Imagine getting into a kombi and being treated like a human being for once, receiving a friendly smile, or the kombi starting to move only once you have secured a place to seat and are seated. Well believe it or not, the City Council of Bulawayo is trying to achieve this. They have ordered ‘hwindis’ to have training courses in public relations and customer care. Another improvement in our kombi ride experiences in local cities and towns, is being brought on by EcoCash the bank run by Econet Zimbabwe. They are introducing EcoCash services to the transport sector. This means commuter users get to pay their kombi fares using EcoCash.

In June this year, overweight Pakistan policemen were told to trim down their waistlines or quit their jobs within a month. Reading this story made me wonder if Zimbabwe will ever order this to their uniformed forces. On many occasions I must admit I have seen overweight police officers with straining buckles, especially at roadblocks. Will our ‘overweight’ officers ever be told to lose weight?

So the news is abuzz with research and survey findings of critical political issues in Zimbabwe. Political parties have commented on the results of these surveys to support or castigate the reports based on how favourable the findings are for their political interest. Politicians, civic society and the media have met to discuss these surveys. Hot and out of the oven, is a survey commissioned by Afrobarometer and conducted by the Mass Public Opinion Institute (MPOI) of their Round 5 Survey in Zimbabwe.

The survey which was conducted by MPOI from the 16th to the 30th of July 2012 randomly selected adult Zimbabwean citizens aged 18+ in the ten provinces of the country. The randomly selected study population was both rural and urban however, it excluded people residing at institutions, police camps and barracks. A total of 2 400 adult Zimbabweans were interviewed in a face-to-face interview using Shona, Ndebele or English as preferred by the respondent. The findings to the first three questions as concluded by MPOI were:

Presidential Term Limits
-A majority of Zimbabweans (74%) want term limits for the president.
-Support for maximum term limits is high in both urban areas (83% in favor) and rural areas, where 69% support this.
-Majorities in all provinces support devolution with Bulawayo Province recording the highest number of this support.
-A huge majority of MDC-T supporters (93%) favor presidential term limits
-Opinion on presidential term limits among Zanu-PF supporters is almost equally split; 48% support the idea while half are opposed.

Citizenship
-A majority of survey respondents are in support of other forms of citizenship except dual citizenship. 72% reject dual citizenship.
-Manicaland province had the highest number of respondents (84%) against dual citizenship while Mat South boasts the highest number of respondents in support of this kind of citizenship in Zimbabwe.
-More Zanu-PF loyalists (76%) reject dual citizenship than the MDC-T supporters (67%).

Devolution of Power
-A majority of Zimbabweans (61%) are in support of devolution
-A significant proportion of survey respondents (21%) could neither agree nor disagree with the concept of devolution
-7 out of 10 provinces want to see a devolved state in Zimbabwe
-The strongest sentiment for devolution was expressed in Bulawayo

In conclusion MPOI says they wait to see if the people’s views found in the survey will be incorporated in the constitution, which is still in the making process.

Limbikani Makani was chosen to attend the 2012 Young African Leaders Innovation Summit in the US and now he mentors young Zimbabwean technocrats. I attended a Food for Thought Session at the US Embassy Public Affairs section yesterday where Limbikani was speaking. I was blown away by his motivational presentation titled, ‘Quit complaining, Take responsibility’.

Limbikani who is the founder of TechZim, a technology news website in Zimbabwe shared his experiences from the Innovation Summit, the experiences of starting up a website and of being a student at a local college in Zimbabwe. He left a lot of the audience believing that anything is possible. He also shared the stories of winners of the 2012 ZOL Jumpstart Challenge, which he co-founded. These stories show how Zimbabweans have seen where gaps exist and filled them with technology based tools and applications. Limbikani challenged Zimbabweans who seem to be born complaining, believe that everything around them is wrong and that someone has failed them. He put it to Zimbabweans to take responsibility and solve the problems they encounter.

Katie the Duchess of Cambridge is up in arms with media houses that published naked photos of her whilst she was sun bathing on holiday in France with her husband William. Their lawyers are said to be pursuing the matter through French courts with the aim of preventing further use of the images and to seek damages. To them their right to privacy has been infringed since these pictures were taken using a long lens by someone in the street near where the royal couple was staying. Back at home, Locardia the PM’s ‘estranged’ wife is a big sucker for encouraging journalists into her private life. Today the Herald’s front page carries a picture of her and her lawyer discussing the way forward. Yes – her lawyer’s office – I wonder how a journalist had access to that meeting! She has always struck me as a media attention seeker. She surely knows how to get journalists inside her camp and get them well equipped with details.

I recently stumbled on a report online about sterilization of HIV positive women. I was baffled to learn that three women in Namibia had been sterilized without their consent. I have to admit that I haven’t heard of any such cases in Zimbabwe. All I see are means of educating HIV positive couples on ways of having healthier and possibly HIV negative children. Thus there is more talk of the mother to child transmission programmes and no talk of sterilization. The three women took the state hospitals to court for sterilizing them, making them barren on the basis that they are HIV positive. Now these women cry that they are going to be outcasts in their societies because of their barren nature. In African societies a woman is defined by being able to bear children. They say they have lost out on this ‘womanly definition’ against their own will.