An excerpt from our Zimbabwe editors:
ZIMBABWE, JANUARY 2009
It has been raining in Harare for the last few days and the city is overgrown and green. Weeds grow tall and lush beside the roads. I am struck by how silent everything seems. All is quiet, as if the entire capital is holding its breath, waiting. But for what? Nobody knows. Zimbabweans, it seems, have stopped waiting for anything in particular. They’ve spent years waiting and know better than to get their hopes up. The best they can hope for now is something, anything, different.
We drive at night. There are no streetlights. Our headlights pick up people walking by the side of the road. Others walk down the median. No one looks directly at us. Traffic lights aren’t functioning either; they’re merely empty, hollow eyes in the dark. Just a few other cars on the road. At intersections, people are polite, hesitant. You go. No, after you, please. Nobody hoots their horn at anybody else. We drive by Harare City Hall, completely dark. We drive by Harare General Hospital. Also completely dark.
Some statistics estimate that at least one-third of the population has fled to neighboring countries, mostly South Africa, but also Mozambique, Botswana, and Namibia. And every day the Zimbabwean Diaspora becomes larger. They are leaving because of systemic political violence, lack of jobs, the almost total breakdown of education and health care systems, and rising rates of deadly disease, most notably cholera. It is impossible to know if this one-third estimate is correct but the country feels emptier. On my first visit to Zimbabwe in 1992, I remember Harare as being especially bustling, an up and coming African capital, a regional and cultural hub, a country that was feeding itself and educating its people. For instance, I remember the bookstores in particular. They were well-stocked with books by such great Zimbabwean writers as Dambudzo Marechera, Charles Mungoshi, and Chenjerai Hove. No bookstores are left in Harare. A few of the remaining stationary stores sell dusty books, but the titles are mostly by popular American and British authors. Nobody buys them.
Zimbabwe has one of the highest inflation rates ever recorded. This week the government issued a trillion dollar note. Yet no matter how often new dominations are issued, inflation (due to, among other factors, the collapse of agricultural and industrial production) keeps rising. Today’s rate: 34 trillion Zim dollars to one American dollar. Soldiers are paid in bundles of cash that are dumped out of trucks like hay bales.
People laugh and laugh over the zeros. What choice do they have but to laugh? An article in one of the few remaining independent newspapers, The Financial Gazette, (known locally as the Pink Paper) laments the nation’s loss of identity, as their currency has become a national and international joke.
On the street it’s almost completely an American dollar economy. Milk is two American dollars; bread is one. A Mars bar can go for three. A bag of maize is between eight and ten. Most people, though, don’t have many dollars. In the shops, as on the roads, people tend to be quiet. They wait patiently with their few dollars gripped tightly in their hands. Only crisp, clean bills are accepted. A sign at the Bon Marché supermarket in Harare reads: Dear Valued Customers: Please note soiled, torn, written on, or stamped notes are not accepted. Thank you. Cashiers examine each bill with the concentration and intensity of jeweler. Often they reject them. And yet even then, there are few confrontations, no raised voices. These supermarket cashiers hold an immense amount of power in Zimbabwe these days, but they don’t tend to abuse it. They simply shake their heads sadly at the bills they can’t take, and wait as the person silently separates out the groceries they now can no longer afford.
But dig a little deeper, ask a few questions, and people begin to tell you their stories, quietly at first. One man who did some work for the opposition party MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) during elections a few years ago tells us how he was tortured. While he was being hit on the legs, he was ordered to keep quiet. If he made any noise, he would be hit harder. A woman, a young mother, tells us she fears for her children, praying that she’ll be able scrounge up enough dollars to pay for food through next week. Another man, a teacher, tells us he had to stop teaching, explaining, “How can I love these children if I know what some of their parents do.”
Today’s headline: MUKOKO ABDUCTED BY STATE SECURITY, ADMITS MINISTER. Jestina Mukoko, the Director of the Zimbabwe Peace (ZPP) was kidnapped by State Security agents, after being accused of recruiting personnel for military training in Botswana. Yet instead of being arrested and booked, Mukoko was taken away and hidden for nineteen days, during which time she was beaten. In other news, Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace are on holiday in Malaysia…
