destructing
Mercedes Sayagues
The owners of the town house I rent ring early on Monday morning. Their neighbour Allen Dunn was tortured and killed by a hit squad Sunday afternoon on his farm in Beatrice, 40km from Harare. Can I vacate the house in two days? They are panicking.
My mouse crashed on the floor. Replacing it was a problem. Shops stopped placing orders three months ago, for lack of foreign exchange. Car and machinery spares also are in short supply.
The price of tomatoes has tripled. Little fresh produce arrives in Harare as peri-urban farms fall to squatters, one by one. Food shortages are expected in the next months.
Dozens of new farm invasions, both peaceful and violent, took place this week.
Attending a Zanu-PF rally does not protect you, as one farmer in Mrurwi, 100km north of Harare, found out. Fifty-two of his workers were beaten up after one such rally on Saturday; six landed in hospital. On Tuesday, about 100 men and women drove up in a lorry. They searched the homestead for weapons and demanded to address farm workers in the area. About 600 were rounded up. A cow was killed, mealie meal, tea and bread provided. The songs and speeches went on all night. The invaders left at 10am the following day.
Enterprising war vets sell residential plots on invaded farms to Harare’s urban poor. Shanty towns will encircle Harare. In downtown Bulawayo, squatters last week took over an empty block of flats belonging to an Asian businessman.
Insurance companies have stopped insuring goods in transit through Zimbabwe. South African executives in Harare last week described doing business with Zimbabwe as “harder than with Angola”.
Wildlife poaching mounts as safari lodges and game farms are invaded, from the Eastern Highlands to Lake Chivero, 30km from Harare.
Tourist arrivals are nil. A new edge of desperation creeps into the pitch of curio and flower vendors. “No customers, no business,” says Willard Mkuwasenga. He made about R7 a day guarding cars down town; now he makes less than half.
Foreign NGOs are pulling out their staff from the unsafe countryside. Norway sent 10 volunteers home last week. Canadian NGOs recalled non-essential staff. One reason is that several major airlines have quit Zimbabwe; leaving will be harder.
In Victoria Falls peer educators cannot give condoms to sex-workers. They are harassed by Zanu-PF guys who assume their small group meetings in beer halls and markets to discuss HIV/Aids are political. Activists have been slapped and forced to praise the ruling party. They are terrified.
The future of 6E000 orphans among farm workers, cared for by the Farm Orphans Support Trust (Fost), hangs on the line. Fost, run on commercial farms in three provinces, was a model programme. Orphans remained in their communities, either with the extended family, foster families or paid caregivers. Fost depended on a wide network of solidarity among farm labourers, farmers, churches, NGOs, volunteers, and agro-industry corporate support. Farm invasions have destroyed it.
Health workers, teachers and students perceived to be pro-Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are targets of violence. Students at Bindura University boycott classes to protest against the beating of a student leader. In Masvingo and Shamva, teachers are beaten up. Boarding schools on the outskirts of Harare are considering closing this term.
Across Zimbabwe not only the economy is collapsing but also development projects, charity work and community links. The social fabric is being torn by violence and fear, by gang rape and looting frenzy. We are watching a country unravel day by day.
“Zanu-PF is ripping the entire development of the last 20 years completely, to maintain political power,” says Tony Reeler, director of the human rights NGO Amani Trust.
Opposition supporters are abducted from hospitals and police stations. For fear of retaliation, hospital staff deny treatment to victims of violence. Militia rule the rural areas. They are getting closer to Harare.
The terror campaign is worst in the three Mashonaland provinces. Mutoko and Murehwa are no-go areas for NGOs, human rights monitors and journalists. In Murehwa, nurses were kidnapped from the maternity ward. Local women who campaigned for the No vote in the constitutional referendum were gang-raped. Some fled to the bush and stayed there for days.
Less violence afflicts Matabeleland, where memories of the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s are still fresh and people still afraid. Just seeing soldiers wearing Gukurahundi red berets is enough to frighten villagers.
Last Wednesday President Robert Mugabe attacked the black middle class as traitors. From now on, he said, Zimbabwe will privilege smallholder agriculture. An analogy with Cambodia’s Pol Pot is not far-fetched.
“This is low-intensity war against the people,” says Reeler.
The wave of terror and fear will leave painful scars. Huge numbers of new trauma victims to add to those still not healed from the atrocities in Matabeleland. A generation of youth taught that political violence and murder are compensated with land and impunity. Torture victims. Children who have witnessed their parents beaten, tortured and killed, their homes torched. Dozens of women and children raped.
If violence continues, Zimbabwe will have internal refugees, perhaps external as well. Rural to urban migration will shoot up as people seek safety in towns.
Says writer Chenjerai Hove: “Our political leadership is dismantling everything that was built, what little cohesion we had achieved. Instead of nation-building, they do nation- destruction.”
The message bludgeoned into people’s minds and bodies is: this is what happens when you disobey the ruling party. Do not dare vote MDC.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Wednesday conceded that the MDC cannot cope with the violence. On Saturday the MDC executive will consider an election boycott; mass action, such as a general strike; and requesting the international community to send observers, perhaps impose sanctions.
“We are harassed day in, day out; hounded, beaten, killed, not allowed to campaign, denied access to the media,” he said.
Last week Tsvangirai was campaigning in Masvingo. Up to dawn of the night before the rally, Zanu-PF squads banged on doors of MDC supporters, warning them not to attend.
Over the weekend, state TV showed war veterans in Mutoko training about 200 rural youth to campaign for Zanu-PF – in other words, to terrorise villagers. It is an old Zanla tactic, taken from China’s Red Guards: persuasion by terror.
Tsvangirai said that 1E000 former Gukurahundi fighters have been recruited for this campaign of terror.
The prospect is that violence will mount until elections are announced. Then it will decrease, so elections can be called free and fair. By then, the government reckons, people will have been cowed into submission. On TV recently, Mugabe swore in Shona: “By my ghost, no one else will rule Zimbabwe.”
Untold damage is being done to one of Africa’s most promising countries. Says Reeler: “God knows how we start putting the country together again.”