African Laughter (37 page)

Robert Mugabe is the product of an authoritarian culture. He was educated by the authoritarian Catholics. People who taught him, and fellow pupils, say he was clever, always reading, did not mix easily with others, but watched and listened: ‘A typical intellectual.’ He was brought up under White Supremacy, which was like living under a cold lid, like a frozen sky. His culture, his people were always criticized, disparaged, despised. When they say now, ‘But it is our culture, it is our custom’ as a last word, what you are hearing is self-respect, a people’s pride, that has survived decades of contempt. When Mugabe became part of the liberation struggle, it was British rule he opposed, and the language of marxism was common to all liberation movements then. They say it was Samora Machel who finally made him a communist, and that was quite late in his career. Because the Soviet Union made the mistake of backing Joshua Nkomo, Mugabe was orientated towards China, whose history since 1949 has been continuous, successive, waves of mass murders–millions upon millions killed for ideological reasons. (I actually heard a Chef say about this, ‘But you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’) He led an army that fought not only against Smith’s forces, white and black, but sometimes against the armies of opposing political groups, Bishop Muzorewa, Nkomo–for while these armies had the same aim, they often competed for future power.

Mugabe was put in detention by Smith. To be detained or a prisoner was a harsh experience. The prison was the scene of hundreds of executions, many of them Mugabe’s friends and comrades. All kinds of atrocities were committed by Smith’s men, which are talked about but have not been officially exposed: this is because of the need to bury the past and its ‘mistakes’. Smith refused Mugabe permission to visit his son–his only child–when he was ill, and when the child died he was not allowed to attend the funeral. It is sometimes argued that this was the stupidest thing Smith ever did. When Robert Mugabe came to power it was after more than a decade of war fought, as wars have to be, with brutality on both sides. The attempts on his life have isolated him, made him suspicious. Why then do people expect Robert Mugabe, with such a history, to be this combination of Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson, Gandhi? But people do expect this: Comrade Mugabe, like God, is on everybody’s side. And he does sometimes behave with magnanimity.

What has there been in Mugabe’s experience to make him admire democracy?

Yet as communism, and marxism as an idea collapses, as communist societies give up and go, it is likely that the ‘marxist’ leadership of Zimbabwe will be pleased their communism has always been more rhetoric than fact.

What will supplant marxism?

Christianity is strong in Zimbabwe, stronger than marxism ever was.

From a letter: ‘The Pope has just visited Zimbabwe. Thousands of people turned out. Don’t run away with the idea they have all become Catholics, it was all more exciting than a Party rally, that’s all, and they
love
parties. Comrade Mugabe was there. He said “This is like being baptized again.” Also, that he could see no conflict between Christianity and what his government stood for. At least that’s what people say he said. The newspapers didn’t report it.’

As marxism fades, the Chiefs become stronger. There are jokes that in the long run the Chiefs will turn out stronger than the Chefs. Slowly, they are getting their powers and privileges back. They are conservative, taking their stand on ‘our culture’, ‘our customs’.

But not always. And Robert Mugabe, that man conservative by temperament and authoritarian by upbringing, is not at all the traditional African male. He is sympathetic to women, and–they say–much influenced by his mother, a remarkable woman whose life was as hard as African women’s lives nearly always are.

LEADERS

Always and everywhere citizens sit around wondering. Why does he–she–they–do this or that? and in the same tone of frustrated incredulity of ‘But why does Mugabe…?’

There surely must be a secret ingredient, information withheld, a palmed card, the joker in the pack?–for the citizens simply cannot believe what is going on.

Let us take a recent event in Britain. (But it happened in the United States too.) It was decided to close mental hospitals and throw out all the inhabitants, who would thereafter be ‘cared for in the community’. Anyone who knew about the services which would be caring for these poor people, could foresee what would happen. The unfortunates would be living on their wits, or be exploited by landlords, or drink or drug themselves to death. But if ordinary sensible people could see this, the experts could not. It was obvious that quite soon, people appalled by the sordid fate of the expelled ones, would cry ‘Eureka! I’ve got it! What we need are a-s-y-l-u-m-s, what we need are r-e-f-u-g-e-s where they can be looked after. Why is it people didn’t think of that before?’

Over and over again this kind of thing happens, always to the bafflement of people who are not experts or officials.

There is an ingredient X. It is that as soon as people get into power, even on an ordinary level, they only meet people like themselves and who think the same–they succumb to a kind of gentle group hypnosis. Nothing is more rewarding than to spend an hour or so in the company of, let’s say, Labour officials, and then an hour with the same level of Conservatives. They live inside different mental landscapes, which they continually reshape to make them fit with their beliefs. So powerful is this mechanism that politicians seem able to persuade themselves of anything. At the time of the miners’ strike–Arthur Scargill’s–members of the hard left all over the country were sure Britain was on the verge of red revolution, and were already choosing the government posts each would fill. A couple of years later they would be secretly thinking, ‘I wonder what got into me?’

THE FARMERS IN THE MOUNTAINS

And now, again, the road from Harare to Mutare. Again we sped through rolling open country past all that magnificence, and those other slow journeys when we watched how a clump of boulders appeared far ahead, grew large, dispersed itself at a turn in the road and came together, rose up, seemed to topple, then fell behind as another clump approached–the slow unfolding of the landscape, like a well-known tale or reminiscence told with pauses for effect, was part of the past, and even the journeys of six years before were in another time. The place of the accident? Conversation in the car was so entertaining I forgot to look for it. In 1982 every stretch of bush, each hill or mountain was a memory in the topography of war. That war had gone, together with all the other wars, into the memories of people growing old; a new lot of young people are already looking at each other with humorous grimaces as their elders intone, Do you remember how the government troops came that night and…?
Can’t they leave it alone? We don’t want to hear about that
. The car carried a load of optimism: the rains, the good rains, were here, the end of the drought; a green countryside, fat beasts, well-fed people. All of us in the world are dependent on the rains coming as they ought, but in Zimbabwe you remember it in every other conversation. ‘If we have another three years of decent rains then Mugabe will be safe. Another drought like the last one and we will be in trouble.’
We
? I am listening to whites who so recently meant we, the whites, when they said
we
, but now they mean Zimbabwe.

The road is almost empty. Is the standard of driving better? Yes, much. Have the unlicenced rattle-traps been cleared off the roads? Yes, but there are still plenty of licenced ones. Do you remember there was no petrol in the pumps, because the South Africans–well, all right, Renamo–kept cutting the pipeline?

‘Yes, you’re right, they did–but now our troops guard the pipelines.’

‘If you live in a country you hardly notice changes.’

‘What changes? Are things really so different?’

In London I wait for visitors, and then ask, ‘What changes have you seen since you were here last?’ They tell me, and I say, ‘Really, are you sure?’

In Mutare we stop to shop, and then off we go into the mountains. I am watching for baboons.

‘Do you still have a man out with a gun shooting wild pig and baboons?’

The Coffee Farmer replies, with that small smile that goes with the pleasure of deflating sentimentalists, ‘No, I don’t need one. Luckily the leopards are back in the hills and they keep the baboons down for us.’

And now the hillside in the mountains, and from the verandahs we look down on mountains and hills, the lakes, the rivers–water, water, because of the rains. And so close you’d think you could throw a stone at it, the mountain that is in Mozambique.

‘Do the Mozambique rebels come through here?’

‘They were around a few months ago, we think. But all during the War the ‘terrs’ were coming back and forth across our farms and we never knew it. Now they tell us and we have a good laugh.’

‘Do the Mozambique peasants still come across the border to get food?’

‘Poor bastards, yes they do, they’re starving down there, don’t forget they are coming to get food from their own brothers.’

The ghosts of the two young white native commissioners dicing over a map, one Rhodesian, one Portuguese, almost appear, but decide not to.

‘And the battalion that was here, driving you all mad?’ ‘They’ve gone, thank God.’

‘What other changes?’

‘Let’s see.’

The servant, a new one, brings out tea, brings out drinks, sets it all on the table, we are introduced, and off he goes to cook dinner.

We sit and watch while the evening light models the landscape.

‘Let’s see.’

There are a couple of newcomers–whites.

‘Any blacks?’

A quick look. A laugh. ‘Didn’t you know? Tekere got rid of all the Squatters. It was Edgar Tekere who threw them out. The hillsides where they were trying to grow mealies and making all that erosion–they are healing themselves. I’ll take you to see them. The forest is coming back.’

‘So you don’t hate Tekere any more?’

‘Hate Edgar Tekere? Certainly not. He’s a good chap.’

‘How many Squatters were there, do you suppose?’

‘Probably several hundred. Well, it was ridiculous wasn’t it? No idea of conservation, no idea of…if you’re going to farm in mountain country then you’ve got to know what you are doing.’

‘Yes, yes, all right…Did you know the blacks think of you as very rich? Those rich Vumba farmers, they say.’

‘Do they! Well, most of us nearly went bankrupt last season. It was a terrible season. Did you know that the X’s just saved their farm? They had the best crop of kiwi fruit ever, but the prices went to nothing because all the Third World countries are growing kiwi fruit, it is grown so easily–as for us coffee farmers we are surviving only because we grow quality coffee–Arabica. Did you know our coffee is a favourite with the buyers?’

The pride of old Southern Rhodesia, the pride of new Zimbabwe, rings in his voice. We always did know how to do things–is the unvoiced message.

What else?

‘We are putting in another dam. Another drought like the last and we’ll be done for.’

He tells this story. A certain new length of pipeline was losing its rubber seals and gushing water. Someone was stealing the rubber. ‘We put our chaps on to find out who was stealing…’

‘Wait a minute, what exactly does that mean?’

‘Never mind. Well, if you must know, we found out which of the kids had new catapults in the school playground. We went to the headmaster. We told him he had to punish the boys. The trouble was, the kids had already been beaten by their fathers. So they were beaten twice. They won’t go stealing our rubber again. But I keep remembering what fun I used to have with my catapult when I was a kid.’

So I tell the Chekhov story about the peasant who steals nuts from the railway sleepers. The local landowner is the magistrate and he asks the peasant why he does this dangerous thing? There have been train accidents, has he never thought it is his fault people have been killed? ‘Well, your honour,’ he says, ‘it’s like this. I like to fish. Those nuts from the sleepers make perfect sinkers for catching some kinds of fish.’ ‘Do they?’ exclaims the landowner. ‘What kinds? I didn’t know that.’ He likes to go fishing too. The peasant and the landowner discuss the different depths certain fish are to be found in the rivers, what bait they like, the best sinkers to use on the lines. They are expert, know everything about fish and their ways. But the time comes when the magistrate has to take over from the landowner, and he sentences the peasant to so many years exile. The man goes off, incredulous: he cannot believe that this fellow fisherman who has been talking to him man to man about the ways of fish, is now turning on him. ‘But I have no alternative,’ says the magistrate. ‘You stole the nuts, didn’t you?’

The Coffee Farmer listens to this tale with his characteristic small smile: Yes, well, that’s how things are, whether you people like it or not!

Easy to say, ‘A story that could have come from old Rhodesia’ if it were not that savage beatings regulate the new schools. It is against the law, but in some countries–Britain for one–adults seem to feel beating children is their right.

Jack later wrote, ‘He has gone, and the new headmaster is in. He works hard, and so far spends all his time in the school. But he drinks and beats the kids. He beats them so hard we…’ (meaning the white ex-pat teachers) ‘go to him to ask if it is necessary. He beats the small kids too, even if they are late because the rivers are up because of rain.’

Whenever you meet teachers they talk, horrified, of the beatings.

‘Did they beat their children in the old days?’

‘Yes, they did. And the women too. Incredible beatings. Horrible. Terrible. When we expostulate they think, oh, that’s just a Honkey talking.’

All right, so what else has happened?

It takes hours of gossip to catch up with it all.

We eat supper early. We go to bed early. We get up before the sun. I look to see if the vervet monkey is in his tree down the hill, so we can watch the sunrise together, but the tree has gone the way of all trees, and perhaps the monkey too. Vervet monkeys do appear briefly on the edges of the clearing, play, chasing each other, in the branches–disappear. Youngsters. Not a philosopher among them.