|
Zimbabwe - A letter from the diaspora (June 2007) |
|
Announcement - This site is being moved to a new address at www.cathybuckle.com. Friday 29th June 2007 Dear Friends. June 26th is the UN Day for Victims of Torture and many Zimbabweans based in London and further afield took the opportunity to attend a service of commemoration for our own torture victims. The service was held at St Paul's church just a stone's throw from Convent Garden, right in the heart of London. It is a most beautiful church designed by Inigo Jones and built in 1633 to commemorate the Restoration of the monarchy. A pretty unlikely venue you could say for a group of twenty-first century Africans to be remembering their comrades' suffering at the hands of an African dictator. But there are intriguing similarities: St Pauls, you see - not the cathedral by the way - is called the Actors' Church and it was built specifically for the actors and musicians, the dancers and entertainers who had been banned from performing during the period of Oliver Cromwell's republic. Oliver Cromwell had fought a bitter civil war against King Charles the First and his followers on the grounds that parliament and the people should be central to the government of England and not the king. The war ended in defeat for the Royalists and King Charles 1 was beheaded. England had become a Republic and Oliver Cromwell assumed the title of Lord Protector. You can guess what happened next, I'm sure. Cromwell became increasingly dictatorial and repressive; he banned all theatre and entertainment; music was heard no more in public and dancing and any form of merry-making were forbidden by law. The man who had started out as a genuine believer in people's power and democracy had turned into a ruthless dictator. Sounds familiar, doesn't it, in more ways than one. Cont Mhlanga, whose play The Good President has been banned in Bulawayo and subjected to the red pencil treatment by Zimbabwean cops would feel very much at home in St Pauls. So, there was an unintended resonance in having the service for Zimbabwe's torture victims in that particular church. Speakers had been flown in for the occasion, among them the writer, Chengerai Hove who now lives in exile in Norway. He spoke movingly of his shock at seeing on television the images of his own sister's battered body displayed for the whole world to see. Hove's sister is Sekesai Holland, one of the women so viciously beaten at the same time as the other prominent opposition members. The images of their beaten and bloody bodies probably did more than a thousand words to alert the world to what was going on inside Zimbabwe. The irrepressible Doctor John Makumbe was another speaker at the service and as always he managed to find humour even in the midst of all the horror. He was speaking of the new kind of torture that Mugabe is inflicting on his people; economic torture which denies children their education. Without the monies sent from Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, Makumbe calculated that 80% of Zimbabwean children would be unable to attend school. At that point in his address someone spotted two officials from the Zimbabwean Embassy lurking at the back of the church. The message was quickly passed to Makumbe and with his unerring gift for gentle humour he capitalised on it.' ' Why even the Embassy staff are suffering', he said, ' Those two gentleman at the back there, they haven't been paid for two months'. The congregation howled with delight and turned as one to see the two but by then the men had scuttled out. That little incident illustrated for me how effective humour is as a weapon against dictators. Mugabe was busy this week hailing the departure of Tony Blair as a great loss for the opposition who would no longer be able to rely on Blair, their 'mentor and sponsor' to forward their agenda of 'regime change'. Ironically, many in Britain were also hailing the end of Blair's long farewell; sick and tired of the endless 'spin' and hoping for a new era of straight talking from Gordon Brown. Little does Mugabe realise that the new man in Downing Street is likely to be much less intimidated by Mugabe's 'spin' and anti-colonial rhetoric than Blair ever was. My favourite quote of the week for its unintended humour comes from the Zimbabwean Minister of Information. Speaking about the outgoing US Ambassador's prediction that the Zim government would fall withing six months, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu dismissed Ambassador Dell's comments as 'malicious propaganda'. Well, of course, he would say that wouldn't he? I wonder though how anyone managed to keep a straight face as Ndlovu added: ' The government of Zimbabwe is in a much stronger position now, politically and economically, than ever. Events on the ground', he concluded, 'speak for themselves'. This week alone, the government threatens businesses with the power of the military if they don't bring their prices down; the Zim dollar becomes a worthless piece of paper which is unacceptable as legal tender; barter becomes the order of the day as rents are charged in fuel or soya beans and the unspeakable suffering of the people goes on unabated. Events on the ground certainly do speak for themselves. And what they tell us is of a government that is bankrupt, morally and financially, that seems neither to know or care how to get the country out of its self’inflicted crisis. Where is the opposition now when the country so desperately needs a fresh voice? Ndini shamwari yenyu. PH. Friday 22nd June 2007 Dear Friends. This is a true story of an incident that happened this week. A Zimbabwean who had just arrived in the UK was passing a cheap clothing shop somewhere in London (Chinese-made goods, probably, the Brits have their zhing zhong too!) where he saw a dress marked £5.00. The Zimbabwean turned to his companion in absolute astonishment and exclaimed, 'You mean they still have items costing single digits here in the UK?' The man who, remember, had just come from a country where even the price of one single sweet for a child runs into four digits simply could not get his head round the idea things of being priced in single digits! That little anecdote illustrates in reverse the reaction that Zims here in the diaspora have when we look at what's happening to the prices back home. There are just too many digits! I know that I spend half my days with a calculator trying to work out how much so and so will get in Zim dollars if I send £10 or £20 and whether it will be enough to pay the school fees or medical expenses or even just buy a few basic groceries. But - as Zimbabweans know only too well - even that calculation is bound to fail because in Zimbabwe prices never stay the same. They have only one direction - and that's up. If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean and not a Cabinet Minister or someone on the gravy train of corruption, you may manage to afford food today but you can't be sure you will eat again tomorrow. So it was doubly shocking to read the comments of Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of Lands this week. He's still droning on about getting rid of all the remaining white farmers, most of whom are Zimbabwean citizens, by the way, and not Brits as the Zimbabwean government claims. Commenting on a UN Report that Zimbabwe will face even more food shortages in the coming months, Minister Mutasa said, 'The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites' and he added, ' we would all rather die of hunger but knowing full well that that the land is in the hands of black people.' You have to wonder who the Minister is speaking for. On behalf of millions of his fellow countrymen and women, Didymus Mutasa volunteers death rather than the 'dishonour' of eating food grown by whites. 'We would all rather die of hunger 'he says. But then that's easy for him to say isn't it? He and his fellow Ministers will not be the ones to pay with their lives the price of this government's criminal and racist policies. I don't suppose for one moment that my friends back home give a damn who grows the food as long as they and their children and relatives get to eat even one decent meal a day. But then logic and plain common sense isn't in Zanu PF's vocabulary - and neither, it seems, is common humanity. Meanwhile, people like Kenneth Kaunda the former President of Zambia and others of the Pan-Africanist persuasion continue to defend Mugabe and his policies. Writing in the current issue of Focus on Africa, the BBC magazine, Kaunda says that Mugabe should not be 'demonised' by the west because ' they do not understand what Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his fellow freedom fighters have gone through'. Kaunda traces the history of Zimbabwe's struggle for freedom and Mugabe's part in that struggle including his imprisonment by the Smith regime. Like all Pan-Africanists, Kaunda goes back into the distant past for justification of present actions. He describes how the land was stolen from the African people, how they were pushed onto the infertile land while the whites kept the best for themselves. Those are facts that no one disputes. Colonialism by its very nature is racist and chauvinistic and Ian Smith's Rhodesia was simply apartheid without the label. Thousands died in the war to end the Smith regime. There was immense suffering on all sides, not least by the villagers who risked their lives daily, caught in the middle between Freedom Fighters and Rhodesian troops. That war, Kaunda claims was about land. True, but he omits to tell his readers that it was also a war to bring democracy to the African people. The slogan of 'One man one vote' was central to the struggle for freedom. That is an inconvenient truth which Kaunda prefers to ignore, concentrating instead on the land issue, or Mugabe's version of it. Bringing his argument right up to the present day, Kaunda says, 'There have been allegations of corruption in relation to land allocation. Well, the corruption should have been dealt with by all. Stopping the land programme and doing nothing, was not the solution.' It's hard to see how the corruption could have been dealt with when the people who were administering the programme and making the laws were themselves corrupt! Kaunda goes on to admit that 'There are some things which President Mugabe has done which I totally disagree with' He cites the police beating of Morgan Tsvangirai as one example but adds, 'On the other hand, given their experience, I can understand the fury that goes through President Mugabe and his colleagues.' Am I missing something here? I cannot for the life of me see the logic of this argument. Kenneth Kaunda seems not to have understood that the 'fury' Mugabe and his colleagues allegedly feel is being unleashed against his own people, against black Zimbabweans. Now why should President Mugabe be 'furious' with his own people…unless of course he feels they will no longer vote to keep him in power. To attempt to justify the President's furious onslaught against his own people, as Kaunda does, on the grounds of Mugabe's past suffering is bad logic and bad psychology. Africa's colonial past needs to be acknowledged for the harm that it did; understanding the past, however painful that may be certainly helps us to understand ourselves but constantly blaming the past for everything we do is simply an easy way out of taking responsibility for our own behaviour. It's called emotional immaturity, a common characteristic of dictators. It was early on a Saturday morning and I was driving along a tar road in an area of thriving commercial farms between Murehwa where I lived and Marondera where I worked as a part-time tutor with the Zimbabwe Open University. From the road the farms looked as flourishing as ever but there were militant war veterans around, we all knew that. I was reminded of that brief flare of resistance in Zimbabawe this week as I watched on television the images of the Palestinians in the Gaza strip; ordinary mothers and fathers, sons and daughters taking to the streets in a desperate attempt to stop the warring elements of Hamas and Fatah from tearing their daily lives apart with murder and senseless slaughter of innocent people. Armed with nothing more than their bare hands, these brave men and women shouted and screamed their defiance at the hooded fanatics armed with their AK 47's.' Stop what you're doing! Stop killing our sons and daughter, our wives and husbands, our brothers and sisters. Stop making our lives unbearable' It was a truly humbling sight, such desperation, such courage. One particular image remains in my mind. A young man with just his bare fists ran right up to confront an armed, hooded man who was running through the streets firing at everything in sight. The demonstrator pushed him, punched him and just would not give up. He was screaming at the man, 'Stop what you're doing, Stop! You could see the hooded man getting more and more frustrated as he tried to shake off this unarmed civilian. Then, he fired over the protester's head and ran off with the angry protester in pursuit. Perhaps age and life experience have made me cynical but one story from home this week illustrated how easy it is for Zanu PF's propaganda machine to work on a gullible population, which, despite countless examples of lies and deceit over the years, appears not to have grasped the truth that the ruling party is just not to be trusted. That lesson has still not been learned. How else can one explain the incredibly naïve way in which some MDC MP's responded to the invitations sent out by Gideon Gono to an event at which agricultural implements were to be given away to so-called new farmers, including members of the opposition? Was it the 'Something for nothing' syndrome that has swept Zimbabwe over the last ten years that led some of the MDC MP's to attend? Whatever their reasons, their attendance represented another victory for the government propaganda machine. With their usual scant regard for factual accuracy, the Herald newspaper splashed the story all over the front page, naming the MDC recipients, some of whom were not even present at the ceremony. Heated denials from opposition members followed but by then the damage had been done. The intended message of the Herald story was to demonstrate to his loyal subjects - and anyone else watching developments in the country - the Dear Leader's impartial magnanimity to all Zimbabweans, regardless of their political affiliation. 'Are we not all Zimbabweans?' the President asked, ' Do we not eat together?' Well, no, Mr President, we don't! Some of us don't eat at all, thanks to your government's criminal mismanagement of the economy. And some of us are denied food aid by your government because we belong to a different political party. And some of us, Mr President, die of starvation. Friday 8th June 2007 Dear Friends Meanwhile the suffering continues. The poverty datum line in Zimbabwe is now estimated at over two million a month; prices for basic goods go up as much as three times in a day and on top of that there are transport costs, utility services, rates, rents and school fees. How do ordinary people manage? Whenever friends call me from Zim, my first question is ' Have you got enough to eat' and the answer always seems to be that they are managing, some how in some way they are managing. It is getting increasingly desperate but by barter and deals and with family help they are getting enough to keep them alive. God forbid that any of them get sick and need medical attention or have a baby born in hospital or, in the final act of despair turn up their toes and die and have to be buried - any of those processes will involve the family in millions, literally millions of dollars. By the time Blair got back to London from his 'Farewell' tour there had been other developments and all relevant to the Zimbabwean president. Charles Taylor's trial had opened in the Hague with Taylor pleading not guilty and claiming that he had immunity because at the time the crimes were committed he was head of state. (Britain, by the way, has said that if Taylor is found guilty they will be prepared to imprison him in the UK.) The Red Cross had declared that Zimbabwe was in a virtual war situation and as such merited Red Cross assistance and Edinburgh University had finally decided to strip Mugabe of his honorary doctorate, two other American universities are likely to follow suit. Reporting on this The Guardian newspaper here quoted Tony Blair saying in the House of Commons that he 'entirely endorsed' the move. He added that the UK would bar Mr Mugabe and his ministers from entering the UK ' until democracy had been restored in Zimbabwe'. Zimbabweans should remember those words. Friday 1st June 2007 Dear Friends. The British weather is renowned for its unreliability and it's a standard joke about the Brits that their one staple of conversation is the weather, usually described as ' the bloody weather'. For Zimbabweans in the diaspora accustomed to planning events months ahead in the sure knowledge that the weather will do exactly what it's supposed to, it's utterly maddening to know that in Britain the one thing you can never be sure of is the weather. Take this May, for example. We had had three weeks of glorious weather; temperatures climbed to record levels for May, trees burst into full summer foliage and gardens bloomed in premature glory. The native Brits, determined to catch a tan, stripped off to reveal their wormy whiteness and every possible variation of un-dress paraded itself on the streets. Then came the last weekend of May and a Bank Holiday, in the UK that's almost a guarantee that it will rain! The Saturday was cold and grey but undeterred I made my way to London to meet up with my daughter. Rain or no rain, we were not going to miss Bank Holiday Monday in the Square. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, had organized a huge celebration of Africa Day in Trafalgar Square. What better time to celebrate Africa's contribution to the world. Two hundred years since the Abolition of Slavery and the commemoration on Africa Day of the Founding of the OAU. It was to be one joyous celebration and Africans living in London together with Londoners, young and old, black and white and every shade in between, were there to join the party and dance their socks off. We were all Africans that day. There were stalls selling African food, African crafts, African jewellery and clothes and above all there was African music. From all over the continent the musicians came; Algeria, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Madagascar, the Congo and South Africa. Mama Africa herself, Miriam Makeba, was to be the star of the show. All the warmth and vitality of Africa was there in Trafalgar Square that day right under the statue of Nelson towering above us on his Column. And it rained and rained and rained! Not just gentle English rain but a cold driving rain that soaked us to the skin. Trafalgar Square was a sea of umbrellas. At one point a cheery d.j worked the crowd with the brolly dance: 'Brollies to the left, brollies to the right, lift your brollies up and shake 'em all about.!' It certainly kept us entertained but we got even more soaked as rain streamed off the shaking umbrellas and down our necks. But in the midst of all the celebrations we were reminded that the struggle is not yet over. A slim young Congolese woman came onto the stage between the musical acts to tell of her experiences as a Prisoner of Conscience. Speaking through an interpreter she told us how she had been imprisoned for five months and it was only through the efforts of Amnesty and the international community that she was finally released. She wanted to thank all the people who had helped her and to remind us that there are still dictators in Africa who imprison people for daring to disagree with the ruling party. Her testimony was a salutary reminder to all those people who in the name of Pan Africanism choose to turn a blind eye to the corruption, the denial of basic human rights and the downright bad governance that still prevails in much of Africa. Yes, it is good to celebrate our Africaness and the rich and varied cultures of Africa but we do the continent and its people a huge disservice by denying that there is still a long way to go before Africa and her people are truly free. Zimbabwe, of course, was not mentioned once by any speaker during this Africa Day celebration in Trafalgar Square, neither was Zimbabwe's wonderful music heard. In politically correct Britain it is considered racist even to acknowledge that black Africans are as capable of violence against their own people as any nasty white colonisiser. Tony Blair has been in the lead with this 'political correctness' and while Londoners and Africans in the diaspora danced in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Africa Day he was away on his 'Farewell' tour. In Sierra Leone he got a rapturous welcome; Sierra Leonians believe that it was Blair's military intervention back in 2000 that ended the bitter civil war. Blair, you see, believes in what he calls 'liberal intervention' arguing that in a global world where nations are more and more inter-connected the world cannot afford to ignore the crimes of brutal tyrants and the excesses of rogue states. As Mugabe continues his brutal repression of all dissenting voices, the Zimbabwean people will surely appreciate the irony of that philosophy coming as it does from a man whose government has stood by while Zimbabwe collapsed and up to four million Zimbabweans have fled their country. |
 
|
||
