We heard this from a subscriber today. What are you hearing about cotton farmers?

The Zimbabwe Gvt said it will be the sole buyer for cotton this year and the farmers are still holding on to their crop. All is silent. A friend of mine told me people are turning into stealing livestock especially goats to get the dollar. Worse things may happen if the silence continues. Is there anything that is being done to resolve this issue.

I was really moved by the boldness of an girl pupils who protested against their school authorities right in front of their nearest Ministry of Education offices in Zimbabwe. The pupils who are all boarders at Mukaro High School in Gutu, walked for 20km, taking four hours to reach to the district’s Ministry of Education offices. They sneaked out from the dormitories as early as 2am and reached the offices at 6am. Their aim was to protest water shortages and poor food at the school. A big round of applause ladies! The girls at school are said to number 700 and one can only imagine the health implications of having water shortages with so many children.

With the Ministry of Education now aware and doing an investigation into the plight of these pupils and the school authorities knowing well that they are now under scrutiny from the different stakeholders involved, like the parents, the education ministry, health officials and other concerned parties, these pupils are guaranteed of some change and provision of a basic necessity – water. Not only will this benefit them until they complete their studies but it will also benefit future generations of pupils to come to that school. They have not only protested their rights at this particular school Mukaro High, but they have been a voice for other pupils around the country who due to varying circumstances are not able to take up such high levels of boldness. Also this a big warning to school authorities that misuse school funds meant for the welfare of school children. They should change their ways before such protests occur at their schools.

It is such small acts of resistance and protest that bring about change in the bigger picture. It is high time we emulate these pupils and make those accountable for discrepancies in the provision of our society’s daily life needs.

We got this and we thought it well worth sharing because it so clearly illustrates the incompetence in Zinara:

This week Zimbabwe Post Offices finally started issuing the new required vehicle license discs.  The new system was instigated as according to the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) their ministry lost US$15 million last year alone to counterfeit discs.  They reckon there are at least 800 000 vehicles on the country’s roads.

Sadly the Post Office computerised system encountered some major glitches, so the majority only opened for service on the 21 May, giving them 11 days, including weekends and extended hours, to issue the 800 000 or so discs.  A large Post Office can issue about 100 discs per day, using at least 3 tellers.  So, I will be generous and use that as a national average for the 50 designated venues, plus the 10 mobile service providers.  Here is the maths:

No. gazetted post offices (including 10 mobiles): 60
No. licenses issued per day on average: 100
National Total per day: 6000
No. days from opening of service to deadline: 11
Total potential discs to be issued: 66000
No. vehicles in Zimbabwe: 800000
% possible of 800 000 vehicles in 11 days: 8.25

There is pandemonium at our Post Offices, tempers are frayed as members of the public are spending up to 8 hours in the queue and still not being served, returning the next day for another massive loss of potential productive work.  The Post Office workers are barely able to type as they have only ever worked on manual systems previously, now they have to capture screeds of information per disc.  The form is long and complicated and the amount of paperwork required cumbersome.

What is amazing is the ingenuity of Zimbabweans in latching on to the potential for lucrative business.  Some Post Offices resorted to issuing place numbers to help alleviate time spent in queues.  I know one elderly person who queued for 4 hours to get his number and who ONLY had to spend 2 hours in the queue the following day.  But, a few particularly enterprising individuals quickly saw the opportunity for profit, spent the day queuing, were issued several numbers for their hard work going from the front to the back of the queue and the next morning they sold places for US$10 a number!  Alas, the Post Office officials quickly caught on and stopped the number system!

Yet another friend hired a queue sitter.  This individual obviously received priority service as he is a member of the police, and for $25 my friend was the proud owner of 3 new discs for his small fleet of vehicles.

Now you have to remember there is one variable that has not been taken into account – the fact that the new system is entirely dependent, of course, on electricity, the scarce commodity that is needed to run the state of the art equipment.  Need I say more?

The new disc plan is a good plan, and nobody can deny it, but oh dear Zinara has really aimed far too high in announcing the programme would be complete within the deadline period of 1 June and no grace period will be awarded.  Perhaps the Zinara head of information, communication and technology Mr Gift Kanotangudza and his colleague, head of corporate communications, Mr Augustine Moyo, should sign up for a few basic maths lessons, for through their insistence that there will be no extension, they have created a mathematical impossibility.

A guy whose opinions I always respect posted a Facebook comment on Independence Day apparently pissed off by what he said was an obsession with negativity among Zimbabweans scattered across the globe as they reflected on what April 18 meant for them.

Turns out the many sons and daughters of the soil, from the “children of the war” to the “born frees,” the sentiment was that there was little to celebrate considering that the independence had spawned blood, sweat, tears, frustrations, broken bones, broken homes and hobos.

These are folks who left the motherland in search of “better lives” elsewhere. And of course these are compatriots who continue fighting for their right to vote by the authors of their misery who know too damn well that the political preferences of these millions lie not with the founding nationalist but elsewhere. For these political elites, political oblivion is a certainty if the Diaspora vote is allowed.

Thus it was that over this past weekend some young men spoke (“obsessed”) about hardships, never mind the setting: they were attending a lavish wedding of a childhood friend who could afford that kind of luxury “because he was in the Diaspora.” A young man in his late 20s, early 30s thereabout said: “I wish independence had come in 1994.” Obviously this was in reference to South Africa, seeing the young man getting married was working in SA and for him to be able to have a wedding in Bulawayo with a limousine and all that glitz was ample proof that South Africa still afforded the average Joe stupendous economic opportunities. But you still just have to point to the unending contradictions: the SA economy is still in the hands of “white capital,” and you only have to listen to Julius Malema, yet it is still affording young black men like the wedding guy a dream life seeing his fairytale wedding back home in Zimbabwe.

This wedding guy obviously has no concern about Julius Malema’s politics, never mind still the ubiquitous poverty that continues to stalk South African citizens which Malema likes to point at in what others see as his radical political views.  Meanwhile, back at the wedding, another young man said: “Independence should have come last year, then things would still be swell and we would all be working!” Talk about a harsh indictment for the nationalist fathers who are touting youth economic empowerment among other unorthodox means that employ such things as cudgels and sjamboks as what will bag them the coming polls.

At a time when the populist clarion call is the stripping of the country’s wealth by whites and the need to return of that wealth to indigenous peoples, young jobless youths obviously are yet to buy that. And one can actually recall some old grannies being heard yearning for the white years, and this time is it young men long accused of being born-frees with no appreciation of the sacrifices the nationalist fathers made who are seeing beyond the rhetoric. You have to hear the sentiments from young people from Matebeleland especially and all the talk about young economic empowerment concerning who is really benefiting from this whole exercise. It certainly isn’t them. Yet the exchanges at that wedding do tell us that someone sure is out of touch with this demographic despite the tunes being beamed on national television penned by born frees in celebration of masimba kuvanhu.  If a thirty-year old young man, because of his dire economic circumstances, can curse the placing of indigenous resources in the hands of a fellow black man in the name of political and economic independence, then surely the MDC-T folks who are telling Saviour Kasukuwere to slow down are not speaking out of turn.

After all, Zimbabwean seems to know where the country’s wealth has gone since 1980 and the latest efforts are but attempts to up the self-aggrandisement ante.

I watched a piece of journalistic buffoonery last night on Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s Economic Forum and wondered who approves this kind of crap to make it to people’s living rooms. By its very name, the programme discusses economic matters but here was this fat guy with apparent breathing problems inviting Zanu PF’s chief of spin to talk politics! This guy who must be standing in for the amiable Billet Magara asked what I figured gotta be some of the dumbest leading questions to come from the mouth of a journalist. Instead of using the opportunity to quiz Rugare Gumbo why his political party has a proclivity for ruinous economic policies, he asks questions such as “do you think voters will realise the mistakes they did last elections by voting for the MDC?”; “Reports say there is factionalism in your party. How true are those reports?” and it went on and on. I’m like “what the kcuf”? What has this got to do with “Economic Forum?” And this is a programme supposedly made not by ZBC hacks but by independent producers! Independent of critical thinking! So much for intelligent journalism.

When it comes to the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) I reckon the gauge above would, and should be permanently in the red. How’s this: after a month of some of the worst power cuts we’ve ever had, ZESA estimates my bill. Do they estimate it down because they’ve provided F’All power? No, they estimate it UP. Dim wits that they are. And to add insult to injury my ZESA bill arrives in the post on the 17th April with the last date for payment cited as 9th April. There might be a crisis in power supply in Zimbabwe but there’s also a crisis in the management of ZESA.