I find it strange that the two MDCs actually invest time in trashing each other when the matter at hand is obvious.

The spat has inevitably sucked in ordinary Zimbabweans who have taken to social media platforms with angry reactions on whether or not the two must play Voltron and combine their forces against Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF.

But you wonder where that anger will get us, and already, some cynics say most of the most vocal people are the same folks who have never bothered to vote! And they have unwittingly voted for Zanu PF, isn’t it said that bad governments are chosen by people who don’t vote!

In the spirit of multi-partyism, it could well be “may the best man win” as it is obvious that these political gladiators are not about to kiss and make up, and if Zanu PF triumphs, then they should start asking themselves serious questions about their relevance to the people’s long yearning for a “transition to democracy.”

But then you can’t talk sense with any politician.

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” George Bernard Shaw

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.

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.

I saw a group of police officers fill a kombi at the Copacabana rank and I found it rather curious that these cops made more numbers than civilian passengers; surely they would bankrupt the kombi owner.

I wondered why the tout would allow all of them into the vehicle, remembering of course that where I am from, police officers don’t pay for a kombi ride!

But turned out they were all paying customers.

Another eye opener about how things are done differently here perhaps, yet I chuckled recalling that for kombi drivers in Bulawayo, the whole idea of giving a cop a free ride right in the front seat is so that the driver is waved through by traffic cops checking for everything from vehicle fitness certificate to driver’s license.

The travelling cop becomes the driver’s Moses, parting the road for safe passage.

What then here where the cops are paying full fares, by the ways of logic, there is obviously no protection to speak of and I am trying to picture a scene where traffic cops stop a kombi full of fellow cops who are paying passengers. Perhaps the same would apply? Wave the kombi through, I mean?

Yet the whole idea of cops and free rides has been met with some daring by certain Bulawayo touts, and I recall a tout looking a young cop in the eye and asking him if he if he had money for the ride.

The dumbfounded cop stared blankly and hesitated before the kombi sped off without him!

In any case, if you think of it, the parallels extend to all sectors of the country’s troubled present: many politicians have been fingered in demanding protection fees from sectors as diverse as farming and mining where extortion has been the order of the day: pay up and I will make sure your farm is not expropriated!

And the small fry, the poorly paid cop, can only have a free ride ostensibly to protect the driver from having his vehicle impounded, at least only as long as the cop is in the kombi!

Yet seeing the cops in Harare pay their fares like everyone else did brings a sense that perhaps this relationship between kombi drivers and cops is based on reports of cops smashing kombi window screens so why reward them with free rides!

It’s become all too predictable that each time Zimbabwe approaches an election, arrests of anyone from reporters to politicians to drunks hits the stratosphere, and this year is coming as no surprise.

But there is a disturbingly comical element to it that you have to ask why the cops apparently always sleep on their jobs seeing that some of these “crimes” border on the ridiculous.

For example, we have Tongai Matutu, the MDC-T legislator for Masvingo Central who faces incarceration for allegedly calling Mugabe a dog some eight years ago. Eight years ago? Surely something must be wrong with this picture.

The Ndebele say “icala kaliboli” literally meaning a crime does not rot as comeuppance will be visited on the offender when they have long forgotten about it.

But then, one has to ask why it would take eight long years for the “wheels of justice” to catch up with Matutu if it is not some arcane and nefarious motive in a country already known to punish people who laugh at the presidential portrait?

This is a country where defenders of the Republic readily beat their chests proclaiming a strict observance and adherence to the rule of law, but it’s a cruel contradiction then that for a country that claims to scrupulously uphold the rule of law, the same justice has been very slow in being applied, effectively denying citizens their right to expeditious legal processes! After all, is it not a well-worn aphorism that “justice delayed is justice denied?”

Early in the year, we had Douglas Mwonzora being arrested for having called Mugabe a goblin back in the excitement of 2008.

Mwonzora has also previously faced arrest where he is alleged to have defrauded someone of ZW350million in 2005!

Law abiding and “fair minded” citizens seeking protection from the Attorney General’s office would no doubt ask why these things are happening now and question the competence of that respected office.

Some would proffer that perhaps someone has been sleeping on the job, but that would be incorrigible naivety as we already know it goes beyond the oft claimed backlog of court cases made worse by shortage of magistrates!

Then there is also Chimanimani West MP Lynette Karenyi who was convicted for “holding an unsanctioned meeting” last year. Last year really?

One could go on and on with this, but it does point to the futility of engaging the Cheka in any political jousting and as long as this continues it makes one shudder to think what crimes, real or imagined, will be “excavated” from the vaults to “let them have it” as the elections loom large!