Rotten Row Page 8

  After the opening prayer and the introductions, after the pam-pam of appreciation for the moderator and the resource persons of the morning session, after all protocol had been observed and after the welcoming of the Special Guest, who is the new First Secretary at the European embassy that is the sponsor of this event, the Familiar Faces cluster to bemoan their fate over Choice Assorted biscuits, lukewarm tea and instant chicory coffee.

  They know each other well, the Old Familiar Faces. Since the beginning of the Zimbabwe Crisis more than a decade ago, they have spent many hours together at seminars, workshops, conferences, colloquiums and other outreach programmes. But they still wear around their necks bright red lanyards that identify their names and organisational affiliations. That, by the way, is one of their favourite phrases. Not where do you work or who are you with but what is your organisational affiliation. They are very educated, the Old Familiar Faces. They pride themselves on their Excellent English.

  To one side, within comfortable reach of the biscuits, stands Mrs Maudie Chikombe, the convenor of the workshop and Mr Collins Dube, the moderator of the morning session.

  Mrs Chikombe, a well-known Feminist Activist, is a flamboyant woman who favours loud prints and dirty-blonde wigs. She long ago lost a half-hearted battle against middle-age spread, but underneath her layers of lurid clothing, artificial hair and excess body weight are glimpses of the loveliness that used to transport Mr Dube into delight on the many nights they spent together at NGO gatherings around the country. Such had been her comeliness that it had induced Mr Dube to launch her career in the NGO sector just after her Master’s degree in Rural and Urban Planning.

  Their affair burned out many years before Mrs Chikombe was married. It goes without saying that Mr Dube was already married, but that is by the way, and more importantly, it was before Mrs Chikombe was Born Again, a mercifully releasing process that involves the erasure of sinful pasts without necessarily requiring a concomitant commitment to a sinless future.

  Though he has become broad before and broad behind, Mr Dube has aged significantly better than his former paramour, for what he has lost in hair he has gained in girth and bonhomie. His penchant for wearing cowboy hats made from khaki canvas, taken together with his comfortable padding, give him the look of a benevolent politician about to hand over buckets of donor maize in exchange for rural votes. He has made much of being in the small category of men specialising in Women and Gender, and indeed, in addition to Mrs Chikombe, there are other women in this sector in whom Mr Dube has personally specialised.

  They have taken different paths to leadership. While Mrs Chikombe has had a simple and upward trajectory to the top, Mr Dube’s path has been slightly more meandering. Having ascended the ladder both early and quickly, he came down a few rungs after he defrauded an Unnameable Embassy when he was its Chief Project Officer, but as he was not prosecuted, he was able to cast it in subsequent job interviews as a simple misunderstanding among friends, a mere matter of the wrong figures inadvertently appearing in the wrong column and besides, most of it was owed to him in expenses. In the intervening years, though a cloud of suspicion has followed him, he has clung to the highest point of elevation that he has managed to reach in the sector. Though he is unlikely to scale the dizzy heights of which which Mrs Chikombe is assured, he is comfortably high up enough that he is not un duly threatened by her success. And so there they are, two of the most glittering stars in the civil society firmament, gossiping and complaining as they munch bourbon creams, custard creams and lemon creams.

  ‘You know those people are becoming very stingy,’ Mrs Chikombe says. ‘What do you call this now? We suggested Leopard Rock or Elephant Hills, but they said absolutely not.’

  ‘For sure, they are on a mission,’ Mr Dube says. ‘I hear they have cut the funding at about ten NGOs now.’

  Mr Dube is partly right: the number is actually seventeen. The more the country’s democracy crisis drags on, and the recession bites in Europe, the less their donors are willing to fund their seminars, workshops and conferences, colloquiums and other outreach programmes. Even their usually-to-be-relied-upon European sponsor of a Benelux Slash Scandinavian persuasion, usually committed to fully meeting the international pledge to give a defined percentage of GDP in development aid, has cut back funding.

  The global recession coincided with the posting, four years before, of an ambassador from the Belt-Tightening, Scrimp and Scraping, Corner-Cutting school of Donor Funding. Unlike his three predecessors, who had all been sent here as their last posting, he was a young Ambassador, in his first posting, in fact, and he was not content to be seen to be doing things. He actually wanted to Do Things. He wanted to Make Waves.

  Why, for instance, the Ambassador had asked, as he looked at the applications that his mainly local staff had approved for funding, should the embassy fund the Centre for Human Rights (CHR), the Human Rights Organisation (HRO), the Institute for Human Rights (IHR), the Human Rights Initiative (HRI), the Human Rights Agenda (HRA) and the Association of Human Rights Agencies (Umbrella), six human rights organisations that all had the same mandate and seemed to exist only to compete for funding?

  And why, the ambassador asked, as he pored over a budget that would have seen him give 200,000 Euros to a year-long ‘Awareness and Outreach Programme’, is it necessary that the country’s human rights problems and democratic deficit should be discussed exclusively in holiday resorts?

  Why, he had asked further, should the embassy take people who saw each other daily in the city to tourist resorts such as the resort town of Victoria Falls to discuss these problems in overnight accommodation? And why was it that, having carted them halfway across the country, paid full board for them, the taxpayers of his country should, in addition, give each participant a per diem of 100 dollars a day for the four or five days that they were in the holiday resort? And why should the embassy then pay for mementos emblazoned with the name of the event they were attending, two different styles of T-shirt, one with a collar and the other collarless, ballpoint pens and caps, key-rings, lanyards and laptop bags?

  These decidedly undiplomatic questions, to which there were no diplomatic answers, had resulted in the Ambassador cutting the funding of four of the human rights organisations, and for the remaining three, taking his pen to the budgets, circling a few line items and reducing their budgets by two thirds. He had then directed his reforming zeal to fifteen election support organisations, seven Peace and Reconciliation through Art organisations, and five voter registration initiatives. Only the organisations supporting Victims of Domestic Violence, Girl Children, Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children, Released Convicts and Recent Drop-Outs had proved immune to the cuts. ‘And it is not even,’ complained Mrs Chikombe bitterly, ‘it is not even as though some of these organisations even applied for funding.’

  After wreaking this havoc on the sector, the Ambassador had gone on to Do Things and Make Waves in another posting. Afghanistan, the Old Familiar Faces heard with some satisfaction – vachasotana ikoko neTaliban, Mr Dube chortled – but by then, the belt-tightening philosophy seemed likely to be entrenched at the embassy.

  Things are a little better since his departure. This workshop is a Big Push. As Mr Dube confirms to Mrs Chikombe over the coffee break that there are indeed no per diems at this conference, she glowers in the direction of the Special Guest. The Special Guest catches her eye and smiles in their direction. Mrs Chikombe and Mr Dube transform their faces immediately into beaming smiles of such high wattage that they confirm for the Special Guest everything she has heard about the charm and disarming friendliness of the locals.

  The bell goes, the coffee break is over and they head back to the Jacaranda room for their workshop. It is not just any workshop, this one. It is necessary to collate the results of the research from the previous years to justify a pitch for more funding for this year. Unless the sector gets funding for salaries and education, fuel and domestic servants and security guards, they will be help
less against the political violence that they are sure will engulf the country. That the Special Guest is here, and more, importantly, that she is new, gives them some hope. The Ambassador has not been appointed yet, and this is a chance for the human rights organisations to restate their case.

  In the Jacaranda room, the chairs and angled tables are covered with a lacy, white net cloth more suited to a bridal party than a hard-hitting seminar on the political violence they predict will engulf the country. Next up is Mr Magaba, Mrs Chikombe’s deputy director. He likes his watches, Mr Magaba, and, by the simple stratagem of being ignorant of Segal’s Law, has chosen to wear a watch on each wrist, thus always showing off at the same time two of the watches in his, at present, ten-watch collection. He also has the distinction of being one of the clutch of thirty-seven-year-old Born Frees who were named after the one and only president, as well as having a last name that sounds like the president’s. They are an excellent team, he and his boss, the Born Again and the Born Free.

  He uses his name as the ice-breaking joke in every presentation he gives, as he does now. ‘As you may appreciate,’ he begins as he raises his lanyard, in the process revealing his right-hand watch, ‘the name is Robert Gabriel Magaba. One might say Magaba is just two vowels short of State House.’

  The Old Familiar Faces have heard this before but they give their customary titter. They each have their own style of presenting. Mr Magaba has trained himself to speak of himself only in the third person, and to lay stress on the last phrase of each sentence and to smile as he does so. He has also taken seriously the advice that he should pick just one member of the audience and address only him. He zooms in on the Special Guest and stares into her grey-blue eyes as he continues.

  ‘As Magaba will show in a moment, especially concerning is the likely prospect of a surge in political violence, particularly the many cases reported last time of torture, murder, and punitive aggravated rape.’ His eyes opening wide in emphasis, he gives the Special Guest a beaming smile on ‘punitive aggravated’ that lasts all the way to ‘rape’.

  ‘And unfortunately, we are likely to experience the same retrogressive unwillingness on the part of the police to prosecute the panoply of criminal cases that are likely to be rupturing like a cancerous boil. In effect, the police force of this country is guilty of such gross misconduct that you might call their conduct, not just a dereliction of duty but also a defecation on democracy.’

  The smile that starts on ‘defecation’ lasts all the way to ‘democracy’. On he continues, Mr Magaba, evaluating the matrixes and assessing the democratic deficits, evaluating the overarching frameworks, and smiling and stressing and fixating his gaze on the Special Guest. Only when he says, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, last but not least,’ does he break the connection. After the applause, Mr Dube, who is the moderator for this session, says, ‘With that presentation, Mr Robert Gabriel Magaba, I would say you are closer than two vowels to State House.’

  The Familiar Faces titter.

  Mr Dube then summarises Mr Magaba’s presentation; the summary, in fact, is half as long as the actual presentation, for Mr Dube, with a microphone in hand, is inclined to be a little expansive. The eyes of the Familiar Faces flicker restlessly to the large Africa-shaped olivewood clock whose copper hands are ticking precisely towards lunchtime. ‘Let’s have another pam-pam for His Excellency,’ says Mr Dube.

  The Familiar Faces applaud.

  Mrs Chikombe presents after Mr R. G. Magaba. Her PowerPoint presentation is a straightforward statistical summary of political violence per province. She has neat graphs and pie charts that show the incidence of political violence in each of the ten provinces. Mashonaland Central, East and West are represented with slices in three different shades of green, Matabeleland North and South are orange and ochre, Manicaland is red, Midlands pink, Masvingo blue, and Metropolitan Harare and Bulawayo are purple and mauve. The green slices take up the largest portion of the chart.

  As she moves to Masvingo Province, the trailing edge of the lace tablecloth catches on the heel of a young woman who has just entered the room. The cloth drags as she moves her leg, almost toppling the little jars of Mazoe orange crush and the bowls of white Endearmints on the table. Three Familiar Faces grab the jars before they fall over. The entrapped woman frees her heel and gives a smile of apology in the direction of Mrs Chikombe who has stopped talking.

  Mr Dube is much more taken by the new arrival than Mrs Chikombe. She resumes her presentation to recount the instruments used per province while Mr Dube fixates on the Unfamiliar Face. Mrs Chikombe moves to a series of slides showing photographs of victims of violence in states of undress. The Special Guest gasps as a slide comes up that shows a young man, his back to the camera, with dark purple welts on his back and buttocks as well as a pattern of marks all over his buttocks that look like they were made by …

  ‘… teeth,’ says Mrs Chikombe. ‘A lot of the youth groups were known to have used their teeth on their victims as we see here.’

  Her laser pointer circles the young man’s right buttock. ‘This is in addition to the plethora of other instruments like sjamboks, belts, whips and iron rods both heated and unheated.’

  More pictures follow, women with their buttocks beaten, a man with his skin sliced off, two opposition activists with their eyes closed in their coffins. Only the Special Guest seems to experience distress at any of the images. Mr Dube surreptitiously checks his phone and forwards a joke on WhatsApp. Mr Magaba’s phone vibrates on the lace cloth. ‘Magaba,’ he whispers as he answers and walks out, his shadow briefly obscuring the picture of a dead opposition activist in his coffin. They hear his raised voice as the doors close behind him. ‘No, no, I think it is just the brake lights, not the brakes themselves,’ he says.

  Mrs Chikombe winds up her presentation. She is a good speaker, Mrs Chikombe. She also gave the opening prayer that morning: it had just the right amount of passion, and she made sure to cut it off when she saw that some of the more exhibitionist, and Pentecostal, female Familiar Faces were beginning to moan, rather than speak, their Amens and Hallelujahs and had started to sway slightly and breathe more shallowly than was called for in a brisk morning prayer.

  As the head of Umbrella, she runs a tight ship, particularly when it comes to the conduct and clothing of her female staff. One of her first acts when she moved from the Human Rights Organisation to head Umbrella was to decree that none of the female staff were to wear trousers or skirts above the knee. A workplace, in Mrs Chikombe’s view, was not the right place for distractions. Mrs Chikombe’s brand of Feminism is very big on Personal Reponsibility, very big indeed, but curiously only for women. Her brand of Feminism decrees that it is up to women to ensure that men are not distracted. It is also strongly rooted in her Born Againness. She is, if you like, a Born Again Feminist, which means that when she worked for a domestic violence NGO, she managed to persuade many women that they were beaten by their husbands because they did not pray hard enough.

  On her clothing decree, a young and attractive Project Officer had been heard to snigger that their new Director had only banned those items of clothing that she could not wear herself. She had been dismissed on the spot, and when the organisation’s Human Resources Officer had tentatively suggested that the Labour Relations Tribunal might have something to say about the unlawful dismissal of the Project Officer, Mrs Chikombe had simply responded, in her best Born Again Feminist voice, that they would see who was the Director here, her or the Labour Relations Tribunal. In the event, the Project Officer had had no money to pursue her case for unfair dismissal and Mrs Chikombe’s next act was to ban Trésor, a pulchritudinous French perfume that Mrs Chikombe had first smelt on her secretary Mandi and immediately decided was just the one for her.

  She had asked what the perfume was, her secretary had handed it to her, and she had sniffed it in appreciation. ‘Iyi yatova ya-Director Mandi iyi,’ Mrs Chikombe said. ‘Only the Director can wear this one.’ With the memory of the fired
assistant in mind, Mandi had complied. The perfume continued to linger on her own clothes until it was completely washed out and she found a new perfume, though not one she liked as much, and her job, for now at least, was safe.

  If all this seems contradictory with Feminism, it is because Feminism is an activity, not a philosophy, it is club or clique; it is a civil society activity that requires workshopping and resourcing, monitoring and evaluation. It is an income-generating activity in the NGO sector, just as human rights is an income-generating activity in the NGO sector, election support is an income-generating activity in the NGO sector, and voter education is an income-generating activity in the NGO sector. And as an income generating activity in the NGO sector, it has its gatekeepers and sentinels who stand guard at the gates to Feminism, to make sure that Unsuitable Women do not enter. The Old Familiar Faces have quite enough Feminists to be going on with, they do not need new ones, thank you.

  In the Jacaranda room in the middle of Mrs Chikombe’s lecture, a phone has the audacity to ring. Mrs Chikombe stops talking to give a glare in the direction of the offending Familiar Face. She looks closer with a frown, this is actually an Unfamiliar Face, the phone belongs to the same young woman who had caught her heel in the tablecloth earlier. The Unfamiliar Face switches off her phone with an apologetic wave. The wave catches Mr Dube’s eye who sits up a little straighter the better to see her. His attention is momentarily diverted and he does not immediately realise that Mrs Chikombe has concluded. He then thanks her and summar ises her presentation, invites a pam-pam, but even now has his eye on the clock. It is ten minutes to one when the group goes to lunch.

  Over lunch, Mr R. G. Magaba, who has also noticed the newcomer, makes his way to the Unfamiliar Face. ‘The name’, he says, ‘is Robert Gabriel Magaba. In fact you might say …’