Becoming The Muse

Coffee With Aunty Climax

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words and invite you to feel free… the Summit guests have left, so you don’t have to be on your Sunday best behaviour.

You know how when you have very important guests you tell the kids to behave or face the consequences and might even confine the lil rascals to their bedrooms, until the coast is clear so they don’t embarrass you with their uncouth behaviour…. As soon as the guests are gone, the reckoning begins..

Zimbabwe hosted the 44th Ordinary Summit of the Heads of State and Government of the Southern African Development Community. The SADC Declaration and treaty was signed on 17 August 1992 in Windhoek Namibia. The 44^th SADC summit has been one of the most attended with 13 out of 16 heads of state in attendance.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the Zambian president was one of the heads of state who did not attend the summit but had the minister of foreign affairs stood in as his representative and also joined some of the proceeding virtually. President Hichilema clarified that this had been due to pressing national matters that required his presence back at home.

However, his absence may have further strained diplomatic relations between the Zimbabwe and Zambia and has been subject to speculation, given the 2 countries’ history and how a former Zambian vice president presented a rather unflattering SADC Election Observer Mission Preliminary Report of the Zimbabwean elections held a year ago and earlier in the year, during a state visit to Russia, the Zimbabwean president had told Putin that western countries favoured Zambia and Malawi.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the summit passed without incident or rather an eerie silence with unofficial reports of security personnel patrolling streets and enforcing unconfirmed curfews and a clampdown on activists and persons of interest.

People had expected the SADC summit delegates to discuss the Zimbabwean situation or for protestors to catch the attention of the visiting thus forcing them to address the elephant in the room… but the summit went off smoothly with the Zimbabwean president appointed as the Chairperson of SADC…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that there has been outrage over Nelson Chamisa’s seeming lack of action and only posting biblical platitudes that God Is In It, instead of actually doing something. Chamisa who has been the crowd favourite presidential candidate in previous elections, stepped down from his political party earlier in the year and its been deafeningly silent in the political circles.

Some claim that he was paid off or a political plant to give people false hope, while others accuse him of betraying the people who voted for him. Others have counter-argued that people pin their expectations on someone else instead of them doing what they think needs to be done….

One cool thing about the elections was that the lights stayed on during the whole weekend, no load shedding… but looks like we are back to default settings, it was fun while it lasted… and back to the usual settings were each day one wonders what new challenge the government will introduce…

The latest shenanigan involved a video of the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank saying that they were looking into ways of holding onto remittances sent into the country as a way of controlling the informal market, it’s a good thing the Reserve Bank issued out a clarification that they are not doing anything of the sort and to disregard any rumours…

If experience has taught us anything, its that announcements get made, denied and finally authorised… Maybe I need to have a hawala man in my contact list, just in case.

So basically a lot has been going on but everything stays the same, rather anticlimactic after a summit…. Whats been happening in your neck of the woods?

~B