A report by the Mass Public Opinion Institute titled “Elections and the Management of Diversity in Zimbabwe” which is part of an Africa wide project under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for African together with the UNDP is one of the latest that does not place much confidence in the country’s electoral processes.

The report, first begun in 2011, is part of the Africa Governance Report launched in 1999 when the Economic Commission for Africa launched its project on “Assessing and Monitoring the Progress towards Good Governance in Africa.”

Like many projects before it that elicited inputs from Zimbabweans as diverse as “experts” and the “common people”, the MPOI report, among other things, found that 45 percent of the respondents “thought the judiciary is hardly independent of other branches of government.”

Up to 62 percent of the respondents “either disagreed or strongly disagreed” with the statement that “the composition of government and leadership represents all segments (of society) and (its) diverse interests.”

That is damning by any standards.

It raises questions about the role of elections in people’s lives and their ability to choose their leaders.

That many Zimbabwe have given up on voting is already known not only from Afrobarometre and Freedom House but also from our daily interactions with colleagues and strangers, yet as we approach this year’s elections, these issues become pertinent as political parties campaign to persuade their supporters not only to register to vote but indeed vote.

What then is the use of exciting the masses with the mobile voter registration exercise then when the same people have lost faith in the electoral processes?

One telling response came from a respondent in Bulawayo who said “Zanu PF does not consider the views of the people, not even those of its own party (supporters).”

Such attitudes from political parties mean many potential voters will need a lot of convincing that Zimbabwe is a representative democracy where the “people’s voice” matters.

The logic is simple really: why listen to a politician asking for your views when his mind is already made up that once you vote him into office, you will see him again at your doorstep after five years.

The interaction of politicians and voters surely has to be much, much improved from the criticism that emerged for example with the March referendum where critics say party supporters were merely instructed to vote “YES” without even knowing what they were voting for.

Besides that, a report like that of the MPOI only adds to a heap of work about Zimbabwe that has failed to nudge the country towards good governance.

Last Friday I went to have a look at the Zimbabwe Association of Female Photographers (ZAPF) exhibition. It is an amazing illustration of talent, as well as being a great cause for female empowerment. It expresses women’s abilities and has given a chance for female photojournalists in Zimbabwe to demonstrate their talents in an exceptional display.

The exhibit has a wide variety of photography, from landscape to portrait and nature. The exhibit is well displayed and each piece carefully explained. I would highly recommend anyone with an interest in art to have a look.

Many of the pieces carry strong messages, from political to social. A particularly captivating piece was the exhibit “Pimp My Kombi” by Nancy Mteki. This exhibit explores “the notion of public transport as a social environment, marked by gendered power relations in which the woman remains objectified”, as described in the caption.

Another particularly prominent piece was “The Referendum Grid”, a collaboration of the work of Angela Jimu, Davina Jogi, Cynthia Matonhodze and Annie Mpalume. This politically striking series shows various images taken during the referendum, displaying a variety of emotions and attitudes. The different images contrast each other making it holistic and captivating.

I would advise anyone with an interest in art, or with a bit of time to spare to go and have a look at the exhibition at 15 Princess Drive, Newlands. It is open until the 24th May from 1pm to 2pm during the week and 10am to 1pm on Saturdays and is a couple of hours well spent!

Virtually every corner of Zimbabwe has huge challenges concerning access to clean water, and despite all talk about the country committing itself to meeting its MDG targets with 2015 fast approaching, it is quite a statement to hear a woman ask the Harare mayor, “can you tell us if the water in our taps is safe to drink!”

The UN says you cannot separate water from all the Millennium Development Goals, it thus has to be asked that in a country where water has become such a very emotional issue because of its regular absence in our taps, what then does this say about the country meeting all the eight MDGs?

But then, this question is rhetorical as it is on record that we are off the mark on many of these fronts.

I was given a jolt, recalling that water treatment chemicals have been hard to come by for big cities such as Bulawayo, and for someone to pose that question, “can you tell us if the water in our taps is safe to drink?” says a lot about the downward spiral of service provision in this country in the past decade.

The occasion was a Quill Speak at the Ambassador Hotel and it was themed “The water supply crisis in Harare – what is the solution?”

The Harare mayor, 59 months on the job he said, attempted to provide insights into the mother city’s water headaches, but like many public officials in this country never seemed to have anything new to say other than what has become a well-worn motif: we don’t have the money.

Someone asked where then the mayor expects to get the money, and it was then that for me he provided a useful insight about what has gone wrong in this once romanticized “great African hope” back in the euphoria of 1980.

Council could raise funds for its service provision obligations such as the ever-snowballing water sector migraines by issuing municipal bonds, but this last happened in the 1990s before the dollar crashed in 1997, the mayor explained.

It is explained elsewhere “municipal bonds are securities that are issued for the purpose of financing the infrastructure needs of the issuing municipality.”

But in a country where everything has been blamed on the voodoo economics of Zanu PF, municipal bonds also became a victim; simply meaning that local authorities could not sustain themselves, raise their own revenue outside payment of bills by residents.

Yet resident associations have criticized these municipalities of trying to run their cities with money collected from bills, which is an impossible proposition.

It explains why virtually every council in this country is broke, with residents being forced to live with the reality of disease outbreak right on their door steps.

We only have the 2008 cholera outbreak as a painful example, which Sikhanyiso Ndlovu claimed back then and without any hint of tongue-in-cheek was part of a biological-chemical warfare unleashed by Zimbabwe’s enemies, when everyone else knew its genesis.

Another lady asked the Mayor why she should bother paying her bills when she hardly gets any water, a question that has been asked everywhere but has not elicited any convincing response from the local authorities.

It is a telling indictment that amidst all these questions, Zimbabweans find themselves being part of the 783 million people UN Water says do not have access to safe drinking water, and these are people living not in the rural outback, but in the city of Harare!

The Herald today reported that 29 political parties, the latest being formed on Monday 13 this week, are asking to be bankrolled by government for their political activities ahead of elections.

Interesting.

29 political parties asking for funding from the fiscus?

And we are only hearing about some of these obscure outfits now, talk about trying to cash in on politics, as if we are not seeing it already from individuals sitting in the Inclusive Government who are resisting primaries!

Ok then let’s take a look at the numbers.

It’s been reported that under the Political Parties Finance Act, the country’s three main political parties, were expected to share USD5 million according to their parliamentary representation.

But according to a ZBC report last month, the parties had received only USD500,000 with Patrick Chinamasa saying they (Zanu PF?) are “putting pressure on Finance Minister Tendai Biti to release the outstanding US$4,5 million.”

Now, seeing that Biti is already failing (or reluctant, depending on your political leanings) to “give” Zanu PF and the two MDCs the remaining USD4,5 million, where the hell is the money for the 29 political parties expected to come from, considering that 29 more can easily emerge from the woodwork in the weeks ahead of these elections?

Perhaps like every vulture that has emerged in our very amoral political landscape, these folks are expecting the largess to come from the diamond manna … why, more diamonds have been discovered in Bikita!

The Herald reported last December that Zanu PF had budgeted USD600,000 for the referendum for its awareness campaigns, lord knows where they got the money from, but the point is, funding any political activity is not for the faint hearted, that is why Zanu PF gets hot under the collar when the MDCs run around across the country using resources whose source Zanu PF desperately wants revealed.

You then have to ask exactly how much are these 29 political parties asking for?

Perhaps they should quietly return to the dustbins from where they crawled, but then it has been whispered that some political parties that always emerge in the run-up to elections are spoilers created by the spooks to muddy the waters for Tsvangirai not to see victory!

So then, it could be these are the same people pushing for the funding of their political outfits, after all, they always know something that we don’t about the nation’s wealth, which apparently is also being kept away from the finance minister.

“The money is there, let’s form a political party,” they whisper.

The Recipe of Love: Ingredients

A few cloves of Garlic
Onions
Green beans
Tomatoes
1 Chinese cabbage
Sugar beans
2kg or so of stewing beef
8 packs of Royco Usavi Mix
5kg pasta
About 30 loaves Bread (I’m not entirely sure about this figure though!)
A fraction of a 2litre bottle of cooking oil
Green peppers (I cut these!)
4 Oxtail stock cubes
Salt
About 500g of flour
LOADS of water
And LOVE!

Instructions
1.Begin the morning by collecting weekly donations and buying the remaining ingredients.
2.Get to the Lutheran Church, on Chatima road in Mbare.
3.Unload supplies and set up cooking equipment in one of the church’s halls.
4.Put a large pot of pasta to boil.
5.Fry up garlic, onions, tomatoes, and beef in cooking oil.
6.Slowly add the rest of the vegetables and seasoning, with water.
7.Have a good chat and few giggles over the large simmering pots.
8.Thicken with flour and add cooked pasta.
9.Boil for as long as possible.
10.Serve hot, with a smile and 2 slices of bread.

Serves more than you would think – I estimate that well over 70 children, their mothers and grandmothers had a bowl, with many having seconds and even taking some home in the lunch boxes they had brought along with them.

Yesterday, I helped make this soup, (well, more like cut a few vegetables!) and saw firsthand the impact that so few ingredients can have on a struggling community. Every Tuesday afternoon, the With Love Foundation runs a soup kitchen from the Lutheran Church in Mbare, serving up a hearty soup with slices of fresh bread to hundreds of women and children in the community. The soup does not necessarily follow this recipe, as members of the foundation use whatever ingredients are available on any given Tuesday, and this, they say, has often made for some interesting soup variations.

Speaking with one of the foundation’s founding members, Chenai Mudede, over the large bubbling pots of ‘love soup’, I soon realized that this weekly labour of love was not easy to sustain, with the foundation’s members funding the majority of the initiative from their own pockets. Though the ingredients list may not seem like much, these weekly amounts certainly do add up to quite significant costs, which are becoming more and more challenging to sustain.

As she spoke, I looked around and compiled a mental shopping list of the ingredients I had seen thrown into the large pots, and thought to myself, “Surely it wouldn’t take much in the way of donations, to gather all these things on a weekly basis.” There is nothing outlandish on this list of ingredients! I began to imagine how much more soup could be made if Harare residents donated the odd packet of Usavi Mix here, or a packet of carrots there. It is, after all, the little things that count!

I first heard about the With Love Foundation soup kitchen towards the end of 2012 when I read a news report on what was then a fairly new initiative, and made it a New Year’s Resolution to get involved. However, like so many resolutions, it got tucked away on my never-ending to-do list. It wasn’t until mid-March 2013, when I met a lovely girl from the organization, that I was given a gentle but firm reminder of what I had promised I would do.

Yesterday, through a recent partnership between With Love Foundation and Kuumba Foundation Trust, a Christian organization I volunteer with, focused on rebuilding and maintaining healthy family structures, I finally found myself at the Lutheran Church on Chatima Rd, in Mbare, Harare, cutting green peppers, and setting up benches for the Women’s Parenting Workshop the two organizations had collaborated to host in conjunction with the weekly soup kitchen. While the soup bubbled away, members of the Kuumba Foundation Trust spoke to the group of mothers that had gathered, addressing parenting issues, centered especially on effective communication.

That soup smelt amazing and I found it hard to concentrate on the women’s workshop I had come for, as the rich aroma wafted throughout the churchyard, drawing larger crowds by the minute. I wish I could tell you all how wonderful the soup tasted, but unfortunately I didn’t get to have any. By the time I finished recording video and taking photos of the Women’s Parenting Workshop that was also taking place outside, all the soup was gone! Well, if the speed with which those two giant pots were emptied is any indication of the soup’s great taste, then it’s safe to conclude that this week’s batch was a culinary masterpiece.

I wonder what next week’s soup will have in it!

Did you know!
Already Baker’s Inn donates loaves of bread each week, Pioneer Gas provides a free monthly gas refill, and several individuals donate in cash and kind. If you would like to donate ingredients for next Tuesday’s soup, pledge ongoing support or volunteer your time, please contact With Love Foundation via their email address; info [at] withlove [dot] co [dot] zw, their Facebook page;  www.facebook.com/WithLoveFoundation, or using their Twitter Handle; @WithLoveZim.

There is nothing more beautiful than a sunset on the Zambezi River, and listening to the hippos while drinking a nice cold beer. And Mana Pools is possibly the best place to do this.

Recently I went on a four-day trip to Mana with a friend, and was amazed by the beauty and serenity. There is an abundance of animals along the river (especially at this time of the year with the bush so dry) from herds of elephant and waterbuck to lions and hyenas. As my friend said there is nowhere else in the world were you can set up a scottle and make breakfast while the sun rises with waterbuck and hippos less than 500 metres from where you are sitting. On one particular morning, we sat quite peacefully eating our breakfast as a lioness (only about 300 metres away) summed up her chances swimming across the river, dodging the crocodiles.

It is the best place to escape from the stress of everyday life as you feel totally submerged in the remoteness. Even in the main camp there is a general respect for everyone else’s privacy giving a very relaxed atmosphere to kick back and watch some game, or just chill under a tree with a good book.