Dear Family and Friends,

It’s been a long time since the news broadcasts on Short Wave Radio Africa have been deliberately jammed by loud, repetitive electronic noises but suddenly, alarmingly, its back. 

The jamming of SW Radio Africa began at 7.20pm on the night of the 1^st September 2010. The news bulletin was by then more than two thirds completed and a report on the need for extra funding for the constitutional outreach programme was just about to be aired. A loud interference broke into the broadcast, the repeated tones continuing until 8.00 pm, making it impossible to hear the remainder of the news reports or the following half hour programme.

Suspicions were immediately raised and the automatic question is:  What’s going on? What is it that the Zimbabwe government doesn’t want us to know? 

Its been over ten years since the fight for political dominance in Zimbabwe destroyed agriculture and business, chased 4 million people out of the country and turned our lives upside down; ten years during which we all learned what signals to look out for when something is up. The jamming of SW Radio Africa is one of those very clear signs and eyebrows are up.

You would think that that with the explosion of cell phone lines in the country and the return of an independent daily newspaper there wouldn’t be a need for radio jamming anymore, but that’s not the case. For the vast majority of Zimbabweans a newspaper is a luxury; computers, emails and internet access are a remote dream and sitting listening to a short wave radio station for two hours a night is the only way to get information that’s not blatant propaganda.

So what is that they don’t want us to know?

Could it be the news that a Bulawayo artist is facing charges with a 20 year prison term for an art exhibition?

Or the fact that the former education minister and Mashonaland East Governor is in a renewed land grab on the few remaining farms in and around Marondera ?

Perhaps it’s the continuing reports of intimidation and harassment surrounding the constitutional outreach programme.

Maybe it’s the 24 point document outlining action to be taken to apparently resolve issues outstanding from the tri party political agreement - issues which are 18 months overdue.

Or maybe, the jamming of SW Radio Africa is being done so that we can’t hear the voices of ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives in a country where fear, intimidation and harassment are still all around us all the time and the only real change we see from our huge government is food in our shops.

When SW Radio Africa asked MDC Information minister Nelson Chamisa what was behind the radio jamming, Mr Chamisa said he didn’t know the station was being jammed. His response was a mirror image of MDC co Home Affairs minister Theresa Makone, When asked about the arrest and detention of a Bulawayo artist, Mrs Makone said she didn’t know about it.  How soon they’ve forgotten that SW Radio Africa was their only voice before they got into Zimbabwe’s massive government – a voice they don’t listen to anymore?

Ironically the jamming of SW Radio Africa doesn’t make less people listen to the broadcasts, but exactly the reverse because now even more people want to know what the government are trying to hide. Until next time, thanks for reading, love Cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

We’ve had an electricity crisis of major proportions this past week which has bought the routines of everyday life to a standstill. Businesses without computers, offices unable to access records, machines that cannot be operated and of course, no electricity means no water which makes things even harder still. Repeated calls to electricity supplier ZESA have yielded nothing: no explanation, apology or excuses just two little words spat contemptuously at you for daring to ask: ‘load shedding’ they say. 12, 15, 18 and even 22 hours a day we’ve been subjected to ‘load shedding’ at a time when the country is desperate for business, production and growth. One man home businesses have come to a complete standstill. Small businesses without the means to provide their own electricity are complaining that they’ve been losing about five hundred dollars a day. Bigger businesses estimate lost income of around five thousand dollars a day, not to mention employees sitting around doing nothing who will all have to be paid at the end of the month. Employees who came to work in the morning without having had a proper meal and will go home to much the same: a smoky fire outside and no water to bath or wash with.

Every outlet that can afford to run them, have resorted to generators. In all shapes and sizes the machines clutter pavements and alleyways and pedestrians have become adept at picking a safe path through the wires and conducting their business over the clattering, thumping and roaring of the engines. The power cuts have become so ridiculous this week that even the petrol stations have resorted to using generators to pump fuel into customers’ vehicles. It’s a slow process if you happen to be in a car though because there is a steady line of people on foot jumping the queue as they wait to fill plastic bottles with a litre or two of petrol for generators.

Craziest of all about this week’s non existent electricity is the sure and certain knowledge that come the end of the month our electricity bills will be as high as they always are. First world bills for fourth world service, or even no service at all.

The knock on effects of these extended power cuts is having a devastating impact on the environment. From early in the morning to last thing in the evening the sound of wood chopping is all around. Emerging from bush and woodland all the time is a steady stream of women carrying huge piles of newly cut wood on their heads. Some is for their own use but more is for sale, a small bundle of half a dozen pieces of indigenous wood costing five US dollars – enough to cook perhaps two or three meals.

Despite it all, Zimbabweans really have become masters of ingenuity when faced with adversity so now, if you know where to go and have a few dollars, you can have a haircut or charge your cell phone on someone’s generator. What a shame it is that ZESA aren’t blessed with a similar ingenuity. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Having a meal with friends this week, the conversation turned, as it almost always does, to politics. First the talk was about the constitutional outreach programme which has degenerated into party politics in most areas and left people afraid to attend, scared to speak and facing the consequences of daring to voice their opinions - particularly if they are in rural areas. Then the discussion was about elections - when they should happen; with or without a new constitution and with or without international supervision were a few of many burning questions. Then came the dual citizenship issue and the

disenfranchisement of so many Zimbabweans who now hold foreign passports either because they have been in exile during our country's decade of mayhem or because they've been struck off voters rolls and declared 'alien' if their parents were born outside the country.

Before long our conversation was about the food on the table. A simple meal is still not something any of us take for granted. Memories of 2007 and 2008 when there was hyperinflation and no food to buy are still very fresh in our minds. How well we remember the horror of government price controls, of youth militia going shop to shop forcing prices to be slashed dramatically and then buying up all the stock themselves. We remember walking into huge supermarkets and gazing at aisle after aisle of empty shelves with nothing to sell except perhaps a few wilting cabbages or packets of 'maputi' popcorn, light bulbs or washing up liquid.

How easily this could all happen again, I thought, as we talked about the food we were eating. Almost everything on the table had been grown or produced outside Zimbabwe. The milk was imported from Zambia, where it is produced by dispossessed Zimbabwean farmers. The margarine was imported from South Africa where it is produced by a Zimbabwean company which had no choice but to relocate across the border to survive. The bread was made locally but with wheat imported from South Africa. The eggs were local but the chickens had been fed on imported food. The biscuits were from Mocambique; sugar and coffee from South Africa and even the fruit was imported.

Its been ten years since  Zanu PF grabbed all Zimbabwe's commercial farms and yet we still have nothing to show for it. We are now completely dependent on outside countries for almost everything we eat. A closer look at all the labels on the food in our shops exposes Zimbabwe's continuing inability to stand on its own two feet. Food may have familiar product names and some may have been packaged in Zimbabwe but mostly the contents are imported. How familiar we have become with those little stickers on most of our food which proclaims 'proudly South African.' Browsing around one small convenience and fresh produce shop recently I had to ask if there was anything they sold that was actually locally grown or produced in Zimbabwe. Potato crisps were imported, as were biscuits, jam, chutney, apples, pears, tinned goods, cold drinks and almost everything else.

What a tragedy that ten years after land takeovers, nothing says 'proudly Zimbabwean' because nothing is. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

While international supermodel Naomi Campbell was testifying about a pouch of "dirty little stones" at the war crimes trial of ex Liberian President, Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe's own controversial, dirty little stones, began making headlines.

Everything about Zimbabwe's Marange diamonds is highly contentious including:

- The legal ownership of the mines;

- Supreme Court orders that have been ignored;

- Parliamentary portfolio teams repeatedly barred from visiting Marange;

- At least 30 million dollars from previous sales that never made it to government offers;

- The detention for a month of Farai Maguwu, who publicized abuses at the diamond fields.

Most damning of all is the 61 page report by Human Rights Watch issued in June

2009 which details a litany of abuses perpetrated by the military at the Marange diamond fields. Abuses that include forced labour, beating, torture, sexual abuse and mass killing.

Despite it all, however, Zimbabwe managed to get Kimberley Process approval and started selling diamonds this week. 893 thousand carats, apparently mined during the past two months only, were certified to be "conflict free" by Kimberley Process Monitor Abbey Chikane. Chikane said the soldiers had gone from the two fenced off mines that had yielded the stones and that  "minimum international standards" had been met. The diamonds were sold for 71 million US dollars - a figure from which the government apparently gets around 10% from the sales in royalties, taxes and dividends.

Diamonds from the rest of the Marange mines were not sold this week and are still banned from auction because of ongoing abuses.

A friend asked me this week what I would do if I was given a pouch of dirty little stones from Marange. I didn't hesitate, a brief glance at pages 34 -38 of the Human Rights Watch report  said it all for me. Called:  "Diamonds in the Rough,"  the report described military helicopters with mounted automatic weapons; indiscriminate firing of live ammunition and tear gas; mass graves and piles of decomposing bodies. One extract, given by medical staff in Mutare in November 2008 is horror beyond belief, it reads:

 "..soldiers had brought in 107 bodies from Marange, of which 29 bodies were identified and collected by relatives. 78 bodies we marked 'Brought in Dead"

(B.I.D.) from Marange, identity unknown. We entered cause of death as unknown although many of the bodies had visible bullet wounds. The soldiers who brought them informed us that the bodies were of unknown illegal diamond miners..."

Surely, I thought, if I had a Marange diamond, everytime I wore it I would have blood on my hands and see the letters B.I.D. engraved on the stone. Surely, surely we have lost our way when stones are more valuable than human life. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

As Zimbabwe commemorates Heroes Day, the official remembrance is again dominated by Zanu PF individuals. Every day we are bombarded with Zanu PF propaganda on the country's only television channel: big breasted, big bottomed women wriggling their bodies, waving their fists and singing endless refrains in praise of Zanu PF. We hear nothing of heroes from other political parties; nothing of the thousands who have died in the last decade in the struggle for good governance, democracy and new leadership in our country. We hear nothing of the ordinary Zimbabweans who who are the real heroes in 2010. This letter is for them, heroes of the last decade.

The heroes are mothers and grandmothers who managed to keep homes together and families alive when shops were empty and there was no food to buy. Women who went to bed hungry, made meals from nothing and kept hope alive.

The heroes are our children who lost their childhood in the mayhem of ten years of political violence. Children who watched their families being torn apart as parents, siblings, aunts and uncles fled to the Diaspora to escape and to survive. Children who sat helpless, hopeless outside closed schools. Children who lost ten years of education and as a result are without qualifications and jobs.

The heroes are people in rural villages who have borne the brunt of political intimidation, harassment and violence. Knowing their every move is watched and recorded. Knowing that if their name is not on the "good" list of the village leaders they will not get food, seed, fertilizer. People who continue to endure the most primitive of conditions in homes which are still without piped water, plumbing or electricity 30 years after Independence.

The heroes are the professionals: doctors, nurses, teachers, and so many more who have held their heads high, worked in the most appalling circumstances for miniscule wages, determined to keep giving of their skills which have held Zimbabwe together.

The heroes are the ordinary workers who have toiled for the smallest of wages, wearing threadbare clothes, walking miles to work, struggling through endless power cuts, going for days, weeks and months without water and coping with years of not having garbage collected.

The heroes are the activists who have lost everything, and given everything,to bring freedom for us all. Activists who are not in this massive government we are groaning under; activists who are not driving government cars and earning government allowances but ordinary men and women who are brave, determined, driven.

The heroes are the countless men and women who have worked tirelessly from outside our borders. People who have given 10 years of their lives to exposing events in Zimbabwe, speaking out, lobbying governments, raising money for people in trouble, giving support, encouragement and hope.

Happy Heroes Day to all of us, whatever our race, colour, creed or political persuasion.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

After my letter last week in which I mentioned the enormous disparity between the daily amount being given to constitution outreach technicians (70 US dollars) compared to the daily wage of a civil servant (5 US dollars), I got a very angry email from a company owner.

"I don't know why you keep on about the workers, the employers have it much worse, " the lady wrote.
"You must tell us the answer," she said, referring to her situation as an employer and then describing the dire position her business is in.

Struggling to turn over 3,000 US dollars a month, her company employs 7 people who, in her words, "come to work late and go home early."The monthly wage bill alone is 2,400 US dollars. The company owner does not draw a salary herself because there is no money left after paying the seven wages, electricity, water, rates, rent, fuel.

The anger and despair of this company owner is being repeated all over the country as most businesses remain barely functional while Zimbabwe remains in a perilous economic state.  Property rentals, utilities, wages and costs go up but there is not a corresponding increase in income because people just aren't spending money on anything except essentials. Many companies describe never having had so little work and so few customers since they started operating twenty or even thirty years ago. As absurd as it may sound, employers can't afford to retrench a portion of their workforce either as the exit packages are so high that it will bankrupt the whole company to lay off a few.

Wages are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to employing people in Zimbabwe. Aside from the pay envelope there is the uniform and shoes, the transport, housing and light allowances, the appeals for a meal at work, for school fees, medical assistance and so it goes on and on - desperate workers looking to even more desperate employers whose companies are on the verge of collapse.  

Enter into all of this the pending compulsory 51%  indigenous shareholding of companies and the waves start flooding in over the edge of the floundering boat. Last weekend the Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, threatened to close down 9,000 companies because they hadn't yet submitted indigenisation plans to his ministry. Apparently only 480 out of 9 557 companies had put in the paperwork that effectively gives control of their companies to complete strangers.

I haven't got an answer for the angry company owner, or for the desperate employees whose wage doesn't get them to the end of the month. There's no answer either for the university graduate who has unsuccessfully applied for 50 jobs in the last five months or for the neighbour who recently lost his job. 

Companies, families and individuals are all in the same position as we start August 2010. We are living from hand to mouth, hoping and praying that we don't have an accident or get sick, that nothing gets broken or stolen and that we can just make it to the end of the month. For all of us there is really only one answer and that is a return to good governance, law and order, property rights and real democracy. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy 

This year another dramatic aspect of our beautiful Zimbabwe is lining roads everywhere as hundreds of miles of trenches are being dug for a communication cable. It is breathtaking to see the magnificent patchwork of colours of soil piled in heaps along the road. Yellow, beige, orange, red, brown, grey, black: it leaves you feeling as if you've seen into the very soul of Zimbabwe.  

Sadly, however, all is not beautiful as spring arrives and our chance in a lifetime constitution making process has turned into a shambles. Every day the reports just get worse and worse. The words used by one senior official to describe the outreach programme, expose the truth of the story: tension, friction, hostile, ugly. We hear of public meetings turning into shouting matches, of people being abducted, assaulted, kidnapped and of villagers being frog marched, intimidated and commandeered. Then there are reports of COPAC (constitutional outreach) drivers and technicians threatening to stop work as they say they aren't getting the pay they were promised. Other reports tell of hotels evicting COPAC personnel or refusing to give them meals due to massive unpaid bills.

In a country where over 90% of the population is unemployed and civil servants only earn 160 US dollars a month, its hard to find perspective in this whole mess. One report tells of COPAC technicians being very disgruntled at only receiving 55 US dollars a day for their services and another 15 a day for their meals. For teachers with degrees surviving on less than 5 US dollars a day, it doesn't really make sense - does it?

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.