Grace Mutandwa

Blog Action Day: Take action and make poverty history

Politicians and donor agencies speak of poverty in romantic tones. When they pour out facts and figures in passionate voices you almost believe they are actually going to tackle it in a sustainable manner.

As a journalist, I used to write equally passionately about poverty. I actually believed I was making a difference. Just like the donors and politicians, I simply spoke or wrote about poverty. I had never gone to bed on an empty stomach or failed to pay for my children's education or foot their health bills.

Today I know first hand what poverty means. I have just had to buy five bags of maize for my extended family so that they can at least survive until the new year. From a life of priviledge, I have seen some members of my family plunged into poverty. When the politicians roll out the numbers, members of my family are included in the growing list.

I have several relatives who have one meal a day or every other day. They can not afford to get proper medical care. A cousin needs Z$45 000 to fill a prescription, that is if she pays cash but if she pays by cheque it swells to Z$2.5m. She is unemployed and her husband has not had a job in five years. They have four children who until their father lost his job, were well fed, went to school and lived a life of hope. They used to be classified as middle-class. Now they are poor.

The middle-class has disappeared. People are either rich or poor and the ranks of the poor are swelling everyday. Everyday you forgo one thing or the other so you may live to see tomorrow. Eventually there is nothing to hold onto and you fall into the huge poverty hole.

My maternal grandmother is stuck in our rural home and I and two cousins have been the only people who have been able to visit her. She has 29 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. She has three surviving children and they are all pensioners, surviving on the little doled out to them by their children. Their pensions of less than US$1 a month are worthless.

I have an aunt who has a son studying and working in the United Kingdom. That young man can not even start thinking of getting married let alone start his own family. He looks after his mum, three adult siblings, several aunts and cousins. His siblings are all out of school but they have never worked and have absolutely no hope of ever working.

I am not yet classified poor but I am surrounded by so many relatives who are, at times I feel poverty is just a stone's throw from my own doorstep. I live in fear of poverty.

It is very easy to talk of poverty in an abstract way, but it is hard when you actually have to deal with it everyday. It is there and stares you in the face all the time.

You only need to walk the streets of our capital city, Harare, to see how much of a toll poverty has taken on Zimbabweans. In the heat of the summer, you walk past masses of people who have probably not had a bath in a month. Soap, deodorant and toothpaste have become a luxury. That is poverty.

When three urban settlements get hit by cholera, killing 18 people, you know the country is not ready to make poverty history. With annual inflation now above 200 million %, reality on the ground tells you that Zimbabwe is facing; "poverty for all by the year 2010".

We have a whole generation of children who stand to be ruined because for the first time in history all the children in government schools have, according to the Zimbabwe Progress Teachers Union, had 23 days worth of education in the whole year. Teachers have spent more time on industrial action or in bank queues battling to get their worthless salaries, than teaching pupils. Some of the teachers have run away from the rural schools where they were terrorised by ruling party members in the run up to the disputed presidential run-off.

Surely it means Zimbabwe is facing unprecedented levels of poverty when the country has recorded a 78% food deficit with no real hope of the country being able to import enough grain to offset the deficit. More than five million people face starvation. And that is the number on record. There are plenty more who will die quietly and unnoticed.

The World Food Programme has appealed to donors to give several hundreds of millions with which to import food to help feed millions of Zimbabweans who can no longer feed themselves.

Poverty is surely something that most Zimbabweans are currently experiencing first hand and at the moment with the economic and political situation in a tailspin there is no hope of fighting it effectively.

We have had no substantive government for almost seven months now. With no one in control except Robert Mugabe, there are clear indications that we have a national disaster on our hands. A few will be fed by Mugabe's ZANU PF if they prove their loyalty but many will go hungry.

For us in Zimbabwe, poverty is no longer something donor agencies hold workshops over or something that you only read of in newspapers. It is very real and we see it everyday. We interact with poverty at every turn. We have seen our country turn from being a regional bread basket into a basket case. We have witnessed our country go from riches to rags. Where at independence in 1980 we had hope, we now have despair.

Yes, for Zimbabweans poverty is a painful reality and the adage; "The poor will always be with us," rings very true for us. With a good political leadership we would be a very rich country and any country that adopts Zimbabwe's ruinous policies will easily accompany us to doom. As citizens we need to reclaim our future and play a positive role in eradicating poverty.

If we do not take action and stand up now, we will fail to make poverty history - it will simply fast become our way of life.

Posted at 14:05 15 October 2008 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[4]

Economic reform is in the eye of the beholder

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed by the leaders of Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU PF and the two formations of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The politicians are talking, the economy continues to decline at an unimaginable speed and hunger is stalking the nation. On the surface all seems to be quite normal. People who still have jobs are still going to work. Students who can, are going to school or college, while vendors continue to make a quick buck from selling food in short supply at parallel market rates.

Our money has gained so many zeros, I am amazed anyone can still make sense of it. I salute my colleagues in the accounts section and those who work on our electronic accounting system to effect various purchases and payments day-in-day-out. How they can whizz around the zeros is a miracle.

This weekend I bought an imported bottle of red wine at Z$8.5 trillion, which in real money is about US$71 if you use last week's cash rate of $120 billion to the greenback. I also bought several 500ml bottles of mineral water there were no bigger bottles) at Z$1.2 trillion each.

We have had no water for more than a week. There was a time when we took having access to water for granted. Not anymore. I have become quite skilled at bathing myself in miniscule amounts of water. There is water in Zimbabwe but at times there either an inadequate supply of water treatment drugs or there is no power to pump water into our homes.

Negotiations under the MOU for a political settlement started a week ago but we have only now just learnt they have either been abandoned or adjourned, depending on who is speaking. I and colleagues I have spoken to are skeptical about the outcome of the talks. I guess we are realists.

While we wonder what our political future is going to be, the Reserve Bank Governor of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, has just announced that we are dropping 10 zeros from our currency!

Most Zimbabweans, even vendors, had become multi-billionnaires and now they will find their money has been re-denominated. It should make sense,but it does not. The coins that had been abandoned years ago, are once again legal tender. We will now have a $500 note which in real terms is 5 000 000 000 000 (five trillion). This will be the highest new note in circulation. A twenty-five cent coin will be part of the new currency. I am not so sure what it's real value will be.

You want to go shopping after this announcement - I can assure you, it is a mind boggling experience. There is not much to buy from shops anyway. In any case whatever money you have, loses value well before you set off for the shops. Our daily bank withdrawal limit was $100 000 000 000 ($100 Billion) which was just enough for a one way trip to work. From the beginning of August it has been set at $200 which is actually $2 trillion of the old money. You need three trips to the bank to access the equivalent of the highest note (500) now in circulation.

We are going to have to re-configure our lives. Public transport providers will have to re-work their fares and prices in shops will also have to shuffle around this new currency. We are even going to have a $10 coin and $10 note! And we have been told that we can do the switch over from old to new currency at "our own pace" until the end of the year. How very generous! I suppose this means all our problems are solved.

Unless the political situation in Zimbabwe is resolved, all these constant currency reforms will never work. They will remain temporary measures that only serve to prolong the suffering of Zimbabweans. Soon after the Governor of the Reserve Bank announced the new monetary reforms, President Robert Mugabe, who attended the presentation for the first time chided those who want him to step down. He also denounced his usual imagined detractors the leaders of America and Britain. To him it does not matter that Tony Blair no longer leads the British Government. He is still seen as a threat and behind the regime change agenda and so he also got a special mention (attack).

If Mugabe still sees himself as the main and indispensable part of the equation in a new Zimbabwe, what are the so called talks about then? Is he really serious about wanting an end to the political and economic turmoil? The opposition Movement for Democratic Change will either stand their ground and refuse to play the underdog, because they won the first round of the presidential and parliamentary elections, or accept being swallowed like what happened to the former ZAPU, led by the late nationalist Joshua Nkomo.

I am a cynic when it comes to politics so I do not see a happy ending to the talks the MOU gave birth to. It will all end in tears. We have representatives of the two formations of the MDC and ZANU PF talking in a secret venue in Pretoria, South Africa. On the other hand state radio, television and the papers seem to be still running a campaign of sorts for President Mugabe. A month after the June 27 presidential run-off war music is still being played on national radio. Do they know something we don't?

President Mugabe's wife, Grace, has become almost the main political face of ZANU PF. The state media feature her dishing out food handouts and telling people about the "virtues" of ZANU PF. Is she campaigning for her husband or is she building the foundations of her own political career? It might spice up the already hot political scene if it turns out she is aiming for the top job. She has been opening state funded "People's Shops" where goods are sold at way below their true value. She has also been dishing out free food hampers that contain a 2,5kg of sugar, 1kg salt, 2,5kg flour, a 750ml bottle of cooking oil, bath soap, 100ml of toothpaste, vaseline (a paraffin based petroleum body jelly) and a 500g laundry powder soap. When sold in the people's shops, the same hamper costs a paltry $105 billion. That amount cannot buy a loaf of bread.

All these foods are imported under the Government's Basic Commodity Supply Side Intervention (BACOSSI) programme which is bankrolled by the central bank. Our manufacturing industry continues to suffer a severe decline in output. Agriculture is almost non-existent. There is no new tangible investment inspite of all the stories we read in the state media about countries in the Far East expressing interest.

Mad does not even start to describe the everyday decisions of some of our political leaders. It is surreal. The fact that we have been able to survive this madness for seven years must mean we are all well and truly CERTIFIABLE.

There is a sense of pending doom. A sense of something being plotted. President Mugabe is still thanking Zimbabweans for voting for him "overwhelmingly" in advertisements in the state media. This is despite the fact that he won in a one-man race. We still hear advertisements promising us "100% empowerment, and total independence" but all we feel is total impoverishment and a sense of foreboding. And of course, Mugabe believes we have a "real" democracy, but then again, democracy is in the eye of the beholder!

Posted at 11:28 01 August 2008 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[2]

Give me an armoured car and open the borders

My daughter says every home should have been built with a bunker.Someone I used to consider a friend thinks the brutal deaths taking
place in the country are "absolutely normal" because according to him we got our independence through the barrel of the gun so in his view
any change has to be sealed by blood.

My daughter is not mad. My former friend might actually be on the verge of madness. At 18 my daughter does not feel safe in her home anymore. We have
seen evidence of petrol bombed houses. At times I think the whole country has gone mad. Inflation must now be above two or three million. We carry around billions of worthless paper called money and it does not buy much. You need more than a trillion Zimbabwean dollars to buy just one Greenback.

And on top of that we now have a one-man presidential run-off. We do make history in everything we do. Zimbabwe is a country of such beauty but right now it is brutal in equal measure. On the 27th of June we are all supposed to go and vote for our sovereignty. We have no choice in what we want or whom we want. We are voting for our own survival.

I used to watch the goings on in Burma on television but now what the people of Burma have been going through is on our doorstep. The whole world is condemning the violence and brutality going on as President Robert Mugabe campaigns in the one man election. Our government of course is not bothered that we have become a pariah. They do not care that no-one in the international community will recognise the results of this run-off.

Even Africa is baulking at the level of brutality going on in Zimbabwe, right under the noses of African observors.My daughter is right. Every home should be built with a bunker. But this would work only if the country was at war with another country or some rebel group but it is not. In such a situation we would all be reasonably expecting to be bombed. What we need are open borders and armoured vehicles to escape the current war against the people.

Zimbabwe has become a country where you can be snatched on your way to work and your body will be found some days later at times. A person walking to the neighbourhood shops to buy bread can be diverted to a ruling party political rally or to put up campaign posters. This is a country that used to be largely described as Christian. Even some of the leaders profess to being God-fearing, but over the past few Sundays we have had people asked to
leave church and join rallies nearby. Opposition leaders are in hiding. More people are staying home in the evenings because it is not safe to venture out. Even during the day you leave home only because you have to go to work.

State radio, television and newspapers are full of hate speech. It takes a very brave person to listen to the radio, watch television or read the papers. The blatant propaganda is hard for any sensible person to stomach let alone believe. Bombarding people with advertisements that are hard to believe and electronic programmes that assume that people are halfwits can only ensure that people continue to look for alternative news and information sources.

Anyone who believes that everyone wearing regalia of a single party is a supporter has to have their head examined. Cars are plastered with posters of a single party - the ruling party. Zimbabweans are a clever people. They catch on fast and they know how to survive in tricky situations. Singing and chanting at a rally that you have been forced to attend at times is a small price to pay for your safety.

This might be the time to ask for divine intervention because all the world can do is look on and wring their hands.

Posted at 14:25 27 June 2008 by Grace Mutandwa  |  Comments[1]

Horror in Zaka

No jokes in this piece, sadly. It’s just too grim.

I am making yet another election monitoring trip in Masvingo this week, along with our Human Rights Officer. It’s the eighth trip the British Embassy has made to the province since February in an effort to know first-hand what is going on. People are starting to recognise us.

The call comes through while we are in Bikita, watching a group of officials and stony-eyed youths in ZANU-PF regalia giving maize meal to party supporters. The Government has annihilated agriculture and has now forbidden UN agencies and NGOs from distributing food. So unless you promise ZANU-PF that you’re going to vote for Robert Mugabe on 27 June, you starve.  

The call says that there has been a bomb attack in Zaka and that people are dead. We aren’t planning to go to Zaka, but it’s only 20 miles away, 15 minutes the way Elvis drives, so we go.

First stop the police station.  A smooth plod denies any knowledge of a fatal attack in Zaka. He’s really good and we actually believe him. But I should have smelled a rat when he showed no interest in investigating my report, but lots of interest in who had called me with the tip-off.

On to the MDC office where we’ve been told the bombing took place. I have to get Elvis to pull over so I can admire the view behind a tree and, as we are parked, a police Landover, going fast, overtakes us. By the time we reach the MDC office, two policemen are standing some distance from it, instructing us to leave the area.

I must admit I lose my temper a little. I ask the more senior policeman why he is obstructing international observers going about their proper business. I ask him if he had arrested anyone for murder. I ask him if he, in fact, knows exactly who has done this.

The policeman says he had orders to obey. I ask him if he’s heard of the international tribunals where war criminals are put on trial, and the Nuremberg defence. I do appreciate that all this is going too far, but honestly, the indifference of this man to every aspect of a horrifying mass murder, other than covering it up, is too much to tolerate.

While our unsatisfactory conversation is going on, we manage to get reasonably close to the MDC office. It is entirely burned out. Elvis pulls the car up beside me and says sharply, “it is time to go NOW, this man is losing control”.

As we shoot off, another call. A man injured in the attack has been taken to a hospital in Masvingo. We zoom over there, Elvis-fast, and find the man - bandaged hands and feet and burned hair. His story of what happened is horrible.

Six MDC officials, sleeping in their office, were woken by the arrival of an armed gang at 4am. The armed men forced the officials to lie down and shot three people immediately. (I pray to any available God that they were killed outright). Petrol was poured over them all and they were set alight. The man I am talking to managed to tear off his clothes, beat out the flames burning his body and escape. Two men are dead, their bodies unrecognisably burned, and another suspected dead but his body is missing. Two men have burns over large areas of their bodies. They will be lucky to live.

If you are one of the few people in this world who believe there is not a ghastly crisis in Zimbabwe; if you believe the brazen official lies that the MDC is responsible for the violence; or if you believe that a fair election is possible when opposition party workers are being burned alive, I urge you to reflect on what you have just read, and think again

Posted at 10:32 10 June 2008 by Philip Barclay  |  Comments[7]

Pisa in Bikisa

The light from the candle on the trestle table catches Tobias’ face, casting Rembrandtesque upward shadows from his features. A big-eared bug lights on his shoulder, but Tobias is concentrating so deeply on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission manual that he doesn’t notice the creature, which appears to be peering down to study the impenetrably bureaucratic guidance too.

Tobias inhales.

“Now we can open the seals on the ballot boxes. But first I must warn our foreign observer from the British Embassy that once I break these seals you cannot leave until the counting is fully complete.”

I nod. Some fiddling with keys and sealing wax; and suddenly a pile of ballot papers pours onto the table. Slumbering polling officers spring to life and grab ballots chaotically, shouting out and flinging papers at each other:

“ZANU-PF!”

“Makoni!”

“Tsvangirai!”

Tobias tries to referee the frenzy and finally persuades his colleagues to collaborate in producing three piles, one for each of Zimbabwe’s presidential candidates. I am so captivated I find I’m holding my breath. The piles take shape. One is just a few papers; the second is a decent pile, about as tall as a doughnut. The third is a tottering, towering Pisa of papers.

I am in a tiny place called Bikisa, deep in rural Masvingo, where Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has won every election that has ever been held. (Ian Smith did not believe in elections for black folk). So my assumption is that the big pile is Mugabe’s.

But I am wrong. The presiding officer asks for the votes to be counted. The smallest pile is Simba Makoni’s – 11 votes. The middling pile is Mugabe’s – 44 votes. Amazingly, incredibly, the Pisa-pile belongs to Morgan Tsvangirai. The polling officer gets tongue-tied at ‘one hundred and twenty-seven’ and loses count. She sighs desperately and starts again. 167. Tsvangirai has won with about three-quarters of the vote.

I force myself to keep breathing steadily; fainting at this point would not become an officer of Her Majesty’s Government. Though I suppose I could plead hunger. Anticipating that I would be locked into the count for hours, my bag is full of chocolate and other essential rations, but I feel too self-conscious to stuff my face while this little piece of history is happening right in front of me.

Bikisa, of course, is only one of 9,400 polling stations. So my result is just one small head of mealie in a very big field. But it’s suggestive, and as I travel round other polling stations and speak to British Embassy and DFID colleagues in remote parts of every province, it’s the same story. Tsvangirai has done well and his Movement for Democratic Change has made gains in areas where its activists used to be beaten for wearing a party t-shirt.

Tobias, like a million other Zimbabweans is a decent and principled professional, who has done his job scrupulously and well. This election may be fiddled, but not by him. By the time he releases me it’s the early hours of Sunday morning. The Milky Way stretches over me. Weakened by lack of chocolate I am overcome by whimsy – I see a starry pathway to infinity paved with hope and new possibility. Definitely time to take a breath and eat some chocolate. Not, sadly, a Milky Way.

A policeman sidles up and whispers in my ear:

“Mr Philip, we are so pleased you are here, but do you really think there is hope?”

Tonight the answer is yes. Tomorrow, who knows? Will they ever dare to release these results? How does a country that has only ever transitioned by violence accept peaceful change? Next week’s questions. Now to bed.

Posted at 12:53 07 April 2008 by Philip Barclay  |  Comments[5]