Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls

Older news from the news: people voluntarily participate in fasting

"The unpatriotic hoarding of food gives the impression that we have a problem, which clearly we haven't, except in the South African media's mind. We do not call it starving, we call it fasting. Fasting is actually good for you. Lots of famous people have fasted for the benefit of their people. Gandhi, for instance. In our case, the people themselves will be encouraged to fast, thereby strengthening themselves against the onslaught of colonial imperialism. We have no objection in principle to people eating. Those of us in government all eat, but only because persons in our important positions have to. What we must guard against is the belief that people have the right to break the law if they're hungry." - Doc Mtusi, official in Zimbabwe's Finance Ministry, interviewed in the Cape Times. Extracted from The Week, September 15, 2007.

From the News: Merkel says Mugabe has right to attend summit

Being German I have to report that in full length

From The Observer (SA), 7 October

Merkel says Mugabe has right to attend summit

Tracy McVeigh, foreign editor

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is entitled to attend a Europe-Africa summit in December, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this weekend. Her pronouncement puts her at odds with Gordon Brown, who has threatened to boycott the talks if Mugabe goes. During talks in Pretoria with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, who has been mediating between the Zimbabwean opposition and Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party, Merkel expressed disquiet about the worsening crisis in Zimbabwe. 'The situation is a very difficult one. It's a disastrous one,' she said. But she did not back calls for Mugabe to be barred from the summit between African Union and European Union leaders in Lisbon. 'The President of the republic of Germany wanted to invite all African countries to that summit, and it's up to countries themselves to decide how they are going to be represented at the table,' she said. ‘Obviously we will make all our assessments heard. We will also raise all our criticisms. We would do so in the presence of each and everyone.' However, her refusal to back efforts to ban Mugabe may now mean it is Brown instead who does not attend the summit.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the Prime Minister's position had not changed and that he would not attend if Mugabe was present. Merkel's comments brought a harsh response from Zimbabwe. The state-owned Herald newspaper reported yesterday that Mbeki had staved off pressure from the German leader. It said Merkel had been expected to take a tougher stance, but left the meeting with Mbeki 'singing from a different hymn sheet'. The Zimbabwe government hit out at Merkel for labelling the crisis 'disastrous' and said Germany should not pass judgment on anyone. 'It is ironic that Germany, with a history such as it has, has the temerity to see a speck in Zimbabwe's eye,' Secretary for Information and Publicity George Charamba said. Last week the Zimbabwe government averted a strike by civil servants and junior doctors after negotiations lead to unions cancelling a walkout planned over salaries. Also yesterday, Zimbabwe's police revealed that more than 23,000 people have been arrested for flouting price controls imposed by the government three months ago.

Dear Econet Managers

I am sick of
"call failed"
"call rejected"
"network busy"
or
"sorry, the subscriber you have dialled is not reachable"
every time I try to call someone!
AND of
70 per cent of my messages not arriving at their destination.

At least I get my weekly messages from econet telling me that they are sorry for me not being able to send messages at all or not being able to call other numbers except econet-phones for the last week.

From the news: White farmers in court for growing crops

From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 6 October

White farmers in court for growing crops

Johannesburg - Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land - in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months. (...)Didymus Mutasa, the lands minister, has said that the few hundred remaining white farmers will be forced out, one way or another. "The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites," he said recently. "Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms." In fact many farms were given to members of the government and their cronies, and one minister has admitted that the new farmers have failed in their cultivation efforts.

hunters and gatherers

Today we have been driving through town, when we suddenly saw someone with a sack barrow and three crates of coke on top walking down the side of the road pushing the sack barrow .
Of course we stopped and asked where he got the coke from. "From XXX". - That's about 7 kilometres away from where we saw him.
"And how long did u have to queue?"
- "oh just one day."

full shelves again soon?

From The Associated Press, 1 October

Chronic shortages to end this month, says Zimbabwe central bank governor Gono

Harare - The state central bank announced measures Monday that it said would help to restock empty store shelves by the end of the month. (...) "I leave you with a promise most basic goods should and will return to the shelves in the next three weeks," Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono said on state television. Gono said the bank also planned to change the nation's currency, striking more zeros off bank notes for the second time since August of last year.

Let's see if we have to find out that washing powder and pool acid are considered basic goods. I hope not.

From Newsdesk (Sweden), 1 October

Swedish development cooperation organization demands: Send food observers to Zimbabwe

Now, the international development cooperation organization Kooperation Utan Gränser/Swedish Cooperative Centre (SCC) demands the creation of a food observer force. In the same way as the international community supervises elections in other parts of the world, an independent international control of the food aid is demanded to assume that it reaches those who most need it(...) Farmers whom we have interviewed confirm that the distribution of food is controlled politically, says Anna Tibblin, director of the SCC in Southern Africa. (...) The Swedish Cooperative Centre/SCC considers that the surrounding world should urge the regime to accept an increased international control of the aid.

That's no big news, but I am glad for the support.
Why do you think MDC ares get now more food aid at the moment?
And what do you think the military feeds on?

from the news: personal experience

GREAT!!!! ... Comment from The Mail & Guardian (SA), 1 October

Going home

Everjoice Win

Going home … going home … am a-going home … The lovely words of Aaron Neville’s song ring in my head for a whole fortnight before my three-week vacation in Zimbabwe. Each day I wake up and pump up the volume. I am so excited, I can’t wait. I haven’t been home for more than five months. This is long overdue. August is vacation time for me and my son. It also is time to renew insurances, annual medical check-ups and, of course, sweet potato time. I love that stuff. I could live on sweet potatoes for the rest of my life. And, believe me, they don’t grow them that sweet anywhere else. I have not been home for so long - it’s the first time I have stayed away that long, partly out of fear of what I will find and partly denial. I cannot face the dreadful realities that have become the story of my country. The constant text messages from home don’t help; the place sounds as if it will fall apart at any moment.

The one thing that sustains me as I work outside Zimbabwe is the belief that I will always go back home. I still hold on to the illusion that my son will go to the same university I went to, because I don’t trust anybody else’s education system. And yet the bad news from across the Limpopo has been too much to bear. "Will you be okay? Have you bought enough supplies? Can we help with anything?", empathetic office colleagues ask in the weeks prior to my departure. I am angry. Why am I being asked these questions? Where do they think I am going? Darfur? Iraq? I am reminded of how I reacted when I met women from Nigeria during Abacha’s time or women from Palestine. When I met Rana from Palestine, with a lovely hair-do and manicured nails, I asked her if she really lived "there". I had to be reminded that life goes on - births, deaths, weddings, falling in love, parties - in the middle of all the atrocities. Zimbabwe is no different.

As I step off the plane and into the arrivals galley I could kiss the ground - pity the formerly blue carpet is now a rather squalid grey. The immigration officials chat to me and laugh as I "manage my passport", telling them where to stamp, so they do not fill the pages. Getting a new passport is not easy, don’t they know? "Ha sister," the officer says, laughing. "Those of you coming from the diaspora can buy these things. Only US$200 these days." The customs officer waves us through. Too bored? Too tired to search us as they normally do when they see large pieces of luggage? We get out swiftly and in minutes my brother is driving us into the city. Harare is not called the sunshine city for nothing. It is a beautiful spring afternoon. The sun shines brightly in the blue sky. Not too hot. A gentle breeze is blowing. I am overwhelmed. I feel intensely happy as the sun sinks into my bones. I lower my window with no fear of a gun being levelled at my head at the traffic lights. Even my son sticks his hand out of the window to catch the breeze. We haven’t done this in a long time. Not in Johannesburg. The streets of Harare are clean. Too "clean", I notice, in that there are few people about. The street vendors were "cleaned" out by operation Murambatsvina a year ago. While some brave ones have ventured back, it is a hazardous business. I notice there are few cars on the road. The fuel crisis is biting. But I am too happy now to worry about it. I just want to enjoy being home.

I wake up on my first morning to another beautiful day. The house is eerily quiet. No radio. No television. Not even the boys on their PlayStation. I realise the electricity is off. My friend Nozipho tells me it will be on again about 2pm. It is Sunday. That’s the schedule in her neighbourhood. I soon learn that in the leafy suburbs there is a regular schedule for power cuts and occasionally for water cuts too. So you can schedule your life -- when to do the laundry, when to iron, what time to start cooking ... By the end of the first week I have the schedules worked out. I know whose house to go to for breakfast, whose for lunch and when to recharge my cellphone. But things are not so easy in the non-leafy, high-density townships, where the power goes off at any time. Perhaps the thinking is that poor people are too poor to need regular schedules.

But there are some things you can’t schedule, like the ever-present funerals, mostly the result of HIV and Aids. How do you conduct a wake by candlelight? How do you feed the mourners in the dark? We soon find out. My friend’s dad passes away in Bulawayo. The power goes off in the middle of his wake. Dozens of candles hardly make a difference in the pitch darkness. The women - always the women - struggle to heat water, cook and feed the large crowd. They manage. At yet another funeral in a less well-heeled township, things don’t go so well. The candles run out after midnight. The firewood runs out after one meal. No one has fuel to go on a quest for these essentials. The mourners go hungry. Many leave. By the time the burial is over there are barely 30 people left. We drive into Mkoba township in Gweru on a dark evening when the power is off. The entire place, 20 villages in total, is in darkness. Thick smoke hangs in the air. I am worried about women’s and girls’ safety and security. Several scurry hurriedly to get home from work, the market, shops, church. I am scared to ask if the statistics for violence against women have gone up.

On day two I experience cut-off number two. Water. I am shown the dozens of buckets, containers, pots, plastic bins -- anything that can hold water. Every household I visit is the same. You keep storing the stuff, just in case. Unlike electricity the schedules for water cut-offs are less regular in every area. But things are worse in the high-density areas. It is much worse in Bulawayo, where cut-offs last anything from one to seven days. No one has that many containers. Once again I see crowds of women and girls around the few boreholes or water points. There is an almost festive atmosphere as they converge there. They laugh, talk, joke and wait. Sometimes the water comes out quickly, but often it’s a slow trickle. The lines move slowly. Nerves get frayed. Pushing and shoving starts and pandemonium breaks out. Local youths come to "restore order", abusing women in the process. Meanwhile, back home the children wait, home-based care patients fret and husbands get angry.

Women’s and girls’ lives have gone backwards in time. The development that seemed within reach by 2015 is a distant, hollow hope. If it’s not a water queue, it’s the search for firewood. Countless hours are spent searching or collecting something. In Glen View a group of young women says it takes them up to three hours to walk to a farm to search for firewood, another three to collect and cut it down and another three to walk back. Meanwhile, other domestic and economic activities must wait. What time do they have to go to school? Learn new skills? Earn an income? Or do anything else in this hunter-gatherer context? We are back to the rural way of life, but without the necessary tools and changes in other circumstances to make this manageable.

I have been home for a week and I haven’t eaten beef. I am beginning to have withdrawal symptoms. There is lots of expensive chicken. As a visitor I have been fed plenty. I can’t face another drumstick. The government deregistered all abbatoirs, so there’s no beef anywhere. I call a friend in the president’s office. He is one of the new farmers. A very productive one. I ask if he has beef. No beef, he says, just more chicken or he can do mutton. I opt for mutton. Sadly, the president of Equatorial Guinea is coming to town, so I never see the mutton. On our way to Gweru we drive into Kadoma Ranch Motel, hoping to buy a burger. I ask for a menu. "You want to see a menu, mother? What do you want to see on a menu?" the waiter asks me, with his arms akimbo and a sneer on his lips. I lose my temper. I want the menu. Isn’t this a hotel?

to be continued...