At least with the Chinese decadal leadership change, the world will have to learn to spell new names. First Xi Jinping, the new and incoming party leader and President of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Second Li Keqiang, the incoming deputy party leader and new Chinese Premier. Both replace Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao respectively.

And there is pressure on the top dog — pressure from within, pressure from without — to change China, but without challenging its core, foundational economic tenet: that of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Of course the broke West, foremost indebted America — China’s own HPIC — would want to see, even instigate, fatal changes that would see the break up of China as we know it today, the same way Reagan collapsed the Soviet Union through Gorbachev from 1989 onwards.

Are our politicians prisoners of an uninformed, ignorant yet overbearing media? Or are they playing political games with and through a pliant media? I raise these questions in relation to the whole debate around the Inclusive Government and all those processes which Government was man­dated to see through, principally the constitution-making process.
Let us play back to the early days of negotiations, which led to the creation of the Inclusive Govern­ment. The media thrust was to write against the for­mation of the Inclusive Government. The MDC for­mations, so ran editorials, should resist partnering Zanu-PF lest they are swallowed, lest democracy would be distorted through partnership. The coun­try could burn for the sake of the concept of democ­racy.

The bitch is in heat again and the world had better be warned! We have two strange stories, one in Thursday issue of the British Guardian, another in Wednesday issue of the New York Times. The two articles reveal the preoccupations of powers on either side of the Atlantic.

New York Times claims from “intelligence officials from several countries” that Iran in recent weeks has virtually completed an underground nuclear enrichment plant at some place called Fordo, which is near the holy city of Qum, which development, claims the paper, “puts Iran closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon, or come up to the edge, if its leaders ultimately decide to proceed”. The British Guardian report claims its government has rejected a US request to use British military bases in Cyprus as launch pads for military action against Iran.

What is all this hau hau around Chinamasa and Gumbo?  Vatadzei? What is their crime? But before that, a bit on our Prime Minister. Finally he is beginning to do right. His legal team has at last seen sense. It is beginning to engage the lawyers of Locardia Karimatsenga, the premier’s first wife.

Let it be remembered that the Karimatsenga lawyers actually offered an out-of-court settlement of this whole matter, well before the matter got to what it eventually became, namely an unschooled shout in the village, only re-enacted in modern courts. And to speak in support of this latest approach is not to suggest that this is what will bring about settlement. It could very well fail, as indeed it is beginning to look like. But

Ha ha ha! Did you see it dear reader? I mean did you read it? Could it be true? Could it? That one Giles Mutsekwa, our supposed Minister of Housing and Social Amenities wants to soundproof our buffeted lives by penning us all in kaylite homes? KAYLITE panelled homes!

Listen to the erudite Rhodesian army major we take for a minister in free Zimbabwe whose com­ing into being he so resisted: “The adoption of appropriate technology has been found to be one of the effective measures of increasing housing at affordable costs while at the same time addressing issues of environmental degradation.”

Uuuh! Yes, Major: “Zimbabwe, with an esti­mated housing backlog of 1 250 000 housing units, is not an exception. It is in recognition of this fact that I led a delegation of technical persons to Italy to assess a building technology for possible adop­tion in Zimbabwe.”
Mondiuraya nekuseka kani Minister (Minister, you crack my ribs with laughter)!

Was it Antonio Gramsci who wrote: “ . . . intellectuals have the function of organising the social hegemony of a group and that group’s domination of the state . . . the function of organising the consent that comes from the prestige attached to the function in the world of production and the apparatus of coercion for those who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively or for those moments of crisis of command and leadership when spontaneous consent undergoes a crisis”?
If it was Gramsci, as indeed I think it was, then this Italian Marxist social scientist was remarkably prescient. I put particular accent on the last part, namely the part to do with the role of intellectuals fastened onto a movement, particularly in “those moments of crisis of commandant leadership

The September 15th to 21st issue of the Economist has a huge leader splash titled “Murder in Libya”. The gist of the leader piece is to urge “the world’s policeman not (to) retreat from the world’s most dangerous region.” 
The world’s policeman is the United States and the most dangerous region is North Africa and the whole of the Middle East. America, exhorts the piece, “indeed should do more.” Do more what? More killing, more dying?

We apologise to our valued readers for not carrying your favourite column, The Other Side, by Nathaniel Manheru in The Saturday Herald. This was due to a technical problem. — Editor.

As a columnist, I have travelled a fairly long road, much of it quite bumpy. It is the price one has to pay. After all, I give quite a lot, with butts of my acerbic attacks bearing bleeding furrows from my burrowing lashes. I am the village cynic so adept at seeing warts hidden and trampled upon by the chorus of herd praise-singing. It is an expensive role to play, one that invites brickbats.

Is the national mind so easily distracted? Or so prone to escapism? A few figures will ram the point home. A story on Tsvangirai and his women on one of the websites on Zimbabwe clocked 210 responses.

Two stories on mining recapitalisation and beneficiation which ran on the same day and on the same site barely managed 44 comments altogether.
Of those 44 comments, only four were relevant to the theme, with most of the comments dwelling on the health and age of Vice President Nkomo, one of the sources for the two stories on mining.
The same story material on Tsvangirai and his women played out in the South African press, including in the largest circulating tabloid, the

Shall it be the ballot or the butt . . . sorry, the bedroom?
The MDC-T leader has been away, will be away for a whole week, and his mouth-man says we should not force his boss to stay in the country while President Mugabe is allowed to be out of the country at will.
Was the President not in Iran recently for the Non-Aligned Movement, added Mwonzora, sounding like a man who has lost charge of both mind and mouth.
We all sound like we are wrongly and wrongfully asking the Prime Minister to stay at home, indeed to stay closer to the country he is so desirous of ruling! Staying in the country now seems like a heavy burden on our Prime Minister.
And for Mwonzora, the whole matter reduces to a tit tat! It is about evening out of foreign fixtures, evening out numerically, which is why attending a 120 country-strong NAM is comparable to attending a convention of a party in America, albeit a governing party — for now! In my world such

I am very mindful of one rule of life, namely that distance simplifies things. I am watching events in South Africa from across the Limpopo, and of course there is a vast distance between the great Limpopo, itself the margin or the helm for our two sister republics, and where I stand as I write this piece.
Much worse, however nearer we are to each other as neighbours, there is a vaster distance by way of our distinct histories, however comparable these may be. Of course, our cultures and languages do intersect in a variety of ways, factors that my lessen that distance. But only lessen.