African Laughter (21 page)

TALK ON THE VERANDAHS

And so for all of the first day we sit around talking, talking, while people come to visit, and I ease myself into Zimbabwe, this time cool as you like, dry-eyed as a judge, while facts and statistics (passionately offered) pile up in my mind, and pamphlets and reports appear from everywhere. No one talks about new Zimbabwe without partisanship, and during the next day, and then the next, people explain and complain and exhort while I think how pleasant to be in an atmosphere where not only everyone cares so much but assumes they can immediately and effectively influence events. How unlike life in Britain, or anywhere in Europe, where long ago decisions have been removed from the levels where citizens have their being, to summits of power high above their reach. And all this time I listen for the equivalent of The Monologue, but that has gone, as they say, into the mists of history. Instead certain phrases recur in every conversation and the most often heard is ‘Why does he…Why doesn’t he…’–that is, Mugabe–do this or that. At this time in Britain we ask why
she
does this or that, but there is this difference: there has never been a governing class or clique more visible than this new one of Zimbabwe, and we are not talking about inaccessible heights shrouded by committees and quangos.

Every conversation at once turns to the Unity Accord, between Zapu and Zanu, Matabeleland and Mashonaland, Mugabe and Nkomo, the Accord which has transformed the atmosphere, everyone optimistic, everyone saying, ‘At last Zimbabwe is one country.’ Then they ask, Why didn’t he do it before? If it worked immediately in 1987, then it would have worked earlier. How was it that Mugabe didn’t know the dissidents were so few? Why did the whole country believe that armies of the Ndebele were involved? If Mugabe didn’t know the enemy consisted of a handful of men now described by everyone as Terrorists, then why not? Did he not have spies and informers?

Why does President Mugabe not stop his ministers and officials from being so greedy? The reply to this is that the corrupt ones are those who keep him in power. But no one wants to believe this: at this time all talk of Mugabe is fuelled by idealism, of a kind frightening to some people who remember similar talk about despotic leaders. But Mugabe is not a despot…but Mugabe could easily become one…but now Nkomo is up there with him he won’t allow Mugabe to be a despot…

Where is President Banana? He is no longer President, he is a Professor in the university, and a popular one.

The university is talked about all the time, because the students have just been on strike over corruption, for every day there is a new scandal about ministers and high-ups, involved in every kind of fraud, embezzlement, theft. The students rioted in the name of the Revolution and its ideals, appealing to Mugabe, expecting Mugabe would stand by them. But he did not. The police went into the university and behaved stupidly. They fired tear-gas grenades into rooms where the students were hiding. Many were hurt. But worst of all was the cynicism and disillusion. It is interesting how people talk about Mugabe when they think he has made a mistake; it is in a sorrowful perplexed tone, repeating the same words through an evening, Why did he let them down? How could he have done it? He was himself a revolutionary and he knows how dangerous it is when young people get cynical…he ought to be treating the students as his natural supporters…I can’t help feeling he is badly advised…who is advising him?–why does he let himself be so shut off from everyone, so remote?…he shouldn’t have let them down. Why? What do you think was in his mind?

Parallel to the Why does he? Why doesn’t he? is ‘Mugabe says…’ Nothing is more interesting than what leaders and satraps are supposed to have said, for here speaks the voice of popular mythmaking, voices of hope or of cynicism. It doesn’t matter whether the Leader has actually used the words attributed to him, for the force and effect are the same.

How very attractive is this talk, is the intense personal involvement in Zimbabwe. The spasms of cynicism, and not only about the current corruption scandals, are only the opposite side of the coin. The people in this room include those who, in the Bush War, supported Mugabe, supported Nkomo, supported Bishop Muzorewa, but now they are all speaking in the same way. What way? I swear this isn’t far off being in love. One may be in love with a country or the phase of development of a country as one is with a person. Incredulous, tremulous hope…uncertainty…amazement at the beloved’s perfections and achievements. Exaggerated disappointment at moments of failure. I was listening to people who spoke of corruption scandals with the raging grief appropriate to betrayed love.

For instance, the car scandal. Because Mugabe will not allow cars to be imported into Zimbabwe (or anything else, not spare parts for cars, not farm machinery–nothing, forbidding the necessary with the frivolous) there is a local factory permitted to make Toyotas. They are vastly expensive, three times what they would cost in Europe. Only the rich can afford one, but even the rich can’t get hold of one, because they are supposed to be for the Chefs. A minister or similar privileged person is informed by the factory his car is ready. He, or she (there are a few women in high positions) rings up a friend who is not on the list for a car. Before the car is delivered it has already been sold for several times the cost. It is said that ‘everyone’ is involved in this scandal, ‘people you’d never expect would dirty their fingers with it’. Why does Mugabe not…

A BETRAYED LOVER

‘I expected a period of incompetence. I expected every kind of mess and muddle. I knew nothing would work for a time. How could it when they didn’t have the trained people? But what I didn’t expect was that these bastards would get into power and then not care about anything but feathering their own nests. There are dozens of them, noses in the trough, getting rich quick. Do you imagine they care about those poor bastards out in the Reserves–yes, they are still the reserves, you can give them a new name if you like–but they don’t give a shit. And if you imagine the students were rioting last term because of corruption, don’t you believe it. Oh yes they sound pure and noble but that isn’t it. They know the layer of jobs in the civil service and the government they ought to get themselves–but they’ll never get in there, because all these jobs were filled by the Comrades coming in from the bush, still in their twenties, who have got decades of working life in front of them, and the students will have nowhere to go and they know it. They want to get their noses in the trough too…’ So he raged.

THE AESTHETIC APPROACH
TO REVOLUTION

‘They have all this money, they build themselves houses that would be seen as shocking taste even by Thatcher’s nouveau riche. You simply wouldn’t believe what they are building, nothing to do with the country or the climate, stupid little windows, a mincing suburban refinement, but boastful and ostentatious at the same time. They fill these houses with furniture that no one would be seen dead with in Britain. There isn’t one thing in their houses that isn’t hideous. You stand there looking at these houses and you want to weep at the awfulness of it all.’

‘But surely that is how it always is? First there is the generation that makes the money, all vulgarians full of crude vitality, without scruples. Then their children, who don’t make money, they spend it, and who laugh at their parents for bad taste. Then the third generation who go in for art and liberalism and fine feelings–history often describes them as effete. So why are you so upset this inevitable process is taking place in Zimbabwe?’

Because this is Zimbabwe
–is the real reply. This man, a white born and brought up here is in love with the dream of Zimbabwe and he was supporting it when to do so meant ostracism from his own kind. He cannot endure any blemish on his love.

To be in love with a country or a political regime is a tricky business. You get your heart broken even more surely than by being in love with a person. You may even lose your life. I knew a woman political activist in the old days - in this case, the 1950s. She spent her days and her nights working to undo the white regime in South Africa. Needing a rest, she went to visit Nigeria, to see her dream made flesh, found it was run by human beings, and committed suicide. Everyone who has been involved with idealistic, rhetorical, politics knows a thousand versions of this story, from all over the world.

It has to be recorded that Dorothy admires the new house being put up half a mile away, a horror of a house you would think had been designed to illustrate how many mistakes could be made in a single building–she loves it to the point her eyes go all misty at the sight or even the thought of it.

‘And Zimbabwe has all these fine architects. Did you know that? Our architects are some of the best in the world. They win prizes–in other countries. So they are leaving to take jobs in countries where they are appreciated. These clever boots employ architects from Eastern Europe whose idea of building is Stalinesque grandiosity. I tell you, it is enough to break your heart.’

After ‘Why does Comrade Mugabe…?’ the most often heard set of words is, ‘The women do everything in this country. They do all the work. The men sit about, and the women keep things going. If you want anything done, then you have to reach the women.’

A VISIT TO SIMUKAI

I was taken by Judy Todd to visit Simukai, established and run by ex-Freedom Fighters, men and women. As the War ended, while they waited at the assembly points to be demobilized, they imagined this farm, decided to make it.

Some miles from Harare a sign said, ‘Simukai Collective Farm Welcomes You’ near a small store, a shed-like building whose shelves have on them more soft drinks than the nutritionists would be pleased to see. It was after midday, very hot, and people lazed on the store verandah, mostly women knitting and crocheting. The men were asleep. It turned out that the chairman Andrew was away. He is famous, a man of principle, whose socialism refused to envisage differences between men and women. ‘Here we have only comrades,’ first he–and then they all–decided. This meant that when a certain feminist arrived to discuss the oppression of women, she was told there were no men and women, only people working on equal terms, but probably the person she would like to talk to was the comrade, a woman, who drove the tractor.

This tale has the quality of myth, standing for so much more than its bare facts, symbolizing new Zimbabwe–like other tales about this farm where many visitors are taken.

This was a white farm, and the old pattern of spread-about farmhouse, farm buildings, animal sheds, is here, and it is easy for me to see the old life, the single white family, and its animals–and now the same place is filled with several black families.

The level of poverty, that is the point, and what is so hard to convey: impossible for a person from Europe to imagine, let alone someone from rich America.

A small brick building is the new school and it represents so much hope, effort, work, sacrifice on everyone’s part.

And here I meet, and within a few days of my arrival, that note, or theme, which soon I see as the main one, I think, of Zimbabwe at this time. It is this: how much a small thing, a single building, or animal, or little garden, or a dedicated person can mean, transforming a whole district.

This meagre little school where remarkable people teach, will be remembered by–how many children?

There is a new dam, where they plan to grow fish.

Trees are being planted.

Everything here, which to an eye used to the riches of European farming seems so small and bare is like a step taken with feet that have iron weights on them.

We are taken to see a workshop, once part of a tobacco barn, where a young woman is making overalls. Then to a little house where small children and babies are being looked after. A tiny child, not used to white faces, bawls in terror and is hushed by an older child who sends us embarrassed smiles. In another former tobacco barn meals are cooked and eaten communally.

The farm grows maize, cattle, sheep, pigs, tobacco, wheat, sugar beans.

I asked what, if they were given a wish, they would choose.

This is a question which often gets surprising answers.

We had been driving through rich farms where miles of fields showed the brilliant whirling sprays of irrigation machines. These are now called Commercial Farms, meaning individually-owned high-tec farms, either black or white. I expected the reply would be, irrigation, silos, a new landrover, a refrigerated truck.

Two young men, polite but sleepy, for after lunch on a hot day is not the best time to go visiting, replied in the tones of practised speechmakers, ‘To raise the standard of living.’ ‘To improve the lives of our people.’ This kind of conversation often disappears into mists of misunderstanding and the need for definitions–and then smiles, full of good feeling, but embarrassed.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘What technique or machine or piece of equipment would this farm find most useful now, at this time?’

There was a long silence.

‘The farmer who had this farm was very rich,’ said one young man, offering this to me, I could see, as a starting-off point.

Given this level of poverty, what standard of living did I have in mind? That of the white family who lived here? To give so many families the same would take more money than this farm had even begun to think of. Was I suggesting that every child would have a room full of toys and a bicycle, young people a car each or the use of one, trips to Europe every year or so?

Such questions could be asked, I could see, but I had not been thinking of past white affluence.

Then one young man brought definition to our talk, when he enquired if I had connections with Aid money. Did I work for an Aid organization? Both of them became animated. Some of the amenities on Simukai had been paid for with Aid money. How much money could I give them?

I said I was not connected to an Aid organization.

I saw they were thinking, Here is another visitor, who likes the way we work so hard.