I drove past a Herald newspaper billboard today. The headline was something like “Prisoners gobble $1.7 a month”. Well first off the majority of Zimbabwean prisoners are starving. They don’t even get to gobble fresh air. Then there’s the issue that the reason why a great many of our prisoners are incarcerated, is because our economy has been so trashed by the political hierarchy, that stealing has become the one of the most common forms of “employment”. And then there’s our failed judicial system that keeps people in prison for much longer that they need to be because of the lack of capacity to take them to trial, on time. Never mind our prison population is really large so if you actually divide the $1.7 over the number of prisoners it would come as no surprise that this amount is no where near what’s needed to keep people from becoming ill or starving. Meanwhile a few ministers get $20 million to purchase luxury vehicles. Now that’s gobbling.

Here’s a pertinent piece from the ‘rebel journalist’ Tabani Moyo. Aren’t the MDC ministers having a swell time …

Luxurygate and the MDC’s false sense of ‘arrival’

By Tabani Moyo

The dust of the government’s hollywood lifestyle is refusing to settle down. It cannot settle down especially when the people are living in such a sea of poverty. However, the development has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the MDCs are stuck in an omnibus syndrome to governance. The mimicry politics have taken over the voice of reason as the so called ‘democratic change merchants’ stampede for the gravy train.

I happened to bump into three ministers one from the MDC and two from the MDC-T riding in their new filthy lucre. The windows where lowered, music loud as if to attract attention from the public in the exhibition of a newly acquired status. The status of a polished league of gentlemen/women I guess. I said god forbid. These are not business people who have the leeway to do whatever they want with their profits, but public officials ridding on the poor taxpayers’ hard earned income. What happened to the so called paragons of virtue, those who saw everything wrong about public officials abusing state funds on luxuries? The virtue seems to have sublimated during the ‘opposition’ times, as the train gets more gravy laced, the elements of virtue are crucified on the altar of public suffrage. As we stand no single minister has declined the offer of these fuel guzzlers, their consciences are clean and their declaration of intent manifest that they are still in a struggle for a better Zimbabwe!

Personally, I don’t have a problem with ZANU PF being implicated in this bangle, we as a people know of its heinous deeds. That’s why the people of Zimbabwe risked limb and life in forming and supporting an alternative vehicle to rid the rot in ZANU PF. It becomes confusing when the line between ZANU PF’s actions and those of the MDCs becomes blurred.

20 million on luxuries!

The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) is set to increase the utility cost of delivering energy. The public hospitals have collapsed, children this summer shall die of mosquito bites, the industry performing below 30%, women failing access basic sanitary facilities and our education system turning into an elitist platform among other things.

With the above cacophony of problems, we have learnt that ZANU PF and the MDCs can actually unite in ‘looting’ from the poor. The current blame shifts between Minister of Transport, Infrastructure Development and Communication Nicholas Goche and the Minister of Finance Tendai Biti should not be tolerated to continue stealing our intellectual space in the papers.  The decision to purchase the goodies is a collective one from the cabinet which the three parties are represented.

In this process there is no room for afterthought. The three parties could not agree at cabinet level on the need to increase civil servants salaries but unanimously agreed to squeeze harder the drying pockets of the taxpayers.

As I stated before such are the pitfalls of proximity to state power it exposes the cravings which were going to manifest themselves soon after the ‘opposition’ takes total control of state power. We are better off with some of these happenings are unfolding at this juncture of our cultivation as a people. The MDCs only got into office two years ago; they are already leaving the lives of movie stars or the English premier soccer stars.

One can only remind the MDCs of the calamity of approaching this ‘struggle’ with omnibus gloves. It gives the impression of a false sense of ‘arrival’, a false sense of destiny. The ministers believe, their yearnings have been achieved, hence the need to amass as much as they can before sporadic cabinet reshuffles. These state trappings are dangerous for the same people who came up with these platforms or movements can still do the same and push aside primitive ‘accumulativists’ into political dustbins.

Tabani Moyo can be contacted at rebeljournalist [at] yahoo [dot] com

Last week I was part of a very interesting discussion with a few Zimbabwean tertiary students, from universities all over the country, on the issue of sexual harassment in tertiary institutions. The group was a balanced mixture of male and female students, and they were all in agreement about the existence and prevalence of sexual harassment in their different institutions.

They spoke of the large number of students being forced into sexual relationships with authority figures, especially lecturers. These students are often threatened with failure of courses, despite the quality of their work, if these sexual demands are not met. When given a choice between failing a course, which in many cases they have struggled to raise the funds for, and having sex with a lecturer to guarantee that they can continue their studies successfully, many young women, (and indeed a growing number of male students too), end up giving in for the sake of their education. This is not to say that all sexual relationships between students and lecturers are all non-consensual. There are indeed some female students who actively pursue lecturers in order to have relationships with benefits (but this not what we are discussing today).

One of the students made a powerful and startling statement with regard to these ‘sexual exchanges’ between students and lecturers, and introduced me to the idea of negotiated rape.

“There are many rapists now who can give you room to negotiate with them, even to use condoms.”

Negotiating with a rapist? Pretty hard to imagine! I guess maybe because I have never thought of the issue of rape in that way before; never thought that there would even be room or time enough to negotiate for anything in the heat of the moment. To me, the word rape has always dredged up images of brutal beatings; ripping of clothing; use of weapons; women being dragged off into the bushes and left for dead, all by unidentifiable monsters, or of uncles or teachers etc,  taking advantage of young children in private and threatening them to keep it a secret. However, from the way she put her point across, I got the distinct impression that the encounters she was describing were quite “civilized”, a far cry from the way I have always imagined rape.  Both parties appear to get a chance to talk things over beforehand, and there also appears to be quite a bit of flexibility on the part of the ‘rapists’. It fells quite strange to be using the words rape and negotiate in the same phrase, but the more I think about it, the more sense it seems to make. I’m also not sure if other people, or relevant organizations are seeing things in the same way as this young lady, but I hope that they are paying attention and at the very least feel prompted to further investigate the matter. After all what is the real meaning of rape anyway?

Maybe we should begin by exploring the meaning of the word ‘rape’ and the issue of consent. According to Wikipedia rape can be defined as the act of having sexual intercourse with a person without their consent. It can be carried out with the threat or use of physical force, duress (coercion), abuse of authority (e.g. sexual harassment) or with a person that is incapable of giving valid consent (a minor).

So, given this definition of rape, can we say that these lecturers are rapists, or is this sexual harassment? The problems with concluding whether, the incidents in our nation’s universities can be classified as rape, or just sex, lie within the issues of consent and duress, and how the latter usually affects the former. I mean, how does one prove that they have or have not given their consent, in a situation where they have been given no other choice but to consent? It seems to me that the line between rape and sex within this context is becoming even more blurry. Even though the women I speak of are not treated brutally/monstrously as we most times imagine is the case when we think of how rape occurs, are they still not, in essence, being raped?

In some way, I feel that most of us, (male and female), have gotten into a comfort zone about how we now define rape. This has to change! We must update our thinking so that our ideas on how to solve these problems can continue to be current and relevant to the situation on the ground. I’m also not sure if other people, or relevant organizations agree with the concept of negotiated rape, but I hope that you are paying attention, and at the very least, feel prompted to further investigate the matter.