Live (life) at 28!!!

By Tabani Moyo

Life is a paradox I must say!
On a day like this we need to start from the beginning. I guess!
You are growing old ‘young’ Tabani! The cotton grower from Gokwe you are really growing old! You are now 28, you are not growing any younger you know. I know the dangers of time, you keep on seeing the same faces, same building, same workmates and you mislead yourself that everything is the same and nothing is changing – time is moving!

You better start realizing that you are not living in no man’s land! Time is triggering motions of changes some of which are dramatic, some earth shattering and others threatening the essence of human kind’s survival, ‘young’ man as Annie Musodza will keep on misleading you, that you are still young! Time is not on your side.

As in Wole Sonyika’s You Must Set Fourth at Dawn, the rainy season that leaves moist thickets, fording swollen gorges, sliding on treacherous rock and being suck into mud gullies, day or night – at night – with nothing but few stars seen through branches, or chasing after fireflies as if to test one’s patience and judgment are gone. They are gone cotton boy, you are now supposed to make tough decisions, decisions that will make or break you and the nation at large.

You have made enemies and friends alike during the 28 years cotton boy, it’s the time for you to carefully structure and charter your plane to destiny--- friends of yester year are now enemies. The danger cotton boy is captured in Bob Marley’s song witch you can’t remember the title stipulating that your best friends are the worst enemies since they know all your secrets and they hold the leverage to reveal them. Cotton boy, never mind, you keep on telling yourself it does not matter that you have broke ties with friends of yester year. Yes you keep on telling yourself that it’s okay, you are of your own making, never ‘godfathers’ making.

You look in the mirror today and you can afford a smile? Why? You have served your conscience well, growing up in Gokwe, walking 10km to and from school you must be very proud? Are you not? Well you are very proud, from the arid lands of Gokwe, where you have to wait until there is moonlight to start tilling the barren lands with the hope that they will feed the multitudes of hot air stomachs to coining the Save Zimbabwe Campaign name that have brought this inclusive government today, you have made some strides ‘young man’!

As they say, the struggle shall never be televised, when books are going to be written never expect your name to appear in those fly by night books, in their foreword to epilogue never dream your name to be captured. You have never played a role in the struggle for Zimbabwe in their minds, thought and fliers disguised as books, never mind that cotton boy, you will write your own books to counter such futile ‘truths’ when they present it to mean facts. Facts are sacred you will intent to tell you kids later on in life, that they must never be tempered with. Never allow clobbered thinking to warp your critical thinking. When facts are misrepresented always stand for the facts to remain your campus for you are the custodian for future generation’s access to information.

They will tell you that you were never close to the points of action when Gift Tandare was shot. They will tell you that because we now have more access to information and a proper context of the struggles of Zimbabwe which they were not able to witness due to the dictates of nature.

That’s why you got surprised when you passed by a certain country and found a group of people claiming that they engineered the brand Its Our Country Too (Oc2) which was used at the All Stakeholders Conference of September 2008 which gave birth to the People’s Convention of February 2009. You set there listening as if you were a stranger to the day light intellectual robbery and disregard of intellectual rights. You knew deep down in you that the people who coined that brand are; Tabani Moyo, Ellen Kandororo, Nixon Nyikadzino, Takura Zhangazha, Benjamin Nyandoro and three more comrades you can’t remember at this time. So history Cotton Boy can easily be distorted, you have to learn and live to challenge that!

When Honorouble Nelson Chamisa was nearly killed at the airport, ‘young’ man, they will tell you that they were the first to seek help, that they informed the world that all was at stake, yet you know deep down in your heart that you informed the world and coordinated efforts together with Itai Zimunya to keep the world informed. Never mind them cotton boy, if you stand by the truth you will always stand by yourself!

They will tell you when the action was folding in Highfileds on the 11th of March 2007, they kept the world focused on Zimbabwe’s brutality which took place yet you kept silent until today, that you were at the epi-center of events keeping the stakeholders, the media and the international community’s lenses zoomed on the country together with the other comrade you can’t name given the processes happening in the country. You were the information centre cotton boy they know, you know and thats why you are dismissing myths of the present day history coming to the fore.
You have worked closely with the MPs so that they get into office! The other time Cotton Boy, you had to be detained for ensuring the safety of your good MP friend for St. Marys. It was yourself and Maureen Kademaunga who mislead the police that the prospective MP was not in the Building when you knew that he was hidden under you office desk.

All the same, life at 28 can be a paradox; the people whom you thought were making a stand for certain values, life time principles have become anathemas to the same – butchering the very same principles with perceived impunity. Life is not that simple, history will judge the same brutality. No human being can manage to mortalize history, given the fact that humans are mortals and history will forever remain the cardinals of our reference points.

Unfortunately at 28 I have come to learn of young generations sublimating into primitive accumulation, in a capitalistically cannibal manner that have left me with more questions than answers. There is nothing wrong in differing but I see everything wrong in a failure to appreciate principles – very sad.

In the same vain, I have come to realize of paid for mercenaries amongst our midst, people who are willing to hire corruptible and disgruntled soldiers to bash those holding differing perspectives to officialdom, above all there are certain civic individuals who have settled for a rather atrocious position that because the MDC is in government they hold themselves as equally ruling and part of the government because of perceived proximity to the person of PM Morgan Tsvangirai. It’s a perception and a dangerous one for that matter. People who will do anything for money – such people are dangerous in life because they can KILL for money – there is need to go back to the source!

At 28, I hope Zimbabwe will start answering some of the hard questions which are more profitable for nation building than caressing individualistic egos. Facts should be respected at all cost as in Thabo Mbeki’s words, “we have the possibility and latitude and necessity to speak thus because we live during our own age of revolution. Exactly because it is such an age, all of us face the demand to understand objective reality accurately and objectively, to enable the revolution to decide on the correct strategy, tactics and operations. Respect the truth. In this situation of an inevitable contest about the future of our country, information, facts, the truth themselves become an area of contestation… opponents of change see it as their obligatory task to falsify reality, in their interests. The imperative to understand the critical difference, and in some instances the contradiction becomes ever-more pressing.”

It is equally imperative that the arrogance in differences exhibited by personalities in the civics and those who have crossed the line to the government be done away with in a civilized manner rather than creating vacuums for overzealous personalities to believe that they can come up with remedies.

Everyone be it in government, political parties, civic should never believe in the old myth of young children they saw joining CSOs and mislead themselves that the same people are still kids--- they will be humiliated and fall with a thud.

Well at 28, you are grown up young man its time you start looking for a women to settle down with have children and continue with the struggle with the hopes that your kids will fight a faithful struggle and keep the struggle for democracy, human kind survival, human rights, struggle for education freedoms, against poverty, deprivation among other things as opposed to the struggles for wealth accumulation, and contestation to donor funds alive.

It’s the paradox of life at 28!

Tribute to a fallen friend – Philemon Sajeni, Finance Officer, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Born 1977-Died 2009

By Tabani Moyo

At exactly 1115hours on the 14th of July 2009, his heart, that of a comrade and colleague ceased beating. He had been in agony as the body and spirit departed from each other. “Philemon Sajeni (main pic) is no more!” was the voice of Kumbirai Mafunda, MISA-Zimbabwe Harare Advocacy Chairperson relaying the message of the passing on of my beloved friend.

My pulse ran riot as I contained my tears from pouring. I felt a thick lump developing from my heart as if I was about to be struck by a heart attack. I saw images flying past my sight of a young man, who had given so much, to so many.

It never occurred to me that human life could be that fragile. Here is a man I was sharing lighter moments with on Sunday 12 July at his home in Highfields, a man I spoke to on Monday and by Tuesday, he is dead.

Questions started racing in my mind, what is going to happen to his two young children Anesu and Anotida aged 6 and 2 years respectively? How is the widow going to cope with the sudden and saddening news of a husband who left for hospital in the morning with the expectations that he will come back home in a better state only to be informed that he had been transferred to the mortuary? What is in the mind of his father who lost his beloved wife when Philemon was a toddler when he receives the message that the family’s bread winner is no more? Why is it that I personally didn’t notice that my friend was hinting, when he was telling me that life is short and that I must get married?

Twenty minutes later I broke into tears. A towering brother had departed from mother earth – if heavens are there, they should pave a consoling space for his soul to rest in eternal peace.

I first met ‘Saji’, the name he was referred to by his work mates and friends in 2005 when I joined Crisis Coalition as an Information Intern. He struck me as a very enterprising person and who cherished it when his colleagues prosper. The friendship since then grew during the three year stint I had with the Coalition and strengthened longer after I left the organization.

I always told him he had chosen the wrong field – accounting due to his vast network. He would always laugh dismissively stating that he would be fired for exaggerating issues. His networks would be every journalist’s envy. At numerous points he would advise colleagues in office to vacate immediately as the police would do their routine raids and arrests at the Coalition.

He would frequently tip me off on the cases and human rights activists appearing before courts whenever the police thought they had tortured them enough to let them go. He broke the news to me that Jestina Mukoko who had been detained for almost three months was going to be appearing in court, each time I was always shocked by this young man’s networks and as usual, it gave me the arsenal to break news to my colleagues in the media and the civics.

When the Coalition relocated its offices from Herbert Chitepo to where it is housed today, police raided the offices on the same day and I can hear still hear his voice telling me to jump over the durawall. Of course I used the main gate because it was open while the comrade decided to hide under the office table, something we would discuss in good humour later on.

He enjoyed his Oliver Mutukudzi music on long distance journeys, the last one we travelled together was on our way to the Bulawayo Agenda Ideas Festival in Bulawayo. As usual he was always bubbling with new ideas on how best to stamp a mark of recognition when he is long gone; sadly as fate would have it, the man was not going to live long after our trip to the City of Kings.

Now that you are gone my friend, I am left with black and white photography on the good times we shared and I also remember the hard times that we shared.

On the 17th of July 2009, I saw his face for the last time in form and content. It seemed as if someone was going to wake him up and proceed with the adventures we always found ourselves entangled in.

His face had not changed! He was dressed in unusual attire. His taste for clothing had always been smart casuals rather than the formal wear. When I saw him stuck in that suit, then I knew the gods had made a decree on the fate of a man who had given everyone so much and received so little in return.

Here is a man, who went through thick and thin to assist people on the administrative issues which are always a herculean task for the majority of us, but in return, he was labeled, accused and ridiculed in some words which are not printable.

A convoy of cars, people who loved and who may also have been indifferent joined hands all the way to Mbudzi cemetery where his body was laid to rest. He had bought 10 grave sites in 2007; I remember accompanying him that fateful day when he was telling me that when the day finally arises, he wanted to be laid to rest next to his family members. That was the extent of his clarity of thought, he saw beyond life.

His life was always in a hurry; his achievements clearly show that the person had an urgent meeting with destiny. He managed to build up a wide network of friends which will take some of us a life time. He never grudged anyone forever, but always found a way of speaking his mind and forgives as he went along.

His death came a month after doctors in South Africa had warned of the dangers which his heart was posing to his survival. The South African doctor refused to operate him arguing that the opening in his heart had grown too big to be operated and that his blood pressure was failing. He however remained strong and bolder than ever before, he didn’t show any symptoms that he was slowly losing his grip on earth. He never explained to anyone except his wife. His last words to his wife was that she must persevere and make sure that the children will be send to school against all odds.

But today my friend; you have left a permanent scar in my life. Your fragile life was synonymous to a burning candle in the wind, like dew at dawn – death was rapturous. He suffered cardiac arrest and that was the last we heard of his voice and never again shall it come from the person who used to give me strong and durable counsel.

May the love of the almighty escort you all the way through the gates of peace and eternal life!

One year after the GPA– mapping the new struggle for civil society in Zimbabwe

By Tabani Moyo

Some events are meant to define history!

How else can one comprehend the new wave of divisions within civic organizations in light of the constitution making process? It is as if a cat has been thrown among the pigeons. Movements, covenants, value systems and gluing principles which maintained consensus for decades and eras, are now fractured and weaker than ever before.

This can only be explained by the dangers elevated by the elements of time. Time has eroded the core values of our struggle - the virtues which as a collective we used to cherish and kept us united under the most trying of times.

Over the last ten or so years, civics remained committed and did not compromise on issues of principle much to the annoyance of the regime. Several good friends and comrades died while pursuing the same virtues and principles which were built through countless conferences and conventions.

As civics, our long held belief has been that a people driven constitutional reform exercise must be done in terms of the principles that were outlined in the National Working Peoples convention as well as Section 3 of the Zimbabwe Peoples Charter. And in this that we must remain defiant in the face of the tempting idea of letting our political outlook colour or warp our intellectual perception of things.

Inherent in this argument is the philosophy that whatever actions we are pursuing or intend to pursue, should be executed with clear conscience that we are doing it as the today’s custodians of Zimbabwe for the benefit of future generations. We must not be blinkered and controlled by cross- buffeting winds and remote controls both in terms of ideology and resources that are dangled as carrots and sticks.

The crux of the matter is that since the singing of the GPA and the formation of the inclusive government, the current wave of divisions are unnecessary given the fact that they are not of the institutions’ own making. Equally, they should not be perceived as simply a reaction to the constitutional making process. The problems are as deep as they are wide. They are a reflection of a deep seated ideological and value system crisis, which I insist must be addressed if we are to move forward as a collective.

This can be noted in the historic split of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into two formations namely, MDC-T and MDC-M. The root cause of the split at face value can be attributed to the Senate elections of 2005, but in essence the causes were deeply entrenched in the lack of value consensus and issues to do with failure to define the party’s ideology. It was also the result of failed cohesion among academics or the so- called intellectual wing and trade unions.

This led to the other group believing that the best way of eroding the then incumbent government was through the courts whilst the radical wing in the mould of labour and student activists impressed on the need to mobilize in the streets.

The travesty of 2005, has struck civil society four years later in 2009. The main difference this time is that the splits are mythical creations built and cemented by a certain crop of personalities deciding how certain actions should be carried out and in what order. Such personality differences have had cascading effects on civic institutions.

It is therefore necessary that consistency of mind, persistency with the cause or purpose and the brazen simplicity of decisions in the face of adversity and successful moments should remain the guiding principle that governs the conduct of civic organizations against all odds.

The mistake happened at the very beginning due to the way we framed the narrative of our journey from the repression under President Mugabe’s rule. It never occurred that one day, the core principles we shared and believed in would stand to divide us. The thinking was that the values of democracy and constitutionalism where clear road signs towards the Promised Land as captured and articulated in the Zimbabwe Peoples Charter.

If the CSOs are to execute their mandated roles of being a watchdog of the government rather than the lapdog, there is an imperative need to borrow from an American phrase – reset the button in our public discourse, because the politics of yesterday will get us nowhere. Typical of any machinery, when you reset, it reverts back to its default status – which will cleanse off the confusion reigning in on the civics and start afresh on a clean slate.

Suffice to note that in the initial proposition I made that the so called splits are mythical still stand. If you cut away the ranting and raving mouth pieces from the sources of proxy wars, one often gets the sense that those fanning the divisions are not always the ones calling the shots; that they are being hypothetical while the organization grinder is lurking from somewhere in the background, pulling the strings. Thereby the personalities battling to outdo each other in the civics are often seen as the elephants in the room.


This is why the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) is experiencing the upheavals and riding in personality driven manifestations of waves in an ocean. If the grinders pulling the strings halt their acts of personality ‘differences’, sanity will prevail at this cog of young and dynamic academic activism. It is therefore notable that the ‘split’ in ZINASU is not hinged on the issues of constitutionalism but the forces of insurgence aimed at weakening the union.

If these forces colliding at the union are to hold their horses, the students will start reorganizing themselves and forge ahead with their academic freedom campaigns with the hope to free the students from the collapse of the education system in Zimbabwe. Above the battle of personalities at ZINASU lies a constituency of suffering students, coming from humble backgrounds, whose main agenda is to attain academic credentials, as the only attainable escape route from the demon of poverty. This can only happen when well meaning colleagues within or without the union are to chip in and facilitate the reign of sanity, rather than employing divisive tactics, which will not help the students to achieve their goals.

The crisis which has been brought by the constitutional making process should therefore be revisited, since it has created some rattling of shock in the civic organizations and the political parties themselves.

The constitution making process should be understood from a point of fact that constitutions are meant to overhaul and redress socio-economic and political imbalances which are deeply embedded in any given fabric of a society. This is mainly so given the fact that constitutions are either written in post conflict periods or in transitions such as was the situation with South Africa, which wrote its constitution under a transition.

For this to happen, there is a need to dispel the mind games being played by the three political parties in government, namely a) Zanu PF seeks to smuggle provisions in the constitutions which shoves away issues of restorative justice must be dealt with in a new constitution and ensure that crimes are swept under the carpet b) the MDCs should be careful of falling in the trap of thinking that its role in government would be drafting a constitution that will liquidate Zanu PF – its role is to abide by its founding values on constitutional making process which allows the peasant, the intellectuals, labour, media, church, women and students among others to play an active role in writing their country’s constitution. The three political parties in short should understand that the constitution making process is not a power contest – no institution or individual(s) can contest for power using the process of making the country’s contract between the governed and those governing unless individually or collectively the parties are not answerable to the people of Zimbabwe.

The MDC as a party of ‘excellence’ and the civic organizations who have all of a sudden found new reason in blindly following where-ever the government is going should be on a constant watch of the terrain which they are treading on. It’s very easy to erode the people’s confidence if organizations and movements are not firm on the covenants and ideals which have been reiterated over and over again.

The wobbling can be understood, given the fact that the MDC and some civic organizations manning the opposition or civic role through the anti-Mugabe crusade and pro-democracy positions not so long ago, found it easy to see things in stark terms: in black and white. No compromise. It’s the beauty of one being powerless, I believe. You don’t have to prove and justify all the things in measurable terms. All you have to do is to yell and hope someone across the barricade will take fright and accede to your demands.

The main danger forthwith in yelling is that of taking a militant pose in making promises to ingratiate your followers for the opposition and the public for the civics. That would be a grave mistake; promises have got political and budgetary consequences. The promises of a people driven constitution which registered Zanu PF’s first millennium defeat by a united CSO and united MDC are now having some political consequences on the MDC and posing serious response problems on the part of the CSOs. It’s neither the time nor the place to keep on yelling on who are the people through countless press conferences and conferences.

It’s time to come up with a constitution that will attempt to correct the ills that are so entrenched and have existed for so long which cannot be done through artificial plastic surgery. Hence the people of Zimbabwe should be given a chance to fully express the grey areas in their lives through factoring their views in an uncensored manner in a new people driven constitution which will surgery the state and the society at large. This will not be achieved when the three political parties have total control of the process from sub-committees to the chairing of the entire committee – those who want to believe that we will find a surgical process through people throwing water missiles at each other at a supposedly all stakeholder meeting should wake up and smell the coffee.

This is why I am opposed to this state led process of writing the constitution. It gives the three parties which are interested in a pending election to write a constitution – such a farce cannot be entertained level headedly as it propels power contests rather that enabling the people of Zimbabwe to express themselves. As said before this should be a revolutionary process of transforming the society. Ours is a society whose constitutional and socio-political ills date back to colonial settlement which need genuine constitutional reform to spare the country from further human rights violations.

The problem of lack of clarity of thought which is being forwarded by the CSOs is particularly from the so called ‘modern’ day civic activists. This is a new crop of cadres facing an identity crisis emanating from the fact that they have been employed in the government but are finding hard to relinquish their roles in the CSO. There is a lot of cross-pollination, whereby a decision made by the CSO coming from these modern activists should tally with the aspirations of the government – Zimbabwe deserves better!

This has led to adverse moments for the civic organizations, presenting it with confusion never witnessed before, which I can liken to ‘young adults’ who leave home to build a life of their own, but are not quite confident enough to take along their belongings. It is critical to make sure that the movement shakes off such confusion. When such a self introspection has been done, the kaleidoscope would have been shaken, the pieces would be influx, but very soon they will settle again, but my argument remains, before they do, there is a need to reorder and realign the movement.

Taking lessons from South Africa, they drew the Freedom Charter in 1955 and it was done by people of principle and virtue, who gave future generations a constitutional architectural design as a model of a society and the governance which over decades has inspired and guided revolutionary activities at all convincible levels of their political, military and constitutional struggles.
In 1994, April the 27th the charter survived the test of time and remained the colossal at which the South African constitution was premised on. It was to become a life time value system and covenant upon which the people of South Africa’s struggles were to be found, but such bonds only work when the leadership, the CSOs and any other pro-democracy forces are of a strong principle hold.

In this country, the so called civic leadership will attend conventions, all stakeholders meetings and come up with binding documents which are supposed to be creating the bind but less than a decade, in this struggle post the movement’s formation, the modern day activists have reined in a circle of confusion. Given such a scenario, it’s high time to re-set the buttons and start on a clean sheet.

The progression of Zimbabwe coming in the form of providing leadership to its people leading to the attainment of better lives and a return to the rule of law should remain our bible. The quarrels and perceived splits are only but buttressing individual egos at the expense of the people of Zimbabwe’s desire for a better country where all men and women have got equal access to opportunities and the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Tabani Moyo is a free thinker, who writes on issues affecting his country. He writes from Gokwe and can be contacted on rebeljournalist@yahoo.com or moyojz@gmail.com

Is the GNU going nowhere slowly?

Palookas have been cautious about the decision by feuding political protagonists ‘agreeing’ to forge a Government of National Unity (GNU) which came into force on the 11th of September 2008. From the onset, the devil’s advocates were insisting that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) should not have signed the Global Political Agreement (GPA) without the resolving the contentious issues ranging from the fate of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, the Attorney General, the governorship, ambassadorial postings to the permanent secretaries.

The decision by the MDC’s national council meeting held on the 17th of May 2009 to refer the ‘outstanding issues’ to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) has proved the suspicious and cautious voices correct that the GNU is really going nowhere slowly, irrespective of the fact that at the time of signing the agreement it was seen as the only way out of the socio-political and economic abyss.

The stalemate is a clarion call to the people of Zimbabwe that, the ‘agreement’ is infested by machinations within Zanu PF that do not want the government to work smoothly. For Zanu PF, every day which lapses is a day closer to the election and imperatively, the successes of the government will send a message of confidence to the electorate crediting the MDC leadership for managing to address a decade of economic, social and political dry spell. Knowing Zanu PF the way every Zimbabwe understands it, it will not sit at its laurels as the electoral boulders of defeat are heading towards its door steps. As a matter of fact no party would be that naïve to smoothly open its own exit package, especially when power and the obsession of primitive accumulation and plunder of national resourses are at the core of its value system.

That is why on the 19th of May 2009, one of Zanu PF’s negotiators Nicolas Goche who is also the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Development was quick to comment in The Herald that the decision by the MDC National Council was ‘pre-mature’. To the demagogy establishment, Goche and his principals are seemingly living in no man’s land; one wonders what the Russian train Minister implies when he argues that the principals have not reached a stalemate when two of the three principals are insisting that the remaining party has taken the GPA for an errant’s ride. The statement in itself shows that Zanu PF remains defiant to the call to change its behavior and refuses to whole heartedly implement the dictates of the GPA.
Zanu PF will therefore continue with its wayward behavior of bestowing itself the imperial powers to allocate what it deems irrelevant to its follies and holding back the carrot to ensure that the bigger picture of the next election remains in the hands of the very same centre which led the flowed electoral processes for the better part of the post independence period. The utterances by Goche are a clear statement of intent aimed at delaying the matter from going to SADC with its best bet being that of ensuring that the tenure of the newly elected president of the Republic of South Africa Jacob Zuma, as the chairperson of SADC comes to an end in August before gaining leverage on the region’s problem child.

Similarly, there are no guarantees that the Zanu PF sympathizers in SADC will change their behavior when approaching the arbitration of their creation. The ball will still remain in the hands of the SADC Executive Secretary Toamaz Salamao to continue managing the politics of brotherhood amongst the revolutionary movements in the region and sidelining those perceived to be threatening the extinction of the same movements.

The SADC leaders will definitely confess ignorance of the Attorney General Johannes Tomana’s over night spreading wings of tormenting the 18 abductees without arresting the abductors. Inimically, the AG went on to arrest of Vincent Kahiya and Constantine Chimakure who are the Editor and News Editor of The Zimbabwe Independent respectively on the 12th of May 2009 for rightfully publicizing what Tomana had revealed into the public domain that he knew the abductors but was reluctant to prosecute. They will bury their heads in sand and wish the missing political prisoners away and hear no evil as the harassment of journalists continues with impunity.

If the MDC is to come out of the SADC meeting ‘aggrieved again’ then the next step will be going to the AU. The ball game has changed; statesmen like Jakaya Kikwete are no-longer at the helm of the organization which had made strides towards making rationale decisions during his tenure. This time it will be a marathon race all the way to Tripoli, Libya. This is an empire of Colonel Maummer Gadhafi, a man who does not believe in elections previously quoted in the quarters of the media arguing that one cannot put revolutionaries under the test of a democratic barometer called an election. The same is true with the majority of the nations sitting in the grouping which President Mugabe once threatened that he was prepared to see a leader who would lift a finger about the blood bath of the June 27 election – as predicted no single leaders quizzed the octogenarian leader who had ‘won’ an election which even the AU observers had dismissed. The end will be tragic.

The danger lies in the two double edged swords namely, time and promises. As the three political formations remain entangled in the ‘outstanding’ issues, time will be passing and the populace will become increasingly hungry and angry since the promises will be pushed to the better end of the pipe dream. Such a calamity only but helps Zanu PF as it is bequeathed with an arsenic election message that the MDC had been making noise on the side lines when they joined the government they failed to deliver the manifesto promises.

In such a process the MDC is confronted with the quadruple quagmire of ensuring the government works, which is to a larger extend impossible under the current conditions, to repair broken relations with its friends of yester year who are increasingly raising their voices over some of the initiatives by the Zanu PF-MDC government, sustaining the political activity of the party which is fast being sidelined in favour of the government and ensuring that it structures the attainment of the end result, which is a victory in the election.

It is therefore advisable that the party re-engineers and rejuvenates its structures and intensifies the lifeline of the party which seems to have been forgotten in the hype of the so called ‘inclusivity’. From the onset there lied a danger of parachuting the majority of the senior leadership into the government leaving the party with little scope from an outsider’s perspective. Literally, the human resource mobility into the government left voids in the party, which if the party is going to be serious about the attainment of the above listed demands should address.

The paradox is that the top party leadership hierarchy, the president, vice-president, secretary general, treasurer, deputy treasurer, organizing secretary are in government, the national chairman is the speaker of parliament, leaving the deputy secretary general as the lone soul to fully commit to the party’s structures.
If the MDC is to become deeply endowed in the government’s business to the extent that the party issues an ultimatum on the outstanding issue at the same time withdrawing the pressure point of the ultimatum that the GNU should finalize the grey areas and insisting that it will not pull out from the government one will be led to the conclusion that the centre which is the party is marginally being weakened and really need to start self assessment.

The MDC’s brief from the people of Zimbabwe on the 29 of March was to lead the country however out of the supervening impossibility of the attainment of such, the party was send on a clear mandate to ensure that it opens democratic space and deliver on the social, humanitarian, political and economic morass which had pressed Zimbabwe’s auto-pilot baton to a precipice.

Very soon the people who entrusted the leadership to steer the wheels of change will start to gradually lose confidence depending on the actions of those in power. When the government was established, there was euphoria and crisis of expectations which the leadership failed to manage. All of a sudden, the messages coming from the leadership is “give us more time”, but as stated earlier on, time and promises are a very dangerous element, one leads into another.

The duck and diving by the ruling parties is drawing the country back to the drawing board of negotiations when the country is crying loud for the captains of the titanic to retain the highest statement of purpose and clarity of sight in the quest to address the plight of the people of Zimbabwe.

The public service which is still trading on the lines of allowances will soon start demanding its rightful status of professionals rewarded with salaries. The students who have been charged absurd fees will soon start asking hard questions through different avenues. The media which has been yearning for a reprieve from the suffocating arm of statutory regulation will start to ask the questions which will be embarrassing to answer and the rural peasants who have been waiting for the better part of the rain season to access fertilizer and seed to invest in the soils for survival will start questioning why its not happening?

As in the Nigerian idiom, you can never measure the length of the frog until its dead, but ours need to be measured when it is alive to console those lying in shallow graves after the June 27 violence orchestra master minded by Zanu PF and to bequeath the people of Zimbabwe with the right to dream again. Zimbabwe cannot afford another loss of productive time on the issues which are clearly outline in the GPA – please show the people of Zimbabwe leadership.

Tabani Moyo is a journalist based in Gokwe. He can be contacted on rebeljournalist@yahoo.com

Paying for peace!

What is wrong with Zimbabwe?
Decades have gone by, philosophies and counter philosophies thrown to the fore and yet still the gears have been failing to engage. Probably the nation awaits a miracle to solve the Zimbabwean crisis, or maybe the power sharing government is that miracle itself!

Events building up to the formation of the power sharing government brought about mixed responses from both within and outside our national frontier. The understanding of such a mixed wave is found in the fact that if you fix Zimbabwe, through the going concern you equally address the auxiliary problems of the region as well.

Zimbabwe is seated on a vast fertile land, and was once known as the food security chief of the Southern Africa Development community, but today its people live in abject poverty as its wealth has over the ages been plundered by an assortment of warlords within a defined party who unleashed a holocaust upon those who chose to stand against them.

If you break Zimbabwe, you literally decapitate the region and if you so wish to mend it, definitely you start sorting out the exported problems in the region. The perennial problem has been that the process of sorting the dormant giant has been locked from both inside and outside. We became land lock polity with inhabitants crying for help and the region watching through the translucent frontiers with ‘cushion’ not to interfere a sovereign troubled republic.

Gradually, the fatigue of intellectuals and the ‘educated’ as in the words of Frantz Fanon in his book The Pitfalls of National Consciousness took sedge of the movement, developing a lethargy when and however clarity of though and position was required, “It so happened that the unpreparedness of educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the masses of people, the laziness and let it be said, their cowardice at decisive moments of the struggle gave rise to tragic mishaps…”

Maybe I am asking for too much, but what I see in present day Zimbabwe is a dry spell of the intellectual tradition which defines the range and comprehensive work of conceptual analysis. In essence, intellectual work is confused with academic scholarships. The Irish Times of February 2007, made a clear distinction between the two, “… intellectuals seek to occupy a more public sphere as journalists, political commentators and opinion spheres. Academics are usually conservative or middle of the road, while intellectuals tend to be politically dissident. Since they have less investment in power than politicians and entrepreneurs, they can occasionally speak the truth to it.”

As such I do not have any investment in power neither do I qualify myself as an academic; this gives me the elective right to pen the truth. It should be equally articulated that the intellectual’s role requires asking embarrassing questions.

Where are the intellectuals of this struggle, both within the civics and the generality of the sphere we are coming from? It is not the duty of the civics to blindly support a power establishment. If there are still intellectuals left in the civics then we need to start raising questions pertaining the new government. Through out my engagement with members of the civics, who are making it a point to agree with all the developments at the labour movement, when are they going to start differentiating between hook, line and sinker?

This is why, for the political gladiators to a swell time ‘negotiating’ on the precarious power sharing deal which later went on to retain the contentious areas of the same. Shockingly, Zanu PF went on to smuggle extra-ghost ministers on the day of swearing in, and the intellectuals failed to come up with a coordinated response. I m not writing of scholarships within both the civic organizations or the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) because they are many of such creed, I m writing of intellectuals who took us on a sailing journey for more than six months after the signing of the inter-party agreement on the 15th of September 2008 telling us they are finalizing the grey areas.

In a nutshell we lost half a year of productive time arguing for the formation of a balanced centre, a centre that has the capacity and drive to address the deeply trenched economic social and political questions which would muscle out more than five million people out of the mucky waters of starvation and hunger. A centre which will manage to flank the warlords within the government to start serving national interest as opposed to selfish and narrow interests which drives on the edges of corruption and nepotism.

The expectations of such a centre are spilling off the containment of the available capacities. This is with the promises of transforming a government’s system on the day of the swearing in of the prime minister, that in two weeks time civil servants would start earning their salaries in foreign currency in two weeks time in absolutist language, political prisoners’ release immediately (by the time of going to press they were still incarcerated) and the appointment of people without any tried and tested competences at this defining time would definitely weaken the much relied upon centre.

It is a much appreciated fact which I equally prescribe to that Zimbabwe needed a transitional regime that would rescue her sons and daughters from the man made forlorn which saw many house holds loosing their beloved one being exposed to the polemic of cholera, HIV and AIDS among other diseases helplessly.

Across the board there is unquestionable consensus that the newly found marriage should be transitional in outlook but is the transition going to be a click of the baton away. The GPA outlines if the marriage fails the aggrieved party or parties will walk out. Perennial wisdom has equally thought us that marriages are not broken as easily as that. It is from such a background that I posed a question that what is wrong with an animal called Zimbabwe?

How can the whole country prescribe to a position whereby names of people are written in black and white in a constitution that so and so shall become a president and prime minister respectively? Constitutions in their nature should be above the politics of personalities. So if one party is to move out, there is a need to amend the constitution first. What is the other partner is not willing to sign the divorce papers?

So in joining the newly found marriage, the prime minister is cognizant of the fact that the other partner has a promiscuous background. He has joined a vampire state which needs transformation from receiving almost 90% of its revenue through a 50% scheme by taking the last cent from every starving citizen. The slippery trading ground is keeping an eye over elitist cultural clique turning into a multi-cultural aristocracy. The questions will not only target the promiscuous partner but the aristocrat marriage if it is going to emerge.


The Pandora’s Box opened at the swearing ceremony of ministers at the statehouse speaks of volumes and hectorages of miles between the people who are suppose to the center of socio-political and economic activities of the country. As insane as it is to conceptualize what was President Mugabe’s line of thinking when he attempted to smuggle an addition half a dozen ministers into cabinet, Mugabe and his clique strongly believed that they were inline with their plan. The spectre of this line of thinking that ZANU PF should be the one with the final word on national events is an anathema to the much needed unity of purpose. How then are these people going to work together when they spend more than six (6) hours on a party which wanted to rig in ministers? Will there be that clarity of purpose?

On the day of the swearing in of ministers, if the parties are working in good faith, why then do the other party arrests a deputy prime minister designate, Roy Bennet who is now being charged of masterminding and organizing terrorist expeditions? These are some of the questions which need to be answered if the is going to be progression within our body polity.


The other threat to the emerging centre is the rumbling of disgruntlement of the party saving loyalists from both ZANU PF and MDC. Some are raising genuine concerns whilst some are militia groups failing to disband. If this voices of dissent including those who were dropped in the last minute at the statehouse grounds are to continue with the grumblings there is a danger of ‘insurgency’ within the party structure as they seek to undermine the work being coined at the centre.

On the same token, the marriage has been a move to stop barbarians and war lords from continuing with the excesses in the name of abductions, killings and abductions of two year olds under the guise that they are being trained to ouster the regime. Hence the agreement is partly paying for the establishment of peace, but for peace to prevail, you need to keep the warlords and militias happy, hence all the warlords, militias who were fueling polity tension will only see merit in the settlement if there is no pay off between what they were earning before the new structure. They still need the red passport to access their multiple entries to the Chiyadzwa diamond treasury or through lucrative salaries. If that equilibrium is not met then, it’s not an enforceable agreement the clock will be ticking in the wrong direction.

In a nutshell the centre’s plate tectonics will always be shifting and widening the fissures in the centre, that’s why this government can only be transitional.

The new culture required from all the parties evolved is to make sure that the understand the fact that yesterday’s dogmas are no longer adequate for pointing out to the much needed solutions of today’s complex problems. This is despite the fact that the other party, ZANU PF is found and font of such dogma as seen in the retention of the old guard such as Mutasa Didymus, Mnangagwa Emmerson among others. What new philosophies will these recycled comrades bring to the fore? Old certainties do not apply, they are obsolete.

Some nations have moved away from the cold war polarization and Zimbabwe too deserves such. This era was driven by the battle of extremes. It was either you are extreme right or extreme left. Humanity has remained stubborn as it trades in between and those nations and individuals stuck in the extremes will end up preaching rhetoric or face the ruthless of the extreme right which saw the global crunch hitting them from underneath their noses. Reality should force all of use to review the old orthodoxies. It’s no longer the time nor the place to elevate rhetoric and misplaced ideology but to come up with models and prescriptions on our way to recovery.

All the same, I place my belief that if the politicians in the newly found government are to subordinate their personal and frequently narrow interests to those of the nation the country will start building from the negative to reach the zero point so that we can start forward marshalling again. After all, nations are built on crises such as the unfolding ones. If there is a creation such as Zimbabwe, it should seek collective enterprise from every collective synergies.

Our task as critical thinker, writing from a bird’s eye view the politicians who are now running the affairs of the state should be taken to task and ensure that they put a system that can handle elections and transition. This is only possible is all of us are included in the process of writing our own constitution which decentralizes the power to participate in political processes and return government ownership to the people of Zimbabwe. Once that is done I will rest my question. But for now, what is wrong with this animal called Zimbabwe?



Tabani Moyo is a journalists based in Gokwe. He can be contacted on rebeljournalist@yahoo.com or moyojz@gmail.com The article was firstly published in the most read journal in Zimbabwe Thinking Beyond.

To my yet to be conceived daughter!

“Now or never is here again. Must I
Look in the face of the moon’s other side?
The moment demands decision. My whole
History is unequal to it – let me be!
I read all day, walk all night. I have
No end but this; no resources but books.
Thus again I dawdle and dither. Perhaps
Th’impartient problem will heart ay my
Expert vacillation”
The footnote to Hamlet – Mind blast – Dambudzo Marechera (1984)
My daughter, I know you are not yet in your mother’s womb, your mother does not know that one day she will be carrying a precious cornerstone of my survival. She is confused what kind of a person your father is, at one time she thinks I m socked in her motions of feelings and the other she holds I m a confused vagrant wondering in the wilderness of her love.
When you are finally going to be a fetus, struggling for space in your mother’s womb – it will be the birth of a struggle within a struggle. It will be the dawn of tears, laughter, endurance and perseverance.
You will one day be ushered onto this selfish earth, barren yet it’s pregnant with contradictions. You will come to realize that the lands of your birth have been forsaken by those who came before you, for good or for evil you will forever live a life of seeking answers to the hard questions which, I as your father failed to answer.
You will live in a dichotomy. It will be highly absurd for you when you ask yourself why personalities are dominating the institutions which were built out of the sacrifices of nonentities. You will wonder why the nonentities rose at a frightening pace to become personalities which unilaterally decided what is good and bad for the majority. You will equally wonder what happened to the value consensus on principle which has led a whole movement engulfed in discussion on the very same principle which is supposed to be the campus for the betterment of this place you call home – Zimbabwe.
My daughter you will curse your father and his generation for failing to put closure to the generational gap deficit between his generation and the one which came before him. You will throb in tears as your peers dance on top of your father’s grave calling him names such as coward, useless and good for nothing – I understand you fear my jewel.
I hear you; I won’t be there to tell you my story. To flip the pages of embarrassment and turn over to the new leaf for you to escape the barrage of firing arrows which will be pearling your innocent flesh with impunity.
If only you could tell them that your father had a dream which you my daughter have to carry over for the betterment of your generation. Never mind how the struggle has been arm twisted into rubbles, my battle has been and remains on the footnote of generational takeover through the straightening of institutions.
Never regret the radical DNA in you which you inherited from your father’s blood for it will remain in you like a menacing shadow. You would like to know how you father stepped to the fore. I have always resisted taking it to the public fore, it’s against my persona to build a domineering personality but I know you will one day want to understand yourself better in your bumpy road from the womb to the day when you write a letter of this nature to your daughters and sons.
My father, your grandfather was come to understand a long journey of stepping on shock pads over how my radical life have evolved. From grade 3 to grade 7 your father was expelled from school six times on different charges of which all he was found guilty as charged.
The same happened in his secondary life where he frequented the disciplinary committee to explain himself to those who where better placed to judge other people’s conduct and trying very hard to effect a correctional service institution within the education system.
Your father remained tall, his conviction was later on to be defined in 1998 when he was to become one of the 15 members who organized the strike at St Mary’s Boys High in Nyanga which left the school grounded for two weeks. The team included Revai Sadziwa who later on went to Midlands state university, Blessing Tichiwangani who became an electrical engineer, George Mudhara, who passed away in 2001, after starting his own company, Cleophas Mutepfe who is now based in the Uk, Farayi Chidhaura, who went to Harare poly, Gift Jamela, Simbarashe Rukanda, Brian Chigumira who is now in the Prison Services, Tapiwa Tafamombe who is now in the president’s office, Eddie Muchena who later went to the Midlands state university, Passmore Bore who is now a Marketer with Jaggers, George Maredza who is now a broker, and the other two comrade I can’t name at the moment.
At that defining moment, a collective group of 200 students were mobilized to shutter the buildings of the school and embarked on a 42km journey on foot to the shanty town of Nyanga where the ministry of education offices is located.
My daughter your father experience the jail smell and blood stains on the walls when he was 17 years old, as usual he was guilty as charged after taking an active role of mobilizing the students to take an act of defiance against the fees which had been hiked from Z$1200 to Z$2200. Your father and his colleagues spent 3 days in cells only to be released without being charged and kicked out of school soon after.
The rest of the story I will tell you in the next letter my daughter, so that one day you will not be puzzled of the radicalism which might come to define you.
The struggle of Zimbabwe might be gone but definitely not lost my daughter, when you will be reading this letter which came from the very centre of my heart you won’t help but concur with me when I insist that Zimbabwe’s struggle has been hi-jacked by personalities who are trying hard to force us to think that Zimbabwe owes them a gratuity for the sacrifices they have made for the country, hell know, recognition yes nothing more nothing less.
On the same token I will agree with you when you tell me that your father’s generation is fast losing it. Yes we are, stepping on each other’s toes sublimating into personality praise singers for those people who are fast running out of new ideas except exhausted rhetoric and dogmatic positions of fundamentalism.
Intellectual capital has become a farfetched mirage, which until your birth and those of like mind might become a reality.
So wakeup my yet to be conceived daughter, its sun shine, the trenches ahead might be minefields but the late Dr. Zvobgo will argue they must not keep you down forever, dust yourself and brace for the vicious struggle against the personification of institutions, organizations and the country. Guard against becoming and academic and failing to become an intellectual – my daughter your father might not have been either but his inspiration is to become the later. I will take care of you in vernacular Chengetai

To she who kept the faith

Some events define history. Some will forever seek to turn the wheels of history anti-clock wise. Whichever way the events of 6 February 2009, which led to the fatal car accident of the premiership along the Harare Masvingo road, have redefined Zimbabwe’s body polity.

This is the day when the Prime Minister’s wife, Susan Tsvangirai’s (main picture) voice came out the last. It was the defining moment when she took her last breath, blinking her eyes for the last stroll which waved good bye to mother earth, her husband, children and the country which she so loved much.

I lastly met and spoke to the PM’s wife two weeks before the 29 March 2008 elections in which his husband was contesting Robert Mugabe and Simba Makoni for the country’s top post. We arrived at the couple’s residency as they were preparing to take the route which later on claimed Susan’s life a year later. Susan stroke me as a very humble and receptive person. An emblem of a down to earth mother figure strongly found on the African cultural fundamentals of reception to both the people she new and strangers like myself and a friend of mine who had graced their residency at her husband’s benevolence.

She spoke highly of how his husband was psyched up for the plebiscite and how the family was raring to go. She introduced myself to her daughter and argued that she was very blessed that she had grown up to see her children taking the huddles of life and conquering them with their support.

When I had of the saddening news – a lump of thickening blood grew on my neck as if to say I was about to be struck by a blot of stroke.

The news broke out when I was making the rounding phases of the Harare Press Club election where I contesting for the post of general secretary which was scheduled to take place the same day and time we were informed of the passing on of the mother figure of the movement and of the nation. When a phone call rung and had the other side of the receiver informing me that Mrs. Tsvangirai failed to make it, a pulse race was triggered in my mind – Life is not fear, I said to myself loudly in silence – here is a rock foundation of a family, a husband, a nation who saw it all in the past decade of the struggle for a people to be freed from the tyranny of Robert Mugabe, poverty, disease, violence, hunger, corruption and collapse of democracy.

She was there in 1989 when the husband was being incarcerated for speaking out against the harassment of students who were protesting against the corruption which was spreading in the government’s systems like a viral infection.

She saw it all during the trials and tribulations of the husband’s tenure as the Secretary General calling for national strikes protesting against the massive tax hikes, during the 1997/8 food riots which led to state operative invading the ZCTU offices and attempting to end Tsvangirai’s life by throwing him through the window from the 9^th follow before beating him up leaving him with head injuries.

She maintained the faith when the husband’s party won elections from 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008 but instead of power transfer, they got baton sticks blatantly dissenting on them, incarcerations, abductions, killings and rape – she kept the faith that one day Zimbabwe would be free.

She braved the weeks’ incarceration of his husband during the final push campaign which saw Morgan being held at remand prison and being exposed on national television in prison attire.

She was there to absorb the psychological trauma of her husband being charged with treason which attracts a death sentence.

She refused to waver her faith when his husband along side with the save Zimbabwe campaigners where tortured in police detention, leading to a swollen head and eye and a fractured arm – but she refused to allow her heart to be broken. She believed in the ultimate price of revolutions and kept her strength as a pillar of the husband’s resilience.

She was there when the husband, was called to the fore to take the oaths of loyalty to the country he so loves much as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe after a decade of persecution and victimization. She was there when the fundamentalists and extremists in Zanu PF swallowed their pride and embraced the person they spend a life time denouncing as an appendage of the west.

Sadly she couldn’t leave longer to see what the movement and herself suffered for was going to end up like.

But today, I say, she saw it all. She have lived and left in and from both sides of the worlds – I hope her soul will be received through the gates of eternity. History will capture you role of a mother figure in the struggle for democracy in ZImbabwe