Rejoice Ngwenja rocks.

Kubatana.net recently interviewed him and you can read and listen to his views on a variety of critical issues in Zimbabwe on www.kubatana.net

In the meantime, below we carry an article by him entitled Scorpion in my Shoe, published by www.africanliberty.org

Thanks to Robert Mugabe’s reign of record-breaking incremental destruction, my country is struggling to redeem itself from the abyss of infrastructure collapse, so much that even hardcore urbanites like me have to make do with irritating wood smoke just to have a warm plate of sadza [Zimbabwe’s staple maize meal paste].    And that was without additional injury to the back breaking exercise.   A week ago, I was stung by a small black scorpion on my big toe as I chopped firewood to beat Zimbabwe’s notorious power outages.

The sting, while irritating, passed off just like any other experience of living in modern-day Zimbabwe under the Jurassic governance of the primeval ZANU-PF.  Thinking back, I imagined that Morgan Tsvangirayi was persuaded to take Robert Mugabe into his political boot, wherefore the old trickster settled at some dark corner until MDC fell into a stupor of artificial comfort.  But now, Tsvangirayi has been inevitably stung while he least expected.

Instead of focusing on the business of building high yielding relations, Mugabe continues to conspire evil against our nation hiding behind questionable legalism.  According to a recent Zimbabwe Situation news online report, “…. Mugabe is entitled under the law to assign functions to ministers, [but] he still has to consult his partners in government on the allocation of the ministries, according to the GPA”.  In complete defiance of this noble proposition, Mugabe unilaterally takes it upon himself to strip MDC-held ministries of essential powers.

Apparently, the biggest challenge confronting Tsvangirayi is not the quality of Zimbabwe’s coalition government, given that most such arrangements are products of large-scale compromise.  Agreements are made on the basis of partner credibility, honesty, consistency and transparency – traits which ZANU-PF is not exactly endowed with.  Most progressive analysts will agree that Tsvangirayi knew exactly the nature of the partner he was committing himself to, that is why he needed to have a comfortable stock of antidotes to deal with Mugabe’s chicanery.   More importantly, ZANU-PF is a completely discredited partner, headed by one Robert Mugabe who comprehensively lost the March 2008 Parliamentary Election, only to be ‘salvaged’ by an equally discredited one-man masquerade in June of the same year.

According to Professor Arthur Mutambara, the Global Political Agreement [GPA] is the only source of Mugabe’s ‘presidential legitimacy’.  In fact he would have proceeded to add that had SADC taken the right decision to call for a more organised, African Unity-supervised presidential re-run, Mugabe would now be confined to overdue retirement at his Zvimba rural home.  It therefore is astonishing by what authority Mugabe cherry-picks ministerial responsibility, if it were not that he is of a tyrannical genre obsessed with power.  I have argued time and again that our Zimbabwe government is too big and expensive, hence the shifting of ministerial powers would, on any other day, have little impact on service delivery.  And yet if you really put Mugabe’s juggling under the spotlight, he is only interested in ministerial adjustments that entrench his hegemonic hold on political power.

What is left now is for both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi and his deputy, Arthur Mutambara to place an inexpensive political device that should shatter once and for all, Mugabe’s life-presidency ambitions. Both MDC cadres must come out of their friendly accommodative shells and tell Mugabe to fulfill all the provisions of the GPA. This is the opportune time for both men to stop making excuses for the aging dictator and embark on three-dimensional activism. The more sensible side of government – MDC – must promulgate statutory instruments to licence all applicants for radio stations and newspapers.  The democratic parties must dispatch all ambassadors, governors and appoint deputy minister for agriculture Roy Bennet.  Morgan Tsvangirayi and Arthur Mutambara must repeal all anti-democratic laws while all pubic appointments not sanctioned by the GPA must be nullified, including that of attorney general Johannes Tomana and central bank governor Gideon Gono.

The gist of my argument is that Robert Mugabe lost the election, thus has no moral high ground to play god.  Five million Zimbabweans have given both MDCs the mandate to govern, so the one-man political dance of the discredited Robert Mugabe has no authority or legitimacy to give five million voters a single sleepless night.  If both Tsvangirayi and Mutambara are weak, they should immediately hand over their power – Nigeria style – to more capable members of their parties.  This weakling image of subservience they are portraying does not augur well with our expectations.  It could also endanger their 2012 electoral standing in their constituencies.  Mugabe’s unpopular mandate expired in 2000, so any compromise on the part of Tsvangirayi and Mutambara is blight on the noble fight against ZANU-PF fascist dictatorship.  Luckily, we now know there is a scorpion in our boot.

And then again, the wonderful Nyemudzai trumps the ugly t-shirt. We spotted her walking up the steps of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe to celebrate the International Women’s Day events. Way to go girl . . . walking the streets of Harare with funk and fabulousness.

Ok, so I’m not hot on censorship, but it was disturbing to see a guy helping with the logistics at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe on International Women’s Day wearing this t-shirt. We’ve got a long way to go.

Didymus Zengenene’s blog post titled is Lobola still valid in the era of equality? made me think. I consider myself a feminist, yet I want my future husband to pay roora to my family. Yes, that’s right, my family as a whole. The understanding of what roora or lobola is, and what it means has, through time and loose translation been lost to a generation that now considers English meaning of a shona or ndebele tradition to be Gospel. But what happens when that tradition’s real meaning is lost in translation? We get feminists, neo liberals and the like clamouring for the banishment of that tradition, using big words like equality and gender imbalance. Don’t get it twisted, I’m all for gender equality. But I also believe that culture is an important factor in personal identity.

Translated into English roora, means bride price. Of course then, on the surface, this tradition would appear to be a man buying a woman. I don’t deny that there are those who pervert that perception of this tradition to enrich themselves by selling off their underage daughters. Neither do I deny that there are men and women who believe that by having roora paid for her a woman must be completely submissive to her husband or suffer the consequences, violent or not. But these are the ill-advised actions of people, not the intent of the tradition. They reflect more on the characters of the individuals involved than on the culture they profess to practice.

The act of paying roora shouldn’t be looked at in isolation. It is part of a complex and formal process of negotiation that results in a mutual agreement of the bride price. Roora is not meant to extract ridiculous sums of money from the would be groom. In fact for true traditionalists, the exchange of money, which is foreign to our culture, is taboo. Roora is a tradition that is rooted in building a sense of community, both within the families that are marrying, and between them. A man cannot marry alone, the cattle he pays to his bride’s father are those cattle given to his family by his brothers in law. The ceremony itself cannot happen with out a number of members of the extended family being present, tete’s (the bride’s father’s sisters), Sekuru’s (the bride’s mother’s brothers), varoora (sisters in law to the bride) and hanzvadzi (brothers and sisters) included. Far from being transactional, this tradition is meant to establish and reinforce a relationship between the two marrying families to strengthen the new union. It is impossible for a good parent to place a monetary value on a child, so why should it be looked at in monetary terms alone?

In answer to Didymus’ question, as a card-carrying feminist who wouldn’t suffer the indignity of being dictated to by a man simply because he is one, yes I think it still is. I think the tradition of roora, as it was intended, is very important. In a time when divorce rates climb every day and our sense of culture and community is being lost through cultural alienation, migration and other factors I think it is more important now than ever.

Zimbabwe is in a process of formulating a new constitution. The process is already reportedly marred by disgruntlements emanating from different lines of divisions ranging from political to gender. It is sad and highly unexpected of an educated populace as Zimbabwe’s. The tensions reflect massive misconceptions not only of the process leading to the constitution but also of what the constitution is and its short term and long term objectives.

If people really knew what they were doing, we would not be having outcries over political rallies and the consequent political violence, which we hear of, or over who constitutes the select committee to spearhead the constitution making process. It is not the role of any political party to inform its people of the constitution but of an independent neutral body, or of other informed citizens.

The constitution is a document much more important than any political party, it should live beyond ZANU PF, beyond MDC and beyond Ndonga or any political party yet to be formed. It is the national bible to determine the conduct of the government and other stakeholders including people. What it implies is that it is the key to control the birth, survival and death of political parties. It should therefore come from the people in general, irrespective of their political party allegiances. Everyone should wear the coat of a citizen and take off any identification with a party in the process.

The select committee to spear heard the constitution making process is not there to influence the outcomes of the process. What we want collected are the views of the people as raw as they are and not views doctored along short term political interests. The same can be said of gender issues. We want people’s views and not those of whoever is part of the committee. People should be educated and to take heed of such elements that are bent on influencing the process to make the constitution their pocket parcel or baby.

People should stop viewing the constitution through political party lenses and rather jointly come up with a constitution that benefits everyone. What is important here is political and social neutrality.

The International Women’s Day commemorations at the National Gallery in Harare on March 6 featured a panel discussion: Moral and/or pleasure? Women, media and the creation of discourse on sexuality. One of the discussants on the panel was Catherine Makoni. Last year, her article Women as vectors of disease: The problem with ill-thought campaigns generated a lot of controversy on the Kubatana blog. One comment challenged her criticism of the PSI “small house” campaign on HIV and AIDS, accusing her of responding based on her feelings, not her analysis. This person claimed her position was based on assumption, not research. But Catherine firmly believes that this campaign violates the principle of “do no harm,” and she used her presentation to explain why she believes this so firmly.

For example:

I go to University, and I do Law. By the third year of University (Law is four years) there is enormous pressure on me to have a boyfriend. Sure, I’m doing Law, but there is immense pressure on me to get married. In third and fourth year you get a lot of girls falling pregnant, in the hopes of securing someone to marry them. So third year, fourth year you have a lot of pregnancies. Why? Because you need to be sure that before you leave university you have someone to marry you, otherwise you’ll be a failure, never mind that you have honours and a first class degree. I’m talking about stereotypes, and gender roles, and expectations, and how these are drummed into us from birth.

Fast forward a few years and I start dealing with gender based violence. My friend, who is a lawyer, has not been able to leave her abusive marriage. It’s like the prophecy is coming true. We were told not to study law, because you’re giving yourself all these airs and what man is going to tolerate you? So she’s done everything. She’s cut her hair, she’s worn long clothes, she’s worn oversized dresses, so that she doesn’t look too attractive, and make her husband insecure. So 14 years later she’s in an abusive relationship, and her husband says “You think you are a lawyer. I’m going to beat you, and I want to see what you do with your law degree.” Her mother says “Why don’t you give him his proper place. He wants to be head of the family. Give him his proper place. You should know you are a woman. Don’t talk about work at home.”

I remember about 11 years ago, I’d just come out of the salon. It was around 6pm. Some man approaches me and tries to chat me up. I ignored him, and he lays into me. He starts beating me up, opposite the UN building on Union Avenue. I got attacked, and people stood by. There were people looking out of their windows in the UN building while I was being attacked. Eventually this guy got tired and walked off, and someone said to me “What did you do to him?” I said I didn’t do anything. The guy was shouting uri hure, and I suppose pretending that I was his girlfriend. The people who heard what he was saying thought, well, she’s his girlfriend. She’s done something, so this is okay. I asked them why didn’t you come to my aid. And they said, well, we thought you were his girlfriend. We have a culture which says it’s okay to beat up a woman. If she’s your girlfriend, then it’s alright to do it – especially if you think ihure, or she’s done something.

There are infinitely harmful ways in which these things play out. The imagery of this PSI campaign sticks in our heads. It sticks in the heads of the police, the magistrate, the teachers who teach our daughters, that man who’s walking out there, the editors, everyone. What it’s saying is yes, you are right to hold these beliefs. You are right to think that women who do not conform to societal expectations of what is right are a problem.

Read more of Catherine’s presentation, and listen to excerpts of her talk, here