It's a hard thing for us murungus (whites). We tell people to call us by our first names as soon as we strike up a friendship. In Zimbabwe, once you become a parent, you lose your first name. You become mai (mother of) and then your child's name or baba (father) and your child's name. After a few years here, I see now how Zimbabweans wince before using a white person's first name. It's such a foreign concept. Even the shop assistant down the road, an unmarried youth in his early 20s, isn't plain Harry to his co-workers. He's Mukoma (brother or cousin) Harry.
"Imagine calling an old lady by her first name," E. said to me once in horror. We were talking about an 80-year-old mutual acquaintance, a white woman who I know as Bet. E's in his 50s. "I just can't do it."
It's only occasionally that you see black Zimbabweans referred to by their first names. Like in the election campaigns. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's running his campaign under the slogan Morgan is more ("You deserve more for your life"). Former finance minister Simba Makoni is using sunflowers and the shout: Simba KaOne (Simba is the one). Only Mugabe's campaigners never ever talk of Bob. Now that would be disrespectful.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
sweeteners
"Did you see those buses in town?" H, a young Shona school teacher and mother-of-two, asks. "The new ones with the Zimbabwe flags on the side? They're coming in from Beira."
Mr Mugabe handed out 300 buses at the weekend. Last week he was pretty prolific in his gift giving, doling out hundreds of computers (to schools without power and teachers who are on strike), 500 tractors, a drum of diesel per traditional chief, generators, an indigenisation law that'll mean locals will get a 51 percent in foreign and white-owned businesses, ox-drawn ploughs and lots of ruling party regalia.
"C's dad works for Red Star (Holdings, a major local wholesaler). He says there's no sugar. They (and we all know who They are) have taken it to the rural areas." Deputy Minister of Information Bright Matonga this week accused the opposition of vote-buying with money and food. Vote-buying's an offence punishable by a fine and/or up to 2 years in jail, according to Zimbabwe's Electoral Act. Obviously the rules don't apply to everyone.
"They've lost it," H says. "Totally lost it. They don't know what they're doing." She fans herself. It'll be 33 degrees today, the radio says. It was hot in the car on March 11 last year, I remember. That was when police were beating opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters for trying to attend a prayer rally.
"We just want someone new who'll bring change," H says.
Mr Mugabe handed out 300 buses at the weekend. Last week he was pretty prolific in his gift giving, doling out hundreds of computers (to schools without power and teachers who are on strike), 500 tractors, a drum of diesel per traditional chief, generators, an indigenisation law that'll mean locals will get a 51 percent in foreign and white-owned businesses, ox-drawn ploughs and lots of ruling party regalia.
"C's dad works for Red Star (Holdings, a major local wholesaler). He says there's no sugar. They (and we all know who They are) have taken it to the rural areas." Deputy Minister of Information Bright Matonga this week accused the opposition of vote-buying with money and food. Vote-buying's an offence punishable by a fine and/or up to 2 years in jail, according to Zimbabwe's Electoral Act. Obviously the rules don't apply to everyone.
"They've lost it," H says. "Totally lost it. They don't know what they're doing." She fans herself. It'll be 33 degrees today, the radio says. It was hot in the car on March 11 last year, I remember. That was when police were beating opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters for trying to attend a prayer rally.
"We just want someone new who'll bring change," H says.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
and the winner is
Zimbabwean writer Olley Maruma is a ruling party diehard. In Coming Home, a book he published last year, he speaks scornfully of whites' "wishful thinking" ahead of the landslide victory of the Patriotic Front in the country's first independent elections in 1980. It was a traumatic experience for whites, he says. "For them, the victory was made all the more stunning by the fact that both the local and the foreign press had predicted that the Patriotic Front (PF-ZANU, led by Mugabe and PF-ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo) would win no more than 50 percent of the seats." He quotes an Australian reporter: "How could a sane people do this to themselves?"
Twenty-eight years on, and everyone's talking about what's going to happen in two and a half weeks' time. "Surely," my mother-in-law's white friends say. "Surely, this time?" and they recount conversations with domestic workers, the man behind the till at Halsteds, anyone who'll bolster their hope that change is finally on the horizon.
At a party at the weekend, I watch an animated American NGO worker. She is telling a black Zimbabwean -- his kids are somewhere in the garden -- that she just can't understand "these people." "These people" are the ones you see on TV on ZBC News Hour (one agency reporter calls it News Horror) every night -- waving, toyi-toying and chanting at ruling party rallies. You can drive people to rallies. But you can't make them dance with smiles on their faces. That comes from the heart, surely. "I mean, you tell me why," she says, exasperated. In the local Shona culture, women do not look men in the eye. They do not wear short skirts (Agonita, 58, once told me off for wearing a "mean" skirt). Some men even object to unrelated women smiling at them. Traditionally, a woman smiles for her husband only.
The man shifts uncomfortably on his seat, looks away from her. "The war, you know," he says. "People remember that war."
The war for independence is only half a lifetime away for people like Ellias, a college lecturer. He remembers when he and his wife weren't allowed to buy a house in the "good" suburbs. They quietly saved up their cash and bought as soon as independence was declared in 1980: a bungalow with parquet floors, a well in the garden, maid's quarters round the back. There were atrocities during that war, atrocities that state TV is making sure no-one forgets, showing grainy footage of white soldiers manhandling a black during News Hour advert breaks. Defence chief Paradzayi Zimondi has warned there'll be war again if Mugabe doesn't win. "We don't want to go back to that," Ellias says. He explained a Shona proverb to me recently. "If you're ploughing a field and there's a tree-stump in the middle," he said, "you don't stop what you're doing and try to pull the stump out. You plough round it." You make a plan. You don't necessarily have to uproot the problem.
"People are really fired up," a local cafe-owner tells me. "They're fed up. They say, this time we're going to win. Things are going to change." Yes, but they said that before elections in 2000, 2002 and 2005, didn't they?
The opposition's in a bad way. Not only is Tsvangirai's MDC split in two but there's been a fair amount of dirty linen-washing that's had the ruling party rubbing its hands in glee. News Hour showed a press conference last night with an MDC candidate defecting from the Tsvangirai-MDC to the Arthur Mutambara-led side. He says some in Tsvangirai's party are "dictators". There's friction too between Tsvangirai and new-man-on-the-block Makoni. Tendai Biti, the Tsvangirai-faction secretary general described Makoni as "zhing-zhong", slang for a cheap, Chinese imported good that won't last. But a sitting MP from the Tsvangirai faction says - privately, of course - that though he'd "love" Tsvangirai to win, he thinks Makoni would make a better transition.
Outside Nolan's Electronics, I watch three men. One of them's jabbing his finger at a newspaper and they too are talking animatedly. "Better the devil you know," he says in English. There's only one campaign poster near our house and it's for Mugabe.
I may be wrong, but...
Twenty-eight years on, and everyone's talking about what's going to happen in two and a half weeks' time. "Surely," my mother-in-law's white friends say. "Surely, this time?" and they recount conversations with domestic workers, the man behind the till at Halsteds, anyone who'll bolster their hope that change is finally on the horizon.
At a party at the weekend, I watch an animated American NGO worker. She is telling a black Zimbabwean -- his kids are somewhere in the garden -- that she just can't understand "these people." "These people" are the ones you see on TV on ZBC News Hour (one agency reporter calls it News Horror) every night -- waving, toyi-toying and chanting at ruling party rallies. You can drive people to rallies. But you can't make them dance with smiles on their faces. That comes from the heart, surely. "I mean, you tell me why," she says, exasperated. In the local Shona culture, women do not look men in the eye. They do not wear short skirts (Agonita, 58, once told me off for wearing a "mean" skirt). Some men even object to unrelated women smiling at them. Traditionally, a woman smiles for her husband only.
The man shifts uncomfortably on his seat, looks away from her. "The war, you know," he says. "People remember that war."
The war for independence is only half a lifetime away for people like Ellias, a college lecturer. He remembers when he and his wife weren't allowed to buy a house in the "good" suburbs. They quietly saved up their cash and bought as soon as independence was declared in 1980: a bungalow with parquet floors, a well in the garden, maid's quarters round the back. There were atrocities during that war, atrocities that state TV is making sure no-one forgets, showing grainy footage of white soldiers manhandling a black during News Hour advert breaks. Defence chief Paradzayi Zimondi has warned there'll be war again if Mugabe doesn't win. "We don't want to go back to that," Ellias says. He explained a Shona proverb to me recently. "If you're ploughing a field and there's a tree-stump in the middle," he said, "you don't stop what you're doing and try to pull the stump out. You plough round it." You make a plan. You don't necessarily have to uproot the problem.
"People are really fired up," a local cafe-owner tells me. "They're fed up. They say, this time we're going to win. Things are going to change." Yes, but they said that before elections in 2000, 2002 and 2005, didn't they?
The opposition's in a bad way. Not only is Tsvangirai's MDC split in two but there's been a fair amount of dirty linen-washing that's had the ruling party rubbing its hands in glee. News Hour showed a press conference last night with an MDC candidate defecting from the Tsvangirai-MDC to the Arthur Mutambara-led side. He says some in Tsvangirai's party are "dictators". There's friction too between Tsvangirai and new-man-on-the-block Makoni. Tendai Biti, the Tsvangirai-faction secretary general described Makoni as "zhing-zhong", slang for a cheap, Chinese imported good that won't last. But a sitting MP from the Tsvangirai faction says - privately, of course - that though he'd "love" Tsvangirai to win, he thinks Makoni would make a better transition.
Outside Nolan's Electronics, I watch three men. One of them's jabbing his finger at a newspaper and they too are talking animatedly. "Better the devil you know," he says in English. There's only one campaign poster near our house and it's for Mugabe.
I may be wrong, but...
Monday, March 10, 2008
power to the people
We stand in a roped-off queue inside the state power utility ZESA banking hall. Patiently, or sort of. A man considers pushing in in front of me, decides not to. "I was going to," he says. "But I see you have the kid, madam. It is hard for kids to queue."
They joke that Zimbabweans have the highest IQ in the world. I queue, therefore I am in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans queue for sugar, for bread, for milk, in queues that snake round the back of supermarkets and in sanitary lanes, queues patrolled by police and Alsatians. They queue for passports (my mother-in-law's just got hers after 10 months of waiting), they queue for milk round the blue Dairibord milk cart. Come March 29, they'll be queueing again.
My son spies the ZESA security guard, with what looks like a pistol in his holster.
"Kids always want to be policemen," the would-be queue jumper says. "But here" -- he checks to see who's listening -- "you only become a policeman if you're desperate."
There are rumours of growing discontent in the police service and the army, despite threats never to salute an opposition victory from two top defence chiefs, Paradzayi Zimondi of the prison service and army commander General Constantine Chiwenga. A report in the UK-based Zimbabwean newspaper quoted pamphlets allegedly circulating within army headquarters urging members to "vote with your consciences" and "remember your kids and your parents are dying of hunger."
"Is he at school?" the queue-jumper-who-didn't asks. He's a burly guy in a suit. A businessman of some kind, I'd guess.
"Nursery," I say.
"How much was the top-up?"
Where I come from, top-ups used to be something pleasant, something you got in a cafe when your coffee cup was empty. Here they're a demand you get handed when you go to pick up your child. You pay your school fee for the term and then you have to top it up regularly because of inflation (100,580.2 percent at the last count in January). "We reserve the right to turn your child away from school if the top-up is not paid by March 10," the letter I got last week says.
"500 million," I tell him.
"Not too bad," he offers. "I've just written out a cheque for 6.6 billion for my kids' top-up."
"How much?" the woman behind him nudges him in horror. She shakes her head. "Zvakaoma," she mutters. Things are bad. I heard the assistant at the zhing-zhong clothes shop say the same thing earlier as she leaned on a pile of gaudy flip-flops. Flip-flops, by the way, that cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
"I saw this South African film," the man tells us. "The guy in it was saying: I feel like a million bucks. Zimbabwean bucks."
I read the vision statement on the wall next to me. ZESA (or its parent ZEDC Holdings) vision is, apparently, "to be the best and the most dynamic electricity and energy services provider" in the country. Today we have no power at home. Down the road at the bakery, there's no power either. "No power, no bread," the woman behind the till sings out when I poke my head through the door. There are bills to pay and top-ups to find, a phone line that keeps going down, a radio signal that keeps disappearing and cellphone networks that keep dissolving. Zvakaoma, yes.
They joke that Zimbabweans have the highest IQ in the world. I queue, therefore I am in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans queue for sugar, for bread, for milk, in queues that snake round the back of supermarkets and in sanitary lanes, queues patrolled by police and Alsatians. They queue for passports (my mother-in-law's just got hers after 10 months of waiting), they queue for milk round the blue Dairibord milk cart. Come March 29, they'll be queueing again.
My son spies the ZESA security guard, with what looks like a pistol in his holster.
"Kids always want to be policemen," the would-be queue jumper says. "But here" -- he checks to see who's listening -- "you only become a policeman if you're desperate."
There are rumours of growing discontent in the police service and the army, despite threats never to salute an opposition victory from two top defence chiefs, Paradzayi Zimondi of the prison service and army commander General Constantine Chiwenga. A report in the UK-based Zimbabwean newspaper quoted pamphlets allegedly circulating within army headquarters urging members to "vote with your consciences" and "remember your kids and your parents are dying of hunger."
"Is he at school?" the queue-jumper-who-didn't asks. He's a burly guy in a suit. A businessman of some kind, I'd guess.
"Nursery," I say.
"How much was the top-up?"
Where I come from, top-ups used to be something pleasant, something you got in a cafe when your coffee cup was empty. Here they're a demand you get handed when you go to pick up your child. You pay your school fee for the term and then you have to top it up regularly because of inflation (100,580.2 percent at the last count in January). "We reserve the right to turn your child away from school if the top-up is not paid by March 10," the letter I got last week says.
"500 million," I tell him.
"Not too bad," he offers. "I've just written out a cheque for 6.6 billion for my kids' top-up."
"How much?" the woman behind him nudges him in horror. She shakes her head. "Zvakaoma," she mutters. Things are bad. I heard the assistant at the zhing-zhong clothes shop say the same thing earlier as she leaned on a pile of gaudy flip-flops. Flip-flops, by the way, that cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
"I saw this South African film," the man tells us. "The guy in it was saying: I feel like a million bucks. Zimbabwean bucks."
I read the vision statement on the wall next to me. ZESA (or its parent ZEDC Holdings) vision is, apparently, "to be the best and the most dynamic electricity and energy services provider" in the country. Today we have no power at home. Down the road at the bakery, there's no power either. "No power, no bread," the woman behind the till sings out when I poke my head through the door. There are bills to pay and top-ups to find, a phone line that keeps going down, a radio signal that keeps disappearing and cellphone networks that keep dissolving. Zvakaoma, yes.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
primary colours
In the dark grocery shop at Halfway House, the assistant weighs my pears and rings in my wild blueberries on a calculator. There's no power to get the till working. Everything's normal. Or nearly.
"We saw people back there," I say quietly. "Walking along the road. Where were they going?"
Until Headlands, there'd been no sign to suggest elections were on this month. No campaign posters, no trucks full of noisy activists (singing's been banned in the eastern city of Mutare in the run-up to the polls, the Manica Post says). Just miles and miles of straight empty road. The road (unpotholed here because there's less traffic) stretches like a white-grey ribbon, bordered by shimmering rust-tipped grass and pine and bottle-brush trees so green they're speckled with black. After a few years here, I know now that these are Zimbabwe's primary colours: roadline grey, black-green, rust. And blue, the well-washed and faded blue of the sky without a cloud the size of a man's hand.
The women walk slowly but purposefully, in groups of two or three. Doeks on their heads, babies on their backs. It's mid-morning. The sun is already high and hot. There are several dozen of them, probably somewhere around 80. Very few men. A church service perhaps? Men aren't so keen on church-going here, not traditionally. But the faces that turn to look at our car are closed, not like the ones we drove past a fortnight ago flocking to an outdoor service in eastern Honde Valley, where the tea grows.
"It's a rally," the shop assistant says. There's a pile of gooey koeksusters next to the till. "It's Didymus Mutasa. He is having a rally in the location." He gives an apologetic half-smile.
I know why. Mutasa is Mugabe's state security minister and - despite the koeksusters (an Afrikaans delicacy) and the colonial style Cape Dutch gables at Halfway House -- Headlands is a ruling party stronghold. Like Macheke, a few miles further on. These are bad places to be opposition supporters or white farmers. Ouma and her late husband used to live somewhere near here. He was Polish. They took his farm even though Ouma is black. "He had a heart attack," Ouma says. "It killed him." Mutasa's the one who said back in 2002 that Zimbabwe would be better off with only six million people (ie half the population) as long as they were supporters of the ruling party.
We climb back into the car, shaking the sand from the car park off our feet. So often Zimbabwe looks as stunning as a picture postcard. Scratch the surface though, and the fear, the politics and the old hatreds are never far away.
"We saw people back there," I say quietly. "Walking along the road. Where were they going?"
Until Headlands, there'd been no sign to suggest elections were on this month. No campaign posters, no trucks full of noisy activists (singing's been banned in the eastern city of Mutare in the run-up to the polls, the Manica Post says). Just miles and miles of straight empty road. The road (unpotholed here because there's less traffic) stretches like a white-grey ribbon, bordered by shimmering rust-tipped grass and pine and bottle-brush trees so green they're speckled with black. After a few years here, I know now that these are Zimbabwe's primary colours: roadline grey, black-green, rust. And blue, the well-washed and faded blue of the sky without a cloud the size of a man's hand.
The women walk slowly but purposefully, in groups of two or three. Doeks on their heads, babies on their backs. It's mid-morning. The sun is already high and hot. There are several dozen of them, probably somewhere around 80. Very few men. A church service perhaps? Men aren't so keen on church-going here, not traditionally. But the faces that turn to look at our car are closed, not like the ones we drove past a fortnight ago flocking to an outdoor service in eastern Honde Valley, where the tea grows.
"It's a rally," the shop assistant says. There's a pile of gooey koeksusters next to the till. "It's Didymus Mutasa. He is having a rally in the location." He gives an apologetic half-smile.
I know why. Mutasa is Mugabe's state security minister and - despite the koeksusters (an Afrikaans delicacy) and the colonial style Cape Dutch gables at Halfway House -- Headlands is a ruling party stronghold. Like Macheke, a few miles further on. These are bad places to be opposition supporters or white farmers. Ouma and her late husband used to live somewhere near here. He was Polish. They took his farm even though Ouma is black. "He had a heart attack," Ouma says. "It killed him." Mutasa's the one who said back in 2002 that Zimbabwe would be better off with only six million people (ie half the population) as long as they were supporters of the ruling party.
We climb back into the car, shaking the sand from the car park off our feet. So often Zimbabwe looks as stunning as a picture postcard. Scratch the surface though, and the fear, the politics and the old hatreds are never far away.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
strike
"The bad news," Kimmy says, "is that the teachers are on strike."
"Yes," Mai X says. "The bad teachers. The hungry teachers." (She was one herself before she took an extended "sabbatical").
I scan the kids' faces. Five-year-old Joe is in the front row. His mother's a state teacher too, out in the rural areas in the east of the country. She came back home Wednesday this week because of the strike. ZIMTA, the main teachers' union is fed up because soldiers got massive cash injections -- more than one billion dollars, though it's not clear if that's a pay-hike or just a one-off cash injection -- ahead of the polls next month. Teachers weren't so lucky. "I'm going to be calling round your place," Joe's mum whispers. "I've got lots of free time this week."
"There are no lessons," Kimmy says. She's bright like her mother, who was once a government school teacher but got out a couple of years ago to work for the central bank. "There are just two students left."
"Ah," says Mai X. "The student teachers. They are not allowed to strike. Their lecturers say so. But the lecturers are also on strike, so..."
Nicola puts up her hand. She has a new orange T-shirt today, with straps criss-crossed over her back and a rich auburn weave in her hair. She makes scrunchies to boost her pocket money. "Our teachers are not on strike," she says proudly.
"Ah," says Mai X. "That is because it is a private school. You pay your teachers nicely. But you, you others, what do you do at school then?
Amos puts up his hand. "We play," he says. I picked Amos up Thursday on his way home from school. He was wearing an immaculately-ironed uniform even at 3 in the afternoon: big floppy-brimmed margarine yellow hat, a brown pullover. Amos is always worried about his mother.
"What, the children are on strike too?" Mai X says in mock horror. "No, no, that is not good. You must take your books and study. See, the teachers will be on strike all this week too. So you must not use bus fare to go to school because it is wasted. You must see if there is a girl or boy next door and study with them."
"And," she says, warming to her theme, "because ZESA (the state power utility) is also on strike, you must study while there is light. Have you seen how much moonlight there is these days? You can even use the moon to read your books."
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