SEVEN desperate homeseekers were recently arrested in Marondera after they invaded a farm belonging to the town’s municipality. Led by their co-operative leaders, the residents immediately parcelled out pieces of land to each other after waiting for years on the town’s housing waiting list.

NewsDay Comment

What is happening in Marondera, though not acceptable under any circumstances, simply highlights one shortcoming that the country’s councils all have: Poor planning.

In the case of Marondera, the farm that those unfortunate homeseekers invaded belongs to the council, which tells us that it actually has title deeds to it. So, why is Marondera holding on to that farm when it has a housing waiting list of thousands people desperate for land to build a roof over their heads, if we may ask? So what are the key priorities of the council? Is housing provision not one of them?

What is happening in Marondera is a deficiency replicated across the country. Such is the paucity of urgency on matters to do with housing that it has largely bred the chaos that we currently see mainly in Harare, where unscrupulous individuals have taken advantage of the lack of initiatives by the capital city’s authorities to grab idle land and sell it to desperate homeseekers.

The country’s towns and cities have vast tracts of open land that can easily be turned into residential stands to build houses, garden flats and high-rise apartments. Since independence in 1980, the cities and towns’ housing waiting lists have ballooned instead of dwindling simply because councils have failed to adequately plan. The parent ministry, the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, should actually shoulder the blame because, in most cases, it has done absolutely nothing to ease the country’s housing problems. Besides constructing very few blocks of flats, that can be counted on one’s fingers and the incomplete Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle housing projects, the ministry has nothing else to justify its existence.

Given the corruption that has, at every turn, visited the country’s housing sector with, for instance the Local Government ministry flats being mired in endless controversy linked to unfair allocation, little wonder the councils have been unable to meet their mandate of providing enough houses for their residents. It is now quite evident that, besides the obvious poor planning rife in our councils, there is a deliberate ploy to create an artificial shortage of urban land for housing to push prices up. Because of the intrinsic value of urban land, it is quite easy to hold desperate homeseekers to ransom. And it is this situation that is leading people to invade open spaces, while land barons find room to exploit desperate homeseekers.

HEAL Zimbabwe Trust (HZT) is mobilising food aid for the starving Tsholotsho North villagers.

BY SILAS NKALA

In its latest report, HZT said, in the wake of the current drought, a community-based social accountability team in Tsholotsho North has made strides in helping to mobilise food aid.

“On October 4, the social accountability team conducted an awareness raising campaign at Sipepa Business Centre. The awareness campaign took the form of a clean-up campaign, where members of the social accountability team were conscientising community members on the importance of social accountability in the attainment of local community development,” HZT said.

“After the clean-up campaign, the guest of honour, a local councillor addressed community members and the issue of the drought was discussed. The objective of the meeting was to raise awareness on the need for social accountability and help entrench a culture of accountability.”

The trust said the meeting was also intended to contribute towards the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6, which seeks to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

The trust said, as part of the feedback, the councillor reported that after engaging the Rural District Council and the Ministry of Social Welfare, he was assured that food aid distribution was going to commence this month.

“The council also reported that the food aid was targeting every household since everyone was facing hunger as a result of the poor harvest. The council further reported that food aid registration will begin shortly and shall be done with due diligence,” HZT said.

“The social accountability initiatives are meant to help inculcate a culture of transparency and accountability between duty bearers and rights holders. They also help build trust and confidence and help in the development of communities.”

HZT, through its trained social accountability teams, will continue to promote social accountability in districts such as Gokwe, Makoni, Chipinge, Buhera, Zaka, Bikita,Tsholotsho and Gutu among other areas.

Title: Daughter of Apartheid
Author: Lindi Tardif
Publisher: Elm Hill 2019
ISBN: 978-1400325269

IN 2011, I was part of a team of researchers from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum that undertook the Taking Transitional Justice to the Diaspora Outreach Programme. The programme aimed at giving a voice to the Zimbabwe diaspora in Zimbabwe’s transitional justice policy.

At one of the meetings bringing together Bristol and Cardiff, I met a group of Zimbabweans who were passionate about contributing to the healing process back home. They regretted the fact that the violence had not stopped, hence, making healing an almost impossible task. The group had painful stories to tell. But perhaps what touched me the most that day was a reflection, not only on the physical effects of violence, but also the invisible wounds. Invisible wounds penetrate beyond the direct victim into generations. The diasporans spoke about the decimation of their identities and the strangers their children have become to their people.

These are the invisible and yet far-reaching effects of violence on a people. Since this day, I developed a deep concern for the state of the African diaspora and its role in driving the process of healing back home. One such significant contribution is the book, Daughter of Apartheid by Lindi Tardif (2019), a corporate international tax planning specialist at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. I met Lindi for the first and only time during my Salute Africa Tour in the United States in July 2019 and listened to her story before I could read it.

Over the last 10 years of my involvement in transitional justice, I have met many authors who tell stories of violence, healing and reconciliation. What struck me about Lindi is that she does not belong to the class of our usual transitional justice practitioners. In other words, she did not have to tell this story. And yet she did and speaks about it with such passion; you can feel her authenticity and belief in her message.

Post her interface with what is possibly the most violent system in human history, Lindi has built a successful career and works for one of the most successful entities. She has transcended her hurts and could as well have ignored this ugly history and focused on her career and family. But she chose to tell this story. For that reason, I was convinced she had an important message, so I thought I should listen to her story. In this piece, I share only three things that struck me the most and the valuable lessons for our healing journey here in Zimbabwe and other places.

“I have chosen to tell this story to share the message that our choices matter,” says Lindi when I inquired into why she wrote the book. This point becomes very clear when she writes: “I have learnt that past hurts and anger can be overcome. I have learned that life is driven by the choices made by individuals, families, small groups, large groups, entire societies and nations.”

She chronicles the personal choices that she made to overcome past hurts, bringing into the transitional justice conversation an often over-looked perspective — the personal approach to social and national healing, over national systems. Many times, our work on transitional justice has tended to focus on systems that must be put in place to facilitate national healing. Not many conversations speak to the power of personal choices that help overcome past hurts.

Since the formation of the first truth commission in Uganda in 1974, over 45 truth commissions have been instituted the world over in an attempt to recover the truth and foster reconciliation.

The “successes” of truth commissions have psyched us up to prioritise the national systems and approaches at the cost of the personal encounters. One of the accusations levelled against the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is that local and individual truths were sacrificed as the commission focused more on a national narrative (van der Merwe, 2002). Another accusation has been that much was lost when expressions of human suffering were couched in standardised and universalised language of human rights. (Saunders, 2008).

In Daughter of Apartheid, the primary lesson is that we can, as individuals, transform our journeys to healing, without having to wait for the national system to be right for healing. This, of course, does not mean national systems for healing and reconciliation are not important, but many times, they are slow, and can never be comprehensive enough to capture all individual traumas. The individuals have to put much of the effort, even in the presence of well-designed transitional justice systems. It is a collection of these individual efforts that drive a national narrative on healing. Lindi calls them little steps, writing: “And with each of those little steps we take, we all move closer to healing and reconciliation.”

The Lindi in Daughter of Apartheid is more than a survivor. She is a victor. Many times, when we read stories of violence and conflict, they evoke a sense of sympathy. They call us to solidarity with the victim. Through this, authors hope our hatred for violence is strong enough to drive us to action. In fact, it is a key strategy in human rights advocacy to use human stories to drive an agenda. And yet Daughter of Apartheid does not do that. It is the story of a victor who, in her moments of torment, is not inviting sympathy, but rather is telling a story that inspires hope and confidence. The past is reflected upon, not as an end in itself, but rather as a tool that perfects a vision of the future.

“The fight is now,” write Lindi, “or now should be — about healing wounds and bringing the various groups together to build a better future in which all can prosper emotionally, physically and financially.”

Perhaps, the most important lesson from the book is that we must tell all stories, both big and small, in the struggle for healing and reconciliation. Africa’s story is the story of liberation.

And in this journey, the stories we hear daily are the stories of the late former South African President Nelson Mandela and such people of high credentials. In real life, these great heroes are not among us. Daughter of Apartheid tells a story that is beautifully relatable to the ordinary African at the hands of a violent colonial system. In extracting these powerful lessons, Lindi brings everyone into an important conversation. She makes the story of healing a very personal conversation and indeed, we have not yet started any serious conversation on the fundamental changes in our society if the issue is not yet personal. When an issue becomes personal enough to a sufficient number, it moves a generation to action.

I share Lindi’s belief that every positive choice, no matter who makes it, where, when or why — rebounds to the benefit of us all. It is for this reason that I am grateful that she chose to write her story. Daughter of Apartheid is a story that I wish to share with many of my colleagues in the transitional justice movement with the primary goal that we are transformed to become more authentic, more hopeful, more futuristic, but most importantly, more attentive to the stories of the ordinary people among us.

Dzikamai Bere is the programmes co-ordinator at the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and co-ordinator of the National Transitional Justice Working Group. He writes in his personal capacity.

Newly-appointed Harare Basketball Association (HBA) president David Pick has high ambitions to try and bring back the sport to its former glory and one of his promises is to return the HBA knockout trophy after a 14-year hiatus.

By Freeman Makopa

“We are bringing back the HBA Knockout trophy. This knockout trophy will involve teams from both A and B leagues and we intend to make it exciting. It was last played around 2005, but then it was stopped due to lack of sponsorship,” he said.

Pick is determined to find funds to resuscitate the once popular competition.

In fact, he says there are potential funders who are willing to partner his association.

“Right now, we have prospective sponsors and I think it’s high time we bring it (tournament) back.

It’s one of the things on my to-do list. I’m also looking forward to the decentralisation of basketball by spreading the sport to all four corners of Harare. More games will be played in Mbare, Mufakose, Dzivarasekwa, Mabvuku and Arcadia,” he said.

The former JBC, Varsity Leopards player said he is also looking forward to the unification of conflicting theories within the institution.

“The HBA is the biggest basketball playing province in Zimbabwe and I am honoured to be leading it. I have been involved in Basketball since 1995 as a player for Mbare Bulls under the late Maxwell Mangwiro.

“My biggest goal is to unify conflicting theories within Harare Basketball. Differences are good in any institution, but they have to be progressive. We all have to be united otherwise we perish. I have to be a listening president. I will be running with the theme ‘let’s make basketball great again’,” he added.

The HBA’s start to their season had a hiccup that affected the start of the first round of matches, but Pick’s executive managed to work things around and avoided what could have been a horrendous beginning to the new term.

“Week 1 has had its challenges, the biggest being games fixtured after 1600hrs. This was due to the load shedding schedule that is affecting most areas in Harare. I want to thank my executive committee for being innovative and always having that never say die attitude. We managed to buy LED flood lights. Though more work needs to be done in that area I feel that we are in the right direction.”

THE Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) has lamented at the poor turnout in its voter registration exercise in Bulawayo, and warned that the city risked losing some constituencies in the next delimitation exercise.

BY NQOBANI NDLOVU

“We are not registering even one person at any given week. It was only last Saturday when someone organised a group of people in Pumula suburb, about 15 of them to register as voters, our highest figure to date at any given time,” Zec provincial officer Sithembiso Khuphe told Southern Eye yesterday.

Khuphe said Zec’s target was to register plus 400 000 registered voters in Bulawayo to ensure the city gets 15 constituencies up from the current 12 during the next delimitation exercise.

However, indications are that the city will lose at least three constituencies as the current voter registered population for the city falls far short of the minimum threshold.

Independent election watchdog, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network has also warned of the same, saying the same fate is likely to befall Matabeleland North and South provinces in the next delimitation exercise.

“We are encouraging people to come and register. What we have realised is that people only take voter registration seriously when elections are around the corner. That is the problem we have.

“We had a target to get 15 seats with plus 400 000 voters in Bulawayo when we started the exercise, but, unfortunately, that has not been the case,” she added.

Bulawayo currently has about 258 000 registered voters.

MDC youth secretary-general Gift Ostallos Siziba said the party’s national management committee meeting held in the capital on Saturday resolved to deploy its senior officials to Bulawayo to help in rallying residents to register to vote ahead of the 2023 elections.

“We noted with urgency the ongoing delimitation process in Bulawayo metropolitan province and resolved to urgently deploy national executive members to assist Bulawayo province in the voter registration process that is ongoing,” Siziba said.

Bulawayo has been one of MDC’s strongholds since the party’s formation in 1999. Zimbabwe last carried a delimitation exercise in 2007 ahead of the 2008 harmonised elections.

According to section 161 of the Constitution, electoral boundaries must be delimited once every 10 years after a census.

A GROUPING of civic groups, under the banner Matabeleland Collective (MC), has threatened to disrupt nurse training lessons at Mpilo and United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) to force government to address reports of unfair recruitment of student nurses at the two institutions.

BY NQOBANI NDLOVU/PRAISEMORE SITHOLE

This comes amid reports that at Mpilo, 20 out of the 24 trainee nurses recruited last week were not from Matabeleland. The same reads for United Bulawayo Hospitals where only four out of the 27 nurse trainees are from Matabeleland.

Mpilo clinical director Solwayo Ngwenya, who also heads the school of nursing, reportedly claimed that the selection process was done in Harare after the introduction of an online nurses’ application portal.

The MC said the move by the Health ministry flies in the face of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s promises, as outlined in the implementation matrix produced after the March engagement at the Bulawayo State House.

Mnangagwa, under the social services cluster, pledged to ensure that government devolves such processes by giving locals first preference in job training or in filling vacant posts.

“MC pledges to shut down some of these training centres if government does not intervene to reverse these unfair practices from these nursing training institutions. MC also urges government to immediately implement devolution of power in order to curb these unfair structural practices that favour other regions over the other,” the MC said in a statement.

On Sunday, Vice-President Kembo Mohadi, while promising redress, condemned the questionable nurse training recruitment at Mpilo and UBH.

“We are not happy and as government, we will address this issue. Government policy is that the recruitment must be done equitably. We don’t want bias in that regard.

“We are going to look into it so that it is rectified,” Mohadi said after a de-briefing on the issue by Bulawayo Metropolitan Affairs minister Judith Ncube at Zanu PF’s Bulawayo Davies Hall provincial offices. Ncube last week also threatened to force the reversal of the “unfair” nurse trainee selection process.

UPCOMING music artiste Nyasha “Arrowgent” Kwembeya is set to do a double launch of his debut 15-track album titled The Black Print online and at a local radio station on December 15 in Harare.

BY CHELSEA MUSAFARE

In an interview with NewsDay Life & Style, Kwembeya said preparations for his new offering were on course, adding that he was working hard to produce good stuff for his fans.

“Music, through online stores and local stations, will enable both radio and television personalities and everyone involved to share and play the music on the same day. The tracks will be available on YouTube and it will also be launched on a local radio station,” he said.

Kwembeya, who said the forthcoming production carries themes centred on social life and gospel, made his own beats and self-produced the album.

“My music centres on life, love and the gospel. Music defines me. It makes me feel alive. My inspiration comes from the sounds I hear in my head. The moment that I create an instrument definitely the lines start pouring down on paper. Music is what keeps me going,” he said.

Some of the songs on the album are: Port of H Town, Jamba, Mutsikei, Get Over It, Real Aint Real, Streets, Mr President, Life Yangu, Real Niggas, I Just Woke Up, Motivation, Imagine That, Chibhora, Let it Run and Mighty Saint.

The musician said he was inspired by hip-hop sensation Takura’s music and he wished to collaborate with him.

Five Rusape man are in hot soup after allegedly killing a 17-year-old man for stealing a chicken.

BY KENNETH NYANGANI

Manicaland provincial police spokesperson Tavhiringwa Kakohwa yesterday confirmed the incident.

The accused, appearing as first, second, third, fourth and fifth respondents, respectively in the matter are Jonathan Elias (43), Michael Bhunu (47), Ambrose Goko (47) and brothers Kingstone and Abel Nyatoro, whose ages are unknown.

Kakokwa said at around 5am on October 11, the now-deceased Watson Goko proceeded to Elias’ homestead and stole a hen from his fowl run. Elias was awakened by the noise of the chicken and when he went out, he discovered that one chicken was missing.

He then followed the footprints, but missed them at a nearby bush.

Elias went to his co-accused’s homes and informed them of what had happened.

They teamed up in search of the culprit and found the now-deceased hidden in a bush holding a hen.

They forced-marched him to Abel Nyatoro’s house where they took turns to assault him with sticks.

At one point, Goko tried to escape, but he was apprehended and Elias tied him with a rope.

Goko was forced-marched to his uncle Ambrose’s homestead, who is the third accused in the matter.

The now-deceased’s uncle was told about the incident and he joined in assaulting his nephew.

Goko was only released at around 9pm after five hours of beatings. He then went to her grandmother Brenda Goko’s house to rest.

A few hours later, he was seen at a nearby stream by his grandmother who discovered that he was in pain and sought help to ferry him to Masvoswe Clinic.

He died two days later and the three first accused persons reported themselves to Rusape Police Station, while the Nyatoro brothers are still at large.

BULAWAYO photojournalist, Crispen Ndlovu has embarked on a continental tour capturing historical features which could become extinct due to climate change.

BY SHARON SIBINDI

His photo-shoot follows a documentary about government atrocities dating back to Gukurahundi, including last year’s August 1 killings titled—The Killing Machine.

In an interview with NewsDay Life &Style, Ndlovu said the motive was to preserve images for future generations in the event that features disappear from the face of Africa.

“I have embarked on a photo-shoot and my aim is to encourage young people, especially Africans, to take a stand and advocate for climate change so as to preserve the planet,” he said.

“Most of my works have been on politics and culture, but now I want to try a new dimension, which is climate change. Most Africans do not find climate change as a matter of urgency and some do not think it’s real.”

Ndlovu said the shoot does not target Zimbabwe only, but other parts of Africa.

“The shoot is being done in Zimbabwe and Kenya. I started off in Beitbridge, Nkayi, Chipinge, Chimanimani, Masvingo, Goromonzi, Lupane, Matopo, Tsholotsho, Plumtree and Munyati. Each of these places tell a story on how climate change has affected them in one way or the other,” he said.
“The approach is very radical and I feel now is the time to do it and it is time when global young people are making the loudest noise against climate change and Africa is quiet. There is deafening silence when it comes to that.”

Ndlovu said the shoot was set to capture perfect natural occurrences which might be extinct if a strong position against climate change is not taken.

“We might not be worst affected as it stands, but the rate at which we are being negligent, for example, carbon emission levels, use of coal and other gases being emitted into the atmosphere when we have the Environment Management Agency, but not much action is being taken by them to curb environmental crimes,” he said.

“Legislation should also be put in place to combat climate change and also enforce the current legislation.”

Ndlovu said he will launch an online gallery and has engaged both local and international publications about the project.

“I have talked to editors of some local and international media houses to have the photos published. Since it’s all about climate change, I am sure the National Art Gallery will approve an exhibition, compared to my previous banned works and this is a self-funded project,” he said.

Ndlovu has also penned a controversial book, Guveya — a political satire, which has opened a new debate about Gukurahundi.