Financial Times newspaper (FT) decided at the last minute to pull this Amnesty International ad targeting oil giant Shell this month. Amnesty is asking you to share the ad that FT wouldn’t publish and make sure as many people as possible see it.

The ad, which was due to appear on 18 May, the day that Shell was holding its London AGM, focuses on the poor human rights record of Shell in Nigeria. It compares the company’s US$9.8 billion profits with the consequences of pollution caused by Shell for the people of the Niger Delta in the past decades.

Amnesty says that in Nigeria “numerous oil spills, which have not been adequately cleaned up, have left local communities with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish, farm on spoiled land, and breathe in air that stinks of oil and gas.”

Amnesty received an email from “FT” the night before saying the paper was not going to run the ad. Yet, Amnesty said, “We gave them written reassurances that we would take full responsibility for the comments and opinions stated in the advertisement.”

The Amnesty ad ran in two other London-based newspapers the day of the meeting. The funds to pay for the advertisements came from more than 2,000 individuals online.

To take action, share the ad on Facebook, Twitter and on your blogs.

I have come to realize and know the people who matter in our country. They are not the high and mighty in posh cars with fancy suits sitting in big leather furnitured offices. The people who matter are the ones in the streets making ends meet doing various jobs to put food on the table for their families. I would like to call these people Zimbabweans who make Zimbabwe work! I am on a mandate to give them their space to shine.

I was talking to a kombi driver, who to me, is among the people that make Zimbabwe work. Being a kombi driver is not a last resort for Simon Chirombo. He has invested time into it and has no plans of leaving the driving business. In fact he has hopes of driving trucks so that he is able to see the world. What motivates him everyday from 5am to 9pm is a selfless drive for the upkeep of his family.

The kombi driving business is not spared from troubles just like any other business under the sky. He says that there are kombi drivers who do not bring dignity to his profession and all of them have been painted with the same brush. He says people do not trust kombi drivers; that in people’s eyes drivers are out to cause trouble, but in reality it is not the case. There are some kombi drivers like Simon who respect and value his customers.

Just think how hard it would be to make it to work, home or anywhere else if kombi drivers decided to stop working – so many of us depend on them. For those of us not blessed with cars as yet, we depend on the kombis to make traveling from point a to b possible.

Actually, just thinking of the VIP delegation interruption at Doon Estate today, I went to a really interesting event put on by the Alliance Francaise in Harare. It was a production called On The Edge featuring juggling, dance and acrobatics. The performers were outstanding. So Thanks A Lot to the organisers. The one blemish on the evening was being kept waiting for over half an hour. It seemed like we were waiting for the French Ambassador and his wife because the show Suddenly Started after they took their seats in the front row. Show some respect Monsieur. Last month Zimbabweans were treated to countless productions that started on time during the Harare Festival of the Arts. I didn’t ever think that I’d say that Zimbabweans keep better time than the rest of the world!

I was listening to a story on the Bradford murders on the BBC the other morning. One of the interviewees in the story stated that crimes like this happen disproportionately frequently to commercial sex workers because of the criminalisation of commercial sex work. Women in this profession are far more likely to be on the fringes of society, less protected by the communities around them, and less able to go to authorities for help when they need it. Because of this marginalisation, potential attackers are also more likely to think they can get away with it – that no one will follow up on these cases.

This resonated with an article a friend recently pointed me towards, on the Accelerating Prevention news service. The article pushes for the decriminalisation of sex work for these reasons:

• Sex work will not go away;
• There are many harms associated with sex work, but these can best be dealt with by other areas of criminal law or by non-legal interventions;
• Anything short of decriminalisation makes those harms worse, particularly to sex workers themselves; and
• Enforcing a sense of morality through the law is likely to generate other harmful immoralities.

The article goes on to argue for the legalisation of commercial sex work by advocating that “consensual sexual contact between two adults in private is legal.” As my friend rightly pointed out, one could use the same approach to decriminalise homosexuality.

The argument is essentially that people’s sex lives – so long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process – are their own business, and the rest of us have no place trying to control them.

People will live lives differently from how other people might – or how other people might want them to. I might be compelled by choice, curiosity, DNA, personality, biology, nature, nurture or any other number of reasons to take actions you might not take. But, as long as I’m not hurting anybody in the process, is it your right to judge, condemn, or legislate my behaviour?

Ignoring the things that make us uncomfortable doesn’t make them go away. Secrets thrive in the dark, like mushrooms. If I’m shamed, or stigmatised, or legislated into keeping my behaviour hidden, it is far more likely that problems will fester. Let things into the light, where we can talk about them, disagree about them, share ideas and concerns and advice. And accept that if I’m not hurting anyone else, I have the right to be who I am, just as you do.

Populist as ever the MDC suddenly decides to condemn power cuts mainly because the world cup is happening soon and Zimbabweans will get right royally fucked off if they can’t watch all the games. So it seems like a good time to harness some support.

Seems like ZESA could actually help by keeping us in the dark during the world cup. Maybe we’ll finally see a “red shirt” style uprising like Simba Makoni suggested we need.

You can take our freedom away, but don’t mess with our soccer.

MDC condemns power outages Tuesday 01 June 2010

The MDC is seriously concerned by the continued power cuts that have inconvenienced citizens and virtually brought business to a standstill across the country. The continued power supply disruptions by Zesa have not only brought unbearable and unnecessary hardships on the ordinary people, but are a threat to industry at a critical moment in the revival of the country’s industrial sector.

The incessant and ceaseless power cuts have resulted in most commercial entities facing massive business losses and being forced to lay-off workers due to low production. The power utility’s load-shedding schedules are shambolic while the intermittent power supplies have damaged electrical gadgets in people’s homes and heavy duty equipment in our struggling manufacturing industries. The entire production sectors, including our farming, manufacturing and mining concerns have all been seriously affected by these power outages.

It is no wonder that the majority of Zimbabweans are wondering whether they will be able to watch the historic World Cup to be held in South Africa in less than two weeks time. It is shameful for Zesa to embarrass the nation and short-change citizens at such a historic moment for the country, the region and the continent. ZESA, which like any parastatal has been plagued by endemic corruption and colossal ineptitude, has short-changed innocent Zimbabweans who continue to receive astronomical power bills, even in cases where a household or a business premises would have had no access to power for a whole month.

This is daylight robbery by a parastatal that is rewarding its senior officials with hefty salaries and allowances for keeping the ordinary people in the dark. As a party, we restate our resolution of the national council of 16 May 2010, that we find unacceptable the charges being levied by public utilities. These charges are high and bear no reflection to a cost structure but rather to high wages and allowances that are being paid to senior management.

The MDC calls upon the Ministry of Energy and Power Development to urgently look into the state of affairs at Zesa with the hope of expeditiously making sure that Zimbabweans have access to electricity. Turn-around plans and astronomical bills have failed to address the issue and ordinary citizens continue to be short-changed every-day even though they are paying through the nose for a non-existent service.

The inclusive government should urgently look into these power outages as a matter of priority as they threaten the survival of the industries that we want revived for the benefit of the country and its citizens.  Zimbabweans want real change. They want dignity, prosperity, hope, security and freedom. Zimbabweans will never load-shed their demand for basic services.

MDC Information & Publicity Department

On Tuesday morning, June 1st, the police blocked public entry to Doon Estate in Msasa because a Chinese Delegation was visiting the sculpture garden housed in the same venue. People trying to get to the restaurant, as well as the coffee and curio shops were turned away and told to come back at 3pm.

This illustrates the kind of abuse of power and position that we have come to experience in Zimbabwe. The authorities showed a total lack of awareness, appreciation and respect for the business owners in this complex who consistently service the few tourists that still come to Zimbabwe, rather than infrequent “VIP” delegations.

The shop owners and business people in this complex already have to contend with power and water cuts – they shouldn’t have to add spontaneous closures on account of delegations to their list of challenges.

Email the Chinese Embassy in Harare (chinaemb-zw@mfa.gov.cn) and ask for their comments on this incident.