Giles Mutsekwa, the MDC-T Co-Home Affairs Minister was involved in a car accident on Tuesday last week – another in a series of car accidents in which MDC officials and their families have been involved. Mutsekwa was travelling to Harare on the Mucheke road when the car in which he was travelling was rammed from behind by a Nissan Hard Body truck. The Co-Minister survived unscathed. The driver of the other vehicle involved in the accident is reported to be in police custody. Mutsekwa heads the Home Affairs ministry jointly with Kembo Mohadi of Zanu PF. This is the fourth accident involving MDC officials since the unity government was established. Prime Minister Tsvangirai’s wife was killed in an accident which left Tsvangirai injured. Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khuphe’s mother died from injuries received in an accident on the Bulawayo-Harare road last month. MDC ministers Gorden Moyo and Sam Nkomo were travelling to Harare airport last month when the vehicle in which they were travelling was also struck from behind by another vehicle. I am not about to launch into a conspiracy theory analysis. In fact, I was disappointed by some of the comments made at the time of Susan Tsvangirai’s death. One MDC official ignoring the bad state of Zimbabwe’s roads made the comment that the accident or at the least the death would not have happened if there had been police escort. I remember thinking of all the thousands of people who daily traverse the Masvingo road on their way to Beitbridge and beyond to South Africa. I thought then as l do now that they have never had police escort. They get on those buses and in those cars on a wing and a prayer and hope that they make it back home with their lives intact. Because of the shock surrounding this sad incident and the conspiracy theories then doing the rounds, people did not analyse this statement too much. But perhaps it needs to be critiqued.

We do not rejoice in the death of a human being. Everyone has a right to life. From the poorest among us to the richest.  From the lowest among us to the most influential. We must reject the notion that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others. This is the thinking that has seen politicians sending their children to schools overseas while presiding over the destruction of our schools and universities. It is the same thinking that has seen politicians going for treatment in South Africa, the UK, China and beyond, while presiding over the collapse of our health delivery system.  It was normal under the ZANU PF government, but we do not expect it from the MDC. It is the disease that comes with closeness to power that Alex Magaisa in his latest opinion piece talks about. It is the former mayor of Harare demanding a four wheel drive vehicle because the roads in Harare were so bad.

Now we have had a lot of talk about the roads in Zimbabwe. The terrible state that they are in and the loss of lives that this has resulted in. Every time there is an accident, politicians talk about the deplorable state of the roads in Zimbabwe. When l started writing this piece, it was my intention to discuss the accidents that have happened involving prominent politicians in the past two or three months, including the latest one involving Giles Mutsekwa. Before l finished this piece, news came through that there had been yet another accident. This time a bus travelling on the same highway where Susan Tsvangirai’s accident occurred apparently burst a front tyre and plunged into a river a few kilometres from the spot where the Prime Minister’s wife lost her life. 29 people perished on the spot and another 44 were injured. 29 nameless and faceless people. 29 people who were someone’s mother, father, son and daughter. Someone’s breadwinner. 44 people who now have to contend with hospitals that have no drips, no doctors, no nurses, no medicines, no theatres, no x-ray machines and no traction machines. They had no police escort.

And so more carnage on our roads. But in a country where human life has been cheapened by politicians, l fear that their deaths will be in vain. No one will be galvanised to act to prevent further loss of life. No lessons will be drawn from this sad event and no one will pledge-never again . . . until the next “important” person is involved.

So the MPs have been the recipients of the RBZ’s largesse? Suddenly the Guv’s activities are not quasi-fiscal now that the MPs are the beneficiaries?  “But what about the luxury vehicles that Ministers took delivery of on being sworn in?” Cried the MPs, when they received orders from the Minister of Finance to return the vehicles. “We too deserve luxury cars!” They whined.

“Comrades!”  he cried. “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.”*

“Surely, comrades, surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?”

Now if there was one thing that the animals were completely certain of, it was that they did not want Jones back. When it was put to them in this light, they had no more to say. The importance of keeping the pigs in good health was all too obvious. So it was agreed without further argument that the milk and the windfall apples (and also the main crop of apples when they ripened) should be reserved for the pigs alone.

So the hospitals remain without doctors, medication and equipment. The schools remain without books, teachers and pupils. Budiriro remains without water; in the grip of a now unspoken cholera epidemic. The killer highways remain. 500 km away from the seat of power, crocodiles maintain their vigil in the Limpopo River, patiently waiting for the border jumper, wading into the river’s deadly depths. Still hoping for a better life on the other side. Better this animal, than the one in Harare. 7 bus loads of women, occupying a 75 seater bus will die this year while delivering the nation’s next generation. Children who will join and swell the ranks of the country’s 1.3 million orphans; to continue inexorably on the road to destitution. While the new political elite jostle at the trough.

* George Orwell

Ifefe is a hill situated in the Matopos National Park.  The Ndebele word refers to one of our most beautiful birds: the Lilac-breasted Roller or “blue jay.”  According to Sir Robert Tredgold, the name is “probably a reference to the colouration of the hill.” The story goes that Mzilikazi, first king of the Amandebele, was the only one allowed to use the feathers of this bird for titivation; consequently it is also known as Mzilikazi’s Roller.

Not to Ifefe, but to a smaller eminence nearby, known as Ifefe Encinyane (Little “blue jay”) do we go to experience transcendence.  We picnic in the late afternoon at a point with a 360 degree view of the horizon. The crystalline granite hill encrusted with yellow, orange and silver lichen, upon which we sit, is about two thousand million years old

We have the world to ourselves.  We are waiting for the moment when the setting sun meets the rising moon: their size is equal, their radiance is equal. The light of consciousness merges with the light of instinct.  We sip our wine on the threshold of time and eternity.  We are neither male nor female; we are perfection.  Like salt dolls walking into the ocean*, we lose ourselves together with the world.  The experience is beyond meaning.

*This analogy is Ramakrishna’s

It’s 15 days into the “First 100 Days” of implementing the Short Term Economic Recovery Programme, and government hasn’t even released the plan of what it’s considering in the short term – much less implemented any of it.

The MDC is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they know that public confidence depends on them making some tangible headway in Zimbabwe’s economic recovery. On the other hand, governments like the US are refusing to give them the financial support they need unless there is rule of law and respect for human rights.

The latest report from the International Crisis Group supports the MDC’s calls for “humanitarian aid plus.” This would see Zimbabwe getting aid for education, health care, civil servant salaries, and infrastructure projects. But, given the stance the US is taking at least, it seems unlikely Zimbabwe will get the support it needs any time soon.

Ambassador James McGee said recently:

It is illegal under the existing laws of the United States to pay salaries to civil servants – we call it budget assistance. I cannot pay a secretary for the Ministry of Health or an economist in the RBZ, I would go to jail for that. What we are trying to look at is other ways of helping the government of Zimbabwe like revitalising Harare Central Hospital. The government itself will have to pay its civil servants and I hope it will be able to generate money to pay its civil servants. Read more

African countries have been approached to assist Zimbabwe, but most have limited funds themselves. If the interim government can’t stop the latest wave of farm invasions, and demonstrate a dramatic turn around in civil liberties, it will be difficult to persuade the US and EU to provide “humanitarian aid plus.”

Meanwhile, the RBZ’s dirty laundry is also coming out – Gono has admitted to raiding the bank accounts of private companies and international NGO’s for foreign currency. But, he swears, that’s all in the past – “Let bygones be bygones,” he says.

When will the interim government start demanding higher standards – and acting on some of its promises?

On the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) website they explain this year’s theme:

Enlightenment is the striving for and achievement of greater knowledge and understanding, the process through which we ‘see the light’

I have just one issue. I cannot see the lights on Julius Nyerere Avenue and Parklane Street. Could the organisers liaise with the City of Harare to have the street lights fixed on Julius Nyerere Avenue and Parklane Street? We cannot have “enlightenment” without light and l sure do not relish being mugged while l go in search of enlightenment in the Harare Gardens. So how about it HIFA organisers? How about some corporate social responsibility which makes your venues safer for your public?

I’ve been following the battle for control of Zimbabwe’s telecommunications portfolios with interest. For years, communications has been a tightly regulated and strictly controlled space. Politically that has made a lot of sense – adds a certain credibility to the “Big Brother is watching” threats that keep the population in check. And economically it’s made a bit of sense – in the short term, at least, monopoly means profit.

So I was pleased and impressed when the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology was created, and allocated to the MDC. But, unsurprisingly, Nelson Chamisa had hardly taken office when the tussle over control over communications began. First, Webster Shamu, Minister of Media, Information and Publicity tried unsuccessfully to assert his control over telecommunications. Then Robert Mugabe announced that he was “redefining” things, taking the Department of Communications out of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, and putting it in the Ministry of Transport, (Communication) and Infrastructure Development – run by former Minister of National Security Nicholas Goche.

As Denford Magora put it recently, through this “realignment,”

Mugabe has taken TelOne, the phone company, Netone, the cellphone company and the regulating bodies for the communication industry out of the ambit of the MDC. Which means that Nelson Chamisa is now a minister in charge of shops that sell cellphones, phone shops and computer shops. Even the matter of the Internet has now been taken out of his hands.

So, I could understand Chamisa being upset. According to the Zimbabwe Independent, he’s threatening to resign unless his ministry is combined with Goche’s, and the two co-chair it. The article reports “Chamisa is also said to be prepared to stay only if the administration of the Interception of Telecommunications Act (sic) was removed from his ministry, leaving the original portfolio as it was.”

Wait a minute. Where is the principle here? Where is the commitment to democratic values that the MDC purportedly stands for. If Chamisa was going to resign unless the Interception of Communications Act was repealed, I would be impressed. But he’s happy for ICA to continue, so long as he’s not responsible for it?

Reading the Zimbabwe Independent this weekend, I got the sense that Chamisa wasn’t frustrated that the liberalisation of Zimbabwe’s telecommunications sector was being thwarted. He didn’t seem outraged that the potential to open up access to information to a range of Zimbabweans might not be realised. They didn’t quote him as expressing concern that Zanu PF control over telcoms would mean continued surveillance of activists’ communications. Rather, he just doesn’t want to feel demoted – and he doesn’t want to lose his ministerial position.