In our weekly Kubatana email newsletter we asked our subscribers to tell us what they think of our politicians going on fund raising trips when revenues from our natural resources are corruptly (mis) managed.

We received some interesting response. A subscriber called Miles suggests that we need a complete overhaul of how we do things in Zimbabwe rather than adopting this piecemeal approach we have to fixing our broken country.

Check out some of the response we got . . .

Yes of course our first step should be getting our own house in order first, but that would require brave actions from a lot of Zimbabweans and I’m afraid the will amongst the masses just isn’t there. I worked in the 2002 elections as a security man for Harare Central Constituency. I had flown out from the UK and volunteered to do a job which no one else wanted.There were a lot more Zimbabweans who just put their heads under the covers and hoped the whole awful situation would just disappear, there are, percentage wise, very few people like Jenni Williams and members of WOZA who are prepared to demonstrate with a physical prescence, rather than the masses who just blog sites like the  Zim Times and moan incessantly “why isn’t anyone doing anything”. Mugabe and his gang, which now should probably include many opposition members as well, should be overthrown by the people as soon as possible. Everyday we put off the inevitable showdown is a day which we give to the Chefs to hide their assets and benefit from Marange. Zimbabwe requires a new Leader; a man whose sole remit is to place the needs of the people before anything else. A person who will lead by example. The ZNA needs to be re-entitled the Zimbabwean Army of Reconstruction and all weapons to be replaced by tools to help rebuild the infrastructure. All members of the Youth League to attend re-integration classes and proper counselling before being allowed back into the community. All Foreign Bank Accounts of all citizens to be repatriated to Zimbabwe and a thorough audit of their origins to be determined. A Truth and Reparation Council to be established. Zimbabwe will never take a step forward until reparations are made to those who have suffered by the perpetrators of that suffering. It is shameful that people like the Mujuru family sell ten tons of Congolese gold whilst their bretheren starve. The times of Mammon must cease, Greed cannot continue and Violence cannot prevail. The time for a Massive General Strike must be now .The people must take to the streets and say “Enough and no further. Chinja Maitiro”. But are you brave enough Zimbabwe? Are you brave enough? Somehow I don’t think so and if that is the case you deserve all you get! – Miles

I found the HRW report incisive and your comment important in terms of grounding the discussion in our reality at home and in engaging the rest of the world. I think we should start moving beyond abusing our resources through such privatization of public funds as is shown in the diamonds case. This is a strategy that unaccountable regimes get donor funds and parade it as conditional and meager to address our challenges while robbing the family kitty behind barricaded walls. We need more information on other sectors so that we can strengthen domestic demand for change financed slowly, transparently and incrementally towards a democratically defined and shared future. – Kudzai

Do you think there are any diamonds left in Marange. I doubt very much. What about gold fields? Do we have any left? How about recovering money already looted by this mining? It does not cost anything only political will. Lets all work together to make this country better for future generations. Remember we  (SIT  UNDER A SHADE TODAY BECAUSE SOMEONE PLANTED A TREE MANY YEARS AGO) so lets stop the rot and all will be fine. All it needs is political will. – Wellington

According to the latest HRW report, the Government of Zimbabwe “could generate significant amounts of revenue from the diamonds, perhaps as much as US$200 million per month, if Marange and other mining centres were managed in a transparent and accountable manner.”

The Zimbabwean economy is in desperate shape, the government is bankrupt, and MDC leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti have been fund raising in Africa, Europe and the US to try and get some cash to pay civil servants, meet the country’s monthly running costs, and rebuild the nation’s economy.

But why do our politicians have their begging bowls out, when we have national resources like Marange at our disposal? US President Barack Obama recently pledged US $73 million to Zimbabwe. If we were properly managing our diamond resources, we could earn that much in under 11 days. TheWorld Bank has pledged US $22 million – less than four days of potential diamond revenue.

According to the government’s Short Term Economic Recovery Programme, and the 2009 Revised Budget,  Zimbabwe needs at least US $1bn per year just to keep things going – that’s US $83.3 million per month. If the HRW estimate is right, getting some diamond revenue into the national purse would meet these expenses – and give Zimbabwe room to grow, save, invest and develop – not just stagger along hand-to-mouth.

Sure, Zimbabwe needs a lot of money to get back on its feet – Tsvangirai estimates US $8.5 billion. But shouldn’t our first step be to get our own house in order?

I’ve just received SW Radio Africa’s latest text message with news headlines and updates:

Bob off to Libya, changes cabinet meet to Mon to stop MT chairing. MDC boycott. MDC Marange MP jailed before giving massacre details to conflict diamond group.

As usual, there’s a lot more than 160 characters worth of information packed into this SMS. But my overriding question from it is why does the MDC stay in this “power sharing” arrangement in which they are so clearly not just a junior partner, but a powerless pawn?

I’m feeling rather ragged this morning after a night of tossing and turning.

I guess reading The Economist’s Book of Obituaries at 10pm didn’t help, but nor did the 4 gunshots at 11:23 or a suspected attack from a tick or other associated pet vermin between the sheets at 12:01. After shining my mobile phone torch between my legs and other interesting places and getting the all clear on the vermin front my mind settled back on Zimbabwe. I started thinking of Tom Soper, a young man recently severely injured in a car accident. It seems like, at this stage, he’s paralysed from the neck down. He’s 37, a husband and father of two. I don’t know the full circumstances of the accident but what I do know is that the traffic lights at the intersection where the collison occured had not been working for some months. Of course working traffic lights don’t mean no accidents but they certainly help make our roads safer. Over the last several years we’ve experienced a devastating failure of infrastructure and service provision and delivery in Zimbabwe. Non-working and malfunctioning traffic lights might seem a low priority on our long list of Things To Get Working Again but when you give a moments thought to Tom Soper and the many other people who have been injured or killed on our roads, traffic lights become a much more serious issue.

I get more than uptight when I think of Zimbabwean MPs demanding US$30 000 car loans when in the majority of cases a US$10 000 car would do the trick except perhaps for Mr MP in Binga. Because in order for us to get things working again in Zimbabwe we all need to be watching our behaviour, monitoring our greed, and instilling fiscal responsiblity in our lives – MPs included. How about some of the money for these oversized car loans going to getting our roads safer?

And of course those of us living in Harare realise that there is ONE traffic light that absolutely never malfunctions. It’s the one on the corner of 7th Street and Tongogara Avenue. I mean what would the guards at State House do if that particular intersection became congested and mayhem ensued like at numerous other spots in the capital city – they wouldn’t know which way to point their bayonets.

Newlands Shopping Centre in Harare used to be a fairly happening kind of place. There was a buzz, parking was hard to find, vendors were hard to side-step – healthy signs of life. These days its pulse is flickering and fading. At least 5 shops, including one of Zimbabwe’s best brand names, Bata, have closed down. The stalwart of Zimbabwean restaurants, The Sitar, now closes on Tuesdays after being renowned for non stop curry 7 days a week. Tracks, the bar/cafe that used to be pom pom full most days has been boarded up for possibly a year. The three telephone booths outside the post office are derelict. Rubbish bins are overflowing and seldom cleared out. Holes in the pavements aren’t fixed and get filled with passer-by debris.

In my office block there’s seldom power from the Zimbabwe Electricty Supply Authority (ZESA). If it wasn’t for the largesse of a major international NGO that installed a generator to service the whole building we’d all be up shit creek. Ground floor shops that used to sell something are closing. One of these shops has had a woman sitting at a desk in the middle of it looking bored out of her skull. Occasionally she sits in the front window – a living but barely breathing human mannequin. A book store has an array of what looks like 1970 Home and Garden magazines for sale; they’ve been laying on the walkway outside the front door for what seems like the last 6 months. At Alberto’s Hairdressing Salon you don’t have to make an appointment anymore. It’s clear that business is slow because often his hair washers and trainee stylists are in the chairs themselves whiling the day away with experiments in all things hair and beauty. A waiter at Libby’s restaurant pulled me aside yesterday and asked me if I had a job for his son who has a degree in engineering; anything will do was the refrain. Meanwhile a young boy who looks no more than 16 has lethargically started to sweep the steps because the two brother janitors who used to clean the place have both died in the last 8 months. Most likely from AIDS but lack of food and low wages clearly didn’t help.

In our own way we try help. We called in The Garbage Guys to try and get a business to clean up because the City of Harare can’t, or won’t. We support local shops. We contribute to funeral funds. We share information. We give out clothes. We join community initiatives to look at ways of stablising power supply.

As I write this email the security guard for our office block is walking up an down each floor ringing a bell warning us that the fuel is running out and the generator is about to be switched off.

It’s not a pretty picture is it? This is the reality on my little patch of ground and there are other far worse examples.

Morgan Tsvangirai has been spouting rhetoric rather than the truth on his recent world tour. How soon before we all start saying that he’s seriously out of touch? A bit like how we’ve been describing his small friend Mugabe for so long.

Nothing could have prepared me, or, indeed I believe, Prime Minister Tsvangirai and his entourage, for the shock reception and outright rejection of his message to Zimbabwean exiles living in the United Kingdom. Like the more than 1 000 Zimbabweans who turned up at the Anglican cathedral to listen to the Prime Minister, by 11am l was already at London Bridge, frantically asking for directions to the famous cathedral, not wanting to miss the opportunity to hear Morgan speak. I saw and greeted numerous familiar faces from home, and eagerly joined a group of women who spontaneously broke into song and transformed the meeting into a rally of sorts. Although invitations to the meetings had indicated that the meeting would start promptly at 12, when the clock struck 1 with evidence that Morgan had arrived, no-one complained.

When the Prime Minister arrived people packed in the cathedral jostled to catch a glimpse of Morgan and his team, and to snap away a photo or two on their mobile phones. The Prime Minister was scheduled to address the people and then have a question – and – answer session, all in time for meeting to end at 3pm. However, just ten minutes into his prepared speech, the Prime Minister was forced to abandone his speech and the pulpit due to jeering and booing from the crowd. The shock treatment of he received was triggered by his bold declaration that the unity government had brought “peace and stability” to Zimbabwe in the last four months. He went on to say, “let me state it here boldly that Zimbabweans must come home!”

His call on Zimbabwean exiles to come home was greeted by an uproar and spontaneous chants of “Mugabe Must Go!” To his credit, the Prime Minister attempted some damage control and said, “I did not say pack your bags and come home tomorrow, but I said you must begin to think about coming home.” But the damage had already been done. He further tried to portray the unity government as a success stating matter-of-factly that schools are open, hospitals have re-opened and, again, my favourite, inflation has come down from 500 billion percent to just 3 percent. In the brief question and answer session that, was also aborted, one woman asked the Prime Minister where ordinary people are getting the foreign currency to buy goods that are supposedly now in abundance in Zimbabwe. If the meeting had not degenerated into utter chaos forcing the PM and his team to leave prematurely, I would have wanted to pose this question to the PM: ” What is happening to MDC Director-General Toendepi Shonhe – who is languishing in remand prison?”

After the shock events, together with fellow Zimbabweans in the diaspora we immediately subjected the meeting to a post mortem to try and establish why events at Southwark cathedral had been so unfortunate. A colleague blamed the PM Tsvangirai’s advisors and speech writers – ” Morgan was not properly briefed,” he reasoned.” “His team should have warned him that people are unhappy with the unity government and they do not believe that MDC is an equal partner.” Another friend ventured, “Well, what do you expect for refugees, asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers who do not wish to return to Zimbabwe? They do not want to hear anyone telling them to go home.”

For me, a more compelling explanation is one that points to a disconnect between messages by the MDC leadership and reality on the ground. It would appear to me that, if the message delivered by the PM in London is taken to reflect the thinking of the MDC leadership, then they are at serious risk of being completely out of touch with general membership and ordinary people. Perhaps to perfectly illustrate my point that the PM’s message is at odds with ordinary members in the party and views of the general public, the MDC has just published resolutions of an extra-ordinary national executive meeting of 23 June where they recommend that “the continued arrests, detentions and human rights violations be referred to the guarantors (SADC and AU)”.

It may well be true that a power-sharing government is the only game in town which should be supported. However, it does no-one any good to sweep critical issues under the carpet just to present a glossy and bright image of an otherwise white-washed tomb. The MDC may be exactly where ZANU-PF want them, doing public relations for ZANU-PF and in the process alienating traditional allies in civil society and slowly but surely chipping away at their membership base. Meanwhile, dubious convictions of MDC MPs are on the rise and the media remains muzzled.

If MDC dismisses the significance of events at Southwark cathedral believing that, after all, these people do not vote, and that the real masses are back home, then may recall the perfect shed well after the storm. There is no need to embellish and paint a rosy picture of a new Zimbabwe evidence is there for all to see that ZANU-PF is still up to its shenanigans.