writing Zimbabwe collection. She served as Festival Director for the Zimbabwe International Film Festival from 2004 until 2006. Rumbi currently produces documentary and feature films with her production company Mai Jai Films.

Max Soutter
Max is the Managing Director of the Business Set-up Group, an organisation dedicated to helping entrepreneurs start up and grow businesses the smart way. He specialises in assisting Zimbabwean start-ups to grow. Max has worked with more than 200 businesses in 35 different countries.  He is an author who has written several books some of which are available for free download from his site. He also runs several blogs and websites and is a very active Internet strategist.

Talent Jumo
Talent is a woman with a big dream to transform the world. She is one of the coordinators of the Young Women’s Leadership Initiative (YOWLI). Yowli was formed in 2007 when a group of young women decided to break the silence and talk overtly about issues if sex and sexuality. Talent is passionate about feminism, and as an activist is deeply committed to working with young women. Her work is informed by her experiences as a young black woman from Africa, who was born and bred in an independent Zimbabwe, but is herself not free.

Even when the GNU was inked in 2008, progressive, cerebral and visceral analysts – and even pseudo-intellectuals – greeted the marriage of inconvenience with the same cynicism that Zanu PF game planners are considering the outcome of what many see as this rushed election.

Reasonable men and women wondered how Zanu PF- a nationalist and rightwing party – could capitulate to any demands placed on the table by the MDC, and this based on previous pronouncements that they did not see any reason why in their opinion people with no liberation war credentials could be allowed to rule the country. And now we have Khaya Moyo and Chihuri speaking the language of Chinotimba we pretend to be surprised, only because another election is looming despite popular opinion that this will be the death of us as the conditions for a credible elections are palpably absent.

In this newest discourse on the future of the country, the issue then becomes what has to be done to have a consensus that the country can go head and have elections, not to mention the referendum. Based on what we already know about the Zanu PF collective and the congenital and abysmal attitude to democracy and the people’s right too choose a government of their own, it would be safe to say that what has been missing in this crisis is outside leverage to make Mugabe bend.  Yet we also already know Mugabe’s attitude toward outsiders “interfering”  in the internal affairs of “his” country.

What choices then do Zimbabweans have on the face of these apparently intractable contradictions as defined for the whole nation by Mugabe and Zanu PF? You get Jonathan Moyo saying the MDC will never win an election, and you have to ask what informs such careless statements: who is voting, the people of Zimbabwe or Zanu PF? Obviously Zanu PF will never vote for the MDC, and in an election where only Zanu PF elements vote, you can guarantee an MDT thrashing – much like the June presidential run-off farce – but for God’s sake it does not work that way and you somewhat understand why Zanu PF would insist on having these elections, because they figure there wont be any MDC supporters to vote thanks to the patriotic efforts of Jabulani Sibanda and Chinotimba!

But then it has to be asked for how long Mugabe and Zanu PF are going to ride roughshod over the wishes not only of Zimbabweans but standards set by the international community which has – albeit feebly – tried to steer this country to placid waters? Imagine the progeny of Zanu PF hawks embracing the same militancy half a century after Zimbabwe’s independence and telling us that no one without liberation war credentials is fit to rule! You then understand the belligerency Africa has seen in its many troubled spots where obdurate nationalists and despots are responded to by matching militancy from frustrated opponents who decided the ballot was just but a fart in the wind as far as the nationalist despots were concerned.

Another thing that has brought the rather unnecessary stretching of this crisis, some contend, is the mediation by SADC and how useless the whole exercise has been since the Mbeki years. International relations and diplomacy efforts only work when local parties involved in negotiations see themselves as equals, after all this is what has brought to an end some of the continent’s most atrocious human crises. Zimbabwe however offers an example that negotiations can drag for centuries as long as one party to the negotiations obsesses about entitlement to political power despite the good intentions of mediators to make repair the limping country.

Meanwhile, with this insistence on elections by Zanu PF, we do not have to brace ourselves that the victory Zanu PF is already claiming will be disputed: we already know that the mediators will persuade the MDC to accept a Zanu PF victory while those who voted for change and the international community who question the outcome will be told once again to go to hell. And where does that leave the ordinary man, woman and child? Well, just blame the MDC for not being tough enough on Mugabe and Zanu PF, yet you still have to empathise with those so-called MDC hardliners who were – and still are – against this marriage that has inconvenienced us all when we could be using our brains to understand better things other than how Zanu PF the party Simon Khaya Moyo so much extols lost the bush war plot, how this neo-patrimonialism crap came to make supposedly good man bad.

I saw and wept the other day at the response to Gabon’s run-off election where results were torn in front of television cameras by an official from the party that was sensing sure defeat, and you understand Zanu PF’s thesis that they will never accept an electoral outcome that does not favour them as a culture from the Dark Ages where the rule and the will of the people has no place in their definition of self-rule and self-determination. The question obviously becomes, why hold elections if you are not going to accept the results? Chinotimba answered that already in a Newsday interview:

That’s how we do things in Zanu PF!