Kubatana.net ~ an online community of Zimbabwean activists

Archive for July, 2010

Football – the basics

del.icio.us TRACK TOP
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Leigh Worswick

A field and a ball made out of old plastic packets and twine. All you need to get started.

Reviewing it like it is

del.icio.us TRACK TOP
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Bev Clark

One of the good things about the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper is Dusty Miller and his restaurant reviews. I like that he calls a spade a spade and doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym (one of Zimbabwe’s many dysfunctions). The majority of Zimbabwean restaurants are overpriced and mediocre which is what he pointed out in his last review of Millers Restaurant in Borrowdale.

In another gruelling review, this time theatre, Susan Hains writing for The Standard newspaper gave The Importance of Being Earnest a bashing. She made some good points I think. I saw the play and also wondered about the choice of music. When I heard the first bit of music I got excited thinking that the play would be seriously re-worked but instead it wasn’t and the music seemed inappropriate. I’m surprised the reviewer didn’t mention having an issue with the accents which I thought were all over the place. Disagreeing with Susan though, I believe that a great deal of work went into rehearsing and staging the play; it wasn’t “thrown together”.

The audience the night I was there provided both respite and frustration. In front of me a lumber jack look a like sat with a big bag of Frittos on his lap for most of the play and continually delved into the bag, crackling and crunching his way through the production. To the left of the lumberjack a very fat school boy nosily chomped his way through a Pascal milk chocolate bar. And behind me two old geezers talked about the play being rather too high brow for them; that they were pleased they’d had a few toots before the show and were glum when they realised it only ended at 930pm and that they’d miss the second half of the evening’s football match.

Accept rejection and reject acceptance

del.icio.us TRACK TOP
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Bev Clark

Here are some general writing tips from some successful writers. And here are some more

1. Ernest Hemingway. Use short sentences and short first paragraphs. These rules were two of four given to Hemingway in his early days as a reporter–and words he lived by.

2. Mark Twain. Substitute “damn” every time you want to use the word “very.” Twain’s thought was that your editor would delete the “damn,” and leave the writing as it should be. The short version: eliminate using the word “very.”

3. Oscar Wilde. Be unpredictable. Wilde suggested that “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

4. Anton Chekhov. Show, don’t tell. This advice comes out of most every writing class taught. Chekhov said it most clearly when he said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

5. EB White. Just write. The author of Charlotte’s Web, one of the most beloved of children’s books, said that “I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”

6. Samuel Johnson. Keep your writing interesting. “The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.”

7. Ray Bradbury. Learn to take criticism well and discount empty praise, or as Bradbury put it, “to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”

8. Toni Morrison. Remember that writing is always about communication. “Everything I’ve ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it.”

9. George Orwell. Orwell offered twelve solid tips on creating strong writing, including an active voice rather than a passive one and eliminating longer words when shorter ones will work just as well.

10. F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.”

11. Anais Nin. “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”

12. Truman Capote. Editing is as important as the writing. “I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”

13. Maurice Sendak. Keep revising. “I never spent less than two years on the text of one of my picture books, even though each of them is approximately 380 words long. Only when the text is finished … do I begin the pictures.”

Young stars

del.icio.us TRACK TOP
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Leigh Worswick

Sabotage and the Kenyan constitution

del.icio.us TRACK TOP
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Bev Clark

To provide Kenyans with a fair constitution, a panel of experts used 47,793 words. To derail it, someone secretly added two. The attempted sabotage occurred at the official government printer, which was producing copies of the proposed constitution ahead of a national vote on the law in August. The document had been praised for guaranteeing basic freedoms. But in a move that has caused public outrage and prompted an inquiry involving the attorney general and intelligence chiefs, someone at the printing plant was able to add the words “national security” to a key clause on fundamental rights. Nearly 2,000 copies of the altered constitution had been published by the time it was discovered. “It was an outrageous act, unbelievable,” said Otiende Amolo, a Kenyan  member of the committee that drafted the new laws. “The addition of those words meant that all rights could be abrogated in favour of whatever was deemed ‘national security’.” Though President Mwai Kibaki  has ordered a police investigation, the saboteur, widely assumed to be an individual or group opposed to the proposed constitution, has yet to be publicly identified.
- Xan Rice, The Guardian Weekly

MDC is comfortable in government

del.icio.us TRACK TOP
Monday, July 5th, 2010 by Bev Clark

Any honest analysis of the MDC post September 15, 2008 would indicate that apart from unsuccessfully declaring unilateral appointments by Mugabe as ‘null and void’ the MDC as we have known it over the years: courageous, confrontational, uncompromising and proactive has become alarmingly ineffective and compromised. Indeed, there might just well be some justification for the view that many in the MDC have become ‘comfortable’ in government and are more focused on enjoying the privileges of office than on challenging Mugabe and ZANU PF.
- Psychology Maziwisa