I was told that the restaurant was African traditional, and that it was somewhere behind the GMB in Eastlea. I finally found it after asking three different people for directions. Sister Mildred’s is tucked away in a house with no sign. My lunch there on Wednesday was one of the best things I’ve done in a long time. It reminded me that life is more interesting off the beaten track.

Independence Day. Out walking I noticed lots of pods – what we call police details or roadblocks – lolling about waiting for some tin god in high office to come whizzing through. As we approached the Chisipite traffic circle a multiple car wedding party hooted and honked its way around it several times. Nearby two ZRP police officials stood watching. Imagine Mugabe’s motorcade meeting an Independence Day wedding party? That would have been amusing.

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?

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
- T. S. Eliot, from The Hollow Men

Via browsery

The ‘war’ between kombi drivers and police officers has been going on for so long and because there is nobody to police the police, the ordinary citizens are suffering. Over the recent years police have been using forceful means to deal with public transport drivers in the country. From smashing of windscreens to Hollywood movie style chases this has been the order of the day. These forceful means have fallen short as citizens are harmed or lose their lives. There are reports of incidents of police smashing windscreens and injuring passengers. I have witnessed such incidents. Just when we thought this was bad enough the kombi operator-police war has yielded the unbearable – death. As kombi drivers try to escape from police officers they do so at full speed and in so doing go against road rules and place the life of other motorists and pedestrians at risk. In the past two months two people lost their lives in such scenarios at the Copacabana rank alone. The most recent was of an old lady who was dragged under a kombi for more than 100 metres leading to her death. The kombi was running away from a police officer.

Death is something never prepared for, but for anyone to die in this manner is more painful than the word painful itself. Even if the driver gets a life sentence or a death penalty the root cause of the problem will not have been addressed. For kombi operators and the police officers it’s now  ‘a mice sees cat game’ at the risk of passengers, pedestrians and other motorists. On one hand, the mice don’t care how they will run away from the cat, as long as they don’t get caught. On the other hand, the cat will use all the powers vested in him to chase the mice. But then again at the centre of all this fight, is a mother on her way to work, a boy on his way to school, an old lady on her way to her rural home crossing the street unaware that a mouse is on the run and that their life might end. For how long will we watch lives being lost at the hands of this cat-mice fight?

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.
- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text