Some useful advice for international “experts” wanting to expand the use of new media in the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe:

Sarah Mendelson summarises the lesson of much of the experience of the 1990s and 2000s by saying that foreign experts and trainers were good architects in that they knew how to build structures, but poor interior designers because they lacked the local knowledge that would provide the content for the structures they had built. This is a profound lesson that many advocates of liberation technology show few signs of learning.

More here

Go to a memorial service and get tear gassed and beaten up. I wonder how our head of police, Chihuri, will explain this one.

Alert: MDC supporters beaten at unveiling ceremony

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

At least 14 people are receiving treatment at a local Harare hospital following their assault by Zanu PF thugs with the assistance of men in riot police gear at the Warren Hills cemeteries this afternoon at the unveiling of tombstones for five slain MDC activists.

Reports received are that, men in  riot police gear arrived in a 5 tonne truck (Mazda T35) and a smaller Toyota truck and, unprovoked,  fired tear gas on the mourners who were preparing to feed. The men got to the feeding truck where they forced three staff members of the catering company into the windowless loading tray, fired canisters of tear gas and shut the three in before they were let out twenty minutes later.

The thugs further attacked the people queuing for food as they fled from the tear gas, beating them with truncheons. One woman was chased and shoved into a shallow ditch where the gang proceeded to throw rocks at her. People were injured in the ensuing pandemonium through panic and beatings from the men in police gear.

The memorial service and unveiling ceremonies were done by the Heal Zimbabwe Trust.

At the beginning of 2011 I wrote (a letter) to several people to launch a small personal initiative called The Teabag Project. Zimbabweans, as well as people who have visited Zimbabwe, are in love with many aspects of this country, including our fabulous Tanganda tea. In a personal effort to stave off the growing Facebook empire and the transformation of everything personal into digital, I posted a letter and included a couple of Tanganda teabags to several people asking them to brew a pot, take some time for reflection and write a few words to me.

Words about anything.

Here’s something from The Teabag Project (start yours and share the words!) …

I wanted you to know how happy I was that you sent a real, live letter. With a stamp. Licked by a human. And you licked the envelop. And complete strangers in a post office thousands of miles away touched it. Spoke other languages over it. Yeow….now I have your letter as an artifact of you.

I love writing. Real writing. The written word. I weep for everything we lost when we moved into digital. Gone are the psychologically revealing strokes, contours, tensions and flourishes of hand-written text.

I remember when I moved from Connecticut to California. I was thirteen and I had so many friends back then that I hated to leave. The love was so deep and tangible. The promise of letters and connection truly kept me alive. Literally, kept me alive. Those first few months in California and away from my support system were excruciating. I wrote letters with tiny gifts of nature in them. I survived each day in the hope of receiving in return, a pebble, sand, a bottle cap, flowers from the curb, anything to remind me of home. You could never get such subversive items through the mail these days.

And did we ever really live in a world nuanced enough to be able to embrace the idea that children just might send bulging, odd looking envelopes through the mail because that’s how they knew to throw a lifeline? Despite the sadness at our separation, I think what we expressed was truly ourselves, embodied in the words and the physical expression of our letters. I felt the words as agents of feelings and energies that just don’t travel through cyber space. I feel a better knowing of someone from a letter as compared to a email.  Ink on paper practically has a voice compared to the flat world of email transmission.

Daniel Maposa, Director of Savanna Arts Trust, spoke to me about his work in protest art in Zimbabwe. Click here to listen and read more . . .

Have you faced any political resistance to your work?
Quite a lot, especially during our formative years. We had artists who were arrested in 2007 & 2008 and some were beaten up. We then devised strategies of going around these problems. That is when we said communities should also be able to produce their own work; they should talk to their own issues, instead of us using a top-down approach. We have had events that were banned but we have always found a way out of this. If communities are doing it, it is difficult to ban because it is a movement from that particular community.

However carved up
or pared down we get,
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn’t matter that
our acre’s down to
a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we’d rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

KAY RYAN, “The Best of It”

Kubatana goes Inside/Out with one of Zimbabwe’s best protest poets, Comrade Fatso:

Describe yourself in five words?
Umm. Not sure. Sarcastic. Maybe?

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Never interview a sarcastic poet.

What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done?
Protest poetry in Zimbabwe.

What is your most treasured possession?
My wit. Sorry is that arrogant?

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Monday morning.

Do you have any strange hobbies?
Democracy. And Crocodile Fishing.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
Sadza stains on my jeans after lunch.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Alcohol.

What have you got in your fridge?
Alcohol.

What is your greatest fear?
Alcohol.

What have you got in your pockets right now?
Alco.. Hold on. Umm.. Is this a security check?

What is your favourite journey?
One that entails a car, a road, no roadblocks, no motorcades and a destination with water. And alcohol.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Dambudzo Marechera, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Mbuya Nehanda, Fela Kuti. You really gotta be dead to be my hero in real life. But I make exceptions.

When and where were you happiest?
2am on Saturday. In my mind.

What’s your biggest vice?
Miami.

What were you like at school?
Like I am now but younger, broker and wearing a crappy red blazer.

What are you doing next?
Clicking ‘save’.