According to the Global Political Agreement signed by the three political parties in Zimbabwe . . .

“RECOGNISING and accepting that the Land Question has been at the core of the contestation in Zimbabwe and acknowledging the centrality of issues relating to the rule of law, respect for human rights, democracy and governance. The Parties hereby agree to: (a) conduct a comprehensive, transparent and non-partisan land audit, during the tenure of the Seventh Parliament of Zimbabwe, for the purpose of establishing accountability and eliminating multiple farm ownerships; (b) ensure that all Zimbabweans who are eligible to be allocated land and who apply for it shall be considered for allocation of land irrespective of race, gender, religion, ethnicity or political affiliation; (c) ensure security of tenure to all land holders; (d) call upon the United Kingdom government to accept the primary responsibility to pay compensation for land acquired from former land owners for resettlement; and (e) work together to secure international support and finance for the land reform programme in terms of compensation for the former land owners and support for new farmers.”

Quite clear? Clear enough? So as Rejoice Ngwenya asks “on any clear day, it is therefore impossible to comprehend why MDC, realising the incapacity of JOMIC to guarantee the democratic rights of citizens, is not evoking the clause that binds the implementation of this agreement to be guaranteed and underwritten by the Facilitator, SADC and the AU.”

Below is a letter written by Ben Freeth, a Zimbabwean farmer. The letter is addressed to Morgan Tsvangirai and it asks him to follow through on his promise to stop farm invasions.

Dear Prime Minister Tsvangarai,

As you are aware I wrote an open letter to you 2 weeks ago asking where we were going because “soon it will be too late.”

I likened our countries economy to that of an engine that is continuing to be stripped. Unfortunately the stripping process has increased in momentum significantly since my letter; and police unfortunately remain complicit with it.

Since I wrote to you we have had a fresh illegal invasion on Mount Carmel Farm on the 4 April 2009. We copied a letter to your office addressed to the Commissioner General of the Zimbabwe Republic Police dated 5 April but have yet to have any response.

Some of our workers have been badly beaten [one with a cracked skull]; the Mount Carmel house was broken into and entered by invaders while my elderly parents-in-law were inside; Mike and Angela Campbell have since been evicted by the illegal invaders and stopped from accessing their home and work place by a locked gate that the invaders have erected on the drive into the farm; their house has since been entered by invaders again and some looting has taken place; the mango crop still in the orchards of over 100 tons is being stolen before our eyes; the pack- shed has been broken into and the 50 tons of export mangos that was rotting there [because the invaders have stopped all the 150 workers from loading the lorry that came from SA for export] are being sold by the invaders – we saw the rotting mangos and invader sales of stolen property on 10 April; the orange crop of 200 tons is being stolen and the maize and sunflower crops will be stolen shortly if nothing is done to arrest the perpetrators of these crimes.

Many of our workers are sleeping in the bush due to the violence that remains unpunished. Others are victims of trumped up charges in jail. They have been subjected to torture by police in Chegutu using armoured cable to beat them. The one with the cracked skull [Sinos] was dumped on the charge office floor by invaders in the presence of witnesses who were never even asked to explain themselves. A police constable then smashed Sinos’ head against the charge office wall. As a result of police being used to torture and arrest our workers, our workers are naturally very afraid to make reports of crimes that continue to be committed.

Invaders threatened to kill any of our guards that tried to continue to guard the crops. They stole a shotgun from the guards and used it to threaten workers. This they subsequently handed into police. Not a single one of the workers has been allowed to work for us in the last week doing the vital job of packing export quality mangos for the earning of tens of thousands of US dollars of scarce foreign currency.

Chegutu police will not even give us the name of the main invader who is frequently at the station with them. Chegutu Police now refuse to take reports of crimes being committed on Mount Carmel Farm so there is no official record. On their visit yesterday they saw all the evidence of these crimes and did nothing to arrest the “untouchables” who were in their presence. Evidence of some of the crimes is on film.

In my letter before this invasion I asked why the SADC Tribunal Judgement is not being upheld. SADC has directed that “the respondent [the Zimbabwe Government] is directed to take all necessary measures to protect the possession, occupation and ownership of the lands of the applicants [ourselves]…and to take all appropriate measures to ensure that no action is taken, pursuant to Amendment 17, directly or indirectly, whether by its agents or by others, to evict from or interfere with, the peaceful residence on and of those farms, by the Applicants.”

If there was a political will to restore the rule of law I have been assured by police that it would take 5 minutes. Unfortunately, there appears to be no political will to deal with these latest invasions and to restore the rule of law and to allow us to live and farm in peace.

This is not an isolated incident. Other farmers are experiencing similar situations and thousands of jobs and livlihoods are on the line. We invite you down to urgently see with your own eyes the realities of the continued State inspired lawlessness in Chegutu. We implore you to have the invaders arrested and to put a police guard on the property to allow us to continue farming in peace and to stop the continued victimisation that is being experienced.

There is always one easy way to spot a Zimbabwean at a dinner table. He or she will be the first one to reach for the salt shaker, thereafter proceeding to generously scatter grains of the white stuff onto his or her food.

Soups, gravies, meats, veggies – you name it. Extra salt is always a necessity.

The culture is so deeply ingrained (excuse the pun!) in many of us that we don’t even wait to first taste our food – thus gauging its levels of flavour. We just go ahead and shake, shower and rattle more sodium chloride onto it.

And when that precious condiment is found missing at a table, before very long, someone will point out, with frustration, to the host that the munyu is nowhere to be seen.

An unhealthy habit, right?

Absolutely. But try talking cholesterol to any salt fiend and you’ll probably get this answer, “But I can’t taste anything if I don’t add more salt!”

Sure, I’ve heard that people who regularly consume alcohol experience a deadening of their taste buds, hence their desire for more salt in their food. And older people, too, experience a dulling of their senses due to age. So what’s the excuse for the rest of us?

I suppose we are just socialised into the use of lots of salt from an early age. But as for me, I can’t stand it!

My mum and I have had to come to an amicable agreement on the seasoning of our food. After enough winces (initiated by me, of course!) at the saltiness of her cooking, she has decided that whenever she cooks something, she will let me first put the salt that’s adequate for my taste buds. After I have taken my share, she will proceed to add more of it to suit her own preference. The same is true when I cook.

It’s called compromise!

I remember once going for a dinner hosted by an American family here in Zimbabwe. As I recall, the meal was beautiful beef stroganoff served on a plate of fluffy white rice.

“Here, you’ll probably need this,” said the hostess as she passed the salt cellar to me. I took one forkful of food and, after swallowing, replied that the salt was just fine. “No extra salt for me, thanks,” I said. “Gosh,” she said in amazement. “You’re the first Zimbabwean I’ve met who doesn’t add extra salt to my food!”

Ah well, different salts for different folks!

A battalion of government ministers, deputy ministers, permanent secretaries and other various hangers-on start a retreat in Victoria Falls today to get to know each other and set some benchmarks for progress in the next 100 days of the unity government.

Apparently the World Bank is supporting this weekend away. I’m wondering what on earth the World Bank is thinking when it invites and supports such lavishness in the face of Zimbabwe’s extreme humanitarian crisis. Just look at the photograph below and consider that while the Zimbabwe government can’t afford to feed the prisoners they incarcerate, they are happy to wine and dine on retreat.

In the World Bank’s rush to wank the boys in suits they fail to acknowledge the extreme injustice they perpetuate with their donor dollars.

Stop feasting mr ministers and start feeding

After years of constant worry, it’s good to finally know the truth. There is absolutely NO CURE for cellulite! Well, that’s unless the medical doctor I watched on the Oprah Winfrey show was only trying to sabotage sales of all the creams and potions produced by those oh-so-cutting edge cosmetic companies who promise a reduction in the ‘orange-peel effect’ of cellulite within 28 days – or your money back.

Mmmm. Now, I have never personally tried those creams, figuring that I would probably just be donating my hard-earned money to companies who realise that far too many women are suckers for products that don’t do much else than raise false hopes of a new body. But still, something in the pit of my gut tells me that these miracle potions aren’t what they seem to be.

And so while Oprah’s guest might have been the source of much disappointment and cursing from women from all quarters, for me he delivered the most liberating news I have heard all year.

Why?

Because, in effect, he told me to stop fretting and fussing about a few bumps and lumps on my body and focus on the real humps and bumps on the road called life. It’s petty and time-sapping to worry about things that I have no control over, and things that will have no consequence in the future.

I hardly imagine that anyone is eulogised with the following words, “She was a great person with a kind heart and a bit of cellulite on her thighs.”

It sounds ridiculous, and yet it is these very trivial things that keep so many women imprisoned. We figure we aren’t good enough because we have been made to believe that there is an existing template of ‘the ideal woman’ that we are all meant to fill out. If we don’t quite fit into it, we think we don’t have the same value as every other woman.

Well, I am tired of that. And I am writing this piece to declare it! For a long time, I wouldn’t wear sleeveless tops for one simple reason. I thought that the stretch marks on the back of my arms would cause offence to people and make them think less of me for having such horrible marks. It was an entrapping, all-consuming feeling that told me I had to protect society from my ugliness.

But you know what? I met a young woman who challenged my ideas about myself and made me rethink my attitude. She was a very beautiful girl, completely at ease with herself and dressed in a string top in all the glory of her stretch marks, both on the back and front of her arms. Now, it wasn’t the marks that I noticed first, but her sunny personality and confidence; her radiance. She didn’t care what anyone would say about her because she was too absorbed in full contentment and joy at being herself.

How many more of us would be happier if we acted just like this young woman? And how many more of us would be happier if people in this often cruel world would just let us be?

I know another young Zimbabwean woman with a birthmark down one half of her face who has to apply layers and layers of foundation every day to hide the mark because people cringe at it or tell her she looks disgusting. And I know women who go through the same make-up routine daily because they think that their beauty can only be fully manifested in coats and coats of propylene glycol and sodium dehydroacetate (just two ingredients from a foundation I have in my own makeup bag). Does beauty lie in ingredients most of can barely pronounce?!

Don’t get me wrong – makeup, exercise, healthy living and preening are not bad. They can definitely enhance natural beauty and make a person feel more confident. But they are not the cause of beauty. Beauty is inherent and ambiguous. It is not about how you look, but more about how you feel – not only about yourself, but also how you feel about those around you.

I have seen beauty in all the places where we think that there is none. Yes, even in the dimples of my thighs when I try to remember which piece of cake or plate of food I enjoyed too much of to get my little cellulite badge of honour. And when I feel bad about cellulite, I just say, “Thank you God that I even have these thighs!”

So I can’t do anything about my cellulite. No big deal. There are more important things that I can change, that we can all change by focusing more on what is within us.

“It’s finally happening,” the small voice in the pit of my belly whispered, eerily, into my ear.

I first heard it speak to me the week one of my good Zimbabwean friends told me that she had met a man who said he wanted to marry her. I instantly burst into uncontrollable laughter because – with all due respect to my friend – she is hardly marriage material. Like myself, she is not quite the most domesticated sort of young woman and prefers to roll out of bed in the late hours of weekend mornings and then distract herself from all household chores by watching re-runs of soaps or heading off to town to get away from it all. These actions have gotten her into trouble with her parents on several occasions, but still she declares that she’s far too lazy to give a care.

And so for me to imagine her being someone’s wife, waking up early to prepare her husband’s breakfast, doing double the amount of laundry she does now ( with a great deal of reluctance, at that) or picking out ties to match her husband’s suits ( he sounds like the type who would like that), is nigh on impossible. Yet somehow, this man sees the potential in my friend to love and nurture him for the rest of his life. And somehow my fun-loving, carefree friend can see herself fitting into this role.

“But I can actually see myself as his wife,” she stated with a tone that sounded genuine and willing to give it a try. That was when I stopped laughing and teasing her, realising that she had found someone she loved deeply enough to consider spending the rest of her life with. And that was also precisely the first time I heard that voice rise through me, adding its tone to the chorus of noises making their cacophonous music through me.

It is finally happening.

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Anybody and everybody knows that Zimbabwe’s GNU has a great many problems to deal with.  They are problems which cut across all sectors of society (education, health, agriculture, arts & culture, economics, etc.).  Some are optimistic about the future.  Some are skeptical.  Many are in the middle, or flat out uncertain about what the future holds.  One thing is for sure.  Zimbabweans are tired.  Their fight for democracy has been long and exhausting.  The pains have been both physical and emotional.  Which makes it all the more painful to suggest that the fight is far from over.  Even if the GNU could instantly fix everything and Zimbabwe became the world-renowned utopia north of the Limpopo, my stance remains the same.  I would still say that fighting for and sustainably implementing democratic practices of governance are permanent endeavors.  For any and every nation.  Citizens have an important role to play in the check and balances of democracy.  That role involves a balanced approach of working with and supporting the individuals and institutions charged with implementing democratic practices along with identifying and taking action when there are transgressions from democracy.

I’ve been thinking about all that in the context of an excellent article I read by Everjoice Win entitled:  When sharing female identity is not enough: coalition building in the midst of political polarization in Zimbabwe.  Win does not state what I will proceed to suggest in these exact terms, but subtly this line of thinking is within Win’s adept analysis.   The women’s movement in Zimbabwe has never really rebounded from Operation Clean Up of 1983. During this operation, The State violated the rights of ordinary citizens by arresting thousands of women for the “crime” of being on the street alone.  This came out of ill-conceived belief on the part of The State that no woman would be on the street alone unless a prostitute.   The ensuing advocacy led to the formation of the Women’s Action Group (WAG).   These moments are historicised as the birth of the post-independence women’s movement in Zimbabwe; in many respects, an accurate historisation.

However, these moments also signal a second birth.  That of challenging The State.  I am purposively using capital T and capital S to make clear that by “The State” I don’t just mean government.  Rather, I mean the political ideology of authoritarian rule and in turn, the masculine ideology of using The State as an avenue to control, not only women themselves, but also to control definitions of the concept of woman.  WAG emerged as an organisation which put front and center an agenda of challenging The State.   A great many women’s organizations came onto the scene once WAG was operational.   Some followed suit with WAG and challenged The State.  Others took more depoliticized paths.  Some were co-opted by The State.  Through all of this, the issue of challenging The State or working with The State remained a sticking point within the overall women’s movement.   As Win notes, “political and ideological differences were concealed by the language of gender and development, with its depoliticized messages associated with national development.”

In 1999, this dynamic played out again, in relation to the founding of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Constitutional Commission (CC), and the Women’s Coalition (WC).   With interest in ensuring women’s rights were part of the constitutional review process, the WC had to choose a path:  The NCA (Civil Society) or The CC (The State).   The formation of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) this same year complicated the terrain even more.  The ‘which path to choose’ dilemma existed, not only for the WC, but also for all development or issue-related movements and organisations.  Of course, it’s not neatly an either or choice; there are ways to make strategic and selective linkages.  And many issue-specific organizations did and continue to do this well.  But still.  Somehow, I think this dilemma around The State has been particularly troublesome for the broader coalition of women’s organisations.   In summarizing the terrain around this time Win notes, “The crisis has left the women’s movement in disarray…  A major blockage for the WC is its lack of a clear position on its relationship with the State.”  Win’s article was published in 2004, so perhaps the WC has cleared the blockage.   However, I have a sneaking suspicion the WC, to this day, remains problematically betwixt and between this issue of relating to The State.

Thus, to connect the dots begs the question:   As the GNU (hopefully not a new The State) comes to fruition and hopefully succeeds as a democracy, is a women’s movement ready to take on the need for discussions about The State, which have been, to some degree, relegated to the sidelines for 26 years?  Perhaps what is needed is, not a GNU, but rather, some WUGU (Women United Government United).