moral fibre

"Are you still there?" she hisses as we near the gate.

She's called in, her braids freshly done, to drop off some cupcakes in honour of the addition to our family. Four beaded chocolate creations, trussed up in blue serviettes. I'm touched -- and struck again by the permeability of culture, of how cupcakes are no Shona tradition. And yet they are. Now.

"It's a lack of moral fibre we've got." There's a second before I realise what she's talking about.

"The MDC." She shakes her head. "That Morgan and his women. There'll be more too, crawling out of the woodwork."

She's referring to the Morgan marriage scandal that broke while I was out of the country. State media announced he'd got married, paid 40,000 US lobola (bride price), that his new wife -- a wealthy businesswoman of 39, with close ties to ZANU-PF- had gone to his rural home to perform the cultural rites a new wife must. More salacious online sources claimed she was pregnant with his twins. After his spokesman denied any marriage had taken place, Tsvangirai then admitted it had -- but now he was to divorce the woman.

"He's not wise," she says. "What is he -- nearly 60? But he still thinks he's a young man. They're all the same, these people. If you give a man a mattress, he will change."

"I was with these people from the start, through the trade unions," she says. "And I look at them and think I may have wasted all that time. What do I do? I've got to --"

"You got to see it through," I finish for her. It's a bad habit I have, of finishing other people's sentences if they seem to have come to a grinding halt. I think it's because I want to encourage them to go on.

"No," she says. "But there is one thing: he may not be wise but he is brave. I'll give him that."

She tosses her braids, gets back into her car. "They're (the cupcakes) are from Sheena's, if they're no good!"