African Laughter (43 page)

But–say the Passionate Apologists–
The Financial Gazette
is well-informed and critical, and there is a magazine,
Parade
, which is not afraid. Cynics reply, Why not? The
Gazette
and
Parade
are only read by intellectuals, the Povos never read them.

As a result of
The Chronicle’s
exposures, the Sandura Commission was appointed: the resulting hearings in court were attended by jeering, shouting, laughing crowds, while the defendants reached heights of imaginative perjury described by one member of the audience as ‘a combination of Baron Munchausen and Cecil Rhodes boasting about the annexation of Mashonaland. I tell you, comrade, only Zimbabwe could have come up with that one–it was better than any theatre.’ All of Zimbabwe applauded Mugabe for appointing the Sandura Commission: at last he was behaving as he was expected to behave, a bulwark against corruption and a defender of the good and the right. The students were particularly full of praise. But then the guilty ones were pardoned by the President, and the people who committed perjury in court and who expected jail sentences were pardoned too. ‘One law for the Chefs and one law for the Povos,’ said the cynical. Said, by the by, the now very cynical. As we all know, there is no one more furiously cynical than an idealist betrayed. Needless to say, the rumours about why the President did this ill-judged thing flourish. ‘They’ say that people very close indeed to the President were implicated. ‘They’ say that the President cannot afford to offend the corrupt Chefs who keep him in power. The charitable say it hurts Mugabe to see old comrades who fought with him in the bush disgraced and in prison.

TWO-BOY TEKERE

Edgar Tekere, the maverick, the outsider, is discussed with the relishing, sardonic disbelief we use to salute disreputable but entertaining possibilities.

If you play that private game, of sitting rather outside a conversation and listening to the sound rather than to the sense of it, Tekere Tekere Tekere clicks through the talk like a cricket.

He is mounting a one-man opposition to Mugabe, and has been thrown out of Mugabe’s party Zanu PF because of his criticisms of corruption and Mugabe’s toleration of it. His new political party is called the Zimbabwe Unity Movement. (It is interesting how often the word Unity, or United, is used for political movements that are in fact divisive.) But Zum is making an impact because everyone knows his criticisms are just. What sort of impact? No one knows. He appeals too, to some people–not a few–who would like to see more whites in Parliament, because of their expertise and know-how. (When whites are valued in black countries it is seldom for their charm, their wit, their delightfulness, their kind hearts, but rather because they are equipped to deal with the modern world.) Everywhere campaigning goes on in preparation for the next election, on lines familiar to Zimbabwe–to Kenya–to India–to communist countries–and, of course, to England in the eighteenth century. Every kind of dirty trick is employed to outwit or discredit opponents. Gangs of bully boys break up Tekere’s meetings and threaten possible supporters with violence or actually beat them up, and are never rebuked or punished. This is because they are members of Zanu PF’s youth section. (Why doesn’t Mugabe…?) By-elections are rigged. Tekere himself is publicly vilified and there is a cleverly managed whispering campaign.

It was Tekere who, when drunk, murdered a white farmer just after Liberation. This certainly darkened the shining image of a Soldier of Liberation. The incident is again being discussed, and, too, his willingness to work with Smith. In addition, the authorities leaked Tekere’s medical records, which made him sound like a schizophrenic. That he is an alcoholic does not seem to discredit him: it is this fact that makes some people think that ‘they’ (this time, the Povos) don’t take Tekere seriously.

Tekere has turned criticism to his own advantage, describing himself as a ‘Two-boy’, which is how schizophrenics are known in these parts. On campaign posters he is describing himself as ‘Edgar Tekere Two-boy, the Christian Alcoholic’, and making everyone laugh.

Tekere is in fact playing a familiar political role, or allowing himself to be in a position where other people ascribe the role to him. He is seen as the opposite of everything Mugabe is. Mugabe has never made anybody laugh. Mugabe needs a whole motorcade and darkened bullet-proof windows if he so much as sets a foot out of his home but Tekere is available to everyone, he isn’t a fearful man, ‘he lives dangerously, just like us’. Tekere doesn’t go rushing off to conferences everywhere all the time. Tekere drives a little car and he never wears a three-piece suit.

During this kind of conversation politicians’ tribal origins always come up. Tekere is from Manicaland, which makes him a representative of Eastern Zimbabwe, just as Joshua Nkomo represents Matabeleland.

But someone gives me a lesson on ethnology. All this talk of the Matabele and the Mashona and the Manicas! There is no such thing as the Mashona. There are four main Mashona groups, the Karanga, the Manyika, the Zezuru, the Kore Kore. The main group is Zezuru from around Harare. Mugabe was Karanga by origin, and brought up as a Zezuru. The battles that go on inside the Party can often only be understood by the balances of power between these groups. At the moment the Karanga are losing out: it is the Karanga versus the rest. But Terence Ranger (Zimbabwe’s prestigious historian) says that before the whites came these divisions were not important: the missionaries exacerbated them. Then each group insisted it was the most important: ‘We are the real people.’

‘Tekere’, says someone, ‘is just as much a Mashona as Mugabe is. They’ll say anything to discredit Tekere.’

During an evening of informal talk with a high official, he insisted Tekere was ‘a Nazi’. Protests at this silliness from everybody. ‘Oh yes, it’s just the same. At first Hitler was just right wing: it was only later that people discovered he was a Nazi.’ (The word ‘objectively’ is implicit.) ‘And so that makes the students who support Tekere Nazis.’ (The university students have again demonstrated–‘rioted’, according to the government press–against corruption. Some carried Tekere party cards and shouted ‘Tiananmen Square!’) The official went on insisting that the students were Nazis. Not once did he admit that the students’ complaints were just. There was an unreasoning hysterical insistence in his talk about the students. Given the law that the same kinds of people say the same things at the same time, then it is likely this students-are-Nazis talk goes on at high levels.

AIDS, AIDS, AIDS

Only eight months before, the atmosphere had reminded me of Brazil in 1986. There were people saying, but privately, ‘AIDS is a time-bomb, ticking away, but our government doesn’t want to know. Brazil might have been invented to please the AIDS virus. It is a ‘permissive hedonistic society, male and female homosexuality–anything–goes. A blood transfusion is a death sentence. Drugs are everywhere.’ A few months later the Brazilian government understood AIDS would not just take itself off, and limited information campaigns began on radio, on television, in the newspapers. Poor countries cannot afford the money for serious propaganda. Compared with Brazil Zimbabwe is well-off with its infrastructure of hospitals and clinics. The point is, no one knows how much AIDS there is. Doctors say there is far more than the government admits to. Politicians let slip damaging figures, but they are not likely to be accurate. Everyone knows that up north, in Zambia, Kenya, Zaire, Uganda, other countries, a whole generation may die of AIDS before the end of the century. Already in Uganda and in Kenya there are empty villages where so many people died of AIDS the survivors fled, from what they see as witchcraft, the evil eye. Zimbabwe believes itself to be fortunate, compared with these countries. But is it? When a subject is
almost
in everybody’s consciousness, is still a question of ‘I met a doctor who says…’ or ‘They say that in the Communal Areas…’, but is not a matter of accurate facts and figures as is the case in Europe or the United States, then it hovers on the edge of conversations, makes an appearance and takes itself off–people look embarrassed or uncomfortable, as if afraid of an accusation of scare-mongering. And AIDS is still monstrously distorted in political left-wing mythology. Thus, in a group of ideologues, the mention of AIDS will at once inspire denouncements of the CIA who deliberately created the AIDS virus to weaken the Third World. The suggestion that the disease may have evolved from monkeys in Central Africa is a malignant invention of Western scientists who allowed the virus to escape from their test tubes by mistake, and who are now covering up their carelessness by lies, putting the blame on Africa…‘as usual!’ These people are at the same stage as the Soviet Union was until very recently, saying that AIDS was impossible in a communist country, only possible in capitalist societies: evil is the attribute of The Other; demons and dangers and threats can only come as the result of ill-will. Or of the Evil Eye.

Meanwhile blood transfusions inspire terror–and many stories. Zimbabwe soldiers guarding installations in Mozambique were given blood transfusions. All became infected and brought the disease home to their wives and children. Mozambique is full of AIDS. (This is true.) ‘Not only do we, Zimbabweans, have to spend our wealth guarding Mozambique and defending it, and feeding hundreds of thousands of refugees, but then they poison our boys with their AIDS. We have an efficient medical infrastructure,
our
blood transfusions are safe. But the Mozambicans are hopeless. We have to look after them all the time.’

Meanwhile some of the ngangas have not been helpful, saying that if men sleep with a virgin this will cure or prevent AIDS. Most have understood that AIDS is something outside their competence and are allying themselves with science.

HEALERS, SPIRITS AND CONDOMS
from the
Observer