Improper Association

When I was in teachers’ college; a three year course, we would spend one year in college, one year out – doing what was known as ‘teaching’ practice and one year back in college. We were supposed to be under the mentorship of an experienced teacher in our respective schools. But because of the lazy nature of most teachers or in some cases, the acute shortage of teachers, we ended up teaching full-time without supervision. That was a recipe for disaster. Or the swim or sink scenario that separated the boys from the men.

I never wanted to become a teacher; maybe that’s why I am not one now even though I was a damn good one and I am qualified to do so. Well, that’s another story.

                When we came back from teaching practice, one of the guys we went to church with now had a wife. She was fourteen. People might have been understating her age when they told the story, but the bottom line was she was young: He had impregnated a schoolgirl and to cover his tracks he had married her: A major escape for him because he could have been thrown out of the teaching profession and on top of that he could have gone to jail for statutory rape.  Another chap had been thrown out the course altogether: He had helped a schoolgirl cheat in exams, schoolgirls had fought over him – his story was a soap opera.

                We had been warned before we went out to the schools of what is known as improper association: A sexual or romantic relationship between a male teacher and a schoolgirl. This kind of relationship was punishable by dismissal from the teaching profession. This rule also applies to a sexual relationship between a female teacher and schoolboy. Even though that happens once in a while, that’s not really a problem and not worth wasting our energies on.

                The two cases I highlighted above, which were really a few of the many cases got people asking ‘what can you expect if you unleash nineteen year old male teachers on pubescent girls?’ Someone went as far as saying teachers should only be ‘mature’ people i.e. above thirty five. When I had spend a few years in the teaching profession, I realised that it’s the older guys who actually abuse schoolgirls and anyway in the case when the relationship was between a schoolgirl and a young male teacher, he would have proposed love in a ‘normal’ way and the girl was in a position to say no and the relationship was common knowledge and society mostly approved. Older guys, however used intimidation and threats and the girl never had the benefit of a ‘real relationship’. All the girl got was hurried sex in some storeroom and the pain of watching the guy move on to another girl. Although I realised that when it came to what we can truly term abuse, it was the older guys who were guilty, there was this one particular youthful teacher who behaved rather childishly: He was friends with a lot of schoolboys and he would provide his room to the boys to have sex in. The school head pretended not to see, just as she was blind to all the sexual abuse cases.

                I also realised that the improper association rule was rarely implemented and in most cases the school head was aware of the abuse of school girls by male teachers and I knew of a case were one forty year old teacher abused at least one school girl every year and no disciplinary action was ever instituted. I also realised that in the rare cases that a male teacher was dismissed from the teaching profession for improper association, no criminal charges were ever preferred even though in most cases the girl was usually underage.

                Cases of sexual  abuse of school girls is just one of the few things that are very wrong within our education system, the same one we claim is the best in Africa. I wonder a lot how safe our children are in the school we send them to. Do we care enough to actually get the step by step detail of what goes in our children’s schools? I wonder.

Are homosexuals worse than cats and dogs?

Homosexuality is a crime in Zimbabwe. No, I am wrong; it is sodomy that is a crime in Zimbabwe. That basically means lesbians can have all the ‘sex’ they want and they will never get arrested. But I guess that is little comfort because the social stigma attached to homosexuality is so intense it can crack up the strongest person. A lot of gay men have been disowned by their families. Perhaps people’s attitudes about homosexuality are influenced by the number of cases of abuse of young boys and drugging of other men for purposes of sex. Rape of men is also rife in prisons and this makes a lot of men react violently when the issue of homosexuality is raised. But just as there is abuse of young girls and rape of women by heterosexual men, we should separate consensual sex, even among homosexuals and rape. I can imagine a lot of people are screaming ‘homosexuality is not natural’ as they are reading this. Admittedly, I also don’t understand homosexuality, but who am I to judge.

                The president of the republic of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe once said that homosexuals are worse than cats and dogs because cats and dogs know between male and female. The majority of Zimbabweans have towed this line and the amount of gay bashing is sometimes sickening even though I am not homosexual myself and I honestly do not understand how a man can be attracted to another man. It is easier to understand lesbians because all women are lesbians anyway, considering how much physical contact there is amongst women. I know a stand up comedian who attacks homosexuals each time he goes on stage; it was funny the first few times but it has become sickening.

                Are homosexuals worse than cats and dogs? From whatever angle you look at it, the current amount of gay bashing is not justified. The most consistent argument is that God did not intend for man to have sex with another man: He created Adam and Eve as others want to put it. He made a vagina and a penis to fit into the vagina. So according to the Christian crowd, homosexuality is a sin. If homosexuality is a sin we conveniently forget that a woman was once brought to Jesus Christ and her accusers were saying she had been caught in the act of committing adultery – I wonder were the man was, because if she was caught in the act, that means a man was on top of her...The accusers of this woman who had been caught in the act of committing adultery pointed out to Jesus that the law said that those caught committing adultery should be stoned to death. Jesus did not dispute this, but told the crowd that he who had not sinned should cast the first stone. Everyone walked away and Jesus was left alone with the woman. There are others who say the practice is not African. That’s a ridiculous viewpoint because we have moved so far away from what can be considered an ‘African’ lifestyle and the only argument worth debating is that homosexuality is a sin. If that is the case, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

                We have murderers, rapists, robbers...amongst us and if devoted the same amount of energy into fighting these we would have a considerably low crime rate. Do we honestly believe that homosexuality is worse than murder and rape? What direct harm do homosexuals inflict upon us? If we had to choose between a rapist and a homosexual for a neighbour, who would we choose?

                Homosexuals insist that God created them that way and they cannot change even if they wanted to and who are we to tell them that they are wrong? Can we honestly say that homosexuals affect our lives in any way? It is two adults having consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes. We cannot say the same about rapists and murderers who fill our lives daily with unimaginable horror. If we have to insist that homosexuality is wrong, then let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.

               

Donor funding for the arts, a double-edged sword

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I am not a huge fan of donor funding; at the very least it rocks the boat. It is easy to believe that a person without eggs and bacon for breakfast is enduring great hardships and should be rescued: The solution for most donors would be to donate the bacon and eggs to that person without eggs and bacon without creating a facility whereby the person will be able to find his own bacon and eggs in the future and in the absence of the donor.

                Donor funding is not premised on the very clichéd ‘teach a man how to fish’ adage and because of that it has wrecked havoc in Zimbabwe and many other African countries – my hatred of donor funding does not mean I wouldn’t take if it came my way though – who would not want easy money? My argument does not apply to donor funding in general but as it applies to the arts ‘industry’. I have been in the arts for about five years and I have watched with a despairing heart as donor funds destroy what could have been a major earner for the Zimbabwean economy. Donor funds have ravaged the cornerstone of any vibrant arts industry; a big and appreciative audience base. A paying audience that is. Now there is silly talk from artists about people not ‘supporting’ the arts. The ordinary man on the street does not have to support an artistic product just as much as he is not supporting a bakery by buying a loaf of bread; it is something he needs: It is the duty of the artist to create high quality and entertaining artistic products that people would willingly pay for.

                The donor community has been throwing loads of money at ‘productions’ that are big on issues – good governance, domestic violence, sexual rights and so on and rather tiny on creativity. The productions are becoming more and more mediocre, more and more ridiculous and the audiences have stayed at home and coaxing them back will be difficult. This is particularly so for theatre. The situation has been worsened by the fact that our ‘government’ is paranoid and constantly bans productions and we as artists have all stupidly jumped into protest art jungle because there is money to be made from insulting Mugabe.

                A new breed of artist has emerged that can write beautiful proposals and awful theatre and television scripts. I watched a television programme on Dead BC the other day that was dealing with the issue of male circumcision: It was disheartening to see the kind of rubbish a bunch of ‘experienced’ artists had come up with. I guess the term experience is relative; if you repeat the same mistake for ten years, are you ten years experienced?

                I remember when the movie Neria was produced. I was a young boy then and the conclusions I made about it I made later. The movie dealt with issues of inheritance. Everything was paid for by donor money and the producers did not feel the need to make the movie a box office success and make a profit. It was an excellent movie that could have filled up cinemas with a paying audience and it could have set a business precedent in the movie making ‘industry’. The same is happening in theatre; everything is paid for and the producers do not care whether a play is watched by two people or twenty people.

                The paranoid nature of our ‘government does not help matters either: At the moment there is a play on national healing on a national tour. I saw a newspaper report saying it would be in Bulawayo, where I stay, last week: I did not see it or hear about it and I haven’t met anyone who has seen it or heard about it. I did not understand why until I heard the police had denied them clearance until it was too late to launch a meaningful publicity campaign. How can we make a decent dollar from gate takings and try to convince the corporate world to jump on board using the best bargaining chip available to artists – a big and appreciative audience if things are like this. Should we be happy that our plays have paltry audiences of two or three people just because everything is paid for?  Perhaps a welcome exception in the past decade is Christopher Mlalazi’s Election Day, directed by Eunice Tava: The play gave the audience value for money.

                Perhaps theatre, film and television practitioners should learn from musicians, who know that only excellence will put the food on table. They strive to polish their acts and present good products to the audience and those who take the audience for granted will fall by wayside.

Let's avoid emotionalism over new Zimbabwe constitution

The parliament of Zimbabwe is like a tavern filled with Dynamos and Caps United or Highlanders supporters. The debate is noisy and rowdy, but leading nowhere in particular. The debates in parliament are sharply divided along the lines of Zanu PF versus the ‘opposition’. One believes the other is a group of sellouts and the other believes the other is a bunch of human rights abusers and looters; the gulf between ‘them’ (they don’t think much about us) is incredibly vast.

                It is no crime for MPs or senators to tow the party line as they are elected based on their party’s manifesto (but I doubt that is the case in Zimbabwe – there are many who were elected just because they are on the opposite side of Mugabe), but this should be done to reasonable extends. The current situation is a sad scenario where everything that is suggested by a Zanu PF MP is short down by the opposition without being considered in a mature manner and vise versa. Our MPs are always within half a step of a punch-up and therein lies our problem.

There has been a lot of opportunism, hatred, hate language, emotionalism in Zimbabwean politics that we have lost the ability to see beyond our noses if ever we had that ability.

                A case in point is the premature campaigning for a NO vote especially by Lovemore Maduku’s National Constitutional Assembly in the referendum of a yet to be drafted constitution. I am very critical of anything that involves Zanu PF, but I think we have to see the draft first and act like civilised, rational people for crying out loud.

                It has been asked several times where Zimbabwe would be if we had voted yes for the Jonathan Moyo draft: no matter from which angle you look at it, we would be rid of Mugabe by now. Either he would have lost the presidential elections in a convincing manner as he was not aware of how unpopular he was until we told him via the referendum vote and gave him an opportunity to ‘campaign’. Or he would have won and his term, according to the draft constitution we rejected, would be coming to an end round about now; never to contest again.

                Most of us did not know why we were voting NO; politicians with selfish motives told us to do so and we lost an opportunity, small, but an opportunity nevertheless. We stood in the long queue in the hot sun to deliver a blow to Mugabe and show him we were tired of his rule – we chose the wrong platform. The same emotional thinking went into the formation of the MDC; everyone who had ‘beaf’ with Mugabe was invited to the party and a group with too many people with differing motives and agendas is bound to fail.

As we look at the Zimbabwean problem and possible solutions we should be forward looking and leave emotions out of it – a difficult position to take considering lost limbs, burnt buttocks and missing relatives, but we must try. I remember when Jonathan Moyo was minister of information and publicity he introduced the 75% local content policy on our radios and television. Minus the other Zanu PF propaganda that he churned out with amazing efficiency, the 75% local content policy was a noble idea and many a local artist benefited from it. His unbundling of ZBC into ZBH holdings was also a sound business move.  But we failed to look at things with a clear mind and declared that anything Zanu PF is bad and should be rejected without even being glanced at.

                We should avoid such short sightedness when it comes to our new constitution: No one should tell us how to vote in the referendum because after forming reading groups to study and understand the proposed document we will know how to vote. I know Zanu PF is claiming that 80% of the views in the collected data are its views and that has got a few people seething and vowing to reject the draft and Mugabe relishes that situation. He will set an election date and the very faulty Lancaster House constitution will be used and we all know what will happen.

                I say let us wait for the draft constitution, read through it carefully and see what to make of it. For one reason or the other it might not be to everyone’s satisfaction, but we should ask ourselves if it will move us from the current hopeless situation to a reasonable position of hope, no matter how small.