Staff Photographer
Jason Moyo speaks to ordinary Zimbabweans about their hopes and fears for the new year — and finds surprising levels of optimism
One would expect a man who is lying sick on a narrow bed with a hole in the middle and a bucket underneath not to feel particularly optimistic about the future.
But hope springs eternal in the human breast. Tariro is a 40-year-old geography teacher whose missionary zeal is unshaken by the cholera infection that has confined him to an improvised ward at Beatrice Hospital outside Harare. His name is Shona for “hope”.
He has a surprisingly sunny-side-up view of Zimbabwe’s prospects in 2009, really more defiance than hope.
He is fiercely opinionated; he hates the fact that journalists have taken images of those stricken by cholera, “as if we are animals”, and used them to “push their agendas”. I don’t tell him I’m a journalist; after all, I’m here as part of a group of volunteers.
He reels off Bible verses, chiding me for “lacking faith”.
“My friend, God has a plan for us, a plan to prosper us,” he says. “My Bible says gold is purified by fire. We will rise.”
Optimism is a scarce commodity in Zimbabwe. And the last place you expect to find it is at a cholera treatment centre. But even amid the misery there is a quiet determination to face up to whatever 2009 may bring.
Charity (26) was close to leaving her job as a nurse at Parirenyatwa, Zimbabwe’s biggest public hospital, when the cholera outbreak began. Instead, she volunteered to join a medical relief agency fighting the epidemic. She bridles when a cynical colleague calls her an idealist.
“Everyone is always hoping to do things differently at the start of each year. If politicians come to this clinic and see what ordinary people are going through, how hard people are working to help each other, they will turn over a new leaf. I want to make a difference.”
Robert Mugabe, addressing a military parade in November, described 2008 as “the worst year since our independence”.
It was a year in which the education and health sectors, once the pride of Mugabe’s huge social investments in the early years of his rule, finally caved in.
The Reserve Bank itself rejected the Zimbabwe dollar, allowing businesses to transact in foreign currency. This measure had been unthinkable at the start of the year; any such suggestion was dismissed as a lack of patriotism and an act of sabotage.
Many now wonder what surprises await the economy in 2009. But stockbroker Ben Dabengwa isn’t sticking around to find out.
“My plan for 2009 is to raise enough money to get a work permit in South Africa. I don’t see our leaders changing the way they view business,” he said.
It had been a good year for the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, which spun US dollar profits for investors until the Reserve Bank cut in with tough measures that have halted the charge in stock prices and sent brokers reeling.
Many young professionals are spending endless hours scouring the internet for foreign jobs. They pay fortunes to shady agents promising to arrange work permits.
Kurai Muhwati (36), a surveyor, was one of many professionals who had vowed never to leave Zimbabwe, and when he watched Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai shaking hands in September, he felt vindicated. But the euphoria didn’t last and Muhwati is chasing a job offer in Qatar.
“Leaving isn’t easy. But once you look at yourself and say, ‘Will I be able to feed myself this time next year?’, it gets easier.”
He believes that even if a political settlement is reached this year, it will be years before the economy recovers. “And now with all this military invasion talk, Mugabe won’t be going anywhere, even if he had planned to,” he says. “He enjoys this sort of thing.” He fears that the army riots in December point to unrest in the new year.
But others are staying put, in fact praying for a continuation of the carnage. At the Keg and Sable, an English-style pub, the city’s dealer class exchanges tales of their latest scams over endless rounds of expensive brandy.
Conversation here is serious and passionate; how much longer can he remain in charge — Arsene Wenger, that is? There is little talk of politics or cholera here.
For this lot, Mugabe was talking out the side of his mouth when he said 2008 was the worst year ever. Take, for instance, my college-mate Pride, who left his marketing job three years ago to develop a small gold claim in Kadoma, central Zimbabwe.
By law, he should be selling the gold to government, but he sells “just some of it to keep the books straight”. He bought an Audi SUV and moved into a R7 000-a-month apartment. It was the best year of his life.
And 2009? “As long as it’s like 2008, I’m happy. Who wants this to end? A lot of people are making money from this; Zanu, MDC, the rest of us. It’s never going to end.