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Haiti: Where was God? |
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THE world has been truly stunned by the images coming into our living rooms from the massive earthquake which violently shook the earth’s crust just beneath Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
The sight of the desperate earthquake survivors working their bleeding hands to the bone to free those still trapped under the concrete rubble brought tears to my eyes.
At first, I could not bear the sight of such human suffering in an already impoverished country and quickly turned the TV off. President Obama amply described the quake as “cruel”.
A similar incident happened a few years ago in a different place. On December 26, 2004, there was an extreme fracture of the earth’s crust somewhere out in the Indian Ocean. This caused great tidal waves to go racing towards Indonesia and other island nations and left hundreds of thousands dead. Read more…
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You know-who? |
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A STORY is told about the how the late retired Zimbabwe High Court judge Washington Ega Sansole was arrested by the very government he used to work under, for political reasons.
Police officers came to his house in Hillside, Bulawayo, to pick him up but had no arrest warrant. He informed them that they could not arrest him without one. The police maintained an all-night vigil outside his house “awaiting further instructions” from their superiors on what to do next.
He was to later tell his lawyer that he slept secure that night with the knowledge that he had free protection from the police. “I was the safest resident in Hillside that night, with all the break-ins that were taking place. Though of course they eventually took me in the very next day!” Read more…
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The trouble with marriage |
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WHAT a storm did I kick up with the article on marriage! I really did not know how strongly some people felt about the subject. And “strongly” is an understatement. They really came out of the woodwork with the most graphic among them telling me where to put my opinion.
There were divorcees from both sides of the gender divide, bachelors and spinsters, mothers and fathers in law and a sprinkling from the feminist fraternity. As for New Zimbabwe.com editor Mduduzi Mathuthu, the subject of the article, he says that I put him off the idea of getting married … for good!
Reluctant to react to verbiage bordering on slander, I sometimes feel its pertinent that one sets the record straight. For one, I have been “happily” (read ‘continuously’) married for 15 years, so that makes me something of an expert on marital issues due to experience. Read more…
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7 things that the GNU has killed |
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1. Burning of Money
Remember when you could take US$20 and get Z$2 billion on the street, but get Z$50 billion if you wanted the money transferred into your account? That was called kupisa (burning). It made hexatrillionnaires of some Zimbos and got others into jail. Well, its no more, thanks to the GNU.
2. The Zeroes of Inflation
There was a time in 2008 when there was not enough space on a cheque to write the full amount. How do you fit Z$712,225,305,266,302.00 onto the ‘numbers’ part of a cheque page? If you think that’s bad, wait until you start writing it out in words: Seven hundred and twelve trillion two hundred and twenty-five billion three hundred and- P.T.O.- five thousand dollars two hundred and sixty-six thousand three hundred and two dollars only. Thank goodness for the GNU the zeros are gone. Read more…
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Further changes to UK student visa |
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A NUMBER of significant changes will be introduced in the UK immigration regime this year. Here, I will only highlight the proposed changes to the student visa category under four heads as follows:
Bank statements
The new points-based system was introduced in March 2009. Since that time, students applying for a visa inside the UK only needed to produce bank statements which showed that they had the amount of money needed for maintenance at the time of application. Maintenance is the generic term for tuition fees and living costs.
This is changing on February 1, 2010. With effect from that date, anyone applying for a visa inside the UK must submit bank statements showing they have held the total amount of maintenance in their account for at least 28 days before the application. Read more…
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Bring out Ingwebu, Mdu is getting married |
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IT’S every girl’s dream to get married which makes one worry when Mduduzi Mathuthu says he ‘wants’ to get married. That’s different from saying he needs to get married which, for many of the male species, is an anathema.
Men usually get married at gunpoint, dragged kicking and screaming to the altar. Well, that might sound dramatic but men have perfected the act of not showing it … reluctance to get hitched, I mean. Unless Mdu is trying to tell us something we don’t already know.
Assuming that he has willingly decided to tie the knot and make someone’s daughter miserable, he should take advice from Sir Alan Herbert, who when approached by a colleague who referred to his own 25 years of blissful marriage (now here are two words that are incongruent) was heard to reply: “The conception of two people living together for 25 years without having a cross word between them suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.” Read more…
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The Christmas to end them all |
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IT WAS a Christmas like no other, in fact, it was the best in more than ten years and I was there.
I went home to Zimbabwe for the festive season, and boy did the freaks come out! Like most ‘returnees’ (read injiva and other diasporians) from across the globe, we set out with trepidation expecting the worst.
A fellow traveller thought that the road from Plumtree onwards would be non-existent. Forgive him for sounding naïve, but when he left, things had sunk to unprecedented depths.
We sure did encounter potholes here and there, some so huge one could plant a baobab tree in them. Call them drum-holes if you like. I am convinced the city fathers could solicit some funds just by circulating the photographs of commuter buses disappearing into the drum-holes to the World Bank.
Come to think of it, they could possibly be touted as a tourist attraction, an African version of the Bermuda Triangle! But then again, I digress too much. Read more…
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Good news for UK HIV sufferers |
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WITH an estimated one in seven adults living with HIV, Zimbabwe is experiencing one of the harshest AIDS epidemics in the world.
Out of the large number of Zimbabweans who are affected by the epidemic, readers of this blog will know at least one person who is living positively.
The court ruling discussed below will, therefore, be welcomed by many Zimbabweans who are HIV positive and currently live in the UK, and there is more good news for those who wish to work or study in the USA. Read more…
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A half brick for Christmas |
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WHEN Themba was asked what he wanted for Christmas, he said that he wanted a half brick.
A half brick, you ask, what for? Smashing some guy’s windscreen on New Year’s Eve?
You see Themba was only six-years-old and a half brick was just about the only toy he could imagine. Remember the bricks we used to ‘drive’ around the elaborately constructed tracks in the yard? It was rugged, cheap and in abundant supply unlike the toys we are blackmailed to buy for the kids these days. Read more…
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UK decision offers hope for qualified ‘overstayers’ |
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THE very latest Points Based System decision is a case called AA (paras 131A-I: switching) Nigeria [2009] UKAIT 00055.
In this decision, the Tribunal has confirmed for the first time that a person applying under the Points Based System does not need to have existing leave under the Immigration Rules at the time of application. To be fair, this has always been the understanding in practice, but it is important that we now have judicial pronouncement on such a crucial point.
Context is important. The new Points Based System is an extremely rigid regime which does not accommodate flexibility or discretion. You either satisfy the rules or you do not. Points are awarded on an ‘all or nothing’ basis. Substantial compliance will not do. The ‘near miss argument’ will not cut it.
Against that background therefore, the AA decision is useful arsenal. It allows disappointed applicants to re-apply and get back into the game. Read more…
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