Rescued migrants watch as the body of a person who died after a fishing boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast, is brought ashore

Joram Nyathi Spectrum

Gaddafi’s unavenged spirit is wreaking havoc across Libya, at one point accounting for an American ambassador, and now a xenophobic Europe is trying to erect a military wall on the Mediterranean Sea to avoid taking care of the fruits of its gory labour

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi early this week summed up the tragedy unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea, that body of water separating Africa from Europe. That was after about 800 migrants trying to cross that narrow strip of water into Europe from the Libyan coast drowned when their rickety, overloaded boat capsized.

That single catastrophe on Sunday brought the number of such deaths to 1 750 so far this year. The International Organisation for Migration estimates the total figure for the whole year could hit 30 000 dead.

Mr Renzi pointed out that the Mediterranean was “a sea, not a cemetery”. This was in reference to the huge number of deaths. He appealed to fellow Europeans for help in dealing with the challenge of migrants escaping poverty and war in Africa and the Middle East.

Most of them never manage to escape; instead they meet swift death in gurgles of sea water. Mothers, fathers and children.

Most of the people trying to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea land on the Italian island of Lampedusa. It is the narrowest point between Europe and Africa. Once these migrants make it to shore, they become the responsibility of Italy.

Yesterday the European Union was forced to convene an emergency summit to work out ways to stop people trying to cross into Europe and how to distribute and share the cost of those “qualifying for protection”.

Renzi called for decisive action by Europe against what they call people smugglers, or, in his own words, “slave traders of the 21st Century”. This called for the identification, capture and destruction of vessels used by traffickers to ferry their easily perishable and disposable cargo of desperate Africans and Arabs.

Now European leaders believe part of the solution is to constitute a stable government in Libya. Italy says 90 percent of the migrant boats which end up on its shores set off from Libya where, according to the EU’s foreign policy guru, Federica Mogherini, there is “no state entity to control borders”.

That’s the tragic irony. Ms Mogherini didn’t say what happened to the “state entity” in Libya. Renzi didn’t mention it. Most likely the EU summit will adopt a number of drastic measures condemning these desperate Africans and Arabs to death without a single mention, except perhaps in hushed voices, of what created the institutional void in Libya, thus turning it into a slaughterhouse from which those who escape meet their grief in the Mediterranean Sea.

But Africa knows why there is “no state entity to control borders” in Libya. The militant Islamic group ISIL probably knows too, and has set up bases to train their fighters. That dangerous woman, former US Secretary of State and next President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, knows what ruined Libya. She boasted in October 2011 after the trio of France, the UK and the America orchestrated the brutal murder of a seating African head of state, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, telling a bemused, shocked but impotent Africa, “We came, we saw, he died”.

She hadn’t reckoned with that Caesarian ghost, more powerful in death than in life. Gaddafi’s unavenged spirit is wreaking havoc across Libya, at one point accounting for an American ambassador, and now a xenophobic Europe is trying to erect a military wall on the Mediterranean Sea to avoid taking care of the fruits of its gory labour in what was once one of Africa’s most prosperous welfare states.

This is classic xenophobia, of a very racist type. Europe and America cannot escape culpability by ascribing the human tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea to war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. This is a product of their gunboat diplomacy pursuant to their greed for other nations’ resources.

America is pursuing deadly wars in the Middle East, including destabilising Syria to force the removal of President Asad. The phoney nuclear threat posed by Iran is not yet resolved; it won’t be any time soon so long as Israel wants to be the sole nuclear power in the region and feeble Obama won’t stand his ground. Daily people are being killed or displaced. As you read this, Sudan has been forced to summon the ambassadors of Norway, Britain and America who on Monday criticised the conduct of general elections in that country well before the results are out. This can only foment trouble.

In their arrogance, Europe and America will not acknowledge that it is their warmongering, not the absence of democracy, which has created most of the current human tragedies in the third world.

Now that these poor souls have been displaced by war, hunger and political instability, Europe wants a “final solution”, a most savage and morally reprehensible in a normal world – either they stew in the war in their countries or they will have their boats torpedoed in the sea.

It is that simple. Thousands if not millions of Africans and Arabs are going to be drowned in the Mediterranean by European soldiers so that they don’t take their problems to peaceful Europe. Very few will ever “qualify for protection” because these are desperate, expendable people with no skills to sell.

Thank you Mr Renzi for reminding us of Europeans’ capacity for barbarism in the slave trade. Except now the slaves are no longer desirable cargo, so they must be deliberately destroyed at sea where not even the most diligent journalist can be able to bear witness to the most dastardly anti-African genocide post-colonialism.

They argue that rescuing this human flotsam can only encourage more savages to try their luck. Thank you. Most importantly, this cargo must be destroyed because in it could hide “evil” Al-Qaeda and ISIL sleepers trying to take their war with America to paradisal Europe.

This is a challenge to Africa. Europe and America must clean their mess in Libya. They must restore stability, constitute a legitimate authority, even if it means stationing a peacekeeping force at their own expense, after all they have already stolen more than enough of Libyan oil. They must be made to endure the burden of carrying their cross, and that calls for unity, for an Africa which knows its collective destiny and that it must speak with one voice. That is the heart and soul of this piece.

Enter Zwelithini

Zimbabwe hosts the Sadc summit as chair next week. It is the same week we have our annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair which often attracts thousands of foreigners, including exhibitors.

These important events cannot, and should not, be overshadowed by the frenzy of afrophobia in South Africa which has just jolted the continent. We need to look at the bigger picture just as we must never lose sight of who is sniggering at what is going on.

We must be clear as to who benefits from a divided Africa. Africa should be wiser to resolve the imbecilic acts of a few misguided elements who have no idea that they belong to the same exploited class as those they attack as foreigners. That is to say, it is foolhardy for Zimbabweans to talk of revenge attacks against South Africans and South African companies. You can’t do that without reducing yourself to the level of the savage. Instead, this is where we should be demonstrating leadership, that our vaunted literacy translates to real education.

It is definitely not in Zimbabwe or Africa’s best interests that next week’s Sadc Summit and ZITF are overshadowed by unduly acrimonious, divisive discourses around afrophobia when there are more pressing matters of economic integration and industrialization in which South Africa is supposed to play a leading role. A more uniformly developed Africa will of necessity reduce labour migration to South Africa by spreading opportunities across the board.

We are more vulnerable to external manipulation the more we are divided. While the West might be anxious about the impact of these afrophobia attacks on their profits, they are just as happy to see how easy it is to get Africans at each other’s throats and forget about their natural brotherhood and common destiny. How easy it is to confuse Africans about who their real and eternal enemy is and how that enemy should be resisted!

If something positive can be derived from King Zwelithini’s ill-informed words which purportedly sparked what was latent and bound to explode any time, it is that Zimbabweans must put their talents to the development of their own economy, to produce most of the goods currently imported from South Africa and export more than they currently do to the region.

That said, the truth is that we are stronger together. No to afrophobia. Africa unite.

Zimbabwe is an open society and those wishing to influence Government policy can, and frequently do, lobby for alternatives, especially where different policies can lead to the same desired results.

The management of natural resources has a particularly rich history of partnerships between Government and non-Government bodies and of debate that has led to improvements and consensus.

This is why it is so unfortunate that the new Hwange Conservation Consortium has decided on confrontation, and done it in such a way that the Ministry of Environment, Water and Climate has had to make it clear that it does not recognise this new non-governmental organisation.

As the ministry notes, the law makes it clear that the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority is the sole regulatory and management body for all wildlife conservation. The authority became an independent body, largely derived from the old Government Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, largely as a result of lengthy debate initiated by NGOs who felt a more powerful and independent agency was needed than a department within the civil service, and interesting example of when lobby groups did change Government policy.

This is not to say that the authority is the source of all wisdom; it can get things wrong but since it does consult widely as it draws up coherent, rational programmes that try and balance conflicting needs it usually does well.

The HCC would be far more effective if it believes there is a better plan to lobby within the system. And the ministry has made it clear that it has no problems with organisations working with the ZPWMA and in fact has advised the HCC to do this.

Others in the past have changed policies by joining the debate and by sensible lobbying. In the 1980s the Wildlife Society of Zimbabwe hosted debates and talks and backed research into the best ways of controlling tsetse, at that time largely fought by blanketing vast areas of northern Zimbabwe with DDT. By presenting research from a wide range of disciplines, the society was able to show that the environmental damage was severe, and that there were other solutions that cost no more that would do the job as well. Policy changed.

Even a single issue lobby group can have an impact if it uses the correct channels. Again in the 1980s there was a plan to develop the next hydro-electric scheme at Mupata Gorge, possibly the best site technically but one that would flood the Mana Pools and cause a lot of other damage. A group of very concerned people formed the Zambezi Society and initiated public debate, drawing out a lot of research.

Sensibly, instead of just voicing opposition, the society sought environmental impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses and asked that all options to augment power supplies were examined, instead of just one.

The debate and the resulting research did push through a change. It was found that the environmental costs of Mupata were huge, that the alternative scheme at Bakota had far lower environmental costs while being only marginally below Mupata on technical grounds.

So the decision was taken that Bakota Gorge would be the site of the next hydro-scheme. The Zambezi Society made it clear all along that it was not opposed to the desire and need for a new hydro scheme. It accepted that this would happen. What it wanted was the best scheme, and by concentrating on the means of achieving that, rather than opposing the end, it was able to uncover the facts that made a change in the initial decision.

The HCC should follow these routes if it wants to amend the Wildlife Management Plan. Accepting the goals of the plan has to be the first step. Then it is possible to debate what are the best ways of achieving those goals. If the facts are presented that suggest something better than what we have, then we will change. But it needs facts, not rhetoric, and it does require acceptance that the Government is the final arbiter and the only way of improving a programme is to work with those who have to implement that programme.

SLEEPING GIANT . . . It will require $300 million to get Air Zimbabwe back in the air

Zvamaida Murwira Mr Speaker, Sir

The failure by Air Zimbabwe to fully utilise the aviation space has created a business boom for other airlines which now ply the routes that should have ordinarily been serviced by the national flag carrier.
Air Zimbabwe has for a long period not been flying to Europe yet the London route had over the years been its cash cow.

Parliament’S recent call to have strategic thinkers at Air Zimbabwe dovetails with a recent Cabinet directive for the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development to identify a technical partner for the national airline.

This is so because identifying a technical partner for the national airline in the absence of strategic thinkers to steer the national flag carrier might not produce the much needed turnaround consistent with what is envisaged by Government’s economic blueprint, Zim-Asset.

In its interactive meetings last month, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructural Development took to task board and management at the national airline, particularly on their capacity to turn it around in the wake of successive losses over the years.

The committee, chaired by Chegutu West Member of National Assembly Cde Dexter Nduna (Zanu-PF), queried the credentials of board members chaired by Mr Abdulman Harid in the context of the national flag carrier being technically insolvent and had been so for several years and yearned for a turn-around strategy.

In the end, legislators requested the board to furnish them with their curricular vitae.

On the other hand, three weeks ago, Minister Obert Mpofu announced that Cabinet had directed him to look for a technical partner for the national airline.

Mr Speaker Sir, all this shows that both the Legislature and the Executive are worried and determined to have the airline back on its feet.

It shows that both arms of the State are worried at the performance of the national airline which requires far- reaching strategic measures that can only be executed by strategic thinkers.

There is therefore need to blend these fundamental elements, that is, the desire to have a viable technical partner and to have strategic thinkers to execute the task.

In announcing the Cabinet directive, Minister Mpofu said his ministry would compile a list of possible technical partners and the criteria to engage them.

“We hope that the airline will be able to attract fresh capital and improve on its competitiveness,” said Minister Mpofu in a statement.

The directive by Cabinet comes as Air Zimbabwe is faced with financial challenges and a debt burden of more than $188 million.

The airline is embroiled in a multimillion-dollar insurance scam involving former company secretary Mrs Grace Pfumbidzayi and former chief executive officer Dr Peter Chikumba, who have since been convicted and sentenced to lengthy custodial prison terms.

This creates anxiety on any progressive person as to whether there are people at Air Zimbabwe not only committed to good corporate governance but with deep intellectual reservoir to be utilised during the trying times that the country is currently facing.

At the moment, Air Zimbabwe is being run by an acting chief executive officer, Mr Edmund Makona.

Parliament once raised corporate governance issues on the airline after it emerged that acting board chairperson Mr Harid was doubling as finance director.

What exposed the situation as awkward was that when asked, Mr Harid told legislators that he reported to the CEO, Mr Makona, when performing his duties as finance director while Mr Makona reported to him once he put on his hat as board chairperson.

Legislators saw a conflict of interest in the arrangement as it would lead to a “scratch my back and I will scratch yours” scenario.

Minister Mpofu said he had since resolved the issue by ensuring that Mr Harid put on one hat, that of board chairperson.

Cde Nduna said there was need to have the best brains in the aviation industry.

“We need strategic thinkers in our aviation industry. The industry is critical in boosting the economy particularly enhancing tourism and investment and supporting Government’s economic blueprint Zim-Asset,” said Cde Nduna in an interview yesterday.

He said when a national airline failed to rise to expectations, as people’s representatives, they were duty bound to interrogate the credentials of those steering it as part of their oversight role.

“We will not rest in our endeavour to see Air Zimbabwe playing its role in the economy. One aspect is that it must be in the hands of the right people to revamp the aviation sector. We have since received their CVs and (are) studying them. We will deliberate on that issue and make our recommendations accordingly in Parliament,” said Cde Nduna.

Cde Nduna also said there was need to have people in substantive positions so that they fully implement the turn-around strategy.

He said the national airline was flying close to 40 passengers on the Boeing 767 and 737 planes yet they had a carrying capacity of 200 and 105 respectively, meaning the airline was operating at almost 40 percent of capacity.

“But the handling fees, landing fees remain constant because of the weight of the aircraft and the size of the aircraft,” said Cde Nduna.

There have been views that Air Zimbabwe was being hamstrung by legacy issues because it was saddled with a huge debt.

Proposals have been made that Government takes over the debt so that it begins on a clean sheet.

Mr Speaker Sir, before that debate can be entertained, there is need to tackle preliminary issues first.

These issues are whether people with the requisite professional and technical skills are running affairs at the national airline.

Another issue is that of identifying a viable technical partner.

The failure by Air Zimbabwe to fully utilise the aviation space has created a business boom for other airlines which now ply the routes that should have ordinarily been serviced by the national flag carrier.

Air Zimbabwe has for a long period not been flying to Europe yet the London route had over the years been its cash cow.

It is crucial for Airzim to diversify its operations and consider partnerships with regional and international airlines to increase capacity and revive the ailing airline.

More than $300 million is needed to resuscitate the airline.

Cde Nduna noted that the national airline did not have an internet booking engine which allows customers to book flights online.

“The opinion of the committee is that the marketing team for Air Zimbabwe is non-existent,” Cde Nduna said.

In his evidence before the committee last month, Mr Makona said the national flag carrier had a huge debt overhang and was struggling to secure funding due to legacy issues.

Air Zimbabwe made a loss of $45 million in 2010 before reducing this to $28 million in 2011 and $26 million in 2012. The losses, however, widened to $39,4 million in 2013.

He said the national airline had three operational aircraft. He said they were in talks with Canadian aeroplane maker Bombardier and Boeing to lease planes as one of the company’s strategies to increase its route network.

Mr Makona said in the long run they would acquire a Dreamliner to service international routes.

With a new technical partner and strategic thinkers, one hopes that is what the doctor ordered for a turnaround at the airline.

Stephen Mpofu
Zimbabwe recently turned 35, a milestone for this young nation.
The country came into being after a protracted revolutionary liberation struggle.The revolution, which remains an inspirational alias for the ruling Zanu PF government, achieved its goal of freedom and peace in 1980 on the back drop of a strong solidarity between the gallant sons and daughters of the soil in the bush at home, and across our borders on the one hand, and on the other masses tired of being treated as Cinderella citizens on their own soil and driven by a desire for self-actualisation in freedom, peace and stability.

But in the latter years of our independence the demonic spirit of disunity has tended to degrade the revolutionary spirit pervading the country as some of those possessed by evil spirits have seen it fit to prune themselves from Zanu PF to set themselves up as separate mature trees, oblivious of the virtuous saying: “United we stand, divided we fall.”

That some Zimbabweans who once drummed their chests as unmitigated revolutionaries now stand accused of not only attempting to unseat President Mugabe unconstitutionally, but also killing him, appears in this pen’s humble opinion, a manifestation of the demonic spirit of division at work and driven by an insatiable hunger for power and power at any cost.

Add to that Zanu PF provincial leaders in whom a vote of no confidence has been passed by their local political structures, or have since been suspended and banned from holding office for two years, for creating structures parallel to mainstream party structures – all of those ills are the characteristics of demonic spirits at work.

Considering the fact that the West is waging war on Zimbabwe in an attempt to effect regime change – after illegal economic sanctions imposed to try to recolonise Zimbabwe failed to exact that change – is it too much of an exaggeration for this pen to suggest that those that seek to divide and weaken the ruling party in order for the country to succumb to foreign, hegemonic influences have willingly or unwittingly become cat-paws for usurping our sovereignty for the imperialists who have unleashed on these unpatriotic Zimbabweans the demonic spirit of division?

The theme for this year’s independence celebrations featured unity and peace, but values that in the prevailing circumstances of disunity wrought by small-minded, power hungry once upon-a-time gallant proponents of the revolution must have rung with a hollow feeling among devout patriots and revolutionaries, who tolerate none of imperialism returning to this country through the back door and clothed in whatever political apparel.

Then there are also these other divisive forces possessed by a demonic spirit of pecuniary greed that parallels the spirit of disunity in its insatiability.

Talk of corruption in the workplace by people who ought to be stewards of the Zimbabwean economy and you will have put your finger on the demonic spirit of greed that seeks to arrogate wealth to individuals rather than for the good of the Zimbabwean nation as a whole.

Yet it is common sense that partnerships that the Government is promoting between foreign and local companies as it seeks to bring about vivacity to an economy beleaguered by illegal Western sanctions, will remain strange bedfellows with corruption in any country where this vice rears its ugly head.

But more damaging for Zimbabwe, corruption riding on the same bandwagon as political disunity is wont to degrade, if not cripple Zim Asset altogether, if allowed an unmitigated sway.

But have all these divisive, negative elements surreptitiously wormed their way to the fore on account of the revolution lacking the red light to stop the rot, as the Government embarked on massive measures to grow education, which in Rhodesia was the preserve of the white minority to try to empower the racists to continue to ride on the backs of blacks, while at the same time improving other, social and economic sectors and culminating in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Social and Economic Transformation?

Or would the current situation of disunity under which divisive elements try to give their break-away little political parties plausible names to delude gullible masses, been thwarted had the ruling party set up an ideological institution soon after independence for the re-education of any of its wayward cadres to make them walk the revolution all the way? This year should mark a point of departure from free-wheeling political elements to bring about cohesion and an unassailable unity as Zimbabwe goes for broke in industrialisation, and with that the emancipation of the economy to a robust vehicle on which Zimbabwe as a nation will ride into a brave new economic future as the ultimate consequence of the armed revolution in which young men and young women sacrificed their precious lives to free all of us from the debilitating yoke of colonialism and oppression.
But when all has been said the onus remains with the public at large who must act and say without any equivocation that they are fed up of fly-by-night political organisations and withhold any carte blanche support for them to wilt and die away, like leaves in autumn.

Zimbabweans should resolve never again to eschew any strange, isolationist ideas or voices seeking to draw parallel lines with no point of convergence and which divide Zimbabweans along tribal, ethnic or political persuasions with the result that our people will be rendered weak and vulnerable to foreign political predators who will pounce on them without any resistance offered.

ONE of the major issues on the agenda of the forthcoming Sadc Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government to be held in the capital next week is the discussion and adoption of a Sadc Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap.

The Extraordinary Summit comes at a time when the Sadc and African Union chairperson President Mugabe has had a hectic schedule since assuming the chair of both blocs.

Notwithstanding, Zimbabwe’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has reassured the nation and the region that it is ready to host the Extraordinary Summit.

“We are on top of the situation and we have been given the funds to run the event,” said Secretary for Foreign Affairs Ambassador Joey Bimha.

That the regional bloc has made industrialisation a key component in its socio-economic development strategy is commendable since this is an area that has seen the region and continent lagging behind.

These shortfalls have also seen the region and continent relying on the developed world. This has eroded its competitive ability vis-à-vis that of the developed world that prioritise industrial capacity and capability.

In the absence of an industrialisation strategy and roadmap, it is difficult for Sadc Member States to achieve the desired economic goals.

The success of value addition and beneficiation are premised on a state-of-the-art industrial base. Without a competitive industrial infrastructure, it means that the region and continent will continue to export its natural resources in raw form and import them at a higher cost as finished products.

This whole production chain that we will have missed translates to missed opportunities and employment creation for the people. It also translates to missed wealth and makes poverty eradication an uphill struggle.

We echo the sentiments from our sister publication, the Southern Times that makes a clarion call for the implementation of the industrialisation strategy and roadmap: “Experts, government bureaucrats, academics and researchers have impressed upon the need for Sadc and the entire African continent to move away from economies based on primary products and produce finished goods. But what is now needed is to implement the agreed policies.”

People do not want to see this Summit as another talk shop, and neither do they want to see more documents produced to no effect. They want results.

It is time for action, and with the political will shown so far, the Industrialisation Strategy and Roadmap should be rolled out soon after the Summit.

Sadc is not reinventing the wheel. This has been a topical issue for quite some time. In coming up with the strategy and roadmap, we are sure that they looked at various models from other industrialised countries, in both the East and the West.

Although industrialisation is the key issue, the success of its implementation rests on regional peace and integration. It is our hope that the Extraordinary Summit will tackle issues that are likely to hamper this.

A case in point is the resurgence of the xenophobic attacks in South Africa. What has taken place in the past few weeks goes against the spirit and letter of regional integration, and people hope that it becomes an agenda item.

As Kizito Sikuka of Sardc says, “the recent cases of increased xenophobia attacks by some South Africans on foreigners may help reveal the nature of challenges that southern Africa faces in promoting deeper integration among citizens of the region . . . Considering the importance of regional integration in southern Africa, there is need for Sadc countries to work together in addressing xenophobia as it has the capacity to derail some of the gains made in promoting mutually beneficial cooperation.”

But, if Rome was not built in a day, the industrialisation of the Sadc region and Africa are the same. Once started, it will remain work in progress, just like what obtains in the developed world. But, we hope that we are seeing the dawn of a new era.

MUMIA ABU JAMAL . . . “It’s always interesting who the West opts to indict on human rights charges and, more importantly, whom it does not”

THE INTERVIEW Obi Egbuna

Mumia Abu Jamal (MAJ) has been imprisoned in the state of Pennsylvania for the alleged shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, where he currently sits on death row nearly 30 years after the original sentencing. He is a pan-Africanist and has weighed in on US/West-Zimbabwe question and connected the current black struggles in the US and what Zimbabweans faced during the liberation struggle. He spoke to our US correspondent Obi Egbuna (OE).

OE: Brother Mumia, Zimbabwe’s late Vice President Joseph Msika who served 20 years in prison during the liberation struggle, stated that if the US government were to lift their travel ban on him, the first thing he would have liked to do was visit you in prison. When he would engage US-based visitors to Zimbabwe, he would always inquire about not only your case, but the cases of Leonard Peltier and the Cuban Five as well.

He emphatically stated prison either hardened your resolve, or made you conform and submit to the enemies of progress. How does this make you feel?

MAJ: I am glad in the case of the late Comrades Msika, Maurice Nyagumbo and even President Mugabe who himself served 11 years in a Rhodesian jail cell, prison certainly hardened their resolve. I think the people of Zimbabwe and Africa as a whole are glad the imprisonment of the revolutionary leadership, resulted in an intensification of the armed struggle, and the masses genuine resistance prevailed. Prison inevitably reveals the truest face of any state, for it is the state, unclothed. Thus, if a nation is repressive, if it is racist, if it is fundamentally unjust, it will be seen in its raw form in prison. It’s true: jail either frees you, or it enslaves you. That is its essence.

OE: Brother Mumia, in order to justify the maintenance of sanctions on Zimbabwe, the US-EU alliance never hesitates to accuse Zimbabwe of human rights abuses. As someone who has always been on the forefront of our fight against police brutality and the unfair criminal justice system, how do you view these claims?

MAJ: It’s always interesting who the West opts to indict on human rights charges and, more importantly, whom it does not. Think about this: how can the US/EU endorse sanctions for one country where such allegations are made, yet refuse to consider it in another, where similar allegations are made? It is hard to feel that these are not pretexts for other neo-colonial objectives. For example, we all have read, of such violations Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc. These states receive praise as allies or in Egypt’s case, billions of dollars in foreign aid. Does anyone see a double standard here? Moreover, just the other day, I read an excerpt from the Edward Herman and David Peterson book, “The Politics of Genocide” where the following note was made: Just as the guardians of “international justice” have yet to find a single crime committed against a white-northern power against people of colour that crosses their threshold of gravity, so too all of the fine talk about the “responsibility to protect” and the “end of impunity” has never once been extended to the victims of these same powers, no matter how egregious the crimes. The Western establishment rushed to proclaim “genocide” in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, and also agitated for tribunals to hold the alleged perpetrators accountable. In contrast, its silence over the crimes committed by its own regimes against the peoples of Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa is deafening. This is the “politics of genocide.” We needn’t mention Iraq or Afghanistan.

OE: Brother Mumia, the National Endowment for Democracy is currently financing about 14 civil society groups in Zimbabwe and the money is being funnelled through the so-called Zimbabwe Solidarity Fund, which is monitored by TransAfrica Forum, Africa Action and the Priority for Africa Network. What is your take on this matter?

MAJ: We need look no further than the papers from Wiki-Leaks, which revealed the US is taking the place of the UK in neo-colonialist projects of this nature. When nearby Haiti was ravaged by an unprecedented earthquake, the US sent armed soldiers, promised acres of aid, and when the media left the US promptly left them to stew in the mud. As for “democracy”, didn’t the US force out Haiti’s elected President Jean-Betrand Aristide? Why? Because he demanded about a dime more be paid to Haitian workers for a minimum wage. The NED is the mask for the CIA (and related agencies), with objectives that have nothing to do with democracy. It has everything to do with capitalism, neo-colonialism, and US control over the natural resources of other countries.

OE: The African Union and the Southern African Development Community have repeatedly called for the lifting of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe, the dominant sentiment is these sanctions are a vindictive response to Zimbabwe’s historic land reclamation programme and their decision to fight off a US-Rwandan-Ugandan invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1999. If Africans in the US continue to take a casual approach to this matter, what message are we sending to Africans at home and abroad along with other freedom loving people?

MAJ: Initially, this is rarely (if ever)reported in the US corporate Press. But even if it were, it would be simply distorted or ignored. It reminds me of the calls from the Arab League, Egypt, etc, demanding that the US not attack Iraq. The US could care less what its “allies” (especially its non-white “allies”) wanted. The same is true of the Obama administration, which was largely purchased by corporate monies. It follows the lead of Wall Street, not Martin Luther King Boulevard. Without an informed and militant popular movement, the US will ignore what Africans want, just as they ignore what Arabs want in Palestine or Iraq. We can all see that the US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe are hardly just, but also the US call for AFRICOM – a military command for Africa! No sane African country wants a foreign army camped in their backyard. Yet the US is pushing for this.

OE: As an esteemed journalist in your own right, you have seen the manner in which the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the National Association Black Journalists have for all intents and purposes ignored the issue of Zimbabwe meaning the dominant viewpoint on Zimbabwe comes from the Voice of America, BBC, C-SPAN, and other the imperialist media apparatus. What do you think should be the role of the black journalists of the US regarding issues such as Zimbabwe?

MAJ: Most African-American journalists of previous decades, found their openings in the field only because of our liberation movement and the Civil Rights era, pushing for these spots. Thus, they were allowed to work in their chosen field because of the popular rebellions of the 60s. Many younger journalists have only read about that era, and therefore know little of that age. They think of themselves as journalists first: not African people engaged in the field of journalism.

They therefore take their cues from their professional bosses, not their community. There is also the undeniable truth that the massive levels of media mergers and acquisition have reduced the number of agencies which are not owned by the very few moguls that controls US media, in almost all fields (books, CDs, movies, newspapers, TV, etc).What that means, in the real world, is that our journalists are scared of being alienating their corporate owners, for fear they will be not only fired but blackballed by the industry.

Thus, there is little challenge to the corporate status quo. That may be sad, but it is the truth about how the world works. When I was president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, we tried to lay the foundation that would empower us to reverse this reactionary and counter-revolutionary trend in the arena of media and information. It’s also true that there are fewer and fewer media businesses that we as Africans truly own and control. In Philadelphia, there is only one African owned radio station. In Pittsburgh, there are none. In both cities, where there are large African communities, African radio stations had a storied life in those regions, with former powerhouses like WDAS-FM (Philadelphia) and WAMO-AM/FM(Pittsburgh), which were both bought by white companies.

As in African continental life, where there is no independence, there can be no freedom. In the case of Zimbabwe they are forced to take the same approach they did during the days of the Second Chimurenga, when all they had was the historic Voice of Zimbabwe broadcasts from Mozambique, which ensured clarity for the masses of the people who crossed the border by the thousands to wage struggle on the battlefield. After all these years guerrilla media continues to serve us well in the face of adversity.

OE: Brother Mumia, do you have any special message for the leadership and people of Zimbabwe?

MAJ: When Zimbabwe announced its independence from the UK-backed Smith regime, Africans the world over exploded with joy. I remember the late great Bob Marley performed at the independence celebrations. Therefore, I think lovingly of all the Zimbabwe people and all the peoples of Africa who are our brothers and sisters. We wish we could support them with more than our words. As for the leaders, I wish them the wisdom, the will and the wherewithal to bring their people to true freedom, true liberation, and better lives. Malcolm X said many years ago that as Africa goes, so goes her children all over the world. When it does well, our situation can become better. Let it be so! Long Live Zimbabwe!

Morgan Tsvangirai

Isn’t life easy for opposition politicians, here and elsewhere?

It must be easier for Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the perennial opposition MDC-T.

Get it from us, Tsvangirai would not have it otherwise – and there are a number of reasons for this, which we will seek to illustrate.

First, he doesn’t have the capacity to run a country, he that is of scant letters.

The idea of running a country, even small as Zimbabwe is, is too much to ask from a man of Tsvangirai’s mould who cannot even run his household.

More to that he is rather notorious for surrounding himself with equally poor fellas.

Ask Christopher Dell, who gave us this damning but honest assessment.

He is also the same guy who told us that Morgan, who is poor on decision-making, would need massive hand-holding.

We cannot have a hand-held president of the Republic, surely?

But that is only the first aspect.

The second, and connected to the above, is that being in the opposition gives one no headaches at all.

You just sit there see how the ruling party trips on its feet and you make your move: issue some statement or two or even plan a march or protest. The ruling party gives you all the ammunition.

But that is a very reductionist analysis of opposition, which the MDC is like, and perhaps less.

Let us probe this further.

Who remembers September 18, 2013, the day Tsvangirai announced his “shadow cabinet”?

The farce was made up of 21 individuals who were given briefs that almost match those in the Government.

This shadow cabinet never met, for all we can guess, and it has never given us any policy alternatives in all the major areas of national concern.

For example, who knows a Dr Matarutse or a Concilia Chinanzvavana, who happen to have been given the portfolios of higher education and basic education respectively?

What papers and presentations, and indeed policy alternatives have been proffered by Morgen Komichi, the Energy and Power Development shadow minister?

Or by Lilian Timveos of Home Affairs? Or by Industry and Commerce’s Tapiwa Mashakada?

Yes, the thing was a farce and the farcical nature of this episode rings through the whole organisation.

In other climes an opposition acts like a government-in-waiting and the leaders are actually given access to State secrets.

Not our MDC.

Not with Morgan Tsvangirai.

He is rather comfortable in the opposition corner.

At any rate, if he becomes President, it means two terms and under he will have to leave the scene, which he will not be able to live with.

That is why he tinkered with his party’s constitution to the effect that he becomes some sort of life president of the MDC as long as he does not win State power, which he won’t, conceivably.

Reforms, what reforms?

A couple of days ago, Tsvangirai launched what he dubbed “No Reforms, No Elections” campaign.

He started in Glen View.

Here is what Luke Tamborinyoka, Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, told a local daily:

“The decision not to participate in the fraud disguised as an election was made at our congress where we drew a line in the sand and said all reforms must be implemented before any election . . . We will not participate in these by-elections and any other for that matter unless and until all these so-called elections are properly vaccinated from the periodic zanu-pf mischief which has led to contested and illegal outcomes.”

Before we examine what poor Luke said on behalf of his boss, it is important to note that the decision not to participate in elections came less to do with any electoral reforms imagined or real, but because the MDC was ill-prepared to tackle zanu-pf after the brutal loss of July 2013.

Defeat in the by-elections, even when the MDC precipitated them as it did with the Renewals, would send the wrong message to its supporters and funders.

Besides, the party was broke, funds having dried on their Western vines.

Tsvangirai himself was surviving on penury.

The decision was to make a convenient excuse to run away from the battlefield and, for all we know, without any alternative.

Unless one says the rallies are the strategy!

And the decision itself is divisive and that is why the likes of Thokozani Khupe are spoiling to fight Morgan.

A major split is unlikely but the division and disenchantment with Morgan can only get stronger, bigger.

Look here, Luke

We all know that Luke Tamborinyoka loves the sound of his own voice and is given to making hollow sounding platitudes.

Can anyone make sense of what he told the media on the decision to boycott by-elections?

He tells us that the polls are “fraud disguised as an election” and that the “so-called elections” should be “properly vaccinated from the periodic zanu-pf mischief which has led to contested and illegal outcomes”.

That is impressive, Luke.

But what has changed from July 2013 when the country held elections that the MDC freely participated in and won a third of parliamentary seats?

The MDC duly sent the winners to Parliament where they are still.

If the elections were a fraud, what becomes of the MPs that the MDC-T sent to Parliament?

Does an election become a fraud only because a certain party has lost the majority, in this case MDC-T?

And would MDC have been whining if it had won July 2013, which it had an equal opportunity to?

Luke tells us elections need to be “properly vaccinated” from zanu-pf “mischief” but tells us nothing substantial – which is the same crime his boss and his acolytes also commit.

The other time they were telling us about the voters’ roll as the main object they wanted, and they got it a couple weeks, and just in time for the by-elections.

What else now?

We are tired of the story about the composition of ZEC when we know only too well that parties in the ill-fated inclusive Government nominated personnel to that body with Rita Makarau having the blessing of Tsvangirai himself.

At some point Tsvangirai was the inclusive Government’s point man on ZEC.

Take this NewsDay story of March 13, 2013 for example, titled “Tsvangirai now backs ZEC”.

Said the story: “Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday exonerated the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) secretariat from the 2008 election fiasco, blaming an ‘underhand’ force for the “shenanigans” that led to the disputed polls … Tsvangirai reiterated that he was confident the ZEC secretariat would preside over a credible election.”

He was quoted as saying: “It will be credible. I don’t know why it should not be . . . an election will be run by a legally-qualified chairperson who is chairperson of ZEC. I don’t think we can run an election without a qualified judge, in this case Justice Rita Makarau.”

The story explained that President Mugabe and Tsvangirai “agreed on the appointment of acting Judicial Service Commission secretary Justice Makarau as acting chairperson of ZEC”.

On February 14, the same publication had told us that Tsvangirai was confident ahead of the election.

He was quoted as saying: “Four years of this GNU have been a torture and I do not wish for another GNU,” Tsvangirai said. “I am very bullish about the way towards elections.”

All this point to the hypocrisy of the present stance of the MDC regarding its imagined electoral reforms.

Unless it is trying to tell us that it needs specific rules that says MDC-T should win all elections in this country.

Which is nonsense, of course.

Bishop B. Manjoro Dunamis
One day Jesus was with his disciples and one of them, Peter asked, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?”

Till seven times? (Matthew 18:21) This is a very powerful question, which will unlock great wisdom and how God feels with regard to forgiving others.

Peter was bold to ask for all of us today, how often should we forgive someone who wrongs us?

He even adds, till seven times?

In a world where the Master said it is impossible for offences not to come, how then are we to handle forgiving offenders?

This article will take you to the next level of your life; it will ensure you climb up the ladder, because forgiveness is the key to your next level of success in life, be it in your finances, marriage, family, spiritual life and yes even in your health. O hallelujah! Do you want to know how Jesus responded to that question above? Read on . . . it will change your life forever!

In Philippians 3:12-14 we hear the Apostle Paul say “I do not count myself to have apprehended it, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before.”

You see in order to continue climbing up the ladder you need to let go of the past. The past can be very powerful in blocking and stopping people from being who they want to be or getting what they want to get in life. Is it a promotion you are looking for, good health, a joyful marriage, blessed family, a successful project or a dynamic ministry?

Listen to me brother, sister, how you deal with your past will determine your next level in life!

If something bad and negative has happened in your past; betrayal, left alone, hurt, despised, rumoured, cheated, ignored, discouraged or disappointed in whatever form and level I have three words for you, let it go!

Eh but Bishop you don’t even know how bad it was? Friend, trust me, all my life I have served God, seen and helped various people from all walks of life in various situations and circumstances and I can safely tell you the key to dealing with your bleeding past is this — let it go!

Hard as it may be, impossible as it may seem yet we learn from the word of God a very powerful ingredient. At a human level, it can be unbearable and incomprehensible — no wonder faith comes in. Faith helps us do the impossible and unthinkable.

It is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

With faith in God and His Word, all things are possible. It is surely impossible to please God without faith. To be able to let go, you need faith to forgive. This is a powerful kind of faith that will embolden you and give you the ability to let go of bitterness, anger and grudge so strong in you that you thought you would take it to the grave with you!

O hallelujah! Why burden yourself and cut short your days on earth! Are you serious bishop? Yes I am. I am very serious! You can drop off that bag of hurt, disappointments, anger and pain you are carrying! You can let it go, forget the past and press toward the goal! Let it go so that you can go forward.

You see, you can’t enjoy your future when you are tied to your past. You can’t go much higher when you are connected to the chains and baggage of the past, they will pull you back and keep you circling in the same place.

What can I do now? Listen to me, if someone hurt you or wronged you, you have to forgive them and let go. Remembering that God also forgave you will help you forgive the next person. What if I don’t forgive? The consequences are worse than if you would have obeyed God’s word.

Not forgiving someone will block the flow of God’s forgiveness on your life according to Matthew 18:35. He forgives you according to how you forgive others. Choose to forgive!

I have also met some people who quickly dismiss the subject of forgiveness claiming that they have let go, forgiven and moved on yet if you remember something bad that happened to you feel a prickle of remorse and arousal of anger in your heart.

Those are traces of bitterness. Probably you see someone who wronged you and you hide from them or change your walking direction to avoid them; that means you still haven’t let go.

Something is still holding you. Let go from your heart and forgive. Forgiveness is more than a confession of your mouth; it’s a decision and a choice that comes from the heart. The good thing is the helper the Holy Spirit will help you do so! O glory! You have help. You are not alone — you can forgive!

I beseech you reader, this day and hour as you read this article and felt some things rumbled in your heart, images and pictures of the people that hurt you, the echo of the words they said to you and bout you — let it all go and choose to forgive! Keeping bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.

You may have been hurt, but holding on to the past will kill you. It will cause you to suffer while the people who hurt you are enjoying life.

Maybe the person who hurt you has forgotten and is now enjoying life, but you are suffering. Choose to forgive because holding on to the past will cause you to suffer, it will hinder you from moving forward and climbing up the ladder.

Even if it’s your parent, child, spouse, relative, neighbour, friend, boss, workmate, pastor, elder, stranger, driver, conductor or whoever it is — forgive! Don’t die just because someone has refused to say sorry. Remember the bible says, “It is impossible for offenses not to come” Luke 17:1.

The offences are not meant to kill you, you must overcome and forgive and move on.

The grace and faith to forgive is available for you right now.

Tap into it! Take faith to forgive! Choose it now and allow God to heal those bruises today, allow the power of the Holy Spirit to touch every broken part of your life and receive healing in your body, mind and soul.

I leave you with the reply of Jesus to Peter’s question, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?

Seven times? Jesus replied, “I say not unto thee seven times: BUT, until seventy times seven” (7×70=490). For with God all things are possible, Mark 10:27

Nathaniel Manheru THE OTHER SIDE
I am intrigued by Tsvangirai’s own strange sense of an electoral boycott. He refuses to participate in by-elections lest his hard-up party confirms its terminal decline through a poor showing certain to put paid to claims of a post-split revival.

Of course he hides behind his clownish slogan of no elections before reforms.

Clownish because all the items which Mwonzora has listed for the boycott, led by a call for the country’s electoral system to go bio-metric, do not suggest a long-held and formulated grievance; simply an opportunistic, spur-of-the-moment argument fed by recent yet outlandish developments.

Until after the Namibian, more recently the Nigerian, elections, MDC-T could not spell “biometric”, let alone grasp its meaning.

How a new coinage encompasses an old thought, only Tsvangirai alone can say. I take it he weighed the risks between continued presence in parliament of renewal MPs and force-marching an un-biometric electoral system, and came to the conclusion that the former was a more hazardous affair!

Morgan Tsvangirai

When the bedroom breaks down

But there is a key contradiction, a key comedy conveying itself in multiples. His own legal aide, Magaisa decries Tsvangirai’s posture, arguing Zimbabwe’s electoral laws are as good as any in the region, whatever fears of institutional or operational deficits there may be.

These perceived shortcomings, further argues Magaisa, are precisely why MDC-T should participate, all to test and expose them, ahead of 2018. Such a compelling argument growling from within his own belly, makes Tsvangirai and his party look quite ridiculous.

Why have they not profited from in-house advice? Why is the advice being proffered so loudly, shouted from on rooftops? Has the bedroom broken down, gone unlivable?

The poll they have lost and endorsed

Secondly, the MDC-T has hurried past all parties to submit its nominations for proportional representation seats. The nominees include Mwonzora and Makone, the two officials sorely spat out in the last harmonised elections, like some discoloured gobble.

They have now found a backdoor, and are hurrying in. What the vote could not deliver, the court has granted; what an election killed, an altercation now yields! Except this is double damnation. Proportional representation seats are a concomitance of electoral seats, of an electoral exercise. They imply contested seats, in fact are underpinned by them.

You can never gain them unless someone else goes a-polling and in their case a-losing! And you cannot assume as righteous parliamentary benefits things that come simultaneously from a correlative process you decry as ill begotten.

Or from the same act which you used to create the electoral vacancies in the first place. So, let it be recorded in the electoral annals of Zimbabwe that Tsvangirai and his party acknowledged and participated in the by-elections they caused! And gladly walked away with the only possible pickings for losers, namely proportional seats! Zanu-PF need not have nightmares.

Vice of anonymity

But there is another level of absurdity. With the nomination over and the stage set for a campaign for the said by-elections, Tsvangirai goes on a campaign trail, ostensibly to explain to his constituencies why MDC-T is “boycotting” the by-elections, fundamentally to participate in those by-elections by stealth!

Arimo mundima, busy canvassing for his candidates he registered as Independents. Nothing subtle about this, only electoral politics incognito! He feared the risk of losing. I notice the Mujuru group is also hoping for the same kind of self-constraining duplicity. Come to think of it, anonymity is never a virtue in an environment of binary politics. Paste a name and get going. That is the rule.

We have exported serious crime

Call it xenophobia, afrophobia, negrophobia, whatever you will, the fact is South Africa has now drifted into hard hat area. Not just in and by itself, but in all its relations with the rest of the world.

It is appropriate to help it through a hard, candid conversation, the kind that honest neighbours give each other.

But first, our own hard lessons as Zimbabweans. Whatever the tragic side of the mayhem in South Africa, whatever its impact on Zimbabweans, there is one lesson which is salutary, but hard to admit, harder to pronounce on paper.

We have our 4 000 in South African jails: hardcore criminals incarcerated for very serious crimes. These are statistics coming from the South Africans, but corroborated by our own mission in that country, in the course of extending consular services to these prisoners.

We are not righteous victims. We have exported crime to South Africa and let’s show contrition.

Often, these bloody flash-points we rename xenophobic attacks have been triggered by serious crimes in the South African neighbourhoods, crimes often blamed on foreigners, Zimbabweans included. With that kind of statistic, we cannot plead victim, wholly, plead more killed than killing.

That ugly statistic blunted whatever sharp points President Mugabe may have hoped to needle his South African counterpart with, during the recent encounter.

Fouling home, going elsewhere

Secondly — and that is another hard point — we have, as Zimbabweans, this nasty habit of soiling our beds and then stealing into someone else’s bedroom, to borrow warmth, salubrious airs and sleep which the owner has laboured to prepare and conjure.

Once in there, we not only foul the new airs through our un-wiped hands; we also excoriate the bedroom we have deserted, we have soiled, as if it was never home. As if it will never be home again. The late Achebe put it so well. Asked if he will ever consider leaving Nigeria for a better world elsewhere, he answered: Nigeria is where God in his infinity wisdom planted me. I will never leave it for someone else’s better home, a home which he has taken the trouble to scour clean. Of course, after a crippling traffic accident, Achebe found himself in US, but for medical reasons. He died bound to a wheelchair, that great Nigerian.

Sanctifying breakaway politics?

I have had bitter arguments with the so-called Mthwakazi people: those un-proud Zimbabweans who snipe at home from the borrowed comfort of South Africa. They want to break away, want to slough off a chunk of Zimbabwe to patch it onto South Africa, “where they came from”. Really? And if they see a Shona-speaker in Durban, they harass him, reminding him KwaZulu Natal is their home by ancestry.

King Zwelithini

Well, in recent mayhem, they too got hacked! And the instigator of that deadly action was none other than the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini. Much earlier, in the run-up to the 2013 elections, countless overtures had been made to South African interests by local politicians hailing from western Zimbabwe.

They sought patronage from South Africans, so they would be capacitated to fight elections on narrow tribal politics. The same King was especially accosted by these tribalists. On a happy day, King Zwelithini would tell President Mugabe the hard answer he gave these importuning politicians from home: do you expect the head of the Zulu monarchy to sanctify dissidence, to bless the disintegration of the same monarchy through criminal breakaways? You rebelled and broke away from the Zulu nation.

There is only one Mthwakazi and it is here in South Africa. If you crave for it, come back, at one for your sins, and maybe you shall be forgiven and reintegrated. It was a sharp rebuke, a sharp chastisement, one that collapsed deformed dreams. Asked if he ever longed to be repatriated to Africa, one leading African-African American retorted: I am a transplant floated by a cruel history into the Americas. That same cruel history planted me here. God, teach me to accept my new habitat, and to thrive in it. Is that too hard an answer to emulate?

Red hills of home

And it’s not just those few Ndebeles in the diaspora who have such a strange outlook. Shonas too, incorrigible failures anywhere and anytime, in Zimbabwe or elsewhere. Often, they congregate nocturnally on Studio 7, badmouthing home, badmouthing Zimbabwe.

They even claim to be political refugees, but refugees who come home every Christmas. Well, who came home every Christmas until the rand gave in to the dollar. Some even go as far as changing their names, twisting their tongues to ape South African accent.

Like saying: Give me my Cellophooni! A Karanga tongue roughened by fricative “r”s, from birth denied the gentle sweetness of labio-dental “l”! A Karanga tongue that says “I rove you”! My goodness! Is this what has become of us? As I write bus loads of such people have been doing round trips, ferrying them back home, remarkably terrified, sweetly happy to be landed home.

They have come home

They come accompanied by hair-raising stories. They have come home. They have come home. They have, yes, acknowledged home, and that is key! The same home they routinely congregate on Studio 7 to denounce, cheapen. I did not know that a blow of xenophobia, the okapi of xenophobia, the bullet of xenophobia, make nationalists of us, remind us of the red hills of home!

As unhappy Ndebeles, do we have to swop our full nationality for an adjunctive, South African one? Why self-flagellate in the hope of being avenged against a politician you judge to be failing you? And as it turns out, where you called home has turned out to be a cauldron? So? Deal with your home politics and home politicians; don’t desert home, call it names.

Assert your nationality; resolutely demand your space, mark your territory. Don’t cede. Bitterness, as happiness and satisfaction, is a key marker of nationality, never a reason for its effacement. As an unhappy Shona in the diaspora, do you have to cast aspersions on your country? Reject it like a village cur eaten by fleas, spotting weeping wounds?

The journey which began way back

The painful point I am making is that this horrific violence against us has jolted us into renaming home, into embracing home with the firmness of a repentant prodigal son. It has helped us mark boundaries of our nationality.

Home might not have jobs, might have limited opportunities. But home has peace, has regard, has dignity, which you can never get anywhere else in the world. Indeed, home is where you return, run to, hotly pursued by strange, xenophobic assailants who haul deadly missiles against your fragile life. Home, too, is that voice that speaks in your defence, that shouts and echoes your trodden rights in portals of power.

It makes a case for you in that foreign country, and if need be, evacuates you ahead of a menacing danger. Yes, home is your Government. I have been reading a big book tracing the “opening” up of this country by white hunters, white “explorers” and white missionaries.

This is well before 1890, say from 1835 onwards. Interestingly, those key historical testimonies record Zimbabweans who drifted down South, especially after the discovery and opening of diamond fields. Many would trek down to secure employment, save enough money to buy clothing and other western goodies.

Then they would drift home to clothe their families. Between them and Mzilikazi’s northward drift was short time. Yet they went north for home. Above all, they would work long enough to afford a gun, itself a prized weapon. With it, they would defend home, source for its unmet needs.

That is as far back as this business of trekking down South started, back in the 1840s! So, with your little life, two little feet, your little dreams, little troubles, you are not starting a new tradition, etching out a new destiny.

Only confirming an old one. It just happens that you are doing it now in 2015, under one Robert Mugabe, doing it under American and EU illegal sanctions that cripple your country and prospects.

Equally, I am writing this piece from Indonesia. A significant part of its population is scattered in many countries and regions of the world, ekeing out a living. They remit monies back home, and those remittances are a key input into their economy. They don’t excoriate home, or those they left behind, for being in the diaspora. Let our other half, that half wondering across and abroad, forever remember these little lessons, often reckoned, learnt and restated in bitterness.

Affluent white argument

I have said South Africa has hit a hard hat area; that it could do with a candid exchange with a neighbour across. But give it to them, the South Africans. They have been raising quite some searching, uncomfortable questions against themselves, unprompted, thanks to this outrage they cannot unanimously name just yet. Their quality press has been leading in the whole debate. Let me sample a few points coming through this candid debate.

One Hans Piennar admitted that the whole mayhem stemmed from a harrowing sense of inner inadequacy, a rankling sense of jealousy, on the part of the South Africans. They fear the foreigner, who is a better entrepreneur than they are. “Foreigners, like Jews, are resented because they tend to outperform others”, concludes this white man, obviously enjoying the colour-comfort of such an admission.

He is admitting on behalf of his black counterparts, hoping pushing the argument of black inadequacy, will exculpate white guilt, deservedly earned from the days of apartheid, itself a continuing shaping factor to this day. Look at these horrid blacks, so mean-spirited in a highly competitive global world. They are still ill-equipped, unable; that’s why we oppressed them under apartheid. It is an argument for affluent whites, one confirming their born-superiority. It must be rejected by all self-respecting blacks whatever grievances we might have against one another.

Hard statistics from home

The Financial Mail, itself again thoroughly white in sensibility, is even more self-admitting: “The violence is an offshoot of four interrelated problems: poverty, mass unemployment, wealth disparity, and an incompletely developed and arguably decaying social contract”. The paper admits that South Africa is “a developing and growing economy”, itself quite a humbling admission for a country which often points to an Africa which is outside of it, up north and beyond it. And the statistics do bear out this dire self-reading.

About 27 million South Africans, or nearly half of their number live below the poverty line. Sixty percent of township residents are unemployed. Currently, about 15,1 million South Africans are employed, with 5,1 million out of employment. With the exception of Limpopo province, unemployment in all other provinces has been increasing, with young people experiencing higher unemployment rates and lower absorption rates than adults.

In fact the unemployment rate for young people aged 15-24 years increased from 45,6 percent in 2008 to 51,3 percent in 2014. Much worse, unemployment rate for persons with qualifications below matric is thrice as high as that of persons with tertiary qualifications. These are the hard statistics culled from South Africa’s 2014 figures.

Macabre personality

Let’s humanise these figures. The slain Mozambican, one Emmanuel Sithole’s family says it does not trust the South African justice system. You can’t blame Sithole’s family. None of the white legal rights lobby which jumps to the assistance of white farmers here, and to the persecution of the Zimbabwe Government, is there for the Sitholes. No, they are the Sitholes, not Mike Campbells, the Ben Freeths! They are on their own, like all blacks. The family makes a more devastating point: their son was assailed by very youthful South Africans, and it makes them despair at what such tender age is capable of. The above statistics begin to assume monstrous significance. It’s much worse. All the images I have seen show the lynching of foreigners amidst gleeful South African by-standers, cheering South Africans.

These include women and children. The humanity of any society is measured not by the number of murderers it breeds, but by how its ordinary citizens respond to murder and death. South Africa gave us wild cheers in front of death, thereby showing its macabre personality where death enjoys voyeurism.

Nhova dzichiri kutambatamba

All these horrific scenes unfolded in townships, again already described by statistics above. “It is worth noting,” wrote the Financial Mail, “that not a single one of the black African victims was drawn from the middle or upper classes. In middle class South Africa, xenophobia really doesn’t exist.” The conclusion of the paper is very dire, if not panicky. Describing the mayhem as negrophobia, the Financial Mail concludes: “And it is rooted in desperate living conditions that have little to do with race, and everything to do with economics, and, tragically, unresolved issues from the past. The anger levels of destitute South Africans ought not be underestimated and the fact that they are now venting their frustrations on fellow black Africans ought not to be misunderstood.”

There is a real fear that some day such destructive anger shall look inward. Of course like all organs of propaganda for the propertied, the paper seeks to obfuscate matters. In South Africa, race and class coincide, thanks to apartheid. It’s tautological nonsense to discount race while accentuating economics. In South Africa economics gives classes which are largely races. Yet the paper has mustered unusual courage. It has recognised culpable apartheid which it euphemistically calls “the past”, as a key causal factor. That is remarkable. Most of all, it has not succumbed to a popular propaganda ploy of scrutinising the victims of the xenophobic attacks: by name, by family, by country, by politics, all in order to dodge a central question, all of it endogenous: who the culprit is: by name, family, residence, history, class, colour, country, etc, etc.

The latter shifts focus back to South Africa itself, something the ruling elite appears unready to do as yet. Back to South Africa itself, not to Sithole’s Mozambique as some kind of escapist odyssey. Here is a hard hat area, but the rulers seem to spot soft fontanelles, nhova dzichiri kutambatamba.

Broader Bantustans

Externally, South Africa has been rattled, badly rattled. Africa has responded in very telling and potentially devastating ways for the South African economy. Between themselves – Zimbabwe and Mozambique – can cripple South Africa’s northbound exports. Within itself, Mozambique can hurt South Africa’s outward investments. The response which the authorities in both countries have had to douse are menacing. Nigeria gloats, and has wasted no time in sticking the dagger in. Like self-hating Zimbabweans, South Africa has been rudely reminded it belongs to Africa and trades on African goodwill.

Often, this last born of the continent vainly carries itself about like the continent’s first born. One Zambian Vice President who is white, made that point. It is not nice, more so when that claimed seniority is founded on apartheid machinery we all fought to dismantle, and whose defeat yielded South Africa’s freedom. Far more dangerous than becoming another Zimbabwe, as Westerners are wont to warn it, is for South Africa to become a second and imperfect apartheid, one with black faces. When that happens, it turns all of us into Bantustans, little enclaves of warring tribes who have to be kept in constant conflict to let the unfair centre hold. Africa fought a system of apartheid; she is ready to escalate that fight should apartheid rear its ugly head again, under whatever guise.

The Harare test

A matter of days to come, an extraordinary SADC Summit will be held here in Zimbabwe. The one matter under discussion will be that of industrialising the whole region. South Africa will be represented, possibly at the highest level. Read against its own trade figures and GDP, South Africa over-towers all its neighbours. Not through better work ethic, far better endowments, better ingenuity, but as a legacy of the apartheid dominance days. It is better to talk of a long apartheid, one which reduces all economies in the region to anaemic satellites, long after its formal demise. Long after the demise of political apartheid, we have not refashioned relations to deal with the distortions of economic apartheid.

Quite the contrary, the current relations have expanded the playground for economic apartheid, all to our collective ruin. That need not be tragic. What is tragic is when the ANC government appear to relish this expansion, this dominance, and seek to legitimise it as black post-apartheid success it is not. To do so is to misread, or not read at all, statistics I gave above. It is not to see trouble gathering in the horizon, brewed by serious internal disequilibria. Above all, it is not to see the dialectical connection between seamless export traffic passing through Beitbridge up north, and the rugged trousered Zimbabweans and Mozambicans smuggling themselves into South Africa, and then into her jails.

The flow of business between South Africa and the rest of SADC need not be uni-directional. It must be a movement of many centres, something which a spatially balanced regional industrialisation strategy can easily achieve, indeed something SADCC sought to achieve before South Africa and SADC. We probably must search for the lost “C”, so we return to the way. The culprit for xenophobia are not the unemployed South African youths who killed Sithole, themselves victims; the culprit is a long apartheid, with its sucking tentacles, it’s tendency of creating a huge, transnational underclass, always at war with itself. Is Zuma ready to decapitate the apartheid dragon? Or is he about to defend it, to give it an African complexion? Let Harare test that.

Icho!

George Maponga Masvingo Bureau
Shell-shocked villagers could not hold back their tears as they prepared to bid farewell to Mrs Naume Garusa (41) (in the portrait, right), who was brutally murdered under unclear circumstances in Johannesburg, South Africa, last week.

Her decapitated body was found in a plastic bag in a refuse dump near Killarney.

The killers chopped her body into six pieces and stashed them in refuse collection plastic bags.

Though circumstances surrounding her disappearance are still cloudy, many who initially pointed the killing to xenophobia think there was another motive behind the brutal murder.

What kind of person commits such a gruesome murder and tries to conceal evidence in such a manner are questions relatives and friends who attended her funeral at Garusa homestead in the Chomupani area of Sengwe Communal Lands in Chikombedzi still ask.

On Wednesday morning, an emotionally charged atmosphere engulfed the homestead as relatives and neighbours kept coming to see for themselves what had become of their daughter.

The young and the old braved the drizzly weather that enveloped Chikombedzi to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Garusa family in its hour of mourning.

Emotionally strong

Only the brave had the courage to view Mrs Garusa’s remains before burial around 10am.

If anything, a warning was issued.

Only the emotionally-strong could view Mrs Garusa’s remains and one-by-one, the brave ones went round the casket.

Among them was her only child, Brian Garusa (22), a second-year University of Zimbabwe student.

What he saw in his mother’s casket weakened him as he immediately covered his face with both hands.

“We all accept that no one escapes death, but the way my mother died is very painful.

“We cannot stop death because it is natural, but to die like this is difficult to stomach,” said Brian tears rolling down his cheeks.

His mother was the sole breadwinner for the family.

“She was responsible for my upkeep at university and only God knows how I will cope without her,” he said.

Brian last spoke to his mother on Sunday evening via WhatsApp.

Unfortunately, that was the last time he heard from her.

He added that his mother did not respond to the WhatsApp messages he sent, and this was unlike her.

“She had actually promised to send me money so that I could buy a few essentials that I needed at college.

“I only learnt about her death four days later when my aunt in Gutu broke the sad news,” he said.

Brian said it was still not yet clear what motivated his mother’s brutal killing.

He added preliminary indications were that the murder might not have been influenced by xenophobia.

Mrs Garusa’s young sister, Nyembezi (30), who works in Pretoria said it was difficult to explain the reasons behind her sister’s murder.

“I am still shocked. I was the first to see my sister’s remains at the mortuary.

“Her body was cut into six pieces. I think the assailant(s) used a machete to chop off the head, both arms, and limbs. It was a gory sight that will be difficult to erase from the mind,” she said.

Nyembezi said before the murder, she spoke to her sister every day and all seemed well.

“I do not know the reason behind the brutal killing of my sister.

WhatsApp

“We spoke via WhatsApp almost on a daily basis and she never indicated that her life was in danger.

“She told me that she was on her way to church on Sunday and the last words I said to her were, ‘Pray for me sister’.

“She was a prayer warrior and alternated her time between work and church,” said Nyembezi.

She says the void left by her sister was too big.

First, her late sister was the sole breadwinner for the family as she looked after six family members in Zimbabwe, including her son Brian and their mother Mbuya Ottina Garusa (67).

Naume’s uncle, Mr Thomas Mhondiwa Garusa (73), said he was speechless following the grisly murder.

The grey-haired Mr Garusa, however, did not mince his words and said xenophobia which was sweeping through South Africa motivated the murder.

“I am still shocked. If my late daughter (Garusa) owed her killers money at least they should have approached me and asked for payment. Ending her life in such a cruel way is unbearable.

“That was inhuman, an act motivated by the devil which is difficult to fathom.

“I do not think that is the best way for Africans to treat each other.

“For centuries people from around the Southern Africa sub-region have been flocking to South Africa to work in the mines, but we never experienced anything like this.

“How can a person hate a fellow African to the extent of killing them so heartlessly? The South African government should put an end to this violence on blacks by fellow blacks.”

But Gurusa’s brother, Richard, is not convinced this was a xenophobic attack.

For him the murder was premeditated since the assailants went on to chop Mrs Garusa’s body into pieces, put them in a litter bag and dumped them among refuse.

“I have never witnessed such cruelty in my entire life, this is shocking and South African police should hunt down my sister’s murderers. The whole thing seems to have been planned,” he says.

His sister could have known her killer (s) as according to information gleaned from witnesses on the ground, Mrs Garusa allegedly received a call from a private number around 9am while at a house she was employed in Houghton, Johannesburg.

A few minutes later she allegedly went to the gate and spoke to the unidentified caller via the intercom.

That was the last time Mrs Garusa was seen alive as she never returned until the recovery of her remains.

Whether she was abducted or voluntarily left with her murderer(s) is still a mystery.

South African police who are investigating Mrs Garusa’s murder have hinted that her death might not be linked to the ongoing xenophobic violence though investigations were continuing.

Chiredzi South House of Assembly representative Retired Brigadier-General Callisto Gwanetsa, who attended Garusa’s burial, said all fingers pointed at xenophobia.

“My constituency happens to be right on the border with South Africa and many people easily cross and look for jobs across the Limpopo River. It is painful that we continue to lose many lives owing to xenophobia.

“This is the second wave of xenophobia to hit South Africa in recent years after the first one a few years ago and my question is what will happen and how many Zimbabweans will lose their lives if xenophobia comes for the third time?” he said.

He challenged Government to initiate developmental projects in the arid and drought-ravaged Limpopo Valley to stem the influx of job-seeking Zimbabweans into South Africa.

As pallbearers lowered Mrs Garusa’s remains into her grave, grief-stricken relatives, friends and ordinary villagers all seemed to agree that Mrs Garusa met her death at the hands of intolerant xenophobic hoodlums who are on the prowl in South Africa.

President Mugabe

We publish here the full speech delivered by President Mugabe at the 60th Anniversary commemoration of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, yesterday.
Your Excellency, Mr Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia,
Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Government,
Honourable Ministers,
Distinguished invited guests,
Ladies and Gentleman,
Comrades and Friends.

On behalf of my own country and the African Union, I have the honour and privilege to address this commemorative anniversary meeting of the Asia-African Conference, held in this very place, six years ago. We gather here today, not to reminisce, but to forge ahead, building on the very solid foundation of our illustrious predecessors.

Excellencies,

The Bandung Principles are timeless, they exude visionary foresight and revolution in inter-state relations. That vision still holds today.
The agenda of Bandung 1955 is a contemporary agenda, which promotes world peace, and engenders equality among nations and races, and deepens economic and cultural co-operation among the countries of Asia and Africa. It also aims to save us from the threat of annihilation from the use of nuclear weapons.

These, Excellencies, are matters that preoccupy us today as they did for those who assembled here in 1955.

Excellencies,

When the African and Asian leaders met here six years ago, they were driven by the ambition to usher in a new world order. A new world order based on peace, equality and justice. A new world order that gives voice and attends to the aspirations and interests of previously colonised peoples and countries. That envisioned new world order has remained elusive.

The world continues to be dominated by Western-designed institutions, mostly founded in the post-1945 era and by Western-inspired doctrines and ideologies of domination and exploitation. Much worse, the Bandung Declaration that “all nations should have the right to freely choose their own political and economic systems and their own way of life” in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations, is wantonly violated, as regime change has become the favoured tool of statecraft by some Western countries. Many among us here present can attest to the incessant assaults on our countries’ sovereignty and on our national economies by the godfathers of the regime change agenda.

Excellencies,

Our countries have, collectively and individually, historically demonstrated an abiding faith in and commitment to multilateralism.

This, in spite of the fact that we have not had, and we continue not to have, adequate and commensurate representation in the multilateral systems’ constituent institutions.

In 1955, our predecessors recognised the inadequacy of our countries’ representation notably in the UN Security Council. Since then, we have consistently clamoured for our rightful place at the table through a reform of the UN Security Council and the strengthening of the most representative body of the United Nations, the General Assembly.

Equally consistently, our demands have been resisted through all manner of subterfuge and procedural manoeuvrings. The UN is turning 70 this year. For how long shall we, or must we, wait for the fulfilment of our just demand for the democratisation of this institution?

I believe time has come for us to revive and resuscitate the spirit of Bandung in order to more effectively push the agenda of the South on all fronts.

Time has also come to look at alternatives, to consider other options of securing our place in global affairs. We see evidence of this in the recent decisions taken, for instance, by the BRICS countries, three of whom are part of our gathering here, in establishing a development bank. Or the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank championed by China. These are the examples of the way and manner we ought to forge ahead if the voice of the South is going to matter in the international arena.

Excellencies,

Over the past 30 years, trade flows between our two regions have increased rapidly, but in a highly imbalanced way. In 2013, for example, Asia accounted for 26 percent of Africa’s trade flows whereas Africa accounted for a mere 3 percent of Asia’s flows. One of the major factors accounting for this skewed trade imbalance is that Africa-Asia trade patterns have replicated those between Africa and the developed countries. In both cases, Africa’s exports are dominated by raw commodities while its imports are dominated by manufactured goods. We can, and must, correct this unsustainable situation.

African countries have thus decided to transform their economies through resource-based value-added industrialisation programmes and projects.

This economic transformation agenda offers immense opportunities for deeper co-operation between our regions through investments and technology transfers, among other exchanges. We thus invite our friends in Asia, many of who already have a significant presence in many of our countries, to partner in our industrialisation projects through the beneficiation of and value addition to the natural resources so abundantly available throughout the African continent. African countries have also decided to enhance the process of integration on the continent, through constructing, rehabilitating and improving transport, energy, telecommunications and other infrastructure.

This offers another window of possibilities for greater co-operation between our two regions.

Excellencies, Afro-Asia solidarity will be devoid of character and substance if it does not express and manifest itself in greater understanding between the two regions’ people. We must, therefore, put in place programmes that will bring our peoples in direct contact through cultural, sports, academic, business and other exchanges.

The value of our partnership should not be measured purely in trade or monetary terms but more importantly, in the solidarity and friendship of our peoples. It is that friendship and solidarity that stood us in good stead during the struggles against colonialism, it is that friendship and solidarity that will count in our struggle against hegemonic globalisation and domination.

It is in this spirit of solidarity that we are deeply, deeply concerned by the continued plight and suffering of the people of Palestine. Africa remains solidly in support of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to justice, to independence, and to their own state. We should continue our support of and solidarity with the Palestinian people in their quest for statehood.

Your Excellencies,

Without concrete actions, the Bandung flame will extinguish. We have, on this occasion, agreed to strengthen our mechanisms for interaction and co-operation. Let us faithfully implement those decisions for the benefit of our people, our countries, and our two regions.

Your Excellencies,

Let me conclude by once again thanking the government and people of Indonesia for the friendship and hospitality we have enjoyed during our stay in your marvellous country. We will remain forever grateful to you.

Thank you

Government should be saluted for tightening screws on retrenchment regulations by making it difficult for firms to simply throw hapless employees onto the streets in the name of cutting costs.

We have observed that the majority of companies that have retrenched have not done so just to reduce costs, but to ring-fence chief executives and top managers’ earnings and other perquisites.

Indeed we say kudos to Government for tightening retrenchment regulations so that workers are protected at the shop floor.

An unholy alliance between board members, chief executives and their managers was threatening to flood the country with retrenchees.

Why is it that when firms are faced with operational challenges, it is the low-grade worker who is usually at the receiving end?

He is made to suffer most and yet in many instances, the managers would have failed to put in place systems to increase viability.

When board members and chief executive officers go on retreat, it will be the hope and belief of workers that key decisions will be taken to bring more profits for the firm, better salaries, profit sharing and bonuses.

But shockingly, these retreats have spelt doom for workers as sad news of retrenchment or whittling of workers benefits are taken as ways of saving the company. Of course we do appreciate the fact that the current economic environment has meant the survival of the fittest as firms face challenges such as lack of capital to recapitalise.

Many producers have seen markets for products dwindle as disposable incomes are eroded while others have succumbed to the influx of cheap imports. But these challenges demand that firms think outside the box to remain afloat or even operate viably. The easier route for most of the firms has been to retrench and yet this is not the best possible solution to operational challenges.

A firm that is a good corporate citizen should not be quick to show employees the door, but should strive to come up with measures to operate viably. Of course there are instances when cutting down staff is the only viable route. Such cases should be thoroughly vetted and given the green light. There are firms where the staff to turnover ratio is too high which means retrenching staff will be inevitable.

However, everything possible should be done to minimise job cuts. A soft-landing should also be provided in cases where retrenchment cannot be avoided. In this vain, we also call on managers to follow tenets of good corporate governance, where when things go wrong at a firm, top managers must be the first to forgo some of their huge perks and desist from sacrificing low-grade workers.

We also suggest that all employment contracts for top managers must be performance-based so that no one claims huge exit packages from a company that they would have failed to lead.

Remuneration of board members and other perquisites should be monitored to avoid a drain of the company’s resources towards the upkeep of people, some whom will be responsible for the collapse of the firm. There must be a balance between executive and non-executive board members to block the creation of an unholy alliance between the former and the chief executive officers that poison the performance of the firm.

There is also a critical need for companies to employ managers who seek to grow companies by investing more resources in production rather than those schooled to shrink the company by retrenching workers as a way of saving money.

Above all, the country should adopt zero tolerance to corruption because many firms have collapsed as they fail to finance production while funding corrupt activities by chief executives and their cronies. Government should be supported for demanding salary structures of executives and management and allowances paid in cash and otherwise that have been used as conduits of siphoning untaxed benefits.

Government should also demand how much will be saved by retrenching workers and how long the firms would take to recoup the funds used to fund retrenchment before it returns to profitability.

The social cost of retrenching should also be considered before people are thrown onto the streets. Government has often been forced to look after people who spent years working for firms that ditched them at the last minute.

A more sensible approach is needed when handling the sensitive issue of retrenchments.

Robert Fantina Correspondent
One longs for a candidate for president of the United States possessing those rare traits of statesmanship, honesty and integrity. One looks back in vain to see such an example, and the near and far horizons offer no such hope, either.

We will take no time looking at the GOP (Republican Party) candidates, either announced or still keeping everyone on the edge of their seats as they “decide” whether or not to toss their hat into the soon-to-be-crowded ring.

Most, including Florida Governor and brother of one of the nation’s worst presidents ever, Jeb Bush, and New Jersey Governor, the obnoxious blow-hard Chris Christie, have already decided, but enjoy the spectacle of endless conjecture. So they wait.

But on the Democratic side, no less a worthy than Hillary Rodham Clinton, lawyer, former First Lady, former senator, former Secretary of State, has slow-balled her tattered hat into an otherwise empty ring.

Her handlers claim, disingenuously, that she expects competition, and a hard-fought primary campaign. Who, one wants to know, is going to take her on?

She has a war chest rumoured to hold $2.5 billion, more than twice what Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Barack Obama each spent on their campaigns in 2012; the total is more than their campaign expenditures combined.

The only other potential candidate with anything close to her name recognition is Vice President Joe Biden, and it will be impossible for him to generate the puzzling enthusiasm that seems to follow Mrs Clinton.

And there does not appear to be anyone waiting in the wings to grab the spotlight from her, as Mr Obama did in 2008.

So, while her various aides struggle to avoid any appearance of invincibility, let us all make the assumption that Mrs Clinton will be the nominee, and work from there.

What possible objections can anyone from the moderate to liberal political philosophy spectrum have to her nomination?

Well, this writer asks: how much time do you have?

In the interest of time, let’s just look at a single area; there will be plenty of time to discuss others as the relentless torture session known as a US political campaign drags on.

One of the most horrific oppressions of people currently happening in the world is being perpetrated by Israel on the people of Palestine.

Now, before anyone says that this is a complex, decades-old problem, and Mrs Clinton can’t be blamed for not solving it, we question these statements, and at the same time object to her worsening of the situation.

And, when one looks at her four years as Secretary of State, one can, indeed, blame her for not resolving the situation.

Some facts: Clinton is beholden to AIPAC (American Israel Political Affairs Committee), and takes her disgraceful, self-appointed obligation to that lobby group more seriously than she does human rights. During her stint as Secretary of State, she blocked every effort Palestinians made at the United Nations to achieve recognition; these successful efforts to thwart the self-determination of an oppressed people win the kudos of AIPAC.

In 2014, as Israel was using US-provided weaponry, some of it illegal under international law, to carpet-bomb the beleaguered and blockaded Gaza Strip, Mrs Clinton had nothing but praise for Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu.

She further echoed the tired old line about Israel’s “right to defend itself” from rocket fire, as if an occupied nation does not have an internationally-recognised right to fight its occupier. One must note that, during 55 days in the summer of 2014, Israel fired more rockets into the Gaza Strip than Gaza fired into Israel in the previous 14 years.

Additionally, Dr Norman Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors and an outspoken critic of Israel (he is no longer allowed in that country), calls those “rockets” fired from Gaza “enhanced fire works”.

No one refers to the advanced weaponry the US gives to Israel in such terms.

During her last campaign for the presidency, she stated that, if Iran attacked her beloved Israel with nuclear weapons, the US, under her presidency would attack Iran and could “totally obliterate” it.

One must take her at her word, since she voted to authorise the invasion of Iraq, a nation that in no way threatened the US, and in which over half the population was under the age of 15.

So she would, one assumes, not hesitate to invade Iran, a nation with twice the population of Iraq, if it, too, did nothing to threaten the US.

So why, one wonders, is there so much enthusiasm among Democrats for a woman who, by all accounts, is a hypocritical war-monger who is more motivated to enhance her own bottom line than to serve the cause of human rights? — Counterpunch.

Phyllis Johnson Special  Correspondent
In addition to his humility and all of his other attributes, one of his long-time close friends gave him the best accolade as “a great human being”.

HASHIM Mbita stood tall as a hero of the liberation struggle in Africa, and he was widely respected for his principles and dedication.

His life touched every person who lives in the region, whether they know it or not.

He died in Dar es Salaam, aged 81, on Union Day, April 26, the date that Tanganyika and Zanzibar were united in 1964 to create the United Republic of Tanzania. Unity is the message that he left behind. He was a proud Tanzanian who became a de facto southern African due to his role in the liberation of the region.

Brigadier-General Mbita (retired) was the Executive Secretary of the Liberation Committee for 22 years, from 1972 until his mission was accomplished in 1994 when the liberation of the subcontinent was completed with democratic elections in South Africa leading to majority rule.

He was honoured by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) with the Sir Seretse Khama medal, and by the African Union with its first “Son of Africa” award.

At the Sadc Summit last year in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe awarded Mbita the highest national honour that can be given to a foreigner, The Royal Order of Munhumutapa.

He joined a list of only six recipients of that award, and all of the others were founding presidents of their respective countries — Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia.

The citation reads: “For the important role he played in regional liberation as well as integration during his 20-year tenure as the Executive Secretary of the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – precursor to the African Union (AU).”

The OAU Liberation Committee was hosted in Dar es Salaam by the government of Tanzania, at the invitation of the founding President, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who was Mbita’s mentor, teacher and commander.

The Liberation Committee provided and coordinated material support for the African liberation movements who had to fight for independence during a 30-year period from 1963 to 1994, and without that support, most of southern Africa may not yet be independent.

He turned the tide of the liberation struggle in southern Africa when, soon after his appointment in 1972, he visited the liberated areas of northern Mozambique with the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo).

He wanted to see the situation on the ground for himself, and determine their needs. He was impressed with what he saw in the well-organised liberated zones, but he learned that they were subject to bombing by the Portuguese colonial forces.

His response was to organise anti-aircraft weaponry for Frelimo, and the rest is history.

Frelimo advanced and the Portuguese military officers soon realised that they could not win the colonial wars in Africa. Their Movement of the Armed Forces seized power from the undemocratic and dictatorial regime in Lisbon, opened contacts through various third parties, and entered into negotiations with Frelimo for a transitional government that took office in 1974 and independence in June 1975.

Angola gained independence a few months later, in November 1975, followed by Zimbabwe in 1980, Namibia in 1990, and finally, democratic elections in South Africa in 1994.

At a conference held in Arusha, Tanzania to close the liberation committee in August 1994, Mbita titled his statement “Mission Accomplished”.

He dedicated the final report of the Liberation Committee to the “gallantry of Africa’s freedom fighters, especially to the memory of those who did not live to see the dawn of this era in Africa. This is a tribute to their courage, a salute to the heroes and heroines of African liberation.

“To Eduardo Mondlane, Amilcar Cabral, Herbert Chitepo, JZ Moyo, Josiah Tongogara, Steve Biko, David Sebeko, Duma Nokwe, Johnny Makatini, Peter Nanyemba, Solomon Mahlangu, and, most recently, Chris Hani and Oliver Tambo, as well as the numerous unknown combatants of the African Liberation Struggle.”

Mbita was born in 1933 in Tabora, in western Tanzania, where his father was a clerk at Tanganyika Railways and he got his son into the elite Tabora Boys School on academic performance, among whose alumni counted Julius Kambarage Nyerere, who became the founding president of Tanganyika and later Tanzania.

Young Mbita was active in the co-operative movement that gave Tanzania most of its early leadership, and joined the pro-independence party, the Tanganyika African Nation Union (Tanu) in 1958.

He moved to Dar es Salaam the year before independence, when young people, mainly men, were being recruited for in-service training in the colonial civil service in preparation for independence in December 1961.

He was assigned to the press section of the ministry of information, soon becoming press secretary to President Nyerere at State House, and hosting the media during official visits such as that of the then Chinese premier, Zhou Enlai, whom he greatly admired.

Mbita rose through the ranks in party and government to become the Secretary-General of Tanu before being sent by Nyerere to the Tanzania People’s Defence Force as political commissar. He went for military training in Tanzania, as well as Britain and elsewhere, and excelled, as he had with all of his other assignments.

By then, his president had prepared him for the most important assignment of all; that of Executive Secretary of the OAU Liberation Committee. He resolved challenges and celebrated achievements, but he never took any credit for himself. He and his country believed that they were “just doing their duty” to the continent.

In addition to his humility and all of his other attributes, one of his long-time close friends gave him the best accolade as “a great human being”. – sardc.net.

Herald Reporter
David Guzuzu, Arthur Maramba, Christopher Chatambudza, Simon Chingosha Nyandoro, Godfrey Manyerenyere, Godwin Dube and Chubby Savanhu are names that should be immortalised in Zimbabwe’s history.

These brave seven Zanla cadres marked the beginning of the decisive phase of the second Chimurenga by firing the first bullets and sacrificing their lives for the liberation of this country.

The sight of the battle, about 3-4 km from Chinhoyi town has been befittingly turned into the province’s heroes’ acre.

Very few people remember details of the bloody battle that took place on April 28 1966. The Herald team was lucky to meet and interview one of the survivors, Cde Mudhumeni Nyikadzino Chivende.

Cde Chivende said during that time he and others such as the late Cde Alex Nharara were involved in recruiting cadres for training in Zambia.

“Mashonaland West is a boundary province so our major task was to recruit cadres and to smuggle them into Zambia and Mozambique.”

Cde Chivende said the group that fought the memorable battle at Chinhoyi was not the first to enter the country.

“Four groups had entered from Zambia. One proceeded to Chegutu, the other one to Rusape, another one went to Harare and the last one went to Mvuma.” Cde Chivende reminisced.

“The last seven—the group that fought at Chinhoyi—arrived about a week later.”

He said among the group was David Guzuzu whom they knew because he had been recruited from Chinhoyi area. Others came from areas such as Guruve, Makonde and Hurungwe among others.

“David knew us and he had instructions to contact Alex Nharara and myself. He left the other six in the bush and approached us,” said Cde Chivende.

The group had come into the country from Zambia through Chinhoyi.

He said Cde Nharara, a Cde Muswere and himself accompanied the late David to their hideout.

“They were hiding at Golden Kopje Mine. At that time the mine was defunct. Nobody suspected there were any people using it as their hideout”

They sat under a tree and the guerrillas spelt out their mission to them.“They reiterated, ‘Our aim is to plunge the country into darkness. When the county goes into total darkness other groups would know that it was the right time to attack the enemy,’” narrated Cde Chivende.

Cde Chivende said he remembered that the young men were confident and seriously committed to their cause.

“They told us that nobody would touch them, ‘Nobody is going to touch us. They will only touch our dead bodies because when the thick comes to the thick we will fight to death. Nobody will take us alive. Do not fear for us. We fear for you because we have guns to protect us.’”

Their aim was to blow the pylon that carries power lines that branch to feed both the northern and southern regions.

“They wanted to destroy the pylon that hold electricity cables to both Bulawayo and Harare,” narrated Cde Chivende.

They hit the pylon but unfortunately the results were not favourable.

“The pylon did not fall. There was no engulfing darkness in the country. They admitted that they had failed. ‘Tinoda kuti tibvunze vakuru venyika kana pane zvatakakanganisa’ they said. (We want to consult the ancestral spirits of the area if we erred prior to our mission). We then went to consult the Masvikiro (spirit mediums of the area)” recalled Cde Chivende.

The Spirit mediums said ‘Vana havana kutiudza asi tinenge tiinemi.” (Our sons did not inform us about their intention but we will guide them always).

They were given maize meal for rituals. After performing the ritual they were advised to leave the maize meal in the forest.

“We were told that if the ancestors were angry and anything was to go bad the maize meal would be destroyed or eaten by animals,” he recalled. He said they did as they were told and the following day they found the maize meal untouched.

But two things had already attracted the Rhodesian security forces. One of the groups that had gone to Chegutu had started operating before the darkness signal. They had killed a white farmer called Verri-John.

The attempted blowing away of the pylon had also attracted the enemy.

“Chinhoyi became a hotbed. It was infested with the Rhodesian security forces. The boys then ordered us to go and collect more material in Harare because they said what they had was inadequate.”

Cde Chivende said unfortunately they found the Harare contact absent.

“We knew the situation in Chinhoyi was tight. Mabhunu aimhanyamhanya. We used back roads to travel back to Chinhoyi. The place was infested with soldiers and policemen. The moment we got to Chinhoyi we were instantly arrested.”

Cde Chivende said President Mugabe’s sister, the late Bridget who was teaching in Chinhoyi was also arrested.

“Vakamuti ihanzvadzi yemagandanga. (They said she was a sister to terrorists).”

He said the moment they were arrested all hell broke loose. The younger soldiers wanted them dead but the elderly soldiers said they wanted information.

“We were then tortured until we became numb with pain. We were suspended from a helicopter in flight. We were 4 and Masara sold out. We refused to divulge any information concerning the whereabouts of the guerillas. In fact we denied knowledge of their existence.”

Cde Chivende said at his home, two soldiers, two uniformed policemen, two detectives and four dogs were keeping vigil.

“They spent the whole night keeping vigil in my hut. But the following morning they were surprised to find a letter on the tables from the boys,” reminisced Cde Chivende with a smile.

He said the letter urged the Rhodesian forces to release Cde Chivende and others because they knew nothing.

“’The letter stated, ‘Leave those people alone. Havana mhosva. Huyai kuno tiri kwaHunyani. (They are innocent. Come and meet us at Hunyani River.)

The Rhodesian forces then went to the site where the all-day war raged.

“The guns started blazing at 9 am and the sound of the guns died down at around 4 pm. The Rhodesian army, including the air force was out in full force and it took them the whole day to contain those seven young men.”

Miss World 2013 Megan Young of the Philippines

Ruth Butaumocho Gender Forum
Miss World Zimbabwe was held over the weekend with 25-year-old Emily Kachote walking away with the coveted prize, shrugging off stiff competition from 14 other contestants.

However, her crowning was preceded by heated debate on social media after Miss Zimbabwe Trust chairperson Mary Chiwenga lambasted the Miss World pageant alleging that it was nothing more than a racist platform that did not promote black beauty.

Her outburst confirms what the majority of Africans -Zimbabweans included – have always suspected that racial origins have always been the biggest trump card in this highly publicised international beauty pageant.

With nothing written in black and white, Miss World has long been considered to be truly a white girl’s affair, intermittently dotted with consolatory slots for women of colour and in very rare circumstances, black sisters, who are sometimes crowned first and second princesses to give leverage to this international pageant, facing a myriad racism allegations over the years.

Since its inception in 1951, only one African black contestant, Nigerian Agbanai Darego, has been able to clinch the title, making her the first black Miss World, a feat she achieved on African soil in Sun City, South Africa.

Since then it has been a challenge for any African black girl to attain the same status, although most countries on the continent continue to send representatives to this highly prestigious event.

Prior to Agbani’s crowning, none of the black African girls who had contested before had been lucky enough to edge closer to the title.

The closest they had been to the title was when they attained first and second positions.

In fact, it was two black women – Jennifer Hosten of Grenada and Pearl Jansen of South Africa – who broke the record in the 1970 Miss World by coming first and second princesses, something that had never happened before at a major international pageant.

Since then, all the black girls contesting in the pageant have been going there to merely make up the numbers and spread the level of representation, rather than competing for the title, because history has shown their chances of winning are slim.

Besides being judged on the natural beauty, contestants to Miss World have to score highest points, awarded for a range of activities and events which take place from the moment the contestants arrive at the venue of the competition.

Six challenge events that take place in the run-up to the finals include beach fashion, beauty with a purpose, multi-media sports, talents and top model, where contestants have an opportunity to shine and embrace an array of judges.

Suffice to say, save for Agbani, what it means is that none of the black contestants have managed to fit into the Miss World template or, better still, bridge the basic bar of attributes needed for one to qualify.

If anything, history has shown that black contestants have to work twice as hard to get noticed and they rarely make it to the top three. More often than not, they have to settle for a host of arbitrary titles and consolation prizes such as “Miss Talent”, “Miss Bikini” and, of course, Miss Personality of the “Face of Africa”.

After all, when they go there they are nothing more than the Face of Africa, a slot that has to be maintained to validate fair representation across races and continents.

At the risk of being called a pessimist, the Miss World beauty pageant has proved to be too elitist for the black girl to put her hopes and aspirations in, never mind the racist slurs that have dragged several contestants in controversy.

African countries continue to spend millions grooming the girls and raising their hopes knowing very well that their chances of being crowned Miss World are almost next to nothing.

Year in, year out, pageant organisers spread across the continent, hold several deportment and grooming camps for these girls, when it is clear that beauty remains merely skin deep.

Of course, beauty enthusiasts might find my assessment far-fetched but even former contestants have cried foul, alleging serious fraudulent judging procedures, which favoured white girls.

Similar allegations have also been raised at Miss Universe, a highly prestigious event, which also attracts over one billion viewers across the globe whenever it is beamed live.

Writing for HealthyBlackWoman.com Nomalanga Mhauli-Moses, who is a former beauty pageant for Botswana, said when she attended the Miss Universe 2013 she was shocked that there were three judges from Indonesia and none from Africa, even though the continent had more than 30 contestants.

She said although the crown could have been won by Miss Ghana, who was the crowd’s favourite and was very distinct in every respect, including possessing physical attributes that fitted well into the pageant’s template, the prestigious crown went to Miss Philippines.

Representatives from different African countries have raised similar concerns, and yet they continue to send contestants to the very same platforms they abhor.

Of course, one cannot run away from the fact that Miss World is a strong commercially driven event, followed by millions of business people across the globe and receives media coverage from all major outlets, making it one of the most accessible platforms to market one’s country, product or business.

However, good as it might sound, Miss World beauty pageant is not adding value to the aspirations of an ordinary black girl who remains excluded because of her skin colour.

African countries that have been dismally disappointed by the goings on should now come up with a pageant that meets the continent’s aspirations.

It should be a pageant that boosts confidence among the participants, makes them appreciate that beauty is not only about high cheek bones and fair skin but it is also about curvy, well rounded and brainy girls.

Once set up, the beauty should also promote the diversity of the continent while marketing it and creating employment opportunities.

James Shikwati Correspondent
The ongoing xenophobia attacks in South Africa are a reminder to each African to rethink what drives continental dreams. The attacks against migrant workers are not a South African problem but an African problem.

This is exhibited by the radicalisation of youth into militia and hundreds of fleeing Africans that perish across the Mediterranean Sea.

African unity is threatened because the continent’s oneness is built on the beauty of history but less on concrete economic reality.

African leaders proclaim “one Africa” for the beauty and protection it affords them in international forums but they are not keen to grow a unified economic dream for people on the continent.

Horrifying scenes of Africans butchering and burning fellow continental citizens simply because they compete for jobs and economic opportunities must force a rethink of priorities.

Is an African, African simply because he/she is black and was born on the continent?

The xenophobia playing out in South Africa is but a tip of an iceberg; a consequence of Africans sold on beauty of continent and left out on juicy economic dream.

Can the continent learn from history and forge way forward?

Historical legacies should offer proactive investment in a people to effectively participate in economic platforms. Unfortunately political leadership thrives on negative energy generated by such legacies.

The tragedy unfolding in South Africa is a pointer to the weakness of having a developed country but excluded populations.

Pressure builds when populations remain mere spectators of celebrated Gross Domestic Product performance that fails to meet their individual aspirations.

In “The Penguin Atlas of African History,” Colin McEvedy notes: “In the 1820s the mounting population pressure in black half of South Africa caused an outburst of political violence, the mfecane or ‘time of troubles’. In the eye of the storm was the dreaded Shaka.” Shaka (Ushaga) triggered massive movements of communities to as far as East Africa (the Ngoni). A close study of migratory patterns of ethnic groups in Africa is attributable to some “pressure” mostly economic and occasionally diseases. Africans, especially political and thought leaders, must get their heads out of romanticised sands of the past and confront reality – it’s the economy, stupid!

The 1,2 billion African market need to be presented into digestible opportunities for African youth to participate and generate hope.

Initiatives such as the Maputo Development Corridor and the Lamu Port – South Sudan-Ethiopia – Transport (LAPSSET) for example, should have a proactive engagement with youth to enable them grow a seed of hope on upcoming opportunities.

Discussions on open African airspace should be broken down into how they will translate into increased job opportunities in the aviation sector, hospitality industry and intra African movement of goods.

Africans of goodwill should initiate “know Africa” campaigns, where African youth exchange programmes facilitate families hosting foreigners across the continent. The continental unity narrative must go to the next step – economic opportunities; not unity by virtue of colour of skin.

The irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries is fuelled by African nation-states approach to lock populations in pockets of poverty for political expediency. If Africa has to grow its economic pie, democracy should cease being an avenue to nurture “herd mentality”, To be “African” one must pass the test of having an “African software”, Ubuntu.

The plight of South African youth calls for a recalibration of economic order to spur growth in industry and work ethic on the continent. An African shared dream of economic prosperity in the continent. I express my deepest condolences to all affected by the xenophobia in South Africa. – The African Executive.

• James Shikwati is Director of Inter Region Economic Network and Publisher of The African Executive.

People will always build homes in their ancestral or original home areas as there is always a feeling that when conditions in the country of origin become more favourable to them, they will always return or they always need somewhere to stay for their descendants

Nick Mangwana View From the Diaspora
The notion of a “home” for a Diasporan has always been both elusive and illusionary. Is home the place of ancestral origin or home is the place where one earns a living? Is it that place where one stays or feels settled? Is home even the place of one’s ancestral burial? Is it the place where one has a house? Some say home is a place where your feet may leave, but never your heart. The great Maya Angelou said that “home is a place we can go and not be questioned”.

There is a clan whose patriarch is known to have come from South African in the Limpopo Province and settled in Zimbabwe over 100 years ago.

They still consider themselves Northern Sothos even though the last three generations of them cannot even speak a word in that language.

The only thing that remains that indicates their Nguni heritage is the totem title (chidawo) known as Mthombeni.

So where is their home? Is it in South Africa or is it in the land of their adoption which in this case is Zimbabwe?

There is never the right or wrong answer to this question. People like Simon Chimbetu left the country to take up arms and try to liberate the country when their father was from Tanzania.

They died heroes and were buried at the provincial heroes acre in Chinhoyi as an illustrious and gallant son of Zimbabwe who fought for his home.

So where is the home of a Diasporan? This is the question which will be discussed in next week’s piece but for this week this column will deal with a different type of “home”. This is the issue of “Homelink.”

A few years ago, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe started a company with a focus of linking up Zimbabwe and its Diaspora. They aptly named it Homelink. This was a company that had been founded specifically with the Diaspora in mind. Unlike most other initiatives which were mainly one sided, this was meant to provide a nexus between both parties and be mutually beneficial.

It was an initiative that attempted to answer the question of where the Diasporan home is (albeit with disastrous reputational consequences). In coming up with this company it seems that there had been a conclusion that the home of a person that emigrated from Zimbabwe to another country remains Zimbabwe. Maybe they were right, if the recent xenophobic incidents in a neighbouring country are anything to go by.

Maybe the home of everyone who left Zimbabwe remains Zimbabwe. But one can also contend that the best definition is that home is not a geographical place. Home is a state of consciousness and therefore where one’s home is only defined by their state of mind. It means that the notion of home is not only a social but emotional and economic construction.

It was with this in mind that recognition was made that those in the Diaspora even if they have houses where they live, they still need houses in their countries of origin.

It is 10 years after this endeavour and the company called Homelink is still reeling from the reputational risk they took. They have come back on the market and are still attempting to lure the same group of Zimbabweans outside Zimbabwe to invest in the country and build houses for themselves.

They have even put up packages with interest rates that are more favourable to the Diasporan than those based in Zimbabwe. In their current products the Diaspora is afforded interest rates of 10 percent and Zimbabweans based at home are afforded an interest rate of 14 percent. The Diasporan remains cynical.

They scream once bitten twice shy. But bitten by whom? The question is, by Homelink or by fellow Dias- porans?

In all situations of disputes there are always two sides to a story and the truth lies somewhere in between.

For this noble idea that is Homelink to prosper, there has to be a lot of reputational redemption. What with the unscrupulous actions of some of their agencies in 2006!

Homelink owners are rightly paying a price for the actions of their agencies. That would ordinarily sound fair as the principal should always be held accountable for the actions of the agent. To this end, they have tried their best and until now they maintain that whoever lost their moneys and can prove it should forward their claim and they are happy to honour it. This is a good challenge. There are not many companies out there that can lay such a gauntlet.

As Shakespeare said: “Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent.” Thus the idea of using a few unknown quantities as agencies is the issue that led to this calamitous result.

The idea that people can just come from Harare and appoint anyone that shows a bit of enthusiasm as an agent was not only ill-advised but very much ill-fated. As would be expected, all sorts of people went into the Diaspora: the good, the bad and the ugly; the reputable, the conscionable and downright criminals.

The only way Homelink or any other company could have avoided the folly of yesteryear is to do what they have decided to do now.

Firstly, to either use credit agencies to perform due diligence for them before appointing any agent or not to appoint agencies at all.

If using agencies, only people with good records should be used as agencies.

The second alternative was to use sureties or guarantees from the agencies so as to mitigate any potential losses not only to Homelink itself but to the consumer.

People work too hard so far away from home to lose their earnings to some unscrupulous rogue elements.

But the best solution remains their current strategy, to employ their own people who are fully accountable to them.

Another point worth noting is their current avoidance of short-cuts. There is also no substitute for regulation.

This time around they have decided to engage with regulators such as the Financial Conduct Authorities (FCA). The mere use of that label means that the discerning consumer is reassured that they will recover their money no matter what.

Maybe this time around the Diasporan hoping to have a place they call their own in Zimbabwe will realise that dream.

The Diaspora bond, when launched, is meant to be a high yielding financial product.

As they prepare to launch it, they can only make a good success of it if they subject themselves to that extra regulation and the insurance that is provided to the consumer by the FCA.

Whilst the registration fee outlay would seem a bit steep in these days of tough liquidity in the country, it is worth it. It also worth it for the consumer as it is also convertible into a deposit for that well sought after home.

But why do people in the Diaspora the world over always build a home in their motherlands?

People will always build homes in their ancestral or their original homes as there is always a feeling that when conditions in the country of origin become more favourable to them, they will always return or they always need somewhere for their descendants.

The Diasporan is always wishing their original home to prosper therefore they want their ideas and a place of their own for that good day. A place of one’s own takes away the feeling of a wondering wanderer.

Whether one likes it or not there will always be an ethnocommunal consciousness which will be more awakened when there is real estate.

This real estate converts a Diaspora visitor into a Diaspora investor.

The solidarity between the aspirations of those in the Diaspora and those at home for the better outcome of their country is the one thing that makes Diasporans want their country to prosper.

Maybe this time the RBZ through Homelink is on to something which will make a difference for the Diasporan. There is only one major condition for that to happen – let Homelink slough off undeserved perceptions by not taking shortcuts.

A good uptake of their products can only bring a desperately needed positive vibe to the economy.

It is time to start trusting national institutions. But only when they avoid short-cuts and play by the rules that govern financial services products.

These are the same rules that will make the Diaspora take up the bond. If one finds themselves taking short-cuts in the financial products journey, then probably that place is not worth going to as there are no short-cuts to a real good destination.

If Homelink takes other short-cuts as was done in the past, they will still end up with a pile of mess from which they will never recover.

Zimbabweans wherever they are located want a home in Zimbabwe. They want to work with straightforward companies with prudent ethical prac- tices.

There are too many cowboys out there so a State company that subjects itself to proper regulation should not struggle to get takers. In that regard Homelink have restarted well.

They have now to narrow the gap between their character and their reputation as currently there is confusion over which is which. They have a reputation their character doesn’t deserve.

Regular family meetings are viewed as a way of fostering family unity and help in resolving family disputes

Ignatius Mabasa Shelling the Nuts
This school holiday, a friend of mine and her two teenage daughters went to visit her parents for more than a week. My friend’s parents are now old, but they still have influence and play a very strong supporting role to their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

My friend is one of the very few fortunate Zimbabweans I know who still have both parents.

Personally, my father died during the liberation war when I was only five-years-old.

My mother died some 10 years ago.

My children do not know how it feels having a grandmother and a grandfather.

I know a lot of young families that no longer have living parents and as a result, their lives are confined to their homes, maids, church, fast-foods and workmates.

Their children are chained to mobile phones, movies, radio stations, TVs and remote controls that are constantly demanding their attention.

They don’t know the blessing of having grandparents who can cook nhopi nederere or tell a tall tale.

Grandparents have lived this very life that we are trying to live and understand.

They may not have a Facebook account or a phone that is WhatsApp capable, but they have seen it all.

They are wise, have a lot of stories to tell and advice to give — hence the Shona idiom, miromo yevakuru haiwire pasi, or the proverb, imbwa hora, inoziva pekuruma.

Grandparents are not in a hurry and, unlike young parents, they invest in people and not careers, swag, gadgets and social media.

So, while my friend was visiting her parents, I sent her a text message asking for some urgent information.

When I realised that she had taken more than two hours without replying, which is not typical of her, I decided to call her.

When I got through, she quickly apologised and promised to call me back as soon as she was through with her business.

When she eventually called me, she apologised profusely and said, “Sorry shamwari, tanga tiri padare remhuri, vazukuru vachitsiurwa nekurairwa. Tanga tichizeya zviri kunetsa mumhuri dzese dzekwedu nekuronga zvemangwana.”

I felt proud that there are families that are still deliberating issues together, and young people that are still benefiting from being guided and educated about human and social values by elders.

Traditionally, a person was considered good kana akarairwa akanzwa.

Munhu asina kukura chembere dzaenda kudoro. Unfortunately, guidance is one thing that has been lost as we become schizophrenic WhatsApp citizens, and those that are supposed to guide our children and youths have become ‘zvibaba nezvimhamha’.

My friend’s words about her family meeting made me realise how much we have lost culturally as a people.

We have lost people and replaced human relationships with technology and artificial knowledge.

We now value eloquence in the English language and trash our own languages as if we do not know that language carries culture.

We are obsessed with passing exams, while we fail dismally in the school of hunhu/ubuntu.

We trust people we don’t know to solve our problems — Tete WhatsApp, Sekuru Google, Sahwira Wikipedia and others.

We believe professors, experts and talkshow hosts who offer one-size-fits -all solutions to all problems.

But people are not homogenous, and solutions and instruction that do not take context into consideration are like a foolish dog that barks at a flying bird.

My friend’s family still finds time for matare emusha — family deliberations!

Family meetings are a very special cultural investment that moulds better and responsible citizens.

It is through matare emusha that children are taught to be good listeners for comprehension. It is through that process that children are taught to present ideas and communicate clearly, to discuss and debate meaningfully.

It is in family meetings that people learn to accept criticism, manage and resolve conflicts.

They teach children and adults to respect other people and opposing views in the family.

Family deliberations are a way to help family individuals to understand each other better and to empathise.

While most young people think that traditionally as Africans we did not plan or manage risks, family meetings do that very well.

They are an effective governance system.

They review issues and draw lessons from the past.

They are forward-looking and offer psycho-social support to individuals buckling under some personal problems.

Even domestic violence cases were always emphatically dealt with in these forums.

Our biggest problem which has attributed to the breakdown of the family unit is lack of communication and shared values.

Communication and shared values were a natural extension of people’s everyday lives back in the village.

There were just too many ways of learning and teaching through songs, dance, storytelling, children’s games, mahumbwe, events like marriage ceremonies, funerals, work-parties and so forth.

Yet, it was the family meetings, matare, that were the cabinet meetings of households and villages.

It was through matare that people shared their thinking, and discussed and planned very important matters for the whole family.

The only downside was that matare did not have secretaries to record in writing the deliberations and resolutions.

Usually the deliberations and resolutions were written in the family members’ hearts and memories.

This could cause serious problems if most of the family members died and the “records” of resolutions and positions were claimed and monopolised by selfish individuals.

The Shona people believe that a household or village that conducts meetings regularly is united and strong — hence the saying musha matare.

Today, one thing that I know we have lost as a people is the art and spirit of having family meetings.

And I don’t mean those meetings that we have because there is a crisis, but planned meetings to share ideas and exchange information as well as in search for common solutions.

Another friend of mine used to complain a lot that whenever she and her sisters visited their late father at the farm, he would always sit them down for meetings and “lectures.”

Now in hindsight, she understands and appreciates what he was trying to do because the old man is gone and there is an heir who is fixated on himself and his wife.

The heir epitomises a selfie culture where other people don’t matter.

Yet, we have always shared problems and moments of joy as a people.

For example, when a baby is born, the Shona say; “Makorokoto!” and the mother answers by saying “Ndeedu tese.”

By saying “ndeedu tese,” the mother will be saying when the child grows up anybody in the village can send him or her on an errand or ask him or her to help them.

Munhu munhu nevanhu, and as Leonard Zhakata appropriately stated in one of his songs, “Nyika ndini newe, nezvakatikomberedza.”

This is what most people borrow from John Doone, one of the greatest English poets when he said:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.

This philosophy is what underpins our values of hunhu or ubuntu as Africans. This is what the English language captures in the beautiful saying, “None of us is as good as all of us.”

This is contrary to our ever busy modern lives where we have become obsessed with global contemporary values of individuality and a narcissistic selfie culture.

Yet even in our selfie culture we still need others to like, re-tweet and favourite our posts.

Unfortunately the problem is that even if we need others, our selfie culture is selfish because all we are after is getting attention and how to impress.

My friend’s family is still practising something that if we all had time to do, Zimbabwe would not have many social problems.

Unfortunately, a lot of our people are dying young, divorcing or living separately as they look for opportunities and survival in countries all over the world.

We have become scattered and having family meetings is a dying practice.

There are a lot of people in my family who moulded me into the person that I am today — and my grandmother and grandfather played a very big part.

They are now dead, but I still remember their role in making me munhu chaiye.

SADC Chairperson of the Standing committee of senior officials Ambassador Joey Bimha (right) addresses a meeting while flanked by Deputy Executive Secretary-Regional Integration Dr Thembinkosi Mhlongo in Harare on Monday

Tichaona Zindoga Political Editor
Harare is this week the centre of regional focus — bar the disquiet over the xenophobic violence in South Africa — as leaders and diplomats take part in the Sadc Extraordinary Summit on Regional Strategy and Roadmap for Industrialisation.

The theme revolves around the long-held need for regional co-operation and the relatively newer concepts of industrialisation and beneficiation/value addition that President Mugabe, the current chairperson, has been selling at home, regionally and continentally.

While it is expected that the region is going to adopt a number of well-meaning plans and strategies, it remains to be seen whether these blueprints will be adopted, indeed, see the materialisation of a mini-European Union (touted as an exemplary bloc) of Africa.

So, what is the politics of Sadc regional integration and what are the likely factors to aid or militate against the consummation of the Southern African dream?

Historically, Sadc was born out the political struggles of the region, firstly as Frontline States and secondly as the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (Sadcc) which sought to create an economic buffer against apartheid South Africa, which was a destabilising force both economically and politically.

The independence of South Africa and its entry into the global family of nations came with its own challenges, and opportunities.

First, is the challenge that South Africa has been viewed as a continuation of apartheid to the extent of its economic hegemony as a bequest of apartheid’s infrastructure.

On the superstructure level, there have been concerns that South Africa has tried to play big brother hence its military ambitions in the region, ranging from Lesotho to the Democratic Republic of Congo, although it may not have entirely succeeded.

But that could be regarded, in lighter terms, as sibling rivalry.

Take for example Judith Makwanya, a ZBC correspondent’s loquacious question to President Mugabe on the occasion of his State visit to South Africa recently.

Makwanya sought to know, essentially, what the two countries thought of the skewed nature of economic relations between them.

President Mugabe was diplomatic and pragmatic about the question, noting that South Africa’s economy was far bigger than that of Zimbabwe and there could not be parity among the two.

President Mugabe does not seem to harbour any petty sibling rivalry.

He rather challenged South Africa to show leadership in the region, saying: “We also appeal to South Africa which is highly industrialised to lead us in this and work with us, and cooperate with us and not just regard the whole continent as an open market for products from South Africa.”

The agenda of the current Extraordinary Summit was set in Victoria Falls.

A model body

While writing for the influential think-tank Council on Foreign Relations, Fraser Cameron, Senior Adviser, European Policy Centre, Adjunct Professor, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin makes a strong case for the adoption of the European Union as the model of regional integration.

This is Southern Africa, of course, but then there are salient points to be made, similarities to be drawn.

One inescapable point he makes is that, “Compared to most other regions of the world, the EU is a haven of peace, prosperity, and security.”

Sadc is also Africa’s most peaceful and secure and fairly prosperous region.

Cameron makes a case for regional integration assuming that regionalism is a building bloc of globalization to the extent that, “EU member states acting alone will be unable to achieve the results that could be gained through a 500-million-strong bloc.”

Sadc has about 250 million people, and the case for such integration has even been made by people like Professor Arthur Mutambara.

Cameron notes that the EU has been a pioneer in regional integration since the early 1950s.

Factors underpinning the success of the EU include, according to the paper, “visionary politicians . . . who conceived of a new form of politics based on the supranational ‘community method’ rather than the traditional balance-of-power model’; ‘the political will to share sovereignty and construct strong, legally based, common institutions to oversee the integration project’; ‘a consensus approach combined with solidarity and tolerance’ and ‘historical reconciliation’”.

These factors are very similar to Sadc, not least the visionary leadership and political will: if they are not historical, they are achievable.

It remains to be seen whether Sadc will take the next step forward.

After all, according to Cameron, “There have been innumerable declarations from groupings in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central America about the desirability of closer cooperation and even integration, but the record shows that the rhetoric has not been matched by action.”

That is a challenge to the leaders.

Cameron counsels that while not always politically expedient, national governments would be wise to put the long-term goal of cooperation above more immediate domestic priorities.

“More importantly,” he says, “if integration is to succeed, governments and publics should believe that it is in their vital national interest. Without such commitment, regional groupings will crumble at the first bump in the long road to integration.”

South Africa’s burden

We noted above President Mugabe challenging South Africa, which is the most industrialised nation in the region, to lead and help the rest of the pack.

Mills Soko, writing a paper titled “The Political Economy of Regional Integration in Southern Africa” recognizes this as South Africa’s “burden of regional leadership”.

Argues Soko: “In sum, regional integration in Southern Africa will not succeed unless South Africa, by far the biggest and most diversified economy in the region, discharges its responsibilities in accordance with its hegemonic status.

“Whether South Africa can assume a hegemonic regional role will depend on three considerations: first, the extent to which the country’s political and bureaucratic elites are able to balance the country’s regional obligations against domestic pressures; second, the manner in which the country deals with the legacy of apartheid South Africa’s historical destabilisation of the region; and third, the degree to which the country’s leadership credentials are accepted by other regional states.”

South Africa’s responsibility to lead is made keener by the fact that as the leading economy, it has become the destination of economic refugees, which could constitute a cause for the recent flare up of xenophobia.

If regional economies grow uniformly, the problem — South Africa’s problem — of immigration and its attendant challenges such as undue pressure on South Africa’s resources, are avoidable.

Economic equity will also foster political cooperation among member states and reduce resentment and petty hates among leaders and citizens of these countries.

Harare should be historical.

And the region is looking on.