A spade is a spade is a spade is a spade!

A spade is a spade is a spade is a spade. Let there be no doubt: Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are trying to make peace with murderers. They may, yet, succeed mainly because history is on their side. Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF have made a living for three decades by murdering innocent people, sometimes on a genocidal scale.Among some plateau Bantu tribes, such as the Mashona, murder is a serious matter for which full compensation is required. The murderer and the survivors of an innocent victim will sit down and talk, talk, talk until they reach an appropriate compensation agreement. It is believed, rightly or wrongly, that failure to pay will result in massive vengeance by the spirit of the deceased.Now, since I do not think that the dead know that they are dead, I suggest that it is up to the surviving victims to seek and obtain justice. ZANU-PF will try to pretend that nothing has happened that needs to be addressed in a more comprehensive manner than declaring a few days of national healing. One gets the impression that the government is trying to pull wool over the people's eyes using an empty so-called national healing process. Will the victims of Mugabe's crimes be lulled to sleep like babies or will they demand more substantial justice for the perpetrators of a murderous purge lasting thirty years?Zimbabweans should demand justice for Gift Tandare, Tichaona Chiminya, Talent Mabika and countless known and unknown victims of Mugabe's murderous venture.

Jackson's kids say no to mother Debbie Rowe

It now appears that the real reason court hearings in the Michael Jackson children custody case have been postponed twice now is that both older children have said they did not want to have anything to do with their biological mother Debbie Rowe. As readers might recall, Rowe moved swiftly to apply for custody of Jackson's two elder children after the death of their father.
However, two scheduled hearings have failed to materialize, spawning a lot of speculation about what could be behind the delay. While some have speculated that the Jackson family and Rowe may be talking to avoid a public brawl, Debbie Rowe is not known to shy away from a fight. She appears to have met her own match this time, ironically, in the form of her own progeny!

On Michael Jackson

Being about the same age as Michael Jackson, I grew up loving his music. In fact, right after the birth of my elder daughter in 1985, I had a picture taken, daughter in lap, wearing a t-shirt with that famous signature emblazoned across my chest.
I began to fall out of love with MJ when he showed up in Tanzania in the mid 90s wearing what looked like a surgical mask as if he was saying that the African air we all grew up breathing, was unfit for human consumption. Later, we learned that Jackson may have been involved in inappropriate behavior with minor boys.
Now, I have no way to verify the veracity or otherwise of the allegations made against Jackson, marring his career and haunting him to the end. Throughout his life, Jackson insisted he was an innocent victim of the press and financially motivated parents, not an entirely unreasonable proposition given the opportunistically litigious nature of the American mindset and the fierce competition for listenership and readership among the media.
Suffice it to say that I am willing to let the jury be the final judge on these allegations. What bothers me about the attitude of some people is that they would have us believe (as they did in the case of OJ Simpson) that Jackson's acquittal was the most egregious miscarriage of justice in the history of the world! After all, we live in a country where a few decades ago, lynching was a spectator sport. I remain unpersuaded that whatever Michael Jackson may have done wrong, if any at all, it is equal to or worse than some of the blatant crimes committed against innocent people in the name of instant justice in these United States.

For the good of the country!

One of the more interesting things we have heard from Morgan Tsvangirai (Zimbabwe's hapless transitional prime minister) recently is that Johannes Tomana(Zimbabwe's attorney general whose appointment is in dispute) and Gideon Gono ( the money grabbing Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor) should both resign for the good of the country. Giving the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that the resignation of these two men will deliver a new era of accountability in government, I am willing to call on these two men to quit.
However, I remain unpersuaded that such a development would be anything more than a political victory for the prime minister. I simply cannot believe that the departure of these men will change the opinion of a large number of people who must loosen their purse strings by way of investing in Zimbabwe or by providing bilateral aid.
The prime minister knows, as do most Zimbabweans, that the real obstacle to the reintegration of Zimbabwe into the world economy is the continued presence and dominance of one person: Robert Mugabe.
Gono and Tomana are mere manifestations of the ailment at the heart of Zimbabwe's quarter century in the economic wilderness: the 'failure of leadership' so eloquently expressed by Madiba.
Zimbabweans get it and, on this particular matter, the prime minister is behind the curve. As long as Mugabe is in place, it will be very difficult to convince investors, foreign and Zimbabwean, that there is a new political dispensation in the country.
Maybe the prime minister should have said or start saying: Robert Mugabe should retire for the good of the country.

From Obama to Mugabe, with love

It is not unlikely that Barack Obama gave Morgan Tsvangirai a personal message to convey to Tsvangirai's partner in the transitional authority (am I the only one who finds it offensive to call him president?) Robert Mugabe? What could possibly be the contents of such a private communication? I think I know.Dear sir, May I take the opportunity to thank you for leading the fight to liberate Zimbabwe and the southern African region from the yoke of colonialism and apartheid. As a young man, I was inspired by your leadership of the Zimbabwe independence struggle. I was unable to make it to the celebrations in 1980 but it was one of the more memorable events of my teenage days. I was equally impressed by your stance against apartheid in South Africa, in the years leading to its demise in the early 1990s.As William Shakespeare said:"the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones". I am concerned by the looming probability that your heroic works will be overshadowed by the sad events of the last several years, in which thousands of Zimbabweans have been directly victimized by their government under your leadership. Millions of others have died needlessly because of the choices you have made.It may not be too late to salvage your legacy. For example, you could earn a windfall of goodwill by acknowledging the mistakes of the past twenty five years and doing good by the victims. You could then call a national indaba at which you will publicly bless the younger generation of leaders all political parties. You could say something like this: "It is not a secret that I am now a very old man, so old that I need my back to be soothed with cow dung from time to time (try some humour). The only thing I ever wanted was to free my people from colonial domination and I succeeded. Your generation must decide what its own objectives are and try to fulfil them, without me. Do not make the same mistakes that I made by not thinking twenty five years ahead. Think more about where our people will be in twenty five years, than about winning the next elections. Compete fairly for political power and above all, submit yourselves to the wishes of the people of Zimbabwe knowing that ultimately, the collective wisdom of the people is just."I can assure you that if you did that, you would give yourself an opportunity to rehabilitate your good name. You could also find time to write those long awaited memoirs and if you needed a publisher, I would be happy to recommend one.For my part, I will do everything in my power to help Zimbabweans put behind the lost opportunities of the past quarter century and re-ignite the promise of Munhumutapa!

A right to bear arms?

Had Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabika (and countless other innocent victims, before and since) been armed on that fateful day in Buhera nine years ago, they might have been able to defend themselves. Unfortunately, only criminals sponsored by, and working for, the government, were armed on that day.
Whenever I consider some of the excesses of the past thirty years of ZANU-PF rule under Robert Mugabe, such as the genocidal atrocities perpetrated against innocent civilians in the western provinces during the 1980s; and the more recent murderous assault by the ruling party on farmers and political opponents of all sorts and conditions, across the length and breadth of the country, I experience a melting down of my natural resistance to the free availability of arms.
I just wonder if the behavior of the ruling elites might have been different had they known that their potential victims were lawfully armed and likely to fight back, as individuals and even, as organized groups. My liberal tendencies lead me to instinctively oppose widespread access to arms of all sorts, from small ones to missiles.
In theory, for one to be able to make the transition from one end of the spectrum to the other, one needs evidence showing that armed communities enjoy more political and individual rights. (I emphasize that for me, this is not an issue of public safety, so I am applying Occam’s razor to that line of discussion because it would be another conversation altogether if my original assumption were correct. Granted: there is a direct link between the number of guns in a community and the number of gun-related deaths and injuries).
Those who think only in terms of general safety are, therefore, missing the point. What I am arguing is that there may be a positive correlation between gun ownership and the enjoyment of individual rights such as free speech, association and property.
Let me briefly describe the gun ownership regulations in Zimbabwe, as I understand them. It is basically up to the police (read ZANU-PF or MDC, depending on who is in power) to decide who gets armed or not. Presumably, anyone can apply for a gun license but in general, licenses are reserved for farmers, businesspeople and other well-connected individuals.
The minister of home affairs may, at his or her sole discretion, by way of a so-called statutory instrument (surely one of the most primitive ways of law-making ever), decide who can or cannot own, a gun. The police are the functional licensing authority with respect to civilian firearms ownership.
In practice, what this means is that only members of the uniformed and intelligence services, thugs in the employ of the ruling coalition, and a few favored people, can legally own or carry, guns.
The results of this situation for the rule of law and the enjoyment of peace and political and individual rights, by the people of Zimbabwe, over the past thirty years, are so well documented that there is no need to discuss them here. Suffice it to say that a reasonable observer might wonder if the people of Zimbabwe might have been better off with an inalienable right to bear arms in the constitution. Of course, the Zimbabwe government is not famous for respecting constitutional rights, but it could well have been the case that before the government realized that its hold on power was under threat, the people would have been so well armed already in their villages and towns that the government would have thought twice before taking any action that might cause mass provocation.
It seems obvious that ruling party thugs would think twice before trying to drag a man from his home in the middle of the night or forcing people to attend political gatherings against their better wishes. Even the police would have second thoughts about exposing themselves to public anger unnecessarily by, for example, arresting people for simply enjoying their freedom of assembly and speech rights. We would all be better off, I suspect, if roles were reversed, and the government actually feared the people and not the other way round!
There are economic benefits to be derived from widespread gun ownership, to be sure. There would be many new shops selling and repairing guns and their accessories, along with a cluster of new jobs, perhaps. But that’s not the raison d’etre of this proposal.
Will there be those who use their guns to settle personal scores? No doubt. But should we punish the rest of the people because a tiny minority of them will commit crimes? I think not.
I am not suggesting that any adult person should be able to own a gun. There would have to be a system in place to screen applicants for specified crimes and other pertinent issues. Individuals would be required to undergo some form of training in the use of firearms before they are allowed to own arms. And those who committed crimes with their guns would have them permanently confiscated, by operation of the law. But it should not be up to some ruling party politician to decide who can or cannot own a gun; that decision ought to be the subject of an opinion of the people expressed through the constitution.
I would sweeten the deal for those opposed to my proposal by suggesting that freedom to own arms be instituted on an interim basis and be subject to public review every ten years. It may also be necessary to remove the licensing power (not the enforcement power) from the police by setting up a separate bureaucracy wholly funded by those who want to own guns. In other words, nobody who is not a gun owner will be forced to pay for the enjoyment of this right through taxes. If all goes well, and politicians begin to fear the people, then I would be happy to get rid of such a provision at the earliest possible opportunity. Those who say that an MDC-led future government will be more enlightened than ZANU-PF are mistaken purveyors of naivety. We heard similar stories in 1980. Nothing should be left to chance.
We know that the government will always have more and bigger guns, but I suspect that any government that consistently and willfully violates the rights of an armed people will soon find itself in serious trouble. It is precisely for this reason that the Zimbabwe government (including the current ruling coalition) will find this proposal to be truly alarming: they want to be the only ones “armed and dangerous”!
I know that many of my liberal friends will see this as an outrageously retrogressive suggestion, if not outright, right wing insanity. But if you asked me who, between a historically and potentially murderous and intrusive bureaucracy and a populace chastened by decades of political repression, should be armed, that would not be a mind-wrenching decision for me.
Umchini wami, mchini wami!

Barack returns to Africa? Sort of

This week president Obama will address the Moslem world from Cairo, Egypt, Africa.And yet nobody sems to think that he will feel like he is a man going back to his roots? The answer may surprise the uninitiated. Egypt is geographically in Africa but let's be honest about it....Egypt is an Arab country and Obama knows that. It will be a different story when he travels to Ghana soon. Those who seek to over-simplify Africanicity often fail to recognize that Africa is a continent of more than fifty countries, at times divided by muddy rivers and high mountains, but at other times by wide cultural and racial lines.In biblical days, an African was barely distinguishable from his fellow middle-easterners, readily intermingling with and disappearing amongst them. The African of today has a darker hue. The irony is that Obama is of Nilotic heritage. What could be more descriptive of Egypt than the Niles? May be he should feel at home in Egypt, too. But will he be welcomed as a son of Africa? I doubt it. But I sure hope so!
Posted by somnolentgenius at 3:54 PM 0 comments
Labels: Egypt