Earning Respect

Her arms and legs are thin sticks, the skin covering them dry and dusty. Her dull hair is so matted it seems to contain lumps of dried mud. The threadbare dress covering her skeletal body is so old there’s no evidence of what patterns might once have covered the fabric. There are no shoes on her bony feet, and she’s probably never owned a pair of shoes in her short life. The hardened, cracked soles of her feet are numb to the heat of the tarmac burning under the midday sun scorching the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city.

It’s impossible to discern her age. Her tiny, malnourished body has the appearance of a child old enough to start school, but the infant she carries on her back shows she has a strength no six year old child could support. Her facial bones are prominent beneath her parchment-like skin, her eyes dull and lifeless as she stands waiting underneath the blazing sun. A lifetime of pain and humiliation and horror stares out at a world not of her making.

She waits on the traffic island at the intersection of Herbert Chitepo Avenue and Second Street, underneath the legendary msasa tree supposedly used by Zimbabwe’s colonialists to hang the country’s spirit medium Mbuya Nehanda in 1897. As the cars stop for the red traffic light she moves to the front car, holding her dirty palm against the driver’s window begging for a few worthless pieces of Zimbabwe’s currency. The window is not lowered, and the driver refuses to acknowledge the starving child. Listless she moves to the next car. Again she is ignored as the driver closes his open window. She continues walking slowly down the line of waiting vehicles. If she’s lucky one of the occupants might pass her some money, or perhaps a sweet.

The lights change, and she moves away from the uninterested motorists. Suddenly, the sirens sound, and the waiting cars quickly pull over to the side of the road. A dozen large, shining motorcycles flood the road, gesticulating rudely to drivers and pedestrians alike to move aside. The child hurries off the island and onto the pavement, somehow managing to get out of the way carrying her infant burden. The motorcycles stop in the sides of the road, preventing anyone from moving away from the verge. Almost immediately two troop carriers, both filled with armed Zimbabwean soldiers, drive down the road, followed by several black Mercedes 200 SEL vehicles with blacked out windows. An ambulance, siren screaming and lights flashing, precedes some more Mercedes sedans and a couple more troop carriers transporting more armed militia. Finally, more motorcycles speed past, moving to the front of the vehicular spectacle as it disappears down the road. The initial motorcycles replace them and speed off after the precedents.

This is the motorcade used by the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. Zimbabweans are used to this frequent display of appalling extravagance, which Mugabe has employed since taking power in 1980. And the contradiction of the excess of Mugabe’s security contrasting with the starving child is a graphic and sobering reminder of the divide between right and wrong and rich and poor in Zimbabwe today.

When Robert Mugabe became prime minister of Zimbabwe in 1980, he was feted by the world as a true son of Africa. The supposed Marxist revolutionary was an educated man, seemingly ready to forgive the former white rulers of Rhodesia for his ten year incarceration and the bitter war which saw him exiled from the country of his birth.

“I wish to assure you that there can never be any return to the state of armed conflict which existed before our commitment to peace and the democratic process of election under the Lancaster House agreement,” he told his country at independence.

And we believed him. Mugabe’s words of forgiveness and assurance seemed to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for a country battered by a 15 year civil war. The country’s new leader was urging the country to unite, and release past injustices and prejudices for the benefit of the nation.

On the surface Zimbabwe was a success story. Investment poured into the country, and business thrived. Social inequalities disappeared with the last vestiges of racial segregation. For fifteen years Zimbabwe was considered a success story, almost unique in Africa’s history. Countries like Kenya and Uganda had suffered terribly under oppressive regimes that took over after independence from colonial power Britain. By the end of the 1980’s the country was the world’s third largest exporter of tobacco, and produced enough food to feed much of Africa. Literacy levels increased to among the highest in Africa. Zimbabwe’s health sector was advanced, modern and available to all citizens, irrespective of class or social status.

Below the surface simmered a cauldron of tensions, carefully controlled by a skilled and effective propaganda machine.

Tribal tensions between Mugabe’s Shonas – the largest ethnic group in Zimbabwe – and the Matabele dated back to pre-colonial times. The Matabele, descendents of South Africa’s Zulu tribe, are a powerful, warlike people who frequently attacked their nomadic Shona neighbours. The Matabele leader, Joshua Nkomo, proved a thorn in Mugabe’s side, accusing the new prime minister of sidelining the Matabele, who had played an important role in Zimbabwe’s liberation war.

Mugabe told the nation there was a need to control Matabele “dissidents”, who he claimed had deserted the army and were determined to destabilise the peace Zimbabwe was currently enjoying. One of his allies, North Korea, trained an elite military squad known as the Fifth Brigade, which was deployed in Matabeleland to stop this supposed uprising. Mugabe called it “Gukuruhundi”, a Shona word meaning “the storm that sweeps away the chaff before the spring rain”.

According to the Catholic Commission for Peace and Justice between 20,000 and 30,000 people were killed, most of whom were civilians. A report prepared in April 1999 contains names of the victims and survivors of the conflict, as well as details of their suffering and the way they were killed. Most of the victims were innocent villagers, with many children and women counted among the dead. Gukuruhundi ended in 1987, when Nkomo signed a unity accord that saw his ZAPU party absorbed by Mugabe’s ZANU PF.

This action made Zimbabwe a one party state, under the dictatorship of Mugabe. But the world looked the other way, which gave Mugabe free reign to slowly and insidiously tighten his grip on his country. And as his power grew so his people became more alarmed. But any uprising or form of dissent was quickly stifled, and any political opponent mercilessly eliminated. Some managed to escape arrest, fleeing the country in terror. Others were not so lucky, and were jailed at Mugabe’s pleasure. Others died suddenly, usually in a car accident.

Mugabe began to degenerate into what Bishop Desmond Tutu called “the caricature of an African leader”, and Zimbabweans wondered what had become of democracy. Other African leaders appeared to idolise Mugabe, praising him for defeating the colonial powers they claimed were the blight of Africa. In 1999 a confident Mugabe announced a referendum, to amend the constitution to allow him to remain President of Zimbabwe for life. Horrified, Zimbabweans voted en masse and denied him his wish.

It was the last time Zimbabweans were offered a free and fair election. Three days after assuring the nation he would respect their “no” vote he unleashed his supporters on the white farming community. Believing them to be the people behind the vote, he told them that it was Britain’s fault for failing to honour a deal struck in 1980, when Britain agreed to fund an open land redistribution programme. Britain apparently made £40 million available before learning the money had been misappropriated, which lead to the cancellation of any further monies until the released funds could be accounted for.

To date 20 white farmers have been murdered, along with several hundred of their employees. More than one million people lost their homes as Mugabe’s supporters and friends evicted the legal owners of the farms. Today most of the farms that formed the backbone of Zimbabwe’s industry lie ruined and derelict, their owners and residents ignorant of the demands of agricultural operations and incapable of financing their livelihood.

The pain Zimbabwe has endured since 1999 has been an unending nightmare. Mugabe has destroyed a vibrant country and its people through selfish, devious and manipulative means, designed to protect himself and those closest to him. Anyone or anything opposing him is eliminated, or brutalised. And his confidants, like the rest of the country, have been affected by his actions. Recently his wife was filmed attacking and beating a photographer for taking a picture of her during a visit to Hong Kong.

At time of writing Mugabe has entered yet another unity deal with his political rival Morgan Tsvangirai. Yesterday Tsvangirai was sworn is as prime minister, by the man who has been his nemesis for the past ten years. Tsvangirai has survived an attempt to throw him out of the window of his tenth floor office and a severe beating in a police station that left him with massive bruising and a fractured skull. He also survived treason charges, trumped up by Mugabe who paid US$3 million to a Canadian security specialist to film Tsvangirai speaking about arranging to assassinate Mugabe.

Regrettably, it seems this unity deal is doomed, with history repeating itself the way it did in 1987. Over 30 political activists remain in jail, in appalling health. Mugabe refuses to release them. Over 3,000 people have died of cholera, with almost 80,000 infected. Anthrax and HIV/Aids wreak havoc on the country’s non-existent health services. The country has the world’s highest inflation, unemployment of over 95 percent and a worthless currency. The country has the world’s shortest life expectancy, and this year 98 percent of the schools have failed to open.

Yet Mugabe demands the world show him the respect and honour due to any head of state. He is infuriated that many western governments, appalled at his governance, have subjected him and his closest allies to targeted sanctions. Mugabe does not understand the rationale behind the thinking of do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To command respect one has to earn it, and no amount of physical violence or torture will elicit the admiration and respect of one’s peers.

Which is of little consolation to the starving child and her infant companion on the streets of Harare. In all probability she is an orphan, stigmatised and cast out by family members after losing her parents to AIDS. She will probably never be able to go to school, and in all likelihood she and her little companion are infected with the disease that claimed her parents. Every evening she walks to the place she calls home. If she's lucky she might have enough money to buy a few slices of bread for herself and the baby. She will huddle under a tree near Harare's city park, or hide next to the rubbish bins in one of the capital city's sanitary lanes.

The next morning she will walk back to the intersection along Herbert Chitepo Avenue to Mbuya Nehanda's tree to resume her degrading and humiliating day of begging. If those two heroes of Zimbabwe's history could see how a child of Zimbabwe lives today in the country for which they gave their lives I believe they would feel great sorrow.

I think they would weep.


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