It’s been a long time since Zimbabwe had anything resembling a legitimate government. In January, Parliament held its last session before the March 29 Harmonised Election. That election came, and went, and we waited, and eventually the results were announced. Then we waiting a while longer, and 9 weeks over deadline, the presidential run-off one-man election was held. For once, things picked up the pace – the results of that one-person election were announced, and Mugabe’s coronation – oops, I mean inauguration – was held within 48 hours.

But now the President’s been sworn in, and at some point all of those basics like the swearing in of MPs and Senators, the election of the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, and the opening of Parliament are meant to happen. But there’s no sign yet of any of those events on the horizon.

According to Zimbabwe’s Constitution, Parliament is meant to meet at least once every 180 days. Today marks the 180th day since Parliament last met. Over the past years, Zimbabwe’s government has mastered the art of stretching the Constitution to suit it, but this is taking things to a whole new level. But as Zimbabwe’s legislation trackers Veritas pointed out, “the consequences of non-compliance with the deadline are not spelled out in the Constitution.”

Of course they’re not. In most democratic countries the Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” Non-compliance with the Constitution is anathema. You don’t need to spell out its consequences; it’s simply unheard of.

But, of course, Zimbabwe’s not a democracy any more. And why would any autocrat worry about a petty detail like a Constitutional deadline to reconvene Parliament when he’d already taken power by a quiet coup?

On Thursday, my coworker and I ventured out of the office in search of some lunchtime snack. We would have started at the bakery on our side of the road, but it’s been closed for months – no flour and no power. So we tried the bakery over the road, but they hadn’t had power all day, so there was nothing on their shelves. We tried the TM, where the most plentiful item was loo roll. At $110 billion per roll, one roll was more than the daily cash withdrawal limit. If you’d paid cash for the loo roll (as opposed to using a bank swipe card), that would have worked out to about US$4 at the rate a friend of mine had changed her cash just days before. So then we tried the farm stall around the corner. I settled on some ground nuts – $18 billion. And my friend settled on what the vendor said was a “stylised goat.” Small, plump, cute, with a gorgeous smile, the painted wooden goat has provided endless entertainment in the office. All that for the third of the price of one roll of toilet paper.

Today, five days later, the cash withdrawal limit remains $100 billion. Transport from a Harare high density suburb like Mabvuku into town is now $50billion – one way. And the cash queues aren’t getting any shorter. So, imagine you’re one of the few remaining employed Zimbabweans. Your daily cash withdrawal from the bank is completely gone, just on transporting yourself back and forth to town. And, during the hours you’re meant to be at work, when are you meant to find the time to queue each day to take out the cash that you need just to get back and forth between work and home? Never mind trying to eat something during the day. Much less getting some money to buy some vegetables from the vendor to take home for supper.

When the price of loo roll outstrips your income, it’s no wonder you turn to using bits of newspapers or leaves in the toilet. In the short term you feel out of options, but in the long run doing this clogs your drains and wreaks havoc on the plumbing. What is the psychological equivalent of what surviving this economy is doing to each of us? In the short term, we find any number of ways to cut corners, make a plan, overcome, and feel a bit of triumph in enduring the adversity. But down the line, where is it all going? And what damage does it do in the process?

waking
awash in slanting winter sun
birdsong singing my cells
breathe in light
breathe out peace

a flash of news before the electricity goes
the BBC announces that
‘the UN Security Council has been unable to declare sanctions on Zimbabwe’

and I see the fear
in eyes of the child watching his father being taken into hiding

grief washing my cells
will there be no end?

the structures that are supposed to hold this in place
cannot hold back this violence

breathe in light

each step we move closer to the edge

when we leap into the chasm
trusting that we will be held by
the invisible web

I listened with disgust the other day to a woman and two men justifying why one of the men had fondled a woman’s breasts in public. The woman in question was a total stranger. While the young man claimed he was drunk when his hands strayed and groped a strange woman’s bosom – an offence that subsequently saw him do community service as his just desserts – the young scoundrel still insisted he believed what he had done was not wrong. His female interlocutor agreed.

They all agreed the woman had invited it, and I could only guess if she had with her a sandwich board with an appeal to that effect! The female in this conversation incredulously asked why the offended woman was the only female “who is always” molested. It turned out one of the men who had groped her for free thrills was an off duty cop at the local drinking hole where the second incident had also occurred. So she invited it! I suppose the violated woman must have had that voluptuous, nubile, adrenalin-rushing, eye-popping, pant-bulging, curvy body that screamed for men to fondle her, so who could blame these men if they only responded in the manner nature ordered?

There was outrage in South Africa recently when touts and taxi drivers thought they could define women’s dress code and punished “skimpily dressed” women by stripping them, then pointing laughing at the naked woman. It is such behaviour that was being extolled by these people.

I sat and listened silently and my mind went on overdrive as I made parallels with our present political circumstances where men, women and children have “invited” the wrath of Zanu PF militias by simply voting for a party of their choice. As the discourse on Zimbabwe’s post-2000 political narrative that has been defined by coercion rather than persuasion and has rendered all democratic precepts – fundamentally that of the ability to exercise one’s franchise without paying for it with brutal violence – the woman’s body as an object of men’s sexual pleasure presented for me a fascinating analogy.

While attitudes have changed among progressive African societies that wife battering belongs to the annals of those Neanderthal men (perhaps a la that cute Flintstone dude dragging the wife) the very fact that there still exists folks who justify these acts surely strengthens the case for those radical courts that would demand the amputation of that part of the anatomy that would compel one to rape.

Same with politics: how do we justify the battering of opponents on the sole “charge” that they decided to take destiny by its horns and vote for a better future. If these acts can be justified, then surely we can justify the violation of women in the manner of that imbecilic young lout.

And these louts abound these days and are giving fashion a bad name donning party regalia emblazoned with that mustachioed and bespectacled darling of the international talk shops. They have also been spotted running their hands all over stupefied teenagers also wearing those loud t-shirts, and a friend quipped the other day that the pregnancies in the making will produce nothing but more fist-waving!

But back to the lager lout. How would he feel if his own sister came home shedding tears and telling a story about having been groped by some drunk? Would he not take an axe and spear and confront the pervert? Stories abound about the circumstances under which recent elections were held, and these are stories that bring tears to one’s eyes even though the testimonies are from total strangers.

The violation of human rights exists on many levels, and wherever such violations occur, it can only be described as tragic if not moronic if justifications of any sort are brought forward. If a woman can be fondled by a stranger in public for whatever reason (as if any is needed), if a voter can be clubbed to death on allegations they did not vote wisely, does that not scream for the total revisiting of what makes a superior being in the whole created order.

The intolerance of alternative views in Zimbabwe’s political discourse as defined by the so-called veterans of the struggle has obviously cascaded down to the lowest echelons of our society. It is just as that great wise soul Confucius noted many ages ago that the model of good behaviour begins at the top.

When we were lying trussed up outside our garage one of them came and piddled all over my head. After that they pulled me down onto the ground they pulled me by my hair. I just saw a huge bunch of hair in his hands.

. . . these are the words of Angela Campbell, aged 66. Listen to audio interviews with Ben Freeth and Angela Campbell, survivors of recent Zanu PF violence, on the Kubatana web site. Photographs are also available.

Back in 2005 Michael McFaul wrote an interesting essay entitled Transitions from Postcommunism. It’s worth reading today in the light of our collective failure to get rid of the regime in Zimbabwe.

The author cites seven important factors which led to a change in government in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine. McFaul acknowledges that many other factors come into play but focuses on the following as essential:

A semi-autocratic regime
All autocratic regimes are vulnerable to collapse at some point. But which kinds of autocracies are more vulnerable than others? Some observers posit that semi-autocratic or “competitive authoritarian” regimes are more open to democratization than full-blown dictatorships, while others argue that semi-autocracies or partial democracies can actually do more to block genuine democratization by deflecting societal pressures for change.

An unpopular incumbent
A second necessary condition for democratic breakthrough in all of these countries was the falling popularity of the incumbent leader. In Serbia, polls put Milo¡seviæ’s popularity at less than 30 percent by the summer of 2000.7 In Georgia, 82 percent of respondents were saying as early as 2001 that the country was going in the wrong direction, up from 51 percent the year before. Kuchma’s approval ratings plummeted during his last year in office.

A united opposition
A united opposition—or at least the perception of one—is a third factor that appears crucial for democratic breakthrough, although the extent of unity varies widely enough across the cases that one may question its necessity as a factor. In Serbia and Ukraine, unity before the election was critical to success; in Georgia, less so.

Independent electoral-monitoring capabilities
A fourth condition critical to democratic breakthrough in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the ability of NGOs to provide an accurate and independent tally of the actual vote quickly after polls had closed.

A modicum of independent media
A fifth critical element in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the presence of independent media able to relay news about the falsified vote and to publicize mounting popular protests. For years, such media outlets and brave individual journalists had been reporting the misdeeds of semi-autocratic incumbents. At the moment of breakthrough, autonomous media remained vital in triggering change despite the incumbents’ last-ditch efforts to hang on to power.

Mobilizing the masses
A sixth critical factor for democratic breakthrough in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the opposition’s capacity to mobilize significant numbers of protestors to challenge the falsified electoral results.

Splits among the “guys with guns”
A seventh and final necessary condition for success is a split among the “guys with guns,” meaning the state’s military, police, and security forces. A segment of these must distance itself far enough from the incumbents to show that the option of violent repression is risky if not untenable. In all three cases such a split developed, though its size as well as the threat of violence varied from case to case.

The author rightly points out that the presence of only a few of these factors is unlikely to cause the same results. And he reminds us that “A more popular or more clever and ruthless autocrat might have been able to outmaneuver the democratic opposition. A less-organized electoral-monitoring effort in any of these three countries might not have been able to convince people to take to the streets. Smaller numbers of protestors in the streets might have led to outcomes that looked more like Tiananmen Square in 1989 than the big and peaceful wins for democratization that actually happened.”