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.