Having struggled to open my eyes this morning, I went to Willowbean Café for a highly recommended Red Ambulance: Beetroot, ginger, carrot and who knows what other vegetable juice guaranteed to help you stand up straight again.

Whilst there, I overheard a customer asking why she was being refused a glass of water. She had ordered her breakfast and coffee, and preferred a glass of water to paying a dollar for a bottle of mineral water. Fair enough. The manager explained that they had been advised by the City of Harare that their water was contaminated, and that they should not serve it to customers.

Notices up in the café confirmed this, reading:

To our valued customers, please note Willowbean Café will no longer be offering tap / borehole water on our premises due to the fact that we cannot guarantee the quality of the water from this source.

In the interests of health and hygiene, please understand that only 100% treated water will be sold within these premises, i.e. bottled mineral water which guarantees it has been through a purifying system which is approved by the Ministry of Health and in accordance with their standards and regulations.

Please understand this practice has been put in place not to hinder you but to protect your health.

The manager also told the customer that they were on municipal water (not borehole). Whilst they’re lucky to even get municipal water in a city where so many are drilling boreholes or buying water deliveries, it doesn’t seem like much of the blessing if the very providers of the water are the ones telling you it’s not safe to drink.

Recent publications from Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) and Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition are just some of those questioning the ability of the Local Government and Water ministries to deliver basic services such as clean drinking water.

All of this brought up some questions for me:

1. Did the City of Harare also go to the nearby houses, gym, service station and primary and secondary school and advise them that their municipal water is unsafe to drink?
2. If the city knows its municipal water is unsafe, what is it doing about it? If the water being supplied to Willowbean is unsafe, surely this means municipal water in other parts of the city is also unsafe?
3. If you do run a café using an unsafe municipal water supply, what about the water you use to wash your vegetables, which you add to soup, and with which you make your coffee?

It also struck me as frustratingly unfair to the café. With unemployment being what it is in Zimbabwe, small local businesses need to be encouraged to grow and thrive, so that they can create jobs, support the families of their employees, and also create opportunities for local suppliers and merchants to provide their good and services. But if something as basic as providing clean, potable water in Zimbabwe’s capital is outside the reach of government, what hope is there to implement the broader objectives of “Indiginise, Develop, Empower, Employ?”

I am re-reading Zimbabwean short story anthologies and one of them is Brian Chikwava’s Seventh Street Alchemy.

An excerpt:

Sue has no birth certificate because her mother does not have one. Officially they were never born so will never die. For how do authorities issue a birth certificate when there is no birth certificate?

“If your mother and father  are dead and you do not have their birth certificate, then there is nothing I can do,” the man in office number 28 had said, his fist thumping the desk. He wore a blue and yellow tie that dug into his neck, accentuating the degradation of his torn collar.

“But what am I supposed to do?” Fiso asked, exasperated.

“Woman just do as I say. I need one of your parent’s birth or death certificates to process your application. You are wasting my time. You never listen. What’s wrong with you people?”

“Aaaah you are useless! Every morning you tell your wife that you are going to work when all you do is frustrate people!”

We have a new constitution that gave people false hope and it’s still more of the same!

A recent report from the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe (SCMZ) discusses some of the challenges facing young women in Zimbabwe today, including their vulnerabilities in the present economic environment.

In their recommendations, they say:

There is a need for civil society to push for the recognition of the informal sector as a source of livelihood for young women and these should therefore set up mechanisms of advocacy both at policy level and economically. For example this can be done by setting up markets like Mupedzanhamo for young women to sell their goods without fear of harassment and intimidation. Secondly, by creating platforms to encourage young women to desist and resist entering risky relationships of exchange through introducing various mentorship programs by either the relevant ministries or non-governmental organizations. Thirdly, by including policies that take into consideration historical gender imbalances for example the current indigenization policy, these policies should also consider gender protocol and enforce gender budgeting to ensure young women claim their space in empowerment. Lastly, the media has an important role to play in helping to address these issues young women face daily because of the current economic environment. It should act as an education tool rather than objectify women; it should be gender sensitive and create platforms for young women to air their views as well as inform them of the various opportunities open to them from various organizations.

Read more

I saw this announcement about a Team Zanu PF Cabinet Supplement in The Herald yesterday, and (naively, I know) I got excited to see the supplement today. I thought it would contain useful information like profiles on the ministers and their portfolios. Maybe it would have brief descriptions of the priorities of each ministry, or a few call out comments from each minister about their hopes for their ministries, and the challenges they would face in delivery.

Instead, the supplement features:

• A photo line up of 30 ministers and their names and portfolios
• “How the President came up with his team,” an article quoting Mugabe’s press conference on the announcement of Cabinet.
• The full transcript of Mugabe’s press conference on the announcement of Cabinet.
• A full page photo spread of the Cabinet members being sworn in.
• “Cabinet blends youth, experience” article
• “Business, labour welcome new Cabinet” article
• “Ministers promise to deliver” article
• Congratulatory messages to the new Cabinet and individual ministers, in the form of full colour display adverts

The actual “meat” of the supplement – articles, comments, information and journalism – takes up less than 3 pages of the supplement; the congratulatory messages take up more than 11. So, more than one week after Cabinet has been announced, the state’s newspaper cannot do anything substantial to inform the Zimbabwean people about these new ministers, their backgrounds, qualifications or responsibilities. Holding one’s government accountable is difficult enough at the best of times. If Zimbabwe’s state newspaper can’t outline even basic facts about the country’s ministers and their portfolios, where do the rest of us begin.

“Leaders of the Women of Zimbabwe Arise  (WOZA) have been arrested in Harare where they were marching to Parliament building to deliver a list of demands to the Clerk of Parliament,” Radio Dialogue reports.

According to Radio Dialogue:

Magodonga Mahlangu, one of the leaders of the group, in a brief interview with Radio Dialogue, confirmed that she had been arrested and was being taken to Harare Central Police station.

“I am in Harare, I’m under arrest and i am going to Harare central police station. I was beaten as i was climbing into the vehicle. I was thrown in and beaten. I am battered and bruised. It is only the voice that is there,” she said before the telephone call was terminated.

According to a statement issued by WOZA before the march:

Over 400 members planned to march to Zimbabwe’s Parliament to hand over a list of demands. The protest was planned to ‘test’ new provisions in the constitution and to make the voice of women heard around the direction that local and national government should take as the take up their positions. The protest also marks the international day of peace commemorated throughout the world on 21st September 2013.

The theme selected by a consultation conducted is peace must deliver freedom and development for all. Seven thousand WOZA members consulted wanted a theme that spoke to the peace bragging rhetoric by politicians that has for the most part been meaningless chatter. Additionally as the UN convenes and President Mugabe plays his sad old song about removing sanctions, WOZA members also call for him to remove his sanctions on Zimbabweans enjoyment of human rights and freedoms.

Corruption in Zimbabwe has now reached the grass roots; this simply means that even a new ZRP recruit who just earned his blue uniform to be a neighbourhood watch now knows that the only way to make a living is to squeeze the life out of other people’s pockets. A few days ago I hinted to my friend that our country is fast becoming a little Nigeria, the culture of corruption that was instilled in us from the top will only be an inheritance that we will forcibly pass on to our children and theirs.

Instead of fighting corruption, the politicians have spent much of their time preparing threatening well dressed speeches and planning how to fight corruption without active resolve. The president has during the last five years been making threats to stamp out corrupt ministers. We have rallied behind him in such efforts, the Anti graft commission has on the other side fed him with a vast amount of information to vaccinate and pacify his cabinet of corruption but we are still waiting for the time his ministers finish pursuing that function, maybe after that we will see action.

Thabo Mbeki at one point provided him with detailed information involving corrupt Zimbabwean ministers and ANC members. Press reports said names and amounts of demanded kickbacks were provided and the president even confirmed that but up to now we have not seen action to show commitment to free our country of this bondage. Some have taken the current rants on Goodwill Masimirembwa as a sign that the president is willing to fight corrupt government officials. Still we have to realise that sacrificing our allies when they become expendable is not fighting corruption. This has always happened in the past that whenever a government official falls out of his master’s grace, he becomes a sacrificial lamb.

I renew my support again today in fighting the scourge of corruption in Zimbabwe before it eats our dignity out. Unnecessary immunities to face justice among some ministers and oligarchs in our country should be lifted and the anti corruption bodies should be allowed to execute their duties without repression or fear of persecution. Corruption is fought by structures and procedures which are designed to bring good governance rather than speeches, sacrifices and threats.