Mugabe's Madness - Zimbabwe In Turmoil

Mugabe's Madness - Zimbabwe In Turmoil

It was after the Canadian farmer had been missing for a few days that his neighbours became concerned.

His family, who were in Harare for safety, were rung and when it was found he had not joined them, a search party was hastily set and sent to look for him.

Later, they found what was left of him.

Tied to a lonely tree under the bright Zimbabwean sun, he had been forced to drink sulphuric acid.

This brutality, horrific as it maybe, is not unique in a country quite literally tearing itself apart.

The ‘lucky’ ones are those such as Althea Human, who manage to get out of the country with their lives –along with an estimated 4000 people who are crossing the border to South Africa every day-.

Althea sits across from me, a pretty, brown haired young woman with haunted eyes. Born in Harare in 1984 her eyes seem to see the sun warming the beautiful country she remembers.

“I had a great childhood growing up on the farm doing all sorts of crazy things,” she says reminiscing about happier days.

However, life in Zimbabwe is no longer the same and she’s not willing to take the risk. After all what sort of a life would it be now?

Her brother, Marius, who’s still in Zimbabwe, refusing to leave the only home he’s ever known, painted a bleak picture when his sister asked why he wasn’t emailing.

“I live in Zim, there is no zesa (electricity) and when we have zesa there is no net to mail.”

Marius says power is only running for 10-15 hours a week, due to bills outstanding with South Africa and Zambia. Water runs once every two days, and you really can watch the price of bread rise while waiting in the shopping line.

Once known as the bread basket of Africa, Zimbabwe is bordering on mass starvation after 95% crop failure; supplies of staples such as maize meal are running low.

If food can be found, it takes bags full of money to buy even a loaf of bread due to hyper-inflation where the black market value of 1 million Zimbabwean dollars is US$5.50.

In June this year Mugabe accused businesses of working with Britain by raising prices in an attempt to destabilise the economy.

To punish them, President Robert Mugabe ordered all prices to be cut in half.

Many importers can no longer afford to do business as they lose money the minute they sell goods; meaning even less food on shelves.

Any retailers who ignored the direction could be imprisoned and Mugabe threatened to forcefully nationalise factories that stopped producing, even although he didn’t have the manpower to run them.

An African correspondent who prefers not to be named, since it's getting increasingly difficult for independent journalists to get access to the country, says “ 7000 have already been charged for contravening the directive about prices.”

“We are saying to all factory owners ‘you must produce’,” said Mugabe. “If you don’t produce, we certainly will seize the factories.”

The New Zealand Herald reported that one Zimbabwean landlord now asks tenants to pay him in sugar, oil, flour and salt.

“Instead of giving me cash, which loses value while I hold it,” said Norah Mutasa told the paper.

The story of Zimbabwe’s fall from grace is a complicated one.

Once called Rhodesia, after British imperialist and business man Cecil Rhodes, it was under partial British rule from 1888 to independence in 1980.

Like much of the rest of Africa, Zimbabwe suffers from a heritage of colonialism and vast inequality between the indigenous black Africans and their former European masters.

This lead, as it often has, to war in the 1970’s and it was during the years of guerrilla war that the young hero Robert Mugabe, a leader of one on the patriotic movements was first noticed.

In 1978 a power sharing deal was brokered with the white government of Prime Minister Ian Smith. His regime was near the brink of collapse after years of war and international sanctions.

Through the deal Zimbabwe got its first black Prime Minister, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who was widely regarded as a sell-out.

The power was still not fully in the hands of the majority, however, and the guerrilla war continued until a mediated peace was arrived at two years later.

In the free elections of February 1980, Mugabe and his Zimbabwean African National Union party, ZANU, won a landslide victory.

He has won ‘re-election’ ever since, and plans to stand again next year.

The validity of most of the elections, however, especially that in 2002, has been questioned by international organizations after reports of intimidation and opposition votes being destroyed or lost.

At first Mugabe’s rule seemed nothing more than nationalistic, but, it was soon understood that he had a vendetta against white Zimbabweans.

He was also under a lot of pressure from the majority of poor black Zimbabweans to provide them with some way to support themselves and their families.

Many agree that land reforms were the correct way to right this imbalance, but the way they were implemented was where it went wrong.

“In the beginning Mugabe wanted to negotiate, he said give us two farms and teach the black people how to run it,” says Althea as she remembers the storm clouds brewing.

She lived on a massive plantation made up of five farms put together, “one cattle, one coffee, one sheep and macadamias”. It covered 3000 hectares and employed around 1500 workers.

“So originally the whites were like ‘okay we’ll give a certain amount’, then Mugabe said ‘no’.

“He wanted more, say give us four farms and you have one. “So the whites said no, we’ve been on these farms for centuries; my great-great grandfather was one of the voortrekkers who went up and got deeds in 1903.”

It was in 2000 after the farmers stood their ground, that it started to get nasty.

Gangs of ‘war vets’ made up of mostly 18-21 year olds would roam the countryside and attack the people who worked for white farmers.

Mugabe had promised to pay them and look after their families.

“Some are younger than I was, they weren’t even sperm at the time of the independence war,” say Althea.

At first the ‘war vets’ were in relatively small groups and only armed with sticks.

They were often beaten off by the farm workers, each of whom had something to defend, such as a hut on the property for his family with toilets and electricity.

Soon the ‘war vets’ began to bus into areas in larger numbers armed with AK-47s. Any who resisted were shot.

Black workers were forced to flee, almost 1 million are estimated to have lost their jobs.

Many fled to the outskirts of the big cities where they joined vast shanty towns such as, Chitungwiza –Harare’s biggest township-, which Mugabe had bulldozed in June 2005 after claiming it was ‘illegal’ housing.

In reality he was trying to destroy support for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party, MDC.

The destruction of Chitungwiza and other townships, has led Amnesty International to estimate there are almost 700,000 internally displaced people in Zimbabwe, many struggling to survive.

The farms in the meantime fell into disarray.

If white farmer still refused to leave, Mugabe’s thugs turned up at his house.

“Like Martin, they came to his house, killed his dogs and burnt him alive in the house; he had sent family to Harare,” says Althea, almost emotionless as if death has become so much a part of life it was no longer shocking.

Farms were turned into fortresses, defended by whoever was at home; people who had grown up hunting.

“My dad and 2 brothers would take turns, like at war, and sit up at night when the blacks would come and take shots at the house.

“So all the men would have little radios on channel 12 so they could call each other if they had trouble, then come to that person’s house and take shots at war vets; not at them, but to scare them.”

“I remember one holiday we went home from boarding school and say 500 of them surrounded the house.

“It was so scary, the dogs were going mental, so they threw stuff at the dogs to try and kill them.

“We started shooting to scare them, get them to run off.”

But, it wasn’t only in the countryside that the situation was grim.

“I visited friend in Chinoyi, the men had gone out; stuff wasn’t as bad there.

“About 40 blacks came and burnt and ransacked the cars.”

“There were just three of us women so we thought, ‘okay’, ‘hide don’t let them know we’re in house’, so we took panel out of the roof and hid in there.

“They came in, but we were in roof.

“We were stuck in there for about 8 hours, praying they wouldn’t burn house.

“It was so fucking scary, you don’t know if that’s last day,” she says, then amazingly she laughs, warm, slightly shaky, laughter.

When asked how she can laugh, Althea explains that it’s all that has got her through.

“I came to a crossroads, either I live life to fullest and make best of it, or I wallow in the past and get stuck in this rut and feel like crap; I decided I didn’t want to wallow in the rut,” says Althea her strength returning.

From 2002 there has been a mass exodus.

“Even if farmers couldn’t sell their farm they went to town and sold goods, clothes furniture.

“Or they just they put everything in cars organised a place in UK and left.”

Althea’s father managed to sell four of the farms to large foreign owned ‘tea estates’.

“Eventually they took our last farm in November 2005.

“We were losing cattle and coffee, you can’t maintain the farm.

“They drove up to our house and gave us letter giving us five days to move out, if we didn’t…, so we packed all stuff and moved to the city.”

“Then they sued us for our own furniture,” she says still laughing with disbelief.

That was in November 2005, since then the situation in Zimbabwe has gone from bad to worse.

The whites that are left live in shared flats in the cities like Harare or Bulawayo.

Farms that were once lush and well maintained, a rare sight in a hot dry country, have fallen into disrepair under owners who have no training in how to run them.

This causing the huge food shortage.

“The government is now hiring whites to run farms, my brother is breeding ostriches,” says a smiling Althea, the irony of the situation not lost on her.

Zimbabwean Sunday newspaper, The Standard, reported in September that disgruntled cane cutters say they were better off under their previous employers, the white commercial farmers.

"We are living in poverty since these war veterans took over the farms," said Justin Chauke, who works for a war veteran known as Comrade Satan. "They pay us a meagre $200,000 a month –about $1-, and we do not know how they expect us to survive."

Chauke said: "This is tantamount to slavery. We have nowhere to go since some of us are not educated. Our former employers, though white, paid us handsomely and we and our families could afford a decent life."

As the old saying goes, ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’; this adage has been strikingly true with regard to 83 year-old Mugabe.

When asked about the situation in Zimbabwe today, the former United Nations Under-Secretary-General Anwarul Chowdhury talked of Mugabe as a megalomaniac and said really there is very little that can be done, as he is beyond reason.

The UN also, cannot agree of a course of action.

The irony in Africa is that Mugabe still has support from many of Africa’s leaders, who frown upon current sanctions.

“He is still regarded as one of the leading liberation heroes of Africa,” said the African correspondent.

However, some of his closest friends and supporters are beginning to lose faith.

Prominent Zimbabwean academic and long time Mugabe supporter Ibbo Mandaza believes that for the good of the country Mugabe must go.

“We cannot even begin thinking of resolving the economic crisis here as long as he remains in power.

“He must quit for his own good and that of the country.”

However, Rhetoric like this may be little more than pipe dreaming.

The African correspondent believes it is “only the Zimbabweans’ resilience and the occasionally heavy-handedness from the security forces that prevents the country from descending into anarchy.”

“On the bright side, Zimbabweans in general still have one of the highest levels of education in Africa, a pride in their country and a work ethic which makes them highly valued in neighbouring South Africa.”

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the MDC –who was beaten almost to death in 2007 -is currently in Australia trying to garner support for change.

“I believe that this Zimbabwean situation has assumed almost that international crisis stage.

“Therefore the role of international community is very, very important.”

Tsvangirai like many other members of the opposition has been badly beaten up many times by Mugabe’s cronies who know no other way to react.

Zimbabwe’s motto is "Unity, Freedom, Work". Right now it looks like it’s going to take a lot of work to get Zimbabwean’s free of Mugabe’s rule so they can unite and save their dying land.

Especially from an international community who have suddenly decided that it is not their place to get involved; possibly because Zimbabwe doesn’t have huge oil reserves.

“Hopefully he’ll die in the next few years and I can go home,” says Althea.

My father, himself born in Zimbabwe, agrees.

He said half jokingly that someone should just shoot Mugabe because it would make things a whole lot easier.

This is an extreme position, but perhaps an extreme situation breeds such a response.

The BBC reported that Morgan Tsvangirai is more positive.

"The people of Zimbabwe are resilient ... and have a shared commitment to see the dictatorship go," he added.

"The people will always prevail. No dictatorship is permanent."

ENDS

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