The Women’s Trust in 2007-2008 ran the Women Can Do It! Campaign, which saw many women contesting Parliamentary seats. The campaign, which ran smoothly and was synonymous with the song, ‘Ndi mai vanogona’ spread to all corners of the country. On the 2nd of May, The Women’s Trust launched the SiMuka Zimbabwe Campaign that encourages women to take part in elections with three main objectives. The campaign wants women to register to vote, to vote and to vote for other women. The campaign’s promotional materials include four different coloured t-shirts, which convey various messages in three languages Shona, Ndebele and English to accommodate every Zimbabwean.

Simuka Zimbabwe is not only for the new voter but for women who have voted during the past elections too. To these women, the campaign encourages them to check that their names still exist in the voters roll. The Director, Memory Kachambwa during the launch clearly pointed out that the campaign has various strategies to target the different women in the country. It is with interest to note that Simuka Zimbabwe is of a dynamic and broad spectrum as it not only encourages voter participation but goes a step further to give a wake call to men and women of Zimbabwe to get up, wake and rise ‘n’ shine.

A booklet is available that empowers women to make better informed decision when voting. The words of founder and Board Secretary Luta Shaba sum up all what Simuka Zimbabwe seeks to achieve, “If you have seen what you want then go and shop for your leader.” The Women’s Trust through their campaign continue to try and develop a critical mass of women who can articulate issues and effect changes.

It’s become all too predictable that each time Zimbabwe approaches an election, arrests of anyone from reporters to politicians to drunks hits the stratosphere, and this year is coming as no surprise.

But there is a disturbingly comical element to it that you have to ask why the cops apparently always sleep on their jobs seeing that some of these “crimes” border on the ridiculous.

For example, we have Tongai Matutu, the MDC-T legislator for Masvingo Central who faces incarceration for allegedly calling Mugabe a dog some eight years ago. Eight years ago? Surely something must be wrong with this picture.

The Ndebele say “icala kaliboli” literally meaning a crime does not rot as comeuppance will be visited on the offender when they have long forgotten about it.

But then, one has to ask why it would take eight long years for the “wheels of justice” to catch up with Matutu if it is not some arcane and nefarious motive in a country already known to punish people who laugh at the presidential portrait?

This is a country where defenders of the Republic readily beat their chests proclaiming a strict observance and adherence to the rule of law, but it’s a cruel contradiction then that for a country that claims to scrupulously uphold the rule of law, the same justice has been very slow in being applied, effectively denying citizens their right to expeditious legal processes! After all, is it not a well-worn aphorism that “justice delayed is justice denied?”

Early in the year, we had Douglas Mwonzora being arrested for having called Mugabe a goblin back in the excitement of 2008.

Mwonzora has also previously faced arrest where he is alleged to have defrauded someone of ZW350million in 2005!

Law abiding and “fair minded” citizens seeking protection from the Attorney General’s office would no doubt ask why these things are happening now and question the competence of that respected office.

Some would proffer that perhaps someone has been sleeping on the job, but that would be incorrigible naivety as we already know it goes beyond the oft claimed backlog of court cases made worse by shortage of magistrates!

Then there is also Chimanimani West MP Lynette Karenyi who was convicted for “holding an unsanctioned meeting” last year. Last year really?

One could go on and on with this, but it does point to the futility of engaging the Cheka in any political jousting and as long as this continues it makes one shudder to think what crimes, real or imagined, will be “excavated” from the vaults to “let them have it” as the elections loom large!

Voter registration arrests: Three activists with the Election Resource Centre were arrested on Saturday for encouraging Zimbabweans to register to vote during the country’s mobile voter registration exercise. We’ve just received this update from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition about the three, who were involved in the X1G campaign:

ERC Director to hand himself over to police as volunteers remain in custody

The Election Resource Centre (ERC) Director, Tawanda Chimhini will today, Monday 13 May, hand himself over to the police in a bid to secure the release of the three volunteers that were arrested by police in Borrowdale on Saturday 11 May.

The three volunteers namely, Farai Saungweme, Wadzanai Nyaku and Moses Chikura have been in custody for the last 48 hours after police handed them over to the Law and Order Section after their arrest.

The trio had been carrying out activities under the ERC’s popular 1st Time Voter Generation (X1G) campaign aimed at encouraging youths to register as voters when they were inexplicably arrested.

Speaking to the Crisis Report, the ERC Director, Tawanda Chimhini speculated that the arrests could be a ploy to unjustifiably charge the organization under section 40 of the Zimbabwe Electoral Act, which forbids individuals from conducting voter education without seeking permission from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).

“It is not clear what they are being charged with but the likelihood is that this could be a way of preferring charges against the organization itself. It’s possible that we may face charges of engaging in voter education illegally but such a charge would be unfounded because the X1G project has been ongoing for months now and it is an exercise meant to encourage the youth to register to vote and not to educate them on how to vote,” said Chimhini who revealed that he would be handing himself over to the police later today as a representative of the organization.

Chimhini said the arrests were totally unwarranted but were hardly surprising given that there was an emerging pattern of harassment that his organization had noted of late as some members of the police took it upon themselves to disrupt their activities.

“Just last Wednesday, we had the police barring us from carrying out our activities at the Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo. They informed me that we needed to get clearance from the Governor before we could encourage young people to register. I don’t think that it’s necessary for me to be granted permission to speak to the youth who are my peers about registering to vote,” said Chimhini.

He said it was baffling that the police were disrupting their work when the X1G initiative had received a lot of traction among the youth and electoral stakeholders such as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) who have been actively participating in the ZiFM and Star FM radio programs that the ERC was flighting.

“We have had ZEC officials featuring on our radio programs on ZiFM and Star FM and we have also had them on board for some of our other initiatives around encouraging the youth to register. If these activities were in contravention of any statute then we expect that ZEC would have informed us. So these arrests are hard to explain,” said Chimhini.

Chimhini revealed that the three volunteers were holding up well although one of them was experiencing depression and had not been able to eat since Saturday whilst the families of the volunteers were not pleased given that their incarcerated relatives had not committed any crime.

It is always refreshing to read “news” from a different perspective and not just the traditional reliance on “traditional” news gatherers and writers informing us about what is making the world turn or burn.

In the age of information clutter with the rapid rise of the so-called information society where anyone with a mobile phone can access hundreds and hundreds of news websites, getting stories from a “street” perspective can not only be attractive for readers seeking a shift from our prosaic and predictable political stories, but could well give fresh insights for citizen journalism theorists.

This is what kalabashmedia.com sets out to do.

In their blurb, Kalabash Media, which launches today 13 May at 1500hrs, says its work is a collaborative effort of “social media enthusiasts” who “write the news from their different perspectives,” and as we already know about Zimbabwean journalism, the polarisation that emerged in the past decade has only seen citizens frown at some news outlets.

And journalists themselves from different stables have fashioned themselves as not kindred spirits but rather virtual adversaries.

Virtual adversaries indeed, what with the polarisation being taken to cyberspace bulletin boards!

So, an initiative like kalabashmedia.com could be refreshing despite what some critics would readily say putting journalism practice in the hands of untrained practitioners and only spells disaster.

But as the blurb has it, theirs is “a group of urbanite contributors with a knack for telling their stories and reporting on events with a fresh twist. From the Streets to the Web.”

It reminds of the Rising Voices project run by Global Voices online where communities pushed to the periphery of dominant news agendas are given a chance to tell their own stories.

kalabashmedia.com could just be another cousin of the weblog where folks post their musings about virtually anything, yet the very idea that they are fashioning it as a news site only ups their relevance especially at a time when dozens of news websites on Zimbabwe can be found with some purported to be hosted by professional journalists rather reading like products of chaps who took in generous amounts of calabashes!

kalabashmedia.com promises that “You will think, you will laugh…and if not….Frowning faces make for good headlines!” and in a country where there is a lot of anger issues, kalabashmedia.com seeks to make light of these circumstances albeit in a rather “newsy” sort of way.

It could well be something that will provide space for locally relevant crowd sourced content, moreso as the country heads for another “watershed” election. We will sure need the “people’s voice.” (Pun intended!)

Demagogues get elected because their jingoism and populism is magnified by a media beholden to them, and when they assume office they proceed to dismantle the very institutions that got them elected so as to perpetuate their rule. Kunda Dixit, Jury Member of the Unesco/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize from 2000-2005. – Extracted from Pressing for Freedom – 20 Years of World Press Freedom Day*

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Mahathir (Mahomad) says we will bury you, I said, “you are 87 years old. You shouldn’t be talking about burying people. You should be thinking about your own grave.” Anwa Ibrahim, Malaysia opposition leader. – From the Financial Times, May 4, 2013*

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To expect the country (Italy) to pay its debts as it did decades ago is to expect an 85 year old man to drink the way he did at university. – Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times, May, 4, 2013*

Vote Zanu PF and get funding for your business proposal?

With elections coming up in Zimbabwe, political parties are trying to win voters. Recent studies have indicated that Zanu PF support is growing. In a country with unemployment as high as 95%, income generating projects are a sure way to win support.

Of course, no party can afford to fund every would-be voter’s income generating project. And clearly, bringing your business project proposal to the Zanu PF rally is no guarantee that it would get funded. But posters like this do raise eyebrows.

Recent reports including the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition‘s Pre-Election Detectors and the International Crisis Group’s Zimbabwe: Election Scenarios suggest that Zimbabwe’s 2013 election probably won’t be marred by the overt violence experienced in 2008. But they also won’t be free and fair. Rather, they suggest Zanu PF will use more subtle tactics – including the unfree press, executive powers, and its legacy of intimidation – to secure a win. Other recent studies have suggested that the March Constitutional Referendum might have been a practise run for Zanu PF to test their vote rigging mechanisms, and to ensure high turn out so that stuffed ballots in a general election are met with less suspicion.

The MDC might have a JUICE plan to revive the economy – including the promise of 1 million jobs. But I can imagine a “Vote Zanu PF and get your project funded” message could be pretty compelling.