Amid fear and many hardships, Zimbabwe is an exciting place, writes Mercedes Sayagus
I am on a high. I am Wonder Woman. I feel like I have had one line of coke and one orgasm. Make that three lines and three orgasms. What happened? I filled up my tank with fuel and the queue was only 25 minutes long.
I can do anything. I can go anywhere. I feel powerful. You get such a high. “I never thought I would feel gratitude for one litre of fuel,” says a smartly dressed businessman, queuing next to me in his brand new BMW.
In Zimbabwe, filling up the tank is better than having sex. You can have sex anytime but you never know when you will fill your tank again or how many hours it will take.
The search for fuel has become part of daily chores. You watch the needle. You are either happy or worried. You phone petrol stations early in the morning. You send the gardener to queue, if he drives. You call friends on your cellphone if you find a short queue.
Fear is also part of our daily lives. Encouraged by the prevailing lawlessness and police paralysis in front of farm invasions, crime has shot up.
Harare is becoming like Jo’burg. You drive conscious of other vehicles. You drive past your home if a car is behind you. The city is eerily empty at night. At robots, the few drivers look at each other nervously. The Anti-Hijacking Trust estimates there is one hijacking a day. Thieves carry guns and crowbars and use them. This is new in Zimbabwe.
A spate of daring robberies recently hit upmarket restaurants. The thieves went ethnic, Chinese and Greek, urban and suburban. They posed as clients or barged in, armed and unmasked. At Taverna Athina, as thieves fought for the loot, one was shot and bled to death on the sidewalk. No arrests are ever made.
Since Zimbabwe has become a police state, we also fear roadblocks. It is mostly young black drivers who are stopped and searched. But anyone can be harassed for a bribe or for the pleasure of abusing power.
“You are drunk,” said a cop menacingly to a friend who was as sober as the pope. The cop just wanted money.
As a woman editor was driving to her office, three men purporting to be policemen jumped into her car, threatened to arrest her and forced her to drive towards central police station until they got bored with the game and got off. “I drive with my stomach tied in a knot of fear ever since,” she says.
Every friend has a horror crime story. I wonder what mine will be.
Luckily the rains have begun. Roadblocks vanish with the first drizzle.
There are all kinds of thieves. One morning as I read the papers and enjoy a cappuccino at Newlands shopping centre, a man runs by, security guards in hot pursuit. The guards catch him and recover a loaf of bread stolen from TM supermarket. The thief is a young man in blue overalls and gumboots, probably a worker from a nearby building site. He is hungry. My cappuccino does not taste good any longer.
A loaf of bread costs Z$20 (R3). Bus fare from the townships into downtown Harare costs Z$70 every day or Z$1 400 a month. A connection to the suburbs doubles the amount. An average salary is Z$3 000 after tax. Many workers bike or walk for two to three hours. It is becoming uneconomical to work if employers don’t provide transport.
Why do people bother to work when transport eats up more than half of your earnings? I reckon that they are so crowded in the township, with relatives and lodgers sleeping four to a room, that it is better to be out of the house for 10 hours a day.
Not surprisingly, the food riots of October flared in Mabvuku township. It’s two years since my last visit to Mabvuku. A local Aids counsellor, Prisca Mhlolo, takes me around. The difference is startling.
Unemployed youths lull on every corner. There are no jobs. Half of the adults are unemployed. The fuel and forex shortage, coupled with lawlessness and farm invasions, has destroyed tourism and industry: 54?000 jobs were lost this year.
Mabvuku reminds me of provincial towns in Angola when war broke out in 1992. In towns under siege, swollen with refugees, their economic activity disrupted, young men hung around idly until most left for Luanda or Lobito. Women were always busy, washing clothes, cooking and childminding.
In Mabvuku, add another chore: nursing sick relatives. On Mhlolo’s block, five households are stricken by Aids. Only Prisca and her sister are open about their status.
Unaids, a United Nations programme on HIV and Aids, says 2 000 Zimbabweans die of Aids every week. Prisca has little hope in the fight against Aids: “What can unemployed youth do? Sex is for free.”
Prisca shows me how to look. See these women sitting on mats in the sun, they are too weak to walk. Relatives carry them out on to the sidewalk. See those kids playing with a rag ball, the ones with the bleached orange hair and the reddish spots on their cheeks and, yes, the sweet girl in pigtails with bleeding gums and rotten teeth.
The real drama takes place inside the matchbox houses. Prisca does her round of visits. Emaciated women and men, pure skin and bones, their eyes huge and hollow. They are naked, for their sores and rashes will not tolerate clothes. Most of the time, Vaseline is the only medicine they can afford.
Before and after school, children care for their parents and relatives. These kids are mature beyond their years. Many sleep with their sick parents, on a mat by the bed they used to share.
Prisca has little to offer except encouragement and advice.
Belinda is a pretty, bright 16-year-old girl. Things are not well at home, she says. Could Prisca talk to her uncle? Belinda is HIV-positive. She knows she must eat fruit and veggies but her uncle refuses to pay for healthy food and school fees. “You are going to die anyway,” he tells her.
A relative raped Belinda when she was eight. Her parents died in a car crash when she was 12. She went to live with an aunt. Her husband raped Belinda and infected her with HIV. She reported the rape to police and the man was convicted. The aunt chased her away. Belinda went to live with another aunt. Her husband sometimes fondles Belinda but is afraid to go any further because of her status.
Why should a teenage girl carry such a heavy burden? At 16, she should be exploring her sexual awakening, romance and first kisses.
But this is Zimbabwe and this is the reality for many girls. Belinda is not a rarity, says Prisca. There are many like her.
In the post I find five letters written by James Zhou from hospitals in Zvishvavane and Harare. Zhou is undergoing major skin grafts for two gaping wounds on his buttocks. In the violent run-up to the election in June, Zhou was kidnapped in Mberengwa by Zanu-PF militia under provincial war veteran chair Biggie Chitoro, taken to the torture centre at Texas farm and beaten and burnt for 24 hours. His brother Phinos died of the torture.
The letters ramble on. Here is a man clearly traumatised by torture and pain. I call Amani Trust, an NGO that helps victims of torture. “We have identified 1 000 people in need of such help, like Zhou,” says its clinical director, Tony Reeler.
After the election, Biggie Chitoro was jailed for murder, kidnapping, torture, arson and assault, for the Zhous and dozens of other victims.
In early October President Robert Mugabe pardoned all those who committed “politically motivated crimes” before the election.
Of 35 000 such crimes documented by Amani Trust since the referendum in February, 90% were committed by Zanu-PF supporters.
Hundreds of Mugabe’s militiamen were facing charges of arson, assault, assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm, malicious injury to property, public violence, extortion, intimidation, culpable homicide, stock theft, poaching, abduction and kidnapping crimes now pardoned.
Mugabe could hardly afford to abandon his militiamen to their judicial fate. He needs them for the presidential election in 2002.
With this gesture alone, Mugabe earns a place in what writer Jorge Luis Borges calls “mankind’s hall of infamy”.
Mugabe embodies the culture of impunity: zero accountability.
Impunity undermines the rule of law. It perpetuates violence and human rights abuses. It corrupts the culture, because you can get away with literally murder. Under impunity, there are no perpetrators and no victims. By denying it, impunity exacerbates the suffering of victims.
After scores of Zanu-PF supporters were freed from the jails following Mugabe’s pardon, scores of Movement for Democratic Change supporters fled their homes. They cannot live in peace when their tormentors are free.
Just in Mberengwa East, of 315 people surveyed, 227 witnessed violence and 98 perpetrators were identified by name. Many were jailed with Chitoro but are now free to terrorise their neighbors.
The clemency order means that poor people, who were beaten up or had their homes burnt down by Zanu-PF thugs and who cannot afford lawyers, have no legal recourse to justice.
Is it all doom and gloom in Zimbabwe? Not at all.
Nightclubs are full, parties are wild. Again, it reminds me of Luanda’s steamy, frenzied nights, dancing and drinking until dawn. Carpe diem: enjoy while you can. Why save money if it loses value daily? Spend it. Like in Bocaccio’s Decameron: have fun while the plague rages around.
Political change is thrilling. It gives you a high, stronger than filling up your tank. If you thrive on politics, Zimbabwe is the place to be: everybody is politicised.
Amid plenty of hardship, Zimbabwe is an exciting place. Change is in the air.