The editor in chief of the Daily News had been the target of an assassination attempt. Zimbabweans said that the proof that it had been government-inspired was its cack-handedness. That it had been botched was certain evidence of government connivance, since the government could not do anything right. Another paper, The Independent, was being sued for ‘contempt of parliament’ for its verbatim reporting of an incriminating parliamentary debate. Another bill had been passed stipulating that music, drama, news, and current affairs programming on Zimbabwean radio and TV had to be purely Zimbabwean ‘in order to foster a sense of Zimbabwean national identity and values.’ Since Zimbabweans had already established themselves as some of the greatest innovators in African music, and its musicians played to large crowds in the US and Europe, the intention of this bill was to make white Zimbabweans nervous.
‘Everything Mugabe says and does is intended to drive the whites away,’ a white Zimbabwean told me. I replied that it seemed to me that black Zimbabweans were enduring an equally bad time, with such high unemployment, high inflation, unstable currency and an economy in ruins. Blacks were being driven away too — many had fled to South Africa.
But Harare did not look like a ruin. Even in its bankruptcy, Harare was to my mind the most pleasant African city I had seen so far — certainly the safest, the tidiest, the least polluted, the most orderly. After traffic-clogged Cairo, overheated Khartoum, crumbling tin-roofed Addis, crime-ridden Nairobi, disorderly Kampala, demoralized Dar es Salaam, ragged Lilongwe, desperate Blantyre, and battle-scarred and bombed-out Beira, Harare looked pretty and clean, the picture of tranquility, and the countryside was an Eden.
Much of Harare’s apparent peacefulness was due to the extreme ension in the city, for its order was also a sort of lifelessness, the unnatural silence of someone holding his breath. I had the premonition that something was about to happen, in months or a year perhaps, and this was an historical moment of silence and inaction before an enormous collapse, a violent election, social disorder, even civil war. It was wrong to mistake this silence for obedience and belief, since it was more likely the natural reserve of people who had already been through serious upheavals. British rule had ended abruptly with the white minority’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, sanctions had followed thereafter, and the ten-year guerrilla war which ended in the black majority taking power in 1980, and brought about twenty years of Comrade Bob.
Years of sanctions had made Zimbabweans resilient and self-sufficient. Zimbabwe was at its core an independent and proud place, a country that had a manufacturing industry. There was hardly any gasoline or diesel fuel for sale but most other necessities were avaiable. Even in these hard times, Zimbabweans were still making things — stationery, clothing, household furniture, shoes, frozen chicken, canned beans; they had dairies and bakeries and breweries. There were many good hotels, though most of them were empty.
Zimbabweans, black and white, grumbled openly. This was new to me. Tanzanians and Malawians had seemed much more supine and oblique, they had surrendered, and having abandoned any hope of things improving were reduced to unapologetic beggary that contained a subtext of entitlement: My country has failed me, therefore you must help. Some exasperated Zimbabweans talked of leaving. The man who had sold me my bus ticket asked me where I was from and responded promptly, ‘I want to go to America.’ Another said, ‘Three years ago this was a good place — but, ah, not any more.’ An African woman tapped her head and said in that accent peculiar to black Zimbabwe, ‘You will be laining a loat’ — learning a lot.
Malawi had lowered my spirits. My interlude on the Shire and Zambezi rivers had lifted my mood. In central Mozambique’s blighted bush and decayed coastal city my guard had been up. Now, in Harare, I could indulge my passion for walking, for it was a city of sidewalks and parks. I felt stimulated, sensing that I was witnessing something that did not yet have a name; yet the very absence of drama signaled the suspenseful onset of a period of historical change. Something radical was going to happen — no one knew what. At that point catastrophe was just a warning odor, a tang of bitterness in the air, the sort of whiff that made people put on a listening face and wrinkle their nose and say, ‘Do you smell something?’
I walked, I began eating good meals — a great novelty on this trip. I went through the market, I stopped in shops to look at merchandise and note the prices. And at each opportunity I encouraged people to talk about what was happening here. The fuel shortage was on most people’s minds, but inflation was at 65 percent and salaries were staying low. A recent strike by government workers had been broken up by police, many strikers had been injured. For most black Zimbabweans the issue was money — the collapsing economy; for most white Zimbabweans the issue was security, for the lawlessness of the farm invasions made all whites, even the urban business people, feel insecure.
Soon after I arrived in Harare a morning headline in the Daily News was ‘GOVERNMENT TO ACQUIRE 95 MORE COMMERCIAL FARMS.’ The text explained that this was not a business deal — no money was changing hands. This was ‘compulsory acquisition as part of the ongoing land reform and resettlement program.’ These ninety-five brought to 3023 the number of commercial farms singled out by the government as ripe for invasion in the past three years. The names of the farms were listed.
The leader of the militant War Veterans’ Association was an angry AIDS-stricken doctor named Chenjerai Hunzvi who had nicknamed himself ‘Hitler.’ Well-documented stories had appeared in Zimbabwe newspapers stating that Hitler Hunzvi’s suburban medical office was used for viciously torturing men who refused to support him. Hunzvi threatened whites and sent gangs to their farms. Hunzvi’s bluster was the irrationality of someone who knows he is doomed, raving in his ill health; yet Mugabe’s government backed him up in his most reckless threats.
So, because he was a white Zimbabwean (and there were many), a farmer who had already been up for hours at his chores would go back to his house for breakfast and, finding his name in the morning aper, could expect a mob of war veterans to camp on his land before lunchtime. If he were lucky they would demand a portion of his property; if he were unlucky they would threaten him with weapons and tell him to leave, screaming (as many of the farm invaders did), ‘This is my farm now!’
This is precisely what happened to Catherine and Ian Buckle, as recounted in Mrs Buckle’s African Tears, which had just appeared in the bookstores. One day in March 2000, three dozen men invaded their farm, singing songs and shouting ‘Hondo’ — the Shona word for ‘war’ and also a popular song by the Zimbabwean singer-composer Thomas Mapfumo. The Buckles had owned the farm for ten years and had been assured on buying it that it was not designated on the government list for resettlement. But that was a detaiclass="underline" events moved quickly. A man introduced himself. ‘I am the one sleeping on your farm.’ The reason for his salutation was that he needed the Buckles’ help: would they give him a ride into town so that he could get some money to pay the other men who were illegally squatting with him? A week or so after that a Zimbabwean flag was hoisted on the property. An African beer hall was built and soon there were drunks on the farm, and a larger squatter camp, and more singing on the premises.