The blog Living Zimbabwe sees no point in Tsvangirai's remaining as Prime Minister if he is powerless. Supporting Mrs Bennett's statement that “unless Tsvangirai shows leadership now, it is going to be a waste of time having an inclusive government anyway”, the blogger says:

Nonetheless, what Mrs. Bennett had to say about the GNU was straight to the point and a fact that cannot be ignored. If Tsvangirai cannot protect Roy Bennett, what is the point of him being Prime Minister?

Most bloggers are frustrated by the lack of visible change in the lives of ordinary Zimbabwe. Kubatana blog, for instance, has a photo of a Zimbabwean reading the state-owned daily newspaper, The Herald, from 11 March, exactly a month after Tsvangirai was sworn in, with the headline: Harare Runs Out Of Water - Again.

Mostly in the firing line is Nelson Chamisa, the new MDC minister in charge of telephone and Internet services (ICT Minister) in Zimbabwe. Kubatana again reproduces a letter sent to the state-controlled telephone company, TelOne, which Chamisa is now in charge of and which is threatening legal action against the company for their “high-handedness”

Zimbabwe's collapse of Internet services, cut off by Intelsat because TelOne had not paid its debts, also elicited biting responses from the blogosphere.

Peace Love and Happiness blog has a post entitled, “Zimbabwe: Minister of Information and Technology, Pull Up Your Socks.” In it, the blogger says:

It has been a month since Nelson Chamisa was sworn in as Minister of Communications and Technology and by now we expect him to have made inroads towards the improvement of the telecommunications industry or at least made a tour of all the TelOne telecommunications exchange control rooms so that he familiarises himself with how the company operates but he hasn't done that. If he had done that he would have been informed that TelOne bills that are red in arrears and he would have sorted that problem. The word that is out among Zimbabweans at the moment is that Nelson Chamisa is very good at talking as an opposition member and very weak when it comes to walking the talk.

On Magora's Zimbabwe Blog,in an article entitled: Is Nelson Chamisa an Incompetent, Drooling and Clueless Minister, the new MDC minister is blamed for following discredited policies from ZANU PF, such as price controls on mobile phone charges:

Last week, Comrade Minister Chamisa announced that mobile phone charges were too high in Zimbabwe (which they are) and he was going to send a directive to mobile phone companies to reduce their charges drastically. So, we are back to price controls, which everyone, including the resident madman at the corner of First St and Jason Moyo as well as street kids, knows does not work. ZANU PF tried it and service suffered as a result. Infrastructure collapsed. Because profit margins are a function of the market, and not a result of a minister's say-so. It is an elementary concept, really, and I wonder how the MDC fail to grasp it.

What on earth has possessed Chamisa? I ask again.

With power and water cuts continuing, this week the world should not be surprised to hear of more riots by soldiers. Most of them are failing to access their US$100 from the banks as promised by the Inclusive Government:

There is chaos in Harare today and you should not be surprised to hear later on that soldiers have gone on the rampage again.

First street is absolutely choked with soldiers, policemen, teachers and other civil servants who are failing to access their US$100 salaries. They have been trying since Friday and it clear this morning on First Street that some of them have slept at the banks waiting for them to open. There are blankets and long jackets spread on the pavement, where the civil servants are sitting waiting for the money to get to the banks.

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Amanda Atwood, writing on the Kubatana Blog a few hours after the announcement was made, expressed utter dejection in a post entitled “It's Official, The MDC Has Sold Out“. She wrote:

This deal is entirely detestable. In its statement today the MDC said this didn’t mean it was giving up the struggle, just taking it to a different arena. But it’s hard to imagine that the party will have much success fighting for true democracy inside a flawed government, when it has come to such little effect outside it. A friend of mine yesterday said he’d heard this deal likened to putting on a dirty shirt. I said it’s more like putting on a dirty condom – smelly, sticky, damp, diseased and distasteful.

Admittedly, I don’t know what other the option the MDC had. A different party – one which was more Movement than Party might well have had different cards to play. But the MDC lacks the capacity to lead any sort of civil disobedience or “make the country ungovernable” movement, which might have resulted in a different outcome. Instead, the MDC has tended towards negotiations and legal challenges and contesting undemocratic elections. This strategy has left it high and dry at this most recent negotiating table.

The day after the announcement, Saturday, 31 January 2009, Eusebia at the Blog Peace Love and Happiness, was in a different mood, saying she felt like the storm in Zimbabwe was now over. In a post Entitled “Zimbabwe: The Storm Is Over” she says:

 In the low-density area where I lIve there is no open jubilation because in September last year when the GNU agreement was signed some people openly celebrated only to have their hopes dashed a few days later, so now people are cautious about celebrating too soon and prefer to have a wait and see attitude. Personally I have chosen to accept this new development in Zimbabwe with an optimistic mind, I know just how the suffering of the ordinary people in Zimbabwe had reached unprecedented levels and I know how the ordinary people were now in desperate need of a solution to end their plight and I want to believe that the three GNU leaders will work together to rebuild the nation they had destroyed so that ordinary Zimbabweans can once again lead a comfortable life. For some of my fellow bloggers to now dwell on pointing out how they think this union is a mistake and predict doom or dwell on how Tsvangirai has been outwitted by Mugabe is rather inappropriate if they have the country's best interests at heart. 

And dwell on how Tsvangirai has been outwitted is exactly what I did on my blog, Denford Magora's Zimbabwe Blog. I have written repeatedly that Tsvangirai would join because he had been boxed in cleverly by Mugabe and SADC. But I still thought that when he did, he would be doing so with some really meaningful concessions from Mugabe. 

On the day of the announcement as well as the day before, I pointed out on the blog that Tsvangirai was walking into government with none of his really important demands met. Jestina Mukoko's continued detention and torture is only one of these demands, as I explained in my post entitled “MDC Formally Agrees To Join Mugabe in Government”:

The MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai, however, are putting on a brave front, claiming that they were” given concessions by SADC” that most of their demands will be met.

As I mentioned previously, the really important demands which have not been addressed at all by Mugabe are:

• The release of MDC activists abducted by Mugabe and subsequently charged with plotting to overthrow the ZANU PF government through force of arms. These banditry charges still stand and the acticists are still in custody, with Mugabe's judges refusing to release them on bail. The judges also refuse to iunvestigate the unlafu; abductions of the same activists, including Jestina Muukoko
• The “equitable distribution of ministries” has not been addressed at all. The MDC goes into government on the basis of the same distribution of ministries that they said made them junior partners in the deal

Okay - so the MDC has backed Tsvangirai's decision to enter into a power-sharing government. Does this mean that the problems in Zimbabwe will miraculously disappear overnight? Far from it! 

Does this mean that the oppression and violence will stop? Will political detainees be released? Will money and employment become available? 

No. 

Mugabe will continue to rule the roost and Tsvangirai/MDC will be sidelined. I see this power-sharing government being very similar to the ZANU PF/ZAPU ‘peace' accord in 1987 which resulted in the virtual demise of ZAPU. 

But I do NOT believe that the MDC have sold Zimbabweans down the river… 

No voices were raised in support of the agreement in any of the threads at newzimbabwe Forums. Here, ZANU PF supporters openly taunted the MDC supporters who, when they did respond, did so by exclaiming that Tsvangirai had sold out and disowning him and the party. Some looked with hope to rumour of a split between Tsvangirai and his Secretary-General, Tendai Biti, urging him to form a new party in a thread entitled “Letter to Biti”

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Two year old Nigel Mutemagau (previously identified as Nigel Mupfuranhehwe, but that is his mother's maiden surname) is being kept in solitary confinement in Zimbabwe’s most notorious prison, the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. Nigel was abducted together with his mother and father nearly three months ago by Zimbabwe's secret police, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and their whereabouts were unknown until 24 December 2008 when they appeared in court in Harare, together with Jestina Mukoko and other abducted activists.

Nigel's parents are facing charges of recruiting “bandits” to topple Robert Mugabe’s government, the same charges Jestina Mukoko is facing. These allegations have been widely dismissed as baseless. Recently the South African president, who is also the Chairman of SADC, said of the allegations, “We never believed that.”

Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, where two year old Nigel is being kept in solitary confinement, is notorious for its atrocious conditions even during Zimbabwe’s better days. Now however, the conditions are much worse. Prison authorities do not have enough food to feed the inmates. They are struggling to make ends meet, much like the rest of Zimbabwe’s public sector. Against this background, the prison authorities say that they have been given instructions not to allow food to be brought to the inmates (including to children) from the outside. No visits from relatives are allowed for these particular prisoners, including for 2 year old Nigel. Even lawyers struggle to gain access and when they do, there is always a state official present.

More disturbing, however, are reports from lawyers that Nigel has been beaten in prison to get his mother to confess to the charges. The lawyers say the child needs medical attention.

In a press release also published on the This Is Zimbabwe blog, the same lawyers give a detailed timeline of the events surrounding their efforts to get the abductees released. These efforts have so far been in vain. In that timeline, the date 30 December 2008 says:

In the afternoon, lawyers attend at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison with the medical team. They find that their clients are not being held as ordered in the Prison Hospital, but are being kept in solitary confinement in the Maximum Security Prison. They have now been joined by the final confirmed abductee, Violet Mupfuranhehwe and her son, two-year-old Nigel Mutemagau, who are now also to be held in solitary confinement at the Maximum Security Prison.

Nigel’s plight has been largely ignored by the mainstream media and attention is focused very much on Jestina Mukoko, the most famous of the jailed activists. Social media has been especially active on the case of Jestina Mukoko, with most Zimbabwean blogs putting up a badge during her disappearance, providing phone numbers where people could call in and give any information on her whereabouts. Several Facebook groups calling for her release have also been created (the most popular of which currently has 2,242 members). Sokwanele has been especially active in encouraging readers to phone Jestina’s local police station to ask them what they were doing about finding her.

Nigel’s plight, however, has been largely a footnote. In my blog, I wrote:

A boy just like the sweet little kid above is imprisoned right now in one of Zimbabwe's most brutal and notorious prisons. […]

Imprisoning a two year old in a maximum security prison together with murderers and rapists and some of the worst kinds of people on earth boggles the mind. I do not know how the government of Robert Mugabe is justifying this cruelity to itself, but I am more shocked at our own reaction, our silence and complicity in all this.

Where is our sense of outrage, Zimbabwe? Where is our humanity? In all the hundreds of thousands of column inches written about the Jestina Mukoko abduction and trial, this toddler is but a footnote in only a handful of them. He lies there on the cold floor of one Zimbabwe's most notorious prisons every day and night, forgotten by a world that is screaming very loudly for a 50 plus year old woman (Jestina) to be freed.

As a result, I have started a petition on my own blog to be handed over to the Attorney General of Zimbabwe on Friday this week, calling for the child to be released and for him to get medical attention as well as access to Child Welfare agents.

In the post with the petition I state:

I ask that we at least do something: Please leave your name in the comments section of this article (below). Just your name. We will put all the names together and present them to Mr Tomana, the Attorney General of Zimbabwe, asking that the child be given access to Child Welfare agents immeditely and freed from that prison.

I have also posted an alert on Facebook, where the Zimbabwean community (especially those outside the country) is especially active. I am hopeful. There is no justification whatsoever for keeping a child that young in jail, let alone in solitary confinement. The idea is basically to publicise the plight of this helpless child so much that the authorities will be shamed into action.

The Attorney General of Zimbabwe has the power to get the child released. Even if the release is attached to stringent bail conditions for the mother, it is better than leaving the toddler where he is now. Like I said, I am hopeful. There are other influential political players in Zimbabwe who have started to also take note of this and I am sure come Friday, we may well see some progress.

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Sokwanele's This is Zimbabwe starts off the year with a post of an ancedote that highlights the collapse of the health, infractucture and educational systems in Zimbabwe. It tells the experiences of two specific Zimbabweans during the Christmas break.

… he saw a child standing in the middle of nowhere crying its heart out by the side of the road, trying to wave down cars. An adult sat crumpled in the dirt next to her.

When he stopped, he learned that the child was with her grandmother, and that the grandmother was very very sick. The small girl had been trying to help her Gogo to find a way to get to a clinic or hospital and they had walked through the bush for miles. When they reached the road, Gogo’s legs gave out, and she could not find the strength to stand up again and the child was too small to help her stand and keep going. All she could do was sob, and try and wave down someone who would stop and help her.

My relative helped Gogo into the car and drove her and her grandchild to the nearest hospital. He said they had a long way to go and Gogo was silent all the way, very ill and every last bit of strength drained from her just trying to reach the road. The little girl, he said, sobbed the whole way there. He said she was crying in grief and fear, but that she also kept thanking him, her gratitude that he had stopped at all was heartbreaking.

He left them at the nearest clinic in the care of doctors and nurses who probably don’t have the medicines they need to help Gogo, and I fear she will probably die. ‘Happy New Year’ to that tiny little girl? I think not.

And the post ends with a promise for 2009:

My promise is to a child I have never met: I promise before God that I will not give up, I promise to keep going. I wish this promise meant something to this child, but the truth is it doesn’t even scratch the surface of a grief she has that runs so deep it will forever define her life as an adult.

The red VW minibus with South African Plates, which is ferrying the activists between court and prison (Picture from Denford Magora's Zimbabwe Blog)

Denford Magora's Zimbabwe Blog [Discloruse: that's me] follows the arrest and trial of human rights activist Jestina Mukoko. The blog starts off the year with a post revealing that Jestina Mukoko is still not in police custody but is being still under the direct custody of the Zimbabwe secret Police, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO):

It is a lie that the case is being handled by the Law and Order section of the police. They were put in front of all this rather hastily on 22 December 2008, in order to give the whole thing a resemblance of following due process. No one at Central Police Station in Harare is privy what is really up with this case.

[…] There are CIO operatives as well as a beefed-up armed guard now permanently stationed at the prison where the abductees are being kept. They are still being questioned, which is why you are unlikely to see this court case begin in earnest for some weeks. It is not the police doing the questioning, obviously, but the CIO. “It's a national security issue,” as the minister in charge of the secret police, the CIO, told the court this week.

Guys, the real business of this Jestina Mukoko court case is being done outside the courtroom and what we see happening in the courts is simply a show. I have now come to realise this.

The blog also reports that President Robert Mugabe is preparing to arrest Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader. It gives details of a plot to arrest the MDC leader on charges arising out of the current prosecution of Jestina Mukoko and the alleged recruitment and training of “bandits” to topple Mugabe.

Another blog coming out of Zimbabwe, Peace Love and Happiness bemoans the part-dollarisation of the Zimbabwean economy in a post addressed to the Reserve Bank Governor of that country, entitled “Gono, US Dollars Do Not Grow On Trees“. This is a revealing post that shows just how deeply the economic crisis has spread and gives an insight into how Zimbabweans are coping with record-breaking inflation now estimated to run into the trilions:

Right now ordinary Zimbabweans are faced with a situation whereby they are being paid in worthless Zimbabwean dollars and yet are expected to pay their rent, their transport, buy all their food, pay for school fees, hospital fees and medicine in US dollars. Where does the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor expect the ordinary Zimbabweans to get the US dollars from, is he aware that the US dollars do not grow on trees. Ordinary Zimbabweans were already suffering economically before this policy of using US dollars was put in place and putting it in place when most of them are paid in Zimbabwean dollars was like putting salt on a wound, adding more suffering to an already suffering people. This shows just how cruel, insensitive and indifferent Gono is to the suffering of ordinary Zimbabweans. His allowing pricing of goods and services to be done in US dollars when most people are paid in Zim dollars has increased poverty, hunger and deaths in the country and made reaching one of the NEPAD millenium goals of poverty reduction very far from being possible in this country. You might be wondering why the ordinary Zimbabweans can not just use their Zim dollar salaries to buy the needed US dollars from the foreign currency dealers which can be found at every street corner in the city. The reason they can't do that is because the maximum money withdrawal from the bank, that Gono set as the limit per person, per day is not enough to buy an adequate amount of US dollars.

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