How to celebrate your countries Independence?

For some it is seen as a day that can finally be spent at home, sorting all the things pushed aside for too long, or maybe just kicking back and enjoying a day off. But thirty-three years on, what do we celebrate as an independent country?

As I watch the Independence celebrations on ZBC, I notice there is not much enthusiasm – the crowds are small and barely awake throughout the long, hot day. Even away from the main event there seems to be little interest.

Times have changed, thirty tree years ago, it was a big deal. Even Bob Marley came out to celebrate with us! Yet the excitement is gone, and I wonder … is it that Zimbabweans have forgotten their great struggle, or maybe they are just tired of dwelling on the past and would now rather look to the future?

Independence Day Competition: Make your mark!

Kubatana is offering a prize of $100 for the most creative submission commenting on Independence Day. Submissions can include poetry, prose, a very short film, original art, a design for a sticker that we might take further, a photograph . . . you get the idea. We encourage you to think outside of the box! Don’t be shy, let it all out. A delivery of 33 cupcakes with Zimbabwean flags stuck in them might win our hearts but not The Money – hmmm, you choose!

How?
You can email your submission to: info [at] kubatana [dot] net
If your submission is an unusual shape or size and is impossible to submit over the Interweb, then get in touch on the same email address and we’ll work something out.

Deadline: 26 April, 3pm Kubatana time
Please include your name, and phone number

I read a Herald headline that said, “Manicaland: Be decisive, Zanu PF urged” and imagined it could have easily read: “Manicaland: Be divisive, Zanu PF urged,” because that is exactly what is happening.

Perhaps the “stalwarts” behind the Manicaland divisions are staring reality in the eye that there really isn’t much to be done about their impending confinement to the much loved “dustbin of history” metaphor. You can only browbeat the peasantry to an extent, that constituency of course being the favourite of Zanu PF’s claim of popularity in the rural areas, yet we know from the violence of March 2008 that this is very much thanks to cudgels and sjamboks as the party’s preferred tools of political persuasion.

After all, some political theorists long noted that divisions that emerge within African political parties are their ultimate Achilles heel that author their attrition and thus harbinger or point to their loss of relevance to the national political ethos, Jonathan Moyo should have told them!

But then here we are dealing with a cabal that seeks to defy all laws, from gravity to commonsense, yet we do get solace in knowing that when the big guns fight for the control of the party, it gives other political parties ample time to regroup, set up their own Praetorian guard for the new political dispensation project and invest their energies in the most pressing matter at hand, that is winning the election. It could indeed be yet another lost opportunity if Zanu PF opponents do take advantage of the party’s squabbles. Else, not just history, nay, none but ourselves shall judge hashly the political strategists of these parties.

Zimbabwe has been a source of fascination for many from scholars to pseudo-intellectuals to lay analysts who turn kombis into their offices as they pontificate about what went wrong, what should be done and only succeed in making fools of themselves. Some writers have gone as far as “analyzing” presidential candidates of the coming polls, gazing into their own crystal balls (there I said it, balls) profiling them and attempting to provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses of these men for whom politics is a career. Bollocks, I say. Here is my own take on some candidates. Those who don’t appear here have been deliberately left out!

Robert Mugabe: Bob ain’t your uncle
Morgan Tsvangirai: Idiot
Welshma Ncube: Cretin
Simba Makoni: Clown
Job Sikhala: Anarchist
Paul Siwela: Walter Mitty

It’s our war, a women’s war! And we are going to win!

These are messages for the currently ongoing protest. Stripping is now an official means of protest even in Zimbabwe. Like the recent stripping in a WOZA protest in Harare and that done by another woman in Mutare during American ambassador’s visit to the town. A group of radical feminists declared the 4 April as International Topless Jihad Day and they urged women to take the topless protest to any Tunisian embassy in their country.  Parading topless with protest messages scribbled all over their bodies these women are touching on issues to do with governance, human rights and religious and in some countries they have persecutions and arrests.

The trend of poor service delivery by the local authorities and public institutions in Zimbabwe has reached alarming levels such that it has become a normal situation to get things like tap water from council after weekly intervals. It is now an acceptable trend to have excessive electricity load shedding every day and receive high bills at the end of the month. Boreholes and wells are now common features in every household and the sound of a generator is no longer a nuisance but music to people’s ears. When it rains be prepared to get an extra charge on commuter fares from the commuter omnibus operators. To get medical treatment for your loved one from the few doctors left in local hospitals a token of appreciation does the trick otherwise you will have to deal with long queues in the crowded corridors of short staffed hospitals. Customer care no longer exists in many shops as the non-refundable and no exchange disclaimer reminds you that what you are buying is inferior. But to many people to be shortchanged is not a normal situation.