Over the past few years, life in Zimbabwe has increasingly come to resemble an Ionesco drama. One ridiculous government policy follows another, each more unconscionable than the last. And somehow, the stated purpose of the legislation never seems to gel with what the policy actually accomplishes.

Take, for example, the latest genius move on the part of Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono. On Thursday he suspended the RTGS transfer payment scheme, because he had found that it had become “an active vehicle for illicit foreign exchange parallel market dealings, as well as a convenient excuse by sellers of goods and services to overprice their commodities.”

Never mind that it had also become an essential method of organising payments in an environment where bank queues take up literally hours of every working day. The RTGS and Internet banking set up enabled some people to perform transactions without having to join the bank queues – thus saving their own time, and keeping the queues a bit shorter than they otherwise would be.

Suspending RTGS to curb corruption is like using a machete to clean out the infection from your finger. In an economy where people can get to the bank at 6am and still be only number 3,478 in the queue, suspending RTGS makes the simple, basic, ordinary transactions of daily life and business impossible. To add insult to injury, it will put more people into the queues – the people in building societies like CABS, who don’t have cheque books and now need to get bank cheques drawn to pay their bills, and the people who need to deposit these cheques. Transactions at the bank near us had already begun to take longer than they used to – in part because the tellers are on go slow in the hopes that they can earn more overtime. Meanwhile, the kinds of people who were taking advantage of RTGS to profiteer off Zimbabwe’s crumbling economy will just find other corrupt ways in which to make their money - Your cash barons ye shall always have with you.

And yet, despite the outrage of it all, the Sunday Mail refers to the move as one to “bring sanity in the banking sector.” It also warns Zimbabweans that the Reserve Bank will be keeping tabs on everyone who is withdrawing money from the bank every day – to establish “what kind of business they are into.” With transport having gone up to $4,000 one way, bread costing $6,000 and the maximum daily withdrawal only $20,000, might it just be possible that people withdrawing money every day are just into the business of getting to work, having something to eat, and getting home again?

No fire at this address

So where’s the fire? That’s what I was asking myself as I passed a fire engine backed up at 76 Alfred Road in Greendale, Harare. No fire fighters in sight – no curious by-standers. Just two weary soldiers directing the fire engine’s hoses into some army chef’s home.

Other residents in the same road can be seen shifting water containers back to their homes daily by wheel barrow or on their heads.

How does an army chef get to commandeer a fire engine as his personal water bowser?

It reminds me of an incident years ago when a senior administrator at Parirenyatwa Hospital commandeered an ambulance to chase after a bus he’d missed. He was, appropriately, dismissed. Fat chance we’ll see this bloke suffer a similar fate.

As basic utilities become ever scarcer, senior staffers in the government, civil service, politics and business are finding new ways to make themselves comfortable whilst others around them suffer. They jump the queue at the bank, dine at posh restaurants, drive air-conditioned cars, procure cheap fuel, medicate and educate their families outside the country. In this way they tolerate the intolerable.

Is this what Mugabe meant by 100% total empowerment in his re-election campaigning in the June presidential run-off?

Greetings in Shona usually go something like this; “Makadii?” (How are you?) The answer usually goes; “Tiripo, kana makadiiwo?” (We are well, if you are also well). Infused in this greeting is this society’s ethos. The recognition that our destinies are intertwined. That no person is an island. That we belong to the human family. That each person has responsibilities not just to themselves, but to the community to which they belong. That you are what you are because of others. Hunhu, ubuntu.

Last night l was in my office on Selous Ave working late when something happened that is symptomatic not just of the serious decay in this country, but perhaps also of the reason why as Zimbabweans we have not risen up and done something about our mess. It was about 8:45pm and all was quiet in this area of the Avenues, when a sudden scream rang out. It was a woman screaming for help. There was terror in her voice. Although such screams are common place in the area around Selous Avenue/ Livingstone Avenue/ Third Street going towards Fourth Street, as people fall prey to the thieves and robbers who haunt the area, they are still shocking and frightening when they happen. We all ran out of the office to look out. What normally happens (and l use the word normally advisedly) is that because it is so dark, (on account of there being no street lighting), you hear the agonised screams of a person as they succumb to the thieves, long before you see them running for dear life.  You peer into the dark but you cannot see the victims until they come to a lit up area near one of the offices. And so it was that last night we heard the screams of the woman long before we saw her. She was screaming for help and it appeared to us that the thieves were still in pursuit, shouting as they went after her. So loud were her screams that she drew the attention of a number of people who were in nearby offices. People were calling out to her to run towards the light. Hearts were pounding as we waited for her to emerge from the night. We were gratified to see an armed police officer who had been checking the nearby Beverley Bank ATMs for cash, emerge and run towards the screams. And then he stopped short. The woman emerged into the lit up area, as did her accosters.  They were about three police officers who were roughing her up. She was screaming that they were hitting her as she came up to the armed police officer who was her would-be rescuer. She kept asking “why are you hitting me? Why are you hurting me? What have l done?” She was clutching her handbag to her chest and there was real terror in her voice.

As they came to the lit up area where people had gathered, the police officers pulled back a little but continued roughing the woman up, pulling and shouting at her. All this without arresting her. The would-be rescuer was at a loss as to what to do l guess, given that these were his fellow police officers. He did not ask what was going on and he just started trailing after them as the three went off, still assaulting the woman. The three of us who had been watching this tragedy just stood impotently, consumed with a mixture of guilt, fear, helplessness and despair.

The security guards went back to their posts, muttering that she was probably a prostitute. The implication being therefore that she deserved whatever abuse the police officers were subjecting her to. Other people went off, muttering and wondering what she had done. Again the implication was that she must have done something to deserve the abuse, otherwise why would the police be doing that? 

No one problematised the role of the police. No one said that even if she had broken the law, the police should have arrested her and taken her into custody, not assaulted her like criminals. There were three of them; they could have done that easily.  Even if she was a commercial sex worker, that still did not give the police the right to rough her up as they were doing.

Now, l do not know the facts of the story. I do not know what she had or had not done.  I do know however that the police take an oath of office in which they swear to uphold the laws of the country. If someone is suspected of committing an offence, he or she should be arrested and taken into custody. As far as l could tell, the woman was not resisting arrest. One is therefore left wondering why the police were behaving as they were. I have my theories as to why, but will not go into them.

The guilt we felt at not having intervened kept pulling at us long after her screams had fallen silent, we kept wondering how she was, what had happened. We questioned whether they were real police officers or they had been thieves dressed as police officers.  We wondered perhaps if they had tried to proposition her and she had rejected their advances and therefore the assault and harassment was retaliation. We wondered if perhaps they had tried to steal from the woman and were roughing her up to facilitate this. (One certainly hears enough stories in which police officers are implicated in criminal activities) They were certainly not behaving like officers of the law as they assaulted the woman. 

Our guilt arose from the fact that we had kept silent when we should have spoken out. We had stood back when we should have stepped up and stepped in. We were relieved that it was not us and we were safe. We felt sorry for the woman but that was not enough to compel us to act.  We were afraid that the lawless louts would turn on us. We were afraid perhaps of the inconvenience, so we sacrificed the woman to her doubtful fate. We were after all working late because we had to. Getting ourselves involved would have meant that we would lose valuable time getting embroiled in a messy and dangerous argument with the apparently lawless police, or so we told ourselves.  The irony is that the incident so disturbed us that we could not continue working.

Our response l think is part of the problem we have in Zimbabwe. We all know what’s wrong and what’s right but no one is willing to do what it takes for the common good. The shelves are empty, but as long as l am managing to put food on my family’s table, who cares that my neighbour’s children are going to bed hungry? As long as l can access cash through various means, who cares that someone has been spending days and nights outside the bank waiting to withdraw their paltry money. We look at them, we feel sorry, we despair but we are relieved that it is not us standing in the baking sun as we go about our business. We do not intervene. We do not speak out when we should.  As long as l is managing, it is enough. Hatisisina hunhu. We have lost our ubuntu. That which makes us members of the human family.

I hope as the Prime Minister and his two deputy prime ministers are inspecting their swanky new offices in Munhumutapa Building, they are thinking of ways of healing our community and restoring our values. 

Here at Kubatana, we are enough of politicians fiddling whilst Zimbabweans starve. Our current electronic activism campaign encourages people to get in touch with the offices of the President and the Prime Minister designate to urge them to stop stalling and start governing.

Getting contact information for the President’s office, though, was no easy matter.

First off, when I used the numbers in the telephone directory, as soon as I asked for contact information they’d transfer me to the Ministry of Information. No wonder Zanu PF wants to keep control of the Ministry of Information. It would be too hard to reconfigure all the telephone lines to separate them from the numbers for the President’s office!

When I finally got through to the right person, I asked for their email address. I could hear the receptionist shouting across the office to one of her colleagues –

“These people want our email address. Can I give it?” She asked.

“Which people?” Her colleague asked.

“These people on the phone. They’re calling from Harare. They want the email address for our office. Can I give them?”

“Who are they?”

“They’re on the phone.”

“What do they want?”

“They want our email address can I give them?”

“No. Don’t give them our email address. We don’t know who they are.”

The whole exchange reminded me an awful lot of trying to get Zanu PF’s email address.

She then came back on the line and told me they weren’t on email so she couldn’t give me the email address. So I asked for fax number. She said the fax was down. So if I have an urgent message for the President’s office? How am I meant to get it to them? She told me to phone the Ministry of Information.

It took four more phone calls and uncountable inter-office transfers for them to eventually give me their fax number – and to get them to give me a fax tone when it rang.

This is exactly what needs to change in the new Zimbabwe. As much as we need government to start governing again, this must be a New government, with a new attitude about itself and its responsibilities to the people, and a new approach towards listening to Zimbabweans and responding to what we want.

Fax the President’s office on +263 4 251641 and let them know that you want a new government – and you want it now.

Bank queuing has become the major occupation of my early mornings and lunch hours. For me and a lot of other people, it has become necessary to open multiple bank accounts to get around the pathetic withdrawal limits that the central bank has been insisting upon. Although the maximum withdrawal was recently increased from the pathetic $1000 to another pathetic $20 000, this has not eased the demand for cash in the slightest bit, despite Gono’s reassurance in yesterday’s Herald newspaper that the cash situation will improve significantly and the backlog will be cleared. People’s money loses value every minute thus there is no motivation to keep it a second longer in the bank if people can help it. There will therefore always be a backlog as long as Gono and his henchmen do not come up with some viable fiscal policies that will check the ravaging inflation.

I’ve found that I despise bank queues. More and more I dread the indignity of standing in disorderly queues in order to get my hard-earned money. I mean, it’s not out of the ordinary for people to stand in queues worldwide, but the ones in Zimbabwe have a way of getting to you. There are all sorts of strange things going on that often make you wonder just how long the country can go on like this before it bursts at the seams.

It is hateful how the frustrating queues have eaten away at society’s moral fabric. Yesterday I watched a small group of angry men literally drag out one old man who had rejoined the queue, arguing they didn’t recognize him and that he was trying to use his age to jump the queue. Not so long ago it was the norm to give way to the old and frail, the pregnant and those who were obviously not in good health or had some sort of an emergency. Nowadays, everyone is just so tired of the daily onslaught of waiting and waiting, sometimes with a real chance of the cash running out before being served that they have completely lost all patience and sense of kindness. Those of ill health just have to get well again, or bring a wrapper to sit on while they wait their turn.

I particularly detest moments when I find myself stuck between two men. My last experience was quite unpleasant with people shoving this way and that and I could feel the man behind me press unashamedly into the small of my back with an extended section of his anatomy. Ordinarily one would stand slightly outside the queue with just one’s foot placed to mark one’s spot. But that is risky because when the self-important guards come to ‘control’ the queue, they shed off anyone who is not in single file with others.

Then there are those that just don’t bother to bath anymore even with the improved weather conditions we are now experiencing. I make it habit of queuing first thing in the morning at one of my banks and it is no longer surprising to catch a whiff of stale sweat and other things only known to God from some of the people queuing. It used to annoy me so much until I figured that sometimes, it is a reality that some people actually lack both soap and water to wash their bodies with; some would even have walked such long distances the bath they would have had in the morning makes no difference.

Above all these concerns is that a lot of productive time is being lost while people queue for money. I know almost all the staff working for one small company located at Newlands shopping centre that I was surprised one day to see them all in a bank queue and wondered who had remained to serve their customers. It is something of a catch-22 really. They are pressed by the need to get cash that will transport them to and from work the next day as well as the need to stay at their workstations as desired by employers. At the end of the day that explains why there is a lot of anger, bad mood and stress going round. It’s infectious.

I’ve taken to religiously making sure my MP3 player’s batteries are well charged for waiting so long in the queues. I play the music full blast and though it makes me appear unfriendly it saves me a lot of stress. When I listen to Regina Belle’s In Love Again - some of the words stand out though I dare not share them with my angry, frustrated fellow queuers:

Do you ever dream do you even know how tomorrow is another day,
Will we be in the same place in the same way?
Don’t wanna leave but it seems that I just can’t breathe
Maybe we need a change,
Coz we always complain about the same things.
If we agree to change - will it be for good or will we be back here again?

A recent CNN Opinion Poll indicates US Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin is well supported.  Among American men, 63% have a favorable opinion and among women, the figure is 53%.  Very scary, I think, the level of support for this mooseburger-eating, right wing fanatic, governor of a small, small state who has zero foreign policy experience.  Maybe it’s due to the side of the fence I’m on, but it seems the 47% of women who oppose Palin are a whole lot more vocal.  Gloria Steinem and Eve Ensler have both written thoughtful and detailed analyses of all that’s wrong with Palin.  Opposition is strong in cyberspace.  And I would add that this is happening in interesting and innovative ways. Five different people have forwarded me a letter written by Wasilla, Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny who knows Palin.  Despite her request not to do this, Kilkenny’s letter has made its way onto 100s of blogs. One even looks like an official US government-sponsored blog. I suspect it’s not official since the ad currently running reads:  How To Write A Sex Scene.  A Romance Author Gives A Peak At How She Does It.  Four different people have forwarded me an email from a couple of New Yorkers who encourage readers to send their views to womensaynopalin@gmail.com .  So far, 140,000 women have expressed their views.

One important element central to all of this commentary around Palin is similar to a set of arguments Alex Magaisa made in his article entitled:  Politics and prejudice: plight of Zimbabwean women.  It happens in various ways and to different degrees of unjust, unscrupulous, and sadistic objectification.  But still, world over women in politics tend to be viewed as just that.  Women in politics.  As opposed to non-sexed, non-gendered politicians involved in public service because they believe in their leadership qualities, and believe they have solid ideas.  It’s not a perfect parallel to look at female politicians in the US in comparison to female Zimbabwean politicians.  But, in a way, it’s like looking at two sides of a coin.  And both sides are bunk.

John McCain picked Sara Palin because he believes that any old woman will do.  As long as it’s a she, she is what will win him votes.  The situation in Zimbabwe, as Magaisa articulates, is such that female politicians signal more space for men to cast and further embed into the fabric of society objectifying eyes.  In paraphrasing Magaisa:  More space for men to ridicule women, not for their ideas, but about their private lives.  More space for men to describe in precise detail their wild imaginations or fantasies about a woman’s reproductive organs and how she uses them, etc.  I mean what kind of person would look at pictures of Grace Kwinjeh after she was beaten and come up with comments about “what they could ‘do’ with a woman endowed with her features, if given the chance.”

Anne Kilkenny made the important point that democracies require being able to distinguish between disliking and disagreeing.  She even went so far as to say:  I like Sarah Palin. I disagree with her.  Personally, I can’t go quite that far.  I both disagree with and dislike John McCain and Sarah Palin.  And more so, the politics and prejudices Magaisa describes are beyond just disagreeing.  All one can do is dislike.  And fight for change.