Uganda has many moral challenges and sex work is just one of them. It is disturbing how politicians expend lots of energy on fighting sex work and homosexuality yet not showing similar stamina against worse evils such as corruption.
- From the article Hard Line On Sex Work Does Not Help published on allafrica.com

The same could be said for Zimbabwe.

Imagine a man who was soliciting for change from drivers on the street became an Internet hit and all of a sudden several big companies like MTV, NFL and countless radio stations are now on the hunt for the man’s golden voice.

This an example of a life changing story for man who had spent couple of years on the streets begging. Captured on a video in the streets of Columbus in America Ted Williams narrates his story as former radio announcer who fell on hard times and he is looking for help. When the video was posted on the Internet indeed help did come and overnight Ted has become an Internet star.

I watched Ted’s video on Sky News and ooh God the man does have a voice. He is just one person you would want to wake up early in the morning and listen to on the radio or TV.  With a background of alcohol and drugs some people would have written Ted off but thanks to the help and generosity of others he can now live his dream. By just listening to him you can easily see that he is motivated and he has passion for his work.

With a life-changing story like this happening in America it got me thinking on how much talent we may have over looked here in Zimbabwe. We have people on the streets and some of them are so talented and nobody is taking time to give these people a second chance to live their dreams. Due to different circumstances we have a lot of people in the streets especially in Harare and in most cases it’s not by choice that one ends begging on the streets. If you go down along First Street in Harare right now you will find people begging and some of them end up singing and performing plays so that they can get the attention from the public and get a few dollars so that they can survive. But besides begging we should also look at the talent some of these might have. Some of these people have perfected their begging skill to the extent that one would think that they have been rehearsing.

Who knows, we may wake up one day to hear that the guy who used perform walking on the wire along First Street is featuring on the latest blockbuster movie directed by Steven Spielberg. To a lot of people Ted has proved that in life you don’t have to give up.

From Pambazuka News

The article below, published by IRIN, will hit a nerve in most Zimbabweans. Treated like shit at the polls, like shit at government institutions such as the passport office, like shit at road blocks by surly, bribe seeking policemen and like shit in shops where retailers run establishments that can’t and won’t work out how to give their customers change.

We’ve all been there . . . accepting the most ridiculous items like 3 minute noodles in lieu of what we really want, and what is owed to us, our change in Money. When I’m out shopping I do my level best to make sure that what I’m buying adds up to a round number. When it doesn’t I pay it backwards, giving my change to the next person in the check out queue. I figure this is better than getting a “credit note” that will get lost, or fade before I get home.

Enough is very much enough:

Short-changed and angry

People in Zimbabwe are becoming angry about the lack of small denominations in circulation and tempers are fraying as a result: A policeman recently shot dead a taxi assistant for failing to give him the correct change.

After the formation of a coalition government in February 2008, the hyperinflation-afflicted economy was dollarized – with the US dollar and South African rand most widely used, but the Botswana pula, the Zambian kwacha and the Mozambican metical also in common use.

To avoid disputes, taxis now give out travel vouchers when they run short of change – and the problem is not just in the transport sector.

Sipho Mpofu, a public sector employee, went grocery shopping last week and was given a brown voucher instead of change. “When I asked them what it was for, they told me that they could not provide me with change and the voucher worth five rand would allow me to use their toilets for free. I threw away the offending piece of paper because I knew I was being ripped off.”

The lack of change angers many consumers, who are now trying to make purchases in round numbers. Shops use items such as tomatoes, matches, eggs, potatoes, candles, bananas, sweets, pens, pencils or vouchers in lieu of change.

Mpofu said the use of “unwanted” grocery items was a “huge inconvenience”.

“Right now I have a huge pile of matches, candles and sweets which I have no use for. In fact, they pose a threat should they be set alight accidentally.” He said he had to hide the sweets from his children.

Financial journalist Paul Nyakazeya said consumers were effectively being forced to buy items they did not want.

“At the end of the day, when calculations are made, it may be discovered that the goods consumers end up taking as change… make up a substantial percentage of their monthly groceries… The best way out of this quagmire for the consumers would be the widespread introduction of an electronic system to purchase commodities.”

But, with frequent power cuts, especially in rural areas, Nyakazeya acknowledged it would be very difficult to make such a system work.

Economist David Mupamhadzi told IRIN the authorities urgently needed to introduce smaller currency denominations, especially for the South African rand: Many service providers round up the bill, making goods and services more expensive, eroding disposable incomes and boosting inflation, he said.

In his article The Age of Polipreneurship, published by Pambazuka, Dr. D McKinley defines and describes Polipreneurship:

At its most basic level, polipreneurship can be defined as ‘politics as business’. Polipreneurship is not simply about making money from and through politics. It is more about the way in which politics is seen approached and more importantly practiced.

It would be easy enough for ours or any other populace to just point fingers at certain politicians, parties, the ruling party itself and/or government and argue that is simply a matter of having different ones in power (at whatever level) in order for our politics to ‘return to the source’. [But] when we take a critical look at contemporary polipreneurship, we cannot just focus on the politicians, political parties and private business sectors, we also have to look at ourselves.

…We cannot divorce ourselves from the intensifying tide of corruption, the cesspool of nepotism, the inbuilt disdain for organisational transparency, the conscious refusal to embrace personal responsibility, the general demise of human empathy, the constant evading of popular accountability and the never ending litany of false promises, lies and subterfuge. They are all representative of what we as a society, and thus our business and politics have become. And let us not fool ourselves, this is the norm, not the exception.

In our polipreneurship age, the mandarins of capitalist politics and capitalist business have perfected the art of creating a sustained symbiosis between the private and public ‘interest’. They have been able to achieve this because most of those who organisationally and institutionally represent the ‘public interest’ at various levels of governance as well as ever-increasing numbers of ordinary people have personally imbibed and institutionally integrated the ‘traditions, cultures and values’ of their business counterparts. In the process the measurement of what is ‘good for society’ has become almost completely delinked from the historic and popular struggle for a universally conceived but mainly nationally practices, collective human solidarity and benefit.

The challenge is as difficult as it is profound. If we can’t change our politics then we can’t change our societies.

A moving message and wake up call from Trudy Stevenson, one of Zimbabwe’s most impressive political activists:

What do you do when your husband asks: “Where do you live, these days?’ You remember that he has Alzheimer’s Disease, and doesn’t know that he lives there too, as your husband. Sharing an experience from today… so that those of you of the younger generation may start to get a hint of what can happen to your loved ones, as they grow older – unfortunately!  Put your arms around them, hug them tight, and treasure them as your loved ones, come what may!