George Nkiwane (President Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions)
What are your concerns as workers? We are concerned by a number of things as workers. Number One, is company closures and job losses which have led to people being pushed onto the streets with little to fall back on. Number Two, is the statement that was made by the Reserve Bank Governor John Mangundya saying that there should be a salary freeze. At that point some companies and workers had already begun negotiating but they came back and said, ‘This is what the RBZ has said’. We are saying we have forums such as National Employment Councils and the Tripartite Negotiating Forum that should be used for such negotiations.

We are also concerned about the lack of investment whether local or foreign, which means that people coming out of colleges are unlikely to find jobs.

Is the labour movement still relevant?

Yes it is still very relevant. What we are worried about though is that when things happen that are beyond the movement’s control, the blame comes to us.

Everything has to do with the economy and if the economy is booming, the labour movement becomes more visible. But I can say the labour movement is still relevant in Zimbabwe.

What needs to be done for the Zimbabwean worker?

The worker needs job security. You want to go to work in the knowledge that you still have a job but right now you can go to work and find the company closed and workers are unsure of their future.

As labour we are saying we should engage business and Government to map out what we have to do and restore the confidence of investors.

We also want to increase production in companies which will see the creation of more jobs and also increase revenues for Government. We all want to see the economy grow.

Thirdly we need to resuscitate the the TNF and if that is done we can agree on objectives and plans for the immediate and long term.

Lovemore Matombo (Concerned Affiliates of the ZCTU)

Our Government should begin to walk the ZIMASSET talk urgently if we are to avoid the inevitable slide into a total economic Armageddon.

We the workers of Zimbabwe today would like to demand that the Government of Zimbabwe quickly move to:

1. Stem the tide of corruption by arresting all those who have looted our resources with impunity.

2. Quickly put in place measures that will end company closures and create jobs for our desperate youths.

3. Engage with all stakeholders to resuscitate the sick economy before it falls into comatose.

4. Reduce executive expenditure and stop the lavish spending on luxury vehicles and other trinkets for elected leaders.

5. Desist from cutting costs by freezing civil service salaries, withdrawing bonuses and hiking rentals for Government accommodation as this encourages profit mongering private sector employer to follow suit.

David Marr Correspondent
Nick Clegg is in shirtsleeves down the back of the Lib Dem yellow bus as it swings through Devon. The tie has been on. The tie has been off. Now the sleeves are rolled up for the business of telling the Press his party will flinch from any coalition with Ukip or the Scots. “They are not political parties in the

conventional sense,” he explains.

“They are movements whose sole aim is one thing: in the case of Ukip to pull Britain out of the European Union, in the case of the SNP to pull Scotland out of the UK. Everything else is subservient to that.” Rather grandly, he says he will have nothing to do with either of them. “We won’t be part of a government basically on life support and surviving at the behest of a party that wants to pull our country apart.”

Clegg’s disdain is remarkable. He resists any attempts to clarify what he means by “life support” and “behest”.

The Lib Dem leader is chipper and vague in equal measure.

Would his party boycott a coalition even if there is no more than an informal understanding with the Scots? “I think,” he replies, “this whole thing collapses into a surreal debate about how other parties may vote.” Well, exactly.

For a foreigner watching all this, there seems to be an air of unreality about the Scottish question in Westminster, a kind of Highland mist that obscures the ordinary rules of politics. All the usual disclaimers must be made: anything can happen between now and next Thursday. But for months the polls have been saying only one thing: that Scotland will decide who governs Britain.

Yet that is not the narrative. Instead we read about the fear campaign being run by the Lib Dems and the Conservatives. High hopes were held for it but it is clearly falling short. The SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is not terrifying the English. Indeed, a TNS BMRB poll in the Herald Scotland yesterday declared her the most popular politician in Britain. They adore Sturgeon in Scotland; they love her in Wales and the West Country; and across the UK, north and south of the border, her net approval rating is +33.

Yet there still seems only a rather half-hearted acknowledgement that the Scots heading for Westminster after 7 May will have much of a role at all in deciding government. Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Miliband and much of the press talk as if the union is already broken and that the 50 or so MPs about to appear from the north will be interlopers in Westminster.

Let ’em in the door and all is lost, is the cry. But even if they want to scuttle the nuclear fleet and do the United Kingdom permanent damage, they have to be let in. Their numbers will be there to be counted. For now they are British MPs elected by British voters to the British parliament.

And unless the Conservatives win a dozen or so more seats than pollsters predict, the Scots will install Labour in No 10.

Surely, that’s the story of the campaign? One of the strangest things for an interloper from the far side of the world is the dreamlike quality of so much of the commentary on the campaign, dreamlike because the most likely outcome has so little traction.

Of course, the mandate of Scotland is no secret. The numbers are there. It’s given serious attention. But so much of the time, the focus drifts elsewhere: to the scare campaigns; to Clegg’s deliberately ambiguous stance on the Scots; and to Miliband’s claim on The Andrew Marr Show — surely impossible to believe — that he won’t do deals with the SNP to become prime minister.

This is no time to be coy about Westminster. You exported it to the world.

We know the rules. America made a terrible mistake right at the beginning by ditching Westminster along with the crown. Westminster works. And at times like these it works by doing deals, by building coalitions.

Cameron is lost if Scotland is part of any deal. His way of keeping Scotland out is to come up with a fresh constitutional ground rule that any coalition not built around the biggest party — for instance the Conservatives — will be illegitimate.

Conservatives have a flair for making up constitutions on the run. They pose as the great defenders of the fundamental rules but here, in America and Australia, they are the radicals. In ways Labour never can, Conservatives will try it on.

Cameron’s new rule to deal his party into any government has been rubbished as law. But destruction of the last Labour government in Australia shows what a potent political trap is waiting here, and how grim Westminster might be in the years ahead if Scotland and Labour rule.

Julia Gillard fell short of a majority in the 2010 elections and put together a coalition with one Green and three independents.

Let’s face it: this is how Westminster works. — The Guardian.

Motsoko Pheko Correspondent
When what many call “xenophobia” erupted in South Africa in May 2008, I made the following motion in the South African Parliament as a Member:“Madam Speaker,
I move without notice that:
This House —
1. Notes with deep concern, the violence that is perpetrated by our people against other Africans from other parts of Africa, namely from Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe;

2. Urges this House to speedily send some Members of Parliament to the affected areas to observe this problem on the spot and to speak both to the citizens of our country and those refugees and others who have been victimised;

3. That the House is disturbed about the alleged xenophobia that tarnishes the image of our country internationally, and by the harm this ill-treatment of our brothers and sisters does to the vision of Pan-Africanism and the work of the African Union;

4. Appeals for thorough investigation as to the real causes of this savage violence and the solution thereof to avoid repetition of same.”

The South African Parliament under Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete adopted this motion and agreed to visit the people affected.

I was one of the Members of Parliament who met the victims of violence from outside South Africa. Sixty-two people were reportedly killed, of which twenty one were South Africans.

When some weeks later this matter was debated inside Parliament, I said the following:

“Madam Speaker, one of the slogans of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), besides ‘Izwe Lethu’(the Land is Ours), is ‘Africa for Africans, Africans for humanity, humanity for God’.

“The hymn that was composed by Enoch Sontonga says ‘Nkosi Sikelela iAfrika’ (God Bless Afrika). One of our liberation anthems is Morena Boloka Sechaba sa Afrika (God Protect the Nation of Afrika).

“These anthems were composed with the reality in mind that Africa is one, from Cape to Cairo, Madagascar to Morocco. Whether we like it or not, Africa is one. It has always been one from the time it was called Al-Kebulan or ‘Mother of Nations’ or ‘The Land of Ham’.

“Xenophobia is a disease that can destroy Africa faster than HIV and AIDS. Xenophobia is a step towards reviving tribalism, another disease that was used to divide Africans by the enemies of Africa.

“In our country, derogatory terms such as ‘kaffir’ are a taboo. Equally, our country must put words such as ‘makwerekwere’, ‘matswantle’ and others in the same category as ‘kaffir’.

“All the 53 African countries belong to the African Union. They have the Pan African Parliament. They own Africa and its riches collectively. A proper terminology must be found for Africans from outside South Africa.

“They are not ‘foreigners’. They can’t be Africans and foreigners at the same time.

“They all agreed to form the OAU to liberate Africa, including South Africa.

Africans are feathers of the same bird. Therefore, let us firmly hold that indeed, the etymological specimen of the identical plumage habitually congregate in the closest proximity.

“The African people have a common destiny. We are sailing in one ship. If it sails across we shall all be safe, if it sinks we shall all perish. When we were enslaved or colonised, the authors of these barbaric acts did not ask whether you were a Nigerian, a Zimbabwean, Azanian or South African. They inflicted their atrocities and genocide on every African whether in Jamaica or America.”

I could not say more. I was allowed two minutes to speak. Now, in April 2015 our people from outside South Africa are again living in fear. There is Afrophobia in this country. It is not “xenophobia”. In English this word that is borrowed from Greek means “fear or dislike of strangers or foreigners”.

In the spirit of Ubuntu and Pan Africanism, there is no African who can be a “foreigner in Africa” while non-Africans who live here are not considered as foreigners. It is a contradiction in terms, to be an African and a “foreigner” at the same time.

What is called ‘xenophobia’ in South Africa is brother hating or disliking brother. This signals that the colonial mentality is too deep-seated in this country; if this is not the work of hooligans or “third force” to derail the Pan African agenda which fathers of the liberation struggle in Africa such as Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Nyerere, Sobukwe, Lumumba, Garvey, Du Bois, Padmore, Malcom X embraced.

Let this lunacy of Afrophobia be sent to hell. It will kill all of Africa. The ANC Government must investigate this dangerous problem and have it solved once and for all.

The vision of Pan Africanism and a United States of Africa must be brought to the masses of Africa. It must cease to be a mere dream of the presidents of Africa. The ordinary people of Africa must know about it and its benefits.

Every member of the African Union must declare May 25 a statutory Continental Liberation Day. This must be a special day in which to reflect with the masses of Africa, where Africa has come from through days of slavery, colonialism and racism. They must know where Africa is at present and where Africa must be tomorrow for the benefit of all the people of Africa.

It is a shame that in many African countries including South Africa May 25 — Africa liberation Day is nothing, while colonial holidays are still celebrated in a new form.

May 25 should be dedicated to educating all of Africa’s people to know themselves and their continent including the Diaspora. Africa Liberation Day must be a day on which Africans must know one another better as brothers and sisters and about their continent and how to move it forward for generations of Africans to come.

Another thing must be done in South Africa (Azania) at the airports and other parts of entry into the country. There must an information board marked ‘From African Union Countries.’ This is where these Africans must be served instead of being lumped with foreigners from outside Africa.

The African Union must be for the benefit of African people not of its rulers. Ordinary Africans therefore must understand the Pan African agenda and vision. After all it is these masses that can drive this agenda, once they realise it benefits them. Afrophobia will destroy the Pan African agenda if African leaders are not careful.

Let all Africans at home and abroad be reminded of the words of that great Nigerian leader Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe when he said:

“As itself the cradle (of Western European Civilisation), this Continent (Africa), has had the bad luck of being over-run by (European) soldiers of fortune who had neither (the moral) fibre nor humanity . . . Slavery played its shameful role in depopulating Africa. Capitalism denuded (Africa) of its wealth. Colonialism deprived Africa of its birthright and imperialism emasculated Africa of its will to live as human being and enjoy its fair share of bounties of the earth.”

All obstacles that make us Africans lose our Pan African focus must be removed. Afrophobia is one of them. Africans are sailing in one ship. If it sails across the stormy sea we shall be safe.

If it sinks, we shall all sink and lose our Africa again to the real foreigners. They are sworn enemies of the Pan African vision and agenda. They work day and night to bury it. Afrophobia serves their vile schemes. All Pan Africanists must be vigilant! — Pambazuka.

President Jacob Zuma

Joram Nyathi Spectrum
“And here is a creature that lacks foresight. The average black does not plan his life beyond a year.” “Creature” refers to the blackman, so does “black”. No histrionics yet about racism you hypocrite. I was reminded of the devil’s speech by the events of the past few weeks which almost derailed the Sadc Extraordinary Summit held in Harare yesterday, the focus of Spectrum this week.

Those comments are ascribed to one Botha in an address to the South African parliament in 1985, almost a good 10 years before Nelson Mandela was to become the first black president of the Republic in 1994.

It is a relatively short speech which I love to reread whenever I am bored.

It is rare in these days of political correctness to find people who speak their mind without flinching, without the need to apologise, without a twinge of irony or hypocrisy.

French philosopher and writer Voltaire reportedly asked God at one point, praying; “May God defend me from my friends: I can defend myself from my enemies.”

The truth of that statement is that we know how to react when we see a snake or a lion. That’s why generally I love whites who don’t hide their disgust at the sight of black people and make a point of keeping a safe distance unless forced by circumstance to mix.

And I want to thank the white devil for his insights. We ignore them at our own peril, for they bid us be people of “foresight” and to plan our lives “beyond a year”.

Though a repeat of what happened in 2008, the outbreak of Afrophobia against immigrants in the coastal city of Durban in South Africa recently generated so much anger and negative energy, it was like there had been a genocide or a holocaust or pogrom of some kind.

Recriminations flew thick and fast, with people calling for retaliatory attacks against South Africans across Africa.

President Jacob Zuma was accused of doing little too late to stop or prevent the “massacre” of seven immigrant Africans.

His condemnation of the attacks was judged to be inadequate and insincere.

Even among politicians who should know better, suddenly the ICC became a suitable institution to decide the fate of King Zwelithini, even as the AU is set to decide soon whether African should remain a part of that Afrophobic court!

And while protesting that they would not return home to Zimbabwe for fear of an ogre called Mugabe, some had the effrontery to sue their host President Zuma in his own court for not taking proper care of them! Surreal it sounds, its not beyond the hypocrisy of some Zimbabweans.

In the end one got the feeling that given the opportunity, most Africans, whether they had relatives or not caught up in the attacks, would have relished driving black South Africans into the ocean and leaving the racists to enjoy the legacy of their apartheid economy unperturbed.

Afrophobia was suddenly elevated to a key agenda item for the forthcoming Sadc Summit, superseding issues of industrialisation, competitiveness and regional integration, the substantive policy interventions which seek to render Afrophobia an anachronism.

Talk of “foresight” and planning “life beyond a year”! They are simply incompatible with the black man. Alien to a political Zimbabwean.

Give the devil his due for a devastating observation given with burnished candour.

Alien to a political Zimbabwean because our recent history is replete with curses of short-termism.

Land reform, Zim-Asset, investment agreements with China and Russia are immediate cases in point.

Land: It took the white man nearly a century to produce the highest ever figure of 236 million kg of tobacco in this country in 1991/2. Resettled farmers are close to that figure with less than 15 years of experience but they are still treated with scorn and the land reform attacked as a failure.

The highest figure of maize ever produced was 2,952 million tonnes in 1984. We are not factoring the fact of the white commercial farmer using slave labour while banks and other institutions such as IFC provided cheap finance.

The poor black farmer who has recently got a plot of land but has no draught power, no bank loan and has to pay his workers at the commercial rates is accused of either laziness or incompetency.

He should do as well, if not better, than the white farmer. There is no honeymoon for him.

Our intellectuals will go out of their way to demonstrate how astute Smith was to survive the brief UN sanctions imposed on Rhodesia, but studiously deny the existence of illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the EU and America as punishment for the land reform, just so they convince blacks that they are inferior or too corrupt to run a country.

Zim-Asset, Government’s economic development blueprint, has been a victim of cynicism rather than critical interrogation by a people who want to break the shackles of the colonial economy.

This is a framework which can be applied to any economy as a measure of human development.

But in Zimbabwe people expect overnight miracles: asking about the 2 million jobs before the programme is a year under implementation!

Investment agreements to rebuild infrastructure signed between Zimbabwe and China and Russia last year have been greeted with the same cynicism. These are meant to improve energy supplies and transport as key enablers for industrialisation.

But people expect results overnight. In fact, people wanted cash so they could spend.

Then you blame Botha as a racist! Why should he pretend that Africans have “foresight” and can plan “life beyond a year” when we demonstrate everyday that we are concerned only with immediate consumption?

So we come to the Sadc Extraordinary Summit in Harare.

It adopted the bloc’s industrialisation strategy and roadmap to be implemented in three phases from 2015 to 2063 in tandem with Agenda 63. Its main thrust is to promote fast industrialisation, value addition and beneficiation of primary products to increase their market value as a way to fight poverty.

Regional integration is part of the vision. This will allow Sadc countries to increase trade among themselves and to pool resources to fund infrastructural development programmes rather than depend on the goodwill of the same nations which view a less developed Africa as a rich market for their manufacturing sectors.

These are the same nations which are happy to see a divided Africa fighting itself because seven people have been killed in senseless Afrophobic attacks by poor, unemployed youths in South Africa.

That is what we wanted to aid and abet, we people who have no foresight, a people who can’t plan their life beyond a year, a people so easily distracted from the bigger picture of a united, stronger Africa.

The endorsement of that industrialisation agenda was a body blow for some dark forces which were praying for the Summit to collapse in acrimony over the outbreak of Afrophobia attacks in South Africa.

Foreign Affairs Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi summed up why this was a landmark event.

Referring to the theme’s focus on value addition, beneficiation and industrialisation, he said; “Never before has any theme of the Sadc Summit outlived that individual summit.

“But in this particular case, the roadmap and strategy which has been prepared span over a period of 48 years,” with the Summit in Harare as a constant reference point.

“Imagine the lifespan if the theme had simply been: Xenophobia or Afrophobia; Africa says No!

Xenophobia or Afrophobia cannot be wished away; the industrialisation agenda on the other hand seeks to address the causes of xenophobia, such as poverty, economic inequalities and unemployment, instead of papering over manifestations through empty platitudes. We need foresight, we need to plan beyond a year to prove Botha wrong.

The task now is to implement the agenda. The Sadc secretariat was asked to come up with costed action plans.

Time is of the essence.

Africa must unite.

So far so good.

Morgan Tsvangirai

Tafara Shumba Correspondent
Addressing a miserable crowd of his supporters in Masvingo recently, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, a self-proclaimed democrat, attacked and threatened the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and other public media for allegedly not giving enough coverage to his party. That rumbling exposed the MDC-T leader in many big ways.

As a leader of a party that is facing annihilation, Mr Tsvangirai could have dwelt on more important and topical issues than to cry for media coverage.

The MDC-T is facing an imminent crack over Tsvangirai’s unilateral decision to boycott by-elections. The boycott is set to decimate the party’s numbers in parliament, a development that will limit its chances of forcing through the so-called electoral reforms that have become Tsvangirai’s popular chorus. The reforms he cries for will never come through the barbaric demonstrations in front of SADC delegates.

A greater chunk of the support base has gone away with the Renewal Team.

These, among other series of challenges, could have been more apt to talk about at this rally.

Tsvangirai seems to think and wants to create a wrong impression that the problems bedevilling his party are caused by the paucity of coverage by the public media. He must have surely run short of what to say to his supporters when he slammed the public media for that unjustified motive.

The public media, or any other media, are just mirrors of society that report events as they happen. As they carry out this mandate, they centre on issues of public interest. They cover issues of national development.

The public media are doing exceptionally well in this regard.

In view of this, Tsvangirai must point out his public interest engagements that received media blackout. Of late, nothing newsworthy has been happening in the MDC-T save for incessant internal strife.

The public media cannot surely expend resources covering street dramas acted out at number 44 Nelson Mandela Avenue. Apart from threatening the public media, Tsvangirai also called for the reversal of the historic land reform programme. Does he really want the public media to cover this type of hogwash? For whose consumption?

Tsvangirai does not have a political eye to read the mood of the mass. People are not interested in media coverage.

They are more concerned about bread and butter issues that Zanu PF is ably addressing.

Zanu PF talks about empowerment, food security in the face of the imminent drought, shelter and many other important socio-economic development issues as enshrined in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset) blueprint.

These issues are sweet to the ears of the masses.

The public and private media would have failed if they omitted such important issues in their coverage.

As a self-styled democrat, Tsvangirai must respect the freedom of the media.

It is one of the democratic tenets. As a politician, as we are made to believe, he must never interfere with the editorial independence of the fourth estate of government.

He must pluck a leaf from some Zanu PF politicians who own or once owned some media projects. They do not interfere with the editorial policy.

Their media sometimes go to an extent of even slating them when public interest is at stake.

Tsvangirai does not own even a tabloid yet he demands coverage whenever he coughs.

This alone tells the story of a man who would assault media freedom upon his miraculous ascension to power.

With all the state apparatus at his disposal, he is likely to treat the public media as his personal project.

Some MDC-T activists in the newsrooms of private media masquerading as journalists dedicate acres of space maligning President Robert Mugabe.

Not a single day was he heard threatening them with closure or any other action despite wielding constitutional power to do so.

In fact, Tsvangirai must not complain about media blackout for he receives more favourable coverage than President Mugabe does.

All the private media in the country fight from his corner and so do the international imperialist media houses such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, CNN and many others.

He has the sympathy of Studio 7 and other pirate radio stations whose existence is solely dedicated to shoring up Tsvangirai and his party.

As an opinion leader within the MDC-T community, his statement endangers reporters working for the public media.

It is surprising that the Zimbabwe Union of Journalist has chosen to wink at such undemocratic assault of media freedom from a presidential hopeful.

Following his threats, some sycophants such as Murisi Zwizwayi reportedly attempted to poke a ZBC cameraman in the face.

Even the MDC-T supporters took lead from their boss and attempted to physically assault the ZBC reporters.

How different is he from the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini, who fanned xenophobia in South Africa?

To make matters worse, a learned secretary-general of the party sweated to defend such undemocratic behaviour.

Some things are indefensible, Mr Mwonzora!

Mr Tsvangirai is a real enemy of democracy and the media in particular.

This is not the first time that he has threatened media freedom.

During the launch of his party’s national policy in May 2013, Mr Tsvangirai, believing that he was an inch away from State House, threatened the media houses that wrote negatively about him and his party. He said those media houses risked closure should he prevail in the July 2013 plebiscite.

“You can’t have a newspaper with six articles saying Tsvangira this, Tsvangirai that. Everyday! Regai vakadaro. But musi umwe gava richadambura musungo. That kind of a media has no future in a democratic Zimbabwe. I want to tell you this, muchadya izvozvo,” said Tsvangirai in a threat to the state media.

An Independent reporter, Hebert Moyo, was nearly killed by the MDC-T youths at the party’s headquarters in June 2013 while covering a demonstration by party members who were protesting against the imposition of candidates in Sunningdale.

A photographer with the defunct Zimbabwe Mail, Watson Ofumeli, was also attacked by the MDC-T youths in the presence of Mr Tsvangirai.

Tsvangirai has threatened almost everybody. The chiefs, service chiefs, police, soldiers, civil servants, among others, have all received threats from Tsvangirai.

Demonstrators in Baltimore

Stephen Mpofu Correspondent
America, how we wish it would walk its equal-race and human rights talk, for the rest of the world to admire and follow suit! Riots by angry blacks in several American cities to protest the deaths of American Africans in encounters with police tell a sad, nay tragic story about the racial hatred that descendants ofAfrican slaves continue to suffer at the hands of white police officers who appear totally intolerant of black minorities in the communities to which those who are supposed to be guardians of the law are deployed.

Since Monday this week the city of Baltimore has been on fire as black rioters torched and looted property in a violent reaction to the death of a black man who in police custody after his arrest, literally turning the city into a war zone as thousands of law enforcement officers were sent in to try to quell the disturbances.

The turmoil in Baltimore apparently capped disturbances that have previously taken place in Ferguson, New York and South Carolina after white officers shot and killed unarmed black men.

Now, how is one to describe a situation whereby a person wields a hammer to swat a fly if such high-handedness as demonstrated by armed American police officers does not fall into the category of racial hatred — a continuing hatred that white America for years demonstrated against descendants of African slaves while Big Brother USA self-righteously pontificates to smaller nations, including those in Africa, about the need for racial harmony and preservation of human rights by their governments?

Terminologies used over the years in America to describe blacks have clearly been replete with racial overtures.

To begin with Negro — a term that according to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary means “a member of black-skinned race of mankind” — was used to describe the offspring of Africans shipped away by force to America for labour centuries ago.

Apparently aware of its racial connotations the word was dropped in favour of “people of colour”.

The latter term was even more discriminatory, implying as it did that white was a universal, Godly colour while black was some kind or oddity, or something resembling a fly in a bowl of milk.

The upshot of these terminologies is that blacks, also commonly known as minorities, really do not have a permanent place in the overall society that they can call home without fear of arbitrary treatment by white guardians of the law who are not known to have wantonly shot unarmed white Americans with the same callous intent as that which appears lately to have been visited upon their black victims.

What clearly appear as cases of race xenophobia are that the trigger happy white officers have literally got away unscathed, as one does after swatting a fly or a cockroach threatening the health of a household.

And come to think of it, when president Obama — son of a Kenyan father and a white American woman — first made his decision known to run for president, white Americans tried to play the race card but all to no avail and today the man is ensconced in the most powerful office of the only superpower in the world after the demise of the Soviet Union.

During a journalism career spanning nearly forty years up to 2001, this pen twice extensively toured the United States of America with a brief working stint at the Amsterdam News in New York City in the eyesore ghetto of Harlem during one of those visits.

It was clear to this pen from observations and discussions with blacks that the people of colour were viewed by whites as an unwanted appendage to the American society. The children of former slaves said they suffered discrimination, some of it subtle, and some of it blatant, at the hands of whites.

A Nigerian taxi driver in New York City claimed that in some cases white employers preferred to give jobs to wives of black people rather than to their husbands because they knew that if the wives controlled the purse strings in the family chances were marriages would break-up.

He claimed that that was one way of trying to destroy black families, although his claims could not immediately be verified.

Sometime last year, an American radio broadcast claimed that where whites and blacks held similar university qualifications, white employers gave preference to white graduates in an apparent case of discrimination against blacks.

Another thing, Americans appear to think they can dictate what they believe to be world order to the rest of the global community with impunity.

For instance, just days ago, gays protested a court decision that gay marriages were unconstitutional. A man said to have been “married” to another man for eight years said he “wanted the world to know” that gay marriages were part of human rights for those with inverted sex.

In other words, the protesters want their constitution to legalise sodomy in the form of same sex marriages.

But if that kind of nebulous thinking is not a brazen defiance of God’s opposition to homosexuality one wonders what is.

But do Americans surely not know that Sodom, a wicked town in ancient Palestine was destroyed by God in his anger at the rampant acts of homosexuality taking place there?

With the sought of mentality demonstrated by gays it is not surprising that the West appears hell-bent on exporting homosexuality to Africa with countries that oppose it risking a ban in foreign aid to them, while those that want to curry favour with the financial donors appear ready to pollute their societies by accepting homosexuality willy-nilly.

The racial upheavals in America, if not solved quickly and amicably, might escalate into a bloody, racial conflagration with more lives and property being lost, making a mockery of the self-righteousness of those who rule that country and regard themselves as a model society where human rights are observed and no one is discriminated against on the grounds of race, religion or creed.

The US touts itself as an economic and military world power, but if the inter-racial animosities continue to rear their ugly heads unabated they might turn out to be that superpower’s veritable Achilles Heel.

ZIMBABWEAN workers today join their counterparts worldwide in celebrating May Day, Labour Day and/or International Workers’ Day. Workers have been celebrating May Day for the past 35 years, since the attainment of Independence in 1980. May Day celebrations date back to the 19th century and it is a day when workers are expected to have a day off, meet and network at events organised by their workers’ unions.

Despite the prevailing socio-economic conditions that have seen many companies closing shop, and people being pushed into the informal economy, the fact that some labour unions are prepared to celebrate the day should be highly commended.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), the oldest workers union umbrella body will be holding its celebrations at Gwanzura Stadium in Harare under the theme: “Workers under siege: Arise and fight on”. We hope this is a call to action to resuscitate the economy, and not engage in violent demonstrations. The Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions (ZFTU) will hold its main celebrations in the city of Kings and Queens — Bulawayo.

The ZFTU theme is: “Workers united, more informed and ready to embrace Zim-Asset programmes.” This coincides with the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair, and should give workers room to reflect on the role of the labour movement in nation-building. Another union, the United Food and Allied Workers’ Unions of Zimbabwe will commemorate May Day under the theme: “Towards the re-foundation of an independent, democratic and united labour movement to fight against the barbarism of neo-liberalism.”

We commend unions celebrating Workers Day because they realise that it came with a heavy price — the struggle for independence and national sovereignty. They also realise that as they get together even under such challenging circumstances, it gives them a competitive edge to review Zimbabwe’s current labour movement vis-à-vis what was obtaining after Independence. The more reason why the different workers unions should be united and be part of the solution to the current economic challenges. Their themes should also reflect an understanding of where Zimbabwe is, and where it is headed. Pessimism and antagonism are not always the best way to deal with problems. It would be a waste of an important day for the workers to come together with the sole purpose of denouncing Government and its policies because it is well-known that the situation obtaining in the labour industry is a result of a myriad of variables, chief among them, the 15-year old illegal sanctions regime imposed by Western countries. Sanctions have crippled the economies of countries like Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Russia.

In the run-up to this important day, we hoped the labour movement will articulate its position on the Government’s economic blueprint Zim-Asset, because it is the workforce that should put life into Zim-Asset.

The economic design is not unique. Since independence, Government and other stakeholders have been coming up with economic designs and legislature aimed at creating a Zimbabwean economy, wholly-owned and controlled by Zimbabweans. This is not an overnight job, and neither is it going to be easy, because armchair critics are abundant, but the important thing is to soldier on. We also hope that workers will raise the momentum on an industrailised Southern African region, since industrialisation was the key issue at the just-ended sadc Extraordinary Summit. That buy-in from the workers will see the resuscitation of most industries that have closed down.

And, it is also imperative that today’s worker understands that Zimbabwe is part of the global village. There is cut-throat competition in that village and those that emerge as top dogs are cognisant of the rules of a competitive environment.

Some analysts also argue that the land reform programme and the indigenisation policy plus other dynamics have created a “new economy”, a new economy that needs to be understood by all, including the workers in formal employment. It is a “new economy” that has created a “new worker”, totally different from today’s worker. May Day is also for these “new workers”.

Notwithstanding, we also call on Government and major stakeholders to protect workers’ interests because it is them that partly finance Government and other social activities through their tax dollars. Workers must also be protected from unfair labour practices, and assurances must be given by Government that retrenched workers get their full benefits.

Finally, corruption is also the cancer that has affected most companies, and Government (the police and the judiciary) must demonstrate a zero tolerance to this malady. All those found on the wrong side of the law, must be brought to book. When corruption is decisively dealt with, it will restore confidence in both local and international investors.

Bishop B. Manjoro Dunamis
Last week we saw how forgiveness unlocks God’s favour in one’s life. Today, I will talk to you on how negativity drains God’s favour. This is something that if you are not careful about, you will miss the favour of God in your life and lose what was supposed to be yours.

The good marriage you desired, the promotion, the happy family, the growing church, the thriving finances, the best results and goals you are aiming — can all be blocked by these things!

However, be of good courage, you will not miss it, but make it and prevail over every trap, hindrance and obstacle of the enemy in 2015. May is your month and your time — a month to glow in the Lord’s favour.

Favour is on your way!

“Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net”, Luke 5:4.

From our text today we hear the conversation of Peter and Jesus. The Lord has finished using Peter’s boat and instructs him to launch out into the deep and let out his nets for a catch.

Peter begins to explain how much they had toiled all night and caught nothing, but nevertheless would hid to the word of the Master.

Here is the first thing you need to watch out on your way to favour — doubt. To unlock the favour of God you must be able to trust and believe the Word of God. You really have to be careful because many have lost great opportunities here.

Marriages, companies, jobs, careers, churches, visions, dreams and many great ideas have flown down the drain due to this huddle. For favour to work in your life you need to believe and trust the Word of God.

The fact that it has been declared a season of favour and mega grace don’t think the enemy will sit down and fold his hands, No.

The enemy will come and try you. But here is wisdom for you, don’t negotiate or discuss with the enemy! When the devil begins to question about your marriage, your promotion, your children, your blessing, your miracle — just hit back and say, “Shut up in Jesus name!”

Jesus didn’t want to negotiate when at one time Peter being used of the devil tried to stop him from dying on the cross.

He said to Peter, “Shut up get thee behind me Satan!” At times the enemy will whisper in your thoughts. At such instances don’t hesitate to open your mouth alone in your house and say, “Eh eh, shut up devil!” It’s allowed to talk alone in times like these.

Don’t just sulk and eat the negativity of the devil, you have a mouth, fight back. You will be fighting warfare, O hallelujah! The month of May is your month!

When doubt and negativity knocks on your door, fight back! Stand on the Word of God. Say to yourself I know that I know that things are going to get better.

When you believe you have to believe the person who spoke the word. When you know who it is then you trust the person concerning the Word.

Trust the Master for his word for you this fifth month! Peter when he was told to launch his nets, though difficult he trusted the words of the Master and said, “Nevertheless at thy word . . .” and acted on it.

You also need to understand that favour is either drawn or drained by what you hear. Be very careful of what you hear. Don’t just allow anything to enter your heart.

For example you may be told by a relative who is into witchcraft and charms, “You will not see tomorrow!” When something like that happens, don’t fear. Fear drains favour, but faith emboldens and keeps favour.

There is a kind of faith that draws favour, like the one that saved Esther and the Jewish race from the evil plan of Haman.

When they tell you, you are dying say I will not die I will live to declare the works of the Lord. Death is not my portion!

Be careful of what you hear. You see, sometimes negative talk comes silently in your mind or at times comes with a messenger. The person will say “Eh zviri kufamba here kuno?” (Are things well with you?). Before you quickly divulge and talk about your life, church, family or finances you say “Ah no, let’s hear about you first?” And they say, “nothing is moving.”

Then you say, “Ah you shall have whatsoever you say! Zvangu zviri kufamba! (My things are moving!)”

Be wise and careful in conversations, be it at work, in the house or in the bus going home. Don’t talk negative — it drains the favour of God! Also understand that your mind is the battleground.

Be careful of what hits your mind. Your mind could be saying to you now that you fasted beginning of January so what did you get? Today its 2 May, 4 months are already over and you feel there is nothing for you in the year! Friend, don’t you worry about that battle of your mind. Let me tell you this, from the first day of the year whatever you were doing you were sowing.

In life sometimes you don’t just sow and reap the next day. Two things have to happen to the seed. It has to die and it has to grow. Unless a seed dies nothing happens. O I like it, I like it. Be of good courage, your seeds are growing — walk in the favour of God.

You didn’t waste the past four months, you were sowing, strategising and planning — watch out for you favour in May the 5th month.

Five is a number of grace in the Bible! For with God all things are possible, Mark 10:27.

Julius Malema

Two months ago, President Jacob Zuma presented his State of the Nation address with most of the opposition benches in Parliament empty after the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was forcibly removed and the Democratic Alliance (DA) staged a walkout. Recently, Zuma, Julius Malema and Mmusi Maimane were all singing from the same hymn sheet, along with the rest of the country’s leaders, to bring an end to the xenophobic violence.

Who would’ve thought it?

But it is not only political party leaders actively participating in efforts to spread the anti-xenophobia message. The entire government system, from national, provincial and local government level, business, sports bodies, labour, religious leaders and civil society organisations have all mobilised to participate in efforts to deal with the root causes of the violence and promote relations with foreign nationals. It is a big departure from the wheels slowly turning in government and the rest of society whinging about its failures.

From mass marches to candlelight vigils to ministers raising money from business to give to aid organisations, the activism and goodwill of the last week has been impressive. The march through Johannesburg on Thursday brought everyone from the mother of the nation, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, currently organisation-less Zwelinzima Vavi, leaders across the political spectrum from the ANC to the United Front, social activists and religious leaders to preach the anti-xenophobia message.

Were it not for the deaths, people fleeing the country and police and soldiers raiding hostels like it is the 1985 State of Emergency, it would all be Lead SA’s wet dream.

Zuma called together about 40 organisations on Wednesday to discuss migration and what could be done to promote relations with foreign nationals. At a media briefing afterwards, representatives of the organisations took turns pledging to do their bit to support government’s initiatives to prevent further attacks on foreign nationals.

“These attacks are not a small matter, nor it is a matter for government alone but for all of us as South Africans. We don’t need another occurrence of these attacks in our country,” Zuma said. While the president normally passes off questions to his ministers – or occasionally defers them altogether – on this issue, he was clearly well briefed and completely hands on. He was even able to give figures of the number of Zimbabweans in South African jails, which he said fuelled perceptions that many foreigners were involved in crime.

“If we don’t deal with the underlying issues, it (xenophobic attacks) will come back … We have taken a decision that we don’t want to see it again and therefore we are going to be working together with that determination,” Zuma said.

The business representatives undertook to look into payment disparities between South African and immigrant workers, which causes resentment and perceptions that foreign nationals are taking local jobs because they are prepared to work for less money.

While government undertook to improve measures to regulate migration, it was proposed that the state monitor the movement of goods into the country that land up in spaza shops. There was also a proposal for a major campaign called “Bill of Responsibilities”, intended to educate young people about what it means to be South African.

A committee compromising representatives of the stakeholder groups will now work with the inter-ministerial committee to take these proposals further. Had the attacks not happened, these issues would probably not have been dealt with anytime soon.

While the attacks caused the displacement of thousands of people and earned shame for South Africa on the continent and across the world, it also got the business as usual pattern altered. Parliament has postponed its programme for next week so MPs can go to their constituencies and participate actively in campaigns against xenophobia. A multi-party committee with representatives from the National Assembly and the National Council of Provinces will visit hotspots to investigate the cause of the violence in those areas.

The office of the ANC Chief Whip Stone Sizani said Parliament could not continue with “business as usual when the nation is confronted with a situation which threatens to tarnish our image as a peaceful and welcoming country”.

At provincial level, the premiers are leading initiatives to promote the anti-xenophobia campaign. At the march in Johannesburg, Premier David Makhura said the country would defeat xenophobia like it did with apartheid. He also said there would be concentrated focus on bringing development to areas like Alexandra, which was a violence hotspot during the 2008 xenophobic attacks and again now.

Alexandra township was also the scene of the killing of Mozambican Emmanuel Sithole last month. Pictures of Sithole’s stabbing stunned the country and revealed the brutality of the attacks on foreigners.

On Thursday night, Vavi tweeted: “The marches of today are a beginning not an end – new struggle on underlying causes of desperation/hopeless long overdue” [sic]. Buoyed by the activist spirit in the air, he also said tweeted: “Madiba is smiling today.”

Indeed, it is all very inspiring. But there is also an inherent danger that those who went on a violent rampage will see some benefit result from their actions and to instigate trouble again to provoke a reaction. If fast-paced development is directed at trouble spots, which it should be, it could set a new trend in how to draw government’s attention.

We have seen people resort to desperate measures before because of the inattentiveness of government to their grievances. Burning public facilities and poo throwing all resulted as methods of protests when normal channels of raising objections failed.

Now that we have seen a responsive government in action, expectations will be raised that they stay on the ball. Like with the 2010 Soccer World Cup, government has shown how it can work optimally. It would be disappointing if it returns to business-as-usual mode as soon as the situation stabilises, just like the slump after the World Cup. For their part, business and civil society also needs to stay in the game to deal with other crisis issues.

South Africa has multiple crises to deal with, including deepening inequality and grinding poverty, which resulted in communities exploding and resorting to violence. Those issues can only be dealt with if government and society remains in peak operation mode, like they are now.

The boots-on-the ground approach need not only apply to the South African National Defence Force. We went to the precipice and are pulling ourselves back. We might not be able to do so in future. – DM.

Demonstrators march in Baltimore, Maryland earlier this week following the death of Freddie Gray. Gray died after suffering spinal injuries while in police custody. — Reuters

Sarah Lazare
As people across Baltimore prepare for another day of mobilisations to demand justice for the late Freddie Gray, voices from the city’s grassroots are calling for broader United States society to dig beneath the police and media spin of “looting” and “protester violence” and listen to expressions of outrage and demands for deep change emanating from the streets.

“The systemic oppression we are seeing is the result of decades of people ignoring the cries of black people in Baltimore,” Adam Jackson of the Baltimore-based grassroots organisation and think tank Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle told Common Dreams over the phone.

“People are moralising about trash cans getting burned. But you should moralise on why black people are being killed by police. Talk about structural oppression.”

“Property destruction is not as important as black life,” Jackson added.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Baltimore on Monday following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after his spine was mostly severed while in police custody earlier this month.

The mobilisation erupted into an expression of outrage in a city with a troubling history of police violence against black people, including a high rate of killings by police. The Baltimore Sun reported last year that the city has paid “about $5,7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects,” most of them black.

It was that police force that was heavily deployed against protesters on Monday, joined by US military service members with the National Guard. Late Monday, nation-wide news outlets quickly spread stories of “protester violence.”

They were aided by questionable and widely circulated claims by police that an alleged gang truce posed a “credible threat.”

But witnesses told a different story: of police violence and targeting of protesters, including children. Brian Arnold, a former Baltimore City high school teacher, shared a counter-narrative on Facebook that quickly went viral:

I want to make this as clear as possible: Step 1: the police created a “credible threat” about some high school students gathering at Mondawmin to start trouble.

Step 2: the police showed up in force and riot gear before the students got out of school at Mondawmin, which is a major public transit hub and SHUT DOWN THE TRANSIT, guaranteeing the kids could not leave.

Step 3: the police started macing people and brandishing tasers.

Step 4: the kids understandably responded to being stranded and maced by throwing rocks.

Step 5: the media starts reporting it as “a riot” and “violent protesters. This is 100 percent bought and paid for by the police department. This is absolutely vile.

“The cynicism inherent in trapping school kids is a reflection of police attitude towards those kids,” Arnold told Common Dreams, adding that, as a former teacher, he saw first-hand that police violence against children “is a prevalent issue in the community.”

Numerous accounts of police brutality emerged on Monday, including reports of law enforcement throwing rocks at protesters. But many from within this city, which is 64 percent black, charge that the violence goes far deeper.

Laurence Brown, assistant professor at Morgan State University and member of the Baltimore Redevelopment Action Coalition for Empowerment told Common Dreams, “The narrative now is on the looting and rioting taking place. People miss the underlying structural issues that are happening everyday. I would call it structural looting in form of policy.”

Brown explained that Baltimore’s history of “forced segregation and displacement” — through racial zoning laws and segregated public housing, to highway construction through black neighbourhoods — drove “discriminatory wealth that dis-invested the black community.”

Police killings of unarmed black people are part of this larger picture, he said.

“And now you have this national movement, but you also have a national outrage. Seemingly every week we see a new video of an unarmed black person shot and killed by police in America. If we don’t see a video, we hear a report. In this moment of national outrage, we are at a crescendo where folks are fed up.”

The Baltimore-based human rights organisation United Workers said in a press statement released on Tuesday that the racism and poverty plaguing Baltimore have reached a “breaking point.”

“Why do 40 000 properties sit vacant while 4 000 are homeless, and another 154 000 face foreclosure and eviction annually?” asked the organisation.

“Why do 62 percent of job seekers report that they are unable to find a job that offers a living wage and almost one in four cited their own criminal histories as a barrier to employment? Why do we utilise economic development subsidies to downtown developers that result in less tax revenue for city schools?

Why does our Mayor champion a toxic trash burning incinerator project for Southwest Baltimore, already home to dangerous levels of lead, mercury and other toxic pollutants?

And why after 16 days is there still no answer to the question why was Freddie Gray arrested or how his spine was broken?”

“Our communities have dignity,” said United Workers youth leader Destiny Watford.

“When we see our human rights being violated we have acted and will continue to push for our rights to be secured — the rights to breath clean air, have access to safe and affordable housing and a job with dignity.”

Jackson of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle emphasised that “the atmosphere in Baltimore is positive, if extremely hectic. People are concerned about being positive, moving forward as a city, and moving forward to win justice for Freddie Gray.”

Baltimore communities have organised street medic crews to tend to those wounded in the protests, as well as legal support — including a bail fund — for those detained and arrested by police.

Community clean-up efforts took place throughout the city on Tuesday, and some establishments — including the co-operative bookstore and restaurant Red Emma’s — are serving free lunch to students who face school closures. Grief counsellors are making themselves available to those in need of support.

Meanwhile, solidarity actions are planned across the country, from New York to Ferguson, including Chicago, where the police officer who shot and killed unarmed black woman Rekia Boyd was recently found “not guilty” by a judge.

“This is part of larger dialogue and conversation about justice for black people,” said Jackson. “People are dissatisfied with their conditions and are speaking up because they’re sick and tired.” — www.commondreams.org.

Herald Reporters
It was business as usual in Harare yesterday. Vegetables, men’s and ladies’ shoes, clothes and other wares covered the city’s pavements while at flea markets scores of people walked in and out in search of products and services, most of which were readily available as is always the case.

Commuter omnibus drivers and touts continued to be a menace on the roads as they ferried people while most supermarkets and clothing shops remained open.

In many offices and home industries, people came to work, to catch up on a few outstanding orders.

The day was Workers’ Day, celebrated on May 1 the world over.

Yet, the day to commemorate workers’ struggle for better conditions turned out just like any other.

The celebrations around Harare were overshadowed by the numbers that trickled to various workplaces both in the formal and informal sectors.

The picture was almost the same countrywide.

Only a few people turned up for commemorations at various venues.

The number of people attending the commemorations continues to dwindle each year because of the drastic change in the political economy of the country which has seen many venturing into the informal sector.

The situation has been compounded by the politicisation of labour unions with two of the country’s largest workers’ representatives – the Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions – aligning themselves to political parties.

ZFTU held its main celebrations in Bulawayo under the theme “Workers united, more informed and ready to embrace Zim-Asset programmes” while the ZCTU’s Harare celebrations were held under the theme “Workers under siege: Arise and fight on”.

Scores of workers in the food industry turned up for celebrations organised by the United Food and Allied Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe in Mbare.

UFAWUZ president Mr Cleopas Tongwe conceded that there was a decline in the number of people commemorating Workers Day and politics had taken a toll on the event.

“However, it is only a question of educating the workers,” he said.

“This is our day which we should commemorate whether one is in the informal sector or the formal one. A difference in ideologies is also one factor and we are an example of that as we were chucked out from ZCTU in 1992 because of ideological differences. This is our first commemorations since then.”

The union held the celebrations under the theme “Towards the refoundation of an independent, democratic and united labour movement to fight against the barbarism of neo-liberalism”.

It was business as usual at Siyaso, Magaba, Mupedzanhamo markets and Zindoga Shopping Centre in Harare.

Those in the informal sector said they no longer had anything to do with Workers’ Day.

“At Siyaso I only rest when someone close to me has died,” said Mukuvisi Manufacturing Co-operative Union secretary, Mr Steven Hove.

Taking a break results in a loss as they are self-employed, he says.

“If you do not work for yourself, who will? We only leave this area if there is an emergency or some national events like Independence Day.”

Mrs Sarah Mafunga said she was not even aware of the venues where the commemorations were being held.

“Gone are the days when we used to gather at a certain venue waiting for an address from anyone.

“The distress of several companies has seen a greater percentage of people finding refuge in the informal sector or being employed in the quasi-retail sector and the transport business,” she complained.

The situation has been worsened by the illegal sanctions regime that drove many out of formal employment as large corporates either closed, retrenched or froze new recruitments.

Government has lamented that more than US$7 billion could be circulating in the informal sector while 5, 7 million jobs had been created from 2,8 million small businesses.

Some chose to hang out at popular braai joint KwaMereki.

These felt May Day should be redefined as it was no longer about celebrating the successes and rights of the workers but the alignment of the unions to certain political parties.

The ZCTU has been the biggest culprit, whose central role in the formation of the MDC in 1999 resulted in greater focus on political issues instead of labour mat- ters.

“Their strong link to politics means the May Day will always be a damp squib,” said Mr Simbarashe Tiki.

He adds: “Trade unions should not be affiliated to any political party because that is what drove people away from the unions. Let us redefine the labour movement and desist from politics.”

Workers like Mr Tinashe Magaya said by attending the celebrations, he felt used by the unions.

“The unions have failed to represent us and unless they are revamped, I will not be part of those celebrations,” he said.

At Glen View Area 8 Home Industry Complex Mr William Jiriyengwa, who makes beds, said although he valued the ideals of the day, he could not afford to rest on the day.

“It is a day that I know and value but as someone who is self-employed I cannot afford to take the day off because I might lose out on business,” he said.

Mr Jiriyengwa said he supported Government’s indigenisation drive but lamented they needed more support to realise their potential.

“The Government’s indigenisation programme is a noble one and I think what is left is for us to be given more support like access to finance and factory shells so that we don’t incur losses due to the vagaries of the weather,” he said.

Mr Vincent Marimo, who also operates from the same complex making lounge suites, said he was comfortable being self-employed but also urged Government to do more to support upcoming entrepreneurs.

“I am comfortable being self-employed but it would make our work easier if we had access to cheap financing. Business is good and we have the potential to do more if Government assists us,” he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of commemorations led by the ZCTU at Gwanzura Stadium in Highfield, Mr Alexio Chiundura, who works at a fast food outlet, said there was nothing much to celebrate given the tough times that workers were enduring.

“As I speak, there is talk of retrenchment where I work and I am not even sure if I will be still employed tomorrow,” Mr Chiundura said.

Zimbabwe Energy Workers Union (Zewu) secretary Mr Martin Chikuni said Workers’ Day celebrations are a time for the working class to reflect on their past, analyse their current situation and draw a future roadmap in an effort to advance workers’ interests.

“As we commemorate Workers’ Day, it is important to note the challenges we are confronted with such as the retrenchment of workers, employers preferring contract workers and company closures.

“It is important to have a day like this so that workers meet and address these issues,” said Mr Chikuni.

Medical Professionals Allied Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe president Mr Bernard Chirenje said May Day is a time for the professionals to reflect on the issues affecting them.

Top of the list was compulsory retrenchment.

This, he said, was also negatively affecting the private health sector.

The non-remittance of medical aid subscriptions had resulted in non-payment of salaries, he noted.

“The private health sector is also affected by the forced retrenchments. As representatives of health workers in the private sector, we say no to the retrenchments and the casualisation of labour,” said Mr Chirenje.

College Lecturers’ Association of Zimbabwe (Colaz) general secretary Mr Nickson Madovi said while May Day celebrations are a time when the working class from the public and private sector shared experiences, it was also a time to call for unity.

In Chinhoyi, ZFTU vice president Cde Batsirai Musona took a swipe at National Employment Councils saying they had abrogated their duty to fight for workers’ interest to sup with the employers.

This, he said, had resulted in cases involving workers and their employers taking too long to be finalised.

Some have even died before getting their dues.

The George Nkiwane-led ZCTU also held commemorations at Alaska Dolomite Primary School in Alaska.

About 300 people who gathered were later entertained by various groups including gure and chihodha dances among others.

A farm worker, Vengai Mavheneke, said working and living conditions should be improved in farms.

“One of our major challenges as workers is that we are going for months without being paid while in some cases our living conditions are not healthy,” he said.

He called on farmers to pool resources together to build schools so that pupils do not walk long distances and others do not drop out of school completely.

There was a low turnout at commemorations in Kariba where scores gathered at Nyanhehwe Primary School grounds and at Mahombekombe Park.

Sources said the low turnout could be a reflection of dwindling confidence in workers’ unions and that more people are now in the informal sector.

Cde Kasukuwere . . . “We are 100 percent behind the leadership that the President appointed. We are 100 percent behind President Mugabe. “

Zanu-PF national political commissar Cde Saviour Kasukuwere (SK) says the restructuring of the party is not a one-man show. He says that people should not overestimate the capacity of former Vice President Joice Mujuru as she was just a member not “the Alpha and Omega” of the revolutionary party. Here are excerpts of the wide-ranging interview with our political editor Tichaona Zindoga (TZ).

TZ: What is the state of your restructuring of the party and is this a one-man show as has been expressed in some quarters?

SK: After completing structures in Mashonaland this week, our next port of call will be Harare where we have a lot of work to do. This is the capital and the party will be mobilising itself to ensure that we solidly build a party base for itself in Harare. We are not going to allow a situation where Harare remains a problem child of the party – failing to perform and to deliver. We have serious concerns over some of the chaotic situations that are occurring in the provincial leadership in Harare. Uncalled for suspensions of members within the province, lack of discipline in the province, failure to take orders from national leadership and the chaos that was created leading to the debacle with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

These are serious issues that we are very concerned about and we will soon be looking at the Harare province with the view to rectifying these situations and have a leadership that respects orders. If a province is given orders by the national leadership it must draw the line and there is no room for toying around and let alone disobeying what comes from the national leadership. We have several instances in which provincial leadership behave as if they are bigger than the party. While we recognise that everyone has rights within the party, when the Politburo makes a decision it has to be respected.

TZ: Are you not worried about fissures that have been created in Harare? We have now heard that Harare Province Youth League chairman Godwin Gomwe’s house was bombed and is that not pointing to some serious divisions?

SK: Exactly and these are some of the issues that are concerning us that in Harare we are seeing some very disturbing trends and so we have to move in to bring normalcy and order to Harare. The bombing of Cde Gomwe’s house and many other sad developments point to a disturbing trend and picture emerging out of Harare.

TZ: Masvingo has also been problematic. Can you highlight the state of restructuring and the party in Masvingo?

SK: So far the reports I have been receiving from the team leadership in Masvingo point to a positive picture with regards to the restructuring. For now we are strictly looking at the restructuring. There are always other peripheral issues that are coming up which at times should not really be like jumping the gun per se, done or communicated otherwise by provinces. But I am generally pleased with the restructuring in Masvingo, what has been done so far. That picture that we have been given so far is positive and we want to build on the successes more than the negatives.

TZ: But we hear that the province is considering recommending the suspension of some people like Cde Walter Mzembi, what is your take on that?

SK: The province, like any other province, is free to make their recommendations and those recommendations must come to the party leadership. What we are concerned about is public statements made in the course of us undertaking our duties. There is a structure; there is the secretary for information whose main job is to make announcements on behalf of the party involving decisions taken by the party leadership such as those involving disciplinary matters and so forth.

I think I spoke about this last week that provincial leadership must not publicise or let alone carry out their activities especially those to deal with membership of the party in the open. We must always be respectful of all the processes we undertake and ensure that if we have recommendations, before the leadership has acted, let us not judge and find guilty individuals. Let that information be transmitted to the leadership.

Secondly, we also want to avoid situations where individuals seeking power are victimising others for their own personal aggrandisement and will rush to the Press to denigrate and damage others without following the due process. The party is very clear, we are not in the business or rather overly excited when it comes to throwing people out. If there is a grave situation that requires the party to take action, the party has taken action before and will continue to take action in the future. But all this must be conducted with dignity and maturity.

TZ: Speaking about the forthcoming by-elections, some people have been pointing out that the people who have filled in are Mujuru elements that are coming back. Can you comment on the quality of people coming back or filling the vacancies that were left by the putschist cabal?

SK: I want to caution people from overestimating Mujuru’s influence. Zanu-PF and the President have more support than anybody else. There can never be any day where someone, and I am speaking right now, has more support, more following than His Excellency the President. Now let us again avoid damaging individuals for your own purposes or for your own sake. The candidates who have won the by-elections right now, Mai Auxcillia Mnangagwa, in Mt Darwin we have Cde Barnwell Seremwe, these are strong party cadres in their own right who support the President, and the party and who have been in the party for a long time and are tried and tested. So for one to wake up in the morning and say, “I think that one is a Mujuru loyalist” is to stretch our imagination at times too far and think that Mujuru was the Alpha and the Omega of Zanu-PF. Never!

Most of the membership in the party are people who support the President and his policies. Admittedly, some people have been confused that maybe the President was going to retire and Mai Mujuru would take over which was far from the truth. The President is in charge and, of course, there are some people who just follow willy-nilly without thinking. They get to a stage where they land themselves into trouble because perhaps they are not mature enough in politics to understand that you do not follow an individual who is aspiring, who thinks they are the ultimate deciders.

Again we have cases of people who were intimidated by simply saying “You got this post because so and so stood for you”. So there was this grand scheming behaviour which got some of our cadres in that thinking that there was a political process leading to the retirement of the President and so if they wanted to remain in politics or remain occupying powerful positions they should be seen behind so and so.

Now, we must distinguish those from those who were eagerly or who were keenly plotting to see the President out of the office using all sorts of manner and ways to try and achieve their objective from those who were basically followers. So the party continues to look at all these issues in a very clinical manner to ensure that those who were not spearheading anything are not made to pay a price for just being followers who did not know why they should have been doing that. We want to ensure that the party remains strong, the party remains united and the party moves forward. Those with bad ideas must have those ideas corrected and this is one of the things that are done in a revolution.

You must always sit to correct those with the wrong ideas and the wrong notions and ensure that they understand exactly what the party stands for. The party has objectives and policies. The party is there, the President of the party is there. We went to a congress,; we selected and chose unanimously, President Mugabe and he has continued to be our leader. He is the leader of the country and the party is in power, that is what we must focus on.

TZ: Some people are claiming that you are building your own power base . . .

SK: You see, again, that shows the level at times of lack of political education. I think we must work hard on it. Each and every one of us has been assigned a responsibility. I have been assigned the job of being the political commissar, keeping the party winning the elections, ensuring that the provinces, the structures are intact. We have gone out to restructure the party, not as an individual but we have assigned key Politburo members to lead the processes in all the provinces.

Now it is not Kasukuwere doing it. It is us all as a unit, as a political unit, as Zanu-PF. We will design the programmes but we have to ask our colleagues, political leaders, to carry out these tasks. So Kasukuwere will not restructure a province in his own right. Kasukuwere works with other members of the party who are leading the restructuring actually. It is a negative view which was put out by Rugare Gumbo which any serious Zanu-PF person will not subscribe to, this is nonsensical. Why do you have to put the cart before the horses? I have a job to do; I do not have time to be thinking or to be allowing my enemies to have agendas for me, no.

TZ: Ok. And, lastly, people are also saying post-congress Zanu-PF has already split and they are even pointing to a rift between you – perhaps what Rugare Gumbo calls a “Gang of Four” – and Vice President Mnangagwa.

SK: Remember I am on record as having said very clearly that we stand behind the leadership of our party, number one the President and the appointments that he made of Cde Emmerson) Mnangagwa, who is a seasoned cadre of the party, of Cde (Phelekezela) Mphoko, another seasoned liberation hero. These are the leaders who we are working with who have been appointed by the President.

You will recall the statement that I made that we stand firmly behind the decision and the appointment of these two senior colleagues who have been in the party for a long time. Now those who are dreaming of a division are wasting their time. Our leadership knows exactly where we stand and what we are doing. We are 100 percent behind the leadership that the President appointed. We are 100 percent behind President Mugabe. So Zanu-PF is not divided. Zanu-PF is a very strong political party. All those who are making those statements or innuendos are trying to actually find ways of destroying the party but they will not succeed. We have gone through that before, we will be going through it again now and in the future but we are not shaken. We are very clear about who is who and there is no room for division. We are very well set to achieve our goals and objectives.

Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa

A number of factors are militating against Government’s efforts to turnaround the economy, but the earlier they are dealt with the better.

Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa was spot on this week when he emphasised the need for local industries to be more competitive if the economy is to achieve sustainable growth. Factors such as low domestic and foreign investments, high cost of doing business, liquidity constraints and poor infrastructure among others have constrained industrial competitiveness, forcing the country to rely heavily on imported products.

The net effect of lack of competitiveness has resulted in stunted recovery and growth of the economy.

The unsustainable level of imports has also worsened the liquidity situation when Zimbabwe needs to save as much as it can, given the fact that exports and investments are low while the country is not in a position to print its own currency.

It goes without saying that efforts by the Government to address competitiveness issues are a step in the right direction as far as enhancing industrial performance to stimulate growth is concerned.

VP Mnangagwa told a business conference at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair this week that the National Competitiveness Assessment Report will be unveiled by August this year.

The annual premier trade showcase, which started on Monday, is one of the platforms that Zimbabwe uses to address issues of competitiveness as it draws a wide range of exhibitors from different countries across the world that do not just come to exhibit, but also to share ideas that local companies can benefit from.

He said the report would highlight the country’s actual and evolving competitiveness issues presented through credible data and its interpreted implications.

VP Mnangagwa said some of the competitiveness issues facing the country included deficiencies in productivity, education and training, entrepreneurship and innovation, social economic and technological infrastructure, taxation and regulatory regime.

Therefore, the position being taken by the Government to address competitiveness will go a long way in eliminating some of the barriers inhibiting investments and productivity.

A country without a vibrant and sophisticated competitive industrial base cannot withstand cut-throat competition in the ever changing global business environment.

It is our belief that the Government should move with speed to implement these initiatives to unlock potential of the economy which has been suffocated by a myriad of constraints.

Already, Cabinet has approved principles on the proposed amendments to the National Incomes and Pricing Commission Act to pave way for the promulgation of the National Competitiveness Commission Act.

This will lead to the formation of the National Competitiveness Commission whose mandate would include addressing the cost and ease of doing business as well as harmonisation of laws and a reduction in the regulatory burdens on the business.

Among key functions of the proposed commission would be to continuously monitor the cost drivers in the business and economic environment and advise on measures to be taken to address current and emerging cost challenges, review business regulations and develop a list of priorities for reducing the cost of doing business.

The commission will also undertake research and maintain a comprehensive nationwide statistical database to be used in the analysis of competitiveness across all sectors of the economy, while also developing periodic competitiveness frameworks.

It would also monitor, investigate and analyse costs and price trends of goods and services in Zimbabwe and benchmark them with those prevailing in the region and beyond.

The proposed NCC would report to the Minister of Industry and Commerce.

Indeed success in turning around the economy will come from the collective effort of every patriotic Zimbabwean.

This requires dedication, full application, and the will to overcome against the odds.

Edward Zuma

Bandile Mdlalose Correspondent
President Zuma’s son Edward is xenophobic and racist. Like the disgraceful Zulu King Zwelithini he supports, whose reckless utterances sparked the attacks on foreigners, Edward continues Cecil Rhodes’ odious legacy of dividing Africans. For two weeks, I have been sitting back and watching one of our country’s most prominent children. What impact does raising one of more than 20 kids, many born before 1994, in exile, have on their morality?

It is quite overwhelming to see the grown son of the most powerful man in South Africa act like a child that grew up in a home without discipline or education. Today, we can say that Edward Zuma is xenophobic, even though he himself was born in Swaziland.

And he is racist even though he was raised in the non-racial tradition of the African National Congress.

This is a very dangerous condition for the country; yet his father is condoning such behaviour, not even rising to the bait of Julius Malema in Parliament, who said on April 17, “Your own son continues to say these people must be killed…Your son is such a typical example of a family member you cannot whip in line.”

The controversy over Edward’s endorsement of King Zwelithini’s xenophobia is well known.

At the same time, the website News24 published articles in which Edward attacked the writer Max du Preez. We should learn from this dispute.

Edward Zuma is racist because when Du Preez said that “It is high time the king of the Zulu is put in his place, he is not above the law or the Constitution,” this was Zuma’s reply: “He is a bitter old, white man… Max does not have traditional leaders and he needs to be reminded where he comes as an individual. King Goodwill Zwelithini is the king of the Zulus. If you are a Zulu, whether you are in Europe or in America, he is your king and if Max has a problem with that then he must pack himself and throw himself away and maybe then will he find himself.”

Where does Edward Zuma get the authority to decide that we Zulu people should consider Zwelithini our king, and who should and should not be in this country?

It must be clear that no one owns this country, and that people who were in the struggle against apartheid cannot be called “bitter” just because they do not like the way Jacob Zuma’s government or King Zwelithini behave.

Du Preez is an “old man,” yes, and he fought racist white Afrikaners with heroism long before Edward was even born.

Du Preez has every right to express his sentiments about the King’s statement, and if Zuma is concerned at the disrespect expressed to the King, has he forgotten what the King said to the nation? “We urge all foreigners to pack their bags and leave.”

Just in case Edward Zuma has forgotten, let me take him back to the creation of this land. God created the heaven and earth for everyone in His own image. When God created this land he gave us power of moving anywhere we want to go. Those powers were practised by King Shaka and King Mzilikazi, and after they fought, Mzilikazi took many of our Khumalo people to Mozambique, Gauteng, and then Botswana, Zambia and finally back south to western Zimbabwe in the 1820s and 1830s.

These names meant nothing then. It was in Berlin in 1885 that the borders were carved out by white colonialists. Cecil John Rhodes made these borders barriers to our people then. That same poisonous mentality of dividing black people is what King Zwelithini and Edward Zuma suffer from today

Edward Zuma, you need to understand that our Nguni people crossed many borders over the years. Yes, about 11 million of us are Zulu people living in South Africa, and 9 million are Xhosas. But another 2.3 million are Swazis, and there are about the same number of Ndebele people. Then there are an additional 2 million Ngoni people in Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. All of us come from the same roots. Cecil Rhodes put up the walls, which you want to maintain at the cost of terrorising so many of our people.

As a Zulu woman, I see no disrespect in the sentiments of Du Preez, but I feel humiliation from the King’s statement. If he is my King, I am ashamed to consider myself a Zulu.

Du Preez was right when he said: “South Africans should not simply sweep Zwelithini’s reckless statements on foreign nationals, the most obvious trigger of the latest wave of xenophobic attacks, under the carpet. Any influential public figure guilty of such provocative, irresponsible utterances should be forced to face the consequences of his actions.”

Nigerians have even referred this case to the International Criminal Court, who have agreed to look into it. We must not turn a blind eye, Edward Zuma, and I will lend my own support to anyone condemning the King’s statement. Du Preez does not owe anyone any apology. The only person who owes the African continent an apology is the King himself, for his words have left many dead and thousands homeless. Thousands are returning to their Nguni homes thinking about this Zulu king, and thousands more are protesting at South African High Commissions and businesses in all these countries.

Du Preez does not disrespect any culture when he criticises xenophobia. Du Preez is right: the King must not be above the law. Innocent people get arrested when they protest for better service delivery under the charge of “inciting violence.” This is what the King did, because his words led to murders, assaults and looting. But so far, no charges have been laid against him.

If South African law was just, the King should be behind bars by now, facing charges of incitement to violence. But because he is bigger than the law, he still walks free. I am saddened, because even the President of this country has had to face charges in court. Even President Nelson Mandela faced a judge when a racist white rugby administrator charged him in 1998. Why are prosecutors and the Human Rights Commission so slow to act against this King?

Edward Zuma asked about Du Preez: “Does he share the same sentiments about Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II?” This is also sad because it is a reflection of Edward’s poor quality education when it comes to our country’s ethnicities.

But even if Du Preez was not an Afrikaner, we should not shift the focus of the crisis of South Africa to Britain’s outdated monarchy. The British are not the ones who attacked our fellow Africans in April. Let us as South Africans accept criticism where it is needed, and grow with responsibility.

This habit of shifting blame is growing in this country which is why we keep making the same mistakes all over again, because we are too good at blaming others for our mistakes. While Edward Zuma questions Queen Elizabeth, did he also question his father Jacob about how long South Africa will remain a puppet of foreign capital?

Maybe it is about time we started questioning who shapes our policies of neoliberalism, which put 54 percent of our people below the poverty line. It’s not Queen Elizabeth this time, though in the past it might have been her ancestors. These days it is President Zuma’s failure to create jobs, build houses and redistribute the wealth of our country, because he follows the rules of global capital.

I wish to correct Edward Zuma when he says, “Our king is not living on crumbs. He is here because we support him”. Not all of us support the king, whose household budget was far higher than any other traditional leader last year at R64 million. Also last year, he had a R4 million party when he wed a 28-year-old Swazi woman (his sixth wife), and he spent R10 000 on his birthday cake. He has 27 children, who are given the finest luxuries.

Yet we say we live in a democratic country. For a king who has so many taxpayer gifts, that xenophobic attitude did so much damage that it is time to ask whether Zwelithini should not just go to trial, but also have his budget cut as punishment. He is an expensive man, in many ways.

This is also the time to open up discussions that will unite us as one Africa. It is not the time to play with verbal fire about alleged foreign drug dealers – not when you, Edward Zuma, were charged last year with illegally importing tobacco.

What has brought us to where we are so divided is the legacy of Cecil John Rhodes. Freedom will only arrive in South Africa when we agree that Rhodes’ Walls Must Fall. We need free movement which will end the nonsensical colonial idea of “illegal immigrants” on our continent.

In West Africa, the Ecowas passport gives all the countries’ peoples that right to ignore colonial boundaries.

But in South Africa, the likes of Zwelithini, Edward Zuma and those who support them, ignore the lesson that the University of Cape Town students taught us all: Rhodes’ borders should be considered illegal if what they do is produce illegal people, and if a so-called king and a president’s son turn Rhodes’ legacy into a permanent statue dripping with xenophobic blood. – Pambazuka News

Bandile Mdlalose is President of the Community Justice Movement and can be reached at bandy.mdlalose@gmail.com.

Jennifer Ouellette Correspondent
“Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat”, by Paul Halpern. On a cold January day in 1947, Erwin Schrödinger took the podium at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin and triumphantly announced that he had succeeded where Albert Einstein had failed for the past 30 years. Schrödinger said he’d devised a unified theory of everything that reconciled the general theory of relativity with quantum mechanics.

His announcement caused a sensation in the international Press, which shamelessly played up the David and Goliath angle, much to Schrödinger’s discomfort and Einstein’s irritation.

It nearly destroyed their longstanding friendship. Matters became so acrimonious at one point, with rumours of potential lawsuits, that another colleague, Wolfgang Pauli, stepped in to mediate.

A full three years would pass before the estranged friends gingerly began exchanging letters again.

This tale of two physicists, their shared quest for unification and the media frenzy that tore them apart is the focus of Paul Halpern’s latest book, “Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat”.

The men were natural allies. Both were Nobel laureates, recognised for foundational work in the earliest days of quantum mechanics.

Each had a strong philosophical bent, which shaped his worldview. Einstein favoured the work of Spinoza, while Schrödinger had an affinity for Schopenhauer and dabbled in Eastern mysticism. Those philosophical influences contributed to their mutual dislike of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, despite its stunning experimental success.

Einstein wasn’t shy about voicing his objections, famously declaring that God “does not play dice”, which prompted Niels Bohr to retort, “Stop telling God what to do!” Schrödinger vacillated a bit more in his stance — maintaining, Halpern says, “a quantum superposition of contrasting views” — but did ruefully confess, “I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.” To highlight the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, he proposed his famous cat paradox.

At its heart, this is also the tale of two equations: Einstein’s equation of general relativity and Schrödinger’s wave equation, governing the realms of the very large and the very small.

The physicist Paul Dirac reconciled the wave equation with special relativity in 1928, sharing the Nobel Prize with Schrödinger for his efforts.

But general relativity thus far has resisted all efforts at being similarly assimilated into a complete theory of quantum gravity. To fully understand why requires delving into some very heady, mathematically dense material.

Halpern, a physicist at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, does his best to ground the casual reader with creative analogies and prose peppered with flashes of wit. Negatively curved (hyperbolic) space-time — usually described as a saddle shape — becomes “a curvy potato chip” for those whose “tastes are more epicurean than equestrian.” Max Planck’s notion of quanta is envisioned as “filling a piggy bank with a pile of coins of various denominations”, while Schrödinger’s wave equation is akin to “a scanner that processes wave functions and in some cases reads out their energy value and keeps them, while in other cases it discards them”.

Many a physics graduate student has gnashed her teeth in frustration over the mathematics of general relativity. Perhaps he/she should try envisioning a flat, boundless desert, with rocks of various sizes scattered across its surface, whose mass creates dips of various depths in the sand.

A sturdy canopy looms over that desert, stretched tightly over a skeleton of tent poles linked by bars, matching the rises and dips in the sand beneath it.

The desert is all the matter and energy in the universe, while the canopy is the geometry of space-time.

The poles and bars are the equations of general relativity, connecting the stuff of the universe with the shape of the universe. As Halpern writes: “Mass and energy warp space-time, telling it where and how to curve. The shape of space-time, in turn, governs how things move within it.”

Despite this knack for clear explication, such moments are all too often preceded by large chunks of technical, jargon-filled prose and dry rehashings of well-travelled historical ground.

The first half of the book in particular suffers in this respect; there is little that is new to surprise and delight the reader. The one fresh twist is the media angle, and Halpern’s writing shines when he returns to this theme, most notably in a lively chapter devoted to the dangers of conducting physics by Press release in the eagerness to unseat Einstein.

It remains a relevant issue, evidenced by the so-called faster-than-light-neutrinos fiasco a few years ago when a European experiment called OPERA stunned the world with a premature public announcement that it had clocked neutrinos travelling fractions of a second faster than the speed of light — an apparent violation of Einstein’s cosmic speed limit. (That result was later shown to be a calibration error, not a violation of relativity.)

For all the media excitement over Einstein’s attempts at unification, Halpern rightly notes that his peers were largely indifferent.

Mainstream physics left him behind as the Standard Model of particle physics took shape, and the mathematical approaches once explored by Einstein and Schrödinger have long since given way to string theory and loop quantum gravity, two of the most promising candidates for quantum gravity.

Should physicists ultimately succeed where they failed, will that be sufficient to wholly describe our universe? Halpern suspects not, because there are still many open questions in physics; he cites the mysterious nature of dark matter and dark energy as examples. Yet they will persevere, just like Einstein, who asked for a pencil and his notes the day before he died so he could continue to work on his calculations — tilting at windmills to the bitter end in his quixotic quest for unification. – NY Times.

ON Friday, Zimbabweans joined the rest of the world in commemorating Workers’ Day, a day set aside to celebrate the key component of any functional society, its workforce who drive production in all sectors. Workers’ Day, which has its origins in the historical struggles of workers and their trade unions for fair employment standards and worker rights, went largely unnoticed in Zimbabwe serve for the few workers in formal employment who got some time off to be with their families but it was business as usual in the vibrant informal sector where owner/operators went about their business undeterred by the calendar event.

While as we reported over the weekend, the umbrella trade unions – the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and its rival the Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions – organised some events in various cities and towns, these were poorly subscribed, and for good reason.

Workers have largely lost faith in the quasi-political organisations that many use as springboards to national politics rather than championing the cause of the worker.

Some of the unions see Government not as a partner but an adversary which is quite inimical to the interests of the worker who needs dialogue between Government and worker representatives.

Many of the workers who lost their place in the formal sector are now doing their own things as owner/operators reflecting the massively transformed political economy of Zimbabwe.

What was destroyed by the decades-long sanctions regime is a foreign-owned, foreign- dominated economic.

It was never ours.

What is emerging in its place is a nascent Zimbabwean middle-class that owns its own, albeit small businesses, which are the building blocks for a genuine, black Zimbabwean wealth-creating middle class in the coming years.

All they need is the requisite support to grow their businesses in the context of the progressive policies of indigenisation and economic empowerment.

To this end we salute Government for its empowerment policies and urge it to support and promote the growth of the small businesses in line with the vision of Zim-Asset, which seeks to build an empowered society that owns the means of production.

We also urge workers to reclaim their unions so that rather than taking an adversarial approach to Government, they can become partners in growth, and in so doing help not only improve the lot of the worker but also grow the economy for the benefit of the worker.

Workers Day need not continue to be a non-event but should be a day of celebration in an progressively indigenised and empowered economy.

Brian Chikwava
I have lived in South Africa for over five years and I must say I have enjoyed the stay despite the hiccups here and there. The World Cup came, was staged and became exemplary that Africa can equally compete with the so-called developed countries and indeed was a great success and followed by the equally successful hosting of the Africa Cup of Nations, which was fantastic.

I have, however, been dismayed and perplexed by what I have been hearing and reading in the local papers, especially the portrayal of foreigners (popularly known as “Makwerekwere”) in general and what has transpired in different parts of South Africa with regards to xenophobia recently that resulted in more than eight people being killed.

Among the things that are upsetting to foreigners who are still living or were living in South Africa, is to read allegations that they hold on to their jobs through “unfair means”, transfer billions of rands abroad, and that some of them have a haughty and arrogant attitude.

If South Africa wants to become a competitive economy in the global system, consideration must be given to the relationship between opening its borders to trade, industry, culture, communications and capital, and the movement of people which must inevitably follow. In my globe-trotting experience I have discovered that immigrants generally have entrepreneurial talent and ambition, are prepared to take risks and possess the necessary drive to survive and succeed in a foreign country.

As a loyalist to my country of origin and a true believer of nationalisation and patriotism, I strongly believe that providing or creating jobs by the local government is necessary and should be given priority at all costs, and definitely nationals have a first go at these openings, and that the whole issue should be dealt with in a proper manner.

The country’s rate of economic growth can be accelerated by dramatically expanding the number of skilled foreigners moving to South Africa. My question is around whether everyone realises how much foreign workers contribute to the South African GDP, and that it was not easy for them to bring their families to South Africa? It is therefore quite natural for them to remit funds to their loved ones as they are the breadwinners of the family.

What prompted me to comment on these observations, readings and hearings is that I have encountered similar resentment from many foreigners’ friends living in South Africa, as well as from those who have worked in SA and then returned to their countries.

On many occasions, I try to emphasise that the government of South Africa and people of South Africa have high regard for the efforts made by all expatriates in further boosting the progress, development and prosperity achieved by South Africa. I reiterate that South Africa still needs them and their endeavours to continue the nation building and development process and that they have a right to transfer the money earned by them to their countries to support their families.

Of course, there are some simple-minded people, who are rigid in their thinking and who have neither obtained an adequate education nor a proper mindset and therefore do not have the ability to understand things well.

The United States provides the best example of the value of skilled immigrants. In 1990 more than a third of engineers and other IT professionals working there had been born elsewhere. People who think that the country can dispense with expatriates and their services represent only themselves and do not represent the South African people.

South African hospitals need nurses, doctors; the education sector requires teachers and the private engineers, lawyers and technicians from different countries like Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria Somalia India and the UK, mainly to work in remote areas where South Africans are not willing to work. Apart from this, take the case of mostly foreign waiters and waitresses, street cleaners who engage in a difficult job from dawn to dusk and draw a low salary. In their absence, restaurants would not have anyone to save the customers or South African streets would be filled with litter.

Their efforts are all necessary because of the absence of a sense of responsibility on other South Africans as they dispose of waste by throwing it from cars or dumping it in unauthorised places, resulting in unpleasant odours and creating severe hygienic problems.

In South Africa, the unemployment rate measures the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force. Quoting Jeremy

Seeking (CSSR Working Paper No. 32, March 2003), he asserts that unemployment is very high in South Africa for two sets of reasons:

First, economic growth has been too weak to absorb the ever rising number of young men and women entering the labour market, itself due to demographic growth and rising participation rates. Secondly, the policies and actions of government, organised labour and business have together resulted in a growth path that has been “jobless’ in that employment has fallen despite economic growth.

Crucially, the growth path has entailed rising productivity and rising wages for an ever smaller pool of workers, with rapid shrinkage in, especially, unskilled employment opportunities.

Furthermore, it has been said and reported in several local newspapers that t there are about a million unemployed South Africans registered, while millions of foreigners are working in the country. There is a lot of disinformation and lack of precision in this talk

If we take this statement seriously and conduct a logical and objective analysis, these are women, and most of these ladies are housewives and are not prepared to work. And those young boys who are ready to work will not accept all types of work but instead will look for a job that is suitable to their nature as well as to their social status and traditions.

The problem of unemployment among South Africans is a complex one and its solution requires a comprehensive national effort with the involvement of various agencies, such as the ministries of education, higher education and labour as well as the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation, and this must be done in conjunction with the private sector, especially major companies such as Eskom, Transnet and SABC. This should involve implementing giant projects in the production sector in order to create job opportunities for South Africans.

Finally, I add my voice to the voices of foreigners in calling on all South Africans to sit and ponder for a while and join us in thanking all the wonderful men and women who came from around the globe and helped in building South Africa, reminiscent of what the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “One who does not thank people, would not thank God.”

This twin failure – to recruit and retain skilled people, and manage the entry of unskilled people – is holding back South Africa’s prospects for growth and development and exacerbating social tensions.

More importantly, it is very important to understand the concept of migration. In the true sense of the concept, migration cannot be stopped or rigidly controlled. This is not a bad thing: the history of humanity is a history of migration. Invariably, it has benefited migrants, their countries of origin, and their destinations.

Brian Chikwava is a Zimbabwean working in South Africa.

Garikai Chengu
Black people in America live in a police state within-a-state. The African American police state exercises its authority over the Black minority through an oppressive array of modern day lynchings by the police, increasing for-profit mass incarceration and the government sanctioned surveillance and assassination of Black leaders.

The African American police state is unquestionably a modern day crime against humanity.

The first modern police forces in America were Slave Patrols and Night Watches, which were both designed to control the behaviours of African Americans.

Historian Victor Kappeler notes that in 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first Slave Patrol.

Historical literature is clear that prior to the Civil War a legally sanctioned police force existed for the sole purpose of oppressing the slave population and protecting the property and interests of white slave owners. The glaring similarities between the eighteenth century Slave Patrols and modern American police brutality in the Black community are too salient to dismiss or ignore.

America was founded as a slave holding republic and slaves did not take too kindly to being enslaved and they often rebelled, becoming enemies of the state.

Slave Patrols were created in order to interrogate and persecute Blacks, who were out and about, without any due process or formal investigation.

To this day, police do not serve and protect the Black community, they treat Blacks as inherently criminal and sub-human.

Ever since the first police forces were established in America, lynchings have been the linchpin of the African American police state.

The majority of Americans believe that lynchings are an outdated form of racial terrorism, which blighted American society up until the end of the era of Jim Crow laws; however, America’s proclivity towards the unbridled slaughter of African Americans has only worsened over time.

The Guardian newspaper recently noted that historians believe that during the late 19th and early 20th century on average two African Americans were lynched every week.

Compare this with incomplete data compiled by the FBI that shows that a Black person is killed by a white police officer more than twice a week, and it’s clear that police brutality in Black communities is getting worse, not better.

Racial terrorism gave birth to America. It should come as no surprise that the state’s law enforcement agents routinely engage in the terrorism of modern day lynchings.

Traditional lynchings were not preceded by judge, jury or trial and were often for the most trivial of reasons such as talking to a white woman, failing to remove a hat or making a sarcastic grin.

Modern day lynchings are also not preceded by due process. Numerous Black children like Tamir Rice have been slaughtered by police for trivialities like playing with a toy gun in public.

Lynching does not necessarily mean hanging. It often included humiliation, torture, burning, dismemberment and castration.

A lynching was a quintessential American public ritual that often took place in front of large crowds that sometimes numbered in the thousands. Historian Mark Gado notes that “onlookers sometimes fired rifles and handguns hundreds of times into the corpse while people cheered and children played during the festivities”.

Sensational American journalism spared the public no detail no matter how horrible, and in 1899 the Springfield Weekly described a lynching by chronicling how, “the Negro was deprived of his ears, fingers and genital parts of his body. He pleaded pitifully for his life while the mutilation was going on…before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones crushed into small bits . . . the Negro’s heart was cut into several pieces, as was also his liver . . . small pieces of bones went for 25 cents . . .”

Such graphic accounts were the norm in the South, and photos were regularly taken of the lynched bodies on display and made into postcards that were sent all over the country.

Nowadays, the broader American public participates in modern day lynchings by sharing videos that go viral of police officers slaying Black men, women and children. By opting not to censor the graphic content of police killing Blacks, today’s videos in the media serve the same purpose as the detailed written accounts of yesteryear by adding to the psychological suffering of the African American. Such viral graphic accounts also desensitize the white community to such an extent that empowers white policemen to do more.

A hallmark of 20th century fascist police states, such as Italy under Mussolini or Franco’s Spain, is the lack of police accountability for their crimes. In spite of extremely egregious circumstances surrounding all lynchings and many police killings, police are rarely held liable.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee recently issued a report on human rights abuses in the United States which roundly condemned the epidemic of police brutality.

It stated: “The committee is concerned about the still high number of fatal shootings by police, which has a disparate impact on African Americans”. In modern America, the African American police state assassinates the Black victim twice.

Once by way of lynching and again to assassinate the victim’s character so as to justify the public execution.

All too often a Black victim’s school record, employment status and social media presence are dragged by the media into the court of public opinion, as if any of it has any bearing on whether an agent of the state has the right to lynch a Black US citizen.

Arbitrary arrest and mass incarceration have been quintessential elements of police states from East Germany to Augusto Pinochet’s Chile.

The United States right now incarcerates more African Americans as a percentage than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid.

A Senate hearing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that the American prison population hovered around 25 000 throughout the 1900s, until the 1980’s when America suddenly experienced a massive increase in the inmate population to over a quarter million.

The cause was Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs which intentionally, and disproportionately targeted Blacks. The War on Drugs is now the African America police state’s main propaganda justification for police brutality and judicial discrimination against Blacks.

One out of three African American males will be arrested and go through the American injustice system at some point in their lives, primarily for nonviolent drug charges, despite studies revealing that white youth use drugs at higher rates than their Black counterparts.

For decades, the African American crime rate has been falling but Black imprisonment rates have consistently soared.

Aside from the War on Drugs, the rise in prison population may have another less publicized cause: gradual privatization of the prison industry, with its profits-over-justice motives.

If the beds aren’t filled, states are required to pay the prison companies for the empty space, which means taxpayers are largely left to deal with the bill that might come from lower crime and imprisonment rates.

Private prisons were designed by the rich and for the rich. The for-profit prison system depends on imprisoning Blacks for its survival.

Much in the same way the United States was designed.

After all, more Black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850 before the Civil War began.

The history of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo has many parallels to what US law enforcement in the Black community has become.

The infamous “stop-and-frisk” policies that allow the New York Police Department to stop you based on suspicion are Nazi-like. Latinos and Blacks make up 84 percent of all those stopped, although they make up respectively 29 and 23 percent of New York City’s population. Furthermore, statistics show that NYPD officers are far more likely to use physical force against Blacks and Latinos during stops.

The Gestapo operated without any judicial review by state imposed law, putting them above the law.

The FBI’s counter-intelligence programmes (COINTELPRO) of the 1950’s, 60s, and 70s formed one of the most infamous domestic initiatives in US history, targeting Black organizations and individuals whom the FBI saw as threatening the racist, capitalist status quo.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, government projects aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and brutalizing Black communities.

After COINTELPRO director William C Sullivan concluded in a 1963 memo that Martin Luther King, Jr was “the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation,” he wrote: “It may be unrealistic to limit [our actions against King] to legalistic proofs that would stand up in court or before Congressional Committees.”

The FBI waged an intense war against Martin Luther King Jr. The African American police state’s law enforcement agents bugged his hotel rooms, tried to provoke IRS investigations against him, and harassed magazines that published articles about him. In 1999, a civil trial concluded that United States law enforcement agents were responsible for Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination.

The perpetuation of the African American police state is a modern day crime against humanity. The ongoing protests and uprisings in Black communities are a direct and just response to centuries of worsening incarceration, modern day lynchings and systematic second class citizenship. Far from being a “post-racial” nation, American race relations are at a new low. Simmering discontent in Black communities will continue to rise towards a dangerous boiling point unless and until the African American police state is exposed and completely dismantled. — Counterpunch.

Garikai Chengu is a scholar at Harvard University. Contact him on garikai.chengu@gmail.com <mailto:garikai.chengu@gmail.com>

WE are not surprised though, we are hardly amused by the desperate bid by sections of the private media and their opposition embeds to create a storm in a tea cup over President Mugabe’s retelling of the colonial stereotype that Kalangas who troop into South Africa from Matabeleland South are uneducated and become petty criminals in the host country.

Addressing a Press conference at the end of the Sadc Extraordinary Summit in Harare last week, President Mugabe recalled a pre-independence stereotype that most Zimbabwean emigrants to South Africa were Kalangas from Matabeleland South who had little education.

Some sections of the media latched on to the President’s sentiments which they widely interpreted as an attack on Kalangas going to the extent of calling for the resignation of Government ministers and exhumation of national heroes they alleged to be of Kalanga extraction.

But even their audit of our national heroes, as we report elsewhere in this issue, is as erroneous as their take on the President’s statement.

We say, storm in a tea cup, because only a dimwit or dishonest person can assert that President Mugabe shares that colonial stereotype given the interventions that he has made in his personal and official capacities towards the upliftment of not only Kalangas in Matabeleland South, but all other Zimbabweans in general. The interventions have taken the form of the progressive education for all policy that has thrust Zimbabwe to pole position in terms of literacy in Africa, the Presidential Scholarship Programme that covers every province and the Presidential Computerisation Programme, all of which were spearheaded by the President.

For instance, statistics from the Presidential Scholarship Programme show that of the 20 418 beneficiaries since the launch of the programme in 1995, ten percent or 2009 beneficiaries were from Matabeleland South, a sparsely populated province of only 683 893 inhabitants according to the 2012 population census report. What this means is that despite being sparsely populated compared to the populous Mashonaland provinces, Mat South actually got the lion’s share of beneficiaries.  This is not a picture of a people who are maligned or scorned by their benefactor.

The same census report revealed that, just like in other provinces, though about 12 percent of the population of Mat South age 3-24 years had never been to school, 87 percent of them were below the age of 6 years, meaning many of them were still to start school and would attend school.

Fifty-five percent of the population is attending school and the literacy rate for Matabeleland South stands at 95 percent, which compares favourably with the populous Mashonaland East which has a population of 1,5 million and a literacy rate of 96 percent and Midlands: population 1,6 million, literacy rate of 95 percent, to mention just a few provinces.

These are cold, hard facts which can never be changed by the self-serving, desperate attempts of failed politicians and struggling regime change media keen to precipitate or paint the picture of a crisis where none exists, all in a bid to curry donor funds.

It is not a secret that there is a section of our society that hates national unity, that tries at every stage to brew tribal discord for selfish political ends.

Yet these same sections of society conveniently forget that their very existence in a democratic Zimbabwe, which they fight at every turn, is because of the peace fomented by the unity that they try to trash at every turn.

Such forces must never be entertained but should be shunned like the plague.

Their claims on Kalangas cannot stand scrutiny in independent Zimbabwe.

Deng Xiaoping,

THE last 15 years have been good for Africa. Conflict reduced, regional integration deepened, governance improved and economies grew, in part due to diversification of Africa’s trading partners. China’s re-emergence as a great power has profoundly impacted Africa. As the workshop of the world, China has an enormous appetite for Africa’s resources, has paid well for them and returned other benefits – infrastructure financing and geopolitical cover for those who request it.

The economic engagement of China, now Africa’s largest trading partner, has sustained and helped Africa’s middle class to grow. This remarkable development took place under the radar at first while our traditional partners distracted themselves with wars in the Middle East.

The surplus and space created by Chinese and other new trading partners, allowed the young to become talkative and creative. In the new buzz, we even adopted The Economist-inspired “Africa Rising” slogan.

But as fast as it rose, the meme is already in danger due to the strong headwinds in the global economy.

The collapse in oil and other commodity prices is impacting significantly on some of the biggest economies on the continent, such as Nigeria, Algeria, Angola and South Africa. These commodity producers are experiencing reductions in the value of their currencies as prices fall. The US Federal Reserve’s winding up of its quantitative easing (QE) policy also adds to downward pressure on African currencies. QE’s massive injection of liquidity into US markets sent capital abroad seeking a higher yield. Now the money is going home, increasing the strength of the dollar.

The next two years or so will be more difficult for most African countries than the previous 15. However, the underlying fundamentals are still sound. An engaged population is beginning to dream of what “Made in Africa” might look like. Lessons are being learned faster and actioned earlier. Competence and innovative thinking are the new focus. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, we are at the point where the colour of the cat does not matter, as long as it catches mice.

Deng and his successors’ cat have helped catch one of the most significant mice for Africa – diversification of its trade and investment partners. This multipolarity is the central development of the “Africa Rising” period. It could become the defining feature of the whole age, driving global rivalry over control of the earth’s energy resources and trade routes.

For over 100 years, the most important global trade route was the Atlantic, connecting the US with Europe. In the last decade, it has been across the Pacific, flowing between the US and Asia, and in the future it will be within Eurasia itself. A new world is taking shape with the development of trading blocs and associations on continental, pan-continental and hemispheric levels. How will Africa insert itself into this evolving matrix?

Africa is already a BRICS member. This grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa contrast to the G7, whose only non-European/North American member is Japan. The BRICS nations represent a geographic diversity of countries that contain dense population centres, are the manufacturing centre of the world, have an excellent IT base, huge savings, enormous oil, gas and other natural resources, and state-of-the-art militaries.

The BRICS does not have the level of co-ordination of the G7 nations. However, it is developing these mechanisms, such as the New Development Bank (NDB). This multilateral development bank will have a lending facility of $100 billion and will challenge the Bretton Woods institutions’ hegemony.

The BRICS’ growing success will attract new members. China wanted Africa represented in the BRICS and fought for South Africa’s inclusion, although it does not have the economic or population size of the other BRICS nations. How else will the rest of the continent relate to this emerging global bloc, apart from seeking loans from the NDB? Is there scope for a much more integrated role for Africa in this alliance of the 21st century? - New African Magazine.