It seems incredible that hundreds of houses can be built across a swathe of suburbs without Harare City Council noticing that building plans had not been submitted for approval.

Yet houses have been built in Mount Pleasant Heights, an extension of Pomona, Gletwyn, southern Prospect, Belvedere West and south Ashdown Park without such approval, although the land itself was correctly subdivided, connected to the city water system and in some cases to the sewer network. The problem is just the building plans, unlike houses in the southwest of the city that were built on servitudes and similar land that was reserved for zero development.

It is highly unlikely that any of the affected houses will not meet the standards required, basically those set down in the Model Building By-laws, and unlikely that any will fail the required inspections.

But the owners are now all in the difficult position of having to obtain detailed plans, submitting these, waiting for the normal process of approval, ensuring the required inspections take place and then having to pay the fee, one percent of the building costs.

It seems fairly obvious that the developers of these new suburbs, or extensions of existing suburbs, did not bother to go through the required process, and so there might be further legal problems.

We assume the hundreds of affected homeowners would have assumed that all regulatory steps had been met when they started paying for their homes.

The need for the approval and inspection process is obvious. It prevents dangerous buildings being constructed.

The Model Building By-laws allow a wide variety of materials and techniques, but also demand that with some materials and techniques calculations by an approved engineer are performed, and in other cases, where calculations are not required, that the laid down materials and techniques have been used.

People now having houses built in schemes will obviously check that their developer has gone through the required processes.

Those who buy a plot and hire an architect and builder themselves are almost always led through the process by professionals and so do not have to worry.

But we still think the council has taken far too long to notice that some developers did not go through the process.

Everything would have been a lot easier for everyone, including the council, if deficiencies had been noticed from the very beginning, such as when the first water connection was applied for.

It should not be difficult for different units of the city council to pass on information to each other.

In any case we think the council, following the problems in the south-west of the city with bogus cooperatives and now the missing processes in this swathe of low-density schemes, should figure out ways of obtaining early warnings of unapproved development. This could be as basic as municipal workers seeing building operations, and especially seeing a number of them on a new tract, simply making a straight forward report at their headquarters.

A simple check when these were passed along would quickly find unauthorised development and allow remedial action to be taken immediately, long before a complex legal mess had arisen and long before large sums of money had been spent by homeowners. It is much easier to put things right before they have gone very far wrong.

How many people have been killed in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Somalia? On November 18, a UN Press briefing on the war in Yemen declared authoritatively that it had so far killed 5 700 people, including 830 women and children.

But how precise are these figures, what are they based on, and what relation are they likely to bear to the true numbers of people killed?

Throughout the US-led war in Afghanistan, the media has cited UN updates comparing numbers of Afghans killed by “coalition forces” and the “Taliban.” Following the US escalation of the war in 2009 and 2010, a report by McClatchy in March 2011 was headlined, “UN: US-led forces killed fewer Afghan civilians last year.”

It reported a 26 percent drop in US-led killing of Afghan civilians in 2010, offset by a 28 percent increase in civilians killed by the “Taliban” and “other insurgents.” This was all illustrated in a neat pie-chart slicing up the extraordinarily low reported total of 2 777 Afghan civilians killed in 2010 at the peak of the US-led escalation of the war.

Neither the UN nor the media made any effort to critically examine this reported decrease in civilians killed by US-led forces, even as US troop strength peaked at 100 000 in August 2010, Pentagon data showed a 22 percent increase in US air strikes, from 4 163 in 2009 to 5 100 in 2010, and US special forces “kill or capture” raids exploded from 90 in November 2009 to 600 per month by the summer of 2010, and eventually to over 1 000 raids in April 2011.

Senior US military officers quoted in Dana Priest and William Arkin’s book, “Top Secret America”, told the authors that only half of such special forces raids target the right people or homes, making the reported drop in resulting civilian deaths even more implausible.

If McClatchy had investigated the striking anomaly of a reported decrease in civilian casualties in the midst of a savagely escalating war, it would have raised serious questions regarding the full scale of the slaughter taking place in occupied Afghanistan.

And it would have revealed a disturbing pattern of under-reporting by the UN and the media in which a small number of deaths that happened to be reported to UN officials or foreign reporters in Kabul was deceptively relayed to the world as an estimate of total civilian war deaths.

The reasons for the media’s reluctance to delve into such questions lie buried in Iraq.

During the US military occupation of Iraq, controversy erupted over conflicting estimates of the numbers of Iraqis killed and details of who killed them.

If more UN officials and journalists had dug into those conflicting reports from Iraq and made the effort to really understand the differences between them, they would have been far better equipped to make sense of reports of numbers of people killed in other wars.

The critical thing to understand about reports on numbers of civilians killed in wars is the difference between “passive reporting” and scientific “mortality studies”.

In reality, the huge discrepancy between the results of these mortality studies and “passive reporting” was exactly what epidemiologists expected to find in a conflict zone like occupied Iraq.

As Les Roberts and his colleagues have explained, epidemiologists working in war zones typically find that passive reporting only captures between 5 percent (in Guatemala, for example) and 20 percent of the total deaths revealed by comprehensive mortality studies.

So their finding that passive reporting in Iraq had captured about one in 12 actual deaths was consistent with extensive research in other war-torn countries.

In the UK, Tony Blair dismissed the “Lancet survey ” out of hand, claiming that, “Figures from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which are a survey from the hospitals there, are in our view the most accurate survey there is.”

But in 2007, the BBC obtained a set of leaked documents that included a memo from Sir Roy Anderson, the chief scientific adviser to the UK’s Defence Ministry, in which he described the epidemiologists’ methods as “close to best practice” and their study design as “robust.”

The document trove included emails between worried British officials admitting that the study was “likely to be right” and that “the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.” But the very same official insisted that the government must “not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate.”

Other mortality surveys conducted in Iraq have produced lower figures, but there are legitimate reasons to regard the work of Les Roberts and his colleagues as the gold standard, based on their experience in other conflicts and the thoroughness of their methods.

Other surveys were conducted by the occupation government, not by independent researchers, inevitably making people reluctant to tell survey teams about family members killed by occupation forces.

Some studies excluded the most war-torn parts of Iraq, while one was based only on a single question about deaths in the family as part of a lengthy “living conditions” survey.

The authors of the most recent study, published in the PLOS medical journal in 2013, a decade after the invasion, have acknowledged that it produced a low estimate, because so much time had elapsed and because they did not interview any of the more than 3 million people who had fled their homes in the most devastated areas.

They made adjustments to compensate for such factors, but those adjustments themselves were deliberately conservative. However, their estimate of 500 000 violent civilian deaths is still four times the highest numbers passively reported.

Stephen Gowans Correspondent
THE implication of a report written for the US Congress is that the United States is a state sponsor of terrorism in Syria. At the same time, the report challenges widely held beliefs about the conflict, including the idea that the opposition has grassroots support and that the conflict is a sectarian war

between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect and the majority Sunnis.

Written in October 2015, the report was prepared by the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the United States Library of Congress. The Congressional Research Service provides policy and legal analysis to committees and members of the US House and Senate.

Titled “Armed Conflict in Syria: Overview and US Response”, the report reveals that:

1. The Syrian conflict is between Islamists and secularists, not Sunnis and Alawites

Media reports often emphasise the dominant Sunni character of the rebels who have taken up arms against the Syrian government, while depicting the Syrian government as Alawite-led. What is almost invariably overlooked is that the largest Sunni fighting force in Syria is the country’s army. Yes, the rebels are predominantly Sunni, but so too are the Syrian soldiers they’re fighting. As Congress’s researchers point out, “most rank and file military personnel have been drawn from the majority Sunni Arab population and other (non-Alawite) minority groups” (p. 7). Also: “Sunni conscripts continue to fight for Assad” (p. 12). Rather than being a battle between two different sects, the conflict is a struggle, on the one hand, between Sunni fundamentalists who want to impose their version of Islam on Syrian politics and society, and on the other hand, Syrians, including Sunnis, who embrace a vision of a secular, non-sectarian government.

2. The Syrian Opposition

Coalition is dominated by Islamists and is allied with foreign

enemies of Syria

According to the report, the Syrian National Council (whose largest member is the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood) is the “largest constituent group” of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC). The SOC is based “in Turkey and considered to be close to foreign opponents of Assad.” (p. 14) The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to base political rule on the Quran, which it sees as divinely inspired, rather than on a secular constitution.

3. “Political opposition coalitions appear to lack…grass roots support” (p. 27)

This is consistent with the findings of a public opinion poll taken last summer by a research firm that is working with the US and British governments. That poll found that Assad has more support than the forces arrayed against him.

The survey, conducted by ORB International, a company which specialises in public opinion research in fragile and conflict environments, found that 47 percent of Syrians believe that Assad has a positive influence in Syria, compared to only 35 percent for the Free Syrian Army and 26 percent for the SOC.

An in-country face-to-face ORB poll conducted in May 2014 arrived at similar conclusions. That poll found that more Syrians believed the Assad government best represented their interests and aspirations than believed the same about any of the opposition groups.

According to the poll, only 6 percent believed that the “genuine” rebels represented their interests and aspirations, while the ‘National Coalition/transitional government”, a reference to the SOC, drew even less support, at only 3 percent.

Assad has repeatedly challenged the notion that he lacks popular support, pointing to his government surviving nearly five years of war against forces backed by the most powerful states on the planet. It’s impossible to realistically conceive of his government’s survival under these challenging circumstances, he argues, without its having the support of a sizeable part of its population.

4. A moderate opposition doesn’t exist. The United States is trying to build one to act as its partner

The report refers to US efforts to create partners in Syria, a euphemism for puppets who can be relied upon to promote US interests.

“Secretary of Defence Carter described the ‘best’ scenario for the Syrian people as one that would entail an agreed or managed removal of Assad and the coalescence of opposition forces with elements of the remaining Syrian state apparatus as US partners . . .” (pp. 15-16).

Also: The Pentagon “sought to …groom and support reliable leaders to serve as US partners …” (p. 23).

To create partners, the United States is engaged in the project of building a “moderate” opposition. According to the report:

“On June 18, Secretary of Defence Carter said, ‘… the best way for the Syrian people for this to go would be for him to remove himself from the scene and there to be created, difficult as it will be, a new government of Syria based on the moderate opposition that we have been trying to build…”(footnote, p. 16).

In the report summary the researchers write that US strategy seeks to avoid “inadvertently strengthening Assad, the Islamic State, or other anti-US armed Islamist groups”. What’s left unsaid is that armed Islamist groups that are not immediately anti-US may be looked upon favourably by US strategy.

However, that “political opposition coalitions … appear to lack grass-roots support”, and that Washington can’t rely on an already-formed moderate opposition but needs to build one, shows that the set of rebels on which the US can rely to act as US partners who will rule with elements of the existing Syrian state in a post-Assad Syria is virtually empty

The conclusion is substantiated by the failure of a now-abandoned Pentagon programme to train and equip vetted rebel groups. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the top American commander in the Middle East, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that despite the Pentagon spending $500 million training and equipping “moderate” rebels, only “four or five” were “in the fight”. As the Wall Street Journal observed in late December, moderate rebels don’t exist. They’ve either been absorbed into Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrah al-Sham and ISIS — the extremist terrorist groups which dominate the opposition — or were Islamist militants all along.

5. The United States is arming

sectarian terrorists indirectly and possibly directly and covertly

The report points out that not only has the Pentagon openly trained and equipped rebels, but that the United States has also covertly armed them. According to the Congress’s researchers:

“Then Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel said in a September 2013 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Administration was taking steps to provide arms to some Syrian rebels under covert action authorities” (p. 23).

Also:

“Secretary Hagel said, ‘it was June of this year that the president made the decision to support lethal assistance to the opposition . . . we, the Department of Defense, have not been involved in this. This is, as you know, a covert action’” (footnote, p.23).

If the United States was prepared to overtly arm some rebel groups, why is it covertly arming others? A not unreasonable hypothesis is that it is arming some rebel groups covertly because they have been designated as terrorist organisations. To be sure, a number of press reports have revealed that rebels who have received training and arms from the United States are operating with terrorist groups in Syria.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “insurgents who have been trained covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency … are enmeshed with or fighting alongside more hardline Islamist groups, including the Nusra Front, Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate” [6]. Another report from the same newspaper notes that “al-Nusra has fought alongside rebel units which the US and its regional allies have backed” [7]. A third report refers to collaboration between “CIA-backed Free Syrian army factions and extremist elements such as Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham” [8]. Let’s be clear. Anyone who is enmeshed with and fighting alongside Al-Qaeda is a terrorist.

Read the full article on www.herald.co.zw.

Stephen Gowans is a Canadian writer and political activist resident in Ottawa. This article is reproduced from <http://gowans.wordpress.com>

According to Congress’s researchers, weapons the US furnished to selected groups have made their way to jihadists. “Some Syrian opposition groups that have received US equipment and weaponry to date have surrendered or lost these items to other groups, including to extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra” (p. 23).

When you consider that, as The Washington Post reported, “the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10 000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years” [9] and that, at best, there are 700, and more likely only 70 “moderate” rebels in Syria [10], then the bulk of the large rebel force the CIA has trained and equipped is very likely made up of Islamist extremists. Concealing this shameful reality from the US public is probably the principal reason the program is covert.

6. Washington wants to contain ISIS, but not eliminate it, in order to maintain military pressure on the Syrian government

Based on the US coalition’s less than vigorous air campaign against ISIS, many observers have questioned whether the United States is at all serious about eliminating ISIS just yet, and is simply trying to contain it, to keep pressure on the Syrian government. For example, veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk says: “I don’t think the US is serious. Very occasionally, you can hear the rumble of American bombs. But they’re certainly not having much effect.”

One day, soon after Russia began air operations in Syria, journalist Patrick Cockburn noted that “Russian planes carried out 71 sorties and 118 air strikes against Islamic fighters in Syria over the past two days compared to just one air strike by the US-led coalition – and this single strike, against a mortar position, was the first for four days”.

After ISIS captured Palmyra, and pushed into Aleppo, the US coalition did nothing to push back the ISIS advance, leading even rebels to question “the US’s commitment to containing the group”. Assad too has expressed scepticism about whether the United States is serious about destroying ISIS, pointing to the terrorist organisation’s continued successes in Syria, despite the US coalition’s presumed war against it. “Since this coalition started to operate,” observed the Syrian president, “ISIS has been expanding. In other words, the coalition has failed and it has no real impact on the ground.”

A tepid approach to fighting ISIS in Syria would fit with US President Barack Obama’s stated goal of degrading the Al-Qaeda offspring organisation. Destroying it may be an ultimate goal, to be achieved after ISIS has served the purpose of weakening the Syrian government. But for now, the United States appears to be willing to allow ISIS to continue to make gains in Syria. The Congressional Research Service report concurs with this view: It concludes that “US officials may be concerned that a more aggressive campaign against the Islamic State may take military pressure off the” Syrian government (p. 19).

By contrast, Moscow has pursued a more vigorous war against ISIS, and for an obvious reason. Unlike Washington, it seeks to prop up its Syrian ally, not give ISIS room to weaken it. It should be additionally noted that Russia’s military operations in Syria are legal, carried out with the permission of the Syrian government. By contrast, the US coalition has brazenly flouted international law to enter Syrian airspace without Damascus’s assent. It has, in effect, undertaken an illegal invasion and committed a crime of aggression, compounded by its training and arming of terrorists.

Conclusion

The report says that in the absence of grassroots support for political opposition coalitions in Syria, the United States is relying on a number of tactics to pressure the current government in Syria to step down, including:

• Keeping ISIS alive as a tool to sustain military pressure on Damascus.

• Arming jihadist groups indirectly and (we can assume) directly (albeit covertly) to pressure Assad.

• Seeking to create a moderate opposition that will act as a US partner.

• Trying to co-opt parts of the existing Syrian state to take a partnership role in governing a post-Assad Syria.

The implication of points 1 and 2 is that the United States — as the trainer of, and supplier of arms, to rebels who are enmeshed with and fighting alongside Al-Qaeda in Syria, and in keeping ISIS alive, in order to use these terrorist organisations to achieve its political goal of installing a US-partner government in Syria — is a state sponsor of terrorism.

Stephen Gowans is a Canadian writer and political activist resident in Ottawa. This article is reproduced from <http://gowans.wordpress.com>

Linda Chisholm Correspondent
It costs more to send a child to some of South Africa’s elite private schools than it does to cover tuition at many universities. This is just one reason among many that it’s time for a commission on school funding. The school fee system also needs urgent attention – not least because it is hardening the

education system into a class-divided order.

South Africa is thinking about overhauling higher education funding. This process should be accompanied by a major relook at the school funding and fee exemption system.

At the country’s universities, the #FeesMustFall campaign has rightly concentrated the collective mind on rising student fees, historical debt, the financial burdens students face when entering university, and an ineffectual National Student Financial Aid Scheme.

But the divide between fee-paying and non-fee-paying public schools is equally worrying. A fee-exemption system was initiated in 1996 and culminated in some schools being declared entirely fee-free from 2006 – paradoxically allowing poverty to continue at one end of the scale and affluence to persist at another.

No-fee schools

The Department of Basic Education is proud of the fact that, in 2016, just over 60 percent of children do not pay school fees. This system was introduced after a long battle by NGOs in the 1990s against fees, particularly those charged to people in poor areas.

The problem is that these fee-exempt schools are not well resourced. South African government spending on education compares favourably with other developing and middle-income countries. But this does not necessarily translate either into adequate outcomes or resourcing of schools.

On average, about 80 percent of provincial budgets are spent on teacher salaries, with some spending more and some less. This leaves about 20 percent or less for spending on maintenance, textbooks and other necessary resources.

It is no accident that more broken windows and toilets are found at schools in the poorer Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces than in wealthier parts of the country.

There is simply not enough in the non-personnel allocation to schools to shift spending patterns.

And there is little provision to deal with poor management of the meagre resources that are allocated.

Frustrated communities complain to watchdog organisations, but this does not solve the problem.

Increasingly, poor parents – particularly from urban areas like Johannesburg and Soweto, Cape Town, Durban and Pietermaritzburg – try to send their children to schools in well-off suburbs.

Schools receive more or less government funding depending on the socioeconomic status of their surrounding communities. So, a school in an established suburb like Durban’s Glenwood will get less money than one in a poor township such as Umlazi. But children from Umlazi can attend school in Glenwood, creating a disjuncture between the social class of the area in which the school is located and the children attending it.

Since resources are allocated in such a way that schools in poorer areas get more, and those in richer areas get less, unexpected anomalies have arisen.

Educational statistics have not kept pace with these changes in suburbs and the nature of schools in them. Research shows that many such schools receive less than they should if their learners’ parents’ income levels were taken into account. – The Conversation.

The chasm between whether schools are fee-paying or not is being widened by schools’ practices and assumptions that reinforce admission on the basis of the ability to pay.

Legally, no child can be excluded if the parents are unable to pay school fees. Children in fee-paying schools are still eligible for total, partial, or conditional exemption from fees. It is the duty of the principal and school governing body to apprise parents of their liability for fees unless they have been exempted.

But often fee-paying schools don’t want to accept children who cannot pay. They simply don’t tell parents that they’re eligible for an exemption. In some cases, this reluctance is spurred by provincial governments that don’t compensate schools for exempted pupils.

Poorer parents accessing such schools may know their rights but lack the confidence to act on this knowledge. This is especially true when they’re confronted by a bursar whose first response to a request for the exemption form might well be: “But if you can’t pay, there are many fee-exempt schools that will take you”. Because of this, parents will simply not pay fees nor apply for exemption.

At the end of their school career, then, these young people are saddled with unpaid debts. These will mount when they enter a university. The hidden slights against such children – the shame and burden of knowing that action can be taken any time – soon accompany that person to university. It can transform into a monumental anger.

Need to revisit school funding model

Schoolchildren can and have been as vocal as university students in their demands. Both the students of 1976 and Equal Education more recently have shown this. But the silence that has developed around school fees needs to be broken.

An argument can be made that if fees should fall anywhere, it should be in schools first. There is enough evidence that the system is not working as it should across all schools and needs a fundamental rethink.- Conversation.

• Linda Chisholm is a Professor of Education, University of Johannesburg. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Bradley Bessire

Tichaona Zindoga Political Editor
Many people may have seen or observed at home how cats have a habit of playing with their prey. The situation plays out like this: the cat goes out into the garden and catches a mouse or rat, which it immobilises with a bite serious enough but not fatal.

With the rodent hurt but still alive, the cat sets out to play and taunts the poor animal. It releases the rodent from its mouth, giving it temporary respite, whereupon the rodent may dash to supposed safety.

It may not even reach the closest safety hole or corner before it is caught by the neck, shaken from side to side and thrown up before being let away again.

Poor rodent, it still hopes.

It hobbles. Its life wobbles.

It gives another try. Another dash.

Typically, it may be left to go and hide in a corner before being sniffed and pawed out. The game continues thus until the cat is tired or rather bored and its prey dead. The cat may decide to eat the rodent, or not. It’s such a funny spectacle, and a sickening deadly game of life and death, too.

Experts have attempted to explain this phenomenon with one journal saying it is a way cats assure themselves that the rodent is “totally dead” and, “In a way, incessantly torturing a mouse is a form of self-defence, feline style.”

We are told that for indoor cats, “the torture factor could be related to pure pleasure . . . it may simply be because she’s playing with it like a toy or a game. She also may be pretty proud of her catch, plain and simple.”

One may have imagined this spectacle playing out, if they came across a story carried by one website titled, “US impressed by resilient Zimbabweans”.

In the story is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Director of Southern African Affairs, one Bradley Bessire, who has reportedly been on a tour of Matabeleland to evaluate the scope and severity of the current drought.

He then tells his interlocutors: “I am impressed and inspired by the resilience of the Zimbabwean people.”

Adding: “The United States will stand by the people of Zimbabwe during this drought, meeting their immediate needs while also reducing their vulnerability to shocks and building long-term food security.”

To the uninitiated, this may sound so well-meaning and considerate to come from the US official but it actually is probably the biggest insult that Zimbabweans have suffered so far this year, 2016.

Just how can the United States of America, the chief torturer of Zimbabwe, be “impressed and inspired by the resilience” of its victims except by trying to tell us that it enjoys its cat-like tyranny over us?

The US imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2001, along with its cousins in the European Union and Commonwealth.

The sanctions were at the instigation of Britain, which was unhappy that Zimbabwe had embarked on a programme to redistribute land from a few whites of colonial stock to the majority poor blacks.

At the end of the programme, land that was monopolised by about 4 000 whites was redistributed to 250 000 families who were previously condemned to arid areas.

But this did not impress the West.

Not only did the West seek to topple the heroic Government of President Mugabe to replace him with a stooge that would reverse the land reform programme, the West, led by America, which crafted a whole law which places the reversal of land reform as a precondition of the lifting of sanctions, embarked on a programme of causing national pain to Zimbabwe.

They froze budgetary and balance of payments support and credit lines to Zimbabwe and caused major multilateral lending institutions to veto any extension of loans and debt relief to Zimbabwe.

Key companies that sustained the Zimbabwe economy, from the land bank, Agribank to the power utility company Zesa, the country’s CEO and other business faces were put under sanctions, preventing both exports and imports.

Zimbabwe suffered a lot as a result of sanctions the peak of which was in 2008, when a humanitarian disaster nearly unfolded on the back of a cholera outbreak while general misery was fomented by hyperinflation, which was mostly to deal with the currency war that the West wrought.

Zimbabwe recovered somewhat when the opposition MDC, beneficiaries of the national misery that gifted them with a protest vote, got into Government in 2009.

It was envisaged that the opposition — which had the mandate of reversing the legacy of Zanu-PF — would take power from within.

They failed because the people rejected them in 2013.

The sanctions are still there, save for cosmetic changes that have intervened, and the country continues to suffer from the systemic and structural hostilities of the West, led by America.

The current drought has just been worsened because the capacity of the State to deal with disasters has been curtailed by the hostile interventions of the US and its friends.

Where new farmers could have benefitted from a functional land bank, the US and its friends ensured that it was one of the first institutions to be crippled by sanctions and all other critical sectors of the economy were equally maimed or dsestroyed.

Is this how the US loves the people of Zimbabwe?

What kind of love is this when the US bites a country’s spine and then tries to play hide and seek with such a mortally wounded people?

In the discourse that followed sanctions, the US and the EU maintain that they have provided aid to the tune of billions as well as trade.

Hence this fatuous claim that “United States will stand by the people of Zimbabwe” — and not their Government which they choose!

It has to be said that this is a very dishonest excuse.

We have not had a chance to address the new US Ambassador, Mr Harry Thomas Jnr on this issue.

He better take note: this obfuscation will not be tolerated — just as we have rejected the excuses of his predecessors who have tried to hoodwink the world regarding the issue.

When he opens his mouth the wrong way, we will sure be at hand to remind him.

The long and short of it is that the US poses an extra-ordinary and continuing threat to the wellbeing of Zimbabwe because of its needlessly hostile policy on a small, peaceful country that only seeks progress for its people, including by fully owning its God-given resources.

Zimbabweans do not need to be commended for “resilience” by the likes of US or its agents at imperialist arms.

At any rate these murderers and torturers do not need to feel “impressed and inspired” by their victims — for it is their duty to inflict pain, sometimes carried out playfully, sadistically.

The patronising, dishonest, disturbing and particularly offending attitude shown by this one Bessire will not be tolerated.

Cde Nyagumbo

Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter
The revolutionary and ruling party, zanu-pf, has seen its credentials incrementally eroded by unscrupulous elements who have brought to the fore greed, corruption, name-calling, lack of respect for the leadership and malice, among other vices.

Plots, counter-plots and conspiracy theories have become the order of the day in the revolutionary party in the process drifting away from what the party must stand for.

Unfortunately, the constituents of those who waged the armed struggle against the colonial regime naturally continues to dwindle while a new crop of party officials, some of whom don’t qualify to be referred to as comrades – in the traditional revolutionary sense – is increasingly growing.

The majority of this new crop appear ignorant of the fact that those who fought the settler regime did not place personal wealth accumulation or power as their objectives.

Selflessness was their forte yet the new crop is obsessed with selfishness.

This new crop also has no idea of the Leadership Code that was adopted at the zanu-pf People’s Congress in 1984 where in its preamble, it stated that “zanu-pf regards corruption as an evil disease destructive of society”.

As a result, the code declared that the leadership shall not: “Accept or obtain from any person or any other person a gift or consideration as inducement or reward for doing or failing to do or for having done or foreborne to do any act in relation to the party’s business or business of the Government or for the purpose of showing or forebearing to show favour or disfavour to any person in relation to the affairs of party and Government . . . ”

This position is probably the reason the late Maurice Nyagumbo committed suicide after being fingered in the Willowgate scandal in which senior Government officials, among them ministers, were accused of abusing a Government facility to buy vehicles at Willowvale Motor Industries and reselling them for profit.

It’s possible that Nyagumbo could have committed suicide because of embarrassment given he was aware of the Leadership Code yet today, officials are alleged to be looting and continue to loot with no shame at all.

The major problem today is that some of the zanu-pf officials right from branch leadership up to the Politburo have no idea what the revolutionary party stood for when it fought the liberation struggle and what it stands for today after attaining independence in 1980.

Some think joining zanu-pf opens avenues for them to loot while others see it as an opportunity to get into leadership positions in an institution whose ideology or founding principles they do not understand.

This explains why some people in zanu-pf today are identified with corruption while others are known for unbridled ambition.

Moreso, some don’t even know the full name of zanu-pf beyond the abbreviation.

Ironically, now you find people who only joined the party less than five years ago holding influential positions both in the party and Government.

Some of them now represent the party in Parliament because some influential cadres imposed them on the people.

But all the blame must be directed at zanu-pf that has been loud in its intention to establish the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology since 1980 but glaringly silent on instilling the ideology of the party into its new recruits.

As a result, some of these new recruits are now all over the shore while those who brought the independence we are enjoying today are relegated to the periphery or assume less influential positions in the party.

At the end of the day, zanu-pf is now portrayed as a party without an ideology grounded on the liberation struggle.

For the past 36 years, zanu-pf has been talking about the need to establish a Chitepo School of Ideology but that idea is still to find expression on the ground.

Over the years, we have been told that the revolutionary party is looking for resources to construct the school.

But is ideology in the infrastructure or it is just a philosophy that has to be instilled in the people regardless of the physical infrastructure?

Surely, zanu-pf cannot claim that the school hasn’t been established because there is no physical structure.

If the zanu-pf Headquarters hall can be used to host music shows and church gatherings, what stops it from hosting party officials to be lectured about the revolutionary ideology?

War veterans who have an appreciation of the party ideology right from the liberation struggle are available to instil this ideology to all party officials and those aspiring to belong to the revolutionary party but are just not being utilised.

Some of these comrades are in the security forces, business and Government, as such they can carry out these responsibilities at no extra cost.

What is so glaring is that zanu-pf is slowly losing itself and its unique revolutionary identity anchored on strong ideology and discipline.

This explains why some party youths have the audacity to attack or disrespect the same war veterans who brought them the Independence that enabled them to join the ruling party today.

These are the same youths who are at the forefront of looting whatever resources are availed either by Government or the ruling party because they think opportunities are exclusively theirs and not the people.

zanu-pf even has some ministers and MPs who cannot articulate its election manifestos or policies because they have no appreciation of what the party stands for.

Their aim in joining the revolutionary party was not to serve the people but to line their pockets.

This is why there have been reports about how some ministers and MPs diverted agricultural inputs that were meant for their constituents to their own use.

If people have no appreciation of what their organisation stands for, they end up elevating their own desires ahead of those of the party or Government.

It is therefore prudent that zanu-pf sets up the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology as a matter of urgency without regard to physical infrastructure because there is already the zanu-pf Headquarters hall that has been used to host music shows and church services.

Without instilling this ideology, zanu-pf risks losing itself and that which it stands for.

Kuda Mupawose Manyepxa with the mixer and bucket

Roselyne Sachiti Features Editor
Many ambitious and persistent young Zimbabweans have been using innovative solutions to fix society’s most pressing problems that range from water shortages, sanitation, education, health care, science to technology among many others.

In Harare’s Mount Pleasant suburb, cosmetologist and businesswoman Kuda Mupawose Manyepxa (44) has made her contribution to the beauty industry in Zimbabwe and globally known.

Her latest challenge — women and men losing hair to tight braiding, thinning and falling of hair as a result of use of chemicals used by poorly trained hairdressers and even baldness in men.
Play the video below:

Her solution — Feso hair follicles renewal, a product she formulated to regenerate hair follicles resulting in balding heads getting their hair back, both male and female across all races.

The feso weed is found in most parts of Zimbabwe and using it as an ingredient has empowered many women in her rural home of Musana, Bindura, in the country’s Mashonaland Central Province.

But why worry about hair when there are many pressing issues in Zimbabwean society?

The owner and manager of Curtley’s Day Spa and Salon in Harare, Kuda, believes hair is not only about beauty, there is more to it.

“I love hair, it’s a hobby turned into a business and out of it other businesses like Feso have come out,” she said in an interview with The Herald Review.

Her story begins with the determination to correct the wrongs in Zimbabwe’s beauty industry.

She wants to see the industry grow in a professional way.

Having stayed in South Africa for 10 years Kuda returned home in 2012 and came across her first challenge.

“I realised that there were a lot of hairline issues with old and new clients. Most of the hair was thinning and falling. I started treating the hair correctly,” she said.

Her research revealed a number of issues that included lack of professionalism among many hairdressers.

“A lot of colleges in Zimbabwe are not teaching proper hairdressing and most are cheating people. Most qualified hairdressers including me had left the country. There was a huge problem with clients who had no hairline or half the head had gone.

“As such we have many unqualified hairdressers who are going for three months training only.

“The result is the wrong usage of hair products.

“Very few know how to style braids properly so that hair does not fall. There is a lot of traction alopecia

“I went back to old school days to come up with a pharmaceutical solution,” she explained.

Seeing many clients lose hair, Kuda, a former CAPS Holdings employee, started searching for a solution using her pharmaceutical background.

The story of one client, a bride, broke her heart.

“I had a new client whose wedding was coming up. I had visualised which hairstyle I wanted to plait. I persuaded her and when she eventually agreed, I discovered that she did not have hair on some parts of her head.

“I started looking for products that could heal her. I mixed products I knew,” she said.

During a visit to her rural home, Kuda remembered watching her grandmother and other women use a local slimy herb, feso, to wash their hair.

“I asked a villager to look for the feso and she gave me a bag. I came back to Harare and added it to my mixture which included oils. It started forming a slimy irritating mixture then I just left it overnight.

“The next morning, I noticed that the container was no longer slimy,” she recalled.

Following this discovery, Kuda gave the mixture to the bride and she used it for two weeks.

“She returned and told me that it was working and wanted more. It was milky as we were not sieving it and all my clients were getting it for free.

“They initially named it ‘Kuda’s Concoction’ and would just bring their bottles for refills,” she added.

For two years she gave the concoction for free.

Then one day, a happy client told her she was prepared to pay for “Kuda’s Concoction” giving birth to “Feso”, which is now available in 61 countries globally.

In early 2015 she packaged her first 10 Feso bottles for sale, but for Feso to be successful, she grabbed every mentoring opportunity that came her way.

In 2015 she was invited to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP) under the African Women Entrepreneurial Programme (AWEP) to the US sponsored by the US State Department.

This invitation came as a result of Feso.

“While in the US, I learnt a lot on how to manage my business and ensure that I give my clients the best.

“The programme taught me to use what I have to help my community. They trained us to make products that would compete with any in the world.

“One of the things was how just good labelling would make my product internationally acceptable,” she said.

Feso is now being officially sold in 61 countries that include a clinic that is testing on cancer in New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, Scotland, Canada, United States, Ghana, South Africa among others.

She said she is now looking into network marketing locally.

Zimbabweans, she added, should support locally manufactured products.

“I do not blame people who look down on local products. The challenge is we do not compete on the international market. We have to be competitive. The key thing is whether your product is presentable.

People shun local products because of poor packaging. Branding is important. People buy what looks good whether locally or internationally produced,” she added.

Besides being a businesswoman, Kuda has also been mentoring many young hairdressers locally through the Zimbabwe Afro Sleek Hair show (ZASH).

“This is a hair and beauty expo which gives hairdressers an opportunity to expose and express themselves. I emphasise that they should treat anything with the professionalism it deserves,” she said.

She complained that banks do not take hairdressing business seriously and are rigid with loans yet it is a big industry.

“I bought this Mount Pleasant house because of hair,” she bragged.

Last year, ZASH winner walked away with a car courtesy of Kuda.

This years’ winner will walk away with a mini salon which Kuda will pay for.

“The winner will choose where she wants the salon. When mentoring someone you do not want to take them out of their work, you let them grow where they are,” she emphasised.

Wife to supportive husband Lloyd, mother to Takudzwa Curtley, Vuyiso and Tawananyasha, Kuda is poised for greater heights.

“My family is my team. We manufacture our products at home in buckets using a mixer. The labelling is also done at home and we hope to grow bigger. At present we have 500 bottles of Feso every two months. Each bottle sells for $20,” she added.

Having risen to glory with her entrepreneurship skills gained from 22 years of doing hair, Kuda has proven her mettle and talent to the world.

Feso is listed as one of Africa’s emerging products for 2015.

In November last year Kuda was invited to present and exhibit Feso on the African platform at Nepad.

It was also launched in Durban at the Nepad platform for Africa.

In 2002, Kuda was invited to South Africa to do parliamentarians’ hair, which led to her opening businesses in that country. The businesses include Inner Sanctum Day Spa and Salon in Sandton and Fourways, in Johannesburg.

In 2010 her Day Spa in South Africa was named as the best in Gauteng by the who’s who of Africa Forum.

Magazines such as the Jozi, True Love, Intem, Cosmopolitan, and Top Billing voted the Spa the place to be in Gauteng (2007-2011).

Kuda became a celebrity hair dresser and started the makeover programme in True Love with the then beauty editor for True Love, Ayanda Bhikitsha (2007-2011).

Kuda is a pharmacology graduate from Michigan State University and Dudley Cosmetology University in North Carolina (US) with extensive knowledge on the science behind good looks.

She later embarked on a diploma with London Chamber of Commerce & Industries (LCCI) and graduated with a diploma in Marketing, Sales and Public Relations. She also holds an IMM diploma from UNISA (SA) and an MBA in Entrepreneurial Development from Wits, SA.

She is a recipient of Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) “Best Service Award” 2014.

If hairdressing is the food of life, let Kuda plait, weave and relax hair all the way to prosperity and more prosperity.

Small enterprises and their families can easily adjust depending on their performance while companies cannot adjust because of contractual agreements

Charles Dhewa
The transition of the Zimbabwean economy from formal to informal has presented diverse challenges and opportunities to many people. Opportunities no longer come in nice boardrooms and conferences where ideas are presented on power point. Neither can the most useful business ideas and solutions be discovered through stage-managed presentations to investors.

Some of the greatest business ideas may be hiding in trash or garbage and hard work as opposed to shiny office buildings or college corridors.

If ambitious young people and investors continue looking for business opportunities in the wrong places, they surely will not find them.

From national to household levels, formal adjustments are lagging behind the prevailing situation. At each level, there are attempts to maintain systems and standards of living that have been created over the past decades. Anything on the contrary is considered a negative unless it is in the positive.

If you used to earn a certain level of income and suddenly you earn less, that tells you to adjust in line with the prevailing context. From a business perspective, most formal companies are failing to adjust their structures and performance to uncontrollable factors like competition.

The Zimbabwean economy is now more about hard work than downloading ideas on the internet.

From employees to business owners

Our economy used to be dominated by formal companies that have now been broken down into smaller units. Those who have survived through their experience and knowledge will tell you the economy is quite good.

We have more than 2 million people who were formerly employed and earned monthly incomes, moving out of formal employment and being paid by their own small businesses.

They are moving from being employees to business owners. From formal companies, some have migrated with their opportunities, networks and customers on whose base they are now manufacturing, trading, etc.

That is why most former big companies have become white elephants.

At national level, due to the fact that knowledge systems are not moving with the times, at least 60 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is now going unrecorded.

Small enterprises and their families can easily adjust depending on their performance while companies cannot adjust because of contractual agreements.

Formal companies also have problems with unsustainable salaries and maintaining equipment in a shrinking market that is now being eaten away by former employees who have set up their small enterprises in the same line of business.

We have now come to a point where the game is more about fulfilling customer-specific production at a small-scale.

In the informal market you can buy anything from as little as a coin to any amount.

You can also place an order and goods are supplied.

For instance, consumers in high density areas simply place orders with vendors who go to buy in agriculture markets and they get what they want.

Those in remote areas such as Guruve, Binga, Nkayi, Chikombedzi or Muzarabani also place orders and goods are supplied on buses, kombis and trucks.

The Government used to be a big customer for most formal companies, for instance, through safety net programmes like supplying maize and maize meal to cushion against drought. That is why the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) did not bother pursuing a profit motive.

In addition, many formal companies used to survive on government tenders. Now the tables have turned. What is emerging is that government should be on its rightful position of creating a conducive environment in the form of infrastructure (market sheds refurbishment), road maintenance, etc.

Once people are satisfied with government services like infrastructure, they are surely willing to pay tax and other needs.

From wage employment to inconsistent informal incomes

There has been a huge shift from formal wage employment to inconsistent informal income streams. The majority still hanging in the formal silo mind-set cannot adjust to start small. On the other hand, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) on the growth trend see opportunities to realise their career path.

It has become a mixed bag where a big player’s challenges are opportunities for small guys. Recognition and support for the existing SME economy is critical. Traders and SMEs know what they want. Unfortunately, few government institutions have taken time to understand what this billion dollar economy requires in order to function properly.

Key Government ministries should be seen coming in to work with low level structures like market committees and communities of practice at community level. You don’t need a big structure like a whole ministry of SMEs but structures for participation which empower communities to support their own systems.

It is a question of supporting these community structures so that they become a chain of reporting to particular ministries. They will just need a framework on how to dialogue and manage the flow of ideas.

Why SMEs should not be a ministry

In a recent survey conducted by eMKambo, the majority of respondents (71 percent) indicated that issues to do with SMEs should not be under a ministry but cut across all economic ministries such as agriculture, mining, industry & commerce and tourism.

According to one respondents, “With the exponential growth of the SMEs sector, it is becoming impossible to clearly define small, medium and large. The number of employees cannot say anything about whether a business is an SME or not.

‘‘What should be considered is impact along the value chain. For instance, what is the impact of a trader who buys 100 crates of tomatoes on transport, turnover, packaging, etc ? If anything, the SMEs department can be under the ministry of industry and commerce”.

Some large companies are now surviving on SMEs who buy bananas. From the market angle, those companies still surviving have actually become a collection of SMEs who buy commodities like drinks and sell in small entities.

The company only concentrates on production while the market has become SMEs-driven. Most former big companies no longer have business models of their own. Any financial inclusion model should look critically at these issues where SMEs have become more like subsidiaries of previously large corporations.

People’s agriculture markets are an example of institutions made up of diverse enterprises of different sizes. Some are small in size but big in revenue, for example, those dealing in high value commodities. Size no longer matters.

If these issues are not taken into account, there is a danger of building policy frameworks which exclude the right participants like traders and farmers.

How financial inclusion comes into the mix

Given its recent interest in financial inclusion, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) can start by supporting this notion in agriculture markets which have already been tested over the past few years.

Lessons from agriculture markets reveal the important to emphasizing clusters of businesses rather than associations. Clusters are about businesses, similarities and proximity while associations are about people.

Clustering is important for assessing viability of any models within a framework unlike where businesses are scattered all over. If you have 5000 association members scattered all over, you can’t accurately tell if their businesses have similar performance characteristics.

Unless you develop clusters with a hub which connects all the nodes according to proximity, you won’t get a correct sense of size or challenges.

While the RBZ is nudging every bank to have a financial inclusion strategy, there is need to regulate all financial inclusion initiatives.

If not properly organised, competition among financial institutions can create a burden on the informal sector. Each financial institution should try to answer this question: What is our selling point? Too much selling of the same loan products can create chaos. As part of regulating these initiatives, the RBZ can stipulate that total loans should not be more than one quarter of the amount circulating in the agriculture market.

Financial inclusion is not only about loans. What other services are on offer? In the financial inclusion stampede, banks should not destroy existing systems and coping mechanisms such as rounds and traders’ own funeral policies that have been built around relationships and trust over generations and represent the strengths of the social fabric among traders or SMEs.

Too much formalisation has its own pitfalls as shown by the recent collapse of global financial systems. Banks should not think providing funding is doing the informal market a favour.

The markets are already functioning so banks should strive to create spaces for themselves in the market. They should not force themselves into the market. Injecting too much money to chase a few goods can create an inflationary environment in the market.

The formal economy had packages linked with companies, eg salaries could build one’s record. On the other hand, the informal sector is a private institution where the best services are quickly shared by everyone.

Any differences can push some formal institutions out while some banks can end up monopolising the informal sector, leading to a cut throat competition to everyone’s disadvantage.

A smart financial inclusion framework should also build a collateral system independent of immovable assets to avoid collateral-related challenges and excuses. It should also be designed to prevent double-dipping by introducing in-built role definition in the whole initiative.

• Charles Dhewa is a proactive knowledge management specialist and chief executive officer of Knowledge Transfer Africa (Pvt) (www.knowledgetransafrica.com ) whose flagship eMKambo (www.emkambo.co.zw ) has a presence in more than 20 agricultural markets in Zimbabwe. He can be contacted on: charles@knowledgetransafrica.com ; Mobile: +263 774 430 309 / 772 137 717/ 712 737 430.

Morgan Tsvangirai

Reason Wafawarova on Thursday
THE pestiferous culture of factionalism makes the concept itself a complex one, and it is not easy to give an easy definition of this inevitable scourge in politics. It is neither true nor factual to assert that the factional infighting within Zanu-PF is a new phenomenon, just as it is a fact that political parties

across the world are always characterised by intra-group gangs competing for power, only differing in the level of factional viciousness.

Here is a somewhat neutral definition of factionalism from James Madison:

“A faction within a political party is a set of members who regularly vote together to carry decisions regarding party policy and rules; and regularly votes for candidates on the faction’s tickets (i.e. a list or slate of candidates) in elections within the party.”

In the Zimbabwean contest, members of a faction often do a little more than merely voting together for particular policies or rules. What we have seen with factions within the two main political parties Zanu-PF and the MDC-T are power contests that have resulted in mass expulsions and splits respectively.

The problem with belonging to a faction is that one has to make an undertaking to surrender personal opinion, principles and integrity — all for the endorsement and ratification of policy positions prescribed by the power hierarchy running the particular faction in question.

The nonsensical tussling between two groups of Zanu-PF members supposedly dividing themselves along the pro and anti-Mnangagwa ascendancy to power is quite telling, not least because the ousted Mujuru cabal was essentially also an anti-Mnangagwa group that adventurously overstepped the mark in an effort to outdo the veteran politician in an ill-imagined race to the national throne.

Mnangagwa himself has an amazing way of keeping away from the burning fires, being the old diehard soldier he is.

The Mujuru cabal fatally raced itself into very dangerous waters, and so seems to be the case with the new cabal that purports to be fighting to stop an imagined ascendancy to the presidency of the country by Vice President Mnangagwa.

The problem with factional fighting is the supremacy of expedience over nobility, rationality and principle. Often there is no sound judgement when factional members advance their sectarian causes, many times solely driven by vacuous ambition.

Even by the lenient standards of a neutral definition, factionalism is generally a bad thing, and it is not easy to give any justification for it. Ethically, factional culture is inherently objectionable, not least because common decency and respect means that the views and ideas of other people deserve to be listened to fair-mindedly. This also means that when someone stands for public office, they should be considered or rated on their merit, not on which faction they happen to be associated. It is a sad indictment when a less meritorious person benefits from the politics of factionalism, and Zimbabwe must never allow factionists to elevate themselves to the pedestal of kingmakers, as seems to be the case in some quarters today.

Democracy is all about moral legitimacy, not just about the winning of the numbers game. True democracy cannot be defined by the mere counting of heads, but by standing for what is contained in the heads of the majority.

There is no obligation for a minority to treat the decision of a winning majority with respect when democracy itself has been reduced to the game of merely getting the numbers by any means necessary.

A majority vote secured on the backdrop of vote buying, intimidation or coercion deserves no legitimacy, and that is from, however, many the number of angles one might choose to look at things. It really does not matter that such a vote gets ratified by the Politburo, or even by a court of law. Factionalism excludes non-factionists from effective organisation of the party. When one faction becomes so huge that it dominates the entire structures of the party, there is virtually no point in participation by anyone who is not a member of that faction. Alienation of members based on factionalism renders party membership useless, and it defeats the idea of healthy debate and the contesting of ideas.

We have probably reached the height of factionalism in Zanu-PF, and this is the point where non-factionists will often realise that they might as well not be there.

They often will recline into inactivity, or in rare cases withdraw their membership, especially from within the lower ranks of the party. This is what often pushes the party away from the reality lived by the general populace. It is neither an exaggeration nor propaganda that Zanu-PF does not seem to be in touch with the needs of the people at the moment, and that the party is seized with internal politicking more than it is with running national affairs. Sadly the nation seems to haplessly pay considerable attention to the misdemeanours. The media is equally obsessed with factional affairs in Zanu-PF and also in whatever remains of an opposition that used to go by the acronym MDC.

One would think our political space would at a time like now be inundated with development-oriented questions from a concerned media. No such thing has ever happened in Zimbabwe, and that is unfortunate. Factionalism breeds injustice and undemocratic practices, like the laughable abuse of the “vote of no confidence” facility — something Zanu-PF factionists have used ruthlessly to eliminate competitors in the past. Pretending that internal democracy within the party is alive and well is not only preposterous, but also a great insult to the concept of democracy itself.

It is hardly sensible to have a whole party executive sit down to deliberate on the gravity of a party member chanting “a wrong slogan,” more so an ambiguous or a meaningless one. It is like a church’s board of elders deciding to excommunicate a member for not properly chanting “Amen” in church. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong or undemocratic about like-minded people voting together to maximise their chances of success. Indeed that is the whole principle of party politics, and of democracy itself. What is wrong is to allow a party’s activities to be hijacked by people of shared venality — charlatans whose like-mindedness is not rooted in principle or nobility.

It does not take rocket science to figure out that putting factional interests ahead of constitutional mandates within the party is a rotten culture, and those playing ping pong with the party’s constitution can be fairly counted as worthless scavengers piling the rot. In 2008, Zanu-PF nearly imploded because factional members decided to sacrifice the party in pursuit of their own interests, and the party survived ouster from Government by a mediation miracle.

Driven by the infamous “Bhora Musango” slogan, the factionists played spoilers in a bid to bring down President Robert Mugabe through the presidential electoral race, and clearly the dissidents were prepared for an alternative presidency from renegade Simba Makoni, failing they would gladly accept any alternative winner, Morgan Tsvangirai very much included, if not preferred.

The move almost paid dividends when Tsvangirai led the first round of the presidential race, but could not win the last round. In the run up to the 2013 elections, the goofball faction was essentially opposed to the plebiscite alongside Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC offshoots, both groups repeatedly telling us how Zimbabwe “was not ready for elections,” whatever that meant. It is not easy to believe the party vibrancy preached by Zanu-PF official spokespeople, especially with the recent emergence of unrelenting factional warriors. There is a distinct difference between vibrancy and chaos, and the sooner the pretences are thrown away the better for the party’s future prospects.

As events are showing within Zanu-PF almost daily, factional warriors maximise their influence by excluding those who disagree with them, and this is why suspensions and expulsions have become synonymous with the party itself.

Simpletons and nonentities have been rewarded with positions and other favours for simply defecting to factional power brokers, making the party to suffer feudalism. If the problem of factionalism is not addressed, Zanu-PF will most probably oppose itself into demise, especially now that there is no meaningful external threat to the party’s existence and dominance.

The balkanisation of the party is no longer a matter of expert analysis or secrecy. It is a reality speaking itself to high heavens, going by utterances of rival Zanu-PF factionists on social media.

One can see that personal differences, clashing ambitions, and murky and long forgotten historical events are the major causes of the factionalism bedevilling the party today. The stupid-looking but fierce hegemony factional wars have sadly overshadowed the focus on the primary needs of the populace. With the MDC opposition hardly anywhere in the picture, it has become unnecessary for the ruling party to even pretend to be seized with matters national.

Commentators and writers are still reminding Zanu-PF leadership to take its election-winning developmental blueprint Zim-Asset seriously — three years post election. Life must be hard for talented Zanu-PF members who have no factional alliance. The factions have become so daring that they now have the audacity to demand loyalty even from journalists and columnists like this writer.

If we are going to have the party legitimately claiming safe custody of the revolutionary legacy of our liberation struggle, this production line of soulless apparatchiks must be destroyed.

Indeed there are some of these highly energetic and proficient characters masquerading as heroic icons within Zanu-PF power corridors, but they evidently have no revolutionary soul, no Zanu-PF soul, no liberation legacy soul, and above all no soul to empathise with the suffering Zimbabwean masses. It appears like control freaks run the factions and cabals jostling for power within Zanu-PF, and these people have no more than tunnel visions limited only to the concept of power for power’s sake. It is sad that we have selfish people who would rather want to see the party lose an election than that they lose their place in the perking order, and these deadly functionaries have thrived well in the landscape of factional politics.

We saw during Webster Shamu’s reign that party’s commissariat department had now assumed a presiding role over factionalism as opposed to averting it, and openly so too. Hopefully the aftermath of Shamu’s demise will not recur the graceless omen.

It would not matter that much if the basis of factionalism in Zimbabwean politics across the divide were ideology. Sadly the basis of factionalism in Zimbabwean political parties is patronage; that is the ability of factional leaders to confer jobs, political posts, honours and other goodies on themselves and on their favoured loyalists and supporters. This has become the fatal attraction luring our people into politics. It’s a deadly national disease.

As a writer I have been enticed and invited to write in promotion of factional agendas, and I bet there are colleagues out there that have failed to resist the tempting call. For me the answer is very short and simple. This writer does not subscribe to patronage. There are telling similarities between the MDC-T and Zanu-PF when it comes to patronage politics, and one just needs to look at the electing and appointing of the top leadership and the trends will match quite apparently.

The leadership within both parties seem to believe they have some don powers to doll out posts to all aspiring others, as they may so wish. For as long as factional warriors are allowed to superimpose their personal interests over the national interest, our people will continue to suffer leadership mediocrity, and we essentially have no valid reason to hope for national development.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

• Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.

The Herald Business, in partnership with the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries is today hosting a Half Day Symposium focusing on the economic outlook for 2016. We know a lot of people will rush to say that it is another talk show.

And yes, we agree that it is another talk show, in fact a lot of these symposiums have been held for the past 35 years.

However, we believe that this outlook conference is coming at a critical time for the economy.

Zimbabwe is going through uncertain times and a lot of businesses and individuals keep asking where the solution lies. It seemed like we had gone through ‘the worst’ (hyperinflation) but the new normal points to another emerging problem (deflation) which promises to also be ‘the worst’.

It is with this in mind that the Herald Business is hosting this conference. We believe that it is an opportunity to correctly diagnose where we are, where we are going and how we will achieve economic development and growth even for future generations.

Today’s symposium presents yet another good platform for interaction of Government, private sector and civil society to share notes around issues besetting the economy and to collectively find solutions to the problems.

Such an approach, we believe, ensures total buy in of all stakeholders as they take ownership of their roles as equal subjects in tackling common problems, which is urgent at this time to resolve our economic challenges.

It is worth noting that this is a follow up to the various business briefings The Herald Business has organised aimed at bringing the Government closer to the business community and investors. The fact that Government and many corporates have signed up to this symposium shows that we are moving in the right direction. Nothing beats unity of purpose.

More importantly no intervention to our socio-economic problems can beat a common alliance between Government and private sector working together. We can make 2016 a success if there is unity of purpose.

But here is the catch; whatever comes out of the symposium should be documented and be supported with an implementation matrix. Naturally, for any intervention to succeed, there should be strict monitoring, control and evaluation of strategies, which must be followed almost religiously given our situation.

This is not the first time that Government and the private sector have come together to share ideas. We are under no illusion to think that everything that will come out of the symposium will be new. Neither are we oblivious to the fact that some of the recommendations from previous forums have still not been taken on board.

But every proud citizen and stakeholder must not lose hope and sight of the destiny considering the immense potential Zimbabwe holds to become a regional power house due to the diversity of our economy.

However, we urge Government to take on board recommendations from well-meaning captains of industry and Zimbabweans in general so that we leave no room for doubts about what could have been had this or that been done.

If Government implements the majority of the recommendations, we are pretty sure, just like the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Dr John Mangudya is, that this can be a transformative year for Zimbabwe despite the magnitude of challenges facing the country and its citizens.

We know that the meeting is happening at a time when we are faced with various challenges ranging from the power shortages owing to the dwindling water levels in the Kariba Dam and a drought due to low and late rains among a myriad of other economic problems that have been around for far too long.

Government revenues have also taken a dip, but we have our bright spots, which we must sweat out to improve our situation.

While agriculture is a critical component of the Zimbabwean economy, without doubt we believe that the diversity of the economy should provide the country with ample room to manoeuvre out of the current situation.

As such, growth can come from other sectors, including but not limited to tourism.

Let us look at the other areas where we have comparative advantage and develop those. Tourism is showing promising signs. The SMEs sector is growing despite challenges of inadequate funding. We should therefore find ways to enhance these bright spots, which Dr Mangudya prefers to call low hanging fruits.

It can be done and it should be done now.

Charles Mungoshi Jr Versatile Fufu
In all your life, have you ever thought outside the box? Or what you have been taught to do by those who came before you has been the order of your life. They say there is nothing new under the sun and truly there isn’t anything new but there are things that are not known to certain generations.

I think I had always been on the good and normal side of things until one day I thought to myself – if I do something differently what would happen?

Then I realised that there was no problem – people just have a religious mentality in approaching their day to day lives that’s why it may be difficult but as time goes on and you keep at whatever you are doing differently people may later on accept it.

Don’t let life pass you by because you think no one will accept your innovation because it is different no – yes, there is the general human attitude that resists and rejects innovation and change.

That is one thing you cannot avoid but you must learn to embrace it and work around it, remember contrary winds drive the roots deeper.

My best friend taught me how to eat pizza with ice cream, at first when she mentioned it I thought it was crazy but when I had a taste of it, I spoke a different story.

TRY SOMETHING NEW, branch out of your comfort zone and the ordinary – it may be in your business, in your relationship or your life style.

Don’t be bound by strong holds of where you come from or how you where raised up.

There are people who have boring lives because they are in shackles of routines.

They wake up bath, dress and drive to work and then home right after work – what a plain bore!

Take a detour and go watch a movie by East gate, join the toastmasters or go to the gym – come on change the routine.

You age quickly if you are not wise enough to colour your life with socialising activities that bring about exercise.

This helps your intellect or even your physical abilities – you begin to get enlightened about things around you and the dormant mind quickly gets in tune.

There is no life that is lived in a tube so be outside and get them to know you but you need to stick to your identity.

Don’t get too carried away by the activities and forget who you are.

And also stick to your mainstream business because you will definitely enjoy the change but you need to have discipline.

A lot of people lose their way because they fail to align themselves to the little change that they would have introduced into their daily lives.

Learn new things everyday and don’t let your life be monotonous!

Yes you can do it!

Belen Fernandez Correspondent
Imagine that 10 Iranian soldiers aboard Iranian military vessels had turned up off the coast of the United States. It’s safe to assume that, whatever course of action was selected by US officials in response to the incursion, it would not have involved briefly detaining the visitors and then sending them on their merry way without a disproportionate amount of bellicose rhetoric and conspiracy theories launched by the sectors of US and international society that specialise in such things.

In recent years, Iran has hardly needed to raise a finger to get neo-conservative and other parties united.

Back in 2011, for example, a congressional subcommittee heard testimony regarding the alleged threat to US homeland security posed by Iranian actions in Latin America.

Among these actions was a reported request from the Iranian embassy in Bolivia for more than two dozen spaces at the international school in La Paz for the offspring of diplomatic personnel. Frightening stuff.

La Paz, mind you, is no fewer than 6 225 kilometres from Washington, DC — in other words, a much longer distance than that between the Iranian homeland and the US military boats which appeared last week in Iranian territorial waters.

And while Iran released the 10 detained US soldiers in expedited fashion, various Western politicians and media couldn’t help but exploit the opportunity to cast the Islamic Republic as the aggressor in this case.

The incident took place just days before the lifting of many sanctions against Iran as part of the nuclear deal, widely hailed as the dawn of a new era in relations between the maligned country and the so-called international community.

But just how bright is that dawn?

For starters, the US’ imposition of entirely new ballistic missile sanctions against Iran even as the other sanctions were being lifted would seem to indicate that, as far as the “international community” is concerned, the Islamic Republic is still persona non grata.

Perennial squawking by the US political establishment about Iran’s “destabilising activities” in the Middle East is another indicator of the prevailing notion that, whatever superficial improvements the country might undertake, it is fundamentally and inescapably Axis of Evil material.

Never mind that Israel, America’s partner in crime in the Middle East, would appear to occupy the position of regional destabiliser-in-chief — and not only because it regularly massacres civilians.

A non-signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (a document for ever invoked to demonise Iran), Israel happens to possess a sizeable covert arsenal of nuclear weapons threatening the entire area, as such weapons tend to do.

And what do you know: Israel is now requesting an increase in US military aid to possibly $5 billion annually, up from the astronomical sum it already receives, to counter Iran and related nemeses.

A new dawn, indeed!

Barack Obama & Co can blather all they like about the nuclear deal and attendant prisoner swap as constituting a victory for “diplomacy”.

But the fact is that self-appointed “diplomats” have been waging war by other means on Iran for years.

A key pillar of this war involves economic sanctions, with the first US sanctions on Iran dating back to 1979.

American independent scholar Sayres Rudy recently discussed more contemporary incarnations of the sanctions regime at a conference entitled “Fragments of Empire After the American Century” — fittingly held at one such fragment, the American University of Beirut.

Joking that he develops a rash any time he hears the phrase “international community”, Rudy observed that that said grouping “proudly and visibly collectively punished the Iranian population to achieve selective disarmament of the nuclear-unarmed Iranian state, although it remains targeted and threatened continually by nuclear powers”.

The beauty of sanctions for those who deploy them, Rudy noted, resides in their “seemingly bureaucratic, lawful, objective, transparent, and non-violent” nature, which provides a civilised veneer for what can amount to the decimation of populations.

A short 2013 dispatch on the New York Times website describes the “devastating” effects of sanctions on Iran, where “the health of millions of Iranians has been compromised due to the shortage of Western medical drugs and supplies”.

In Iraq, as we all know, sanctions dispensed with some half a million children — an outcome endorsed by Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, as follows: “We think the price is worth it.”

Writing in the online magazine Warscapes in October of last year, meanwhile, Max Ajl pointed out that an “eas[ing of] Iran into an accommodation with the US-dominated global system” would require Iran to “become a very different country than it is now — one that does not contest Israeli interests [and] one that does not use its oil riches for human-centred development” but rather for purchases from Lockheed Martin and other such goodies.

Until that happens, Iran will effectively maintain its position as international bullseye. Maybe we should hold off on the “new dawn” celebrations.

 Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine. — Al Jazeera

Obi Egbuna Jr Simunye
During an interview with Playboy magazine in January of 1965 conducted by the author of the book later adapted to a television mini-series “Roots” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Mr Alex Haley posed the following question to the internationally renowned civil and human rights champion Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Do you feel that the African Nations, in turn, should involve themselves more actively in American Negro affairs? The epic answer by Dr King was as follows “I do indeed. The world is now so small in terms of geographic proximity and mutual problems that no nation should idly stand by and watch another’s plight.

“I think that at every possible instance Africans should use the influence of their governments to make it clear that the struggle of their brothers in the US is part of a worldwide struggle. In short, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, for we are tied together in a garment of mutuality. What happens in Johannesburg affects Birmingham, however indirectly. We are descendants of the Africans. Our heritage is Africa. We should never break the ties, nor should the Africans.”

Because this compelling answer by Dr King has both theoretical and practical implications, we are historically obligated to address the following questions, the first would naturally be, is there an African head of state bold enough to agree to raise the issues of so-called African Americans?, the second would be, would so-called African Americans come to their defence when they incur the wrath of US-EU Imperialism for taking such a bold and visionary stand?

The last and perhaps most formidable question would be, are so-called African-Americans courageous enough to even approach and engage an African head of state whose character and policies have been completely maligned by US-EU Imperialism?

As this year marks the 40th anniversary of what could be labeled Mother Africa’s most devastating political tragedy, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah’s government being overthrown by the CIA-orchestrated coup alongside British intelligence; It must be stated that Mr Haley’s question to Dr King is indeed two-fold.

The other part must address how so-called African-Americans deal with US policy on Africa. This shameful atrocity was committed while Dr King and his wife Coretta Scott King were dinner guests of the most Honourable Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, at his private residence in Chicago.

Another historical irony was that Osagyefo was on the way to Hanoi to present a proposal to end the Vietnam War, which as we know voicing his displeasure concerning this issue ultimately cost Dr King his life.

Since Dr King ended Mr Haley’s question by stressing the importance of never breaking the ties between African born in Mother Africa and so-called African Americans born inside US borders, it is only fair to begin by analysing how Dr King’s closest confidants, in particular and the Civil Rights movement in general, along with organised formations who consider the distinguished fighters and groups from this era their inspiration for being involved, have dealt with US-EU Policy on Zimbabwe.

Shortly before the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington in 2003, former US Congressman Reverend Walter Fauntroy had visited Harare and was granted the opportunity to have a private audience with President Mugabe. During this discussion, Reverend Fauntroy made a verbal commitment to use the platform of the march to raise the issue of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe, the reason President Mugabe was pleased to explore this strategy was, not one member of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against the sanctions.

The end result was, at no point during the march did Reverend Fauntroy mention a need to make Zimbabwe an issue of importance.

In a private capacity, Reverend Fauntroy stated he felt that it was rather odd that African countries with a revolutionary pedigree like Zimbabwe, hired Caucasian-owned and run law firms to do their public relations and consulting without even considering people like him for the job. In April of 2014 and January 2015, two so-called African Americans, Prince Asiel Ben Israel and C Gregory Turner, were sent to prison for failure to register as agents for a foreign government.

Mr Ben Israel pled guilty and was sentenced to seven months in prison, while Mr Turner pleaded not guilty received 15 months in prison under the guise of illegally lobbying to lift US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe.

According to the prosecutors, Mr Ben Israel and Mr Turner were to receive $3,4 million to lobby for the lifting of the sanctions. Without debating the accuracy of this point, the fundamental question still has to be raised with Reverend Fauntroy, Mr Ben Israel and Mr Turner, should President Mugabe and zanu-pf have to pay a king’s ransom to so-called African Americans to get them to fight to lift US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe?

Zimbabweans still are trying to put behind them the shameful and unacceptable manner that former US Congressman Mel Reynolds came to Zimbabwe and attempted to con government officials into believing he could had the influence to help build a Hilton Hotel in Zimbabwe.

It must not be forgotten that Mr Reynolds was introduced to President Mugabe by Reverend Jesse Jackson in New York City at the UN General Assembly.

The day before this meeting, Reverend Jackson had audience with the former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Morgan Tsvangirai, who attempted to come to the US and upstage President Mugabe’s delegation at the UN, even though he was part of the inclusive government at that particular time.

When highlighting his conversation with the Press that were part of President Mugabe’s delegation, Reverend Jackson admitted that it was an error on his part not to use his historic campaigns for the US Presidency not to call on the President Carter as a private citizen and President Reagan to honour the Lancaster House Agreement. Reverend Jackson also admitted that at no point did his organisation, the Rainbow Coalition, actively lobby to lift US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe.

History will judge what was worse, not fighting to lift sanctions or exposing Zimbabwe to a two bit hustler like Mel Reynolds.

In 2003, the head of the New York office of the Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Attorney Michael Hardy had told the former Zimbabwean Ambassador to the US Dr Simbi Mubako, that NAN would like to explore the possibility of creating a humanitarian centre in Zimbabwe. When asked to be part of a delegation to observe the 2005 Parliamentary elections, he stated that NAN would want to meet Mr Tsvangirai as a precondition for making the trip.

One of Dr King’s closest aides, Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker and a founding member of CORE, Reverend George Houser, who was a recipient of the Oliver Tambo Award from South African President Jacob Zuma in 2010 and founded the American Committee on Africa in 1953, have never called for the lifting of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Reverend Houser transitioned last August and Reverend Walker also started the Religious Action Network of Africa Action, which is one of the organisations that is guilty of funneling National Endowment for Democracy blood money to 14 civil society groups in Zimbabwe.

Those who have heard President Mugabe reflect on the Lancaster House negotiations know he is extremely fond of Ambassador Andrew Young, who represented the Carter Administration during that engagement process.

As a special envoy for US Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador Young met with President Mugabe before the 2013 elections. This was Ambassador Young’s first visit to Zimbabwe since 2003, where he agreed to lobby for the lifting of US-EU sanctions behind closed doors.

After being in power for 36 years, President Mugabe and zanu-pf have come to the realisation that while Dr King’s disciples are very visible and well respected, health, old age and being hostage to the agenda of the Democratic Party prevent them from leading the fight to lift US-EU sanctions to the very end.

The beauty of this is President Mugabe and zanu-pf may not even be familiar with the comrades leading this fight, which means they are not seeking compensation or recognition

Obi Egbuna Jr is the US correspondent to The Herald and the external relations officer of Zimbabwe Cuba Friendship Association (ZICUFA). His email is obiegbuna15@gmail.com

Mondli Makanya Correspondent

What we are finding with the reaction to racism and white supremacy is unguided anger disguised as ideology. The obsession with whiteness is beginning to border on irrationality, to the extent that the racists are now conducting the direction of national discourse.

In the US thriller film The Siege, New York is under attack from terrorist bombings. As the situation escalates and the city goes into panic mode, the military moves in, pushing aside FBI- and CIA-led efforts to curb the attacks.

Hard-line Major General Devereaux (Bruce Willis) rounds up and locks up young Arab-Americans en masse and approves the torture of key suspects.

Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington), the FBI man on the scene, is appalled by this, as he feels it flies in the face of American values.

The men clash viciously, as they have since the military moved on to New York’s streets.

What follows is one of the most prophetic statements about the US’ treatment of terror suspects, given that the movie was released in 1998, three years before 9/11 and the advent of the Guantanamo Bay torture prison.

It is a monologue by Hubbard in response to Devereaux encouraging the torture of a suspect named Tariq: “Come on, General. You’ve lost men; I’ve lost men — but you can’t do this! What if they don’t even want the sheik? Have you considered that?

“What if what they really want is for us to herd our children into stadiums like we’re doing? And put soldiers on the street and have Americans looking over their shoulders? Bend the law, shred the Constitution just a little bit? Because if we torture him, General . . . we do that and everything we have fought, and bled, and died for is over. And they’ve won. They’ve already won!”

It is a monologue we South Africans should keep in mind as we battle the racist terror that is trampling on our quest to forge a common nationhood. We have noted in recent times, particularly in the past fortnight, how those who are outraged by racism have been allowing themselves to be dragged to the levels of those they condemn.

What we can glean from the racism discussions is that the concept of non-racialism, one of the holy grails of the liberation struggle, is on death row.

We can also see that South Africans would be willing to sacrifice long-term principles of free speech for the immediate gain of silencing racists.

The discourse on how racism should be fought has become coarse and unsophisticated — at times as crass as Penny Sparrow and Justin van Vuuren themselves.

There is a thread emerging that white people are visitors and should behave as such.

They are being told that they should only speak when asked to and should say only the things the majority approves of.

At the risk of sounding like an ou toppie from a time gone by, this is not what the Africanist, black consciousness and Charterist movements were about.

They were about the affirmation of the humanity and dignity of all. They were about the overthrow of white supremacy and its replacement with a system that would seek to change social, political and economic relations among South Africans.

They were never about the diminution of the role of whites in society.

What we are finding with the reaction to racism and white supremacy is unguided anger disguised as ideology. The obsession with whiteness is beginning to border on irrationality, to the extent that the racists are now conducting the direction of national discourse.

This anger is understandable, given the largely unchanged economic relations, the stubbornness of many white South Africans and rising levels of racism.

The problem is that the rest of society is allowing itself to be dragged into the cesspool by racists. The racists are winning.

It does not help that the organisation that once boasted the slogan “ANC lives, ANC leads” is playing follower. The governing party, the century-old custodian of nonracialism, is failing to rise above the noise and give direction to society.

As a party that commands the support of more than 60 percent of the population and reaches into every corner of the land, the ANC has a greater responsibility to keep the nation-building project on track. Instead, the party is behaving as if it is just another player.

The other area in which the racists are being handed an easy victory is in allowing them to set the parameters of free speech.

In the wake of the public vomit of Sparrow and Van Vuuren, we behaved like frenzied sharks who had just smelt blood in their corner of the ocean.

Suddenly, we were detecting racism everywhere. People were guillotined left, right and centre, instead of simply being whipped into line.

It was very discomfiting watching institutions set terrible precedents about the nature of public conversation.

By being quick to the guillotine, we are creating terrible precedents that will soon begin to affect genuine public commentary. It may not be long before commentators, analysts, cartoonists and satirists are decapitated for speaking out of turn. The democracy we are building must be resilient to earthquakes.

It is important that in everything we do in reaction to the racists, we do not compromise the long-term quality of our democracy. If we do, the racists will already have won.

Isdore Guvamombe Reflections
Back in the village, in the land of milk honey and dust, the ancestors and God gave each land its autochthons — the original people with authoritative historical claim to the land — and internationally, continents are reflective of this autochthonous mantra.

It is, therefore, foolhardy for another continent to deride the autochthons of another continent, because geopolitical issues can turn the world into a full scale war. The full input of this is that Africa, by far the continent that still harbours vast untapped natural resources, have been the target of subtle manoeuvres to regime change African leaders who protect the natural resources and make them benefit the indigenous people.

The United States in particular, and Western Europe in general, are losing sleep over Africa’s resources and would want to get rid of all African leaders that are deemed an impediment to their accessing of the natural resources. This has given birth to a hodgepodge of conflicts in Africa. Ironically, the same US and Europe that sponsored the conflicts want a claim to fame by pretending to solve the problems using military outfits such as NATO and Africom. Fetid!

All problems in Africa should be resolved by Africans and Africa has the means to solve its problems through the African Union, through social, political and economic strategies. The African Union has, of late, come up with a standby brigade, a military outfit that is still in its infancy but is certainly the future of the continent. It will be folly for Africa to think she can progress while it still subjects its survival on foreign security systems.

African leaders should co-ordinate through AU and must vehemently reject US, Europe, NATO or Africom and any other foreign body from settling in Africa.

It is stupid for NATO to want to have an office at the AU Headquarters or anywhere else because that should be viewed as a straight intrusion. Africans must view this move as Western Europe’s quest to strengthen military control and hegemony on Africa and promote their own interests.

It is never about Africa but about Western interests. The AU standby Brigade should be functional and put into effect in order to take full charge and control of the events in the continent. AU standby Brigade should be deployed in all hot spots and solve the problems.

If Africa fought colonialism and won, what then makes her fail to come up with a military force that can resolves her conflicts. The earlier African leaders realise the need to speed up the functioning of the African brigade, the better for the continent. Africa will never receive total independence unless she controls events that happen on her soil. AU can easily work with the United Nations in these troubled spots. It should be an organisation to organisation agreement.

The world should not be run the way the US wants but the way the world wants.

Nations should be respected and given equal status no matter how tiny.

Even when it comes to fighting international terrorism, the application of international law must not be selective but universal. It is unnecessary to have double standards as dictated by the US and its allies.

On that note, AU, EU and UN must all condemn countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for supporting the Islamic State’s attack on the Russian plane in Turkey and Egypt. It is should be recognised that the only sensible thing to do is to support the Russian government for its outstanding inroads in Syria. The impact ever since Russian intervened in Syria has been so huge and has been done within the limits of international law. The international law is clear that what is wrong is wrong and that what is wrong cannot be right because it has been done by the US. NO!

Muammar Gaddafi

Back to Africa. The current crop of leadership must have learnt from past mistakes in how NATO handled issues in Libya. The Libyan people are now poorer in economics, sleep and peace than they were under the slain Muammar Gaddafi. The Libyans regret ever allowing NATO to enter their territory. Bombs are dropping everywhere, guns blazing, freedom and peace are now a scarce commodity. The war rages on but the oil is going in millions of barrels to Europe while the Libyans slump into poverty. This is the price there are paying for allowing NATO to interfere in the internal politics of Libya.

Africa must have learnt from that. Today self-control and management of conflicts on the African soil should be the priority of African leaders. Africa for Africans.

African problems for African elders. African leaders should take charge of the continent in all aspects.

Former Anglican Archbishop Nobert Kunonga

Vuso Mhlanga Features Correspondent
Police officers scamper for cover, with congregants in hot pursuit. The men in white catch up with some officers and give them a baptism of fists and rods. A few journalists are caught in the crossfire.

The May 2014 clash, that happened when Apostolic Council of Zimbabwe president Johannes Ndanga attempted to enforce a ban on Madzibaba Ishmael’s church for abusing women and children, stands out as a case of false fire gone wild.

However, it is only one of many such cases as fanaticism, violence and manipulation of the laity has been taking over pockets of religion.

One of the uglier shows was Nobert Kunonga’s sustained persecution of the faithful in the Anglican Church just to hold on to power.

In the recent past, one of the most respectable Christian brands in Zimbabwe, AFM, has been marred by reports of schism, corruption and litigation.

Christians may be unwittingly missing an opportunity to be the salt and light Jesus mandated them to be as they further destablise a world desperately in need of moral examples.

One cannot help making much out of the way religion has given tabloids to cash on its contemporary slackness.

Of course one cannot be dogmatic or stereotypical with regard to the trend. It is impossible to make a case to the effect that religion is a negative force in the world.

On the contrary, faith has given us many Mother Theresas and Good Samaritans.

Instead of maximising benevolence, however, fundamentalist ne’er-do-wells have contributed many red pages under the guise of religion.

This resonates with the observation made by satirist Jonathan Swift that: ‘‘We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.’’

A cursory look at religion as a front for terror confirms as much.

In the West Bank village of Duma, an 18-month–old Palestinian child, Ali Dawabsheh is killed in an inferno sparked by two Jewish extremists, one of whom is Amiram Ben-Uliel.

He and his accomplice have since been convicted of arson by the Israeli government.

In Nigeria , the most populous nation in Africa, Boko Haram, a sectarian Moslem Jihad group kills many and has since been a menace .

Back in the distant past, William Tyndale was killed for his noble effort of translating the Bible, the sacred record, into English, the language of many.

One may be prompted to ask, what is the problem with religion?

Can one be sceptical of all religions? What positive things have some religions accomplished?

Are there signs on the horizon that give hope that one day religion will largely become a force for good?

These are complex questions that need answers because religion affects every person alive today, even those long buried in the bowels of the earth.

During World War 1, in different warring camps, the clergy “blessed” the fighting armies, even invoking God’s name.

They have also given talismans to the soldiers alleging that they would protect the soldiers.

In the battlefield, Catholics have slaughtered Catholics and Protestants have killed Protestants.

On another note, on a continent where Christian churches are predominant, the anti-Semitic discourse has seen many Jews being butchered in what is now known as the “Holocaust”.

Admittedly, others died because of being conscientious objectors, the likes of The Bible Students.

Religion has spawned violence and blatant hatred. Jews also have fought Jews on religious grounds. As reported in The New York Times in 1977, quoted in the Awake journal, a young Jew from Brooklyn, New York, was stunned by what he saw.

The Hasidim, (the pious ones) among the rabbis were punching each other. The young man remarked: “I could not believe my eyes,” he continues, “I saw a man with a beard punching a man with a beard.” Traditionally “the most pious ones” wear beards and black suits.

It is reported that during the Passover time, in March, 2000, Lubavitch Hasidim trespassed into the territory of the other rival faction called “Satmar Hasidim”.

The former, it is alleged broke into a senseless spree of beating elderly rabbis and hurling objects at them.

The main problem with religion, as has been established, is intolerance and meanness. Christians cannot exist side by side, Moslems cannot co-exist, the same is also true of other religions.

The intolerance found its niche 6 millenniums ago as aptly portrayed in the Bible record, when the world was still “young”; Cain killed his brother Abel.

The reason, the form of worship practised by the former was not acceptable in the sight of God.

That is the first recorded account of religious bigotry and intolerance engraved in the Bible.

During Jesus’ time intolerance was also rife. Jesus himself condemned the intolerance and bigotry of his time using a poignant illustration of The Good Samaritan. Samaritans were looked down upon by the religious sects in existence during the time Jesus walked the earth especially by the self righteous Pharisees.

In the illustration that Jesus furnished, a Samaritan businessman, and benevolent benefactor, helped the man in need, a Jew. He reflected, to the recipient of that magnanimous act, brotherly love that transcends tradition, language and prejudice and malice that was rife at that juncture in religious history, which is also commonplace in our time.

Jesus himself was different, though not condoning sin, mingled with tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers.

He was not mean. Though Pharisees hated him, he even accepted invitations for dinner and social intercourse.

The genocide in Rwanda that took place from April 1994 to mid–July of the same year illustrates so clearly the extent to which Christianity lacked brotherly love.

People streamed into the walls of the churches and the religious leaders exploited that concept of religion as a sanctuary.

The Hutu rebels came and “harvested” those seeking refuge at the church structures.

The sought after refuge proved to be a false refuge as aptly demonstrated by the following quotation from the book Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, “Organisers of the genocide exploited the historic concept of the sanctuary to lure tens of thousands of Tutsis into church buildings with false promises of protection; then Hutu militia and soldiers systematically slaughtered the unfortunate people who had sought refuge, firing guns and tossing grenades into the crowds gathered in church sanctuaries and school buildings, methodically finishing off survivors with machetes, pruning hooks, and knives . . . The involvement of the churches however, went far beyond the passive use of the church buildings as death chambers.

“In some communities, clergy, catechists, and other church employees used their knowledge of the local population to identify Tutsis for elimination. In other cases, church personnel actively participated in the killing.”

Nothing could be so apt; the buck stops at religion.

Admittedly, as has been mentioned, Christians cannot exist side by side.

They have the same Bible but different ideologies that divide them.

The courts are full of cases and litigations involving religious leaders warring over property and power.

Ironically, Christianity attaches a lot of import on peace, tolerance, and brotherly love.

Jesus himself said the hallmark of true Christianity is genuine love that transcends every divisive force.

Religion has to some extent benefited humanity. Well meaning people have expended themselves for the cause of benefiting men. Many have even paid with their lives. Many like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale, have made the Bible accessible to the common men. They exhausted even their fortunes to that worthy cause.

Non-governmental agencies sponsored by religions, like Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Plan International, the Swedish Organisation for Individual Relief among others, have furnished help that has improved lives of peoples.

They have carried projects that have improved mankind.

Missionaries have built schools, hospitals and clinics. Religion also has the potential to improve economies through religious tourism.

The media on May 7, 2014, reporting about the International Convection of Jehovah’s Witnesses that was to take place in August 2015 made this sterling observation; “The International Convention, the most significant of its type, will bring major economic impact to Zimbabwe including an estimated 20 000 rooms nights and millions of dollars in overall economic impact.”

News of such nature is promising. It is a glowing sign that religion can benefit mankind. The religious tourists cited above streamed from lands afield including Kenya, Zambia, Brazil, the US and Germany.

• Feedback: mhlangavuso85@gmail.com.

A child walks past a poster during a recent campaign against child marriages

Joram Nyathi Spectrum

What is evident is that we are creating a nation where the law turns a blind eye to promiscuity by the adolescents while society in general provides the support services by way of condoms and come Sunday morning we are all hypocritically happy Christian soldiers marching to church.

Initially I wanted to express my penny’s worth of thoughts on the vexed and vexing topic of indigenisation, an area of our economy I am very passionate about, but an area, it now appears, where the World Bank and the IMF, working in collusion with local revisionists and apostates, have assumed control of the ship of state.

It is a subject I hope to dwell on next week, God willing.

A new matter suddenly loomed so large it could not be deferred, it being the Constitutional Court ruling which clarifies the age at which a boy or girl can legally contract a marital union.

Constitutionally, that age is now 18 years.

This is consistent with the Legal Age of Majority, itself one of the first milestones for Zimbabwe’s women at independence.

Except this time there appears to be a grotesquery of trying to lift an elephant by its tusk.

It is not clear to me which problem Zimbabwe, or women in our society, are trying to solve despite the noise about ending child marriage.

If we were to start from the beginning, the problem is that people have sex before they are married, they don’t have sex because they are married at a young age.

This fact of life has nothing to do with the court ruling, but exposes everything wrong with our attitude towards sex and how we are complicating things further in purporting to liberate the girl child.

We have banned marriage before the age of 18 years but in the same breath acknowledge that the same girl child is sexually active at the age of 10.

And they indulge in sexual activity as soon as they get a chance, whatever the reasons and causes.

Society is tolerant of this, including churches whose responses to the whole condom debate has been muted.

The real fight, apparently, is not about sexual abuse of the girl child.

It’s more to do with liberalising sexual activity, that is why there is this whole debate about packing condoms in the lunch box of school kids or somewhere in the satchel so that our little Benny and Betty can have real life experiments about sex before marriage.

Commenting on the judgment, Veritas Zimbabwe, the organisation which promoted the court action, said: “This is a great day for gender equality, women’s rights, children’s rights and the fight against poverty.”

For its part, the court made sure the ban is universal, stating: “Section 78(1) of the Constitution permits of no exception for religious, customary or cultural practices that permit child marriage, nor does it allow for exception based on the consent of a public official, parents or guardians.”

For a good measure, the Constitutional Court went further; “The rights to marry and found a family are rights to be enjoyed by adults and not children. In effect, a person aged below 18 years has not attained full maturity and lacks capacity to understand the meaning and responsibilities of marriage.”

Let’s take it that the prohibition of any exceptions to the ruling is a total surrender of our national uniqueness to foreign jurisdictions because ours is “primitive” as one organisation helpfully reminded us.

We are inherently foolish and immature, just like the under 18s, to know what a mature woman is like.

The logic around the “rights to marry” is no less controversial.

It insinuates that there is something adult-like in a marriage which a person who is under 18 years is physically and mentally incapable of doing or knowing.

Count up to 18 and boom, the epiphany of adulthood!

Yet that same immature person can indulge in sex, a central and core necessity of marriage, so long as they don’t call the relationship a marriage.

In other words the girl who is saved from a pagan culture, which in its primitiveness often frowns upon sex between or with young persons, is being ushered into an international jurisdiction where she can now freely enjoy the benefits of a married woman so long as no one calls it such.

This period sexualised marital dormancy can be as long as eight years, during which time our liberated girl can have equally as many relationships.

Is that what the legislators had in mind?

I don’t know to what extent the distinction between marital sex, adultery and fornication matters.

What is evident is that we are creating a nation where the law turns a blind eye to promiscuity by the adolescents while society in general provides the support services by way of condoms and come Sunday morning we are all hypocritically happy Christian soldiers marching to church.

What are you talking!

Where I come from girls start being women the day they are born.

They do everything their mother does — cooking, fetching water and firewood and washing.

Except for the budget, every girl by the time she graduates from O Level she is a mother.

The only thing her mother does which she is officially not permitted to do is sex.

But she does it anyway.

And when she gets pregnant, she can happily get married in our own cultural way, pursue the white man’s bookish formalities later with her husband.

All of which begs the question: what is it the judges mean when they declare “ . . . a person aged below 18 years has not attained full maturity and lacks capacity to understand the meaning and responsibilities of marriage”?

Surely they couldn’t be alluding to sex!

And my experience of life here in Harare shows that a majority of the divorce cases involve persons married when they are 24 years and over and go for white weddings, most of them purporting to be virgins.

Soon everything turns sour when reality dawns that the moon has no honey.

Back to the boys.

Perhaps science has proved this: I am not aware of boys around the age of 18 who indulge in sex because they are thinking of marriage and the responsibilities the girl already knows so much about.

For a majority of the boys, sex is about conquest and fun.

What this constitutional clarification simply does is to say you can enjoy sex without responsibility.

The responsibility lies with the girl who faces the risk of a pregnancy.

But since they can’t legally marry before they are 18 years, we are to assume the liberated pregnant girl must take her pregnancy to her parents to shoulder responsibility until she can legally get married.

By the way, what’s the penalty for a 25-year-old man who impregnates a 17-year-old girl child whom he can’t legally marry but can safely enjoy sex with?

In the event that it’s custodial sentence and he is locked away leaving behind a pregnant girl who turns 18 years next month, what happens to the girl? Who takes care of the pregnancy and subsequent baby?

Having crossed the bridge into adulthood, is the young woman still bound to the jailed man or she can start new relationships since her legal circumstances have changed?

At the end of the day I don’t understand what’s being celebrated in this judgment to the extent that this is being called a victory for the girl child.

I don’t want to believe as a society we think it is ok for the girl child to indulge in promiscuous fornication so long as she uses protection.

And that the only thing society and the law find offensive in all this is getting married before 18 years.

Really, victory?

So we can safely retire to bed knowing the law is protecting our little girls from molestation by primitive local men before they are 18 years but are fair game to entertain tourists with their bodies?

In infrastructural projects carried out by Chinese firms, employment is created for the Chinese at the expense of Zimbabweans

Lloyd Gumbo Mr Speaker Sir

It does not help the country to have so many infrastructural projects that are exclusively carried out by foreign companies with no local component at all.

China has stood with Zimbabwe through thick and thin to the extent of risking its own bilateral relations with countries that were against the latter as together with Russia they vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution seeking sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2008.

Mr Speaker Sir, it has been said on several occasions that Harare and Beijing are all-weather friends and this is evidenced by China’ support to Zimbabwe when it faced Western onslaught.

Over the years, China has availed about 20-year loans to Zimbabwe at concessionary rates of about two percent per annum, a development that further cemented relations between the two countries, considering that no other financial institution is ready to disburse such cheap money.

Critics of Brettonwood institutions cite political interference and conditional aid from countries that contribute a lot to the institutions as one of the financial institutions’ greatest undoing.

Yet not with China, because that country’s foreign policy has been that of quiet diplomacy and non-interference on internal political processes, the loans have come through with no conditions as compared to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund terms.

The Asian giant with the fastest growing economy has been hailed as a permanent friend of the African continent.

Over the last few years, China has invested billions of United States dollars’ worth of projects throughout the continent from power, transportation and other infrastructural projects with President Xi Jinping last month pledging a further $60 billion towards developmental projects for the next three years.

But as for Zimbabwe, Mr Speaker Sir, the devil is in the detail where there are also conditions attached to the loans that the country gets for infrastructural projects.

For instance, for the majority of mega projects that are signed between Harare and Beijing, there is an implementation framework called Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC), which means all these three activities are carried out by Chinese firms, a development that fulfils the idiom; “he who pays the piper, dictates the tune”.

But the issue is not really about Chinese firms doing everything, but it is about them not trusting us with their money.

They have their own fears, whether real or imagined because they think we may divert the money to other duties, possibly recurrent expenditure, hence their insistence on EPC.

What this means is that everything from engineering, procurement of equipment and labour is imported from China at the expense of Zimbabweans.

Mr Speaker Sir, at the end of the day, nothing comes from Zimbabwe except the site of the construction project.

However, that is not the formula that Zimbabwe needs at the moment because it desperately needs capital injection into the economy at large through purchasing locally available machinery or equipment for any such mega projects.

What is happening under the current system is that the winning bidders, particularly Chinese firms will buy the majority of the equipment from China and ship them here at the expense of local companies that can produce the same type of equipment, probably at a cheaper price.

It means local companies or suppliers will continue to struggle regardless of infrastructural projects on the ground.

This also means employment will be created in China at the expense of locals.

What needs to be done is to ensure that at least local companies are enlisted in the supply of equipment that is readily available in Zimbabwe.

China should treat us in the same manner they treat other countries such as Venezuela, where they have availed billions of dollars to resuscitate its economy.

They do not necessarily have to give us cash but Government should insist that a certain percentage of all the equipment must be bought from local suppliers instead of importing everything including wheelbarrows and shovels.

Yes, the winning bidder may still be in charge of procurement but must be obligated to ensure that some of the significant equipment is bought locally because we have engineers in Zimbabwe who are able to manufacture some of the equipment that is needed.

Mr Speaker Sir, indigenisation should not end with having 51 percent stake in a foreign-owned company but must go to procurement as well so that local companies can remain afloat.

Under this framework, it means there will be a cash injection into the economy, which would enable downstream industry to feel the investment.

This will also create employment for the majority of Zimbabweans who are qualified but are unemployed at the moment.

While some people may want to believe in the idiom that “beggars can’t be choosers”, this has no place in international trade where competition calls the shots.

What we should accept is that besides our economic, social and political challenges, Zimbabwe still remains a geopolitical prize worth competing for.

Zimbabwe should be able to set its terms even if it does not have money for the good of the country and preservation of its sovereignty.

It does not help the country to have so many infrastructural projects that are exclusively carried out by foreign companies with no local component at all.

Mr Speaker Sir, Government must endeavour to ensure local companies have a role to play in any infrastructural project that is done here.

This also makes it easy for the Government to have a point of reference whenever it is realised that the contractor has done a shoddy job.

When a project is carried out by a foreigner with no locals, there are less chances of accountability on their part, as such they will just rush to complete the job without taking into account quality of the job.

Besides, it is a given that Government must be responsible for infrastructural projects as a way of creating employment for its people.

 Feedback: lloyd.gumbo@zimpapers.co.zw

The Constitutional Court has now found that any marriage entered into from Wednesday this week that involves a person under the age of 18, under any law, custom or religious rite, is invalid, that is this marriage has never taken place and is totally null.

The nine judges, in their unanimous ruling, found that such marriages went against provisions in our new constitution, but interestingly they went further, noting that studies from around the world found that there were frequently horrific consequences of a marriage involving a child. In other words they not only cited the constitutional safeguard, but made it clear that they approved of this safeguard, that it was not just a minor matter that could be changed by an amendment but that it set a needed fundamental right.

One direct result of this ruling is that child marriages are now a thing of the past. But the results of the judgment go further, overturning a large number of customs and traditions of many cultures. No one able to contract a valid marriage now requires permission from anyone to do so. While most people would like their families to bless their marriage, there is no legal requirement for anyone, except the couple themselves, to approve of such a marriage.

The court also removed an escape clause in the present legislation allowing the Minister responsible for justice to approve a marriage where one or both parties was under the required age. This was put in place decades ago largely to ensure that a child was born legitimate. But other law changes have removed all legal problems that illegitimacy used to attract, so the safeguard is not necessary.

What is now required is changes to our legislation governing marriages, which allow a girl aged 16, but under 18 to contract a marriage with the permission of their legal guardian. Such a marriage is invalid already, but there are no penalties for the parent or guardian who permits such an invalid union. These are needed, and Parliament may well want to tighten up the existing penalties for those involved in arranging an under-age union or those pushing a child, or an adult for that matter, into marriage.

More is of course necessary. Rights that are not known are useless, so everyone in Zimbabwe needs to know their rights. Mechanisms have to be put in place so that those being forced into marriage can get help. Fortunately, almost all religions and churches do teach that both parties have to agree to a marriage, so there are few fundamental difficulties in a united campaign.

There will always be those who quote custom, tradition and religion to try and undermine a right.

They have to understand that all cultures change. Slavery was permitted almost everywhere up to near the end of the 18th century, and then over the course of the 19th century was banned almost everywhere, the last holdouts doing this in the 20th century. Over the course of the 20th century racial discrimination moved from being an acceptable, if distasteful, practice to something seen as inherently evil. In 1900 only New Zealand gave women the vote; in 2000 women could vote everywhere, except in a handful of monarchies on the Arabian peninsular and now these are changing as well.

Humanity does move forward. As our most senior judges have noted, we learn from what we have been doing wrong in the past, and stop doing that wrong.

The Constitutional Court has given us all a strong lead. We must now go forward and turn that legal right into a practical right for all.

Joyce Jenje Makwenda Inside Out
When I was growing up I used to hear that women built their own kitchens.

I always wanted to see them building one as in the township I had never seen a woman building a house.

I used to visit my maternal grandparents in Gwatemba but unfortunately I did not have the chance to see any woman building a kitchen.

Even when my paternal grandparents decided to have a home in the rural areas later in life, I did not see any woman building a kitchen.

What I did not know is that women had been stripped of their power and there were no longer looked as powerful people.

Building a house is architecture and it is powerful. The kitchen itself was a powerful place.

Sometime in the 60s when I had visited my maternal grandparents in Gwatemba, an aunt gave birth in the kitchen.

I asked my grandmother how she could let her give birth in the kitchen.

With my urban way of thinking or looking at things, this was very backward and unhygienic.

My grandmother told me that life begins in the kitchen and ends in the kitchen. I did not understand what she meant. For some time I did not eat in the kitchen. It was rather snobbish on my part just to look at the hygiene part and not the cultural significance attached to human life beginning in the kitchen and ending in the kitchen.

It is also in the kitchen that someone was brought when they died.

When I started researching about the kitchen, I understood what my grandmother said and that women who were the custodians of our culture facilitated this journey from birth to death.

I came to understand how the traditional kitchen empowered women and how they asserted their authority and became the holding centre of the home.

The way the kitchen is structured in Southern Africa in particular and Africa in general might differ from tribe to tribe.

The way I understand is mostly influenced by my Shona (Zezuru) and Nguni (Ndebele) backgrounds.

There are similarities in the whole of main Africa (what is called Sub-Sahara) but because of people moving and settling in different places and wanting autonomy, they have come up with different ways of doing things, but the fundamentals are the same.

The kitchen in pasichigare/endulo (pre-colonial era) was the centre of the home and women were seen as powerful in that regard. The traditional kitchen influenced today’s women’s professions in a big way.

I am what I am today because of what was passed to me from the kitchen.

I used to say I do not belong in the kitchen because of my not wanting to cook, but I was wrong because it is not only the cooking which took place in the kitchen.

I am this modern storyteller that I am today because it was passed to me from the kitchen. It is in the kitchen that language was shaped, where children were told stories to shape their lives, where family history was passed on, where children were initiated into different phases of their lives, stories were told, music was taught, and food cooked.

Cooking was the mainstay of women in the kitchen. Language was shaped in the kitchen by talking to the baby who would answer with smiles or laughter.

From the day the child came into the world, they would be talked to.

Miriam Makeba’s song, the click song (BaxabaneOxamu) came from how children were taught how to do the Nguni clicks, the xa, qa, ca.

This is how one mastered the clicks and this started when you were young — in the kitchen. The click lesson went like this —(Baxabaneoxamubexabenengexoxo . . . ).Those who were taught Nguni (Ndebele) when they were growing up like me will know how important mastering the clicks is. Women were teachers and language specialists. Today they still continue to shape children’s language as we are still a matriarchal society socially and patriarchal politically.

Women, however, do not have the time that they had with children like they did in pasichigare/endulo as the shaping of our children’s language has been taken over by the maids, television, teachers e.t.c. Women also passed family history to young people and this gave them a sense of pride and belonging.

Family history translated to community history and community history to national history and women were the guardians of these records.

They documented family history and passed it on. This made them politicians, archivists, and librarians, among other things. This is what one today would call documentaries (film/television or radio), they were documentarists.

Stories of a dramatic nature were told in the kitchen depending on different age groups. This was a way of shaping children in order for them to be rounded people. The stories were to warn, entertain and educate. When women were telling stories, they would include music and dance to illustrate a point. They would create visuals and sound in someone’s head through storytelling, which today has been replaced by a crew (film crew) to fulfil what a single woman did in the kitchen.

These are today’s producers (television/film/radio), writers, actors, directors e.t.c. Today this could also be your comic books, children’s books, novels.

Music was also used to teach and it made the subject look easier, for instance counting was taught in the kitchen through music; Song – Motsiro

Motsiro-o, (one)

Dendere–e (two)

Wagara- (three)

Mashangwe (four)

Mbirimbidzwa (five)

Pamuromo (six)

Pegange (seven)

Ngangaidzwa (eight)

Chindori (nine)

Gumirawa (Gumi rakwana) (10)

This made learning enjoyable. A friend’s daughter told me that, “Auntie for me to understand what the teacher would be saying I have to turn the teacher into a musician otherwise if I don’t do that it would be boring.”

Cooking was the stronghold of women in the kitchen. It is the women who would decide what the family would eat and what time to eat. This made them very powerful. If they wanted to cook food which would make the man sleep all night long they would. If they wanted the man to work all night they would, depending on what they wanted. They would make it happen through food. They had recipes for the young to the oldest person in the village.

Because of cooking, there were fully in charge of the home.

Today, this is what is called Culinary Arts and I am happy that women today have taken back this art in the public space and they are benefiting from it financially. There was a lot that happened in the kitchen. Life happened in the kitchen from birth to death.

There was so much that was passed on to me from the kitchen, not only storytelling.

Sex education — how our grandmothers were so candid about this topic, I got my share. I can go on and on.

But did I fulfil my wish to see women building the kitchen. Yes I did.

One day I was visiting the National Gallery and I met Prof Saki Mafundikwa, who took me upstairs to show me something he thought would interest me.

We went on the first floor of the gallery and I saw women building a kitchen, all I could say was — Wow!! I greeted the women Mai Mhlolo and her assistant who is her sister — Mai Mukucha. I asked if I could also put my hand on the kitchen, they gave me a go ahead. They had reached the polishing stage and I did some polishing on the kitchen. I felt so good! The women came from Mhondoro in Chief Chivero’s area.

Prof Mafundikwa, who was the co-curator met the women when he had gone to buy a cow at Mhlolo’s homestead near were his farm is situated.

What caught Prof Mafundikwa’s eyes in Mai Mhlolo’s kitchen was the design when she invited him inside.

In the booklet “Zimbabwe Designs — The Traditional Kitchen”, he wrote, “ . . . After my eyes adjusted to glowing light, I looked around the room and my eyes fixated on the clay shelves at the back of the room. Her pots, pans, plates, dishes and utensils were neatly arranged on the shelves in some sort of “grid” system.

I had never seen anything like it and I exclaimed “WOW”.

Prof Mafundikwa, a leading design voice who is calling for Africa to “look within” Africa so that the continent can make her mark on the global scene, said that while in the kitchen he kept on thinking how designers in Africa and Zimbabwe in particular always bemoan the fact that we have nothing to reference locally for inspirations.

Here was Zimbabwean interior design hidden in the round kitchen.

Doreen Sibanda, the director of National Gallery of Zimbabwe and who was also the co-curator of the kitchens should be commended for opening spaces for women to showcase their work in a safe public space.

This was the first time a kitchen was built at the gallery and it worked.

The gallery has opened its doors to a number of women in different arts disciplines; this has helped create safe spaces for women to showcase their work.

On the first day of the exhibition, I thanked Mai Mhlolo for passing this heritage to us and I encouraged her to see herself as an architect. I had the privilege to share my research about the kitchen. What also fascinates me about the kitchen is its roundness that encourages inclusivity, which is very important in our African culture.

That roundness represents life — the kitchen is a powerful place it represents life.

Joyce Jenje Makwenda can be contacted on – joycejenje@gmail.com