Zimbabwe August 2008

4th August 2008

It's a Sunday afternoon back in London, where I landed this morning, and I wanted to jot down a few more reflections on Zim before the big city sweeps me up.

 My first incongruous tale regards chocolate. Did you know that Cadbury's Zimbabwe still *exports* chocolate?  I kid you not.  It exports to Namibia, Democractic Republic of Congo…and…wait for it…Switzerland.  Yes, Cadbury's Zimbabwe is the only Cadbury in the world that makes Crunchettes – mini versions of Crunchies. It's also the only Cadbury's where Flakes are still hand-made.

My three weeks in Zim, as ever, provided so many insights.  Overheard conversations and glimpses of daily life in Harare were windows into socio-political change, trauma, resilience and humour.  People there live in a wartime economy even though the conflicts and violence are not described as war.   Since my last email, I visited TM supermarkets in Newlands and Kamfinsa; I was properly shocked by row after row of bare shelves which stocked only a handful of longlife products like soap powder, Dettol and Doom.  But in true Zimbabwean fashion, as a Joburg friend pointed out on seeing the photos that I furtively took with my phone, the shelves and floors are spotlessly clean – gleaming, even - and the staff neatly dressed and all standing behind their counters as usual.    Just afterwards, I went into a nearby art shop, where an artist was telling the proprietor how she was now exchanging paintings for fuel coupons.  Another woman was complaining bitterly about her friend's experience of immigrations officials at Heathrow:  'They asked her why she'd lived in Cape Town for 2 years. None of their bloody business!  What's she going to say?  Because the weather's better?!'  I mentioned that I'd just been into TM supermarket, and they retorted, 'Oh, didn't you know, it's not called TM anymore…it's called MT (emp-ty).'

 People's economic strategies are innovative and rich in their diversity.  I listened to urban housewives co-arranging the butchering of a mombe (cow) they'd managed to procure through someone who knows someone; the butcher was identified in a similar fashion.  These days it's all about having a wide network of contacts who fill gaps and seize opportunities in the informal market.  A friend of my brother's, formerly a world-class triathlete, currently trades diesel from Harare for kapenta fish in Binga, which he then brings back to the city.  This trip, for the first time, I saw wealthy white women stopping on corners in their 4x4s to buy a handful of vegetables from the street vendors whom they've overlooked for years.   They also look further afield, of course, and there are a number of traders who now bring in goods from South Africa and re-sell them at anything between a 10% and 90% mark-up.

In the midst of economic collapse, my second top incongruous tale involves postcolonial etiquette. The Royal Harare Golf Club, neighbouring the  presidential residence, was opened in 1898 and remains an elite hang-out, including for the political chefs. It maintains a stringent dress code.  A family friend visited the club for lunch recently in business-casual attire.  Having already ordered his meal in the Club's restaurant, he and his partner were asked to leave because he wasn't wearing socks under his long trousers.  Indeed, the dress code, in some bizarre colonial fashion, trumped all else – including the need to retain customers in one of the most desperate economies in the
world.

People still pay taxes in Harare, but are now often subsidizing state services, sometimes dramatically.  In a neighbouring northern suburb, the residents were so fed up with the chronic electricity problems that they approached ZESA to ask what could be done.  In the end, this same group gathered together USD 4000 to pay for spare parts that ZESA could not afford.  Similar stories are heard from the high density suburbs, though I imagine the amounts of money involved would have been significantly less. In the same vein, last week a friend of our domestic worker was  admitted to Parirenyatwa hospital, in the last stages of terminal breast cancer.  She was in hospital for 4 days before her death, during which time she was not given even a single painkiller.  Her relatives had to pool together to buy her a drip, in a last effort to ease her suffering.

Last weekend we traveled to Rukomechi, in the Mana Pools National Park area, a journey of about 7 hours.  Leaving the city early in the morning, I was struck by the image of 3 women in Apostolic robes, praying in the direction of the rising sun as they knelt in the white winter grass near some crossroads.  Between Harare and the Dyke, every village or homestead sported a Zanu PF poster visible from the road, tied high onto tree trunks, almost as if charms to fend off bad luck.  Driving the road through Chinhoyi and Karoi, formerly some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, we saw hundreds of acres of waist-high weeds.  Zanu PF T-shirts and headscarves were also quite a common sight in this area (in contrast to the Domboshawa side of town, where I saw not a single poster or handout).  Near Banket, ironically the only form of livelihood activity seen from the road were craftsmen selling wooden toy replicas of John Deere tractors.  Watching ZTV the same week, discussion panels informed viewers that agricultural failure was the outcome of Western sanctions (coincidentally, I nearly
fell of my chair laughing when I came across a white news presenter on ZTV – yet another one of Zimbabwe's many little incongruities).

Rukomechi, our destination on the banks of the Zambezi, with the Zambian escarpment as a backdrop, was absolutely stunning.  We and the elephants had the entire river to ourselves, minus a little noise pollution one afternoon from Rautenbach (one of Mugabe's business partners for his DRC dealings) in his black helicopter.  Bee-eaters and water birds, hippo s galore, enormous crocodiles lazing in the afternoon sun, waterbuck on the plains...and the most sublime African colours. Elsewhere in the country, illegal poaching is rife, but this part of Mana seems to have retained its character as a safe wildlife haven.

 The weekend's close brought my third most incongruous tale.  This one concerns tsetse fly control.   Some institutions never die - and it seems that the tsetse doesn't either.  The poor old tsetse fly, the carrier of sleeping sickness, has been subject to state interventions for decades and decades.  I was impressed by the tsetse fly control man who appeared to inspect our vehicle as we passed out of the National Park vicinity, equipped with a small net and a virtually-empty spray can, with which he carefully eliminated 1 of the 3 tsetse flies inside our car.  The lives of the other 2 were spared, it seems, due to unspoken spray rationing.  Like the Royal Harare club, only much more remote, I thought this little incident spoke volumes about how certain institutions survive despite massive upheavals, and how people still carry out their jobs as best they can under adverse conditions.

On our return to Harare, we heard that Zanu PF was distributing free food to its supporters, a few blocks away from home.  My dad and I went for a drive to check it out – and yes, there it was:  a rally taking place in the grounds of a nearby primary school, a few hundred metres from the party's local 'headquarters' where people were taken to be beaten in the run-up to the elections.

Before I departed, I treated myself to a copy of the government mouthpiece, The Herald.  There are advertisements for generators and water pumps.  The second page proclaims, 'Victoria Falls opens multi-quadrillion dollar truck-inn'. Last but not least, there is a quarter-page colour ad placed by the National Social Security Authority, featuring and congratulating (I quote) "His Excellency Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe on being elected as the President of Zimbabwe". This week our dollar is losing 10 zeros.  Many of us didn't even get a chance to see the 100 billion dollar notes that are being sold on Ebay for as much as USD 100.  Like many other banknotes, the 100 billions came and went rather fast.

That's it folks - Thanks for reading.

Zimbabwe July 2008

July 2008

This is a quick recap without much editing for those keen to hear what returning to Zimbabwe has been like…Before getting onto the depressing stuff, some light entertainment anecdotes from my pre-Zim trip:

Zambian taxi driver at the one-room Sesheke border post: Do you speak Norwegian?
Me: Er, no…(Do I look like I speak Norwegian?  Well, maybe). Why, do you?
Zambian taxi driver:  Oh yes.  I have 3 siblings in Norway.

Zambian teacher through a bus window:  Hello, er, I'm wondering if you can help me?
Me through a bus window: Uh, maybe…what is it you need help with?
Zambian teacher:  I need a metal detector.
Me:  Uh, I'm not sure I can help with that.

Me, watching beer being smuggled onto Zambian bus (beyond the gaze of customs officials):  So, did this beer come across the  Zambezi river on a boat?
Zambian passenger:  No no, that would be illegal.

Zimbabwean airport security official, scanning my hand luggage:  Do you have any metal items in this bag?
Me:  Yes, I have a lot of metal items in that bag…(including razor blades, cables, adaptor plugs, camera, etc etc)
Airport official, looking at images:  Oh, ok.  Proceed.

--------------------

I crossed the border into Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls very early last Friday morning, having taken a beer-smuggling bus the previous day through Zambia from Namibia.   I paid my Zambian taxi driver in a combination of kwacha, rand and US dollars, and set off across the potholes with all my bags.  Hard to know what to expect, but it was a relief to be home.  I went straight to the Falls for an extraordinary sunrise through the mist.

The sense of disillusionment in the air was palpable, and my taxi driver unusually quiet. He didn't have enough fuel to get to the Vic Falls airport (a journey of 20 mins), and there is no such thing as going to a service station nowadays, so we had to drive around the
backstreets of town, haul some guy out of bed, and then wait for 5 litres of petrol in a plastic bottle to appear.  I had to give the driver an advance in US dollars to pay the fuel dealer.  On the way to the airport he told me that civil servants were now earning 100
billion Z$ a month – and that a loaf of bread that day cost 80 billion.  There was a power cut at the airport, but somehow I managed to get a boarding pass, and passed the time with a golf caddy-turned-teak dealer who was taking a heavy boxful of groceries
from Zambia back to his family in Harare.

The Chinese plane miraculously arrived on time and landed successfully at Harare airport, where we caught a glimpse of Phillip Chiyangwa zooming off in his black Mercedes.  So, I am back in Harare where things have quietened down quite considerably since our leader reinstated himself.  In fact we've even heard reports of police arresting those responsible for some of the horrific recent violence. There are also other reports of retributive violence by communities themselves against youth who terrorised people in their home areas.

We have electricity today at home but it's only the second day we've had power this week.  We usually get a few hours in the evening, but during daylight the northern suburbs of Harare are humming with the sound of generators – for those who can afford them.  Our generator at home is strong enough to power lights and computers, but not the
kettle, stove or the borehole pump.  So we use water in buckets drawn from the 

swimming pool as necessary. (We always knew our swimming pools would come in handy one day).  And during the power cuts we cook using a combination of the solar cooker and a wood fire in the garden.  Gas is difficult to come by.  When the power comes on, then we go wild with the washing machine ;)

 All the lampposts in our area are smothered in Zanu-PF posters, proclaiming 'This is the Final Battle for Total Control'.  My personal favourite, however, is the slogan 'Behind the Fist'.  Unbelievably apt.  I wonder which information ministry guru came up with it – it will make a brilliant book title one day.  Apparently putting up posters was a post-assault duty of those rounded up and beaten by the youth militia in the nearby Lewisham vlei during the second elections.

I have been phoning various family friends to catch up.  The phone networks are completely overloaded, so sometimes it can take 20-30 attempts to get through. Nowadays when I ask how people are, they tend to pause and say, 'well, we're…ok'.   Amidst the fear and the trauma that most people are trying to shield themselves from, daily life here is incredibly time-consuming.  Our dollar devalues every hour (about 60% per week) and paying for things is always complicated.   Last
weekend I had lunch with 4 friends and it cost us about 1.4 trillion Zim dollars.  Yes, people here are adept at doing calculations in billions and trillions. I don't even bother to try and keep up with them.  We settled the bill in rands – by far the easiest method.  US
dollars and rands are common currency now in shops and restaurants – but still officially illegal.

My family can only draw the Z$ equivalent of USD 1.50 each per day from the bank.  Cash is in extremely short supply and hence expensive to obtain, even in exchange for foreign currency on the parallel/black market.  Quite a lot of grocery shops only take cash or cheques – but our bank, for example, will only allow the use of 1-2 cheques per dayvalued at USD 5-10 each.  Keeping track of exchange rates is a full time job, given the dynamism of devaluation, and subsequently most people are happy to round off numbers or approximate their dealings in ways which you'd never see in other parts of the world.

The city is full of harrowing stories, but most people try to avoid talking too much about politics – it's simply too depressing.   My parents' domestic worker has been badly affected over the past few months.  After the February elections, a gang visited his elderly mother's rural homestead in Murehwa.  They assaulted her and other elderly women, demanding to know why Mugabe had lost in that area, and what their children were doing in the cities. The family's homestead was set on fire – even their grain store was destroyed.  Their radio and television – supposed sources of opposition propaganda – were hacked to pieces with axes.  Their oxen cart was also hacked to pieces.  These items were pretty much their sum possessions.  His mother has been staying with a relative since the incident and has not yet returned home.  Meanwhile, in one of the townships in Harare, he had to move his 18 year old daughter to yet another relative during the second elections to safeguard her from rape.

Food staples are in very short supply and very expensive.  Most in the townshipws are living on potatoes and cabbage.  Meat is now an incredible luxury that very few can afford.  On the other end of the spectrum, there are quite a few popular restaurants in the city which charge USD20-30 per person, and they are certainly not short of
clientele.  (For an ordinary person, in London terms this would equate to something like spending several hundred, if not thousand, pounds on a meal).  The discrepancies and inequalities here are massive and growing.  There is an increased police presence everywhere (and friends report frequent extortion for petty or made-up offences), but
I have been driving around and even walking around the neighbourhood virtually as normal, albeit having to see Bob on every lamppost.

The shops are bare, though, and usually ensconced in darkness.  Our local pharmacy spreads its products out along the shelves at a distance of about 30 cm in between each shampoo bottle.  The informal economy has flourished – we buy vegetables regularly from the back of a truck which parks at the end of our road; and if I want to have a
hair cut, a massage (that's right, available even here) or attend a yoga class, I go to people's homes for the service and pay them in foreign currency.

Amidst all this, last weekend I went to a craft fair.  The sun shone, music blared from loudspeakers, meat was barbequed, and lots of white people wandered around stalls as if everything was completely normal. t was surreal.  In the fields next door, Apostolic church services continued, perhaps even more fervently.  Meanwhile, Ben Freeth still
could not see, one week after his brutal attack in the Chegutu area which left him with a skull so badly fractured that surgeons had to drill into it to release the pressure around his brain.  Such are the juxtapositions of life here.  At least among those with any economic
security, people seem to take the view that life has to go on, and are determined to live the best that they can under the circumstances.

School sports fixtures run as normal, and I've watched hockey and rugby matches this past week, as well as attended a (rather dire) karaoke night in Borrowdale Village.   As my brother says, staying at home and reading/watching the news everyday is a one-way road to depression.  And so people block stuff out as part of their coping strategies.

Those are a few of my observations from the past week – admittedly among a sub-section of the population with better buffer capacity than most, but at the same time, nor are these people among the super-elite who mark their status with incredibly expensive cars and the like.

Many of my friends think I'm crazy to be here, but it comes to me almost as a relief.  Watching the news from a distance is far more distressing .

Zimbabwe February 2003

February 2003

 

Dear friends

Some of you have asked for an update on Zim.  For the rest, I'm including you because it's hard for Zimbabwean politics to get a word in edgeways with the whole Iraq thing going on. Things are pretty dire on most fronts. Even our weather reports are now monitored by government officials, so that they can manipulate information about the drought.

 

 Mugabe continues, as successfully as ever, to 'divide and rule'.  The groups affected by his strategy range from white farming communities to the EU.  He arrived in France last week much to the disgust of many – for him it's a win-win situation, and yet again he has made international sanction policies fall flat on their face.  Tom Spicer, a 19 year old white MDC youth activist, has made headlines with the Paris protests that he arranged.  I met Tom on a plane to the UK about 2 years ago.  This was before he himself had been tortured, and I remember being stunned at how casually he spoke about how his friends had been tortured.  Now he is just on the same footing as the rest of them.

 

We've had the World Cup Cricket on recently, alongside Morgan Tsvangirai's treason trial.  The army helicopters have been out and about, as have the riot police.  The American and German ambassadors were manhandled by police after arriving to watch the first day of the trial at court – as you can imagine, this did not go down well.

 

The food crisis continues.  There is no bread or milk in supermarkets at all, although luxury bakeries still have produce at much higher prices.  If one wants basic commodities, one has to use 'the network'.  Then if you're lucky, your 'contact' might call you once a week, and in whispers over the phone tell you that there is something for you to pick up.  This week at home we are eating butter imported from Australia (!), at an horrendous price.  So much for those of us who can afford butter – driving out of town, there are children picking up single grains of maize off the road.  At the railway station, street kids are killing sparrows to eat.

 

Fuel shortages and 50-car queues continue, although the situation has eased up somewhat because of  the World Cup and the government's well-timed 'hide-it-from-the-journalists' strategy.  Apparently there has been a fuel loan made to the government by Anglo American, which is enough to buy about a month's worth of petrol and diesel.

 

Economically, things are pretty bizarre.  Our dollar has devalued so much (at the black market rates) that everyone walks around carrying huge quantities of cash notes. Even some of the banks are using the black market rates. Yesterday my parents paid for the car service with a plastic-bag full of money. It's quite common nowadays to see people in the bank with suitcases and cardboard boxes!   Our hairdresser has put up her prices by 100% in a month.  Numerous retailers are just taking advantage of inflation (said to be at 500% by the end of this year) and putting on another 20% to goods every fortnight because people won't know that they're being conned, and will pay all the same, because no one can keep track.  There is no foreign currency to be found except illegally.  This means that even if someone had the necessary financial means to leave the country, they cannot convert it into US dollars, simply because there aren't any.  The government has imposed numerous measures in the last few months to monitor the movement of forex in minute detail.  They have also imposed all sorts of new rules in order to acquire as much of it as they can.  For example, all tourists have to pay for all tourist services (including hotel accommodation) in US dollars, sterling or rands.  In November, British tourists had to pay 30 USD to enter the country. By December, this had increased to 50.

 

This week I have been entering data on a computer at work.  It concerns people suffering from HIV and AIDS.  About 60 times over, I've typed in stats about widowed women who are supporting 5 children and 2 other dependents on a salary of £2 a month, and whose relatives have taken away from them their only property, including children's clothes. Government nurses are only earning about £15 a month.  It's depressing to say the least.

 

Reading about all this stuff the past two years has been one thing.  More recently, the ongoing trauma that this society is experiencing has made itself known to some of my immediate friends.  Last month a (white) friend of mine was arrested unlawfully after a property deal went wrong, and after he discovered too late that the man he was dealing with had all sorts of ZANU-PF connections.  He spent 36 hours in jail, whilst the officer who had locked him up conveniently disappeared with the key.  There was no evidence whatsoever that he was being held, or that he had ever been arrested.  The rest of police officers at the station maintained that what had happened was completely illegal, but that there was not much they could do about it.

 

A week ago, a (black) friend of mine was seriously verbally harassed at a bar for sitting with a group of white friends.   He thinks that his harasser may have mistaken him for the cricketer Henry Olonga who, alongside Andy Flower, made a courageous speech about 'the death of democracy' at the opening of the Harare World Cup cricket.  Flower has since then received telephone threats at all times of the day and night, and may have to leave the country for a while.

 

The clamp-down is extending itself more now than ever.  Even people at church meetings have been arrested.  In general, it is starting to sound like Stalin's Russia, as I was reminded the other day when I taught a few O-level history classes at a nearby school!

 

So, all in all, we are fearful most of the time, especially being white.  But life still remains the same in many ways, and we continue to live well (at least in material terms) amid crisis.  What is going on in the emotional sphere is of course another question.  I have no doubt that the troubles of the last few years are responsible for the ongoing illness and (non-political) death that seems to be prevalent here, especially from cancer.

 

So that gives you a flavour of how things are – I think the negative side of things is really starting to become apparent now that my initial 3-month excitement at being home is over.  But there are still things, people and places that we love here, and always will.  And so, for now, we stay and do our best to stay positive.