According to today’s Herald, the Registrar General’s office now enables one to access the passport application form online, fill it in, print it out, bring it to a passport office – and get an SMS when it’s ready for collection.

Today, our attempts to access the Registrar General’s website have been intermittently successful – Suggesting that perhaps they’re getting more hits with the launch of this service than their server has capacity for. But we were able to get to the online form, which looks like this:

I did think to myself – “But I’m not Patience. Can’t I be Amanda whilst the form is downloading?” but other than that, I can’t complain.

I could fill in the form on their site, print it locally, and could take it to the passport office and submit it in person if I wanted to apply for a passport.

According to The Herald, the fee for using the online form will be $33 – less than the standard $50 charge, and you’re spared the step of having to queue up just to get the form. So all of that certainly sounds more convenient than the current system.

So, will it really work? Who will be the first to try it? If you do, let us know!

On our run on Sunday, my friend and I passed a number of women in bright yellow t-shirts, with a photograph of Mugabe in the centre. The effect on us was telling, and discussing it afterwards, we wondered if it was part of a strategy for the elections, most recently being punted for March next year. Because the t-shirts, actually, were not “political,” in the formal sense, at all. If you looked closer, you saw the words “Zimbabwe Women’s Football” and “Chief Patron” wrapping around the photograph. But how many people would look closer? If my friend and I were reluctant to stare, for fear of sending some wrong signal and getting ourselves in trouble, how many others would give t-shirts like that a closer look? And, even if you do get a closer look, what better way to get out the message “we’re in charge” than by circulating a variety of innocuous, non-political t-shirts, with Mugabe’s face on them.

Anyway, perhaps we gave Zanu PF far too much credit, but they are historically good at the use of propaganda and information, and we decided that it could well be part of their election strategy. The strategy, we figured, would be largely around the need for Zanu PF to win a “free and fair” – read internationally recognised and accepted – election. If they can’t win an election under those circumstances, they’d probably be better off trying to cling to the Government of National Unity. So we thought maybe we were in for a Zanu PF that was less formally threatening – and instead relied on people’s residual fear, and any inroads they may have made through the GNU, if surveys like Freedom House’s are to be believed.

But then we read that Zimbabwe’s Energy Minister, Elton Mangoma of the MDC, had been arrested, detained at Harare Central, taken to Bindura, turned back, and returned to Harare Central, and eventually released with a warned and cautioned statement, all for supposedly saying “Mugabe Chifa, Mugabe Chibva” (Loosely translated Mugabe die, Mugabe go) at a rally in Bindura earlier this year. Mangoma was arrested twice in March last year for charges of abuse of office.  In one case he was acquitted, and in the other charges were dropped before the case went to trial.

Today’s arrest of Mangoma is the sort of “bad old days” behaviour of Zanu PF that makes people roll their eyes at any talk of a “free and fair” election. If they are hoping to lull people into voting for them – and having the election legitimated internationally – they’d better tone down the hamfisted intimidation tactics choppers.

Assorted body parts reduced to clear.

Shoko Festival 2012 is live and kicking and Radio Active is audio blogging direct from the festival.

Get there now through 23 September.

And check out what Freedom of Expression means to ordinary Zimbabweans at the Festival here: http://soundcloud.com/tswarelo-mothobe

On Saturday, I saw a brand-new Range Rover with Zambian Embassy number plates. Yesterday, I was overtaken by a posh sporty Mercedes Benz, also with Zambian Embassy plates, speeding down a residential road. So people of Zambia, if you ever wonder where all of your money is, it is here in Zimbabwe, invested in cars for your Embassy.

There hasn’t been any water at our office block since Wednesday last week, and the toilets are beyond disgusting.

On Friday, the building manager organised for a bowser of water to come, and everyone filled up as many tanks, drums, bins and buckets as we could find.

For a few days, things were clean and hygienic again, but now that water has run out and the situation is worse than before.

Now, we’re being asked to bring in water from home – not just for office use, but to donate for the toilets which are shared across all tenants. This is because the bowser contacts the building manager has been phoning are too busy to come and deliver.

In other words, all over Harare, water is so scarce that so many companies are placing so many orders for water deliveries that the water companies can’t keep up. This is without even getting into the bigger question of where these water companies get their water from (sometimes residential boreholes and by pumping directly out of city rivers and streams). In the rural areas, the problem is even worse.

September has only just begun, and it’s another two months until the rains start to recharge the city boreholes and water table.

If water is already scarce, how will offices and high density areas in particular weather the water crisis that will only worsen?