Tag: Zimbabwe

Harare demolitions: Residents say they’re not going anywhere

A Chitungwiza resident at what used to be her home. (Pic: Kumbirai Mafunda)

Eleanor Magaya was close to tears as she narrated how she has been continuously duped of her hard-earned cash by land barons.

“Shuwa ndongoita mari yekurasa veduwee?” (Should I keep on pouring money into waste?) she asked. Her house is one of the thousands that were razed down by authorities in Chitungwiza, 25km north of Harare. Residents say their homes were built legally but authorities disagree. Many were evicted while others had their homes destroyed.

In September, the Chitungwiza Municipality authorities razed down 70 residential and business buildings at midnight. On the other end the Harare City Council served 324 settlers in the high-density suburb of Glen Norah with eviction notices. So far, the demolitions in Glen Norah have not proceeded as residents armed with axes and knobkerries faced off with the police, forcing them to withdraw. Residents in Epworth (15km outside Harare) also had their houses destroyed and are facing eviction from the local authorities.

Chitungwiza town clerk, George Makunde, highlighted the demolitions were set to rid the town of illegal structures which were built on undesignated areas. “As long as people continue to illegally occupying council land, the demolitions will continue,” says Makunde.

However, the Zimbabwe High Court ordered the government to stop the unconstitutional evictions and demolition process. On October 9, Judge Nicholas Mathonsi ruled that the authorities would need a court order to demolish any more houses. Hundreds of people have been left homeless as a result of this government exercise, and it is unclear whether they will be compensated for their loss of property or be relocated.

Illegal or not?
A government audit of illegal structures carried out in December 2013 found that more than 14 000 residential stands in and around Chitungwiza had been illegally sold by housing co-operatives, councillors and village leaders. Much of the land where stands were illegally created were meant for the construction of clinics, schools, cemeteries, roads and wetlands.

Following the release of the report in January, Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Deputy Minister Joel Biggie Matiza was quoted in the state-owned daily The Herald, committing to a “well organised, humane” demolition process that would ensure all affected families were offered alternative land.

The residents of these “illegal structures” have vowed to remain at their stands and are threatening to fight back the move.

“I will not go anywhere, I paid for this land, I am not staying here for free”, Nomatter Matikiti, a Chitungwiza resident, said.

Housing backlog
According to the audited report, Zimbabwe has a staggering housing backlog of 1.3-million and government and local authorities are struggling to keep pace with ever-increasing urban housing demands.

The report fingered land barons and proliferation of housing co-operatives who came in as gap fillers, amassing wealth for themselves .

Dzimbahwe Chimbga, programmes manager for the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) said the demolitions “are quite devastating and disturbing as most of these people have only these homes and no other place to seek refuge. They happened at a time when not only the economy is ailing but as rains have also started,” said Chimbga.

The demolitions are said to have conjured memories of the 2005 Operation Murambatsvina which left 700 000 people displaced across the country.

Justice Mathonsi’s ruling on October 9 castigated the September demolitions, quoting section 74 of the Constitution: no person may be evicted from their home or have their home demolished without any order made after considering all relevant circumstances.

Mathonsi took a swipe at local authorities, saying that they have allowed illegal settlement to take root at the expense not only of the settlers but also organised urban planning and public health. He said local authorities are “now waking up and by force and power demolishing structures without regard to the law and human dignity“.

His decision has been applauded and although the demolitions have ceased for now, residents are yet to know whether they will still have a roof over their heads in the months to come.

Sally Nyakanyanga is a journalist in Zimbabwe.

10 years ago

Zimbabwe: The LGBTI community’s struggle for healthcare access

A woman walks past a billboard promoting male circumcision to combat Aids in the capital, Harare. (Pic: Reuters)

Seated on a bench in a clinic in Harare, Taenda Tavira (not his real name) waited patiently for his turn. As he entered the consultation room, the nurse asked: “How can I help you, young man?” Tavira didn’t know where to begin but he managed to point at his pants, mumbling something. Annoyed, the nurse snapped: “You are not the only one to be served, don’t waste my time.”

The young man gathered himself and with difficulty said he thought he had contracted a sexually transmitted disease. As he removed his pants in front of the nurse, she shouted: “I knew when you entered that something is wrong with you! Are you a man or a woman?” Stunned, Tavira pulled up his pants, walked out of the room and never went back.

This wasn’t the first time he was treated this way.

“I, like every other gay person, has to give in to a lot of insults and degrading inhuman utterances every day,” Tavira confides after relating the recent incident. He is open about his sexuality and the discrimination he faces at the hands of health personnel in Zimbabwe.

For Zimbabwe’s LGBTI community, disclosing one’s sexual orientation is a major barrier to getting accurate, appropriate and relevant medical treatment. Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (Galz) is an organisation that works to protect the interests of this minority group in the country. Its programmes manager Samuel Matsikure highlighted that as Zimbabwe’s leadership has openly denounced homosexuality, discrimination and stigma against the LGBTI community goes unpunished and will take a long time to uproot.

President Robert Mugabe has made it clear that homosexuality will never find a place in Zimbabwe. “Homosexuality degrades human dignity. Its unnatural and there is no question of allowing these people to behave worse than pigs and dogs … If you see people parading themselves as lesbians and gays arrest them and hand them over to the police,” he said in a speech at a Harare book fair in 1995. More recently, he maintained that “gays have no human rights” and reportedly called for the arrest of gays and lesbians who don’t conceive children.

This state-endorsed homophobia has made it difficult for Galz to get HIV and Aids prevention messages out to its 2100 members and the LGBTI community at large, who face a backlash from government and society and receive no support from public health institutions. About 15% of Zimbabwe’s adult population is living with HIV and Aids. There is currently no data available on the LGBTI community specifically.

“The hostile environment the gay community is exposed to, especially at health facilities in the country, has impacted negatively on their rights to basic services such as health,” Matsikure said. “Some have been keeping sexually transmitted infections for six to eight months without seeking help.”

“Such discrimination and stigma at the highest level makes our lives difficult and we remain a secretive and isolated community always fearing for our lives,” Tavira added.

Zimbabwe’s Constitution promotes universal access to health, enabling every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, to be treated with respect and have access to healthcare and support. The every day reality, though, is very different.

In a bid to address this, Galz has engaged the Zimbabwean government, the National Aids Council (NAC) and Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights to educate them about the LGBTI community.

“We have held sensitisation workshops with stakeholders to root out ignorance and misinformation associated with the LGBTI community. Hostility, and beliefs systems deep rooted against the practise of same sex relationships in the country will need to be reversed,” said Matsikure.

While Zimbabwe’s Constitution stipulates healthcare for all, it also outlaws same sex marriages. The gay community continues to be marginalised, making the fight against HIV and Aids all the more difficult. “The intersectionality of HIV and Aids between the broader heterosexuals and LGBTI community is a reality. If we are to reduce or end new infections, end deaths from Aids, end stigma and discrimination in Zimbabwe no one should be left behind,” said Matsikure.

Sally Nyakanyanga is a freelance journalist and media trainer based in Zimbabwe.

10 years ago

Zimbabwe: A call for new heroes

A Zimbabwean casts his vote in Epwath on March 16 2013 during a referendum on a new constitution. (Pic: AFP)

I am convinced that Zimbabwe is devoid of sensibility and sensitivity. Each year we celebrate the President’s Birthday, Independence Day, Heroes Day, Defence Forces Day, and recently we added a new banquet to the list: a celebration to remember Zanu-PF’s emphatic win in last year’s elections. This recent excess, unfortunately, is more senseless and insensitive given that we had already hosted the mother of all weddings for the first daughter, while the average citizen is facing one form of starvation or another.

Every August we celebrate Heroes Day to remember those who sacrificed their lives for this country. Never mind who determines who is a hero or not, that is not the issue at stake here. But this year on the 11^th I was sitting at home, hoping to watch the proceedings on ZTV. Okay, let me admit, I was too broke to make it anywhere else. So I woke up, took my usual bath and got myself ready for the event. I was eager to hear the President’s Speech. Each time you hear him speak, you get a feeling that this may be his last speech, and you want to be one of those few who will remember him with the nostalgia of one who knew him well.

Just as I was waiting for the day to fully begin, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority struck. The lights went off. Literally just switched off. I was left staring at a blank TV screen and, naturally, my mind decide to roam. Right there, I had my Voltaire moment: If it’s Heroes Day, then it means heroes are dying. And each time we bury one, we have less and less left and like it or not, soon and very soon, there won’t be any heroes left.

Now, as you know heroes are those people who literally went into the bush to wage the armed struggle against the Ian Smith regime and afterwards remained cadres of Zanu-PF. Anyone outside this bracket is subject to appointment and definition by this first group.

We can’t live without heroes. We need heroes because villains don’t die, they just morph into another form, and are waiting to pounce on us and devour us, literally. You know the villains. You know their races, their names, their children, and even how they will come. You even know their proxies in the event that they can’t show their faces, and you secretly admire yourself for refusing some of their proxies during the 2013 general elections.

Sitting there that day, watching a blank TV screen, it struck me that maybe we need new heroes.

Having been given the mandate by a current hero, the President, when he said that The Leaders will be selected by the people, and I am the people, I am taking our destiny into my hands to ensure that we have new heroes.

Forgive my long preamble, but here is the call for applications:

New Heroes wanted for a country currently sitting in an economic cesspool. Previous heroes need not apply because their applications will be dismissed with the impunity they deserve. Besides, we acknowledge that very few genuine heroes remain from the previous generation. Also, please note, THIS IS STRICTLY AN ECONOMICS AND ADMINISTRATIVE JOB AND NOT A WE-DIED-FOR-THIS-COUNTRY KIND OF JOB.

Duties:
Ensure Zimbabwe regains its breadbasket status

Create new jobs in their millions

Get various industries (primary, secondary and tertiary) working again

Mend broken international relations without necessarily selling away the country

Clear debt overhang, and strictly reduce future borrowing (bonding of minerals in the ground is a foolish idea you know)

Deal, with whatever tools available, with corruption

Qualifications:
Tertiary qualifications, while desirable, are not a prerequisite. What’s needed is a demonstrated ability to generate own wealth cleanly. To those who are looking for the big break, this may be the wrong post to apply to. We will be carrying out strict lifestyle audits on successful candidates. Anyone previously suspected, accused or convicted of corruption, theft by conversion or any such crimes that would make us doubt your ability to handle public funds honestly, need not even attempt to apply.

Also, no one will be allowed to hold the nation to ransom by refusing to vacate these new seats by claiming that only they deserve to rule or govern because they sacrificed the most for this country. As stated earlier, those who have the right to such claims are fewer and fewer now, and the few that remain are dying.

All applications must be addressed to:
The Public Recruiter (a.k.a. The Voter, who is smarting from a stupid voting decision during the 2013 general elections and cannot wait for 2018 poll)

Lawrence Hoba is an entrepreneur, author and passive politician. His short stories and poetry have appeared in The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories, Writing Lives, Laughing Now, Warwick Review and Writing Now. His anthology, The Trek and Other Stories (2009), was nominated for the NAMA in 2010 and went on to win the ZBPA award for Best Literature in English. It tackles the highs and lows of Zimbabwe’s land reform. Connect with him on Twitter: @lawhoba

10 years ago

Chido Govera: Transforming lives in Africa by growing mushrooms

Chido Govera. (Pic: futureofhope.org)

When she was 10 years old, Chido Govera was offered a way out. A relative walked many miles to see her and said: “You know, I see that you’re suffering and I would like to help you. The only way I can help you is my husband has a friend and he’s around 40, he’s been struggling to find someone to marry and he thinks if you marry him, it would be a chance of escaping all this poverty and abuse. So you should come and meet him next Wednesday.”

Other girls in Govera’s position in rural Zimbabwe might have acquiesced. She never knew her father and lost her mother to Aids when she was seven. She was left to care for her grandmother, who was virtually blind, and her five-year-old brother. She would often wake up at 4am, search for firewood, walk at least a mile to fetch water, work in a field, attend school and go to bed hungry. She was also physically abused by members of her extended family.

When it all became too much, aged nine, she dropped out of school, abandoning her mother’s dream for her of boarding school and studying in America. “It was tough,” she recalls. “I remember I cried many days after that and I used to watch other kids going to school that I used to run around with, and it was painful. But it was more painful to go to school and spend the whole time thinking about what’s going to happen when I get home. Getting back home to watch the hungry faces of my granny and little brother. It was unbearable.”

So when next Wednesday came, the young girl with few prospects was expected to meet the man 30 years her senior who would become her husband and provider. “The reason why I was supposed to find it attractive to marry him was because he had two sisters that were going to South Africa to buy clothing and coming back to Zimbabwe.”

She chose a different path: “I did not go because I realised if I got married, then I was leaving my grandmother and my little brother alone and I wouldn’t be able to help them any more.

“When I was eight years old I’d told myself, ‘I want to help other young orphans so they do not have to experience what I was experiencing.’ I thought, ‘If I get married, am I achieving that or not?’ And it was clear that was not the way to go. I didn’t go to meet the guy and my relative told me, ‘I tried to help you, you turned that down and from now on you’re pretty much on your own.'”

Green fingers
Today things looks very different for Chido Govera. At 28 she is a successful farmer, campaigner and educator with her own foundation, The Future of Hope. She has trained nearly 1 000 people in communities in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania and South Africa. Her work has reached schools and communities in India, Aboriginals in Australia and entrepreneurs in the US and around Europe. The key to this one-woman revolution is mushrooms.

A year after turning down the stranger’s marriage proposal, Govera was among 15 orphan girls in Zimbabwe invited to receive training in mushroom cultivation, supported by the Belgian environmental entrepreneur Gunter Pauli. She had been accustomed to harvesting mushrooms in the bush but this was different: “My grandmother was so knowledgeable that even when she couldn’t see any more she could smell which mushrooms were edible, inedible, poisonous … But to grow them was very strange.”

The group received bags of waste mixed with spores and learned how to manage a mushroom house. In less than a week, mushrooms were growing. When Govera took her first taste of one, it came as a shock. “They were completely different from mushrooms gathered from the forest,” she laughs. “It was a bit like eating a snail. It had sliminess to it and the crunchiness of a snail.”

Soon the group was producing enough to sell, earning money to buy food and pay for the school fees of orphans including Govera’s brother. “You realise that if you can work, you can actually get there step by step, you can put food on your plate,” Govera says. “In this case it was converting waste into food, creating food for the community, but also doing something that no one else in that community was doing. We were unique in that time, doing something that was highly scientific without having studied at all. In my case I’d only done five years of primary-level education. It was like magic.”

The girls’ success made them attractive marriage material and of the 15 taking part, 13 quickly fulfilled society’s expectations by finding husbands. Again, Govera did not. Instead, from the age of 12 to 16, she was to be found in a university laboratory taking advanced studies in what she describes as both the art and science of mushroom cultivation. She continued to hone her expertise during spells in Colombia, Serbia and China.

And in Pauli, she discovered the father figure that had always been missing in her life, most notably when she was being abused and had no one to turn to. “One of my biggest dreams, of course, never having met my father, was to actually have a father.

“The lady who was teaching us in the laboratory sent a message to Gunter Pauli saying, ‘You know what Gunter, we have a girl who’s got green fingers, mushroom fingers, and unlike the others she doesn’t want to get married.’ Then he says, ‘Well, what does she want?’ He was told she needs a father and that’s how he became my daddy.”

‘We are not what happened to us’
As Govera travels the developing world teaching mushroom farming to women and orphans, she is also pioneering new techniques, for example growing mushrooms from coffee grounds for commercial use.

Otherwise she divides her time principally between South Africa and Zimbabwe, a country many still associate with 90-year-old president Robert Mugabe’s authoritarian regime and its ruinous economic policies. “I don’t think I would be doing what I’m doing now in Zimbabwe if I didn’t believe there is a possibility for a change,” she says.

“I strongly believe that, regardless of what is happening in politics – not just in Zimbabwe but in many different parts of the world – if we want to change things, we will need to go to the grassroots and teach them to stand up for themselves, because if we can empower them beyond being a victim of a political situation, then we are making change happen.

“The reason why I go into communities, select groups of young orphans, empower those and bring them back into the communities to inspire change there is because we need to change the way change is viewed. People say politicians or the grownups or the successful ones are going to change things in the country, but I think everyone has a part to contribute.”

Zimbabwe’s politicians are sometimes accused of being imprisoned in the past. This is not something Govera herself could be accused of as she looks back on that 10-year-old who, one Wednesday, decided to take the road less travelled.

“I learned to redefine myself regardless of what happened to me when I was a kid,” she reflects. “I’ve been able to reclaim myself. This is something that’s required for every individual. We are not what happened to us.

“From those experiences there’s some kind of lesson that inspires me to do what I do now, but I’m not back in the moment when I was 10. I’ve dealt with that. I just look at the future with a new hope. I’m 100% sure that I am not going to be one of those women who say, ‘Things are the way they are because I grew up as an orphan.'”

David Smith for the Guardian

10 years ago

Dear Zanu-PF, here’s my application for one of those 2.2 million jobs you promised

Dear post-election Zanu-PF (aka Government of Zimbabwe)

RE: APPLICATION FOR ONE OF 2.2 MILLION JOBS

With reference to your election manifesto, which excited even the MDC-T to splitting point and made me put a cross next to your name on the ballot paper, I hereby apply, publicly, for any one of the 2.2 million jobs you promised in Zim Asset. In case you have forgotten, this is that economic blueprint you came up with in October 2013, which is meant to “to provide an enabling environment for sustainable economic empowerment and social transformation to the people of Zimbabwe”.

July 31 marked exactly one year since I cast my first official ballot in the country’s elections, ending previous attempts at maintaining my political virginity. Now, there is some background I should give you. I do not bet or play the lotto because everything I put my bet on seems to lose. Even when I want my football team to win, I don’t watch the match. That is why I have not been voting all these years. I hated to see what I love losing. But last year, for the first time, I took the risk – and the jinx was broken! You won the election. However, looking back on my country, I’m concerned about whether the jinx was really broken. Could it be that in you winning massively, Zimbabwe actually lost quite a lot?

Forgive my rambling. With so many of my job applications gone unanswered, I do not know if it was my cover letter that failed me, or the comma that was missing from my CV, or if it’s just that none of the 2.2 million jobs you promised are on the market yet. But the issue at stake here is that I am looking for a job, and urgently so, because I am 31 and unmarried and cannot afford to be unemployed. One may ask why I am applying to you. Most of the companies I approached are either already closing down or downsizing staff, and employing me is an unrealistic dream for them. But I know you have 2.2 million jobs that you promised me in 2013, and I have come to claim at least one.

I am one of those “resources that gives Zimbabwe a comparative advantage over regional and other international countries is its economic complexity that includes the strong human resource base, which is an outcome of a deliberate educational policy instituted by the ZANU-PF Government at Independence in 1980.” Unfortunately, I have been trying to make myself a useful resource with little success, hence I’m approaching you so that you can employ me.

I hold a qualification in tourism and hospitality, among other numerous qualifications, and should be glad that tourism is one of your key target economic areas with huge potential. It’s just that I have not seen what you referred to in Zim Asset as “Quick Wins” or “rapid results yielded “in the shortest possible time frame (October 2013 – December 2015)”. Obviously I blame this on the fact that no initiatives have been implemented or “blitz interventions” made since I voted for you. Damn the sanctions, of course. Oh, I had forgotten that there are also sanctions-busting strategies. So damn the inaction. What have you been doing this whole past year?

Secondly, survival has taught me all these other vital skills and given me a great deal of experience, which will account for any gap periods in my CV. Like most others, I am now a serial entrepreneur, sometimes vendor, marketer, social media enthusiast, administrator, occasional job-hunter and writer. So, do not get me into the unemployed-experience-unemployed conundrum. I don’t deserve it, neither do millions other Zimbabweans who have faced desperate situations, including this economy, and lived through it.

And if there are any other things that you deem important which I do not have, such as a driver’s licence and a passport, please remember that I might not have been able to afford the $200+ required to bribe driving inspectors, or had the time to wait in unending queues at the Registrar General’s offices.

And lastly, if it turns out that all the other vacancies have already been filled by the numerous educated but unemployed youths roaming the streets – most of whom are thinking of leaving the country – I would like to become one of the officials in the Office of the President and Cabinet who will “play a leading and co-ordinating role as overseer of the implementation process to ensure attainment of set targets of the Plan.”

At least I know that vacancies still exist in this section of Zim Asset because, with nothing happening, my only guess is that no one is co-ordinating the implementation process of this brilliant document. My claim to employment in this section is backed by my qualification in monitoring and evaluation, and validated testimonies that I am discreet, patriotic and intelligent enough to meet your requirements.

Please note:

Do not take this a joke; I really need a job and so do millions others. And the earlier you make those “blitz interventions” for “Quick Wins”, the better it is for all of us. December 2015 is not far away.
At this point don’t refer me to non-working youth funds. I have tried those before. All I need is a job. A piece of land would be a welcome alternative though.
Please ensure that I get a job in haste before South Africa and its post-election ANC deport the more than 3 million jobless Zimbabweans there back home.
I can attend interviews as fast as the kombi you want to banish without an alternative can take me to the venue.

Regards (because we are compatriots and I deserve better from you),
Lawrence Hoba