Thursday 8 October is a day that I will remember this year with bitter memories. This is what happened on the night of October 8. I was coming from a neighbouring township with my mzukulu at a round 2015hrs, and as we were about to cross the street that joins the two townships, a speeding car suddenly stopped in front of us. An armed cop apparently dressed for peace keeping duty in Kosovo jumped off the back of the vehicle with the agility of a ninja. He approached gun in hand, and boy was I stunned.

“Get in the car now!” he barked without giving us a second to understand what was happening. I obviously tried to protest, and the enraged cop further barked: “You are the people who go about raping women and killing them.” I thought, this is becoming surreal. Maybe I’m dreaming. Is this the Zimbabwe we want? There is GNU for Gods’ sake and should we be subjected to this treatment, I mused in the privacy of my thoughts – and under the cover of the dark night that managed to camouflage my obvious rage.

We were then shoved at the back of the truck where about twenty bitter men sat huddled like those miserable illegal immigrants trying to sail through the Straits of Gibraltar. “I was picked up when I was coming from church. Look, here is my Bible.” “I was picked up right in front of my house.” “I was picked up when I was giving way to the police car.” Their grumbling went on and on, and one female cop who proved to have been particularly miffed by something that some guessed had nothing to do with carrying out her duties went into action.

She liberally lashed her sjambok above our heads in the dark and I saw grown men wince in pain. “You think because I am a woman I cannot use this sjambok on you?” she snarled. Soon we were at the Nkulumane Police Station. I told myself, we are leaving this wretched place soon as we explain we were on our way home as law abiding citizens, but then I was to learn later rather painfully that you cannot reason with an unreasonable man – or worse yet cop. Soon, were told to line up. As we were led to the holding cells, the baton stick was again recalled and each of us got pretty violent and very painful lashes on our buttocks. I actually asked one stupefied cop to add more as he had no clue what the hell he was doing and for what reason.

These cops did not bother to tell us why our rights were being violated like that. Then we were told that anyone who did not want to spend the night in the filthy cells must pay USD5! For what? Are we living in a police state and not aware of it? Wrong question! As we were pushed into the cells, a visibly – and understandably bitter guy said: “I am not paying for a crime I did not commit you can bet on that.” Then the cop said something I still recall today and wonder what the hell he was talking about: “So you think you are the Prime Minister? You will rot in there if you think we are here to play.” He spoke in Shona and appeared aggrieved by something which only some seer and someone blessed with ESP could have deciphered. I wondered like everybody else where the Prime Minister fit in here and in what context. But then it has been said the GNU has many enemies! The cop just let the sentence hang and it was up to the crowd to fill in the gaps. Spend the night in the cells we did, 20 of us.

I wondered about my two young boys back home. They were obviously waiting for their dad to tuck them in, but they were to spend the night with their young minds wondering where the old man was. Talk about feeling like an absentee dad! In the morning, we were asked if we had the money to pay a fine. Again back at the “charge office” we were subjected to more ridicule. So we were being offered our freedom, but we had to tell the cops what we had been arrested for. “You tell us, isn’t you are the one who arrested us,” I said to the cop who sat on a high bar seat literally feeling high and mighty.

“If you do not know why you were arrested then we are returning you to the cells so you can wait for the cops who arrested you to tell you why you were arrested. Or even if you still insist you did not do anything, we throw back in the cells so you can go to court and plead your case.” I instantly hated the guy. He was enjoying it, and in his own warped mind he was doing us a great favour by offering us an option to pay a fine. I wondered: is this the Zimbabwe the GNU is promising us? It certainly isn’t the Zimbabwe we want. “So you think you are the Prime Minister” those words kept ringing in my angry mind. “We cannot just accept your fine when you do not know what you are paying for,” the cop reasoned. To a cut a long story short as I was increasingly being infuriated by someone, others in the cells had already called a “Border Gezi graduate,” I said fine we were arrested for public drinking. That seemed to rile the cop.

“We are not playing here. We will throw you back in the cells until you tell us why you were arrested.” “Okay,” I said. “We were crossing the street about a hundred metres from here (meaning the police station) when we were picked up and thrown into the cells.” “Okay then. You were arrested for loitering.” Boy was I stunned! Then my nephew asked what I still think was a clincher. “So there is a curfew then?” “Huh?” the cop was baffled. What the heck is he talking about? I saw it written on the bamboozled cops face. “So there is a curfew then,” my nephew repeated. “Huh?” Turns out he did not know what a curfew is! “Asivanhu havatshavumidzwa ukuhamba ebusuku?” the young lad asked, lacing his broken Shona with Ndebele. It was only then that the cop responded, but only to expose the nature of the intellectual aptitude of these people tasked with protecting law abiding citizens. Another guy on the other side of the counter asked: “So the curfew is that no one moves around after 9PM?” “Even 8PM,” the cop replied. And we all burst out laughing despite our circumstances. So as you may imagine, we parted with USD10 and for what? I still do not know. But I did tell the cops who rained that sjambok on my buttocks: “God bless you.”

Even as I write this I have difficulty sitting as my backside is still painful. It also got me thinking about something: when you are assaulted or mugged, doctors always ask for a police report before they treat you. Now, I was sjamboked by cops, who do I get the police report from for me to get treatment? Great country ain’t it? But then this is not Europe or the States where you can sue these cops and expect to be awarded damages. After all, these are the same chaps who over the years have literally got away with murder. For me the least I can do is tell the world about it. Perhaps we are living a lie under this GNU animal. These are times we are living in when so many of us had imagined police brutality was confined to the pre-GNU years. Two weeks later I read in the Chronicle newspaper (Wednesday 14 October 2009 p.2) that the country’s Number One Cop Augustine Chihuri had urged promoted officers in the Midlands province to respect human rights. I laughed bitterly.

Snip snip. Extra extra. Blah blah. Aids could well be worst thing to happen to mankind if one is not to indulge in time consuming Biblical and other extrapolations to find worser scourges, but the strategies being debated and proffered by health experts have somewhat exposed how desperate the world – especially the developing – is about containing new infections. That is if not only it was about taming the feral sex urges. Take for example all this talk about circumcision: it has been reported that this drastically reduces chances of contracting the HIV-virus that causes Aids. But looking at the bigger picture this provides insights about the world’s obsession with unprotected sex – just exactly what is killing poor Africans in their millions! No wonder radical religious types snort at all approaches designed by experts as what will beat this terrible thing. Have a circumcision, have unprotected sex – bulletproof! Why? Without sounding like some haughty holier-than-thou type, is it because we have resigned ourselves to the eerie imagination that nothing else will – not even behaviour change – beat this terrible thing that is claiming the lives of young men and women with so much promise before their time? To circumcise or not to circumcise, that’s the question.

For me winter has momentarily provided a welcome distraction from blogging about politics and all ruminations about the bad and the ugly of the usual suspects who have made vows that they will not preside over a bountiful Zimbabwe.

I am not a fashionista and will not claim any aptitude or taste in choosing appropriate wardrobe for anybody including myself no matter the season. But the coming of winter always seems to bring the worst in folks who stick to that dictum that they dress because they MUST not because they WANT to.

In any case, not many here can afford the luxury of picking the kind of clothes they would want or desire had they been afforded the opportunity by their economic circumstances to stash the cash for that cold day.

I saw the other day a woman obviously trying to beat the cold and I could not but wonder rather aloud what other females would have to say about it if at all they would have bothered considering they also would have been busy trying to keep the cold at bay – minding of course their sense of humour.

She wore a heavy sweater and beneath the sweater protruded what would have been a dress, then beneath that dress protruded what looked like a petticoat, beneath the petticoat came a long to cover her legs up to the ankles.

Forgive me but this was my first time since ages ago that I saw a petticoat extending under a dress for all to see. And I thought to myself “isn’t female underwear (any underwear) supposed to remain unseen?”

No contest about men, they could be just as fashion “unsavvy” but one has to ask if winter is an excuse to parade fashion tastes that would put one in front of the dress taste firing squad, but then of course Zimbabweans have long been reduced in the past 20-something years to live lives they previously looked down upon with utmost disdain.

I figure it only gives ammunition to the tourists and pressmen and women who visit this part of the world from outerspace about how bad it has become for us so much that we cannot afford to decently cover our butts!

But then it is this winter which for those with a sharp eye has exposed how bad stretched incomes here have become so one has to ask if food, CLOTHES and shelter are still up there as taught in kindergarten as Man and Woman’s basic needs.

“There is life beyond politics and I hope with a bit of luck to experience that myself,” said British Defence Secretary John Hutton on announcing his resignation from the government of Gordon Brown on June 5, 2009.

And these are the same British chaps lampooned over the years by the Zanu PF cabal, the same Africans who have chosen politics as a career where wild riches are amassed beyond their wildest dreams. Take them out of the political office what do they have? Kind of reminds one of Africa’s career politicians doesn’t it? Once one is elected into office, you are in it for life. And this obsession is exactly what has fed or fanned political violence as unpopular leaders stoke the emotions of poor people and refuse to leave office and therefore politics.

For some reason they can never pursue other interests outside gladiatorial politics, those who left without putting up a fight have for example been appointed to mediate in some of the world’s hot spots, yet those who came after them have seen no reason why they should leave and pursue other interests.

Thank God for those nations who continue resisting attempts by idiotic leaders who seek to rewrite their constitutions in a bid to extend their rule as if that itself is informed by having done a swell job. On the contrary. They still want to amend constitutions even though the people they claim elected them into office are fed up and seek fresh minds to steer them away from perennial poverty.

So what do these career politicians who seek to amend constitutions and those who lose elections do? They unleash their supporters and the security forces on their perceived opponents to “quell unrest” and the blood on the streets thus defines African politics as informed by their unwillingness to make themselves useful elsewhere other than the realm of politics. It is a crying shame. Wacko Jacko sang about blood on the dance floor: these politicians have blood on their hands but they continue dancing! D for dancing ministers, right?

Within Zimbabwe’s context, it is interesting that the people who presided over the country’s ruin are celebrated for their education and insist on being addressed as such – remembering of course that some of the PhDs are honorary. So one would imagine they would easily find use elsewhere where no punches are thrown and no verbal WMDs are hurled.

Yet because they have destroyed all sectors of gainful employment, they find that they too will never find “proper” jobs outside active politics so they stick it out in bloody politics come hell or high water and urge supporters to cudgel anyone who chants a different political slogan! That is the odium African politics carries in its baggage thus we see that drive to personalise whole nations as leaders refuse to leave office and declare themselves life presidents – as if there was ever such a thing. But then African politicians typically live by that old dictum: make hay while the sun shines. And they sure do.

I have heard of a number of households in high density suburbs that have received fixed telephone bills of up to USD1,500 and had their phones disconnected. A guy told me the other day he got a bill for USD125 and also had his phone disconnected.

We get pronouncements from ministers in charge of state utilities assuring consumers that they will never be cut off from these essential services and yet these reports continue with consumers being clueless about recourse.

Electricity, water, telecommunications etc appear to be riddled with odious political machinations one has to wonder if these directives issued by the ministers mean anything to the utility administrators.

These directives appear to be simply ignored and if consumers do not have the protection of the ministers, where then do they turn for relief when their phones are cut off because of these ridiculous charges?

Everyone knows there is no Zimbabwean worker who earns a USD1,000 and we know civil servants get a measly USD100, and these are the folks who back then enjoyed the so-called mod-cons (fixed phones included) so how the heck are they expected to pay a USD1,500 phone bills.

It will take them a cool 15 months to settle that bill and this means in the meantime they won’t be eating anyting or paying any other bills! All this for a telephone? Only in Zimbabwe!!

These families will never again have a telephone in their homes, and if it is folks who had stuff like dial-up internet connection, they are then forced to patronise internet cafes where they will pay for a service they rightly should be accessing in the comfort of their homes.

Not only that, the inconvenience is inconceivable in this age where virtually every family has a member living and working outside the country who cannot get through the frustrating mobile phones.

Fixed phones then have been a godsend for these families as calls from abroad get through without any headaches, but who is listening. This is not an appeal for the service provider to ignore defaulting rate payers but rather simply to review these outrageous bills.

As long these rates are not revised, it’s a sure return to the Stone Age.

I have to say this. I have commented on local social and political issues from way back before the turn of the century and for me whether it has been objective or emotional, one thing has always stood out in my analysis and understanding of local politics: the sincerity of Zanu PF is always and has always been suspect.

Everything the party says – the individuals as a collective – is taken in at your own peril. Whatever people say, the analysts, the opposition, the academics, there is always a caveat.

Beware – they (Zanu PF) only put up a human face to a leviathan that only seeks the dominance of other people’s lives. And all this based on the folly of imagining their own immortality.

I wrote a long time ago about how Mugabe made snide remarks way back in the early years of independence about a white legislator who sued govenment and won the case only to have Mugabe – then the darling of the white world -  to issue an edict that the pay out would be a waste of taxpayer’s money so why pay it.

Now they (Mugabe types) are arressting or rather re-arresting all kinds of activists in direct contravention of the so-called GPA so where does that leave us? Are we there yet? Stupid question! Are we ever getting there?

With this kind of crap where everybody seems to think the leopard will change its colours one can only commiserate with the opposition – and the rest of the incorrigible optimists – where popular thought is that Mugabe and the other types are about or on the road to Damascus. It has always been a trifle that actions speak louder than words, so folks how louder can it get?

The question then is: how do Zimbabweans get themselves out of this mess as the whole world is saying we only pass this Rubicon when they see genuine changes? We have lived with this crap for long enough and we surely deserve better.