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by Mputhumi Ntabeni

G21 AFRICA Staff Writer

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Mputhumi
Ntabeni

Queenstown, SOUTH AFRICA - We decided, with two white American friends of mine, to spend our summer holidays in Zambia and Zimbabwe -- via Botswana. The most border-post pain we encountered was [at] the Botswanean border at Martinsdrift. Perhaps it was because we crossed on the 23rd of December when everybody was going home. Still three and half hours on the border-post is extreme.

The first day we slept in Francistown (Botswana) and proceeded towards Livingstone (Zambia) the following day. We crossed the Kazangula border (Botswana-Zambia) the same day. Kazangula was more congested and involved crossing the Zambezi River in a ferry but it was less hassle. We spent three days in Zambia and crossed the border, on foot, to Victoriatown (Zimbabwe) on the 27th [December] on pretence of seeing Vic[toria] Falls from the Zimbabwe side. This was the easiest border to cross for all three of us.

We were not in Zimbabwe to sentimentalise over sunsets and falling water, but to investigate [the] social, political and economic situation first hand.

What one notices most, when he arrives in Zimbabwe, is [a] shortage of freedom, which begets the shortage of choice.

You hardly see any commercials on national TV, and hear lot of worn out freedom songs about Mugabe's liberating the country from the British colonials.

The people we hung around with in Zimbabwe were our age, with little emotional memory of the Colonial era.

We took care not to hang around [the[ abounding tourist guides, as we wanted to experience the raw Zimbabwean life.

We went to nightclubs, township sheebens -- against the advice of all tourist guides. Most of the people we met in the townships were angry with their President, Robert Mugabe, seeing him as the source of all their troubles.

We went to Zimbabwe expecting a world of dying beauty and harsh life. Our experience was a little different. The same poverty, drunkenness and desperation of wasted lives exist in Zimbabwean townships as it does in the one I stay in in South Africa. It is only confounded by the abundant presence of security forces -- "to bring into silence the recalcitrant population who don't want to be part of Uncle Bob's vision," we were told. But it had another spin off, the almost non-existent crime in Zimbabwe.

Life in [a] Zimbabwean township is a hit-and-miss affair. Basic foods and amenities are not scarce but very expensive. To have adequate means you must belong to the grisly confraternity of Mugabe's followers, which most people in the townships don't.

There's an extensive feeling of blame towards the South African government's attitude towards Mugabe's regime. The [people in Zimbabwe] say South Africa's quiet diplomacy augments and multiplies the suffering of the great part of their population. Mugabe's regime, they argue, is a misery-producing brew that would immediately crumble without South African economic support. Still almost everyone's dream [is] of coming to work in South Africa.

On driving to Bulawayo, we passed a lot of villages -- some of which we [chose to take] advantage of their rustic hospitality and sleep over. Zimbabwean rural people are not much different from rustic South Africans. They're strong, patient, sedate, etc, etc. They differ with their urban counterparts in the sense that you get a lot of constructive energy and faith in what they deem the government is creating for them. This faith, I believe, comes with facile half-cooked theories and glib explanations to justify everything wrong about the former colonial manipulations. But, unlike their urban brethren, they don't see themselves as helpless victims but rather as heroes struggling for a just cause.

I initially thought most Zimbabwean rural people hoisted Mugabe on the petal of virtue because they lack personal exposure and psychological understanding of the modern world. I'm now convinced that is not the case. They see themselves as living in a state of revolution against the baggage of colonialism.

There is, in the majority of the people of Zimbabwe -- especially in rural areas -- a deepening sense of reality that Western solutions are designed to benefit Western vested interest. They've lost patience with [the West], which is why their government is now propagating a vision of looking East for common [and] mutually beneficial interests.

When we sat around the village fires in Zimbabwe, something of the country's soul communicated itself in silence.

I've always felt politics are driven either by profit, power, or theory. It dawned to me, in the midst of unspoken words under the silent deep unfathomable skies of southern Africa, that the gospel of the Western [peoples] is no longer acceptable in [the] African continent.

At best it is viewed with suspicion and hostility at worst.

At last, Africans are adopting the attitude that the solutions to their problems lie with themselves. As the result, [an] organisation like the African Union has more clout than the United Nations.

The West has done too much damage around the world to ever be viewed with innocent eyes. It is a credibility issue more than race. Sometimes it is much more preferable to suffer than to be forever auctioning [off] your own human dignity. Mugabe has understood that, and there lies his strength.

I saw [this reality] in the inexpressive, inactive form of despair of an old man who sat indifferently in our talks, smoking his pipe and scanning distant skies. He lay at ... death's door fighting the terrible battle between the weakness of his body and the terrifying silence seen [a] long time ago in the infinite skies by Pascal. "The trees are moaning against the wind." was the only contribution he made on our conversation.

On our way back, my friends and I engaged in discussion [about] what best was needed to solve the Zimbabwean crisis. We agreed that Mugabe was senile and needed to go. I blamed the Zanu-PF leadership for not facilitating that; they're the only people in [a] real position to do anything about Mugabe. We disagreed on what more the South African government could do to remedy the situation.

The Zimbabwean issue is complex. Only the Zimbaweans can come up with a lasting solution. The urbanites are more influenced by the scarcity of jobs and [the issue of high] food prices, which is why they blame Mugabe. The rustic people have hopes of acquiring land from the controversial land reform scheme, which saw more than 4,000 white farmers lose their land to landless black people. In between are normal people who're hoping that things would normalise in their country so they could get on with their lives.