MY PETITION TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF ZIMBABWE

This day I regret that I am a poor man. If I had money like Mutumwa Mawere, I would have made the following submission to the constitutional court of Zimbabwe.


MY PETITION TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF ZIMBABWE IN OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF ZIMBABWE'S APPLICATION TO HAVE THE ELECTION DEADLINE POSTPONED.

 1.
 a) My name is Jupiter Charles Punungwe
 b) I am Zimbabwean citizen identification number 63-0000000-X-18
 c) I am currently working outside the country but I reside at 1278 Tynwald South, Harare. I also alternatively reside at Farm no 1025, Hampshire, Chikomba District
 d) I am not a member of any political party. I make this submission as a private citizen interested in making sure that the tenets of democracy are upheld in Zimbabwe.
 e) I am proud to be Zimbabwean, I am proud to have been Zimbabwean every second of my life. I will proudly remain a Zimbabwean to the day I die.

 2.
 a) You worships, you are the supreme legal authority in Zimbabwe.
 b) You have in your hands the sovereign authority of the people of Zimbabwe which you exercise without fear, favour or interference from any parties.
 c) On Zimbabwean soil, state parties have to obey and respect your judgments, even though such states may deem themselves more powerful than Zimbabwe.
 d) I have absolute faith that your decisions are always in the best interests of Zimbabwe.
 e) I have absolute faith in your impartiality in upholding the laws of Zimbabwe.
 f) Furthermore I submit it to you that the constitution that gives you your authority, is the very same that defines the democratic nature of Zimbabwe.

 3.
 a) I submit it to you that the cornerstone of democracy is that elections must be held on time without fail.
 b) I implore you not stop the democratic clock, simply because a group of individuals are not confident of winning.
 c) I implore you not to stop the democratic clock until some individuals are convinced that the deck is stacked sufficiently in their favour.
 d) I implore you not to stop the democratic clock for reason of appeasing external parties some of who have vested interests and interfering in Zimbabwe's governance.

 4.
 a) Your worships, I also beg you be cognisant of the fact that, the current coalition government was supposed to have concluded its business by the 14th of September 2010.
 b) If you wish to consider that the GNU was sworn in on 13 February 2009, then at the very latest the GNU should have concluded it's reform business by 12 February 2011.
 c) Your worships, it is therefore my considered submission to you that if there were any urgent and critical reforms that warrant the halting of our democratic clock, the respective parties in the GNU have had more than enough time to push for those that they deemed critical.
 d) It is also my considered submission to you that reforms have indeed taken place.
 e)  I recognise that fact that yourselves as the Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe, are constituted by a constitution that was adopted after a referendum. The referendum extensively reformed Zimbabwe's electoral systems.
 f) I submit to you the conduct of that referendum as evidence that indeed reforms have taken place.

 5.
 a) Your worships, any system, including a system of laws is subject to constant improvement.
 b) Our democratic right as the people of Zimbabwe to periodically choose our representatives, should not be subordinate to these incremental reforms.
 c) Your worships I submit to you Zimbabwe has clearly defined ways in which various servants of the state including security officials and judges are appointed. People with the relevant authority to make the appointments do so when they are in office not before.
 d) Your worships may I bring it to your attention that many other democratic systems including the United States work the very same way Zimbabwe is doing it. When a democratic president is in office, they tend to appoint liberal judges. When a republican is in office, they tend to appoint conservative officials including judges.
 e) Your worships, it is therefore only fair to expect that anyone who is not happy with past appointments in whatever sector of Zimbabwe's government and judiciary, should win office first and make their own changes going forward.

 6.
 a) Your worships, may I also establish the fact that not all Zimbabweans are represented by the political parties wishing to delay the elections.
 b) However elections are the vehicle which afford Zimbabweans to determine their political representation for the next democratic cycle.
 c) That the current cycle is about to expire means that none of the political parties can claim to have a solid mandate, but that they must all go back to the electorate to renew, extend or maybe loose the mandate as the electorate may desire.
 d) Your worships I beg you to be cognisant of the fact elections give every Zimbabwean the right to express themselves if they so wish, irrespective of political affiliation or lack thereof.
 e) By insisting that elections take place on time, you will be upholding the right of every Zimbabwean as defined by the constitution of Zimbabwe, not just some of particular political affiliations.
 f) By upholding the democratic rights of all Zimbabweans, you will not be in any way interfering with the rights of some who express the wish to delay elections.
 g) Your worships, submit it to you that political disagreement among some Zimbabweans, is not a sufficiently strong reason to delay the democratic process.

 7.
 a) Your worships as you may be aware one of the demanded reforms is media reforms.
 b) Morgan Tsvangirai leading this media 'reform' drive was recently quoted as threatening media that is not sympathetic to him and his party that 'muchadya izvozvo' a clear threat made in the Shona language.
 c) Making such threats against the media clearly suggests that calls for media reform are not sincere.
 d) Your worship there is a distinct possibility that these calls are merely meant to delay processes or simply be a spanner in the works.

 8.
 a) Your worships, I submit that there is no need to delay the democratic process
 b) I submit that there are no special circumstances to warrant a delay of the elections.
 c) External state parties including the African Union and SADC have made it clear that the decision amend your previous ruling is yours alone.
 d) Even if these external parties had attempted to instruct otherwise, they do not hold any authority over yourselves. You are the constitutional court of the sovereign nation of Zimbabwe.
 e) Your worships I submit that the paramount consideration is Zimbabwe's democratic needs. I submit that right now, the most important need is that of upholding the democratic precedent that has been religiously maintained for the past three decades.
 f) I submit that it will be extremely harmful to Zimbabwe's future if we allow the precedent that elections can be delayed for the sake of a few unhappy individuals. In future such minded people may seek to delay elections by several years negating the entire practice of democracy.
g) Your worships the purpose of elections is to determine Zimbabwe's political representation from this point forward. It would be unfair to allow those who may have enjoyed political representation in the past to tinker with future political representation outside the democratic electoral framework.
h) Your worships I submit it to you that elections must take place first, to determine the valid political mandates from this point forward, before we tinker with any other reforms.

Elections must be held on time in Zimbabwe

Ladies and Gentlemen, there is not a single day that Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe without an electoral mandate from the people of Zimbabwe.

All those howling in protest please cite the facts, not the conspiracy theories, to prove me wrong. Yes there have been numerous allegations, claims, theories and claimed conspiracies of how Zanu-PF rigs elections, but not a single one of these has ever been proved.

In fact I have no recollection of even one instance, when clear coherent facts were ever presented to make a convincing case. Whatever allegations are made, they fall apart the moment they are subjected to detailed examination.

So in reality most of the allegations are a little more than losers' sour grapes.

One allegation often cited is that Mugabe did not win 2008. This is often accompanied by the unfounded claim that Tsvangirai was the winner. On the contrary, there was no clear winner in March 2008, necessitating either a coalition or a rerun. Tsvangirai did not understand the position and thought he had won outright. He hadn't.

He later chickened out of the rerun, leaving Mugabe to claim the mandate unchallenged. Recognizing the deep divisions among the people, and the disputed conditions of the rerun, Mugabe still went into coalition with Tsvangirai.

So the truth is that Tsvangirai is the one who doesn't have an electoral mandate for anything but is occupying his position purely by negotiation. In fact he is named prime minister specifically as part of an agreement that was supposed to expire three years ago.

He is the one who, if anyone can claim so, was imposed on Zimbabweans by SADC which is one of the reasons he keeps running to them to try and prolong his stay in office and the consequent access to a luxurious lifestyle. That is also the reason he doesn't care for a proper electoral mandate because he does not have one, and does not have the confidence that he can obtain one.

He doesn't want the agreement that put him in power to expire until he has the best possible chance of winning. That is why he is basing the next election on demands for ever-shifting 'reforms'.

Elections must be held before his current mandate expires on July 31, as determined by the Constitutional court of Zimbabwe. If that date passes, believe me the backers of Mugabe's opponents will quickly turn around and say you do not have a mandate anymore so we are not going to recognize you.

He would be a fool to allow himself to be delayed beyond that date. Once that happens, his detractors will have him exactly where they want him - without a mandate. Psychological warfare tactics are being used to manipulate him into that position.

One the one hand we have clear and irrefutable constitutional provisions and requirements. On the other we have very vague 'reforms' that are being made to sound like an absolute necessity. Needless to say the vagueness of these reforms allows them to be panel-beaten and modified along the way to suit the agenda of the moment.

Moreover these reforms are not really meant to improve democracy in Zimbabwe but are being pushed to try and give a single particular party the best possible advantage. 'Reforms' are only deemed necessary only if they are believed to help the MDC-T, end of story.

I have got one question. Do 'reforms' supersede the Zimbabwe Constitution? Anyway, what are these reforms? Can anyone outline them in point form? If the point list made in 2009 and the one in place now were to be put side by side, will they be the same?

Mugabe's opponents are not sure that their proteges will get power through the vote. So to circumvent the people, delay elections beyond the current electoral mandate, then simply recognize anyone you want, because no one has a mandate anymore. Once they recognize whoever they want, simply give them money to prop them up. It happened in Libya.

The greatest strategic imperative in Zimbabwe right now is to preserve peace and stability. The preservation of stability will allow the people to gradually re-grow the economy. As long as the key resources are in their hands and control the people will reap maximum long term benefit, as opposed to the short term benefits of quickly handing over resources to others.

The greatest threat to stability is foreign sponsored destabilization as happened in Libya and is happening in Syria. Therefore a careful and clever foreign policy is necessary to starve off such nefarious sponsorship of destabilization.

When one looks at Libya and Syria, it is clear that the destabilization, euphemistically called 'international intervention', is not meant to help the countries but rather induce them to self-destruct. It is classical divide and rule.

In the case of Zimbabwe what counts in her favour is that you cannot militarily destabilize Zimbabwe without destroying the South African economy. Zimbabwe sits right on top of South Africa's transport routes to key markets and sources of raw materials in the north.

Any instability in Zimbabwe will rub off on South Africa itself with its potpourri of 11 major ethnicities some highly suspicious of each other. If things start going wrong, South Africans can easily start fighting along tribal and racial lines. There are indications that some, particularly hardcore Afrikaner racists, are chomping at the bit to set up separate states. Already they have enclaves, Orania and Kleinfontein.

Whether we like it or not, Zanu-PF have their hands on the most important levers of power. Prying off their fingers has to be carefully and intelligently managed, not just for Zimbabwe's sake but for the sake of the region.

Look at what is happening in Syria. What was claimed would be a quick deposition of Assad by Western favoured rebels is turning into a regional conflict, whose outcome nobody knows. However the destruction wrought upon Syrian infrastructure will take decades to overcome.

America's drone policy is racist

Suppose a CIA informant has this girl he is going out with. Then this guy from the next village also bonks the girl and the informant finds out. Of course he won't be happy.

Most human beings will seek ways to avenge such slights of their honour. These include

1. Shouting and screaming at the rival.
2. Looking for a suitable weapon to inflict bodily harm on the rival
3. Go tell big brother to deal with the rival.

In the past 'big brother' could only be some stocky guy, or a can of acid. Nowadays big brother can have drones. Mind you big brother doesn't even need to know the root motive of why he is being asked to use his drones. He can simply be told what is needed to get him to go along with the plan.

The aggrieved guy now has the option to tell that so and so from the next village is the worst of the bad Taliban - send him a Hellfire.

Will the CIA be any wiser to the real motive. Chances are that they won't even have a clue. Firstly the did not grow up within the culture hence they won't be able to pick up the tell tale signs of a jealous infused individual.

Mind you we are talking about a society where people kill and maim for honour, just like that. Women are routinely maimed with acid and some are shot for merely going to school.

Secondly there is no record of interactions, like a folder of salacious draft messages, that keeps growing with messages that never get send. That is how David Petraeus used to communicate with his lover. Most interactions are verbal and are literally speaking - gone with the wind.

Eventually the casual intimate liaison of the then CIA director ended up sending threatening messages to a perceived rival. Imagine if she could have got away with sending a Hellfire armed Reaper. Informants in remote areas, whose information is difficult if not impossible to verify, can get away with sending Hellfires to love rivals as we speak right now.

In the Petraeus case there is a trail of salacious emails to give us an insight into what happened. Out in the field, there is no luxury of such records to reveal the details of motives.

America just finds itself with more and more people hating them.

In my opinion, America's drone policy is simply criminal. According to a recent NBC report (http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/05/18781930-exclusive-cia-didnt-always-know-who-it-was-killing-in-drone-strikes-classified-documents-show?) they admit to not knowing a quarter of who they are killing. Their claims to know the other three quarters are also tenuous.

America's drone policy is no different from bombing an entire Bronx apartment building simply because a drug dealer is living there. Of course they would never attempt that in the the Bronx.

The only reason they do it elsewhere is because they consider the lives of us third world people to be cheap and useless. So if they kill ten of us in the hope of getting maybe one person they want, it doesn't matter to them. We are nothing but useless collateral damage.

This is exactly the same mentality that has been the driving force behind slavery and colonialism for centuries. The mentality that the lives of other races are cheap and expendable in the quest to improve the lot of the 'chosen race'. This mentality is the foundation upon which racism is built.

Even though America's president is black, America's drone policy is racist. It treats the lives of non-Westerners as cheap and expendable.

I am willing to bet my bottom dollar, that they will never ever replicate the policy in regions with significant white populations. If Ayman al Zawahiri were to go and hide in a Swiss hamlet, a Welsh borough or a French villa, they would never drone bomb it. However if he were to hide in a Thai muban, chances are they would drone bomb it.

I am not justifying the actions and philosophy of the cave dwelling fundamentalists who would like to see every woman in the world covered from head to toe.

All I am pointing out, is that two wrongs do not make a right.

The rural vs urban debate in Zimbabwe : An extension of the land question.

If one watches American movies, or even everyday news, hardly a day passes without hearing about homeless people. These are people without a roof over their head, who sleep in the streets and have got no other option. Most of them are not insane people either.

If you live in Zimbabwe, a person who sleeps in the street is either insane or a street kid. Most of the later would have run away from abusive homes.

Yet the USA is the richest country in the world, and Zimbabwe is one of the poorest. Why is that? Why  do Zimbabweans not end up living on the streets, homeless, despite the famed economic hardships in the country.

I believe a key part of the answer is a culture that is land based. We Zimbabweans believe in owning a piece of land somewhere (musha) which one can use for, at a minimum, subsistence living. Vanhu vane misha yavo.

If you have access to land you can always build a roof for yourself. You use your own time to mould your own bricks, cut your own grass, cut your own poles and build a hut. Thus the poorest you can ever be if you have land, is not be homeless sleeping on the streets but have a grass thatched hut over your head.

Yet recently we had the prime minister calling for people to be removed from the rural areas and be relocated to towns so they could look for jobs.

Prime Minister Tsvangirai does not understand the core problem around people being poor peasants. The people in so called communal areas (which were created as, and are still operating as, native reserves) are poor peasants because they do not have legally recognised ownership of the land they live on.

Their tenure on that land is not economically actionable. Apart from utilizing the land for living on and growing subsistence crops, they cannot use the land as an economic asset.

Let me put it this way, a man living on 6 hectares in Musana communal lands cannot go to a bank to get a loan for building say pig sties or a commercial chicken hatchery. Yet he has enough land to run those kind of operations.

On the other hand a man living in Kuwadzana on 250 square metres can go to any bank and get a loan using his house as collateral. But even if he gets the loan, where is he going to get the space to build a commercial hatchery and commercial pigsties.

What Tsvangirai is effectively saying is take a man who has six hectares, and therefore a chance of employing himself and probably one or two other people, and put him on 250 sqaure metres or in a lodger's room where he has absolutely no chance of employing anyone, but is one hundred percent dependent on being employed himself.

Don't forget that the man in Musana still has the option to compete for same job with the man in Kuwadzana, if he so chooses.

If they both find jobs, the man in Musana has got somewhere to invest his income. If both are working pensionable jobs, at retirement time, the man in Musana will have some cows plus a pension while the Kuwadzana man only has a pension.

The man in Musana can grow much of his own food, using his pension for other things. The man in Kuwadzana has to buy most of his food.

What people often mistake for poverty in rural areas is a lack of infrastructure. That lack of infrastructure is due to negligence by government. Colonial governments neglected the rural areas where blacks live because of racism. Today's government is failing to develop the rural areas mainly because of mismanagement and corruption. However some of it is due to the mentally colonised belief that rural areas should only be poor.

The cornerstone of land reform should have been to give people from the former native reserves, legal economically utilizable tenure on the land they live on.

Yes equitable re-distribution of land to de-racialise land ownership patterns is also important, but that on its own without reform of the tenure system is not sufficient to economically uplift people's lives.

Indeed white farms have been taken mostly to recreate the tenureless land occupation of the former native reserves. I do not know if the people implementing this type of land reform are at all aware that, in the first place, tenureless occupation was specifically designed to disempower the natives.

What is needed now is to give not only the people resettlement areas, but even those in the old native reserves, legal tenure on the land. Ipai vanhu kumamisha ma title deeds kuti vakwanisewo kutsvaga mari dzekuita maprojects anopihwa mari kuma bhanga pamisha yavo.

Of course there are risks, because if somebody mismanages a project they could loose their home. However there are many ways of mitigating or working around those risks. For example instead of getting a loan an the whole homestead, people could officially subdivide and get a loan on a portion. That way even if the project fails one will still have a roof over their head.

The prime minister was talking of  taking people off the land and putting them into towns where they could end up on the streets.

Can he not see that by taking a man from where he has a chance to utilize 6 hectares, to a place where he has to first look for lodgings and then maybe get a job, you are actually drastically narrowing his economic options not expanding them.

Instead of giving your citizen a loan on six hectares, you want to invite someone and give them loans, while you force your citizens to look for jobs from those you are giving loans. That is exactly what is going to happen, if people are pulled out of resettlement areas so that 'commercial' farmers can be brought back.

The countries that Tsvangirai is trying to emulate, the Western countries, have got homeless people. That is people who live on the streets with not even a roof over their head. Yet in Zimbabwe it is difficult to find anyone who sleeps in the open because they have absolutely no other choice.

People who own land in those countries are considered rich. The ranchers in the United States and the Lords in Britain are all classes whose esteemed status is historically rooted in tenured land ownership.

The biggest problem with Zimbabwe's economy right now is politicians using their position to take money that is meant to provide services for people, and spending it on luxury lifestyles for themselves, their families and their cronies.

Politicians are also using their influence to help people avoid paying monies that are due to the state. This sometimes goes to the extend of aiding and abating tax evasion. Recently I came across a man who claimed that he doesn't pay toll fees because he claims he is related to a well known Zanu-PF politician.

Rural areas are poor because money meant for infrastructure development is being misused. The key to uplifting lives in Zimbabwe lies in upgrading the infrastructure and tenure system in rural areas, not moving people to towns so they can look for jobs.

When I was nearly struck by lightning

When I was about 9 years old a granary was struck by lightning 10 metres from the kitchen hut where my family was sitting. The granary had a roof of iron sheeting, a steel window frame, and there was a metal wire tying a loose roof sheet to the wall, looping through the windowframe.

The building was unscathed save a large chunk of brickwork that had been gouged out just below the window frame. The wall below the gouging had been burnt dry by the heat of the lightning. It was as if no rain had touched that part of the building. As per traditional belief my grandfather duly consulted a n'anga.

The n'anga 'traced' the 'route' of the lightning from about 200 metres away, from close to the boundary fence of the homestead. He duly found two sets of 'lightning eggs' one just behind the granary and another under a mutukutu tree about a hundred metres in the direction where he claimed the lightning 'ran' from.

He claimed the lightning had been targeting people in the kitchen huts but through the power of our strong ancestors it had been diverted and instead it had crashed into the granary. According to the n'anga the gouging was from the crash and the dry wall was because the lightning was carrying fire which it intended to use to burn the people if it had caught them.

According to the n'anga, the lightning had been hiding along the boundary fence for a long time waiting for an opportune moment to strike. He said someone malicious towards the family had left it there. He didn't exactly pinpoint anyone, but the family discussions soon rounded upon a local villager who, reputation had it, had gone to Manicaland and came back with lightning.

"Akamboinda kuChipinge ka uya!" was considered proof that the man had powers to manufacture lightning.

Us youngsters we were not allowed to see such scary things as lightning eggs, but I did manage to be naughty enough to sneak a peek. The eggs were white, not brownish like chicken eggs, and were slightly smaller than chicken eggs. But I could see they were real eggs. They were definitely not scary and, at that tender age, I had serious hopes that they would be cooked for consumption.

I was very, very disappointed when the n'anga performed some rituals with them and then took them away, together with my grandfather, to throw them away without giving me a chance of eating them.

The n'anga latter claimed that some of the eggs had hatched, and the chicks of the lightning were hiding somewhere near the homestead. He warned that the chicks would come back to strike again. He hadn't had enough time to hunt for them, but he was prepared to come back and finish them off. To bring him back he hinted that he wanted several cows. He ominously warned that if he wasn't allowed to find the remaining lightning chicks soon, the family would be wiped out.

Of course the entire family was in awe of the n'anga's explanation. For weeks afterwards the discussion centred on whether the lightning, came running, galloping of flying. "Mheni inouya ichiita chamurambamhuru" was a common claim. Some claimed that since the n'anga said the lightning had travelled along or near the ground from the boundary fence, it must have run or galloped along the ground and left behind footprints only the n'anga had powers to see.

My grandfather, much to the chagrin of some family members, baulked at parting with so many cows, so the n'anga was never brought back. He was accused of wanting to have the family wiped out by lightning (munoda kutipedzesa nemheni Sekuru aJupi) just for the sake of keeping his cows. (Mombe idzodzo dzakakosha kudarika vanhu here?)

This happened several years before independence and to this day our homestead has never been struck by lightning again. I wonder where the chicks went.

With the understanding of electricity that I now have, of course it is easy to figure out what happened. The lightning discharge must have struck the metal roof of the granary. It travelled through the wire to the window frame. Below the windowframe there was no metal to travel through. Met with a higher coefficient of resistance it heated up the brick material causing sudden expansion, hence the gouging in the wall. It still managed to travel to earth through the wall but as it heated the wall causing the water to evaporate.

What is the fight in Syria really about?

What is the fight in Syria really about? Is it about freedom and democracy?

Bashar is not a democrat, far from it. Neither is Shaikh Khalifa, nor that other king whose country beheads underage girls. They are the chief sponsors of the fighting in Syria.

Of course these two would not be so emboldened without American blessings, or at the very least American indecisiveness. It looks like the Americans are playing Russian roulette with terrorism in Syria.

They were worried that the jihadist al-Nusra front was too pre-eminent in the Iraqi opposition. Now they are telling their client states to supply more weapons to the 'moderate' rebels. There are hoping to lure the people who had joined the jihadi side back to the moderate side.

The foolishness of this policy is patently obvious. The jihadi fighters could join the moderates get weapons and either simply walk back to the jihadi side with the weapons, or simply apply their jihadi policies on the ground with those weapons.

The same mistake that was made in Najibullah's Afghanistan and Somalia is about to be made again. Here is how. As the fight heats up and individual commanders on the ground struggle to stamp their authority, they will morph into warlords. As warlordism takes hold, loyalties are far much more likely to be cemented along clan lines.

Overall loyalty to a particular cause will then be determined by contingency and survivalist necessities of the moment. Once such a fluid state has been reached it will be years or even generations before any central body is able to stamp its authority again.

Also overall loyalty of a group is likely to be determined by the deep personal convictions of individuals in the groups involved. I do not know what the deep personal convictions of Syrian rebel leaders are. Neither should the Americans fool themselves into thinking they do. Did they know the deep personal convictions of Osama when they were sponsoring him against the Soviets.

To cite an even more recent example, did they know he deep personal convictions of Tamerlan Tsarnaev when they were mentoring him to an adult in the USA. In the case of Tamerlan, despite being warned by the Russians they couldn't pick it up that he was dangerous.

I don't blame the FBI for that failure, some people are simply good at bluffing especially if they know what those to be bluffed are looking for. It is as easy as putting on the make-up that you know a suitor wants to see.

To me the strategy to democratise Syria is very simple. Force an election even with Asad in power. He belongs to a minority, he is bound to loose. Even if he manages to retain a fingerhold, that grip would soon slip away in a few years after another round of elections.

The big advantage of such a strategy is that central authority would hold, containing many threats. The transition would be gradual allowing population groups to adjust. Of course external powers seeking to influence the outcome may not get the outcomes they are hoping for.

The Americans should also be wary of another risk, falling for the small brother syndrome. The small brother will start fights he can't possibly win knowing that big brother has got the brawn. American allies will take chances relying on American influence and power.

It happened in Libya. The French pushed for a fight. It was the Americans who provided the backbone for that fight. It was also them who took the hardest blows thrown back. They lost ambassador Stephens.

In Syria it is the Saudis and the Qatari who are pushing for a fight. They cannot provide the military solution by themselves but they are hopping to drag the Americans into fighting for their interests. Their reasons are essentially sectarian, they are Sunnis and Assad belongs to a Shiite sect.

The Russians, at this point, may have finally figured out that the demonisation of Syria has got nothing to do with human rights but might have everything to do with rolling back their influence. If they can't see that, they will never be able to see anything even if you give them glasses the size of Siberia.

Syria, has become nothing but a proxy battlefield. The main battle seems to be on Sunni vs Shia muslim lines. It has drawn in the regional powers of both sects. It has also drawn in the world powers with a resolutely pro-Assad Russia on the one side and the indecisive Americans on the other.

The raised fist is not just a Zanu-PF symbol

What does the raised fist mean? Chibhakera chinorevei?

If you follow Zimbabwe politics you would have come to believe that the raised right fist is the personal trademark of Robert Mugabe. Indeed he is informally referred to as 'kamudhara kechibhakera' (the old man of the fist) in some circles.

The misunderstanding on the use of the fist has grown so much that some now treat it like the official symbol of Zanu-PF the party.

The MDC factions, use the open palm as the official party symbol. As such most of their supporters have come to assume that the open palm as a direct result of opposition to Zanu-PF.

They have been subtly brainwashed into believing the the clenched fist is a Zanu-PF symbol. It is not.

Most of them are oblivious of the fact the open palm signifies opposition to much more than Zanu-PF.

Amandla! Ngawethu!
Nelson Mandela uses the clenched fist symbol during a speech.

Indeed in the subcontinent, world icon, Nelson Mandela used the raised fist symbol much more than Mugabe does. Jacob Zuma is so enthusiastic about it that he often raises both fists. Steve Bantu Biko was another prominent user of the raised fist.

As far afield as the United States of America people like the civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr used the raised fist.

It is no coincidence  that all these politicians who cut their teeth and made their names fighting colonialism, supremacist racial segregation and generally fighting for the rights of black people, use the raised fist as their symbol of choice. They use the raised fist in its context as the Black Power symbol.

It signifys the black man's demand for his rights. The raised fist is the symbol for black power, black empowerment (often characterised as indigenous empowerment in Africa) and black consciousness (which what Steve Biko died for).

Jacob Zuma enthusiastically raises two clenched fists

Probably the most iconic, and at the time most controversial, use of the raised fist, was the 1968 Mexico Olympics Black Power Salute. Winning American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, with the support of white Australian Peter Norman, raised their fists in the black power salute. All these athletes were subsequently ostracised, and treated as villains, by their national Olympic committees.

Back in Zimbabwe, at the time the MDC was formed and the open palm was announced as their symbol I didn't put much thought into it. It was just another party symbol. However as time has passed I come to realise the subtly clever strategy, behind it.

MDC activists have almost completely forgotten that the official Zanu-PF symbol is the cockerel (jongwe) and an image of the Great Zimbabwe. They now treat the raised fist as if it is the official Zanu-PF symbol. Together with the demonisation of the party and its leader, Robert Mugabe in the international media, it has come to a point where they think to associate themselves with the raised fist is to associate themselves with 'evil'.

In short, black people have been turned against black empowerment, without them even realising that they are being turned against their own empowerment.

These days the argument often advanced is that black people are already empowered because they now have equal rights and political self-determination. Those advancing this argument are forgetting one crucial detail, power is not just exercised through politics, but through the control of wealth as well. It is not a coincedence that throughout history kings, emperors and chiefs often had more cattle, more gold, more wives, more land, more wealth than everyone else.

The 1968 Black Power Salute at the Olympics in Mexico

The rule of thumb is that those with wealth will take the political power, or those with political power will take the wealth. Political power and economic power are like two oxen. They need to be tethered to the same yoke. Blacks now mostly have political power, but they do not have the economic power to be completely self-determining. Thus black economic empowerment remains a necessity.

Moreover, economic power did not just fall into the hands of a particular racial group by some divine right, laziness of the black race or their lack of intelligence as it is often made out to be. For centuries plain physical aggression was used firstly to extract labour from the black man for free (slavery), and secondly to prevent the black man from enjoying fair and equal opportunity (racial segregation and oppression).

Wealth for many was created by centuries of a policy of exploiting the black man's strength. According some historians, the British industrial revolution of the 18th century was financed by profits from the slave trade. Some argue that the slave trade is the reason why Britain and its former colonies such as the USA, are the leading economies in the world today.

Indeed some of the world's biggest corporations today like JP Morgan Chase, America's second largest bank, were given a kick-start in their business by the slave trade. Companies that later formed JP Morgan Chase started business by accepting slaves as collateral to give loans to plantation owners. Blacks were treated as collateral the same way we do with livestock today.

Martin Luther King, Jr stressing what he stood for.

When laws abolishing slavery were passed in 1833, Britain paid out more than 20 million pounds (17 billion pounds in today's values) to about 47 thousand slave owners who lost their slaves. For those who invested this windfall wisely, the families are still rich today.

Not only did such benefits accrue from slavery and general exploitation of black people. When colonialism retreated, the former colonialists left behind laws that made sure that wealth and property, such as land, which they grabbed violently from the natives could not be taken back by the methods they used to acquire that property.

In other words the rule of law is now being used as a method of retaining property that was acquired under the racial supremacy and right of race doctrines. It is important to understand that the rule of law does not automatically equate to justice and equity. If it did then we would have no reason to complain against laws such as the Group Areas Act and the Land Apportionment Act of 1930.

It is policy which brings about justice and equity. If fair policies are pursued then the laws passed to implement those policies will also be fair. Unfair policies will lead to unfair laws.

The bottom line is that to undo centuries of black racial deprivation, carefully crafted policies of black empowerment need be followed. Laws to support these policies need enacted. Even with these empowerment laws in place it will take generations if not centuries to undo the disadvantages of centuries of oppression.

Kamudhara kechibhakera

These policies need to publicly advocated and politically marketed. Politically marketing policies needs the use of symbolisms. The symbolism of black empowerment is the raised fist.

To slow down or maybe even stop blacks from getting back property rights they lost in the supremacist era, what better idea could be there than to actually get some blacks to vehemently oppose the symbols of black empowerment.

Can anyone explain to me how the MDC now find themselves vehemently opposing the symbol of black empowerment? It is not even the symbol of their opponents. Could they have been carefully manipulated into the position, where they trivialise their own empowerment?

Could it be that their open palm symbol was subtly positioned to de-market the idea of black empowerment among the black masses?

For the ANC, Jesus might just come too soon

South African President, Jacob Zuma, once said the ANC is going to rule until Jesus comes.

Well, I am an atheist and Jesus' coming does not particularly concern me. However based on the above, I am convinced that Jesus is going to come within the next two decades.

It is unlikely that the ANC, four or five general elections from now, will be able to win election with a sufficient majority to dictate who the president of the country should be.

It is perhaps ironic that it is President Zuma's associations that have in recent years been leading to a decline in the faith that South Africans have in the ANC. COPE split away from the ANC as a result of the fallout from Zuma's fight with Mbeki for the presidency of the organisation.

The most recent expulsion of a high ranking official, that of Julius Malema, is linked by some to the President's fight to retain the ANC presidency he wrestled from Mbeki.

Unfortunately, another scandal that has just erupted, is linked to a family regularly described as close associates of President Jacob Zuma.

Already christened Guptagate, the saga involves a plane carrying some Indian government officials, and private citizens, that was allowed to land at a military airbase. The plane apparently was not subjected to normal customs procedures. Newspaper reports also claim that it was carrying five truckloads of gifts.

I am not sure what logic was used to allow this plane to land without being subjected to normal customs procedures but whatever that logic is, it has little, if any, relation to normal diplomatic conventions.

As far as I know, only an officially marked diplomatic pouch, sometimes accompanied by a diplomatic courier is not subject to search or seizure by customs officials. Also as far as I know a diplomatic pouch can only be send from a country to its embassy and vise versa. Note that the destination, an embassy, also has official diplomatic immunity. So a diplomatic bag is essentially an immune communication channel between two immune territories.

The goods on the Gupta plane were headed fro a private wedding venue which has absolutely no diplomatic immunity. In any case, there are no reports that they were marked by the Indian government as diplomatic pouch.

They should have been subject to normal customs procedures. If the Indian High Commision had a hand in organizing their importation it should have made sure they were clearly marked as a diplomatic bag and should have ferried these goods to its official premises. If it didn't it essentially aided and abated a smuggling operation.

Some countries allow goods intended for the personal use of diplomats or for charitable use to be exempt from duties. Although exempt from duties, such goods are subject to examination by customs officials - unlike the diplomatic pouch which is not.

Most countries require that such goods be re-exported when the user leaves the country, or be used only for charitable purposes for their useful life or for a set period of time.

If the user wishes to hand over the goods to a local resident, requisite duties and taxes such as VAT then need to be paid. As a result goods intended for duty exemption under diplomatic conventions are inventoried and valued in detail at the time they are imported.

Some goods such as cars may have notes attached to their registration papers clearly indicating that they can not be passed on to residents and other non-exempt entities. Some may have their serial numbers noted and kept in a register to aid later investigations if necessary.

Note that duty exempt goods are different from goods in the diplomatic pouch. The goods in the diplomatic pouch normally do not leave the diplomatically immune premises of the embassy.

It is important to note that goods not intended for personal or charitable use such as gifts, are normally required to have appropriate duties paid even if imported by a diplomatically duty exempt person or entity.

With goods intended for charity, normally the end use charitable organisation should be registered as such and applies for its own exemptions. You cannot donate a Breitling watch to the Ratanang Family Trust for Julius Malema's use and call it a charitable donation. Nor should anyone claiming to a be a diplomat be able to donate say a diamond encrusted, gold lined microwave oven to a Gupta maiden on her wedding.

I am not claiming that anything like that happened. However neither can anyone conclusively claim that it did not happen because, according to newspaper reports, SARS did not examine and inventory the goods carried on the Gupta plane.

As part of protocol, customs officers normally do not bother with trivial things such as examining the personal luggage of diplomats. However if the personal luggage is in the form of five truckloads, it is not a trivial quantity and will normally be examined and appropriate inventories made.

Some of these protocols are not based on any legally binding conventions but on the trust and good faith that diplomats are honest.

Needless to say the protocols and gentlemen's understandings have been abused. Last year 40kg of cocaine were found in an official diplomatic pouch sent from Ecuador to Italy. In the same year a shipment marked as a diplomatic pouch contained 16kg of cocaine. It was only discovered because the syndicate apparently failed to intercept it and it actually ended up in the mail room of the United Nations headquarters in New York.

During the Falklands war Argentina send limpet mines, by diplomatic bag, to their embassy in Spain intending to blow up British battle ships docked at Gibraltar. The plot was uncovered and once the limpet mines left the embassy they were seized by police because they were no longer on immune territory, nor in a diplomatic bag.

Some countries like Israel and Nigeria have used or attempted to use the diplomatic pouch to smuggle kidnapped people out of other countries.

In recent years, only the hard nosed Zimbabweans are known to have seized, opened and examined - without prior consent - the officially marked diplomatic pouch of the British embassy in Harare.

It appears to me that the behaviour of the Gupta family in this case is typical of kleptocracies where the politically well connected generally behave as if they are exempt from the law, and normal bureaucratic channels.

In a country with a very vibrant and vocal press like South Africa, kleptocratic behaviour is always a magnet for negative attention. The negative attention, like a plague will affect the host organisation, as much as it does those parasitically feeding on it.

If such negative attention continues for the ANC, Jesus might just come too soon for their liking.

The African Cosa Nostra : Cronyism and Politics in Zimbabwe

Some people who have been selectively funding some groups of Zimbabwean politicians may feel good about themselves, but they have done nothing good for us ordinary Zimbabweans. They have just been worsening the problem of crony politics and corruption that is bedeviling Zimbabwe.

They have been thoroughly watering a new and emerging crop of cronies.

Take for example the various appointments at the Prime Ministers office. We have had the Makone's, Ian and Theresa, who are said to be close friends of Morgan Tsvangirai, to the extend of being among the chief match-makers in his private life. Then it turned out that James Maridadi who started his career as a ZBC journalist and ended up Tsvangirai's spokesperson, was the Makone's nephew. He was booted out when his uncles fumbled Tsvangirai's love life.

I am dealing with the subject of MDC crony politics but that does not mean the same does not exist in Zanu-PF. It does, which is why we have had many members of Mugabe's family from sisters, nephews and even vakuwasha (in-laws) holding or having held posts in various levels of the Zimbabwe government and parastatals.

I just want to explore MDC crony politics because it is new territory. I want to help those not in the know of how things work in Zimbabwe understand it better. Let me be the David Livingstone of their exploration into the inner workings of cronyism in Zimbabwean politics.

The bottom line of cronyism in Zimbabwean politics is rooted in the Shona proverb, 'Chawawana idya nehama, mutorwa ane hanganwa' (What you get eat with a relative, a stranger will forget you). People in responsible positions in Zimbabwe will try and fit as many relatives as they can into jobs often without merit. This is not just in politics. It is common to find that many people in a company or department may be from the same extended family.


For example this last rainy season the Central Vehicle Registry in Harare had to be closed, after nearly all staff members were stranded by floods while attending the funeral of a co-worker in remote rural Zimbabwe. It is very probable that most of these workers also have some sort of extended relation to the co-worker which is why it was culturally important for them to attend the funeral.

This concept is deeply rooted in African cultures, much like the cosa nostra (our thing) is rooted in mafia mentality.

What those providing the funding should not forget is that they too are strangers. They might be providing what is being eaten (the funding) but that doesn't mean they would have broken the African cosa nostra.

The MDC has very rapidly split into several factions. Some people claim that is because the PM tends to trust what they have called the 'kitchen cabinet'. That is simply another way of describing cronies.

My own theory is that as the MDC fortunes have grown, leaders have scrambled to find room for their cronies and relatives on the boat leading to conflicts with the existing leadership. Needless to say, some have been cast out from the ship in lifeboats to which they are still clinging perilously. Of course it helps to be a crony of the captain.

I want it to be clear to those who have been fooling themselves that they are funding something better than Zanu-PF that they have just been creating another edifice of the same nature. Continuing with the Italian theme, it is like a choice between the Mafia and the Camorra.

This is not the first time I am making this comparison. I have used the metaphor of leopards and hyenas before.

Protesting the BBC's negativity about Zimbabwe

I am extremely concerned that reports recent trumpeted by the BBC as signifying political violence in Zimbabwe may have been about events manufactured by the BBC themselves.

The coincidences in the whole saga, in terms of place time and duration are rather odd. How could the violence occur at exactly the place and time where the BBC crew are, and only last for as long as they are there? Yet the putting of posters all over Harare including Mbare had been going on for weeks. What sets a cacophony of bells ringing is that the BBC crew flew in and out of the country just in time to catch that particular incident of violence. 

Needless to say such reports create extremely negative perceptions about Zimbabwe in general, not just the political organization targeted by the negativity. This has strong consequences in the way we Zimbabweans are treated in our travels, irrespective of our political affiliations or lack thereof.

Such reports are also used to justify continued sanctions against Zimbabwe by Western powers. I would therefore consider it wise for the Zimbabwe government to lodge a formal complaint on all our behalf, with the British Foreign Office.  Since the British also use such incidents to also justify and push for EU sanctions against Zimbabwe I would suggest that a formal note also be sent to the EU, so that they are aware what kind of designs Zimbabwe is dealing with.

On my part, as a concerned Zimbabwean, I have already lodged a formal complaint with the BBC. You can complain by phoning them on 0044 3700 100 222, writing to them at BBC Complaints, PO Box 1922, Darlington, DL3 0UR, United Kingdom or lodging an online complaint at the site http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/. Don’t forget to mention that this is about events at Matapi flats in Mbare.

I also understand that the BBC crew and some of the people with them had water thrown at them by the irate residents of Matapi flats. This is the cultural equivalent of having a shoe thrown at you in the Middle East. I suggest they watch the drama film about Sabhuku Vharazipi, or the video for the song Maria by Jah Prayzah, to understand what kind of annoying nuisances normally have water thrown at them. 

Claimed Political Violence at Matapi Flats Looked Staged

I am extremely concerned at the unprofessional bias displayed by the BBC TV crew that was attacked at Matapi flats in Mbare.

After watching the clip on their website I have concluded that there is no clearcut and conclusive evidence that this was an attack by Zanu-PF supporters.

I am neither a supporter of Zanu-PF, nor of the MDC. However I remain unequivocally and proudly a Zimbabwean. I am therefore extremely concerned at unwarranted negative publicity soiling Zimbabwe's image.

These unwarranted claims of political violence foul the atmosphere and increase the likelihood of real political violence and instability taking root.

The first clear statement in Shona that I heard is from a woman who says 'Indayi munonamira kumba kwenyu.' The direct translation for this is 'Go and stick [the posters] on your own house.'

The BBC reporter translates that as 'You can't stick them here.' which entirely removes the context that this could have been simply residents trying to stop people from messing up their walls.

You just don't go and stick up posters on other people's residences. I certainly would not allow anyone to stick posters on the walls of the house where I am staying. Cleaning up the mess can be a costly and time wasting job.

Secondly there is a strong possibility that the people fighting were a rented crowd. The fighting looked staged. Most of the people seemed to be standing around watching the spectacle. Those fighting never looked like they really wanted to land seriously damaging blows.

There was certainly no hint from the actions of the crowd and even the people fighting as to what their political affiliations where. It was left to the reporters and their handlers to tell us that the attackers are Mugabe's supporters. From the contents of the clip it was a mere assumption, or fabrication, on their part.

Their reasons for reaching that conclusion are not given. One is therefore left strongly suspicious that they were simply trying to manufacture a scenario to support their pre-conceptions and agenda, not the reality.

Lastly, despite being 'attacked' the BBC crew and their equipment survived unscathed. Chances are that Zanu-PF supporters would have made an effort to prevent footage of the attack from going public. Thus cameras, tapes and recording media would most likely have been destroyed or damaged.

Also the attack on the crew only came towards the end of the filming. I would like to believe that the crew would have been the first to be attacked. After all a couple of white reporters in Mbare are about as inconspicuous as a palm groove and a beach on the North Pole. So they can't claim nobody was noticing them all along.

The reporter claims that they retreated to a 'safer neighbourhood' but was clearly still at Matapi flats. The whole complex is about 500m long and 200m wide. If there was a crowd of Zanu-PF supporters baying for their blood they wouldn't have been able to remain within the complex.

As the reporter gives his report, he sheepishly says, 'Some stuff was thrown at us.' Apparently water was poured on the team. Having water thrown at you is the cultural equivalent of having a shoe thrown at you in the Middle East.

At the end of the clip when the 'main actor' gives his final speech there is clearly some cheering. 'Hip! Hip! Hooray!'. What are the members of the audience cheering?

One would expect a group that had just been violently attacked to be sombre and worried, not cheering. Cheering suggests that they had achieved their goal. If the goal had only been sticking posters, that doesn't look like it was achieved in any meaningful measure.

However if it was creating an attention grabbing scene, it was a huge success – with the help of the BBC – whether witting or unwitting I wouldn't know. I think the audience were cheering that the 'main actor' put up a successful and convincing performance.

There are three distinct possibilities. It could be political violence. It could be vigilantism. The drama could also have been stage-managed.

From what I have seen of the clip it was most probably vigilantism against messing up of walls. There is also a very strong probability of this having been staged. I would be very reluctant to say this was genuine political violence. It simply doesn't fit the pattern of typical political violence.

Further, on the possibility that this was staged, it could have been staged by the politician who took your reporters around. Based on the evidence available one cannot rule out that it could have been staged by your reporters as well in an effort to create more dramatic news than the dour spectacle of both parties campaigning for the same outcome in a referendum.

Let me stress that I am extremely worried when people go out of their way to manufacture negative publicity for Zimbabwe, most likely in an effort to make their news more saleable.

The negative publicity does not just paint one or two politicians in bad light but the entire country. Events such as xenophobic attacks in South Africa can be traced partly to the negative perceptions of the country caused by persistent negative publicity. While our politicians have done most of the damage to our country, unwarranted negative publicity from other sources does not help either.

What is wrong with South African men's psyche towards their women?

I few weeks back a 21 year old boy, killed his girlfriend, helped by a couple of friends. The boy allegedly cut open the woman's stomach and pulled out her intestines, leaving them strewn on the ground. The girl managed to survive long enough to be able to identify her attacker.

In my Shona culture anybody below mid-20s, or older but not married is, also considered a boy.

Both the killers and the victim lived in a poor downtrodden suburb of a Western Cape town. One is therefore very much tempted to think that the violence was a function of the poverty.

However just this week, any such notions, were quickly blown away like a Sahara mirage in a sandstorm. Two of the most popular and wealthiest people in South Africa were involved in a fatal incident that according to some reports has connotations of domestic violence. Oscar Pistorious an internationally renown sportsman shot his girlfriend, an equally well known model. It is the South African equivalent of Brad shooting Angelina, or David shooting Victoria.

Oscar says he mistook her for a burglar. Neighbours claim there had been audible arguing in residence and before the shooting, so much that police had to be called. It does not help that Reeva Steenkamp is no longer alive to tell her side of the story. The press is also awash with claims that Oscar was temperamental and aggressive.

I am no Imam or Cardinal Bishop but I am not a particular fan of FHM and similar magazines either. So until after her death the name Reeva Steenkamp would not have aroused any inkling in me. However after reading reports that her skull had been crushed and a bloodied cricket bat was also found in residence, I couldn't help feeling as if my own sister had been mercilessly butchered.

Why? Why? Why? What is wrong with some South African men's psyche towards their women? One cannot help but wonder.

It appears as if South African women are treated as objects, expected to do whatever the men want. If these objects do not fulfil the desired function they not only discarded but destroyed - cruelly.

If a woman is unwilling to do something there is no attempt to persuade. She is also not left alone. What is desired by the man is violently taken. The violence is typically carried out using lethal weapons.

Recently a work colleague had a disagreement with her husband over suspicious emails he was exchanging with another woman. She was told the only way the marriage was going to end is through a gun. This is a middle class well educated couple.

It was St Valentine's day. We should have been giggling over gossip about roses and chocolates. Here we are, riveted accounts of by guns, cricket bats and crushed skulls. It is so sad.

I am a Zimbabwean and will not claim that my culture is a paragon of civility and domestic tolerance. Husbands, wives and lovers do fight, but not with guns, knives, broken bottles and cricket bats.

One of the major grievances leading to the xenophobic pogrom of 2008 was that foreign men took, not only jobs, but women as well. Given the way some South African men treat their women, it is not surprising that many rush into the arms of men whose culture and upbringing is not so gratuitously violent towards women.

My advice to some South African men is that aggressiveness is not a mark of manhood. It is often a sign of deep seated insecurity and weakness. People afflicted by inner weaknesses often try to compensate by showing aggressive physical strength.

Certainly, South Africa as a country needs much less of this kind of publicity. Already the tag 'rape capital of the world' is bad enough. It is not surprising that some foreigners, like Shrein Dewani alleged to have arranged the murder of his wife in South Africa, may have thought South Africa is just the perfect country to get away with domestic violence.

That is not a nice thing to have people thinking about a country. Given the events of the past few weeks, one woman's stomach slit open, another one's head crushed, allegedly, with a cricket bat, it is difficult to see how South Africa is going to get rid of that notion.

Certainly this cannot be blamed on apartheid. One couple was black and poor, but the other was white and wealthy.

France: The right kind of intervention

Francois Hollande rightly and deservedly got a rousing welcome in Mali. Hollande's intervention was to support the state of Mali and enhance its stability.

This is in stark contrast to the intervention of Sarkozy in Libya which was to attack the state of Libya in the guise of attacking Gadhafi, weakening and destabilising the state. To this date Libya has not recovered from that destabilisation. To this day Libyans are living in a condition of insecurity, near lawlessness and virtual warlord rule because of that unwise intervention.

That unwise intervention also opened doors for terrorists and other hardline militants resulting in the murder of the American ambassador to Libya. Such doors would never have been open if a properly managed transition had been allowed in Libya.

It is also worth noting the Hollande's intervention came after a long period of careful consideration and consultation. As a result France has the full backing and support of the African Union and regional countries. This is in stark contrast to the intervention in Libya where the attitude towards the African Union was disdainful to the point of bordering on insulting.

I hope this also opens the eyes of those with myopic vision to the fact that criticism of the West does not amount to hate of the West.

There are people who hate the West for no good reason. Some of us criticise the West because of very good reasons.

The fact that Hollande could mingle with a crowd in Timbuktu illustrates my point. Would he dare to go and mingle with a crowd in Benghazi? Let alone would he hope to hear even one person shouting 'Vive la France' in the later.

Hollande stood with the people of Africa the right way. Sarkozy led the humiliation of the people of Africa through direct snubs to the African Union. Yet if we look at events in Mali and Libya today, it is clear that the AU were wiser than Sakorzy.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the mistakes and misdeeds of the powerful countries are swept under the carpet of international justice. Only the weak, and particularly African, countries who don't have the power to veto appointments to well paid international civil service jobs, are pursued with quixotic vigour.

Such justice clearly influenced by the politics of the stomach and pockets can never be truly balanced justice.

If Obama was half as wise as Hollande the world would be a much better place. The truth has to be said. I am not going to stand in his corner simply because he is an African brother.

The land question still has not been properly addressed in Zimbabwe's new constitution.

The land question still has not been addressed properly in the new constitution. The 'new' constitution is the same old hag with a new layer of make-up.

The system of priviledged land ownership left behind by colonial dispensation has not been substituted with a more inclusive system.

Under the new constitution 90% of rural dwellers will still be living in untitled communal lands or to use their original name, native reserves.

From the way the constitution is written it is clear that there is no intention of addressing the lack of constitutionally protected tenure that prevails in the former native reserves. The politicians are focused on fighting for tenure rights on priviledged and titled former whites only land. They seem to have forgotten the urgent need to give the dwellers of 'native reserves' constitutionally protected tenure.

Under this so called new constitution, what happened to the people of Tangwena in the Rhodesia days, and what happened to the people of Chiadzwa just recently, is still possible. Peasants can be kicked out of the homes they have lived in for generations with no possible recourse to the law. None of them has got title deeds to the land they call home, so they cannot go to court like the formerly priviledged class, white farmers, are doing.

Both Zanu-PF and the old colonial dispensation are united in fighting for the rights of only the priviledged. What is widely and incorrectly passed off as land reform, is merely the  fight is over who should be occupying the priviledged position between the new political elite and the descendants of colonial settlers.

While the peasants and other under-priviledged groups such as farmworkers are useful pawns, especially when voting time comes, nobody has given careful thought to their land rights and needs.

During the colonial era Africa was cursed with leaders who didn't have a vision beyond their skin colour. Today Africa is cursed with leaders who don't have a vision beyond their pockets. We should look at the land question beyond the pockets of the political elite and the skin colour of the settler occupiers.

The growing trend of headmen and chiefs selling land, will eventually lead to massive chaos if it is not arrested by constitutionally protected tenure. My suggestion is that current homesteads and fields (misha, imizi) should be surveyed, pegged and the owners given some form of constitutionally recognised title (either deed of lease, or deed of grant) to their homes.

Let me make it clear that this is not targeted at chiefs and headman. I only mentioned them to highlight one of the many bad trends that lack of constitutionally protected tenure in communal lands is giving rise to. In fact, they too need constitutionally protected tenure, on their very own homesteads.

Right now the constitutional owner of communal land is the state. The state can take communal land and give it to private companies (Sviba Hills), or even foreigners (Chiadzwa), or preferred individuals (Tangwena in the 1960s).

The people in the communal lands need to be protected from the whims of unscrupulous 'leaders' by legally secured tenure. These leaders could be politicians hoping to make a huge killing, headman and chiefs selling pieces of land for a quick buck, or administrative officials taking advantage of people.

For a long time land reform has been couched in the language of taking land back from white descendants of colonial invaders. However to me proper land reform should include bestowing constitutionally protected land rights to the residents of former native reserves. They were denied these rights by colonialists for reasons of oppression. Continuing to deny them these rights is continuing the oppression.

Peasants need land rights that are economically actionable in the modern Roman-Dutch law based legal and economic systems.

Tackling corruption is the cornerstone to Zimbabwe's future

Having read Eddie Cross' write up about his crystal ball, I am convinced that the MDC still have no clue on how to take Zimbabwe forward if they win. In fact one cannot be sure that they will handle a transition correctly. They have already failed dismally at their first opportunity to handle a transition in 2008.

The MDC must see beyond Mugabe.

If for a moment the MDC could get their eyes out of the long narrow pipe that only sees Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF, then maybe they could see the rest of us Zimbabweans. Judging by Eddie's sentiments, their vision never progresses beyond defeating Zanu-PF to serving Zimbabwe. They are like a young couple that cannot see that beyond enjoying the sex there is something called 'looking after the family'.

As usual Eddie drones on about his wounded buffalo theory of Mugabe. Eddie, Mugabe is not the issue, we ordinary Zimbabweans are the real issue. Your party has never been convincing that they have our interests at heart beyond using us to get power from Mugabe.

Eddie makes two interesting revelations. The first is that it is Mugabe who is pushing not to break the current constitutional mandate which sees his term ending in June 2013. The other is that the MDC wanted to ignore that constitutional mandate until the conditions were right for them to win.

Excuse me. Who are the democrats here? The ones who want to follow the constitution come what may, or the ones who want to throw the current constitution into the dustbin because they are not sure of victory?

Eddie's language is also darkly ominous. He is promising the whole of Zimbabwe will have 'buffalo steaks' if the MDC wins. This is a not so well veiled threat that there will be a witch-hunt for Zanu-PF supporters, real or perceived. I wonder what kind of democracy it is that will be founded on a witch-hunt of opponents. Maybe be a Josef Stalin type of democracy.

Despite all their warts and moles, Zanu-PF are still Zimbabweans with a substantial level of support. True democrats will guarantee them their right to associate freely, not promise Stalinist purges of them.

It seems also my rantings and ravings about what ought to matter for Zimbabwe have been getting an ear. For the first time I have heard Eddie talk about a 'small government' of 20 ministers. By my standards 20 is still a huge number for a country Zimbabwe's size.

What still worries me is that, Eddie does not talk about limiting the ministers ability to free-load on government resources. One minister one car in five years, is my motto these days. Right now we have 77 ministerial level people who spend like 400 ministers.

Small government: It's no use having 20 ministers who spent like a 100 ministers.

It is no use having 20 ministers who spend like a 100 ministers. We will end up with exactly the same problem of too much money being spend aggrandising politicians and almost nothing being left for delivering services to the people.

If the British could fire a minister for merely riding a bicycle out of the wrong gate, imagine what should be happening in Zimbabwe where ministers, their relatives and even the girlfriends routinely drive through toll gates without paying.

Eddie also talks like a true politician - promising things he can never hope to deliver personally. He tells us that tourism will grow to 20% of regional arrivals. Yet he doesn't mention that the current economic recession will limit the ability of First World holiday makers to spend for some time to come. Greece, whose economy was highly dependent on tourism, is currently the sickest man in the European Union. This is not exactly the right time to be looking to tourism for economic emancipation.

Eddie also tells us the investors will pour money into mining with such an air of confidence that you would think he was giving them instructions on where and when to invest. Yet the truth is that commodity prices have been struggling to sustain investment in mining worldwide. Many of the biggest mining companies are already struggling because of marginal profitability.

The only thing most likely to attract investors is long term low cost in production. Zimbabwe might have a slight edge over South Africa in that its labour force is highly educated and less unionised. The removal of political uncertainties would help Zimbabwe, but it is not the ultimate panacea. A lot of other work still needs to be done to attract investment.

For example, in this day and age when email, and instant messaging are the cornerstone of business communication, it doesn't help that broadband connectivity is spotty and exorbitant. It costs $100 a month to get a 2GB connection in Zimbabwe. Sign on fees and annual fees are not part of this cost. The 10GB connection that I am using right now costs me about $15 with a free ADSL modem and not other hidden costs.

Political uncertainty is not the only inhibitor to investment.

Zimbabwe's infrastructure is also increasing run down and inadequate. Infrastructure designed for a population of 7 million is the same we are still using for 13 million people. Instead of improving the infrastructure, the government is rather using the inadequacy as an excuse to extort exorbitant fees from the public.

Eddie's language on land reform is also vague, I suspect deliberately. It just promises 'secure land tenure' but does not mention that the tenure is now practically contested between 180 000 black resettled families and 4000 white farmers.

Which of these two groups is Eddie promising 'secure tenure'. Obviously the vague language is designed to hoodwink one of the groups. I can only hazard a guess that Eddie promising secure tenure to his kith and kin. The black peasants are the ones being hoodwinked. The MDC needs their votes first before they can give back secure tenure to white farmers.

Most likely the black peasants will be returned to tenure-less communal lands where they were forcibly put by Eddie's colonial ancestors in the first place. That amounts to continuing to enforce the system of native reserves designed by colonialists to deprive blacks of any land rights and reduce them to a mere labour force for settlers. This was so starkly illustrated by the recent case of two chiefs who lost an attempt to challenge the granting of a lease to a private company on 'their' land.

My own view is that it is now impractical and potentially destabilising to try and uproot the resettled peasants. The issue that is best worked upon is fair compensation. The sticking question is by whom. Mugabe says by the British, since they were responsible for colonisation in the first place. I suspect the MDC will want to shift the compensation burden to the Zimbabwean taxpayer to appease their chief sponsors.

Peasants need secure and economically liquid land tenure too.

The MDC also says nothing about indigenization. The fact that colonial systems deliberately disadvantage blacks is not a figment of anyone's imagination. It is a reality of our history. I often mention how my family struggled in the native purchase areas without any support from the white government, and in the face of deliberate policies designed to hand advantage unfairly to whites such as selective pricing of produce.

Surely no one in their right mind will argue that the effects of those racist policies should not be mitigated against today. South Africa has indigenization in the form of BBBEE (broad based black economic empowerment). Therefore indigenization is not a policy unique to Zimbabwe.

Some form of black economic empowerment will need to be considered by the MDC. Zimbabwe is full of well educated youngsters who need support in the ventures they are attempting to start. The MDC is essentially saying these youngsters should not aspire to be entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg. Rather, according to the MDC, they should only aspire to be employees, mostly as lowly farm workers.

I have no objection to the Zimbabwe economy being kick-started by foreign investment. However Zimbabwe can only derive maximum benefit if her people have ownership of a fair share of the economy. There has to be a mechanism for ensuring that a fair proportion of the profits remain in Zimbabwe. There also has to be a mechanism for capacitating Zimbabweans to be self reliant.

The whole MDC programme is founded on mere hatred of Zanu-PF, not any progressive thinking about the needs of Zimbabwe. To me that is a serious shortcoming. What is needed is in Zimbabwe is not mere replacement of a political party, but a committed tackling of the culture of corruption that now pervades every sphere of Zimbabwean life. Even headmasters are now routinely demanding bribes to allocate places in their schools.

When we get the hyenas out of the goat pen, we need to make sure we are not putting jackals in there.

Chiefs loose case in rural land dispute in Zimbabwe

Recently two chiefs took a local company that had been granted a land lease by the Masvingo Rural District council to court. Both chiefs were demanding compensation for violation of 'their' land by the company.

The problem is that the Chiefs do not understand the current land tenure system, otherwise they would never have wasted their time going to court. The land is not theirs. It belongs to the state. It is only the state in the form of Masvingo Rural District council, which could have taken the company to court.

They also do not follow history because if they had followed, and understood, the travails of Rekai Tangwena and his people, they would have understood that they are powerless. Even more recently if they could have followed the Chiadzwa happenings.

The bottom line, and rule of thump, is if YOU do not have a piece of paper called a deed of grant (title deeds) for the land you care calling your own, then the land belongs to the state, or to someone else granted tenure by the state.

The state is at liberty to do what it wants with the land including kicking the natives off, which is what happened to the Tangwena people and Chiadzwa people.

You do not have the power to challenge the state because in the eyes of the courts, if you don't have a deed of grant to produce before the court, you haven't proved the land is yours. You are absolutely no different from me coming from Chivhu to claim that Sviba hills is my land.

The court might listen to the circumstantial evidence of witnesses to try and make a decision but in this case the authority, the Rural District Council, had actually given Econet a lease. The RDC is the arm of the state (owner of the land) administering the land at district level, not chiefs.

The chiefs should remember that the land they live in is called Maruzevha a name which arises from Native Reserves. Under Southern Rhodesia native reserves were the Queen's Land, the personal property of Elizabeth Mountbatten nee Windsor (otherwise known as Queen Elizabeth II). Under Ian Smith's UDI and Muzorewa's Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, they became Tribal Trust Lands held in trust by the government. In Zimbabwe they became Communal Lands still held in trust by the government.

The natives (meaning the chiefs and their people) are allowed to stay on that land UPON THE GRACE of the owner. In the early days the phrase 'upon the grace of the Queen' was frequently used.

Kuti ndinyatsopedzeredza nemuchivanhu, Madzishe nevanhu venyu kugara kwamakaita haasi mano enyu asi kuti kunzwirwa tsitsi (upon the grace) nevaridzi vevhu iroro, Hurumende. Panguva yehutapwa ranga riri ivhu raQueen.

Note that this is in contrast to farmers all of whom had deeds of grant. Because of that, the farmers have the power to take the State to court. Chiefs don't.

Farmers have gone as far as to regional tribunals and other international law bodies because in terms of the Roman-Dutch law system, their deeds of grant are recognized as proof of ownership of the land.

Chiefs cannot do that, as these two chiefs have just discovered. They can not even go beyond the local magistrate.

The fact that the chiefs and their people are powerless to do anything against the state is not an accident. That is exactly how the colonial system was designed - taking away all rights from the natives while giving the settlers as much rights as they needed to deal quickly with any natives who chose to be troublesome.

What this means is that if anyone goes to the state and gets a lease from the RDC for say a chief's fields and homestead, the chief or anyone else is powerless to stop the RDC from granting the lease. The people of Tangwena had their homes bulldozed because the then Rhodesian state had decided to grant someone else the land.

That is the law as it stands. When our politicians agree to uphold 'the rule of law' they are effectively agreeing to maintain a system that doesn't recognise the land where 90% of the population have homes as the occupants' property.

That the politicians have failed to reform the system - over three decades - is part of the ignorance that I am always complaining about. Most of the politicians do not know the finer details of the system. They never even stop for a minute to think about it.

Some are even trying to abuse it like the colonialists did. There have been persistent rumours that certain powerful people in Buhera have been trying to move villagers to enlarge their fields.

The Herald is not to blame for the Anglicans' problems

After my recent postings about the Anglican saga, it has been explained to me that Kunonga's problems with the church started well before 2007.

According to the source, the problem started with Kunonga playing the race card against Tim Neil, during his election. He reportedly then proceeded to victimize a number of priests as well as appoint un-ordained and untrained people to posts which required ordainment and training.

The world media regularly refers to Kunonga as 'Mugabe Bishop'.

Kunonga was then charged with maladministration by the church, and summoned for ecclesiastical trial. According to the source that is when Kunonga played the political card and made overtures to Zanu-PF.

According to the source it this point it was inevitable that the church was going to split. He claims the real catalyst for the split was that the regional archbishop, Archbishop Malango who had been protecting Kunonga since 2001 retired and was replaced by Archbishop Chama.

Unfortunately, that is not the story as it has been told, not just in the Zimbabwe state media, but in the international media and in general.

The information above shows that Kunonga's problem had nothing to do with politics but abuse of power. It also makes it clear that political associations only came in when Kunonga was looking for backers.

The source claims that Kunonga's ecclesiastical trial was 'frustrated into abortion by [the Herald]'. That is a very myopic view. The Herald were not even party to the trial so I fail to understand exactly how they did that.

The Herald is not the Anglican church's public relations department. It cannot be expected to paint an accurate picture on behalf of the church. If the judges or whoever was at the trial ended up fighting among themselves, blame it on their own confusion.

Public relations does not work on auto-pilot

If one searches Google for the word Kunonga most of the news articles you come up with will refer to him as 'Mugabe bishop'. The Wikipedia page on him states that his main problem with Anglicans was 'his ardent support of Robert Mugabe'.

This is clear evidence that there is a wide perception out there that Kunonga's problems are as a result of his political views. Surely the Anglican church only have themselves to blame, not the Herald, for allowing that perception to dominate the truth.

If indeed Kunonga was being persecuted for his political views, then I would have absolutely no hesitation in condemning the Anglican church for trying to impose its political views on its congregation.

However if it was about the incidents which are now being cited of victimization of priests and general maladministration  then the church was absolutely right.

What I fault the church with is allowing the issue to be incorrectly characterised in the general media for long. It should have been made very clear long ago that Kunonga's problems had nothing to do with politics but his own maladministration of the Church.

Trying Kunonga for maladministration is proper; for his political views is human rights abuse

I am sure if that had been made clear, even Zanu-PF wouldn't have offered him protection. Much of the world out there believes Kunonga was targeted for supporting Robert Mugabe.

As we speak some some are trying to characterize his current travails as a humiliation of Zanu-PF. Yet judging by Herald reports Zanu-PF have clearly washed their hands of him.

By simply correctly and accurately communicating the real facts behind the Kunonga saga, the Anglican church could have saved their congregation a lot of gnashing of the teeth.

It is the job of the church to make sure its position is clearly communicated. Public relations does not work on auto-pilot.

Corruption and Patronage must go - otherwise Indigenisation and JUICE won't make a difference

Both Zanu-PF and the MDC are swinging into election mode. For us the people of Zimbabwe we have leant the lesson that election time is empty promise season. Political parties will say anything and everything that they think will get our votes. However we now know that their promises count for nothing.

In the midst of all the flowery rhetoric and lofty promises being made, I for one continue to sorely miss what I consider to be the basic tenets of good governance in Zimbabwe. My premise is that to have good governance we must end political patronage and the corruption it gives rise to.

The fundamental principle of ending patronage, is to reduce the government to as few ministers as possible. I have earlier shown that the number of Zimbabwe's ministers is astronomical compared to the world's leading economies and largest countries. I have also illustrated how the lifestyle of ministers compared to ordinary people is simply unsustainable.

The only reason why we have an astronomical number of ministries is that both parties, Zanu-PF and the MDC, feel that their high ranking members have to be rewarded with senior posts upon the party making it into power. This has got nothing to do with the efficient administration of Zimbabwe but an unjustified feeling of entitlement among politicians.

I first made this point when the two parties signed the GPA. Then I characterised them as hyenas and leopards negotiating of the goat carcass that is the welfare of Zimbabwe's people. The moment the announced the sharing of ministries I immediately complained that the number was too much. To prove my point, the country's economy has struggled to recover under the weight of the bloated GPA government.

As long as government is bloated, no matter how many JUICEs and Indigennisations we have, Zimbabwe will never prosper. All the money meant to circulate in the economy will be quickly siphoned off into private pockets.

Coupled with the problem that our politicians want to show off by importing very, very expensive luxury goods, money siphoned into the private pockets of politicians is quickly taken out of the country leaving the country with nothing.

As long as the problem of corruption, patronage and unnecessary extravagance is not tackled, we will never ever have a 100 billion dollar economy.


On the MDC's part, the JUICE plan is not a plan that is meant to turn around the Zimbabwe economy but a plan that is meant to buy votes this coming elections and no more. It is not a plan meant to achieve success for Zimbabwe but a plan meant to win power for the MDC.

The people who came up with this plan were answering the question, 'what do we tell these people so that they vote for us?'

They were not answering the question, 'what do we do to develop Zimbabwe?'

What happens to the economy after they win power is not guaranteed and can never be guaranteed. The only thing guaranteed is that they will get a lot of prestige and use it to make money.

All the countries that wait for others to come and invest are poor.

On Zanu-PF's part talk of indigenisation is mostly cover for well connected politicians grabbing going concerns and running them down. True indigenisation would entail fostering the growth of new black owned enterprises. However the party has thrown spanners into the works of growing black owned companies like they once did with Econet. Anybody who is not politically connected to Zanu-PF is treated as a threat.

Foreign investment is already happening. We have had companies mining granite in Mutoko for years. In Chiyadzwa while the Chinese are the most publicised, their are four mining companies one of them having Italian roots. The platinum and gold sectors are bustling with investment.

Yet all these investments are count for nothing because money is being wasted in a huge bloated executive as well as rampant corruption and personalisation of national resources by politicians.

What does the existing foreign investment means for ordinary Zimbabweans. For Chiyadzwa villagers it has meant being kicked out of their homes like dogs to allow for top politicians to make money through demanding lucrative kickbacks and cutbacks from the so called foreign investors.

Right now we are sitting with a problem of billions of tones of iron ore reserves that have been given away for a song to an Indian company.

The other serious problem we have is simple plain ignorance in the top echelons of government. A patently ludicrous manifestation of this ignorance is when several senior cabinet ministers were made to sit shoeless in front of a school drop-out in the belief that pure refined diesel would then flow out of solid rock.

It is the same kind of ignorance that saw a so called professor, giving away our iron ore reserves for a song.

A few years back the entire country was made to run around planting jatropha, which was supposed to be turned into bio-diesel. While it is possible for various plant oils to be refined into diesel, one needs to do thorough research and carefully consider any intellectual property issues regarding the process before just jumping in on the deep end.

The MDC's JUICE plan is loaded on futuristic promises but empty on current action. They forget that we are not new to futuristic plans and are not as gullible anymore. Zanu-PF took us through a series of five year plans. Going by the promises made then Zimbabwe should have been a first world country by now.

We even had something called housing for all by 2000. Going by the promises made then every Zimbabwe would have been living in a mansion by year 2000. Yet all we ended up with was Operation Murambatsvina.

Good plans for providing houses did exist. One such plan was the Pay for Your House Scheme started by the Ministry of Construction. That was a very good plan. However it was soon torpedoed by rampant corruption is bigwigs diverted pool funds to build their own mansions.

Even progress that had already been made has been reversed by corruption. Right now as I write this the railway line that had been electrified between Harare and Gweru has been stripped bare of copper catenaries in one the saddest stories of infrastructure destruction.

If rumours are to be believed this was all the work of our self-centred and greedy politicians. Imagine the sheer stupidity of taking a refined product already in use and selling is as scrap which needs to be refined and tuned into a useful product all over again.

We have been listening to lofty plans for 30 years. We are being fed lofty plans now. But nothing is ever going to come of them unless the fundamental problem of patronage, gravy train seat allocation and government bloatware is addressed.

That doesn't need a plan. All it needs is a simple cabinet reshuffle.