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I think what ruffles my feathers more than anything about Zanu PF’s indigenisation policy is the duplicity shrouding the  sanctimonious speech around it. It also bugs me that the few people supporting it fail to see the wood for the trees, and  that they foolishly turn a blind eye to Zimbabwean history as recent as five years ago.

For a start, there’s a world of difference between an empowerment policy that is based on the notion that one group of people ‘has too much and should be punished for it‘, and one that argues ‘I want the entire country  to have the ability to be equally as successful as that group of people‘.

Second, there is an absurd contradiction in any policy that claims to be economically ‘empowering’ when its means of enforcement requires the calculated disempowerment of a group of people.

But these contradictions are small details when viewed alongside Zanu PF’s hypocrisy.

You can divide the Zimbabwean economy of the last ten years into roughly three broad categories:

Group 1: The Zanu PF elite, profiteering out of shady business deals and preferential treatment for Zanu PF; for example, access to fuel and preferential exchange rates (all lucratively sold on the black—market).

Group 2: The formal business community, fighting to survive in the context of hyperinflation, currency shortages, corruption, and a skills deficit and, most impressively, doing so amidst Zanu PF meddling with issues like price-controls, wages, and pilfering of money held in foreign currency accounts.

Group 3: The ‘wheeler-dealer’ informal market: these being the people who pushed their imaginations to the furthest boundaries, spotted opportunities when they arose and adapted speedily to changing conditions, all the while ducking and dividing to avoid police crackdowns.

It is Group 3 that has always given me the most hope for our country’s future: their imagination, their ability to adapt to changing conditions, and a willingness to take risks seeming to me to be a fantastic basis for future training and entrepreneurship.

Group 2 is undoubtedly the most skilled in formal business skills – surely, they must be among the best in the world! We saw numerous businesses dying month by month through the mess that Zanu PF made of our economy, meaning that those businesses that hobbled through to the other side – regardless of the colour of their skins – must be exceptionally gifted at keeping a business afloat. In any other country awards would be handed out:  in ours, scarce and rare skills will be rewarded with a punitive policy which will only set the economy reeling backwards again.

It would be seductive to think that the people from the wheeler-dealer Group 3 will join forces with Group 2 and put their cheeky ingenuity to work in a formal business sector instead. I’m sure romantics will think that this is what indigenisation and economic empowerment are all about…? But anyone who hopes for this only has to cast their minds back to 2005, when Zanu PF set about trashing the livelihoods of those in the informal sector through yet another self-serving policy called Murambatsvina.

Far from empowering Zimbabweans, Zanu PF brutally destroyed them – deliberately, calculatedly, with violence. People died. Children starved. Thousands and thousands lost their homes. In winter. When it is freezing cold. It’s worth pointing out that those affected by Murambatsvina were all indigenous and also disempowered, but Zanu PF wasn’t as puffed up with self-righteousness in those days… were they?

Why now float a policy that is ostensibly about economic empowerment, when barely five years ago Zanu PF was stripping indigenous Zimbabweans of the very little they had? Why should anyone on the receiving end of Zanu PF’s thuggery five years ago ever believe that suddenly they will be empowered by the same party now? It’s all absurd.

The bottom-line is, Zanu PF wouldn’t know real economic empowerment if it smacked them in the face and stank of dead-fish.

After all we’ve been subjected too, Zanu PF now swaggering around masquerading as a champion of empowerment, literally makes me feel ill. My nausea reached high levels yesterday when it was reported that Saviour Kasukuwere apparently declared to journalists

“There is no going backwards,” he said, “There are those who think the regulations would be changed. Forget it. Forward ever, backward never.”

The Zimbabwe Times write that Kasukuwere then went on to castigate

journalists whom he accused of have developed the habit of opposing every policy that comes from Zanu-PF without giving themselves the opportunity to study its intensions.

He said clever journalists should seize the opportunity to also empower themselves through the vehicle. (My emphasis).

We all know what that means, but Eyewitness News spelled it out for the hopeless romantics amongst us with a story titled “Write nice on BEE & we’ll empower you”. They wrote:

Zimbabwe’s Indigenisation Minister told reporters on Monday that if they write good stories about black empowerment he would make sure they were “empowered” too. (My emphasis).

Kasukuwere appeared not to say what would happen if reporters instead continued to write the truth, but one can assume they are unlikely to find themselves on the receiving ends of ZanuPF bestowed ‘gifts’ – i.e. rewards for being good to the monster and writing lies.  One can also assume that it would be irrelevant whether they were indigenous or not, what matters is how much they appeased the Zanu PF machine.

And there it is in a nutshell: ‘empowerment’ in the Zanu PF lexicon could be loosely defined as “you scratch my back, we’ll scratch yours”. In any other lexicon the word defined in this way would be referred to as ‘corruption’.

But bowing to Zanu PF largesse is the fastest way to board the gravy train, and catapult oneself into Economic Group 1, the fastest growing pool of multi-millionaires in the country. A group that somewhow managed to become disgustingly wealthy while the majority literally starved or were forced to become economic migrants.  A group that castigates the West, whites, asians and foreigner investors from ostentaious homes with fridges packed with luxury food i ems and garages housing mercedes benzes and fancy four-wheel drive vehicles.

It is grotesque. Is this the type of ‘economic empowerment’ we want for Zimbabwe?

Unfortunately, the skills required to reach this group are not skills conducive to running a successful business, or skills that lend themselves to the betterment of our nation: this is aptly demonstrated by Zanu PF’s catastrophic efforts to run a successful country (yet another reason why Zanu PF has no authority to talk about the meaning of ‘economic empowerment’).

Their incompetence is beautifully demonstrated by the impact the indigenisation policy has had on the economy today: trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exhange has plummeted from a daily average of US$2 million to US$500 000 since news of the regulations broke (SWRA).

Credit where credit is due: when it comes to destroying an economy, Zanu PF are world class leaders.

Didymus Zengenene’s blog post titled is Lobola still valid in the era of equality? made me think. I consider myself a feminist, yet I want my future husband to pay roora to my family. Yes, that’s right, my family as a whole. The understanding of what roora or lobola is, and what it means has, through time and loose translation been lost to a generation that now considers English meaning of a shona or ndebele tradition to be Gospel. But what happens when that tradition’s real meaning is lost in translation? We get feminists, neo liberals and the like clamouring for the banishment of that tradition, using big words like equality and gender imbalance. Don’t get it twisted, I’m all for gender equality. But I also believe that culture is an important factor in personal identity.

Translated into English roora, means bride price. Of course then, on the surface, this tradition would appear to be a man buying a woman. I don’t deny that there are those who pervert that perception of this tradition to enrich themselves by selling off their underage daughters. Neither do I deny that there are men and women who believe that by having roora paid for her a woman must be completely submissive to her husband or suffer the consequences, violent or not. But these are the ill-advised actions of people, not the intent of the tradition. They reflect more on the characters of the individuals involved than on the culture they profess to practice.

The act of paying roora shouldn’t be looked at in isolation. It is part of a complex and formal process of negotiation that results in a mutual agreement of the bride price. Roora is not meant to extract ridiculous sums of money from the would be groom. In fact for true traditionalists, the exchange of money, which is foreign to our culture, is taboo. Roora is a tradition that is rooted in building a sense of community, both within the families that are marrying, and between them. A man cannot marry alone, the cattle he pays to his bride’s father are those cattle given to his family by his brothers in law. The ceremony itself cannot happen with out a number of members of the extended family being present, tete’s (the bride’s father’s sisters), Sekuru’s (the bride’s mother’s brothers), varoora (sisters in law to the bride) and hanzvadzi (brothers and sisters) included. Far from being transactional, this tradition is meant to establish and reinforce a relationship between the two marrying families to strengthen the new union. It is impossible for a good parent to place a monetary value on a child, so why should it be looked at in monetary terms alone?

In answer to Didymus’ question, as a card-carrying feminist who wouldn’t suffer the indignity of being dictated to by a man simply because he is one, yes I think it still is. I think the tradition of roora, as it was intended, is very important. In a time when divorce rates climb every day and our sense of culture and community is being lost through cultural alienation, migration and other factors I think it is more important now than ever.

Zimbabwe is in a process of formulating a new constitution. The process is already reportedly marred by disgruntlements emanating from different lines of divisions ranging from political to gender. It is sad and highly unexpected of an educated populace as Zimbabwe’s. The tensions reflect massive misconceptions not only of the process leading to the constitution but also of what the constitution is and its short term and long term objectives.

If people really knew what they were doing, we would not be having outcries over political rallies and the consequent political violence, which we hear of, or over who constitutes the select committee to spearhead the constitution making process. It is not the role of any political party to inform its people of the constitution but of an independent neutral body, or of other informed citizens.

The constitution is a document much more important than any political party, it should live beyond ZANU PF, beyond MDC and beyond Ndonga or any political party yet to be formed. It is the national bible to determine the conduct of the government and other stakeholders including people. What it implies is that it is the key to control the birth, survival and death of political parties. It should therefore come from the people in general, irrespective of their political party allegiances. Everyone should wear the coat of a citizen and take off any identification with a party in the process.

The select committee to spear heard the constitution making process is not there to influence the outcomes of the process. What we want collected are the views of the people as raw as they are and not views doctored along short term political interests. The same can be said of gender issues. We want people’s views and not those of whoever is part of the committee. People should be educated and to take heed of such elements that are bent on influencing the process to make the constitution their pocket parcel or baby.

People should stop viewing the constitution through political party lenses and rather jointly come up with a constitution that benefits everyone. What is important here is political and social neutrality.

The International Women’s Day commemorations at the National Gallery in Harare on March 6 featured a panel discussion: Moral and/or pleasure? Women, media and the creation of discourse on sexuality. One of the discussants on the panel was Catherine Makoni. Last year, her article Women as vectors of disease: The problem with ill-thought campaigns generated a lot of controversy on the Kubatana blog. One comment challenged her criticism of the PSI “small house” campaign on HIV and AIDS, accusing her of responding based on her feelings, not her analysis. This person claimed her position was based on assumption, not research. But Catherine firmly believes that this campaign violates the principle of “do no harm,” and she used her presentation to explain why she believes this so firmly.

For example:

I go to University, and I do Law. By the third year of University (Law is four years) there is enormous pressure on me to have a boyfriend. Sure, I’m doing Law, but there is immense pressure on me to get married. In third and fourth year you get a lot of girls falling pregnant, in the hopes of securing someone to marry them. So third year, fourth year you have a lot of pregnancies. Why? Because you need to be sure that before you leave university you have someone to marry you, otherwise you’ll be a failure, never mind that you have honours and a first class degree. I’m talking about stereotypes, and gender roles, and expectations, and how these are drummed into us from birth.

Fast forward a few years and I start dealing with gender based violence. My friend, who is a lawyer, has not been able to leave her abusive marriage. It’s like the prophecy is coming true. We were told not to study law, because you’re giving yourself all these airs and what man is going to tolerate you? So she’s done everything. She’s cut her hair, she’s worn long clothes, she’s worn oversized dresses, so that she doesn’t look too attractive, and make her husband insecure. So 14 years later she’s in an abusive relationship, and her husband says “You think you are a lawyer. I’m going to beat you, and I want to see what you do with your law degree.” Her mother says “Why don’t you give him his proper place. He wants to be head of the family. Give him his proper place. You should know you are a woman. Don’t talk about work at home.”

I remember about 11 years ago, I’d just come out of the salon. It was around 6pm. Some man approaches me and tries to chat me up. I ignored him, and he lays into me. He starts beating me up, opposite the UN building on Union Avenue. I got attacked, and people stood by. There were people looking out of their windows in the UN building while I was being attacked. Eventually this guy got tired and walked off, and someone said to me “What did you do to him?” I said I didn’t do anything. The guy was shouting uri hure, and I suppose pretending that I was his girlfriend. The people who heard what he was saying thought, well, she’s his girlfriend. She’s done something, so this is okay. I asked them why didn’t you come to my aid. And they said, well, we thought you were his girlfriend. We have a culture which says it’s okay to beat up a woman. If she’s your girlfriend, then it’s alright to do it – especially if you think ihure, or she’s done something.

There are infinitely harmful ways in which these things play out. The imagery of this PSI campaign sticks in our heads. It sticks in the heads of the police, the magistrate, the teachers who teach our daughters, that man who’s walking out there, the editors, everyone. What it’s saying is yes, you are right to hold these beliefs. You are right to think that women who do not conform to societal expectations of what is right are a problem.

Read more of Catherine’s presentation, and listen to excerpts of her talk, here

The Southern and Eastern African Political and Economic Series Trust (SAPES) is hosing a weekly seminar series, alternating between policy dialogue, and discussions on the Constitution. To kick off their series, the first discussion was on the Land Question in Zimbabwe.

Renowned land policy analyst Mandivamba Rukuni lead the discussion, sharing his thoughts on the challenges facing Zimbabwe, and what role land policy played in that. He warned the audience that he would be controversial, and indeed he was. Some of his more controversial points included:

• The four causal reasons for Africa’s problems are organised politics, organised religion, formal education and economic policies based on greed, individualism and selfishness
• Government needs to strengthen the traditional tenure system, not weaken it
• Most African governments don’t believe that rural traditional people know anything about anything. We are just as bad as the colonial masters

Read more of Rukuni’s thoughts, and listen to excerpts of his talk here.

Join the SAPES discussion series every Thursday from 5pm-7pm at 4 Deary Avenue, Belgravia, Harare. This week, Lovemeore Madhuku will lead the discussion, on the topic Constitution-Making in Zimbabwe: Re-inventing the Wheel or Learning from Precedents? Admission is $10 (free for SAPES members). For more information, email admin@sapes.org.zw

I went to the International Women’s day events hosted by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe last Saturday.

The pond in front of the gallery has got a pathetic bit of water in it, but enough to float the debris from Zimbabweans who sit on the edge of it and chuck their litter overboard.

It isn’t only the National Gallery of Zimbabwe that needs to keep the litter in check, its also the folk who clearly couldn’t care less about treating one of our national institutions with respect.

C’mon Zimbabweans, clean up your act.

Zimbabwe Democracy Now releases weekly news updates which summarise key news developments in Zimbabwe.

Highlights from their latest issue include:

• State-owned Air Zimbabwe is to retrench a further 468 workers this year after it laid off 700 workers last year. The airline has also had to ground two of its three Chinese aircraft due to a serious shortage of spare parts and debt to the plane’s suppliers.
• Mugabe and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono have reportedly differed on the indigenisation law, with Gono arguing that the act discourages investors. He has also said the law is being created by greedy Zanu-PF officials who want to grab companies for free, in the same way that they appropriated white-owned farms.
• Zimbabwe’s largest auto assembler, Willowvale Motor Industries, is on the verge of collapse due to a US$3.4 million debt to its principal supplier in Japan.
• The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe said prices of basic commodities rose 20.5 percent from January to February, placing pressure on low-income families.
• Zimbabwe’s government is earning only US$100 million per month, 65 percent of which goes to wages, Finance Minister Tendai Biti told said on Thursday. He also said Western donors are ready to cancel Zimbabwe’s US$6 billion foreign debt if the country declares itself a heavily indebted country, but Zanu-PF is firmly opposed to the idea.
• Mines minister Obert Mpofu said Zimbabwe would pull out of the Kimberley Process (KP) if the diamond regulatory body finds the country has failed to comply with its regulations. Mpofu said Zimbabwe would continue to sell its gems to diamond trade markets.
• Zanu-PF has proposed in its nationality programme that only children born in the Diaspora be allowed dual citizenship. If this regulation is adopted, it could affect Zimbabweans living abroad who have taken up foreign citizenship. This has been interpreted as a method of stripping diasporeans of their nationality and thereby reducing voter numbers.

Read these valuable bulletins each week.

What an amazing tribute to Prudence and all the wonderful members of Liyana. The full acceptance speech is posted below and can be read on the official Oscar’s page here.

I was expecting the usual Oscar-style thank-you speeches that we all have yawned through, but the producer, Elinor Burkett – who lives in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – was on a mission! She cut in to the director’s speech with an intense sense of purpose. I was already emotional, blown-away by the fact the film had actually won an Oscar, but tears literally poured down my face when Burkett, who looked emotional herself, said

In a world in which most of us are told and tell ourselves that we can’t. Liyana, the band behind this film, teaches us that we’re wrong. Against all odds they did, so we can.

I can’t hear the words “Against all odds they did, so we can” without thinking of Zimbabwe because we are a nation daring to hope for a future without fear and tyranny, and we are a people who feel that all our hopes are fragile  and flimsy when stacked up ‘against the odds’  hurled at us by a tyrannical Zanu PF.

“We can’t”  is a daily struggle for me, and I know its a daily struggle for lots of Zimbabweans; in fact, I’d say that “we can’t” is probably one of the biggest obstacles confronting us.

It’s hard to square up to the enormity of the obstacles facing us and think, ‘we can do it’; it becomes even harder to do this when just as you think  that maybe we’ve taken a small positive step forward, Zanu PF comes along and blindsides us with yet another ill-conceived policy that disrespects the nation and her people.

The film is all about an astonishing young woman named Prudence, and the Liyana band members, but the words “Against all odds they did, so we can” grabs what is an unashamedly ostentatious and glitzy American moment by its throat, and roots it strongly back in the brutal and bloody context the film emerges from: a country still struggling to recover, a nation still hurting from decades of human rights abuses, citizens still too afraid to hope that maybe we can pull ourselves through to the other side, families still divided across different countries and continents. Ours is a world where despair and hopelessness thrive.  How do we dare to hope, and how do we dare to find the strength to believe that there might be a better future?

I hope that the individual band members who have overcome so much, and then came together to achieve so much, are enjoying every moment of pride that they are entitled to in this moment.  An Oscar is … like… wow, wow, WOW!!.

But the most spectacular gifts that this band can potentially offer Zimbabweans are gifts of courage and self-belief – qualities that we desperately need to save and heal our wonderful country and to unite our communities. When the headiness if the red-carpet moment fades, it should be these inspirational gifts to Zimbabweans that Prudence and the band members should feel the most proud of, because these are the qualities that may save our country and quite literally save lives.

“Against all odds they did, so we can” – Amen to that! Congratulations! More about Liyana here.

Full acceptance speech:

Roger Ross Williams:

Oh my god. This is amazing. Two years ago when I got on an airplane and went to Zimbabwe, I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I’d end up here. This is so exciting. This is so exciting. So exciting.

Elinor Burkett:

…Let the woman talk. Isn’t that the classic thing? In a world in which most of us are told and tell ourselves that we can’t. Liyana, the band behind this film, teaches us that we’re wrong. Against all odds they did, so we can. So the bottom line is, to me, my role models and my heroes, Marvelous and Energy, Tapiwa, Goodwell, the whole rest of the band and especially Prudence.

Roger Ross Williams:

And Prudence who is here. Who is back there. Prudence is here tonight. This is for Prudence.

Music by Prudence, the film about Prudence Mabhena (21), and the KG Band has just won the Oscar for Best Short Subject Documentary. With determination and their love of music, the band has overcome the stigma and prejudice that many experience associated with disability. Amhlope, Makorokoto, Congratulations!

President Jacob Zuma has been called all sorts of names of late for making the choice to enjoy the privilege of being a polygamist which his culture permits, which the South African constitution does not criminalize and which the women he is married to have accepted much to public outrage.

While I have strong personal feelings against polygamy, I notice that during the hullabaloo that ensured - none of Zuma’s wives voiced dissent, none of them took to the streets in protest over their husband’s perpetual marriages, engagements and never-ending wooing.

It was to me, a case of the media crying louder than the bereaved - for if indeed there are any who are harmed or aggrieved by how Zuma conducts his love-life; surely it would be the women he has married, promised to marry and those he has fathered children with - all of whom have remained silent. The silence, presumably, of those who are in acquiescence.

But then people are entitled to their opinions, moreso if the opinions they wish to voice regard those who are in positions of power, who find themselves accountable to the public and whose private lives play out in the public domain as Zuma’s life has.

Now the British media called him a ‘buffoon’ who also happened to be ‘over-sexed’. Now to my way of thinking, buffoon is not high on the scale as far as insults go - in fact it is really nothing compared to some of the colorful invectives that have gone Zuma’s way.

Inadvertently, this insult has done more to turn the tide of public opinion in favor of Zuma, primarily because it was uttered by a white man, who happens to be non-African and whose contemptuous view of Zuma’s polygamous status has riled the afrocentric and pan-africanist sensibilities of some of us.

Though it may sound clichéd, Zuma’s conduct has a cultural premise - an African culture, which (whatever its flaws and imperfections may be) is our proud heritage and an integral part of our ethos as a people, as continent and as a race.

Where I come from, when we fight or disagree - we are allowed to do so without pulling punches knowing that what binds us is greater than what would divide us. I have often found that the only thing that quenches a family feud is the intrusion of an outsider, one who would presume to appoint themselves as the judge and proceed to proffer unsolicited advice or opinions on what is an internal affair.

And that British man has managed to raise my hackles by his superciliousness and the nauseating superiority complex that informs his interpretation of African customs, specifically polygamy.

Had he desired to make an informed judgment of President Zuma’s lifestyle, he would have done so within the confines of the African customs and culture that permits him to be a polygamist.

Anyone, particularly a non-African, would do well to show the appropriate level of humility that is reflective of his or her limited experience and knowledge of African mores when they make the choice to hazard an opinion. Logic dictates that it be so.

Voltaire once stated, I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. It is in the same vein that I am compelled to leap to Zuma’s defense; for while I (as an African) do not agree with how he chooses to conduct his life (and find polygamy to be unpalatable) I defend without qualms his right to marry many women as our culture permits and in the same breathe I would be duty-bound to defend the right of all his wives to be married to their one polygamous husband.

It is a personal choice they have made and whatever the consequences - it is not my place to hurl insults at them because I happen not to agree with the decisions grown, mature and adult women have made in picking a life partner.

So much for the gospel of tolerance that the has been preached by the West with advent of fighting for gay rights the world over and here is one who would scorn a man for marrying three women and find it palatable that two men ‘jump’ each other’s bones?

Whatever; that snide remark however goes beyond the issue of Zuma because really the issue is polygamy and polygamy is an African issue and surely any disparaging comment made about it reflects on the African people whose culture makes it permissible?

A buffoon, is he? What does that make the rest of us, I wonder? Or would someone care to explain how that remark has nothing to do with the rest of us; sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins of polygamists - let me guess - we’re just a family of African ‘buffoons’.