We all love it when technology makes our lives exciting, that is perhaps why mobile phones have been changing in shapes and sizes with stunning speed ever since these wonder gadgets were introduced to us back in the day. You can easily recall the “bricks” we used when Strive was granted his licence after “Father Zimbabwe” intervened. It’s kinda laughable now if you think of it. It wasn’t long of course before funky handsets became the vogue and them who had the bricks became very self-conscious about answering their phones in public as they feared ridicule from those who felt they were keeping up with cell phone technology.

One can list all kinds of phones that had their very fleeting 15 minutes of fame, the razors, the flip phones, and one can even recall some folks who seemed to think they were up the ladder of funky because of the ringing tone of their mobile! The “camera phone” became for some a “must have” as folks became fascinated with the whole idea of snapping away on your phone and sharing the pictures with the world. Then came this whole thing about 3G-enabled phones and some considered it the zenith of cool and are “Facebooking” in public as testimony to others that they are Zuckerberg-types therefore the definition of savvy.

I have heard from people who rushed to purchase what they back then considered expensive phones now claiming they do not need those phones after all: a phone that can receive calls and send messages will do just fine and you wonder what changed. Maybe they just got broke and can’t afford the smart phones of 2011. Yet there is a trend that has emerged rather with lightning speed that is pushing the boundaries of social and cell phone etiquette. And this is not the kind that speaks at the top of their voices in kombis about some phony multi-million dollar deal they are negotiating. But of course many users have obviously welcomed the advancement of mobile technology that has enabled these to be multi-media devices where you can record and also store music, movies, pictures etc. and they are using these utilises to the fullest.

However, it is the music part that pisses me off. These gadgets have given wannabe entrepreneurs immense business selling “memory cards” and this has become some kind of godsend for “music lovers.” Without consideration to other people’s space, this music is being blasted from mobile phones in all kinds of places you can imagine. I have seen and heard some of these people play music from their cell phones while in a kombi ride full of passengers. That these things come with earphones is of no consequence to these people. Looks like the logic is: the louder the better. Imagine sitting in a long kombi ride next to someone playing their favourite sounds, and I saw the other day a young woman actually singing along in kombi full of passengers! Boy was I pissed off. But what can you do? Tell the clown to turn that thing off? You can imagine the response. I remember when there was this excitement about “people’s radio,” you know, those walkie talkie-like wireless radios some chaps carried around with them everywhere, beer halls and even soccer matches where they would listen to the commentary of the match they were watching! It was just irritating, but those radios somehow disappeared from our faces and now we have these cell phones. OMG!

I imagine I am not the only one terribly irritated by this. We all love mobile technology but do we have to shove it in other people’s faces? You just have to recall those situations where people “refuse” to switch off their mobiles during a funeral or church service. It just is the definition of uncool. Around 2001 just the time the cell phone craze was gripping the nation, I recall a friend telling me his girlfriend actually asked him to call her during class so everyone could drool when they saw her phone as she answered it! You see she was doing some course whose classes were after hours so it presented an irresistible opportunity to show other working types just what she was made of. Yes my friend, there are people like that there. But puuuuuleeeeez, turn off the music!

I read with some kind of disgust the other day a story about ZESA managers who were fuming because Energy Minister Elton Mangoma had ordered the slashing of their salaries. They actually told the minister it was not his business to question their salaries. I wondered rather blithely if they would have responded with such brashness if this had come from a Zanu PF minister! But then it has become the typical story here where parastatals and state enterprises senior officials have continued to command ridiculous salaries when there is virtually nothing to justify it.

We all know about the mismanagement of these big concerns over the years with accusations that officials were riding on the back of Zanu PF patronage, and where in fact keeping up with the party’s streak of looting state resources. It is here where consciences have been numbed as the plundering of resources has rendered these state utility providers a huge burden on tax and rate payers with no service provision to speak of. So a minister who comes through with a broom to sweep the rot naturally becomes the bad guy because the logic is simple: no one ever complained before, and simply because – as some have claimed – these officials have been political appointees.

We read each time how South African government ministers are ever vigilant cracking the whip on unnecessary perks for officials who appear to think working for government is a sure way to bleed the purse. What then is amiss with Mangoma putting caps on salaries, or at least demanding that they get performance-based salary increments? Makes sense to me. We heard even from Ignatius Chombo the other week when he demanded a salary cap for Town Clerks where in some cases these municipality CEOs are reported to be earning monthly salaries of up to USD15,000.

Surely these salaries must be justified, and for a long time these people have been getting absurd perks that are not even based on performance, which reminds one of those US CEOs who run loss-making corporations but at the end of the year award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses, of course much to the chagrin of shareholders. Indeed Zimbabwe is in dire need of ministers who will put a stop to this nonsense.

Upenyu’s writing resonates with many folks, and it is disturbing that such attitudes exhibited by the cop she mentions can still be found in the “locations,” many years into the age of enlightenment. A guy “grows up in the hood,” goes to varsity, and the chaps treat him as one they cannot “hang with” no more. A friend said it is important  for him  that “even though” he is pursuing an MA abroad, he can still come to the “hood” and hang out with the fellas and pass a calabash of opaque beer just like they did back in the day. It is important because it tells him that he has not changed. Obviously this self-consciousness is also for the benefit of childhood chums who have this thing in their heads and would not expect him to hang out with them simply because he has been out there getting an education. That’s how it is in the “locations,” “elokitshini,” kumarokesheni” as Winky D puts it.

That education makes you interpret “reality” – constructed or otherwise – differently is obvious despite of course there being some who think not, yet there are chaps who think because you do not see and interpret the universe through their lenses you are therefore placing yourself on a higher intellectual plane. Come to Bulawayo and just try and respond in English to a cop who addresses you in Shona! He expects you to understand him but not him you, and will tell you to your face “saka ndimi makafunda” (so you are the educated type!). I heard over the weekend a pirate taxi driver say to some student teachers from Hillside Teachers College: “phela abantu bengafunda bayahlupha” (educated people are troublesome) after they had asked him to drop them off near the college gate but claimed they did not have extra money (ZAR5) to pay for this convenience. It reminded me of the good old days in Zimbabwe when teachers were respected as part of the “educated middle class” but have over the years seen the profession being ridiculed because of poor salaries and working conditions.

Yet there are many more others who impose “erudition” on you. A few years ago, a friend’s wife asked me to tutor her on some subject I had no clue about, and her reasoning was that since I was at varsity therefore I had the knowledge therefore was supposed to assist her, thus went the logic. And yes she did not take kindly to my claims that I had no clue about what she was talking about: “if it was some salad chick you would have assisted her” – her exact words. And these are the folks who will be quick to remind you that you belong in the rut along with them so don’t imagine you are a better person because you went to varsity! Of course you wonder where the heck that is coming from? And that’s not to say anything about my wife who over the years had to deal with the whole neighbourhood as folks sought to be tutored on one subject or another, and woe betide her for claiming commitment to other issues. Why? Because she was at varsity! That’s just how folks view life, and that is where resentment of “privilege” and “education” is found in very generous servings. Like Upenyu says, you are expected to apologise even if you do not know what exactly you are apologising for.

Another friend who earned his PhD last year said to me he had learned to do things differently when we scoured the CBD looking for a decent joint where we could sit and catch up over a few beers. It was no longer about just seeing the neon lights of a pub and getting in, but being careful about the places one patronises. Thing is, he would be expected to hang around the corner with his old neighbourhood buddies, but you also have to imagine the conversation. He bought himself a decent home, and said to me, “when people see me walking and commuting, they will ‘say look at him, what did he bring from the Diaspora’!” He, like many returning or visiting from the Diaspora, would be expected to be driving and buying copious amounts of beer for old mates who still hang around the local “bottle store” waiting for anyone to buy them anything from a cigarette to beer, and hell, pilfer change from the money you give them to buy another round of beer!

That’s what we found older chaps doing back then when a childhood friend visited from Wenela or Goli, and they obviously left something for their younger brothers to emulate. Ah, this Diaspora and education thing, you have to be in the township streets to feel the pulse. It  is here where throwing in a few English words in the conversation is met with disgust because, as some put it, you are flaunting your education, you think you are smarter than everybody!

Perhaps Upenyu ought to say, “sorry, I’m not apologising!”

It is interesting that only a few weeks ago, the government was being extolled by some incorrigibly optimistic watchers of the Zimbabwean crisis for “opening” up media space by licensing new publications and also calling for applications from prospective broadcasters. Media reform is one of the sticking points of the GPA and the GNU that it birthed, and one has to imagine the reluctance of the former ruling party to give in to the demands of its sleeping partners based, of course, on its own historic knowledge of how these “tools” were used in the hands of the “white enemy” back then.

Yet there is something about some “analysts” here who are always quick to see reforms in the making each time the unflinching Zanu PF lifts its finger to scratch itself. They imagine the party is about to move the mountain of political, economic, media or whatever reform demanded by progressive forces and other people of goodwill. Yet here we are this week being told yet again that some scribes from the alternative media have once again been made very reluctant guests of the police. The latest arrest of these journalists coincided with Webster Shamu telling a gathering of SADC journos that there are scribes who continue to do the bidding of Western and other forces, a line favoured by oligarchs when referencing the private media.

That Shamu does not raise a finger – even to scratch his head – about these continued arrests tells some he could well be colluding with the police, after all, the cops have publicly avowed their allegiance to his party! How else would “ordinary” Zimbabweans read into it? Is not ours a land filled with political conspiracies? You hear it in kombis, pubs and yes, newsrooms! One just has to listen to ZBC bulletins and the unstinting dressing down of Biti and Tsvangirai to get the gist of how the Minister of Journalists favours his own. Thus it is that it is apparent that anyone dreaming of reforms of any sort in this country as long as Zanu PF lives is surely indulging in an exercise that will only give birth to ulcers and migraines.

Only a few day ago, ZBC News was being berated for showing the charred remains of victims of the Sunningdale fuel tanker “inferno,” and on 22 June during the 1730hrs Shona news bulletin these same people had the gall to show the body of a man hanging by the neck from a tree “in an apparent suicide,” the broadcaster reported. To “mitigate” viewer shock, the body still hanging from a tree was covered over the face with a white sheet! However, in the Nbebele bulletin that followed, someone must have come to their senses as the “hanging man” was not shown, and so it was for the 2000hrs main news.

Where the heck are these hacks trained?

There are many reasons why the so-called “Mthwakazians” are a butt of many Zimbabwean political jokes, and you just have to ask yourself why the fight for a separate state or whatever keeps them in the papers is being taken to other “people from the region” who decided to follow their own political beliefs. You can see it here where the Speaker of Parliament, who they refer as “Laughmore”, is ridiculed by “Mthwakazians” who expect him to be in their corner simply because he is “from the region.”

And we read the other, the recently released Paul Siwela, demanding to meet President Robert Mugabe, but we all know the old man has other “more pressing” issues like how to cheat Father Time and remain a sprightly octogenarian for the forced poll. That the issues raised by federalists, devolutionists and other fringe pro-Matabeleland activists are legitimate, you just have to question their political savvy.