Go to the Village Walk shopping centre in Harare’s Borrowdale suburb and the first thing you’ll see is Dexter Nyamainashe’s mobile wire sculpture.

The wire sculpture is large and intricate, and people can’t help but stop to have a closer look.

Which is part of the point. As much public installation as a work in progress, the machinery, as Nyamainashe calls it, is a mixture of heart-felt expression and deliberate attention seeking.

A composite of small, unique wire sculptures, Nyamainashe’s art is several stories high with sections covered in carpeting and bunting. Each sculpture within the piece depicts different scenes. Many are of rural African village life – pounding maize, collecting firewood, minding cattle. But others include experience from Western cultures including the US and Europe.

The mobile wire sculpture that Nyamainashe has been developing since 1994, sits on six wheels and can be dismantled into five sections. It features moving parts and flowing water. When asked where his ideas came from, or how he learnt to make the water flow and the sculptures move, Nyamainashe says, “It’s just like art of imagination. It’s always on plan. When you’re working on this it’s like you’re spirited by the Holy Spirit and you get possessed somewhere during the course of doing it.”

“The main theme is saying it’s all about uniting all people,” explained Nyamainashe in a recent interview. “I cannot see any reason why we should fight one another. We should get together and learn to share, equally and unify the world.”

He sees the purpose of his art primarily to convey a message of peace and harmony, and to get people talking. “We are seeing so many wars in other countries, worldwide. We don’t like situations whereby an innocent human being gets killed.”

But the wire sculpture is also helping Nyamainashe, 43, reach another one of his goals, to become an artist.

Life, as he describes it, is a ladder. And “in life,” says Nyamainashe, “you don’t climb five steps at one time. You start from the first, then the second. Can I say maybe I’m just on the third step. I’m still close to the ground.” Times have been hard for the artist. When he finished his O Levels in Bulawayo, he took up tree cutting. But after seven years, his business collapsed and he had financial problems. Visiting Harare, he saw artists selling their work to tourists on First Street. He had been good at art at school, and calls art his “inborn concept, from younghood up to this age.”

Nyamainashe rediscovered the talent he had with wire in school and started making wire sculptures to sell to tourists. And so, he says, “I injected myself into art.”

He gets his materials from people who see the wire sculpture and bring him materials for it. He also uses objects he collects from the ground and off cuts from places like carpet shops.

Nyamainashe has dreams for how he’d like to expand his wire sculpture. “Because so far, I have Africans, Whites and Jews. So that means there are many races left which are supposed to be put on so that the whole world is there together with all races. And then I can add onto it Hell and Heaven. And some other planets. Maybe I can work on a big moon, and put the astronauts doing something after coming from earth. Then it’s going to be a united universe at last.”

The mobile wire sculpture attracts attention – and, occasionally donations, or orders from tourists and locals. The café owner that his taken him in, and given him a permanent place to host his wire sculpture, was “anointed by God,” he says. On a good day, Nyamainashe might take home USD 30, on a bad day, next to nothing. With Zimbabwe’s economy in decline, and tourism in a slump, the bad days far outnumber the good.

But Nyamainashe holds out hope that his fortunes will change, that he’ll travel the world with his wire sculpture, and that he’ll earn enough money to marry and start a family.

As Bev pointed out a month or so ago, we’ve started getting these fantastic little occasional newsletters from MarkLives. They point out highlights in art, design and technology in South Africa. The MarkLives blog site isn’t exactly an example of compelling design, but the posts themselves invariably draw your attention to hidden treasures you’d never otherwise know about.

Even better, on the right hand sidebar of the blog site is a link to Mark magazine. Far more than your average pdf file, this is an interactive fully featured magazine experience. What’s more, the magazine content itself is stimulating, diverse, and interesting. The downside is it runs on a flash player type interface, and I shudder to think how much bandwidth it must chew. But where else will you find a reference to Vivienne Westwood’s Manifesto – Active resistance to propaganda (“We shall begin with a search for art, show that art gives culture and that culture is the antidote to propaganda.”) in the same place as an advertorial promoting recent University of Cape Town research on “The Feasibility of Mobile Technology as an Information Medium” (about how much more education needs to be done in South Africa to help mobile phone users there take better advantage of the communications potential the phones have) and this photo of the rubbish bins decorated by five Cape Town ad agencies in an urban design project.

To subscribe yourself for the MarkLives newsletters, email join-marklives [at] emessagex [dot] net.

Lynde Francis Zimbabwean AIDS activist and founder of The Centre, died yesterday from AIDS-related complications.

I had the privilege of interviewing Lynde in 2007, and found her to be one of the most stimulating, thought provoking, passionate and committed people I have ever met.

Keith Goddard, director of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) shared some of his memories of Lynde:

I learnt with deep sadness yesterday that Lynde Francis had died that morning. It was almost unbelievable because Lynde was always a great fighter. She had lived with HIV for decades and pulled through a serious illness, probably caused by a spider bite, which left her unconscious for days.

I first met Lynde as a dynamic member of the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ). She didn’t fit into any conventional category or define herself as gay, lesbian or bisexual. She used to say she was polysexual and then laugh.

In the early 1990s GALZ had no offices and Lynde’s home was open house for many of our meetings and even interviews with journalists.

Lynde was the first member to receive sponsorship through GALZ to start counselling training with CONNECT and her home phone was the hotline for the GALZ Counselling Services. In 1995, Lynde’s dining room became the interim offices for GALZ until we moved to our present address.

She was also with us at the 1995 Book Fair which had as its theme that year ‘Human Rights and Justice’. Despite the title, government illegally banned GALZ from participating and the President, on opening the Fair, issued the first in a series of vitriolic attacks on gays. Despite the ban, we were there and I can remember standing next to Lynde and others day after day at an empty stand talking to members of the public who had come to stare at and mock the homosexuals. At the end we all went back to her house for a glass of white wine exhilarated by our success of having put gay and lesbian rights firmly on the national agenda in Zimbabwe. I remember Lynde describing it as a coup.

But Lynde’s association with GALZ caused her difficulties when it came to setting up and finding funding for The Centre. Government’s disapproval of GALZ made many AIDS Service Organisations nervous about being linked to an organisation which might incur the wrath of government. But, in true style, Lynde refused either to deny her links with GALZ or to give up the struggle to realise her dream of setting up The Centre.

She won through and in 1998 even spoke up at a meeting of ZNNP+ in support of the application for membership by GALZ. It was largely through Lynde’s efforts that GALZ became fully accepted and respected as a member of the AIDS movement in Zimbabwe.

Lynde gave hope to thousands of people living with HIV especially at a time when ARVs were unaffordable to most. She always took on too much and always placed herself second. She was a wonderful mother to us all and we will miss her dearly.

According to the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, there will be a viewing for Lynde at the Doves Chapel, 157 Harare Street on Thursday 2 April from 11:30am – 1.00pm.  All those who would like to pay their last respect to Lynde are welcome to come and part take in this service.   Her body will be taken to Mutare for cremation. On Monday 6 April from 11:30 – 1.00 there will also be a Memorial Service at Celebration Centre in Harare to celebrate her life. Thereafter all are welcome at The Centre, 24 Van Praagh Avenue, Milton Park from 2.00pm-5pm.

If you knew Lynde and would like to share your memories of this amazing woman, please leave your comments here.

I’ve just finished Dead Aid, Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo’s book on “why aid isn’t working and how there is another way for Africa.”

At a time of STERP and budget slashing, Moyo’s book poses an interesting challenge to Zimbabwe’s Minister of Finance and the inclusive government as a whole.

Moyo is sharply critical of aid and its role in Africa’s development:

Sixty years, over US$ 1 trillion of African aid, and not much good to show for it. Were aid simply innocuous – just not doing what it claimed it would do – this book would not have been written. The problem is that aid is not benign – it’s malignant. No longer part of the potential solution, it’s part of the problem – in fact aid is the problem.

Foreign aid and concessional loans have contributed to Africa’s bad governance and human rights track record, Moyo posits, by supplanting the relationship between governing and governed with the relationship between government and donor.

Moyo doesn’t for a moment doubt Africa’s need to develop. But rather than relying on aid for this purpose, Moyo recommends that countries instead turn to a combination of:

• Bonds
• Trade – local, regional and foreign
• Foreign Direct Investment
• Micro-finance
• Leveraging remittances

In her book, Moyo outlines the potential each one of these areas has for promoting growth – and the challenges countries would face in leveraging each of these options.

Unfortunately, the principle challenge raised by Moyo’s suggestion is a governance one – it would require political will for governments to convert their aid dependency into a more business model approach to financing. Financing is hard work compared to getting aid, and it requires transparency, accountability, and sound decision making to keep it. For politicians who have themselves been getting rich off of aid – even as their countries don’t develop – there’s a disincentive to move to the harsher conditions of the market. Those politicians who would want to change would face stiff resistance from their more corrupt and less forward thinking colleagues.

Despite the obstacles, Moyo consistently argues that moving away from donor dependence and towards a more diversified, business model of finance, is good for its own sake, as well as having the potential to be more financially lucrative. Of course, as Moyo points out, having confidence in the institutions – the banking system, the government, the laws, and the government’s respect for these laws – is an important part of encouraging business in a country.  Zimbabwe has a long way to go on this score; suspicion is still rife.

But Moyo’s point on remittances particularly stood out, given recent conversations I’ve been having.

The UN estimates that there are around 33 million Africans living outside their country of origin. Remittances – the money Africans abroad sent home to their families – totalled around US$20 billion in 2006. According to a United Nations report entiteld Resource Flows to Africa: An Update on Statistical Trends, between 2000 and 2003 Africans sent home about US$17 billion each year, a figure that even tops Foreign Direct Investment, which averaged US$ 15 billion during this period.
…
Although the actual remittance sums taken individually are relatively small, taken collectively the remittance amounts flowing into African nations’ cofferes are enormous. On  a household level, remittances are used to finance basic consumption needs: housing, children’s education, healthcare, and even capital for small businesses and entrepreneurial activities – the heart of an economy.
…
Remittances are, of course, in some sense a form of aid (the recipient is essntially getting something for nothing). And like other forms of aid, there is the inherent risk that remittances encourage reckless consumption and laziness. But at least some part of the money is reaching the indigent and making its way to productive uses. And unlike aid, it does not increase corruption.

With Zimbabwe having moved to a US dollar based economy, obviating the official vs. parallel market exchange rate dilemma, and with the mandatory foreign currency remittance to the central bank lifted, moving money from overseas into local bank accounts should become easier. And hopefully, with an interim government that is able to engender a bit more trust in the population, encouraging remittances should be met with less cynicism than Gono’s Homelink initiative was some years back.

Even my lowly banking society, CABS, has created USD accounts for all of its existing ZWD account holders. One only has to deposit $10 into the account for it to be active – the same swipe card, account number and pin number apply.

One can imagine an economy in which shops again started offering point of sale services – for customers to swipe their USD account bank cards. Schools could offer their account details for both local and Diasporan Zimbabweans to pay school fees directly into their accounts. Relatives could make other purchases, for example for electronics, equipment or other investments directly into the supplier’s bank account.

Morgan Tsvangirai recently estimated that rebuilding Zimbabwe will require at least US$ 5 billion. The revised 2009 budget stands at about US$ 1 billion – and most of that is for running the country, not rebuilding it. And whilst Zimbabwe is asking for aid, Mugabe’s and Zanu PF’s assets remain untouched. Zimbabwe needs financial help – but it needs this help to solve its problems, not create new ones or compound the existing ones. It’s time to get creative about how we finance our future – and depending on donors to bail us out isn’t the only way.

According to ZimOnline, Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti believes that “The consequences of it (unity government) not working are drastic, it will lead to a failure of the state, a collapse of the state and all the civil unrest that follows the failure of a state.”

Anyone would agree that Zimbabwe’s economy is in dire straits. All sectors of the economy, from business, agriculture, industry and mining to education, health care and sanitation need more money, more support and more stability if the country is to recover from the downward spiral of recent years and again be able to provide prosperity and development for Zimbabweans.

I appreciate that Biti may be deliberately presenting worst-case scenarios to pressure foreign governments and aid agencies to give more generously to Zimbabwe. He’s saying that if the unity government collapsed because it was short of finance, it would cost even more to clean up the mess that would create.

But I question the desperation inherent in Biti’s statement. It implies the potential to cling to a non-functioning unity agreement, because one is afraid of the alternatives. To date, Zimbabwe’s democratic transition has been a story of imperfect, negotiated settlements that we are urged to accept because “what other option is there.” Painting our current interim government as “make or break” just adds to the feeling that we must accept this deal, however flawed, because the alternatives are too ghastly to contemplate. And it stifles criticism of the deal, because who wants to be a spoiler if this really is out best hope?

But settling for a morally bankrupt compromise solution is what is most ghastly. Rather than clinging to blindly to our imperfect agreement, politicians should be encouraging all of us to open up the space in which to contemplate our alternatives more positively and proactively.

The Global Political Agreement signed in September last year makes it very clear that it is a framework for a transitional government. However, Zimbabweans are not vigilant, we run the risk that our interim government will become our government for the next five years or more.

Someone recently sent us a very useful list of the steps detailed in the GPA that will lead to a new Constitution, to be followed by fresh elections to be held according to the terms described in that Constitution.  They also sent a timeline of when those steps should be taken, given the number of months the GPA provided for the various tasks.

The first step is that a select committee – to work on the Constitution – should be set up by 11 April. That’s just three weeks away. Play your part in ensuring Zimbabwe moves towards a people-driven Constitution and a democratically elected and established government. Put pressure on your representatives, and the heads of all three political formations who signed the GPA, to make sure they follow the timeline.

The Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (“JOMIC”) has been established to “ensure full and proper implementation of the letter and spirit of“ the Global Political Agreement. If you have any concerns about the implementation of the agreement, or the government’s adherence to the timeline for drafting a new Constitution, report your concerns to JOMIC. You can reach JOMIC rotating Chairperson Welshman Ncube on Tel +263 4 252782-3/94-5/846, Fax +263 4 736300 email: wncube@africaonline.co.zw  and cc to funsthole@yahoo.com

Steps towards a new Constitution

1. Select Committee be set up within two months of inception of a new government;
2. The convening of the first All Stakeholders Conference shall be within 3 months of the date of the appointment of the Select Committee;
3. The public consultation process shall be completed no later than 4 months of the date of the first All Stakeholders Conference;
4. The draft Constitution shall be tabled within 3 months of completion of the public consultation process to a second All Stakeholders Conference;
5. The draft Constitution and the accompanying Report shall be tabled before Parliament within 1 month of the second All Stakeholders Conference;
6. The draft Constitution and the accompanying Report shall be debated in Parliament and the debate conceded within one month;
7. The draft Constitution emerging from Parliament shall be gazetted before the holding of a referendum;
8. A referendum on the new draft Constitution shall be held within 3 months of the conclusion of the debate’
9. In the event of the draft Constitution being approved in the referendum it shall be gazetted within 1 month of the date of the referendum; and
10. The draft Constitution shall be introduced in Parliament no later than 1 month after the expiration of the period of 30 days from the date of its gazetting.

New election date then to be decided upon according to new Constitution.

Timeline for a new Constitution

Maximum 20 month process – Taking the number of months stated in the GPA and using the maximum time limits as the guide to building the calendar.

11 Feb – New Government
11 April – Select Committee to be set up
11 July – Convening of the first All Stakeholders Conference
11 Nov  – Public consultation process completed
11 Feb 2010 – Draft Constitution to be tabled
11 March – Draft Constitution and the accompanying Report tabled before Parliament
11 April – Draft Constitution and the accompanying Report debated in Parliament
18 April – Draft Constitution emerging from Parliament shall be gazetted
18 July – Referendum on the new draft Constitution
18 Aug – If draft Constitution approved in the referendum it shall be gazetted
18 September – Draft Constitution introduced in Parliament

New election date then to be decided upon.