Going home … going home … am a-going home … The lovely words of Aaron Neville’s song ring in my head for a whole fortnight before my three-week vacation in Zimbabwe. Each day I wake up and pump up the volume. I am so excited, I can’t wait. I haven’t been home for more than five months. This is long overdue.
August is vacation time for me and my son. It also is time to renew insurances, annual medical check-ups and, of course, sweet potato time. I love that stuff. I could live on sweet potatoes for the rest of my life. And, believe me, they don’t grow them that sweet anywhere else.
I have not been home for so long — it’s the first time I have stayed away that long, partly out of fear of what I will find and partly denial. I cannot face the dreadful realities that have become the story of my country.
The constant text messages from home don’t help; the place sounds as if it will fall apart at any moment. The one thing that sustains me as I work outside Zimbabwe is the belief that I will always go back home. I still hold on to the illusion that my son will go to the same university I went to, because I don’t trust anybody else’s education system. And yet the bad news from across the Limpopo has been too much to bear.
”Will you be okay? Have you bought enough supplies? Can we help with anything?”, empathetic office colleagues ask in the weeks prior to my departure. I am angry. Why am I being asked these questions? Where do they think I am going? Darfur? Iraq?
I am reminded of how I reacted when I met women from Nigeria during Abacha’s time or women from Palestine. When I met Rana from Palestine, with a lovely hair-do and manicured nails, I asked her if she really lived ”there”. I had to be reminded that life goes on — births, deaths, weddings, falling in love, parties — in the middle of all the atrocities. Zimbabwe is no different.
Kissing the ground
As I step off the plane and into the arrivals galley I could kiss the ground — pity the formerly blue carpet is now a rather squalid grey.
The immigration officials chat to me and laugh as I ”manage my passport”, telling them where to stamp, so they do not fill the pages. Getting a new passport is not easy, don’t they know? ”Ha sister,” the officer says, laughing. ”Those of you coming from the diaspora can buy these things. Only US$200 these days.”
The customs officer waves us through. Too bored? Too tired to search us as they normally do when they see large pieces of luggage? We get out swiftly and in minutes my brother is driving us into the city.
Harare is not called the sunshine city for nothing. It is a beautiful spring afternoon. The sun shines brightly in the blue sky. Not too hot. A gentle breeze is blowing. I am overwhelmed. I feel intensely happy as the sun sinks into my bones. I lower my window with no fear of a gun being levelled at my head at the traffic lights. Even my son sticks his hand out of the window to catch the breeze. We haven’t done this in a long time. Not in Johannesburg.
The streets of Harare are clean. Too ”clean”, I notice, in that there are few people about. The street vendors were ”cleaned” out by operation Murambatsvina a year ago. While some brave ones have ventured back, it is a hazardous business.
I notice there are few cars on the road. The fuel crisis is biting. But I am too happy now to worry about it. I just want to enjoy being home.
Schedule your life
I wake up on my first morning to another beautiful day. The house is eerily quiet. No radio. No television. Not even the boys on their PlayStation. I realise the electricity is off.
My friend Nozipho tells me it will be on again about 2pm. It is Sunday. That’s the schedule in her neighbourhood. I soon learn that in the leafy suburbs there is a regular schedule for power cuts and occasionally for water cuts too. So you can schedule your life — when to do the laundry, when to iron, what time to start cooking …
By the end of the first week I have the schedules worked out. I know whose house to go to for breakfast, whose for lunch and when to recharge my cellphone.
Manoeuvres in the dark
But things are not so easy in the non-leafy, high-density townships, where the power goes off at any time. Perhaps the thinking is that poor people are too poor to need regular schedules. But there are some things you can’t schedule, like the ever-present funerals, mostly the result of HIV and Aids. How do you conduct a wake by candlelight? How do you feed the mourners in the dark?
We soon find out. My friend’s dad passes away in Bulawayo. The power goes off in the middle of his wake. Dozens of candles hardly make a difference in the pitch darkness. The women — always the women — struggle to heat water, cook and feed the large crowd. They manage.
At yet another funeral in a less well-heeled township, things don’t go so well. The candles run out after midnight. The firewood runs out after one meal. No one has fuel to go on a quest for these essentials. The mourners go hungry. Many leave. By the time the burial is over there are barely 30 people left.
We drive into Mkoba township in Gweru on a dark evening when the power is off. The entire place, 20 villages in total, is in darkness. Thick smoke hangs in the air. I am worried about women’s and girls’ safety and security. Several scurry hurriedly to get home from work, the market, shops, church. I am scared to ask if the statistics for violence against women have gone up.
Water water
On day two I experience cut-off number two. Water. I am shown the dozens of buckets, containers, pots, plastic bins — anything that can hold water. Every household I visit is the same. You keep storing the stuff, just in case.
Unlike electricity the schedules for water cut-offs are less regular in every area. But things are worse in the high-density areas. It is much worse in Bulawayo, where cut-offs last anything from one to seven days. No one has that many containers.
Once again I see crowds of women and girls around the few boreholes or water points. There is an almost festive atmosphere as they converge there. They laugh, talk, joke and wait. Sometimes the water comes out quickly, but often it’s a slow trickle. The lines move slowly. Nerves get frayed. Pushing and shoving starts and pandemonium breaks out.
Local youths come to ”restore order”, abusing women in the process. Meanwhile, back home the children wait, home-based care patients fret and husbands get angry.
Women’s and girls’ lives have gone backwards in time. The development that seemed within reach by 2015 is a distant, hollow hope. If it’s not a water queue, it’s the search for firewood. Countless hours are spent searching or collecting something.
In Glen View a group of young women says it takes them up to three hours to walk to a farm to search for firewood, another three to collect and cut it down and another three to walk back. Meanwhile, other domestic and economic activities must wait. What time do they have to go to school? Learn new skills? Earn an income? Or do anything else in this hunter-gatherer context? We are back to the rural way of life, but without the necessary tools and changes in other circumstances to make this manageable.
Food, glorious food
I have been home for a week and I haven’t eaten beef. I am beginning to have withdrawal symptoms.
There is lots of expensive chicken. As a visitor I have been fed plenty. I can’t face another drumstick. The government deregistered all abbatoirs, so there’s no beef anywhere. I call a friend in the president’s office. He is one of the new farmers. A very productive one. I ask if he has beef. No beef, he says, just more chicken or he can do mutton. I opt for mutton. Sadly, the president of Equatorial Guinea is coming to town, so I never see the mutton.
On our way to Gweru we drive into Kadoma Ranch Motel, hoping to buy a burger. I ask for a menu. ”You want to see a menu, mother? What do you want to see on a menu?” the waiter asks me, with his arms akimbo and a sneer on his lips. I lose my temper. I want the menu. Isn’t this a hotel?
The waitron thinks I am a Martian from Pluto. ”Mother, here you ask us what we are serving today. We don’t do menus anymore. This is a new Zimbabwe. Ask me what I am serving and I will tell you. Today we have two things: chicken wings and pork chops.” He rattles off the prices. I don’t listen. I just want pork chops.
I ask what drinks he has and he almost keels over laughing. ”But mother you are really not from here right? Drinks? We have the usual, Mupfure River crush — oh, sorry, that means water — and Mazoe [concentrated orange juice].” I settle for Mupfure crush on the rocks.
By the second week we have queuing down pat. My son, driver and I become experts at spotting queues from miles off and joining them. It doesn’t matter what the queue is for, we simply join — and ask as we move along. Jokes abound about people like us. One is that someone joined a funeral body-viewing line and found out only when he was face to face with the corpse.
We are lucky our efforts are not in vain. It is always for something that either we need or someone else can use: bread, cooking oil, fresh milk and sugar. We feel so pleased with ourselves at every victory. Of course we can do this only because I carry wads of cash in my big bag.
Sometimes we get desperate. Our supply of bread runs out. I bump into a friend in a supermarket and jokingly ask if he knows the manager so we can get bread. Sure, he says. He goes over to negotiate with a shop attendant. We are told to wait in the sandy lane behind the supermarket. I feel like a common criminal making a deal with the attendant in the little lane. We get three loaves. What happens if you don’t know someone who knows someone who knows someone else?
The shelves are bare
I finally get confirmation of those images I have seen time and again on TV. The rows of empty shelves in supermarkets. TM, the largest supermarket chain in my hometown, Gweru, has two items filling up two rows: plastic buckets and bran flakes. The first I can understand as people need buckets for storing water. Bran flakes? Maybe nobody grabbed them when prices were slashed and they just remain on the shelves.
I see a woman cleaning an empty fridge and my hopes rise. I ask what will fill it. ”Ah aunty, we just clean them [fridges], so that they remain in good condition.”
Back in the leafy suburbs in Harare one supermarket is filled with imported foodstuffs; all kinds of pastas with names I do not know. I see six kinds of fancy cheeses, pasteurised milk from South Africa, imported washing powder, coffee and wine. Who buys this stuff?
My mother is a small retailer in Gweru. My friend Sophia’s father is a retailer in Harare. Both shops have empty shelves. I don’t get to see Sophia’s dad. He is always queuing for soft drinks at the distribution depot. My dad gets up at 4am to line up for soft drinks.
They do this to keep the shops open and running. There is nothing else to sell.
We visit a widowed aunt in a township. This gives me a micro picture of what the food shortages mean. Normally a visitor is given something to eat and drink. It can be black tea with sweet potatoes or just plain sadza — pap — with veggies.
My old aunty welcomes us with warm hugs. We talk and swap stories for almost an hour. As the conversation winds down she begins to shift uncomfortably in her seat, avoiding my eyes. Finally the penny drops. There is no food to give us. ”What shall I give you my dears? Things are so bad. What can I give you?” I insist that we are not hungry and she need not give us anything.
But this is not the way of our people. Visitors must be fed to feel welcomed. In the end she gives us two dry maize cobs. ”Take these and roast them. Please take them.” She thrusts them into my cavernous bag. My heart sinks. I give her cash and she weeps with gratitude.
The meaning of independence
My visit home coincides with Heroes’ Day. In days gone by this commemoration of our independence struggle was an important day on our calendars. For those of us who can remember the second Chimurenga, it is a time to reminisce and to sing along to the uplifting struggle songs.
But, after two days of watching the same stuff on ZTV, my son casually asks: ”Mum isn’t there something else to watch besides this fiction?” I am stunned. Fiction? I ask him why he thinks it’s fiction. ”Well, after all the bad things that this government is doing and making people suffer, why are they trying to tell us that they are heroes?”
My heart breaks. I am in pain. If the story of our struggle is dismissed like this by the next generation, what does it mean? If things have got so bad that we can’t convince even our children about our history, where are we going? But I have decided that this is not my burden. If the leaders of Zimbabwe cannot see for themselves that they have eaten their own legacy and they end up sounding like liars to the next generation, it is their burden, not mine.
South Africans often say ZimbabÂÂweans do not resist oppression hard enough. But one area where resistance has been fierce is in the media and communication. Almost every third household, even in the poorest townships, has raised money to buy a Fortec gadget and a satellite dish. Unlike DSTV, Fortec doesn’t need a subscription. Once installed, all you need to do is check the frequencies don’t shift. Rather than being subjected to ZTV, people watch foreign channels. Deep into the night people listen to short wave radio, pirated from outside the country.
After a week in my parents’ home, without Fortec or cable, I realise I miss al-Jazeera and my favourite, Kaya FM. On Friday I stock up on newspapers, the Zimbabwe Independent, Mail & Guardian and, on Sunday, the South African Sunday Times and The Standard. I don’t bother with state-owned dailies. No need to get my blood pressure up.
All dressed up and no transport
Driving around the cities and on every major route, I see hordes of people flagging down lifts. At first I think there is some kind of protest or long queue for something. I soon realise that it’s for transport.
In every direction, at every bus stop, there are at least 40 to 100 commuters. Sometimes more. Waiting. Boiling in the sun. We give lifts to a few in our small car. Every passenger tells us a long story; he or she has been waiting for two days, trying to get to a funeral, collecting a sick mother from the village.
The fuel crisis has spawned a public transport crisis. Again it’s the poor who suffer. With no means to get from point A to point B, they are subjected to the vagaries of a dysfunctional system. The evenings are particularly heart-rending as poorly paid workers struggle to get home before dark, before the power cuts or in time to look for firewood, bread and maybe vegetables for supper.
Sex for fuel
I soon learn that as a member of the NGO community I am ”a person to know”. Generally it is believed that NGO staff members have access to fuel coupons and foreign currency.
I call an old ”regular” of mine. He is enthusiastic to hear I am in town. He would love to hook up. But he has no fuel. Do I have a coupon? Just 25 litres? Then he will ”come and deliver”. I decide I am not that desperate for sex. I will hold on to my hard-won fuel. Or maybe I should hold an auction? Find the most handsome bidder?
And the epidemic goes on …
The story of Zimbabwe would not be complete without something on HIV and Aids. I visit three families to give my condolences for those who have died in the past five months, see two sick relatives and hear of a couple of other deaths.
Antiretrovirals are easier to get in some towns than others. But a monthly supply of drugs on the open market is unaffordable. I don’t know who can still buy them.
The government clinic in my hometown has stopped taking in new patients. The CD4 count machine has broken down. Without it you can’t be assessed for treatment. The food crisis has compounded the problem. Several relatives on treatment say they struggle to get adequate and timely nutrition so they can adhere to their regime.
My visits to graveyards in Harare and Bulawayo confirm that more young people are dying. Someone born in 1987 is in a grave already.
The rich get richer
As in any place in a crisis there is opportunity. Zimbabwe is no different. A new breed of billionaires has arisen. Wheeler-dealers are everywhere: smugglers, sellers of scarce commodities, fuel importers or just plain thugs.
Moving mostly in the leafy suburbs and among the middle classes it is interesting to see the lifestyles and listen to the ”woes” of this group. At a hair salon the young come in their dozens to get fancy hair-dos. I have never seen so many well manicured women as I do in Harare.
At a popular restaurant I eavesdrop on a conversation among those I call corporate wives. One has taken up horse riding. Another is persevering with her flying lessons. The third frets about the lack of seats on flights to Dubai for her family for the school holidays. They’ll have to go to Victoria Falls — how boring, they all commiserate.
And you can’t believe the fancy cars this lot and their offspring drive. An economist friend tells me that because the Zim dollar is so worthless now, saving is pointless. You’re better off chowing your money in this manner. I worry about the long-term implications of all this.
I meet a group of young secretaries and hear fascinating stories about what the ”indigenous” or new farmers are buying their girlfriends. Plasma-screen televisions, double-door fridge-freezers, leather lounge suites, Japanese used vehicles, monthly fuel supplies, shopping trips to Jo’burg or Dubai. Many of these young women have regular facials and massages — all paid for with the new money. For some, every cloud does have a silver lining.
A new birth
As I dance at my friend Juliana’s birthday party, I disagree with Oliver Mtukudzi’s new song, Gehena (hell), in which he says there is no such thing as a slightly nice hell. Hell is hell, he sings. Oliver dear, Zimbabwe is a slightly good hell.
I am angry at what I see. It makes me depressed. I am angry at the unnecessary pain and grind that women and girls, in particular, have become subjected to — the constant search for food, fuel and water. I am angry that younger women continue to die unnecessary deaths from Aids or are subjected to sex work when they could be earning their own incomes in a functioning economy.
I am shocked at the denial by those in power that there is a crisis in Zimbabwe and that poor black people are suffering. These people are not related to Tony Blair — or Gordon Brown now –and have done nothing to deserve this ”punishment”. All they want is to live in the functional Zimbabwe they once knew.
And I am even more angry that the solution being punted is another meaningless and wasteful election — an election that will not resolve poor women’s and girls’ problems. Just as all the other useless elections in the past few years did not.
Yet I come out refreshed and happy. After a visit to my gynaecologist and my dentist — both of whom treat me like a human being and not a tropical disease in progress, as I am normally treated in South Africa — I have every right to be happy. I am greeted with a smile and a chat at the bank. In Johannesburg I am ”X-rayed 55 times”, as I call it, and my ID photocopied four times every time I visit my bank.
Having spent three weeks travelling under the most beautiful African sun in three of the safest cities in the world, I am at peace. For three weeks I do not obsess about locking doors and windows and clutching my handbag. The laughter, community and sense of hope in everyone I see is something I will live on for the next few months. Even in the most trying of times, or in the longest bread queue, there is hope and faith.
I cannot help but be elated at the sight of new houses being built: big, beautiful houses. No matter how much it costs, parents still sacrifice to send their children to the best schools; buy them necessary school uniforms and other supplies. University and college students study diligently, hoping for a better life.
In Bulawayo’s Centenary Park, although the flowers have not been watered for months and the place looks desolate, I witness at least five weddings on a beautiful Saturday morning. My eldest son has a new baby girl, who looks so cute in pink; my younger brother has a baby boy with the most beautiful long nails.
Life has become hell for many, but it is a slightly good hell. There is hope. The struggle to reclaim our beautiful country must continue.