So Zimpapers, which ‘allegedly’ is not a parastatal has launched its own daily paper called H-Metro. I’m tired of this, don’t buy the Herald, cancel your subscriptions. RIGHT NOW! Not tomorrow when you’ve had a moment to think about how difficult your life will be without state sponsored drivel. The Herald et al are not the only sources of news in this country. Neither are they fair, balanced or accurate. It is not a defense to say that you need to know what’s going on in the country, you know what’s going on in the country! We as consumers and citizens are being taken advantage of. The longer we lie down quietly, the longer it will keep happening.

I’m not saying go out into the streets and march on Zimpapers, I don’t have the same amount of courage as those who do so. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit helplessly while the government violates my freedom. We still have the freedom to spend our money where we will. I’m saying hit Zimpapers and by extension the Government of Zimbabwe, where it hurts the most, in their wallets. Clearly, they refuse to pay attention to my vote and my voice. If the 20 000 people who are currently buying the Herald everyday, stop, perhaps the State will begin to listen.

I’m beginning to think that the term ‘empowerment’ is fancy NGO parlance for giving people permission to think for themselves. I went to the NGO Expo yesterday and I met a lot of NGO workers who appeared not to be ‘empowered’. It was a work assignment. So being ‘empowered’ by my NGO, I spoke to other NGOs about who Kubatana is and what we do. I should mention here that I do not labour under the title of Communication / Information and Advocacy Officer, I was merely doing my job as someone belonging to an organization: that is promoting its agenda and furthering its goals (ultimately that is the purpose of anyone’s job). Imagine my surprise, being an ‘empowered’ NGO worker, to find that other NGO workers were not as ‘empowered’ as I was, although they throw that particular term around like its free money.

I really don’t understand how some (not all, there were some organizations who had people that were very ‘empowered’) NGOs get on their soapboxes about ‘empowerment’ and fail to ‘empower’ their own people to speak to the media? Surely this is a basic marketing principle? The Expo is after all a marketing tool. I may not be very experienced in all things marketing, but I am familiar with the term Brand Ambassador, and with the principle of making every single person in an organization , from the Director to the cleaner, a Brand Ambassador. Making an organisations functionaries Brand Ambassadors means ensuring that every one knows what the organization is about, what it does, its hopes and aspirations for the future and more importantly why the existence of that organization is necessary. More than that, they are able (or shall we say ‘empowered’?) to speak to anyone at any time about it. Therefore, in an organization that believes enough in its own vision to invest in its people to do the same, anyone, Information Officer or not can answer basic questions about what their organizations does.

At one NGO, when I asked to interview to the Information Officer, she refused point blank to talk to me. At another, we spent most of what was a lovely afternoon trying to reach Head Office so we could get permission for an interview. I had spoken to the Information Officers earlier, who then gave me the run around. You might well wonder what sort of scary questions I was going ask that would elicit such reactions. They were simple: what issues that organization was currently focusing on; how the current political environment affected their work; how they (and here’s a key word), communicate with their constituencies; and the most controversial one of all: how they stay inspired in their work.

The NGO Expo was to give those NGOs who chose to exhibit an opportunity to get their issues out there. But they failed to ‘empower’ their Communication/ Information and Advocacy Officers to communicate to the public and media, and advocate their organizations objectives. So what exactly have they achieved by exhibiting? How are these organizations going to achieve their objectives, EVER, if their own people are poor representations of the organization? It seems to me that marketing is the least of their problems, and next year the money would be better spent in training their people to better represent their organization. I can’t really blame the functionaries for being afraid to speak out of turn. I blame the administrators and directors who create all the red tape in the first place. They are no better than government officials for having created such nonsensical rules for the dissemination of information.

I want the life I was promised as a child.
I do not want to go to another country,
to live like a foreigner,
a second class citizen
who doesn’t speak the lingo,
understand the subtle nuances of
that culture, that language,
THOSE people.
I want to celebrate MY Heroes Holiday,
not just go through the motions,
because really, its a public holiday and what else is there to do?
I want to feel safe when I walk the streets,
of MY country,
and not live in fear
of harrasment because I’m a woman;
of violence because of my political, religious or social beliefs;
of hunger when I work like a slave;
or poverty because no matter what I do, its never enough.
I want to see an end in sight,
a reason to stay and fight,
other than this is the land of my birth.
Its not enough anymore.

If we all stand back from things that are broken, that need fixing and say that we can’t do any thing, and that the government is responsible and they need to fix it. And if the government says that it doesn’t have the money to fix it then does that mean that there is no solution? Does that mean students will forever go without schools and books and teachers? And sick people will go without hospitals doctors and nurses? If we all agree that we don’t want handouts from rich countries and that we want to dictate the terms of their aid, and yet we still expect them to come and bail us out, do we really believe that they will take us seriously? If we let our politicians get away with corruption and we don’t hold the MPs that we voted into position accountable for their actions, who really is to blame for a bad situation turning into an untenable one?

I didn’t learn African history in school. What I know of my own history is what has been handed down from father to son (or in this case daughter) for generations. In Shona we say Ziva kwawakabva, kwaunoenda husiku (know where you came from, for where you go is dark). Very few of us know our histories before colonialism, and have a passing knowledge of the country’s history as a whole. What we do know is a history that is tainted, it is our story as seen by foreigners. It wasn’t that long ago that to be black was to be inferior, and we believed it. We didn’t know how to prove anything different.

The world has changed, but that lesson of a lack of history has become part of the very nature of being African. Africa as a continent looks Westwards and Eastwards and never to herself for solutions to her problems. Africans are supposedly the most educated and skilled immigrant group in America and Europe, yet Africa itself is the poorest and most under developed continent on the planet. How? Because even in education we teach ourselves the inferiority of our ideas. It is no wonder then that Africa’s collective present, and future, looks dark.

Dictionary.com defines patriotism as devoted love, support and defense of one’s country, national loyalty. In confusing love of our country with support of bad leadership, we’ve lost our sense of Patriotism. Yet patriotism is within the reach of ordinary citizens and something that we desperately need a lot more of. It’s spreading the word when something good happens and realizing that not everything in this country has to revolve around party politics. Patriotism is refusing to bribe a police officer and insisting that he follow the letter of the law for our traffic (or other) violations. It’s paying our taxes when we have to and buying Zimbabwean products to support our manufacturing industries. Its letting our neighbours who haven’t had water for years get water from us when we have boreholes. Its letting someone else go at the dead traffic lights. Its even turning the lights off when you’re not in the room to save electricity, not just for you but for the whole country. Patriotism is standing up for the Zimbabwe we believe in. Being Zimbabwean, regardless of who or where we are is something we should all take pride in. Working toward the Zimbabwe we all want to live in is something we should all do on a daily basis. It doesn’t require grand national gestures. Oftentimes it is the littlest things that make the biggest difference, it just takes us to keep an eye out for them. What have you done for Zimbabwe lately?