The ‘war’ between kombi drivers and police officers has been going on for so long and because there is nobody to police the police, the ordinary citizens are suffering. Over the recent years police have been using forceful means to deal with public transport drivers in the country. From smashing of windscreens to Hollywood movie style chases this has been the order of the day. These forceful means have fallen short as citizens are harmed or lose their lives. There are reports of incidents of police smashing windscreens and injuring passengers. I have witnessed such incidents. Just when we thought this was bad enough the kombi operator-police war has yielded the unbearable – death. As kombi drivers try to escape from police officers they do so at full speed and in so doing go against road rules and place the life of other motorists and pedestrians at risk. In the past two months two people lost their lives in such scenarios at the Copacabana rank alone. The most recent was of an old lady who was dragged under a kombi for more than 100 metres leading to her death. The kombi was running away from a police officer.

Death is something never prepared for, but for anyone to die in this manner is more painful than the word painful itself. Even if the driver gets a life sentence or a death penalty the root cause of the problem will not have been addressed. For kombi operators and the police officers it’s now  ‘a mice sees cat game’ at the risk of passengers, pedestrians and other motorists. On one hand, the mice don’t care how they will run away from the cat, as long as they don’t get caught. On the other hand, the cat will use all the powers vested in him to chase the mice. But then again at the centre of all this fight, is a mother on her way to work, a boy on his way to school, an old lady on her way to her rural home crossing the street unaware that a mouse is on the run and that their life might end. For how long will we watch lives being lost at the hands of this cat-mice fight?

Independence Day Competition: Make your mark!

Kubatana is offering a prize of $100 for the most creative submission commenting on Independence Day. Submissions can include poetry, prose, a very short film, original art, a design for a sticker that we might take further, a photograph . . . you get the idea. We encourage you to think outside of the box! Don’t be shy, let it all out. A delivery of 33 cupcakes with Zimbabwean flags stuck in them might win our hearts but not The Money – hmmm, you choose!

How?
You can email your submission to: info [at] kubatana [dot] net
If your submission is an unusual shape or size and is impossible to submit over the Interweb, then get in touch on the same email address and we’ll work something out.

Deadline: 26 April, 3pm Kubatana time
Please include your name, and phone number

I read a Herald headline that said, “Manicaland: Be decisive, Zanu PF urged” and imagined it could have easily read: “Manicaland: Be divisive, Zanu PF urged,” because that is exactly what is happening.

Perhaps the “stalwarts” behind the Manicaland divisions are staring reality in the eye that there really isn’t much to be done about their impending confinement to the much loved “dustbin of history” metaphor. You can only browbeat the peasantry to an extent, that constituency of course being the favourite of Zanu PF’s claim of popularity in the rural areas, yet we know from the violence of March 2008 that this is very much thanks to cudgels and sjamboks as the party’s preferred tools of political persuasion.

After all, some political theorists long noted that divisions that emerge within African political parties are their ultimate Achilles heel that author their attrition and thus harbinger or point to their loss of relevance to the national political ethos, Jonathan Moyo should have told them!

But then here we are dealing with a cabal that seeks to defy all laws, from gravity to commonsense, yet we do get solace in knowing that when the big guns fight for the control of the party, it gives other political parties ample time to regroup, set up their own Praetorian guard for the new political dispensation project and invest their energies in the most pressing matter at hand, that is winning the election. It could indeed be yet another lost opportunity if Zanu PF opponents do take advantage of the party’s squabbles. Else, not just history, nay, none but ourselves shall judge hashly the political strategists of these parties.

Sarah Norman, reader, reviewer and all round cool gal has just reviewed a book I’ve enjoyed quite a bit. This is how you lose her by Junot Diaz. Sarah quotes a line from one of Junot’s short stories that is both funny and true: “Show me a beautiful girl and I’ll show you someone who is tired of fucking her.”

A short film written and directed by Zimbabwean Eunice Chiweshe Goldstein – Nhamo – has been nominated for the 2013 Best Short Film at the Africa Movie Academy Awards. Nominees were announced in Malawi at an event graced by the Malawian President, Joyce Banda. The awards founded in 2005 will be held in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Last year the award for the Best Short Film went to Braids On Bald Head from Nigeria. In 2012 a Zimbabwean, Kudzai Sevenzo was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her role as Nyarai in Playing Warriors.