I spend a fair amount of time walking in and around the city centre and have established routes, largely to avoid getting turned around (more honestly I mean lost).  On a recent excursion, I had to stop by an NGO located deep in the city centre.  I decided the best route was to walk behind Eastgate along Robert Mugabe Road, which is not a road I walk along often because it just seems sketchy and more dangerous.  I was heading east toward the Avenues.  As I navigated the hustle and bustle, I experienced first-hand something I’ve only been told about.  And my gosh it’s true what they say.  That road is packed full of forex dealers.  All right out in the open.  Men, women, and children standing a mere meter apart in a line that felt like it stretched from here to kingdom come.  I didn’t change money, but did think about whether these thousands of forex dealers purposively chose Robert Mugabe Road for their base to signal who has brought their profession into existence.

I also thought about the law and that I was walking amidst a hotbed of criminal activity.  Of course, residents and visitors in Zimbabwe have become accustom to the reality that individual economic sustainability in Zimbabwe requires routinely breaking the law.  I used to have a twinge of naivety and thought it was only foreigners and middle-class and wealthy Zimbabweans who illegally changed forex by the hundreds.  But there on Robert Mugabe Road were Zimbabweans from all walks of life changing forex, mostly in small amounts like $5 or $10.  It’s the reality, nothing can be done.  But still, it’s a crime and it leaves an unsettling feeling in my stomach.

Robert Muponde wrote an interesting article astutely suggesting, “violent crime in Zimbabwe is a manifestation of political manipulation. It is not part of the social fabric.”  He provided historical and cultural reasons, and as common, he made jokes. Pockets have no cash and cars lack fuel leaving pickpockets and carjackers without a crime to commit.  While it’s true, particularly in comparison to South Africa, violent crime rates in Zimbabwe are low.  Admirably low, yet ironic given the amount of state-sponsored crime Muponde points out.  I can’t help but think there’s reason to read with caution Muponde and his “court in the people’s hearts… inherited from the past… about culture and tradition…about conscience.”  Back to Robert Mugabe Road.  With all those forex dealers, it’s full of crime.  You might even say it’s a vibrant culture of crime.  Sure, it’s crime necessary for survival, it’s seemingly not violent, and given the volumes of people involved, it’s been normalized.  It’s also a fine line, particularly when you start incorporating phrases like the social fabric, moral fibre, and culture.  I think there are deeper meanings when the law is routinely broken every single day. It’s the question I often pose in my blogs:  What will be the long term effects with so many otherwise law-abiding people having been brought into the fold of criminal activity?  Somewhat in jest, will the folk tales 50 years from now be about powerful and wise village chiefs who gained their prestige through black market forex dealing in Harare?

Political analyst and commentator Moeletsi Mbeki couldn’t have given a more apt analogy of the circus surrounding the ‘diplomatic’ handling of Mugabe and his illegitimate occupation of the presidium, especially by the AU, in a television interview with Debra Patta on 3rd Degree. He alluded to Mugabe as the naughty boy in the school playground who is rude to fellow boys, rude to the prefects, as well as the teachers and headmaster. The other boys, who probably would have loved to do the same but are too scared, are often so ‘besotted’ by his pranks, they urge him on/encourage him. Most notable of these boys is South Africa, as seen during the existence of the Commonwealth, after Zimbabwe had held elections that were widely declared not free and fair. South Africa was most vocal in defending Zimbabwe from being expelled from the Commonwealth. No doubt South Africa did the same thing at the AU summit in Sham, my mistake, Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

Moeletsi Mbeki lambasted the very concept of a GNU being recommended as the peaceful and only solution by the AU. He argues that Kenya set a really bad precedent that sought to legitimise governments that had outright been rejected by the majority, but just wouldn’t leave and would make everyone’s life hellishly miserable until they were granted ‘leeway’ to share power. Recently, the Secretary-General of Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO) said, “The election situation in Zimbabwe is unacceptable. What is the point of having elections in Africa, if it always ends up by a power-sharing system? The Kenyan example should not be a model for Africa.”

African governments advocating so-called GNUs ought to be ashamed of themselves as this defeats any semblance of democracy.

Moeletsi Mbeki also pointed out that the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe would likely remain unresolved for a long time because the AU, and indeed the rest of the countries in Southern Africa, remains divided over what to do with Mugabe. There are also those who continue to revere and remember him as the great statesman who did not tolerate colonial rule. Sadly, those who see him in that light are many.

Binyavanga Wainaina in an article titled Throwing fuel on a dying fire says, “Mugabe’s primary source of power becomes the power we give him. The man is bouncing around Zimbabwe with the energy of a five- year- old powered by Duracell… the New York Times will headline him. The BBC and George Bush too. Mugabe is getting the attention no African leader ever gets. He is a big deal. And this is his fuel…”

Indeed, it is the people around him that allow this circus to continue. Michela Wrong in her article How a continent missed its moment asks: “But what did the international community really expect of the AU? Any organisation that includes among its elder statesmen Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak (27 years at the helm), Gabon’s Omar Bongo (41 years) and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang (a modest 29) will have problems lecturing members on the merits of democracy, as Mugabe himself pointed out. Exactly which recent elections could they have held up as models? Kenya’s? Nigeria’s? Ethiopia’s?”

The AU dubbed the ‘dictators’ club’ is a toothless dog protecting the egotistical interests of a cruel few. We are so tired of the same rhetorical statements. Just how many more people have to die before the AU or the UN Security Council actually do something? Why is it that all the whiteheads at the AU (save for Mwanawasa) seem to concur that a GNU is the only way forward? Many justify GNU as the only route that will avoid yet more bloodshed but it just smacks of the old guard protecting personal and future self interests. Once the concept of a GNU gets adapted as normal in Africa none of those old men will relinquish power easily.

Apart from the fact that a GNU does not address the problems of Zimbabwe or acknowledge the will of the Zimbabwean people, it also further entrenches the Kenyan precedent that will mean in future, holding any election will be a ritualistic waste of time. And what a joke Africa will become.

Amidst all this is the electorate for whom decisions are being made in high places. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has masqueraded as a will-of-the-people party. The challenge for them now is explain to the people what a GNU will entail should they eventually decide to enter negotiations with Zanu PF. Failing this, many Zimbabweans will perceive it the ultimate betrayal if they just jump in head first without engaging and consulting the electorate. Nelson Chamisa, spokesperson for the MDC, says the party already has a position paper on how they want any talks to proceed. Many of us are interested in its contents.

For some of us, a GNU controlled by Mugabe simply communicates that our votes did not count, that we have no say in our own governance and that in the future democracy will never matter again. In fact, right now we do not need a GNU. We need solutions to deal with stubborn old men who won’t let go of what’s not theirs.

I find it challenging in blogging to develop balance between a strictly informative style and a more personal style inclusive of my opinions and experiences. And if leaning one way or the other is of more interest to readers. There’s a similar balance issue when it comes to statistics concerning HIV/AIDS. Just as a more personal blog potentially presents a particular slant on a piece of information, so too are statistics most often about slanting a story in particular directions.

Of late, I’ve been reading the report The World Bank’s Commitment to HIV and AIDS in Africa: Our Agenda for Action, 2007-201. More I should say I’ve been analyzing the report to uncover what statistics the report left out. This undertaking led me to develop my own chart concerning trends in HIV/AIDS funding among the big name and big bucks donors. The information I think is very telling. Also, I really love making pretty charts and I think this is one of my best charts ever.

By reorganizing data provided in the report, I was able to cast additional light on something that’s missing from the report. That being: It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to make an argument that funding is highly political and falls short with regard to providing money for the countries that have the most need. The multi-colored columns are amounts of funding for individual countries and the connected dots plot adult HIV prevalence rates in those same countries from lowest to highest. Looking left to right, what’s telling is the first really tall column. Ethiopia has received the most donor funding (US$1.1B) and has an adult prevalence rate of 2.2%. Then if you look to the far right, the countries with highest prevalence rates have short columns. Zimbabwe has an adult prevalence rate of 20.1%, but has received only US$50M of funding. Of course, one has to factor in that the population of Ethiopia is about five times greater than the population of Zimbabwe. And several of the countries with tall columns are some of Africa’s most populous nations. But still. The columns on the far right don’t even come close to the line with the connected dots. And with its US$50M of funding Zimbabwe falls well short of the per country average total amount of funding (US$227M).

As much as I like my chart, it made me angry. Thick donor reports tend to garner a lot of fan fare, but ascertaining the most relevant information generally requires reading between the lines and reformulating the content of the report. I’m sick of the slanted donors (the politics and the system, not necessarily the individuals). For years, the world has noted the resilience, patience, and courage Zimbabweans exhibit given their ingenuity to adapt to difficult circumstances which have largely grown to be beyond the control of individual citizens. Jokes are made to help cope and people take solace that things could be worse. But with talk of more sanctions, things would become worse. I see no problem with bloggers being slanted. But for donors it’s inexcusable. Stop slanting, skewing, eschewing, politicking, etc. and instead, put sufficient amounts of money where it’s needed.

Download the JPEG, PDF or MS Excel version of this chart.

Note: If you download this chart, it will open in a MS Excel spreadsheet. When it opens, it will say: “The workbook you opened contains automatic links to information in another workbook. Do you want to update this workbook with changes made to the other workbook?” Click No to view the chart.

The Herald newspaper, Mugabe’s daily distorter, continues to publish articles suggesting that Zanu PF and the MDC are either open to, or engaged in “talks” with the current illegitimate government of Zimbabwe. I’m hoping that the leadership of the MDC isn’t naively attaching any hope or investing any energy in this particular area. As Michela Wrong rightly points out in the article below, “Zanu-PF and the MDC have been negotiating for years without any noticeable dilution of Mugabe’s powers.” What has been clearly evident over the last several years has been Mugabe’s ability to out manoeuvre the MDC at every turn. So it is with great concern that I read of Mugabe potentially giving certain MDC politicians cabinet posts. This is appeasement, pure and simple. We need a change of government in Zimbabwe not piecemeal and convenient interim measures. The other day a friend said to me that the situation in Zimbabwe calls for an extreme, not a moderate solution. All those diplomats out there might not like her suggestion one bit, but shades of Mugabe simply cannot linger on.

Here is Michela’s article for you:

How a continent missed its moment

As the UN, EU, US and Britain all piled in to cajole or browbeat the African Union into Doing the Right Thing over Zimbabwe at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh, I experienced a sudden déjà vu.

There was another occasion when commentators informed us that Africa’s leaders had finally lost patience with Robert Mugabe and were about to rap him across the knuckles. That would be the August 2007 meeting of the Southern African Development Community – at which Mugabe’s entrance triggered a standing ovation. Funny how we keep getting it wrong.

As this column was going to press, the AU had eventually decided to press for “a government of national unity”. A call for dialogue between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC is perfectly unobjectionable but Zanu-PF and the MDC have been negotiating for years without any noticeable dilution of Mugabe’s powers, and the sheer viciousness of the election was an unlikely harbinger of trust and compromise.

The AU had, in any case, already missed its moment. The time for Mugabe’s African brothers to speak forcefully was in March, when Tsvangirai won the first round of the election and officials sat on the results for five weeks. Their silence, urged on them by South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, encouraged Mugabe to wage a rearguard action. Zimbabweans paid a bloody price.

But what did the international community really expect of the AU? Any organisation that includes among its elder statesmen Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak (27 years at the helm), Gabon’s Omar Bongo (41 years) and Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang (a modest 29) will have problems lecturing members on the merits of democracy, as Mugabe himself pointed out. Exactly which recent elections could they have held up as models? Kenya’s? Nigeria’s? Ethiopia’s?

Then there’s the mindset. The Organisation of African Unity, dubbed “the dictators’ club”, was consigned to history back in 2002, its members’ knee-jerk tendency to attribute their woes exclusively to colonialism, apartheid and Cold War interference supposedly buried with the title. Thanks to a generation of progressive “Renaissance” leaders, announced Mbeki, an invigorated institution would in future deliver “African solutions to African problems”.

The continent would still need western financial and technical help, of course, but the world should no longer assume Africa was incapable of policing itself. A key ingredient would be the African Peer Review Mechanism, which catered for governments to be assessed frankly by their counterparts. Six years on, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Eritrea’s Isaias Afewerki and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi no longer look like enlightened Renaissance leaders. Or rather, theirs is the Renaissance of the Borgias and Machiavelli, not that of the Medicis and Galileo.

On the policing front, it is true that Nelson Mandela managed to negotiate a peace deal between rebels and the government in Burundi, and that an AU force successfully snuffed out a separatist movement in the Comoro Islands. But it took a British military operation to stop civil war in Sierra Leone and Somalia. AU forces have proved little more than token presences, short of equipment, manpower and political backing.

During Kenya’s election crisis in December, what was striking was the ruling party’s open contempt for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ghana’s president, John Kufuor, two eminent Africans who flew in to mediate. It was only when the British and US governments told President Mwai Kibaki that travel bans had been drawn up and asset freezes were being prepared that it stepped back from the brink.

Zimbabwe tops the list of failures. The classic explanations for African leaders’ long indulgence of Mugabe – respect for an elder and former liberation guerrilla, irritation at being lectured by the west, a preference for quiet diplomacy – lost most of their force in the dreadful run-up to the second poll. The facelift has slipped, leaving the AU today bearing a depressing resemblance to its predecessor.

Mbeki’s grand project has been sabotaged by his inability to view events on the continent outside a narrow racial prism, and by his refusal, having publicly adopted a position, to be seen to backtrack.

As the South African president was the man who first championed the notion of “African solutions to African problems” with such passion, it is fitting he should now bear the blame for discrediting it in the eyes of the world.

It is encouraging to see that despite the challenges of this world and the hurt going on there are still people who sacrifice to save lives. On Friday night 27 June 2008, I was watching the 46664 concert live on television in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday. The concert held in London was graced by a number of international artists under the theme, ‘It’s in our hands.’

Annie Lennox is one particular artist who touched my heart in her efforts to make a difference in the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. During the concert she showed the audience a picture of a 7 year old child with full blown AIDS whose poor health was being worsened by malnutrition and lack of treatment to boost the immune system. She then showed another picture of the same child after taking treatment and following a proper diet . . . this was such a moving experience to me.

It got me thinking that if each one of us had such a selfless heart, this world could be a better place. I believe that even the smallest of gestures like helping a neighbor in need either in cash or kind means a lot to the recipient no matter how small. Echoing Madiba’s words, ‘there is still so much work in Africa’.

What upsets me is the fact that some of the challenges we face in Africa are self inflicted. For instance, to look at Zimbabwe and the way the economy has gone down and the health delivery system also deteriorating, some individuals still find time to intentionally cause physical harm to others, all in the name of politics. Surely this should be a time for those who directly or indirectly perpetrated violence during the election period to reflect on their actions and what they think they achieved.

It is time we realize that indeed, the responsibility to improve the world we live in lies in each and every one of us. Africa belongs to us Africans and it is only us who can make conscious decisions about our future.