Zimbabwe: Ghost birds, frogs and men with whips

These early mornings, as summer draws to an end, mist hangs in our gardens and somewhere in the branches of a tree, the eerie drawn-out whistle of a ghost bird (grey-headed bushshrike) is a reminder that the seasons are changing.

The summer birds have gone, and at night and in the early mornings there is a chill in the air.

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Out of nowhere, a late rainstorm lashed my home area one night. Half a dozen sausage flies and a handful of crickets appeared, and a little reed frog climbed up the kitchen wall – a beautiful little creature with a green back, cream stripes, red blotches and reddish-pink toes.

You couldn’t make up these colours, I thought, while another 25mm (one inch) of rain pounded down.

With so much variety and beauty all around, it was hard to watch the other side of the story in Zimbabwe as we approached our 46th anniversary of independence on Saturday (18 April).

Distraction

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe  introduced new ZiG banknotes.

It says these notes are more durable, convenient and secure than the ones it originally released only two years ago.

The new ZiG banknotes have such minuscule exchange value to the US dollar that, frankly, we are bemused.

Only three denominations of the new notes have been released: the $10 ZiG note, which is worth less than 50 US cents; the $20 ZiG note worth less than one US dollar; and the $50 ZiG note, which is worth less than two US dollars.

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The highest local bank note available today in Zimbabwe isn’t even worth two US dollars.

As it has been for 25 years, Zimbabwe’s rapidly changing, short-lived banknotes are worth more as collectors’ items than as money in our pockets.

The bigger and far more important issue

Zimbabwe’s new banknotes were just a momentary distraction from the latest events in the final 30 days of the public consultation period about the ruling party’s proposed amendments to the Constitution.

In the past 60 days, we’ve seen opponents to the amendments being beaten, arrested, attacked and threatened.

Last week saw the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) was in the firing line.

ZHRC chair, lawyer Jessie Majome, released a statement about the constitutional amendments saying the public hearings had been marred by the systematic suppression of dissenting voices.

The ZHRC said some venues for the hearings had been controlled by youths, with vetting at entry points restricting access.

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Majome said that in Mashonaland West, “men holding whips were involved in vetting participants in Mhondoro-Ngezi”.

The ZHRC said: “The Commission observed instances where participants with divergent views to the proposed amendments were threatened, silenced, denied opportunities to contribute and in some instances physically attacked.”

Three days after releasing the ZHRC report, Majome was fired from her post by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

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She was reassigned to the Public Services Commission. Lawyers immediately said it was unconstitutional for the president to have removed Majome from her position.

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Lawyer David Coltart said a commissioner can only be removed for incapacity, gross incompetence, or gross misconduct and only the Judicial Services Commission is empowered to initiate those proceedings.

“None of this has happened in Ms Majome’s case.

“She clearly isn’t incapacitated and clearly isn’t incompetent. There has been no allegation of misconduct. This was a brazen breach of the Constitution,” said Coltart .

Hearts are heavy in Zimbabwe. In the past two months, we have again become a nation that whispers and looks over its shoulder.

It feels exactly like the build-up to an election, and the tactics to silence voices and instil fear are the same as always.

Those awful words that we know so well have again become everyday vocabulary: abduction, beating, threatened, silenced, attacked, blindfolds, whips and batons.

(The public consultation period runs until 17 May.)

© Cathy Buckle

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