The only people who don’t seem vaguely fazed by Simba Makoni’s election bid are the beauticians in Cleopatra’s Beauty Parlour next to my office. They seem to have fallen asleep face first in their towels. Yesterday, a friend of mine called Anna, told me that its a good thing that Simba is posing some sort of challenge to Mugabe because, in her words, “Mugabe is an old man and doesn’t listen to the people”. There’s truth in that.

Speaking of people I’ve just been surprised to read that 15 members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) were arrested whilst waiting to book into Meikles Hotel. Apparently the WOZA activists had come to Harare for the People’s Convention being co-ordinated by various civil society organisations. Quite honestly, I was astounded that WOZA were booked into a 5 * hotel. OK, its not that I expect social justice activists to rest their heads in some flea pit of a backpacker’s hostel on Herbert Chitepo Avenue. But choosing to spend their donor dollars on 5 *s makes me question how in touch with the people the organisers of the People’s Convention really are?

This entry was posted on February 7th, 2008 at 5:55 pm by Bev Clark and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.