Last Saturday as a friend and I were driving along Borrowdale Road we witnessed a full commuter speeding at an estimated 120km/hr as compared to the 70km/hr speed limit. To make matters worse the driver was bullying other cars out of his way!

Commuter transport operators have become a law unto themselves. In a report published in The Herald last week, Inspector Chigome from the Zimbabwe Republic Police named commuter transport operators as the main culprits in road traffic accidents that have killed 1 500 people and injured more than 12 000.

The majority of the public have no choice but to take their lives into their hands and board a combi because what other transport options are there?

The police are useless to the public. The recent police blitz on combis ended in commuters having to walk several kilometres to and from work. This is not the first time the operators have taken out their frustrations on the public. In more than one incident, I along with other passengers, have been forced off a combi after complaining about many things, including fares that double or treble after leaving the commuter rank, change not being returned, reckless driving, or overloading.

Police corruption doesn’t improve matters either. I have witnessed for myself a commuter driver bribing the police to get a car that was obviously overloaded and unroadworthy past a roadblock.

This is no way to live. I have had enough. On Saturday I took this picture of the combis licence plate – ABJ 7892. For your own safety, if you see this combi don’t get on it. If you are driving and you see it on the roads, stay very far away from it.

Khadija Sharife writing for the Harvard International Review:

Somewhere in my closet, taped across a small cardboard and sealed in a transparent casing, is a $50 billion Zimbabwean note. Purchased two years ago at a local bookstore for R21 ($3), this ‘made in zimbabwe’ wonder at the time had the purchasing power of two eggs, or a loaf of bread, in a country where inflation hit the 231 million % mark. An unemployed lawyer working a street hawker in SA expressed outrage that I would spend $3 to acquire it. ‘That money is life or death back home,’ he said. But there’s bigger money in the making – and for the taking. Mugabe Inc. has once again, in anticipation of forthcoming elections, vigorously begun to engage in exploitation through ‘primitive accumulation’ of resources via war vets, corrupt corporate execs and political cronies.

Prior to the discovery of diamonds, specifically Marange — estimated to be one of the world’s largest diamonds capable of yielding as much as $1.7 billion in revenues annually, the big kahuna was land. The bulk of large-scale commercial farms seized by Mugabe’s war vets, using the rhetoric of social justice, were not redistributed to those previously dispossessed by the colonial government. Instead, a new politics of dispossession took form through the politicisation of rural poverty, equating the ‘public interest’ with the nationalist vocabulary serving elite political interests. This time around, legal concessions to Marange have been voided, with two South African companies granted right of access via fraudulent licenses.

One company in particular, New Reclamation, has engaged with the Zimbabwean government through a joint venture called Mbada. The company’s operating arm, Grandwell Holdings Ltd, has been created a Global Business Category II (GBCII) entity, essentially a paper company, using Mauritius as the ‘tax haven’ of choice. As the Zimbabwe Mining and Development Corporation (ZMDC) admitted, due diligence into internal financing mechanisms, beneficiaries and other critical details, could not be conducted as it was ‘a paper company registered in Mauritius.’ Such shell corporations act as passthrough conduits allowing for economic activities, including profits and transactions, to be disguised and transferred through to ‘ultimate beneficiaries’. GBCII companies are tax free enabling entities allegedly accruing tax to escape taxation, while facilitating the flow of profits to ultimate beneficiaries.

But Mauritius should better be classified a secrecy jurisdiction thanks to legal and financial ring-fenced services such as the provision of nominee shareholders. Basically, all private companies must have at least one shareholder, and one share. Unless these are bearer shares (according ownership to those physically possessing shares), such shares can be ‘represented’ by intermediaries nominated by ultimate owners or beneficiaries profiting from economic activities. The same applies to nominee directors. Mauritius kindly provides these mechanisms to foreign clients and entities deliberately cloaking specific activities.

As OCRA, an international corporation peddling secrecy vehicles itself reveals on its website, “Beneficial ownership is not disclosed to the authorities.”

For $1000, the company can access banking secrecy preventing the Zimbabwean government from ever accessing the true value and volume of diamond exploitation. Many companies like OCRA provide bank account signatories, professinal directors and other false fronts assembled to create the illusion of an active business. Mauritius claims to be within the bounds of the law having complied with the voluntary ‘on request’ only Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIAE). While these are usually useless unless one already possesses the information required by external government authorities to investigate corporate and state corruption, in this instance, the South African government, if it decided to do so, could easily the corporate veil given that Grandwell’s details are already known. During an interview with Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai for the BBC, I learned that he ‘was hearing about it for the first time.’

The threat that corporate secrecy presents to Zimbabwe’s economy cannot be understated especially in anticipation of the desperate need for sustainable revenue for basic services and the impact of ‘primitive accumulation’ as a means of controlling the outcome of forthcoming elections. This time around, Zimbabwe stands a great chance for actual democracy and economic and political recovery: The power sharing agreement between ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) coupled with the appointment of Judge Simpson Mutambanengwe at the helm of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), cultivates a growing environment of accountability and justice. But Mutambanengwe has declared outright that the ZEC requires financial resources to ensure that the processes and outcome is not disputed. Siphoned diamond revenues – to a ‘secrecy’ corporation where any number of war vets may be the ultimate beneficiaries, provides the old guard with unlimited millions – even billions, in financial resources that should be invested in justice not war, nor even – and this is what the Mugabe Inc hopes for, a forced peace.

My friend, being an entrepreneur, has established a t-shirt business. Of course anyone will tell you that the key to a successful retail business is marketing. So, a few week ago, she decided to launch her brand in style with a launch party.

As good citizens, we went to our local police station to get the necessary clearances. Now last year, the Co-Ministers for Home Affairs publicly announced that all anyone needed to get a police clearance for an event was to report the event, who was holding it and how long it would be. The Ministers even said that as this was being done in the interest of public safety, there would be no need to pay any fees. It sounded simple when they said it, and being the Ministers responsible for this, I would think that they knew best.

It even seemed simple when we went to the police station. We told them about the launch, what it was for, and who was the contact person for it. The police checked if the bar had the necessary council licences and we got our clearance.

The afternoon of the party, I received a call from the police informing me that we did not have any clearances and I was to report to the police station. It wasn’t a problem with the licences for the establishment, which were in order; the police had a problem with the company that owned the brand. The exact problem, the officer could not articulate, but it was imperative that we go to the police station immediately.

Panicking, I consulted the bar manager who went, came back and reported: “Ah, they want a bribe.”

The bribe was a couple of T-shirts for the desk sergeants and some officers. It seems a small price to pay to establish a successful business. But isn’t it a sad state of affairs when any service involving a government institution must also necessarily involve bribery?

While my friend could afford to hand over t-shirts to the policemen, what happens to those entrepreneurs who cannot afford to pay? It’s not just the police that are asking for bribes, almost every government department involved in the establishment of business from the Company Registrar’s office to the City of Harare itself is illegally extracting large sums of money and goods from entrepreneurs. Surely the government, and in particular the Ministry of Small to Medium Enterprises must understand that corruption is killing small businesses.

The policy of encouraging entrepreneurship is a laudable one, but it will not work as long as corruption is allowed to flourish. If our politicians really want economic recovery (for further looting opportunities), then before they start looking East for handouts, they must plug the leaks that are happening in their own back yard.

“Ah! Ndozvinoita varume . . . (That’s what men do)”

When confronted with a cheating spouse, this is what women tell each other. Tradition advises that every man at some point in his marriage will cheat, and then it is up to the woman to forgive, tolerate it, and move on.

The Standard recently published an article charging that “Extra Marital Affairs Derail AIDS Fight”. In it, Pyke Chari from Action said that extra marital affairs threatened to reverse progress made in the fight against the HIV pandemic.

Action conducted a research study in 11 countries including Zimbabwe Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa, which found that married couples are now the group with the highest infection rate, because of the widespread prevalence of extramarital affairs. Presenting the findings, Chari said, “In all countries, the polygamous mindset was prevalent.”

I’m sure polygamy made sense in the days of yore. It amounted to cheap labour. Africans had no concept of the ownership of land, so a man could till as much land as he was able and as apportioned him by the chief. The more labour a man had, the more land he could cultivate, the more crops he reaped, the wealthier he became. Not only that, but having always been biologically weaker, women and children needed men for protection from predators like lions, cheetahs and other men.

Why is it then that an ancient tradition and attitude rooted in a society that has since changed drastically has not evolved with that society? What is most baffling is that the very people it turns into victims perpetuate it.

We live in an age where women are educated, and as a consequence financially independent. Where even though there is still progress to be made a woman may own property, vote, and sell her skills and labour to work and accumulate her own wealth.

Women don’t even need men to have children!

Yet the attitude that a woman is nothing without a man prevails. And because of that attitude women settle for bad and potentially life threatening behaviour. Because of it married women find themselves unable to negotiate safer sex or regular HIV testing, lest their husband leaves them for someone more docile.

Until women collectively realise that it is they who determine how they are treated, that men need us as much as we need them, that it is possible to feel whole without being in a relationship; then multiple concurrent partnerships, polygamy, AIDS and STIs will continue to exist. And men will continue to cheat.

There are very many reasons why men cheat, but the biggest one is because women allow it.

There are times when it is undeniable that Zimbabweans are a menace to themselves. Now those of us who reside in the Diaspora have got a bad reputation. Where once we were hard working, educated individuals capable of working anywhere in the world, we have quickly turned into global pariahs.

Zimbabweans are committing fraud in America and in the UK, evading taxes and even being jailed for knowingly and intentionally infecting people with HIV, all the while using Robert Mugabe as a scapegoat.

Take for instance the case of Gamuchirai Nhengu an 18-year-old Zimbabwean contestant on UK talent search reality show X-Factor. She made headlines a few months ago when she made it through several rounds of judging and even won praise from the mercurial Simon Cowell for her singing.

Gamu and her family now face deportation. She and her two brothers were allowed to stay in the UK as dependents of their mother while she studied nursing. But the visa ran out and the family’s application to remain in the UK was rejected. It turns out the deportation order was issued as a result of an investigation by the Home Office into £16,000 in benefits wrongly claimed by her mother, Nokuthula, reports The Sun. Nokuthula, received benefits and tax credits for her children, but her visa rules strictly forbade her from any state payouts.

This was followed by Gamu conducting a tearful interview with a Scottish newspaper in which she claimed that she and her family would face a firing squad if they returned to Zimbabwe.

“I’ve been in the public eye now and people there know I’ve fled [Robert] Mugabe’s regime. They will punish us if we go back. They’re going to know where we are; we’re going to be very unsafe. People have been approaching our family members; we think they could be working for Mugabe. And we know how brutal he can be. I would be in danger, it’s blatantly obvious. My family would be in danger.”

Gamu has even been quoted as saying she regrets being on the show as it drew attention to herself and her family.

Gamuchirai Nhengu is a child, whose sole claim to fame is mediocre success on a British reality show. What does she or for that matter her mother know about Roberty Mugabe’s brutality? They didn’t go to the UK as asylum seekers, they are economic migrants, hoping to take advantage of a generous welfare state.

She is a Zimbabwean child seeking to manipulate the image of Zimbabwe as a country in which total chaos exists and in which no one is safe, to justify her mother’s illegal actions. What is worse is the readiness of the British public and even Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop to believe her. It may be lazy thinking to accept her word without the slightest critical examination of her claims; but what else can one expect when Zimbabwe has been reduced to a single despotic individual who is demonised in the media. Their comprehension of the complexities of Zimbabwean politics is superficial and informed by racist thirty-second television spots selling ring tones that depict Mugabe as an incompetent bespectacled hairy, black baboon.

We cannot deny that political violence exists in our society. Even today two years after the 2008 elections, when there is a semblance of stability in the country, we still have incidents of political violence. This situation was and is painful for many people, not least those directly affected. Gamu’s claims diminish the struggle by all those working to make this country a better place, and they are a slap in the face for anyone against whom actual violence was perpetrated.

Recently Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights published a report regarding access to HIV treatments and corrupt practices by healthcare professionals.

This is blatant exploitation of a minority group by people is positions of relative power. With the health system in such dire straights, we can hardly afford to let corrupt practices flourish in an environment where we are trying to rebuild, and encourage public faith in service delivery. With a bloated civil service, and thousands of nursing graduates seeking employment I am surprised that the government and in particular the Ministry of Health is not eager to appear to be efficient by firing the perpetrators and hiring new staff to replace them.