Masakhaneni Projects Trust

The events that unfolded from the 14^th to the 19^th of January 2019 have left all of us as citizens of this country shell shocked. We have always known that violence is endemic in our society. We are a country that was colonized through violence and liberated itself through violence. Although these two forms of violence have no moral equivalence, the common denominator is that lives were lost, property destroyed in both episodes.

We need national healing as a matter of urgency. The events were precipitated by what was meant to be a response to economic hardships. People were called on by the ZCTU officials to stay home as a show of displeasure at the hardships writ on the generality of Zimbabweans by current government policies.

This is my personal narrative with respect to what I think happened. Our divided society has different narratives some speculative some accusatory and some obscurantist to put it bluntly. Many of us saw the same things but drew different conclusions about the causes, and most significantly,  about the perpetrators. If we cannot agree on anything else, at least as citizens, we agree that lives were lost, how many we are not sure. We agree that massive destruction of property occurred and that millions of dollars were lost as a result.  We agree that among the dead was a police officer.  Business people lost their life savings. Residents took away goods from their local shops. Some got arrested afterwards and suspected that their neighbors had tipped off the police. As a result there is tension, suspicion and mistrust between neighbors. Children are said to have ‘looted’ school stationery. Some women are reported to have looted sanitary towels. The story is told that men looted alcohol whilst women looted sugar, mealie-meal and other essentials. One video shows a woman pushing a trolley full of groceries. As the trolley gets stuck in a pothole, a child helps her get it over the pothole and a bystander is heard advising the woman to loot only what she can afford to carry. Some shops were looted and then burnt to ashes. Most were looted and generally trashed. On the third day of what had been two days of a total shutdown, residents visited their regular supermarkets to replenish empty fridges and bare pantries. The queues at these shops were discouraging. However, the police with their riot equipment, were at hand to control the numbers that were allowed into the shops.  Some wished the police had shown similar presence in numbers as shops were being looted and burnt down into ashes in the western suburbs. There are disturbing videos of armed men beating up civilians.  There are also saddening videos of women who allege they were raped by armed and uniformed men.

Residents relate harrowing incidents of youth blocking roads and then demanding money from motorists seeking to proceed on that road. We hear of residents who protected their local shop from being looted. We hear stories of the police and in some instances the army encouraging people to loot.  There are court reports of police and army being arrested for looting. What do I make of all of this? This is a country that is hurting, it is hurting badly. 38 years after independence our claim to nationhood is tenuous. We are poor, we are unemployed, there is corruption right across the board, and our economy is screaming for rescue, our nation cries for healing. We need to be an empathetic nation that sees value in solidarity. We want to believe that we are stronger together. But we need to admit that we have lost hope in our country becoming a fair, just and equitable place to raise children who do not burn down shops. Our children have lost the ability to laugh and be happy because, we their parents, are unhappy and do not laugh anymore. We must accept that we have a disturbing capacity to inflict pain and harm on each other. We are a violent society, so are our institutions that should know better than to harm us –citizens.

We at Masakhaneni experienced the destructive events at first hand. My son’s shop at Emganwini was looted and vandalized extensively. When I worked for the promotion and strengthening of co-operative production at ZIMPRO, we assisted former ZIPRA combatants source funds for the construction of a building complex at Entumbane. These former combatants were sustaining themselves from rentals obtained from leasing out offices ad space in this building. The building was burnt totally. We did the same thing with the former ZIPRA combatants who owned property at Mountain View in Magwegwe, it too was completely burnt.

Some of our staff tell of harrowing experiences on the roads as they walked home on Monday in the face of burning tyres and unfriendly gangs manning those roads. One of these is a heart wrenching experiences which saw a staff member serving two lives at midnight on the fateful Monday. A nursing mother herself, she was approached by a woman in the dead of the night, in labour and desperately in need of transport to ferry her to the nearest hospital. The husband of the woman in labour was away on work errands and could not be reached by phone. Neighbors who owned cars were not in a position to help due to the situation that was obtaining in the roads. The situation was just tense and menacing.  Confronted by such a situation the staff member in question had to act fast. Two ambulances (the city council one and mars) called were not in a position to help too citing lack of a driver and a car respectively. Leaving her 2 month old infant in the house the staff member had to take a risk. The woman was in such a bad state that an hour of waiting was going to be disastrous. Braving the situation the woman was driven to the nearest 24 hour centre (Nketa 6) passing through barricades of rocks, rubbish, poles, street lights and anything that the marauding “omavala” deemed useful for their cause. The place was however closed. The only other place where the woman in labour could get help was UBH. Using her last 5litres in the car, the staff member finally drove that woman to UBH. She gave birth in not more than 20mins after arrival. One wonders what could have happened to that woman and her child had she failed to get to hospital in time. Two lives that were at a risk of dying that day were served

As a result of the disturbances, we lost 14 working days. Most of our programs are about conflict resolution and management among and within communities. I think we have learnt a number of lessons that we seek to apply in the implementation of some of our programs. Above all we believe that we Zimbabweans do not talk to each other often enough. We need dialogue among ourselves structured and unstructured. We need to talk about our citizenship in all its configurations. We need to dialogue about our past, we need a dialogue about the future of our children. We need a dialogue about an economy that does not include all of us. We have to dialogue about why there is so much corruption in our land. We need to find answers about all the hatred that permeates every aspect of our public discourse.

Above all we have to talk about why there is so much fear of the uniformed forces in our land. We need to talk about the role of civic organizations in our land. We must talk about the role of traditional leaders. There is so much to talk about. Some will say but the constitution addresses most of these issues we will then have to talk about why the constitution is not as effective as it should be.

We have to continue talking to each other in order to lower the mistrust that exists among our people.  Above all we need to keep talking because ours is a young country whose various institutions are work in progress, we begin to own and strengthen these institutions if we are in a constant dialogue among ourselves at various levels.

I have been reflecting on MPT programs and realise that all of them seek to tip the scales of justice and fairness in favour of the less privileged. I will not attempt to define who in our communities fits in the definition of “less privileged”. Suffice to say that when members of the communities we work in, men, women, girls and boys, enjoy basic freedoms like the freedom of choice, freedom of expression, freedom from fear and freedom from hunger, as well as the freedom of the acquisition of knowledge and information, MPT would have achieved a much.

TROICARE/TRACE supports MPT in enhancing the protection and promotion of Human Rights in the communities we work in. We notice that as we engage in MOU’s with various local government entities, there is some consternation about the concept of Human Rights. The rights of our communities are enhanced when they have access to clean water to drink, the children are able to attend schools close to them, and there is neither domestic nor any other form of organised violence whose objective is to deny communities freedom of choice.

In partnership with CAFOD, MPT seeks to improve the participation of women and youth in decision making structures through livelihoods. In our view, women and youths should actively participate in development projects by being elected to various committees or structures that are relevant to the enhancement of livelihoods.

The Open Society of Southern Africa is funding MPT’s bid to ensure that the Girl child’s chances of accessing quality education are improved. The adage that you educate a woman then you educate a nation”, applies in the choice of this kind of support. Women constitute the majority in our society, thus educating women gives the community a chance to increase its skills base whilst strengthening the status of women who tend to be marginalised in most societies.

We at MPT, know for a fact that communities that are in conflict hardly find common cause to promote their collective interests. Their urgency is compromised and they lag behind in development. The Oloff Plame Centre therefore funds MPT’s community work that improves community solidarity and diversity through the creation of collective voices and negotiations. Communities learn to tolerate diversity and promote co-existence. Peace enables communities to expand their energies in productive activities which in turn improves the guarding of life of communities; this is called the peace dividend.

PACT looked at MPT’s program and contributed to strengthening existing initiatives that seek to empower women and youths in decision making in their communities. This intervention is premised on a shared vision that places the role of youth and women at the centre of the whole democratization project in rural areas where the majority of the citizens we work with live.

In rural Sitezi in Gwanda North, SIDA is supporting the construction of a Reflection Centre where young people will be provided with space to think critically about their roles as citizens and stakeholders in their communities. They will be provided with opportunity to reflect and choose the skills that they believe would enhance their participation in development activities in their communities.

It has been an extremely busy period for the Masakhaneni Staff who have worked tirelessly to ensure the success of the various projects. The economic uproar posed as a threat in the carrying out of some of our projects but MPT staff rose to the occasion to ensure that none of our projects were negatively affected.

Does Zimbabwe have an economy?

Herewith a seemingly simple yet thought provoking question to ponder on. Does this our country have an economy? In light of the release of the recent monetary policy statement released on the 2nd of October 2018, it is imperative to critically evaluate what passes for the economy of Zimbabwe in order to establish and map a way forward for the average Zimbabwean whose life and day to day activities are tremendously affected by decisions made at national level.

What is an economy? According to the Collins Dictionary 2018, an economy is the system according to which the money, industry and trade of a country or region are organised; a country’s economy is the wealth it gets from business and industry. For a long time now in Zimbabwe when the term ‘economy’ is mentioned, the first thing that pops up in someone’s head is money and how the depreciation of the currency used at the time (bond notes in this instance), negatively affects trade as prices spiral upwards and shortages in commodities occur. What kind of economy are we going to have when productivity in most sectors has plummeted? Production means jobs, jobs mean income for households. Taxes are levied from those who have jobs. Then the state can maintain social services.

Zimbabwe currently has a $16.9billion debt which covers both the domestic and foreign debt. What is saddening to note is that despite the steepness of this debt, there is practically no development on the ground to justify such a borrowing. Funds borrowed for the purpose of benefiting an economy ideally should be organised in such a way that profits are realized; this means borrowed funds are poured into production and farming activities. Not only does production answer the question of paying back the incurred debt, it also explains the question of the availability of commodities. By Friday the 5th of October 2018, the inflation rate had gone up by 230% and this resulted in a serious hike in goods prices and has also resulted in the shortage of commodities as goods are purchased from neighboring countries such as South Africa and Botswana and in order to purchase these commodities, there is the need for forex which is only available on the black market at ludicrous rates.

The average employed Zimbabwean is receiving a salary in bond notes whereas the unemployed Zimbabweans who constitute of 90% of the population do not even have a salary and are struggling to make ends meet. With the then continued increase in prices of commodities, how is the Zimbabwean citizen expected to survive?

Not so many years ago, Zimbabwe was the bread basket of SADC, providing maize for the SADC region; it was through the country’s productive ability that the country had a strong economy and a stable currency. That however is not the case today, thus the question which I leave with you to ponder is; Does Zimbabwe have an economy?