Posted on 07/18/2002 3:34:55 AM PDT by Clive
I came across some letters and diaries today, dating from 1997. They describe a completely different country from that which we Zimbabweans inhabit today. It had its imperfections and its injustices as all countries do, both the economy and the Mugabe regime were giving cause for concern, but Zimbabwe was essentially a happy country of cheerful and decent people who lived without fear. Much has changed since then, little of it for the better. For now there is evil across the land, evil in the quiet streets, on deserted farms, in silent, hungry villages, in the shadows of the kopjes.
Few people will admit to doing evil. Hitler in his bunker, Pol Pot in his jungle retreat, Milosevic in the Hague - all have ranted about betrayal and conspiracy even when the accusing consequences of their evil lie rotting before the eyes of the world. And so it will be with Mugabe when he writes his memoirs in his Libyan retirement home. Even there he will fume and foam about colonialism and racism and land as people in Zimbabwe try to repair the sickening damage bequeathed by his regime. But we should not credit him with a scrap of integrit, however twisted such a scrap might be. He did nothing about land for twenty years apart from parcelling it out to his supporters. While the whites in Zimbabwe remained apolitical he encouraged the country to learn cricket and become gentlemen.
Equally we cannot believe that Mnangagwa and Bredenkamp really believe that they are sustaining their allies in the DRC rather than plundering both the coffers and the minerals of the Congolese. We cannot believe that Jonathan Moyo believes the racist hokum that he and his creatures spout. We cannot believe that Justice Chidyausika and the rest of Mugabe's poodles in the Supreme Court really believe Mugabe's land laws to be constitutional or legal or that the rule of law holds good in the rural areas.
It is impossible to believe that the politburo and the (unconstitutional) cabinet really believe in the grandiose plans for doubling food production or destroying AIDS in five years that they pompously exude onto the pages of the Herald where such plans soon die of absurdity. All are cynical means to a rotten end. Show me a senior Zanu PF figure who does not drip farms and wealth and privilege and I may just acknowledge in him or her a lonely portion of integrity. I haven't found one yet. All is greed and vanity and plunder. All is evil.
But this evil, manifest in the state media, in crooked judgements and rotten laws, in desperate hunger and endless violence, needs its agents. And here I find the greatest sadness. We always knew that Mugabe and his crew were bad. Sometimes they were avuncular, usually incompetent, but always bad. Most of the true heroes of the Liberation War were kicked into the shadows long ago - we were left with the profiteers and the placemen. But to see thousands of Zimbabweans, of our kindly and courteous people, recruited to Mugabe's cause, is sickening. The arrogant, hungry, youths who form the ludicrous youth brigades, the drunken, incoherent so-called war veterans, the hopeless squatters turning prosperous farm land to dust, the Zanu PF squads looking for victims in the dark streets, robbing, raping, ranting, even those few farmers that pay Zanu PF protection money or sell their souls, or their neighbours for time, these are the products of our country's past and must be part of its future.
"They are rubbish" the shopkeepers told me when all this began, "Tsotsis" said the workers in the factory and on the farms, "fools and criminals, scum." Well, the scum has risen to the top. From the start they sought to coerce, terrify or buy decent people to their side. One great success for them has been the purchase, if it were ever necessary, of the Zimbabwean Republic Police, almost in its entirety. The casual acquiescence of police officers is as wicked as the crimes they ignore. For years to come to have been a policeman during the last years of Mugabe's dictatorship will be a badge of dishonour, a mark of shame that should entail unemployment, and isolation. Many in the Armed Forces seem to have behaved as wickedly. These are not faceless robots but husbands, brothers, fathers and sons. And now on farms, in factories, we see ordinary men and women joining in, driven by fear, confusion and hunger.
It is the task of government to maintain the social contract and uphold the law. Mugabe, the then head of government, threw the law aside in defence of his own interests. This was a great crime. But he committed a greater crime thereafter.
All around the world those confronted with the vigour and spirit of Africa will, indeed can, shrug and turn away saying: "Well look at Zimbabwe. It was bound to happen sooner or later." They are wrong. In 1997 Zimbabwe was a country more or less at peace with itself. A high proportion of 'white' farms were no longer relicts of privilege but had been bought since independence under the umbrella of certificates of no interest from the government. Alongside these farms a new breed of African businessmen and farmers was growing apace. A prosperous African middle and professional class offered advancement to many. All that is gone. In its place Mugabe has sought to instil a creed of hatred and violence that justifies any crime, any repression if it is done in the name of Zanu PF. By this creed wealth and food and dignity come not from work and education and co-operation but as a right, as a dividend from exhumed injustices or from threats and force. It is a creed that forces the many to act in the interests of the bloated few. And the petty dictators, the inadequates, the drunks and the thugs have seized upon this creed and now ram it down the throats of the hungry and the frightened.
When the likes of Ceausescu and Honeker and Milosevic and Amin came crashing down it was remarkable how many pillars of their regimes revealed that they had been in secret opposition to their masters all the time. I look forward to hearing the odious Police Commissioner Chihuri explaining how his officers kept things from him, to Mnangagwa and Mujuru claiming that they were moderating influences, to the youth brigade claiming that they were drugged throughout, to the violent squatter begging for a job and a fresh start. But it will take years for Mugabe's poison to work its way out of the system. He has set us back twenty five years and would set us back fifty. That is his greatest evil. Children, who would have been born to plenty and hope now struggle with fear and disease - hungry, hopeless and often alone. That is Mugabe's achievement.
How extraordinary it is to see such waste and destruction in Zimbabwe, to hear endless stories of brutality and arrogance. We may truly pray to be delivered from evil, Yet it is increasingly clear, with every day that passes, that we will have to deliver ourselves. Thank God that we who are not evil remain the overwhelming majority. Soon we must overwhelm.
That's the saddest part of it. Iddi Amin didn't suffer for the hell he wrought. And the insane left-wing nonsense goes on...
Well stated...bump.
You may well have a point. In that case, then the rat is truly cornered and he won't come out any way except paws first.
Zimbabwe should be so lucky. If Mugabe should be *removed*, the whole house of cards would fall - at least I would hope. Rebuilding is another matter.
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