"What you have to know is: Shona isn't about Robert Mugabe," the teacher says. "It's about Zimbabwe, where we all live."
We're sitting in a parents' meeting by candlelight (thanks to yet another power cut). My son's Shona teacher is angry: white parents aren't pushing their kids to do their Shona homework.
Zimbabwe's indigenous languages are a compulsory part of the school curriculum here. All well and good, you'd think: I'm keen for my child to improve his grasp of a second language as soon as possible. The problem is that Zimbabwe's chequered history of white-black relations weighs heavily. Not every white parent wants their child to learn Shona, it turns out.
"I tell them: speak with your maid, play with Shona kids. You need to practise," says the teacher. "But I get all sorts of answers: 'I'm not allowed' or 'the maid's not allowed to speak Shona to me' or "I'm not allowed to play with the children on my street. Black kids are well-behaved, you know. Most of them, at least."
"I love my language," she says passionately. "I want your kids to like it too." I look at her in the dim light: bright, young, articulate, well-educated (probably better so than many of the parents present). Zimbabwe didn't go through apartheid but some of the provisions of the former minority regime came pretty close to it: we have black friends who weren't allowed to live in the "good" suburbs 'til 1980. I know of three Shona families who bought classy homes in one low-density area in Mutare immediately after independence was declared on April 18th. They'd saved the cash, been itching to move for years.
Memories of the-whites-who-wouldn't-mix die hard. It must seem sometimes that many of them still won't.
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Thursday, July 2, 2009
zilla
She was a bit worse for wear, he says.
My father-in-law talks very little about the war. When Ian Smith declared independence, there were UDI parties and chants of 'good old Smithy'. He and a friend refused to celebrate. But they couldn't refuse to fight. Six weeks on, six off for more than eight years. A few gapped it. My mother-in-law's friend's ex-husband drove to the airport the day he was supposed to report for duty, hopped onto a flight and 'phoned her from England. But he was running more from debts (and excess children) than from the call-up.
Zilla was memorable in more ways than one. She was a stripper, brought in to entertain the forces. She made a trip to Chiredzi once. "Hey Zilla, you've got a hole in your pulling-socks," a rowdy member of the audience shouted. Zilla drew herself up to her full height. "So? Don't you know there's a war on?"
My father-in-law talks very little about the war. When Ian Smith declared independence, there were UDI parties and chants of 'good old Smithy'. He and a friend refused to celebrate. But they couldn't refuse to fight. Six weeks on, six off for more than eight years. A few gapped it. My mother-in-law's friend's ex-husband drove to the airport the day he was supposed to report for duty, hopped onto a flight and 'phoned her from England. But he was running more from debts (and excess children) than from the call-up.
Zilla was memorable in more ways than one. She was a stripper, brought in to entertain the forces. She made a trip to Chiredzi once. "Hey Zilla, you've got a hole in your pulling-socks," a rowdy member of the audience shouted. Zilla drew herself up to her full height. "So? Don't you know there's a war on?"
Saturday, May 30, 2009
supper
"They say they won't kill us. They just want their properties back," the note read.
Matabeleland, 1982. S's 23-year-old son had taken his girlfriend to the family farm for a party. S was in Bulawayo, not on the farm, but that morning she'd been violently sick. So had the girlfriend.
"Premonitions," says S, matter-of-factly.
S's son went out with his grandfather to a small mine on the farm. The pair never returned.
The note, handwritten by S's son, was delivered to the house that day. The body of S's father was discovered hours later by the mine. There was no sign of her son.
Who was behind the attack? The general consensus was that it was ZAPU , the Ndebele-based opposition to Robert Mugabe's ZANU. The Matabele "troubles" were just starting: in the mid-1980s around 20,000 died. Many were killed by Mugabe's Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, who were officially clamping down on "dissidents".
The then security minister Emmerson Mnangagwa wrote S and her husband a letter, promising that those responsible would be punished. "And some people hung for it," she says. "I don't know who." There was, of course, always the suspicion -- never voiced, never investigated -- that the Fifth Brigade themselves were behind the attack.
They found S's son's body nine months later, two weeks before her first grandchild was born.
"That's what I was praying for, that they'd find him first," she says.
She wipes her mouth delicately on her serviette. She's in her 80s now, a widow. "It will take me the rest of my life to get over it," she says.
"And now it's 27 years later and what do I read in the paper? ZAPU wants its properties back. Such a flimsy thing to kill someone for. If it was them."
Matabeleland, 1982. S's 23-year-old son had taken his girlfriend to the family farm for a party. S was in Bulawayo, not on the farm, but that morning she'd been violently sick. So had the girlfriend.
"Premonitions," says S, matter-of-factly.
S's son went out with his grandfather to a small mine on the farm. The pair never returned.
The note, handwritten by S's son, was delivered to the house that day. The body of S's father was discovered hours later by the mine. There was no sign of her son.
Who was behind the attack? The general consensus was that it was ZAPU , the Ndebele-based opposition to Robert Mugabe's ZANU. The Matabele "troubles" were just starting: in the mid-1980s around 20,000 died. Many were killed by Mugabe's Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, who were officially clamping down on "dissidents".
The then security minister Emmerson Mnangagwa wrote S and her husband a letter, promising that those responsible would be punished. "And some people hung for it," she says. "I don't know who." There was, of course, always the suspicion -- never voiced, never investigated -- that the Fifth Brigade themselves were behind the attack.
They found S's son's body nine months later, two weeks before her first grandchild was born.
"That's what I was praying for, that they'd find him first," she says.
She wipes her mouth delicately on her serviette. She's in her 80s now, a widow. "It will take me the rest of my life to get over it," she says.
"And now it's 27 years later and what do I read in the paper? ZAPU wants its properties back. Such a flimsy thing to kill someone for. If it was them."
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
eaten by a lion
Reporting from Zimbabwe has been dangerous for some time.
In Robert Cary's The Pioneer Corps (the story of the 57 whites who crossed the Shashi River and erected the British flag in what's now Harare's Africa Unity Square in September 1890) there's a mention of a certain Baumann, J in the "civilian" column.
Newspaper correspondent, the entry says. Eaten by a lion. November 1890.
In Robert Cary's The Pioneer Corps (the story of the 57 whites who crossed the Shashi River and erected the British flag in what's now Harare's Africa Unity Square in September 1890) there's a mention of a certain Baumann, J in the "civilian" column.
Newspaper correspondent, the entry says. Eaten by a lion. November 1890.
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