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Dear principals
Everjoice J Win, Mail & Guardian (SA)
August 01, 2008

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-08-01-dear-principals

Hello, er, ah, Mr, Pres . . . comrades. Neither of you is a constitutionally elected president, really. And don't ask for the lofty "your excellencies", because that would be pushing it. There must be some relationship between title and action, after all.

In negotiation-speak you are called "principals". I reserve my comment on the high school, cane- wielding, imagery that comes to mind when I hear that word. So principals it shall be.

Thank you so much for finally seeing the light of negotiation and consensus, Comrade Boycott, (that's you, Morgan).

You finally lived up to your name when you boycotted the one big thing that mattered, the June election. As the messages came through my little cellphone on that Sunday, announcing your pullout, I could have jumped for joy. You did the right thing politically and you pulled the rug from under Zanu-PF's feet. You changed the nature of the discourse on Zimbabwe. African governments were bound to see, and see they did, that these endless electoral rituals were pointless.

Bob, thank you too for coming down from that mountain you normally live on and back to reality. As I watched you finally "losing it" in Egypt, it was clear the game was up. I hadn't seen the Sharm El-Shaik African Union Summit coverage, on that day you screamed, "you idiots!", to the pesky journalists trying to ask you the tough questions your brother leaders could not.

My worried 14-year-old son came into my room and asked if presidents were allowed to swear at "other human beings in public". I responded wearily that nobody, no leader, or person, should call anyone else an idiot. He asked me if I was sure about this and queried "So why is Mugabe calling somebody an idiot like that on al-Jazeera?" You had well and truly hit muddy bottom and you were swimming in it. Negotiation is the rope you needed to get out of there.

I can only imagine how difficult the decision to come to the negotiation table was for both of you personally. I don't envy you at all.

You have once again raised such high expectations among Zimbab-weans that you should stop the nonsense of fighting for positions and get on with the real business.

Both of you please stop posturing.

We know that in politics you always think you have to show your power and your one-upmanship. The time for that is sadly gone. Zimbabwe is grieving too much. What people need to hear both sides of the political divide is a message of hope. Bob, your insistence that you are the president and will remain the president is not helpful.

The first action point for you, Bob, should be to stop the violence. Call off your men in uniform of all ranks and bring them out into the open. Disband militia who terrorise women and girls in your name. Most of them are simply rapists.

Morgan, you and your supporters need to get over the false assumption that nobody in their right mind supports or votes Zanu-PF.

We know that Zanu-PF tugs at something in people's souls. Ask the South Africans what they have learned from Polokwane: it's not in the head, it's in the heart. Your pretence that race and racism are "so last century" haunts you to this day. We can trash Mugabe's rhetoric about land redistribution and colonialism all we like, but deep down we must acknowledge that these issues are as alive as ever.

Morgan, you also need to shut up your British and American friends. They are just not helping. Misusing the Security Council in its abortive call for sanctions backfired so badly you're still limping from it.

I want to see three black Zimbabwean feminist women at that negotiating table. Surely you can't tell me that you have no women with functioning brains and mouths in your parties? Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? This year the only one with a woman on his team is Arthur Mutambara. That is just unacceptable. Both of you have female vice-presidents, what is their role? Just goes to show you wanted them only to get the votes, right?

I want to come back to a country where things work. I want schools for the children with qualified teachers, books, computers and science laboratories. I want all the universities and technical colleges to return to being centres of excellence that churned out all these highly qualified dishwashers and waiters I meet in South African cafés.

Clinics and hospitals must have good doctors and nurses, who you must now cajole back from United Kingdom and Australia. There must be medicines for everyone, especially anti- retrovirals, so young women stop dying unnecessarily. I would like young women to have hope, as they once did, that with laws, policies and attitudes changing, they can become anything they dream of. Not just sex slaves.

I would love to see girls buy sanitary pads, (plus some nice trinkets, while they are at it), to choose from a whole array in their favourite well-stocked supermarket.

You must agree to redistribute land to poor black women in their own names as citizens. Bob, this is no longer 1994 where you thought this was not do able. It is an imperative. If you are that serious about land reform that benefits those who need it the most. Morgan, if you believe land should be allocated to those who can farm it, black women, especially former farm workers, are the people you must fight for.

I want a new Constitution that guarantees my rights as an equal citizen. I want laws and systems put in place to protect and uphold those rights, not because I can afford them but because I am entitled to them. I don't want to go around in fear of police or the army.

I want to live in a country where I can listen to as many radio stations as I want and read as many newspapers as I can.

None of this is a tall order. With enough political will all of these things can be delivered. These negotiations are not about you all accommodating one another. Your biggest role as the principals is to keep reminding yourselves and those (men), around you that Zimbabwe is bigger than each one of you.

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