I saw a group of police officers fill a kombi at the Copacabana rank and I found it rather curious that these cops made more numbers than civilian passengers; surely they would bankrupt the kombi owner.

I wondered why the tout would allow all of them into the vehicle, remembering of course that where I am from, police officers don’t pay for a kombi ride!

But turned out they were all paying customers.

Another eye opener about how things are done differently here perhaps, yet I chuckled recalling that for kombi drivers in Bulawayo, the whole idea of giving a cop a free ride right in the front seat is so that the driver is waved through by traffic cops checking for everything from vehicle fitness certificate to driver’s license.

The travelling cop becomes the driver’s Moses, parting the road for safe passage.

What then here where the cops are paying full fares, by the ways of logic, there is obviously no protection to speak of and I am trying to picture a scene where traffic cops stop a kombi full of fellow cops who are paying passengers. Perhaps the same would apply? Wave the kombi through, I mean?

Yet the whole idea of cops and free rides has been met with some daring by certain Bulawayo touts, and I recall a tout looking a young cop in the eye and asking him if he if he had money for the ride.

The dumbfounded cop stared blankly and hesitated before the kombi sped off without him!

In any case, if you think of it, the parallels extend to all sectors of the country’s troubled present: many politicians have been fingered in demanding protection fees from sectors as diverse as farming and mining where extortion has been the order of the day: pay up and I will make sure your farm is not expropriated!

And the small fry, the poorly paid cop, can only have a free ride ostensibly to protect the driver from having his vehicle impounded, at least only as long as the cop is in the kombi!

Yet seeing the cops in Harare pay their fares like everyone else did brings a sense that perhaps this relationship between kombi drivers and cops is based on reports of cops smashing kombi window screens so why reward them with free rides!

We have all heard the bad effects of drinking Coca Cola, how it will rot our teeth and poison us, but then again, so will most soft-drinks, and in fact, most processed food. However, it is not just the drink itself that is getting flack at the moment, but also the actual company. Recently the Coca-Cola company has had a lot of problems in a multitude of countries over their environmental and social implications on the respective countries it is based in. They are accused of doing terrible damage to the environment and having a dodgy work policy. I even have a friend who refuses to drink any Coca-Cola product, not because it is bad for her, but because she wants to boycott the company altogether.

However, it is difficult to point fingers so quickly, because although there are a lot of issues with Coca-Cola deals, such as the current law suits in India, their policies are not all bad. Coca-Cola does support some significant causes, such as “Fighting for an AIDS free generation”; a project in collaboration with other companies like Nike, Girl and Converse. Their aim is to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child by 2015. They also are one of the biggest sports sponsors, sponsoring major events such as the FIFA world cup. It was also the first commercial sponsor of the Olympics in 1928.

As with most big commercial companies, Coca-Cola does have problems with corruption and dodgy policies but overall one of its biggest problems seems to be its connection with the United States, in modern colonisation. The idea of “Coca-Colanisation” had been brought up in many parts of the world, accusing the United States of colonising countries with big corporate companies such as Coca-Cola.

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!

There is always something of a culture shock each time you move to a new city, whether it’s a bustling metropolis or a small city the kind where everyone knows everyone.

And for me returning to Harare after having lived here a decade ago is something that I am treating with a little trepidation.

After all, so much has changed in the past decade, from the growing population to the deluge of ex-Japanese vehicles clogging the streets.

Nothing has changed in the form of government and governance, but this is an obvious story that has been rehashed for so long it has become tedious because apparently the more you curse the oligarchs, the more they dig in, so why give yourself an ulcer.

I travelled in a kombi from Westlea to the city centre and felt choked by the traffic gridlock and watched as the kombi driver assumed a Formula One persona and I could only ask a friend how the motorists escaped the wrath of road rage.

Yet it seemed to me everyone here has accepted this – albeit grudgingly – as a part of their daily grind as they attempt to navigate these mean streets during the morning rush to get to work.

It’s something terrible nativising yourself to a life of misery, yet you still have to live with it, after all, there is nothing you can do about it.

I saw a single lane street turned into a four lane autobahn as motorists and kombis competed for space, and the question to ask came naturally for me, perhaps as someone just coming in from another city where the ubiquity of traffic cops cannot be escaped: “Are there no cops along the way?”

And all the way from Westlea to the CBD no green arms waving, signaling the motorists to stop and perhaps try and create order out this chaos. Or in fact fleece a few greenbacks from already enraged motorists.

Yet it is perhaps something to be expected in a big city where a vehicle census would produce numbers that show a rapid growth of cars per capita but very little or nothing in the form of developing the road network to accommodate all these carbon expelling beasts.

I want to imagine that it is not just transport that will keep me in awe in my first week here, because anything else would be a no-no, and as a virtual outsider trying to learn the ways of this host city, it is inevitable to make comparisons with my native Bulawayo and in the process make prejudiced judgments about the big city and its people.