A warning

• 200 homes destroyed in Epworth

• 228 shops, food vendors, hair salons and offices in Harare have been shut down.

• ZESA is threatening to cut off customers in high-density areas for non-payment of bills but not customers who owe them more than $100,000.

• the on-going story of the Mbare petrol station that couldn’t be built because the owner didn’t have the right party card.

Admittedly, there have been contradictory reports on some of these and they got more publicity in The Herald than elsewhere, but there’s no smoke without fire. The question is: whose fire is it? As usual, party politics sticks its ugly snout into everything.

There have even been hints of another Murambavanhu in preparation. Who would benefit from that? Certainly not the ordinary inhabitants of our high-density suburbs.

Over the past six months, we have seen the return of front garden kiosks and tuck shops, which most people favour. A large number own such kiosks. Buying and selling is a traditional way of making a bit of income. But these kiosks are not supermarkets, where you can do all your week’s shopping under one roof. When there are a dozen in a street, there will be a certain specialisation. Family A buy matches from their neighbours B, who buy soap from C, who in turn buy airtime from D; sooner or later everyone is buying from and selling to everybody else.

There is a kind of power which is no more than the ability to prevent others from doing anything to help themselves. We should know about that; one party in our low-level civil war are trying to show that they have that power. They treat any independent action as a threat to their power. That should tell us how weak they really feel.

Look at the “threats” they feel compelled to crush: the latest was a group of youths who set up a guarded parking space, a safe place for residents of Chitungwiza to leave their cars overnight. These youths did not have the right party card, so they must be deprived of their income. Nobody may have anything unless they grovel to the ruining party and beg.

That’s why we have the intensifying kombi wars. That’s why we see open spaces being fenced as new flea-markets,where you will be allowed to sell as long as the local mafia get their cut on every cigarette or sweet you sell – and you buy the right party card.

I thought I had heard it all until I discovered that those government ghost workers, beardless boys in grey uniforms, are not being paid. The elected government does not need more than 20,000 cops, most of whom have never stopped a crime or caught a criminal. They can’t afford to pay “workers” who won’t work.

But the guys who “employ” them to do their dirty work won’t pay – even though they are rich, maybe richer than the national exchequer. They still force their minions to forage for small change to live on at road blocks and toll gates.

Maybe someone should remind Augustine Chihuri of the parable the prophet Nathan told to King David when he had murdered his neighbour Uriah just because, although David – like all kings of his time – was well supplied with wives and concubines, he had caught a glimpse of Uriah’s only wife in the bath and wanted to add her to his collection. I see parallels between the sinful David and men who control a large part of the Chiadzwa diamond fields – but demand that their private armies be paid out of the fraction of our taxes that reaches the government we elected.

David was man enough to admit his sin and repent. It would be nice to think our self-appointed guardians and rulers could find that much honesty and courage in themselves. We could still be more forgiving than they expect, but they shouldn’t expect to get off scot-free. David didn’t.