Average Joe's Blog

It was a journey that – as all journeys do – started with a whimper in a maternity clinic on the 24th of October, 1959 in Chivhu; then known as Enkeldorn, in Mashonaland East Province. Native Zimbabweans were still crumpling under the colonialism yoke, but as the sixties approached, winds of change were blowing all across Africa, and they must have caught on the infant, Barbara Gakanje when she cried her first breath that October day. Growing, she must have been doing all the feminine chores done by every other girl in Mudavanhu Village. But there was a stillness about her that struck a cord in her younger brother, Last Gakanje, who was also the youngest child in the family. “She was of royal blood,” said Last in a tribute to his late sister at her home in Seke Communal Lands recently. “There was this amazing quality about her being a messenger of truth all the times. She spoke her mind and did not apologise for it.” The same treatment was given to those who tried to dress her

When you are in Zimbabwe, the only place you can be alone with your girlfriend is the bush. There are no theme parks, no movie houses, or recreation places where you can spend a decent day with your date. You either choose the bushes, or the lodges. Most people cannot afford the few movie houses, which are only situated in harare and Bulawayo anyway, and the lodges carry an unwanted connotation of paid sex work. Almost no girl want to be caught dead in a lodge. So Shingai Mubani* chose the bushes. It was a Sunday, and after church, the young man decided to take his girlfriend on a stroll in the bushy seclusion separating Mufakose and Crowborough. On the way, the two lovers met a masked man who told them he was a police officer, and that Shingai was under arrest. The ‘officer’ threatened Shingai with an axe he was holding, until the latter fled the scene, fearing for his life. When he stopped at a distance, Shingai paused to ponder why a police officer would want to cover his f

There comes a time in life when all around you avoid you like a rat would avoid a meeting in the light with that whiskery predator called a cat. They cower in mortal dread at your approach, as a lamp post would fear the approach of a sniffing mongrel. You feel an incessant grating at the back of your bamboozled mind, as – huddled under the depth of obscurity – you marvel at your new found state of pariah. Maybe it’s your mouth – but no, man, it can't be: you’ve just brushed your teeth this morning. Could it be the armpits, then; ‘cause they could be pitfalls full of shit, y’know? No way; 'cause I just spent some light years scrubbing my ass away in the tub, with particular emphasis on pits – all pits, holes and crevices, for that matter. All the time, the grating behind your mind's back keeps rising to a blaring crescendo, and you give an impatient shake of the head – wait a minute, seems you dropped something on the floor. It is a question – ARE YOU ZIMBABWEAN?

When police in Gweru found Charles Zulu’s body lying in a pool of his blood one morning in May last year, they might have sent out word about a gun-totting loose canon on the prowl. And, given the grisly nature with which Zulu was slain, the police might have warned the public not to approach the suspect, who must have been in the same league as the heartless Briton, Raoul Moat, who shot and killed his ex-girlfriend’s current partner the very day he was released from prison. Not once might the law agents have suspected that the killer could be a greedy, fresh-faced sixteen-year-old boy from Kwekwe who was supposed to be asleep the time Zulu met his fate. And, in their investigations and public warnings, nobody ever thought of leaking the same words of wisdom to ‘The Beast’ of Chivi. Zulu was a Gweru-based employee of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings. On the fateful night, the 58-year-old man was traveling towards Kwekwe when he picked up a teenager who had flagged for a lift. The t

There is a small metal sign that welcomes all and sundry to Nembudziya Police Station, and a glance at the charge office from a distance indeed makes one feel welcome. But inside, trouble is brewing in the cauldron of ZRP Nembudziya in the Gokwe district of Midlands province. It is not the weather-beaten, partially burnt wooden modules that used to be sweet home for police officers deployed to the place when it was still a post for Gokwe police station. They are still standing and habitable – weather-beaten, but fine. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the brickwork erected when Nembudziya was upgraded to station status. On the face of it, Nembudziya is a very modern rural police station, with residential houses built along the lines of the famous Battlefields police camp – three bedrooms, a lounge, a pantry, bathroom and toilet. Going into the cells, you would wish to be arrested to spend just one night behind the immaculate bars and pump a few muscles in the cell birds’ exercise

Masvingo province is mocked for suffering from drought every second rainy season, an unshakable joke since the problem of rain supply in the province is there for all to see – what with their wide tarred road network that is favourite home to almost every vehicle. But try to take a trip to Gokwe in the neighbouring province of Midlands, which – with its white gold known as cotton, and several mines – is virtually a land of plenty. But Gokwe’s envious riches are well and truly hidden, right beyond the back of Zimbawe's latent opulence. You will not get to Gokwe - not on their roads; hell no - not unless you are airborne; or otherwise made of some superman, batman, spiderman; or any such superhuman stuff. You could be asked to describe the road network of Gokwe district in a sentence; well, I have a tip: swabs of cotton hanging onto thorns and leaves attached to dusty trees either side of dusty, sandy and/or stony, sometimes fragmented bituminous strips on a treacherous terrain t

These are the words of the provincial chairperson of the Matebeleland North chapter of the Zimbabwe Republic Police's new baby, the Women’s Network. She leads the Matebeleland North chapter of the ZRP Women’s Network and, under her leadership, the province has made tentative steps towards empowering the cause of the fairly skinned in the ZRP. It is not much really, and they do not gloat about it in the province. To the women in Matebeleland North, small things do matter in life. In their own small way, they have made a small contribution to the development of the girl child in the mineral and tourism stalwart. Their small tuck shop at the Eland Farm, 70km North of Bulawayo is a modest affair with small stock, like crates of beer, some groceries for the local populace. And the fairer sex in the province are sitting on a small golden handshake from the provincial fund – a $2000 loan, which they were forwarded to make their business venture, the only one in the area, a success. The

You know – there are things in this life that you swear never to do again – never, never, never. Some of these vows are easily reached – like that time when, in an epileptic fit of blind rage, you picked the forest as your permanent abode, precisely because mum had forfeited your supper to her cattle that you had lost. Or that other year when you ruled that radio should become an eternal no-no, for its unredeemable sin of voting Dembo fourth on the ’94 charts. Number four! What abomination! Simple decisions, made on the spur of the moment; of course you knew you were lying to yourself. But there some precedents, whether made on the turn or after careful musing, that leave a permanent mark. Yea; they thought it was a joke when I just upped one day and realised that the slimy green leaf called okra sliding down my throat was just as bad for my masculine metabolism as a conscious gobsmacking gobbling of phlegm. It’s not that I’m allergic to okra. Hell, no. I just loathe it – there are