Late yesterday afternoon I got a Big Shock. While I was at home there was a hoot at the gate and lo and behold, a Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) meter reader had arrived to do an Actual reading rather than the usual Estimate.

I took the opportunity to ask him two (2) questions:

1) If I only get power between 8 or 9 at night until about 5am most days then surely my electricity bill shouldn’t go up, or stay the same, it should go down? He nodded his head in profuse agreement but said that ZESA seldom does actual readings so they continue to estimate useage and don’t take into account the fact, the sad, sad, fact that they supply very little power to home owners. In other words, every month, if ZESA doesn’t actually read your meter and do some accurate calculations, they’re robbing you and me, all of us, blind.

2) Why doesn’t ZESA publish a load shedding schedule so that we know when to plan to eat and all that stuff? Well the ZESA meter reader said that ZESA can’t vaguely guarantee any kind of regular supply and that the power deficit is so huge that they have to flip the switch Off at any given moment.

I said thanks a lot – its not his fault – and said see ya later. I watched him drive away, clutching his meter readings, in a brand spanking shiny new mini bus.

What sense does this make? This 15 seater mini-van hopping from house to house when ZESA should have a fleet of motor-cycles moving around our city, doing Actual meter readings.

Today I met a man fixing leather shoes on the side of the road and stopped for a chat and a quick photo session. All this man had was his work bench on the side of the road, his tools and his bicycle but he still had a smile on his face and a friendly manner. It is people like this that make me feel Zimbabwe can, and will make it. He’s not hanging around begging for money; instead he is getting out there and using the skills he has to make a living.

Being back in Zimbabwe has made me realise what a desperate situation people in Zimbabwe are in. Every day is a struggle for survival for the average Zimbabwean. Degrading poverty has driven people to the point of vending anything and everything in an attempt to make a living.

While out taking pictures this morning vendors offered me the opportunity of taking pictures of them in exchange for money. Some men fixing a broken drain in the street asked me if I was going to pay them for the pictures I was taking.

Yesterday my mother paid a visit a to the Avondale flea market and while she was browsing through the DVDs the man selling them begged her to buy a DVD that she already owns. When she explained to the man that she already had the DVD so there was no use in buying it he implored, “madam I am so hungry, I don’t have any money to buy lunch, please buy this DVD for $5 so that I can have lunch.”

While the constant harassment and hounding by vendors aggravates me immensely, it is a reflection of the current state of the country and evidence that there is still a long way to go in the stabilising of the economy.

So there’s this thing that we Africans do that is a little bit funny, but also actually quite a serious issue.

Let me set the secenario for you by introducing you to the imaginary Mr. Y and his wife, Mrs. Y who will help me illustrate my point.

The Ys are a family who earn enough money from their combined salaries just to get by each month, as well as take care of their three young children. Mr. Y works with an NGO where his pay is lukewarm, and Mrs. Y is a nurse in a public hospital. Her pay is definitely cold.

So you would think that the Ys try by all means to live within their means right?

Far from it!

Rather, they rent out a house in some  plush suburb (though they are three months behind on paying up and the landlord is threatening to take them to court) and their children go to that private school up the rolling highlands where the red-hot fees ensure that Mr. Y can never save enough money to fix that dent on the bonnet of his car.

Speaking of his car, Mr. Y drives a C Class Benz – black in colour, tinted windows with reams gleaming that seem to make time slow down with each revolution of the fine specimen’s tyres.

Oh, and doesn’t Mrs. Y just love to drive that Benz to church on Sundays and ‘humbly’ remind Jehovah’s children how blessed in the blood of Jesus  she is to be in possession of this stunning vehicle.

If only they knew that it wasn’t actually her car, or even her husband’s. Nope. The car belongs to Mr. Y’s brother who’s fled to the UK and entrusted the keys to his most prized possession to Mr. Y. whose old tired jalopy is now hidden from public view, locked up in the car shed.

So you get the picture, right?

This is a story about a family that on first appearance seems to have it all going on BUT is actually living a horrible lie.

What for?

Esteem in the eyes of society, of course. Hey, you gotta show that you’ve done something right with your life and the Ys are just trying to ‘keep up with the Moyos’.

I remember an American friend visiting Zimbabwe once asking me a very interesting question.

“Why do so many African families have this fixation with flat screen TVs and leather sofas ?!”

She just couldn’t get why everyone either had those two items, or was saving up towards them.

It got me thinking.

Why is that so many people own terribly expensive phones, and yet can’t even afford to load air time onto the things every month? Why is it that every woman worth her salt in society owns a microwave or washing machine and often never actually uses them?

Like I said before, it’s all about APPEARANCES. When purchased for all the wrong and misguided reasons, these things become status symbols that people use to say, “I’ve made it, unlike you!”

Such reasoning reflects an innate fear of inadequacy that many of us have. You must have a legacy, you must show up all those people who said you wouldn’t amount to much, you must have something to show for all that suffering you endured growing up in some rural area reading for your exams by candlelight.

It’s really sad that in African cultures, we tend to gauge success by trivial things like possessions. And it’s sad too that so many young people strive for that ideal with such singular purpose that they lose sight of the real dreams for their lives.

Who cares what the neighbours think? They will talk regardless of what you do, or don’t do; own or don’t own. A life lived on behalf of the perceptions of others about you is not your life, especially if you really don’t like leather sofas anyway!

A week before the FIFA hoopla in South Africa began Minister of Energy Elias Mudzuri made the following announcement:

“I have directed ZESA to suspend disconnections to allow the public to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Zimbabweans have had to endure persistent power cuts for as much as 10 hours per day in some case while ZESA battles to meet demand.”

Essentially ZESA would suspend its regular programme of load shedding so that football fans would not miss the World Cup.

While I’m not a soccer fan I was happy, actually jubilant, that we would have a few more hours a day of electricity. I even considered that I might be able to take a proper hot bath, with more than a bucket of water and perhaps even some bubbles. I admit I may have misinterpreted the Ministers remarks. I thought that it would follow that those customers who had been loyal, i.e. had been paying their bills, to the power utility, would also be rewarded.

As with most promises made by politicians, this one failed and even went backwards. I have been disappointed by Ministers before. In fact I’m still recovering from the promises made to me by another Minister regarding the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe issuing radio and television licences.

In the case of ZESA, and the electricity delivered to my house, the disappointment is particularly bitter. Our loyalty as ZESA customers feels like its being violated. We paid our bills regularly, even in the confusion that followed dollarisation, the few US dollars that we had went first towards the ZESA bill, even when the meter wasn’t being read. When we had faults, we drove the ZESA people around. Under the circumstances, I think we as customers have done more than our fair share of maintaining a cordial relationship with our power utility.

Yet following the Minister’s announcement, it seems that now that we have even fewer hours if any power per day. There has been no explanation of this in the paper, and instead ZESA sees fit to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on an advertising campaign, which most notably features half a page of solid black ink. Moreover, the Minister’s statement undermines the entire purpose of the advertising campaign, and indeed ZESAs recovery. It’s simple, if you didn’t pay for the service, you shouldn’t get it. The World Cup is no exception.

Zimbabwe’s formal economy has been struggling to survive whilst the informal sector has become the key to livelihood. There seems to be a change for the better in many sectors including the fuel sector where service stations now have good stocks of the precious liquid. But black market activities have not ended completely. As one drives up to the pumps in most service stations a swarm of young boys approach you selling coupons at a price cheaper than that pump price.

One wonders how this illegal business is viable given that the fuel price is on the rise the world over? My talk to one informal trader of coupons provided a shocking revelation, which left me close to bursting with anger. He said some people have diesel coupons yet they want petrol so they negotiate an exchange with these dealers who in turn charge a fee for the deal. It also emerged that some people have easy access to coupons, which they sell at a discount on the black market. It also emerged that the key suppliers of fuel are government officials including Members of Parliament who offload thousands of liters on the black market in the form of coupons.

The vendor revealed that yesterday (17 June 2010) some of his colleagues had a fight over about 5000 liters of fuel coupons, which a certain MP had come to offload at the BP Service Station on the corner of Fourth Street and Samora Machel Avenue. The dealers normally buy one 25-litre fuel coupon at US$22 and sell at US$25. The MP is said to have come with two full books of coupons of which one is 2500 liters worth of coupons. The MP is said to have asked the boys to offer good money, and they started bidding against each other, until they could buy the two books at US$24 per coupon.

The fight and the supply of fuel is not my problem; but the problem is where do these MPs get that much of fuel to sell on the black market? It becomes suspicious especially at a time when these MPs are set to take on a big role in the constitution making process. To make the deal more suspicious the MP is reported to have refused to receive the money on the spot. Instead he offered to carry the boys to some unnamed hotel to finish the deal. The government is broke and civil servants are sacrificing themselves to work without enough take-home money. Yet the politicians are busy lining their pockets with national resources. Lately the MPs have been demanding unrealistically hefty rewards for taking part in the constitution making process.

If they get these coupons from the government, one wonders how one person is given that many coupons at once? The administration has a case to answer. It is really disappointing to note that corrupt tendencies are at the top of the government. How will we heal the economy when the healing system comprises rotten elements? The first healing step is to bring these elements to book. Who then should lead the investigation and the arrest of these people?