Grace Mutandwa

Life goes on

Someone dies, someone disappears and later reappears in court or their body is discovered decomposing somewhere. More than 50,000 people are struck by cholera and 3,028 of them die.

We all worry about these developments, do what we can to help ease the pain butat the end of the day, life for those still free to move around goes on. We go out,we invite friends to dinner, get invited to share a curry or a drink and slowly we continue with our lives.

This is the reality of life. Even in war torn countries life of sorts still goes on.A toddler spends several weeks with an abducted parent and later becomes a guest of the state in one of the country's worst prisons. Still we talk about it for a while and soon enough we move on.

Several are starving but those with the means feast -their lives go on. Survival itself has become a major feat and those who still can drag themselves around do so with dwindling empathy and patience for the less fortunate.

Two 13-year-old girls incessantly ring my gate bell and when I answer, they tell me they are looking for jobs and that they have not eaten in days. They will work for food because being paid in local currency is useless. They have walked all the way from the high density suburb of Dzivaresekwa, west of the Harare.

I already have domestic help so I give them water and two slices each of bread. The food and water soon disappear. The two skinny-looking girls thank me profusely and ask me for old clothes.

My youngest and only daughter is an 18-year-old who is built bigger than the two. She is away studying but before she left home she cleaned out her wardrobe and gave various cousins some of her clothes - so there is nothing to give.

My heart bleeds. No child should ever have to go through what those two are going through.

All this gets me thinking about how really jaded we have become with political, economic and social situation in the country. Even as I spoke to the two girls it struck me how distant I managed to remain even as I gave them the bread and water.

There is something dead in us as a people. Several stories were written and appeals launched on behalf of journalist, turned activist Jestina Mukoko. She is a prominent person, so journalists tend to focus on her. The toddler who went missing with its parents got a mention every now and then if it was lucky.

Even when the toddler turned up at a police station with its parents being accused of banditry, we as a nation failed that child. We behaved as if it was the most normal thing for a baby to be incacerated. News that the baby too was beaten to force the mother to confess, just makes the whole story very sordid, and still no one raised a voice.

The Child Protection Society suddenly died - not a single word from them. The other so called children's rights organisations just disappeared off the earth. We have become damaged goods.

We are facing a bleak year. Politicians want power but they do not seem to realise that with power comes responsibility. When I sit through 16-hour powercuts it does not make me feel better to find out that the same is happening in Nepal. Citizens deserve the best from their government.

When people hanker after power they must realise and accept the fact that they must be accountable and that citizens expect improved standards of living and not to be taken back to the dark ages.

Zimbabwe used to be Southern Africa's breadbasket. It is shameful that today we produce nothing. Today we import turkeys from Peru and chickens from Uruguay. There is something very wrong and we can not even ask God anymore to put it right because God left Africa ages ago - in fact when he did he never even passed through Zimbabwe.

So in a way life goes on.

Posted at 12:04 03 February 2009 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[4]

We Shall Overcome

We shall overcome - one day peace will prevail over brutality.

Zimbabwe has joined the international community in commemorating the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence. All well and good but problem is, this is the same country where nobody who stands up to the regime is safe. In Zimbabwe this commemoration has lost meaning.

Jestina Mukoko, a former media colleague turned human rights activist was abducted from her home in the early hours of 3 December. A defenceless woman, clad only in her nightdress was forcibly taken by more than 10 armed men.

As director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), Jestina exposed and documented various human rights abuses before, during and after the Zimbabwean elections and subsequent disputed presidential run-off.

Jestina was working consistently and lawfully for the advancement of peace in Zimbabwean communities. Soft-spoken, Jestina is a warm, brave woman who went about her work in a  non-threatening way.

All efforts by her lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa to get the courts to attend to an urgent  application for a court order for the police, to produce Jestina if she was in police custody, or if not, to launch a search for her was only heard on the 9th December after a tortuous struggle by human rights lawyers.

Reports abound of female judges finding excuses not to hear it. One would have thought fellow women would be gravely concerned and falling over each other to get to the bottom of this savage abduction. But no, it seemed either too hot or not in their interest.

Yes a woman judge eventually heard it and ordered Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri, to delegate a team of police officers to work closely with lawyers from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) to search for Jestina, to search all places as maybe within their jurisdiction in terms of the Police Act and Constitution of Zimbabwe and to report progress to the Registrar of the High Court by 1000hrs each day until her whereabouts have been determined.

What about all those female politicians who only a few months ago were urging fellow women, including Jestina, to vote for them. Where are all those women today when one of their own is in trouble? What do these women stand for?

Abductions in Zimbabwe as human rights lawyers continue to point out, have resulted in many deaths. Everyone is worried that she was not even given the opportunity to put on decent clothes, get her spectacles and medication. We are even more concerned that no-one in authority seems keen to get to the bottom of the abduction.

The people who abducted her identified themselves as police officers. The police say they know nothing of the abduction and also argue that they can not search for her in Central Intelligence Organisation or military centres as they have no jurisdiction.

The fact that the Zimbabwean government is a signatory to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which recognises the protection to life and physical integrity of a person and is against arbitrary deprivation of liberty, has not in any way helped to protect those Zimbabweans who have stood up for what is right.

If anything, Zimbabweans have found themselves even more vulnerable. There is no protection for those seen as enemies of the State. And Jestina through her work had turned into an enemy of the State. A helpless mother of a 17-year-old boy and an aunt and guardian to a six-year old, Jestina was abducted at gunpoint - treated as a dangerous mass murderer.

That some people can actually live with themselves after being party to such brutality really breaks my heart. That some Zimbabweans believe life is worthless and can be treated with such disdain makes me grieve for my country. We have hit rock bottom, if we have lost all respect for the rights of others.

If anyone can wake up in the morning after participating in such brutality and look themselves in the mirror and still go around as if what they have done is the most normal thing, then the country has really hit rock bottom. We are in serious trouble.

It is indeed deeply, deeply sad, that Zimbabwe is stuck in a region where very few leaders have spoken up about the current brutality. What is going on here is happening on these men and women's watch and yet they are not moved. Where is the Southern African region's conscience?

It is a sad day indeed for all peace-loving and democratic Zimbabweans to wake up to the news that a group of armed men raided and abducted a defenceless woman in front of her shocked family.

What Jestina and several other activists who have been equally tormented stand for, is something that is so big that it scares some people. Scares them enough to get together a group of armed men to abduct one helpless, nightdress clad woman.

I am deeply sad but the more I think of what it took and how many people it took toabduct Jestina, the more proud I feel of this hard-working, soft-spoken woman. She is bigger than her tormentors. She is stronger than they ever will be.

If Jestina's abduction was meant to scare civil society then it was a terrible misculculation as this has made people stronger and even more determined to ensure that Zimbabwe becomes a country where human rights are respected and upheld and a place where ourguiding principles are of good governance and democracy.

People who use brute force and torture others, do so because they are scared of what their victims stand for. Wherever you are Jes, you are in our hearts, our trueheroine, a woman not afraid to stand up and be counted for the good of her country. We shall overcome.

Posted at 10:01 12 December 2008 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[5]