Tham Moyo and Christine Chiweshe-Adewal
CROSSFIRE
‘Although these statistics on violence against women might appear grim, thank God this happens in a country like ours, where we have very good laws and a very good Constitution. I shudder to think what would happen if this were in some other African country.”
Famous last words, by one Deputy Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Bridgette Mabandla at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, Harare 1999.
Many of those present were shocked that such words could come from such a highly placed official at an international public gathering. But those of us who have lived here for the past few years were not shocked at all.
It was the usual arrogance with which we have been treated by many South Africans, from before we set foot here when we tried to get visas and work permits.
We are two Zimbabweans, temporarily working in South Africa. We use the word ”temporarily” to indicate that we shall be going back home at the end of our contracts.
Having read the piece in your edition last week (”The Yankees of Africa”, October 22 to 28), and after many months of seething in each other’s lounges or over the phone, we have enough anger to put pen to paper.
We have been at the coalface of South African ill-treatment, arrogance and ignorance about the continent.
We hate South Africa for inviting us for tea and then telling us we are not wanted at the table.
We came to this country after being head-hunted. One of us was literally asked by an international agency if he would be interested to come and work with a new institution and ”help them set up and develop their programmes”.
This is a fact that we like throwing at our colleagues at work and to the South African police when they dare stop us on the road, as they love doing once or twice a week.
We like to tell this to secretaries and security guards, who often say to us, ”Oh, we saw the paper yesterday. Things are really bad in your country. Aren’t you glad you are here?”; or the others who speak very loudly within ear- shot, ”These foreigners who just came to South Africa …”
Yes, we are glad to be here, being paid in foreign currency, living in the lap of luxury and being able to remit money back to our families. But we were not starving before we came here. We are educated, skilled and we came here to work.
Yes, there is poverty across the Limpopo. Yes, there are fewer jobs there than in South Africa right now, but we have come to fill ”vacancies”, and take up opportunities.
Interestingly, white people who come into South Africa are not seen as taking locals’ jobs. Australians, Americans or even white Zimbabweans or Kenyans are welcomed with open arms, because they are seen as businesspeople bringing in so- called investment.
We find it ironic that while we are stopped by black South African police on the road, while our work permits are scrutinised five times at the airport and at Beit Bridge, whites are literally waved past. What we find most painful is the treatment and attitude we get from black South Africans.
We hate South Africa for the way in which some of its citizens speak about the rest of the continent. Yes, South Africa has a good Constitution, good laws, and some very good examples of democratic practice. But we dare to say that some of the so-called democracy is on paper. On the ground, its black citizens are still as poor as those in Kano, Naivasha, Mutoko or Dakar. People do not eat good constitutions or laws on paper.
We are sick and tired of hearing South Africans shudder, ”Oh God, Robert Mugabe is really terrible. How can he say that about homosexuals?” We dare to suggest that the sentiments Mugabe and Yoweri Museveni have publicly expressed are held by a very large percentage of South Africans on the streets of Durban or in the village in Matatiele.
While we vehemently oppose the things that these men have said and done, South Africans should acknowledge that the same attitudes are held by significant numbers of their own leaders and ordinary citizens.
We have sat in workshops in rural areas and in townships where South African citizens publicly challenged then president Nelson Mandela to dare come and tell them to stop beating their wives. It happens in a village in Malawi, it happens here. Yet the picture that some South Africans would like to present is that the rest of us are so backward and do not know how to live democratically.
We hate the way in which South Africans think that they can learn nothing from the rest of the continent, and many say so in so many words.
We have sat in workshops where South Africans literally silence us with their disdain for what we consider to be our achievements, and our struggles.
We may not have achieved much, but we have fought, we have organised and we continue to struggle. The struggle for democracy was not invented in South Africa. Neither was it perfected here – as some South Africans would have us believe.
We hate the way in which the new kid on the block is made to look as if it is the one that has come to save us all. Witness the way in which Zambian President Frederick Chiluba’s efforts at solving the Democratic Republic of Congo crisis and other African leaders’ attempts at helping in the Libyan crisis have been unacknowledged by the South African press and leadership.
In Shona we call what South Africa did in these two cases ”vana mucheka dzafa”, meaning ”the ones who come to skin an animal that is already dead”.
The only thing other countries in Africa appear good for, it seems, are to serve as examples of all that is bad and is to be avoided. Hence various African leaders are treated as mere buffoons at best, and, at worst, bogeymen.
Perhaps, just like an abused woman (a phenomenon you all would be familiar with), we resent neighbours who stand on top of their huts and denounce my abusive husband. Abusive he may be, and I would call him all manner of names, but I will not let you say it on my behalf. I would equally resent it, knowing, too, that your own husband is not as loving as he appears. Yes, he may not exactly have broken your hand yet, but hey, we are watching, he has started to twist your fingers.
South African papers do not report anything that is positive about the continent. They say nothing about the fact that you can go and have coffee at night in Accra without being mugged, raped or killed; that they have roads and schools that work in Mali; or that, in its first five years of independence, Zimbabwe achieved such high-volume (and quality) delivery in its education system as compared to all the years of colonialism.
The fact is that the majority of this workforce that South Africa has been poaching from Zimbabwe is the result of Mugabe’s policy of free (and good) education and of Mugabe’s free health care policy.
We are proud of that legacy today, and we equally hate him for what he has done in the past 10 years. South Africa has not done half of what we did in our first five years, and we can say so very boldly.
Little mention is made of some of the achievements that we have seen in our countries. Granted, some of these achievements have paled under the current gloom and doom. But, in typically white, Western fashion, the problems besetting the continent tend to be presented as the fault of the bad (dare we add native) leaders, the backward peoples and their lack of (paper) democracy.
At a personal level, we shudder at the arrogance (underlain by ignorance mostly) of the average South African we have met here.
On a recent trip to Zimbabwe, our fellow travellers from South Africa said loudly how they were really upset about travelling on ”the bad roads to Africa”, how they were going to be ”sick with all that dust and the beggars that we will see and have to deal with. I hope the hotels will be decent. Oh, I hope the water and electricity will be working well. Maybe we should buy food at Checkers in Pietersburg, just to be safe.”
They did not bother to ask us all these elementary things, let alone be a bit sensitive. After all, they were going to Africa. It was only two days after arriving; having travelled on tarred roads throughout and staying at The Meikles, where everything worked like magic, that one of them said: ”So we are now in Harare?” I could not help saying, ”No, sweetie, this is heaven, we have died and arrived there.”
But, of course, they had come prepared for the worst, so heaven was not going to go without criticism. They did not understand why a BP garage in Samora Machel Avenue could not take their credit card for petrol. Why their cellphones did not automatically work in Harare and why they could not just use the rand on the streets to buy crafts.
They complained endlessly about the service at the hotel, about how slow the banks were, and so on. Yes, these are comments made by a few ignorant people, you might say, but this is what we hate. The arrogance, the insensitivity, the behaviour, as if some neighbouring countries are colonies of South Africa, and, of course, the ignorance.
While five years ago we could buy the argument that South Africa had been isolated from the rest of the continent and did not know much about us, we now believe that South Africa does not want to know, and does not want to learn.
Even the most ignorant American from Idaho whom we have met never said such things.
We hate the way in which South Africa wants to present itself as being at the top of the ”league table”. In spite of the blemishes and spots on our various countries, we always console ourselves that at least back home we can go to sleep safe and sound and wake up the next morning.
Even if our houses get broken into, all we will lose are stereos and televisions. We will not be killed in the process.
We come from communities where people still care about each other and look out for each other. And most importantly, we do not have to live with racism and tolerate it. With our ”cracked pavements” (as Maureen Isaacson wrote in The Sunday Independent recently), and our beggars on the streets, we struggle, we love and laugh, in this our continent, which we are happy to call home.