Dear Family and Friends,

A disturbance before dawn one morning this week led to the search for who or what had made the noise on the roof. Running footsteps, a thump and a thud and then the eerie quiet. Following an invisible scent, the dogs showed the route taken by the intruder. Running with increasing frenzy, noses millimetres off the ground, they stormed under hedges and thick bushes, ran backwards and forwards across the lawn before coming to a stop with tails wagging stiffly and tongues dripping, under a big Musasa tree. There, high up in a fork of the tree, sitting completely still was the pre dawn intruder. A Small-spotted Genet stared unblinking into the beam of the torch, momentarily mesmerised, paralysed at having been discovered. A beautiful creature with creamy brown fur covered with dark spots on its body and black rings all the way down its very long tail.  For the briefest of moments we stared at each other by torch light. As soon as the beam of light moved away, the cat disappeared silently into the tree, perfectly camouflaged amongst the dark, lichen covered branches.

Just this brief encounter with the Genet explained all those soggy little fruit pips lying in the sand a few days ago. It explained the shredded remains of a birds nest lying on the ground and answered the question about who owned those  little footprints left in the dust on a windowsill.

The Genet is one of the growing number of wild creatures looking for somewhere new to live  this year as their habitat is destroyed in the frenzied cultivation of every open space around and in urban areas. Cobras, mambas and other snakes are becoming far more frequent in urban gardens, while Storks, Egrets, Ibises Plovers and Nightjars are retreating and disappearing, along with their natural habitat.  After eleven years of farm seizures which were claimed to be making land available to ‘the masses,’ there is no sign that the revolution eased the pressure for ordinary people, quite the contrary in fact. This season the uncontrolled cultivation of urban and peri-urban areas, by anyone and everyone, wherever they want, is worse than it has ever been.  As trees are cut down , undergrowth cleared and woodland turned into self apportioned maize and sweet potato plots, ground nesting birds, small carnivores and  reptiles have been forced to run for cover.  The very sights and sounds of Zimbabwe, so sought after and attractive to tourists, is melting away like the cat in the night, while our leaders continue their never ending fight over power and politics.

The latest horror, if ever we needed something new  to scare away tourists, is typhoid. Fifteen hundred people now affected in some parts of Harare. White quarantine tents, polyclinics they call them, have been erected in the grounds of health facilities to isolate and treat infected people. The Minister of Health described it as a “stone age” disease while a Zanu PF Harare spokesman said it was yet another imperialist western plot. “We suspect biological warfare by imperialists,” Claudius Mutero said, describing this disease as “sanctions-induced typhoid.”

Oh dear, oh dear, there’s more sanity in looking up trees for cats in the night. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

When I arrived at my local Post Office this week I couldn’t believe my eyes as I squinted through the brick dust and picked my way around the rubble.  For the past six weeks there have been increasingly loud whispers that the Post Office was moving out of the Post Office. (Yes you read that right!) At first I thought it was some sort of mad Zimbabwean joke and just shook my head, muttered under my breath  and laughed.  As the days went past and Christmas drew closer, the story kept coming back. In the end I asked the counter staff and, like everything in Zimbabwe, it was a mission to get to the bottom of the story. First look over your shoulder and make sure no one is listening, then check that no one is watching and then talk in the quietest of whispers. Eleven years of fighting for political power have turned us into the most suspicious, untrusting people you can imagine.

Anyway, it turned out the whispers were true, the Post Office staff told me. The owners of the Post Office building had put the rent up and when the Post Office management said they couldn’t afford the new rent, they were told they would have to vacate the building by the 31^st of December. A few days after Christmas, Post Office staff were packing things in boxes and a computer was being dismantled. It’s really happening, they said,  the new rent being demanded was a staggering seven thousand US dollars a month and they had no choice but to  vacate. Like everything Zimbabwean, there were more questions than answers, uppermost was who actually owns the Post Office. It sounded like a silly question but I asked it anyway: “Doesn’t the Post Office own the Post Office?” More glances over shoulders and whispered whispers before I was told that the government Post Office had been sold in 2005 to the government telephone company’s Pension Fund. For the last six years the Post Office had been renting the Post Office. Confusion reigns, but it’s laced with suspicion. Why all the whispers; why no publicity or protest, no public meetings; why so hush, hush, is there politics behind this?

New Year came and the Post Office was still open and functional. They had been given a reprieve of one month, time in which to dismantle parts of the building that were essential for the continued operation of postal businesses. They were referring to the many hundreds of steel post boxes cemented into the walls of both the main Post Office and another smaller, circular brick building in the grounds. As the days of January passed there was no sign of movement or dismantling infrastructure and no notice to the public about the pending move.  Perhaps it was a mad Zimbabwean joke after all I thought.

Three days before the end of January 2012, I arrived at the Marondera Post Office to be met with the sound of banging and hammering as I made my way to my steel Post Box cemented into the wall. Chips of brick and cement flew in all directions, there was no barricade or notice  to deter pedestrians, no warning of falling rubble.  A pair of builders wearing goggles and armed with hammers and chisels, were smashing the steel Post Boxes out of the walls. I felt sure someone in authority would have emptied the letters from the post boxes before they started smashing down the walls but thought I’d better check, just in case. Wiping brick dust out of my eyes I unlocked my box and sure enough there were all my letters, sitting under a coating of brick dust.

The Marondera Post Office has been in its present location since 1977.  On the 27^th January 2012 a handwritten notice, stuck to a signboard was propped up outside the door. “To our valued customers. The Post Office will be moving to new premises at Marondera Country Club with effect from 1^st February 2012. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

I stood outside for few minutes watching people’s reaction to the sign.  One after the other people exclaimed in disbelief:  moving the Post Office to a Club where the main activity is a bar? Situated on the outskirts of the town behind a sprawling commuter taxi rank and huge flea market, the Club is hardly a safe and secure place for a Post Office. No one has forgotten how this same Club was taken over by war veterans  in 2001. How they  planted a Zimbabwe flag in the main driveway, renamed it The Laurent Kabila Memorial Club, cleaned out all the food in the kitchen and drank the bar dry. I took a trip to the Club to see where our new Post Office was going to be. At the gateway the grass is two meters high, the Club signboard is promoted by a beer advertisement. The buildings are in a bad state of repair; grey, chipped, run down. There is no mention or indication that the Marondera Post Office is about to arrive here and I found myself filled with sadness. Small towns around the country are falling apart at the seams. 

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

All week we received increasing warnings about an approaching cyclone. ZBC radio and TV advised people to avoid low lying areas, not to try and cross flooded bridges or fast moving rivers and to be prepared for heavy rainfall and big storms. Whilst warning us about the approaching weather system, ZBC reminded us that the last cyclone to hit Zimbabwe had been Cyclone Eline, in February 2000, and went on to point out that some of the bridges destroyed by Eline had yet to be repaired – eleven years later. A disgraceful admission if ever we heard one.

Roofs, gutters, drains and trees near houses were top of the list to be checked and cleared. We’d been told to prepare for hailstorms, high winds and rainfall of 80 mm (just over three inches) every day for two or three days. The view from the window was of people checking their roofs, hammering in nails and clearing sticks, pods and branches from gutters.

I spent a morning under a bright blue sky and blazing sun trundling backwards and forwards with a friend collecting rubble and bricks that had been dumped in the bush nearby. We used the bricks to repair a deep gully which had made our quiet, suburban road almost impossible to traverse. Despite repeated appeals to the local municipality, it’s been over four years since any road repairs or maintenance have been done in the neighbourhood. No pot-hole filling, no drain clearing, no grading, no sign of a single municipal worker. My emergency brick dumping was a lonely and desperate attempt to save what’s  left of the road in the path of an approaching cyclone.

By the middle of the week storm clouds had stared building up in the burning blue sky. Towering, deep purple columns rising from a dense and imposing grey horizon. Cyclone Dando was now being called a Tropical Depression and had hit Mocambique causing major flooding. It was moving in to parts of South Africa leaving a trial of flooding and devastation.

While we waited for the storm a human cyclone was underway in Bulawayo. Seventeen members of WOZA were arrested while standing at a shopping complex. A woman police officer beckoned to the group and made her intentions quite clear from the outset:  'WOZA people today I am going to fix you,’ she said. The women were taken to Donnington police station where WOZA leaders said that a number of the women were assaulted in custody. Some were knocked on the head with a broomstick and threatened, as police tried to get them to admit that they been planning a protest. Another young woman had a plastic bag forced over her head and was told to kick her leg when she was ready to talk. A male police officer said to the women: ‘we are going to remove your panties and beat your bottoms.’ At that time the WOZA lawyer arrived and the women were released from custody, many said to be deeply traumatized by the events.

A press statement from WOZA said that the male police officer who had threatened to remove the women’s underpants and beat their bottoms, followed the WOZA members out of the police station and said: 'when you see me around town don't hate me I was just doing my job.'  

It’s not clear what, if anything, the seventeen women will be charged with. Nor is it clear what, if anything, will happen to the police for their actions to WOZA members at Donnington police station in Bulawayo. If the abuses of the past are anything to go by, we must assume that, like Tropical Storm Dando, they will come to nothing, just blow away in the wind.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Since Christmas we’ve been watching, wide eyed and open mouthed, the developments in Zimbabwe’s latest gold rush. This time it’s in Kwekwe where nuggets, metal detectors, panning, digging, pounding and hammering are the words on everyone’s lips.

Stories of gold rushes from the old days of our history get blood pumping and hearts racing. Outlandish adventures, outrageous exaggerations and the wildest characters you can imagine taking part in the frenzied search for gold. Myths, legends, facts and fiction all become a heady, swirling, maze: tales that Fig trees were apparently planted to mark sites that needed further exploration; pegged claims being swopped for cases of whisky; porcupine quills filled with grains of gold being found in the back of dusty, musty caves.

Zimbabwe’s latest gold rush began with stories that 100 kilograms of gold nuggets had been found. Fact or fiction wasn’t important, the thought alone triggered the stampede. A  Midlands police spokesman said the gold alluvial had been discovered near the Munyati River in the Sherwood Farming Block, about 20 kilometres outside of Kwekwe. At first there were reports of approximately four hundred gold panners trying to get a look in. Within a couple of days the press reported that thousands of people were pouring into Kwekwe to join the gold rush. Mayhem and politics was hot on their heels.

Armed police with dogs arrived and chased the gold panners away saying: "We want sanity to prevail while we identify the proper owners of the mining claim.” Violence broke out and the police made a confusing statement which has left us still wondering exactly what went down. “No one was killed. Only a few rogue thugs who intended to pan, threw stones at the police,’ said a police spokesman. Kwekwe hospital opened its doors and took in casualties. One man had sixteen stitches in his head after being beaten with a shovel.

Next on the scene was Zanu PF. Hundreds of panners who had been chased away from the Sherwood Block gold field attended a rally addressed by Owen "Mudha" Ncube, the Zanu PF Midlands security official. The press said Ncube announced that the gold deposits belonged to Zanu PF. He said Zanu PF had fought in the liberation struggle to ensure that Zimbabweans owned their land, and the minerals in it, and therefore had rights to control who mined at the gold fields. NewsDay reported that Zanu PF had started making a list of people who would be allowed to mine the gold field when it re-opened and this led to a frenzied scramble for Zanu PF membership cards with 3,500 being sold in the first two days. The cards sell for one US dollar each so this seemed like a very good way to make money too.

Meanwhile the Midlands police spokesman said at least four people had laid claim to the Kwekwe gold field and the police were waiting for the Mines Ministry to adjudicate between them. No prizes for guessing who wins this one.

Gold fever in Kwekwe in 2012 left me looking for anecdotes about gold mines in the area from the past. I came across reminiscences of the wife of a former manager of the famous Globe and Phoenix Gold mine. Mrs Atkinson wrote about the new railway line that had opened in November 1901 and went from the mine to Harare, a journey previously undertaken with pack mules and donkey carts: “The railway journey took about four hours… Not only did the train driver stop to collect more fuel by chopping down a tree or two but if he spotted a herd of buck or a flock of guinea fowl, he would go after them on foot and shoot ‘for the pot.”

‘The law of the jungle where the strongest survive’ is how the diamond human rights monitor Farai Maguwu described the recent scramble for gold in Kwekwe. Not much has changed in the last hundred years. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Finding a wild Flame Lily to welcome the New Year was a difficult task this year. Normally they are all over the bush by late December, glorious flashes of crimson in knee-high, lush green grass. This year, after a decade of completely out of control, illegal cultivation, the search was a difficult one. All my usual peri-urban haunts yielded nothing. Stretches of open grassland, between rocky outcrops, in old quarries, the edge of vleis and in the scrub near streambanks – all have been dug up and planted with maize, sweet potatoes, nuts, beans and sugar cane. In the process of searching I became reacquainted with the striking blue of the Woodland Kingfisher with its enormous red beak, the bright yellows and reds of Masked Weavers and Red Bishop Birds and the raucous, scolding, chattering of a Redbilled Francolin. At last I came upon a Flame Lily. Deep crimson, ablaze with fiery yellow at the base of the flower, fading into a delicate, yellow outline along the wavy edge of the petals. What a sight to welcome 2012.

The madness wasn’t far behind. Hardly had we drawn the first breath of the New Year into our lungs than the absurdities of the never ending struggle for political power engulfed our lives again.

First came the news that the country’s leading timber producer, Border Timbers is facing closure. 2,500 hectares of prime timber plantations in Chimanimani have been invaded by people from surrounding areas. An Estate Manager said the invasions were being co-ordinated by politicians and that people were simply walking into the plantations and “parcelling themselves pieces of land.” The invaders were cutting down the trees and planting little squares of maize and rapoko. The impact of cropping on mountainous plantations, with their fragile, porous soils is devastating. The Estate Manager said that repeated appeals for intervention to the government’s Environmental Management Agency had yielded nothing. A councillor for the Chimanimani area said he had moved a motion in Council for the invaders to be evicted from the timber plantations but this had failed because: “our colleagues from Zanu (PF) are against the idea.”

Next came the unbelievable news that the Minister of Transport had issued a circular ordering Air Zimbabwe to stop flying to South Africa, obviously to try and stop the planes from being seized by creditors. The suspension of flights followed the Christmas from hell for both Air Zim and their passengers after a plane was impounded in the UK over unpaid debts and passengers were left stranded at Gatwick airport for over a week. The CEO of Air Zimbabwe said that now the national airline was waiting for government to pay their debts for them. (Again)

Then came the most despicable news of the week. Eighty Anglican Clergymen who had gathered for a week long prayer retreat at Peterhouse School in Marondera, were ordered to leave by the police. Told they needed police permission to meet at the private school, the Clergymen refused to leave saying they weren’t breaking any laws. The next day the police were back. The spokesman for the Harare Bishop said: “This morning police returned with re-enforcements and threatened to arrest men of God, including the Bishops, if they did not leave immediately.” First they lost their churches, then their church assets, then the people they were helping were evicted from church orphanages and homes and now it seems these Anglicans may not even meet on private property to pray together.

More madness followed: war veterans demanding parliament be closed, teachers threatening to strike, the constitutional process on the verge of collapse and then the jamming of Short Wave Radio Africa’s broadcast on the 4^th of January. Oh poor Zimbabwe, when will it ever end. How we long for a normal life again. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Father Christmas,

I know that you only give gifts to children and I’m not a child but I wonder if you would consider the items on my list for the benefit of all Zimbabwe’s children, most of who don’t have a voice, and for their parents who struggle so much every day.

First and most important: Is there any chance you could give us some more water? Scooping water out of open wells in the bush because our taps are dry 22 hours a day makes life very tough and we are so scared of our children getting sick. We haven’t had a drop of water in my home town for the last three days, it’s been much longer in many other places and we would really appreciate your urgent help on this. 

Secondly: Please can we have a little bit more electricity? These 16 hour a day power cuts are gruelling and we don’t understand why the power company keep charging us more and more but give us less and less. We have to keep throwing away the food in our fridges because it goes bad and are cooking outside over smoky fires so a bit more power would be a very welcome gift.

Next Father Christmas, please, oh please can you stop the latest batch of farm invasions. Never have we seen anything so cruel as groups of thugs evicting farmers and their workers from their homes just a week before Christmas. Maize and tobacco crops are flourishing in the land, cows are growing shiny and fat on the new green grass but no one can stop it all being seized by a bunch of greedy criminals. They are using their political connections to steal people’s homes and livelihoods and reap crops they did not sow. It’s breaking our hearts Father Christmas, where are all these people to go, they know nothing but farming, they have no other homes or incomes.

If you had any spare cash it would be great if you could pay off Air Zimbabwe’s debts that they seem to owe in a number of countries, not to mention the money outstanding to their long suffering members of staff.  It seems every time they land somewhere their planes are being grounded or impounded leaving passengers stranded. Families separated by our political and economic crisis are in exile around the world and are desperately trying to get together this Christmas, they need your help.

There are so many other things I’d like to ask for this Christmas but the most important gift you can bring us is hope. Hope for real, meaningful change for Zimbabwe. Hope for an end to fear, oppression, greed, intolerance and political violence. Hope for real democracy, prosperity and respect for human rights.

To all Zimbabweans and those who care about us, wherever you are in the world, thank you for your support of my writing and books in 2011 and for not giving up on our country. I wish you all a peaceful, happy Christmas, surrounded by friends and filled with laughter. I hope that 2012 is a better year for us all and for Zimbabwe. Until my next letter in January, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

The day before the official opening of Zanu PF’s Bulawayo conference the collapse of a tree in Harare got tongues wagging and left the superstitious running for cover. A Musasa tree thought to have been nearly 200 years old collapsed on the road near State House when it was hit by a vehicle. The tree, which was a National Monument on a declared Historic Site, has for many years been called the Hanging Tree despite the fact that historians disputed stories that famous Zimbabwean ancestors were hanged from its branches in the late 1890’s. One historian said the Hanging Tree was an urban myth but even so there can be few of us who haven’t stood under its branches at one time or other and wondered, goose bumps covering our arms.

In a magnificent article, journalist Angus Shaw described how a n’anga arrived and performed a ceremony over the collapsed Musasa tree, witnessed by crowds who had gathered, many of whom took away leaves and pieces of bark as momentos. Shaw wrote that the the Zimbabwe National Traditional Healers Association said the “tree represented "powerful forces" in the nation's social and political life.” He said that a street vendor nearby said the collapse of the Musasa was surely a sign that “something big was going to happen.

On the same day as the ‘Hanging Tree’ collapsed in Harare, Mr Mugabe was in Bulawayo, planting a tree on National Tree Day.  All eyes were on him and Bulawayo as Zanu PF held their annul congress. This the most important gathering of senior members and leaders of Zanu PF and this year it had the potential to be explosive to say the least. Zimbabwe held its breath.

A year of damning Wikileaks cables had shown that most of Mr Mugabe’s high level colleagues had betrayed him and indicated that he should step down, including his Vice Presidents. Everyone thought that the Bulawayo gathering would be the place where the betrayers would be held to account and lose their positions in the party’s leadership but nothing happened.

Delegates had a unique chance to change the leadership of their party but did not do so.

They unanimously endorsed Mr Mugabe as their presidential candidate in the country’s next election. Mr Mugabe is 87 years old.

Wearing a baseball cap and a red and white Zanu PF jacket, Mr Mugabe addressed the party he has been the president of for thirty one years. He spoke to the four or five thousand delegates for two and a half hours and television cameras showed a very restrained and subdued audience – not a reaction we have come to associate with these events.

Despite anticipation and expectation, the Bulawayo gathering appeared to have been a regurgitation of more of the same. Mr Mugabe described the present government of national unity as “a drag on our nation,” saying it shouldn’t be allowed to continue. He spoke repeatedly of an election in 2012. He said there was no turning back on indigenization laws and that they were not an election gimmick. Mugabe said all mining companies would be forced to hand over at least 51% of their shareholdings to black Zimbabweans.

At the end of a week when we expected huge fireworks but got a damp squib, you have to wonder if the collapse of the 200 year old Musasa tree is a sign that something big is going to happen.  That grand old tree will be missed but reminds us that nothing and no-one is immortal. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Believe it or not, the hot topic of conversation this week was take-away chicken portions. Shock, intrigue and controversy came with an advert for chicken pieces that was aired on DSTV, a South African satellite television broadcaster that is available in many countries in Africa.

The advert came from Nando’s, a South African fast food chain which has a Zimbabwe franchise and outlets in many centres around the country. The advert shows Robert Mugabe standing alone at a Christmas dinner table, holding place name cards of absent guests. To background music of “Those were the days my friend,” and with actors playing the characters, Mugabe is shown having a water pistol fight with Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, whose is using his trademark golden gun. Then on stage he sings with China’s Chairman Mao, and later makes sand angels in the desert with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Final scenes are of Mugabe playing on swings with South Africa’s P W Botha and then standing on top of a tank with Uganda’s Idi Amin, both with their arms outspread in classic Titanic pose. The advert ends with the words “No one should ever eat alone so get a Nando’s six pack meal, for six.”

The advert was definitely a case of forbidden fruit being more desirable as people scrambled to find a satellite TV where they could watch the Nando’s advert. Ironically it’s only because the sole TV channel in Zimbabwe, ZBC, is so biased and full of propaganda, that everyone that can has satellite television. In the blink of an eye the advert was on You Tube enabling even more people to watch it.

Within a couple of days the inevitable happened and a Zanu PF militant group known as Chipangano warned, through ZBC radio, that Nando’s should withdraw the advert or face punitive action. Chipangano called for an apology for what they described as the negative portrayal of Mr Mugabe in the advert.

The blame game and denials rapidly moved into full swing. Nando’s Zimbabwe said they were not informed about the advert or the marketing strategy of Nando’s South Africa. DSTV said they could not “filter out” adverts on the satellite channels that were available to Zimbabwean subscribers. A major shareholder of the company that holds the Nando’s Zimbabwe franchise, who is himself and ex Zanu PF Governor, said the advert was a ‘violation of business ethics” and in disregard of “African values.”

Of course, anyone that hadn’t seen the advert by that stage, made determined efforts to see it and find out what all the fuss was about. Things reached absurd levels midweek when the Short Wave Radio Africa broadcast was jammed just as a news report about the Nando’s advert began. The jamming continued for the next two hours and no one was in any doubt about who was behind the radio’s signal interference.

What had started out as a Christmas advertising campaign for a chicken dinner had turned deadly serious. On Thursday Nando’s South Africa announced they were removing the advert because of the : “volatile climate and believe that no TV commercial is worth risking the safety of Nando’s staff and customers.”

And the world thinks that everything is OK in Zimbabwe? Happy chicken dinner. Thanks for reading, until next time, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

The saying it never rains but it pours, was never more true than this week. After another round of scorching temperatures, punishing water shortages and bone dry days, a storm brewed up very rapidly early one evening. Very strong winds were followed by a spectacular half hour of continuous sheet and forked lightning and then the heavens opened. Fifty millimetres (two inches) of rain pounded down in an hour and a half over areas of Mashonaland East and left us like drowned rats floating on the detritus. Areas of Harare had eighty millimetres in an hour and huge pine trees fell like matchsticks in many places.

I thought I’d had it bad when about two litres of rain streamed in through a hole in my roof soaking everything in its splash range below. It was nothing compared to a neighbour whose roof leak caught twenty litres of rain – it was like someone left the tap running he said. We both laughed at the insanity of that comparison because our taps only ever have water for a couple of hours a day if we’re lucky as our town continues to suffocate in a never ending water crisis. It’s a crisis that has crippled most towns and cities around the country despite donors providing all the water treatment chemicals and almost three years of opposition control of town councils. The municipalities give more excuses than you can shake a stick at, none of which help alleviate the toil of finding, collecting and carrying water all the time, or reducing the fear of disease. A number of people in my immediate neighbourhood have been collecting water for weeks from an open and unprotected shallow well they have dug in a patch of open ground near a local cemetery. They had their water supplies disconnected by the local municipality because they couldn’t afford to pay large backdated accounts which went back to early 2009 when we converted to trading in US dollars. The amounts owing by residential households range from fifty to five hundred US dollars and leave people with no choice but to risk disease and collect water wherever they find it.

The last water-borne disease tragedy to hit Zimbabwe was an horrific cholera epidemic in 2008 which killed over four thousand people.  This year the disease fear is typhoid. The Harare City Council this week said they were “talking numbers in excess of 500 cases” in the capital alone.  Their spokesman said shallow wells and boreholes in unsuitable places were the main carriers of typhoid. Messages are being sent out by one mobile phone service provider alerting people to the spread of typhoid through contaminated food and water and advising people with fever, stomach pains and diarrhoea to get medical treatment immediately.

The morning after the storm the roads in my neighbourhood had been scoured. Thick beds of sand blanketed corners, dips and the bottoms of hills. Potholes and gullies not filled or patched, let alone even inspected for over five years, tripled in size and depth overnight. What should have been simple, routine road maintenance has been ignored for so many years that it will now need heavy machinery and vast amounts of money to restore basic suburban roads.

Closer to home casualties of the rain storm lay in the form of carpets of flying ants’, countless drowned earth worms and curled up, water- logged sausage flies. A veritable explosion of Tsongololos (millipedes) emerged from underground. Flooded out of their hiding places, they were drying out on rocks, logs and sandy patches everywhere. Hard at work were numerous birds whose nests had been damaged in the storm. Weavers, Flycatchers and Manikins worked tirelessly, flitting backwards and forwards with strips of grass, fluffy seeds and strands of papyrus. The best sight was that of a gorgeous Plum-coloured Starling carrying bunches of soft green Musasa leaves to re-line its nest in a toilet stack pipe. Such beauty in such an ugly venue, a familiar Zimbabwean contrast.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

The moment I saw the long legged bird with its stout body and flat head I was taken back in time. As I watched the bird walk, head above the grass, I searched for its name in my memory. It didn’t take long to remember that this was a Kori Bustard, once a familiar bird I’d seen often on our highveld farm. The sighting of the Bustard on a hot and very humid November day announced the start of a very strange and contradictory experience this week.

I had been given the rare opportunity of going back in time for a few hours by paying a brief visit to a commercial farm that was still partially functional. There aren’t many of them left eleven years into land seizures. These politically biased land takeovers should have ended years ago for the good of the country. Instead they just go on and on, year after year, slowly draining the last drops of lifeblood from our once thriving agricultural industry.  Every week now we hear of what are being called ‘black on black’ land seizures. These entail repeated invasions and evictions by black people, of black people who themselves invaded and evicted white people from the farms a decade ago. It all makes a complete nonsense of the rhetoric that land invasions were allowed in order to correct colonial, racial imbalances and empower indigenous black Zimbabweans.

With all this in mind, you can’t help but feel very apprehensive when visiting one of the few remaining commercial farms in Zimbabwe. The farm gates were locked and manned by a guard and it wasn’t far from there to the cropping lands. The road was of deep red soil and it snaked around a cluttered workshop and a couple of run down buildings. The obvious neglect told its own story. Farmers no longer spend money on buildings and immovable infrastructure because they know that on any day, at any moment an arbitrary bod off the road can walk in and claim the farm as his own. After writing this fact down for eleven years, it is still as absurd and incomprehensible as it was when it first happened in March 2000.

The road passed through an avenue of towering gum trees and alongside the remains of depleted seed beds before emerging at the tobacco lands. Perfect lines lay in measured sections, bisected by roads at equal intervals. Row after row of tobacco plants with enormous leaves met the eye in every direction. Looking down the lines there wasn’t a plant out of place and hardly a weed to be seen anywhere. Three tractors and trailers were at work in the lands. At least fifty men and women were busy doing various tasks. The first reaping was underway and a dozen or so were picking the lowest leaves, loading them into spring clips and laying them on the trailers so they could be taken to the barns for curing. A gigantic irrigation pivot towered over a section of the field, looking like an enormous scaffolding on wheels, the multiple watering points reducing the risks for the vast crop. This is farming the way it should be done, farming that contributed to a country’s economy, you knew it at a glance. The chilling reality was that this farmer and his fifty employees may not be here at the end of the day, week, month or year. He had no guarantee at all that he would be allowed to harvest this crop at the end of the season – it all depended on who was passing by and what their political connections were.

There were 36 commercial tobacco farms in this district a decade ago. Only six remain and all are enduring varying degrees of mayhem and obscenity at the hands of people trying to evict them. Leaving the farm and returning to the main road, the contrast is so dramatic that you literally draw in your breath. All of the neighbouring farms have been taken over. All the boundary fences have gone. Cattle and goats graze right on the edge of the main highway, tended by children who should be in school. A scrappy, primitive mud and thatched hut stands in what was once a large tobacco land. Two men guide a pair of long horned oxen as they plough up a small field. They are making a small red square of an acre or two in the midst of a vast, deserted land. A group of women sit under a tree selling wild fruits displayed in chipped enamel tin bowls.

This week the President of the Commercial Farmers Union described farms being the least prepared for the growing season in fifty years. He speaks of catastrophe and predicts massive food shortages in the coming months. Anyone who doubts his predictions doesn’t have to look far to see what has prompted this dire warning. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2011, the world remembered the men and women of their armed forces who lost their lives in war; their fallen heroes.

Zimbabwe also remembers. We remember our men and women who died in wars, and also those who were killed in more recent times which have often felt like war. We remember:

The men of all races who fought and died in World War One. Sources indicate that731 were killed in service abroad between 1914 and 1918.

The men and women of all races, who fought and died in World War Two. Sources indicate that 1173 people were killed in service abroad between 1939 and 1945.

The men, women and children, of all races who died in the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1960’s and 70’s. An estimated 35 thousand people on both sides lost their lives.

We remember the estimated 20 thousand men, women and children who lost their lives in the early 1980’s at the hands of Zimbabwe’s Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland in what is known as the Gukurahundi massacre. Those who perished were unarmed and outnumbered. They could not get state protection, did not have the chance to fight back and fell at the hands of their own government.

We remember the men and women who lost their lives in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from the late 1990’s into the new millennium. Their names and the number of people who died, have never been made public.

We remember the people of all races who were brutalized and also those who lost their lives during Zanu PF’s seizures of commercial farms around the country from 2000 to 2011 and which are still continuing today. The victims were unarmed, outnumbered and unable to get protection.

We remember the men, women and children who were brutalized, and also those who died before, during and after the violent elections of 2000, 2002 and 2005. They were unarmed and outnumbered; they tried and failed to get protection.

We remember the losses and suffering of 800,000 men, women and children whose homes and livelihoods were obliterated when government bulldozers mowed their houses down. We do not know how many died as result in the bitter mid winter of 2005, we do know that nearly a million people lost everything at the hands of their own government.

We remember the hundreds of men, women and children who died in the violence before, during and between the two elections of 2008. Hundreds died and thousands fled. They were unarmed and outnumbered and tried but failed to get protection.

To them all we dedicate a thought on Remembrance Day.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

The searing heat and record breaking temperatures melting Zimbabwe in late October were finally broken by rain a few days ago. Never have thunder, lightning and mud been so welcome. There’s nothing quite so delicious as walking out on a quiet dirt road early in the morning after a night of noisy rain storms. It’s that time of day when yours are the first footprints to mark the wet sand. The ground is soft and springy underfoot, the air cool and clear and if you are lucky you may see the tracks left by an animal of the night. It always comes as something of a surprise the way a single rain storm awakens an extravaganza of weird and wonderful beetles, spiders and insects. Almost overnight they are back: Flying ants, Tsongololos, Sausage Flies, Rhino beetles and giant moths the size of saucers.

As the sun lifts from the horizon its not long before the voices of the crickets fall silent, to be replaced by the screeching of cicadas as the day heats up. The reality of Zimbabwe is sitting in a heap at the side of the road. There’s obviously been a burglary in the neighbourhood during the night and the unwanted, discarded items are lying in the wet grass: a black sun hat, an ornamental carved wooden assegai with steel tips, a plumber’s rubber plunger and an assortment of car parts. Walking a little further down the road the day’s work has already started for two young men who are digging a foundation for a new house. Damp soil thuds off shovels, their laughter rings out in the quiet of the dawn; a raised hand is lifted in greeting.  A builder strides past carrying his spirit level; smiles and greetings are exchanged. A school girl meanders along, a little pink satchel on her back; she casts her eyes down and responds shyly when you say good morning. The first vehicle approaches, it is an early commuter minibus going towards the half built high density housing complex nearby. They started building there after the government’s Operation Murambatsvina  (clear out the rubbish) of 2005 left 800,000 people homeless. Four workers wearing overalls emerge from a gate, we chorus early morning greetings. A woman carrying a hoe and a bag of seeds heads down to a roadside field; a man inspecting his newly germinated maize crop lifts his hat and we exchange a few words about the rain, the weather, the hope for his crop.

With encounters like these to illustrate the face of Zimbabwe at the start of every new day, it’s hard to comprehend the turmoil that engulfed the capital city this week. Apparently a choir member complained that street vendors were selling pirated CD’s in central Harare, right outside the building that houses the offices of the MDC. Police arrived to arrest vendors who ran into the MDC headquarters. Minutes later the police were firing teargas, first into the MDC building and then at the large crowd of bystanders who had gathered to watch. The independent papers had screaming headlines and frightening pictures the next day. “Mayhem,” was the banner covering the front of the Daily News with headlines: “Police turn city centre into battlefield,” and “Teargas thrown on civilians.”  NewsDay’s front page screamed: “Hell Breaks Loose” and showed pictures of riot police, men and women running and clouds of tear gas engulfing a street in the centre of the Harare.

The next day Prime Minister Tsvangirai said Zimbabwe was retreating into ‘siege mentality.’ He said political violence was on the increase and that 800 cases had been reported in September. Talking about the teargassing of MDC headquarters, the PM said police had threatened bystanders, thrown teargas into crowds of people going about their business and bought the capital to standstill. “The police say they are for the law, for the people, for the country,’ the PM said, “but what we have witnessed is that they are anti law, anti people and anti country.”

At the end of it all, looking at pictures of rows of helmeted riot police in grey police trucks two thoughts were uppermost; the first was ‘oh no, here we go again’ and the other was: ’goodbye tourists.’ Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

The chat in the queue at a government hospital Outpatients department this week was about the searing heat that has been beating down on the country in the last few days. The extremely high temperatures scorching Zimbabwe have been the national talking point as day after day we’ve looked up into dazzling blue skies without even a whisp of cloud. One woman in the hospital queue said that God must have dropped the sun, letting it fall down lower in the sky. People laughed and her words made me think of Chicken Licken, Turkey Lurkey and all their mates who were sure the sky was falling in! Someone else in the hospital queue said that this heat was a sign from the ancestors: a warning of something, although no one volunteered what. The dreaded word on everyone’s lips is ‘drought.’ Memories of hunger and starvation are still very fresh in our minds although the hunger in our recent past was caused more by political mis-governance and negligence than by weather.

This October is hotter than most people can ever remember. Many higher areas of the country which usually have milder climates have been recording minimum overnight temperatures of 27 degrees and midday temperatures of 37 degrees Celsius. Too hot to walk outside barefoot, in fact, too hot to be outside, let alone to be walking. In the drier lowveld areas temperatures have been hitting the high 40’s for a number of days. According to the Meteorology department, temperatures like this have not been recorded for almost fifty years, last seen in October 1962. Even sleeping in this heat is a problem, too hot even for a sheet. The nights are made considerably worse by clouds of whining, niggling mosquitoes desperate for just one little mouthful of blood.

Exacerbating our rising tempers in the searing heat has been the crisis with water. In urban areas in many towns and cities it has become normal to have no water for days at a time; you are very lucky if you have water for an hour or two a day and it is very unusual to have a continuous supply. Morning, noon and night people are trudging with water containers to the nearest stream, borehole or open well. Handpumps on boreholes sunk by NGO’s in many small towns and congested residential areas last year are always surrounded by people waiting for their turn to fill a container. Wheelbarrows, handcarts and even pick up trucks loaded with small containers and huge drums all join the water queue. They have now become such a familiar sight that no one gives them a second glance. Its hard to believe this is urban Zimbabwe in 2011.  In some parts of Harare where residents have gone for over three weeks without water, fights have broken out and people queue day and night at the handpumps.

Travelling to an eastern town this week, both the heat and the water shortages were common denominators. A shimmering mirage danced on the tarmac and I looked for something to take my mind off the heat. First I saw two oxen hitched to a cart standing under the shade of a tree. Beasts with huge curved horns their tails flicked incessantly at flies and they were accompanied by two young men. One lay flat on his back in the shade of the tree while the other did all the work. He was busy unloading dozens of empty blue plastic beet crates filled with empty brown beer bottles called Scuds. The beer crates were being piled up on the side of the highway, waiting to be collected and replaced with full ones by the brewery truck. On the road a steady stream of four wheel drive vehicles went past, watched by two oxen and their burden of beer bottles.

Minutes later another sight caught my eye and helped take my mind off the scorching heat. I saw four little Vervet Monekys running through the short burnt grass towards the road. Two scampered across the tar, the third hesitated before deciding on a very fast dash in front of my approaching vehicle. And the fourth, which I felt sure I was going to run over, turned a head over heels somersault right on the edge of the tar and sat staring at me, looking dazed and bemused; as surprised as I was that it had been able to stop in time.

What a land of contrasts! Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Its been one of those weeks where we’ve been shaking our heads in disbelief all the time.  A week of ship captains, torturers, deported pensioners and watching TV in the dark.

First came the interview with Zanu PF’s Patrick Chinamasa by the Independent newspaper. Asked if the 87 year old  Mr Mugabe would be the party’s presidential candidate in the next election, Chinamasa said:  “We will put our best foot forward and President Mugabe is our best foot. We can’t change the captain in the midst of a storm.”

Then came two stories of Zimbabweans in exile which left us open-mouthed and wide eyed.  On the one hand is the 47 year old Zanu PF spy and torturer who has been given community service and granted asylum in the UK. On the other hand is an 88 year old woman who lost her farm to Zanu PF thugs, went to the UK to live with her daughter and has now been told she can’t stay in the country. 

When the UK Immigration Judge, David Archer said last year that there was no doubt that ex Zimbabwean CIO spy Philip Machemedze was “deeply involved in savage acts of extreme violence,” it seemed pretty obvious that the man would be deported from England. Machemedze had admitted to electrocuting, slapping, beating and punching a farmer; smashing someone’s jaw with pliers and putting salt into the wounds of a female MDC member who was being held in an underground cell. In the four years that he’d been a spy for Mr Mugabe’s government, Justice Archer said of Machemedze’s victims:  "Some were killed slowly and their bodies disposed of. He witnessed people with their limbs cut off. Other acts of torture were too gruesome to recount."

A few months later Philip Machemedze was granted asylum in the UK. A tribunal ruled that under European Human Rights law Machemedze’s life would be in danger if he was returned to Zimbabwe.  "Those rights are absolute and whatever crimes PM has committed, he cannot be returned to face the highly likely prospect of torture and execution without trial," the Judge ruled.

The reason this whole story has surfaced again is because Machemedze had been living and working illegally in the UK for seven years before he was found out. Finally charged for working illegally, Machemedze’s sentence has just been deferred for six months in exchange for half a day a week spent in service for the ‘poor and needy’ at a local Pentecostal Church. Making her ruling, Judge Julian Lambert said: “If I see you have done good work when you return and I have your promise that you will continue that good work I shall give you your liberty.” Punished with church service for working illegally but going scott free for torture. What about those ‘savage acts of extreme violence,’ and what about the human rights of his victims?

On the other hand is the story of the 88 year old Zimbabwean woman who has just been told she cannot stay in the UK. News reports say that Mrs Werrit went to live with her daughter and son in law in Kent eight years ago after her farm was taken over by supporters of Zanu PF who said they would cut her throat if she came back. The UK Border Agency said it had "fully considered" Ms Werrit's claims of persecution in Zimbabwe and "found she was not in need of international protection". Ironically Mrs Werrit, is just a few months older than President Mugabe but will come back to no health care, no pension and no government assistance for any of her needs.

Lastly, cause for head shaking came with a list of quotes in a local newspaper.  NewsDay’s  front page banner headline was: ‘Gaddafi’s bloody end,’ and inside came: ‘Some of Gaddafi’s craziest quotes.’  My favourites were: “Were it not for electricity we would have to watch television in the dark, ” and “A woman has the right to run for election whether she’s male or female.”

The end of Colonel Gaddafi sends a dramatic message to dictators who continue to fool themselves that their people love them. It’s a message that ends in a storm drain under the road. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

When the Archbishop of Canterbury came to Zimbabwe last week it gave us all a lift, regardless of our religious persuasions. Here was a man who had the courage to say it like it is, something we’ve been sadly starved of for the last two and a half years. Zimbabweans are frazzled, worn down and bone tired of the platitudes and diplomatic niceties that have come to characterise our once firebrand politicians. None of our leaders say it like it is anymore and that made the visit of the Archbishop even more refreshing. 

The Anglican Archbishop didn’t mince his words in a sermon he gave to the multiple thousands of people who had gathered at the City Sports Centre in Harare. To outsiders it may have seemed strange that Archbishop Rowan Williams was addressing Anglicans in a sports stadium rather than in the Cathedral. But he couldn’t because the previous, and ex-communicated Bishop, Nolbert Kunonga, has taken over the Harare Cathedral and 40 percent of other Anglican churches in the country. Kunonga is an open supporter of Zanu PF and has described President Mugabe as a “prophet from God.” Speaking to the press at the Harare Cathedral, Kunonga said that Archbishop Rowan Williams was no threat to him. Kunonga said: “I am in charge of the church, of all its properties. I am in the cathedral. That's my throne. He cannot come here.

 In the last few months Kunonga got a court ruling and started taking over church houses, schools, clinics and orphanages, evicting anyone who does not support his breakaway church. Harassed, intimidated, beaten, arrested and locked out of their churches, Anglicans have been hounded by Kunonga and his band of followers. They have taken to holding religious services in private homes, tents and even under trees. It is a truly humbling sight to witness this vast body of people turning the other cheek. 

In his sermon at the sports centre, the Archbishop’s references to events of the last decade were obvious. He  said: “God has given so many gifts to this land. It has the capacity to feed all its people and more. Its mineral wealth is great. But we have seen years in which the land has not been used to feed people and lies idle; and we have begun to see how this mineral wealth can become a curse…” Weaving his message into biblical references, Zimbabweans knew exactly who the Archbishop was talking about when he asked if we could hear the voice of the Creator saying: “ ‘Why will you turn my gifts into an excuse for bloodshed? Why will you not use what you have for the good of a community, not for private gain or political advantage?’ ”

The day after delivering his sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury met President Mugabe and gave him a dossier detailing abuses being suffered by Anglicans in Zimbabwe. The Archbishop asked Mr Mugabe to guarantee the safety of worshippers and “put an end to illegal and unacceptable behaviour.

The Archbishop then went on a visit to Manicaland and described how he met Anglicans in the area : “They gathered at the roadside to meet us, they gathered in extremely smelly disused cinemas to meet us and in the middle of a field. …It's been hugely moving and I'm very glad I came."

This stoicism and continual turning of the other cheek in the face of violence, oppression and blatant theft has become the national character of Zimbabwe; it has become our middle name.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Despite past records indicating that it was too early for rain and international long range forecasts predicting that rain was still some weeks away, the heavens opened over much of Zimbabwe this past week. It didn’t just drip or drizzle, but absolutely pounded down. Thunder and lightning came cavorting in on a high wind, the sky went deep purple, lit with an ominous orange glow, and then the hail rattled down. Small icy balls bounced on the baked ground, clattered on roofs and windows and knocked on doors. When the strange orange light in the clouds disappeared, hail was replaced by torrential rain. That first storm gave us 25 mm (one inch) of rain and in the next two days another 63 mm fell in my home town.

Months of choking dust and wind blown ash were washed from trees and roofs and everything looked instantly cleaner. You could almost see the trees and plants breathing again! The rain brought to life the ‘goodies,’ in the form of Kingfishers, Coucals and Flycatchers, and the ‘baddies’ in large numbers: water scorpions, rain spiders and a plague of very hungry mosquitoes.

The Met Department made an announcement on ZBC TV and Radio news bulletins. “This is NOT the start of the rainy season,” they said but no one paid them any attention. Three inches of rain led to an immediate flurry of ‘mealie madness.’ Everywhere you looked people were digging up roadsides, verges and empty spaces in order to plant a few rows of maize seeds. It’s all illegal cultivation in our urban areas but with authorities perpetually engaged in fighting for their own political survival, the enforcement of many laws remains non existent.

Not long after the first torrential storm I received a call from a family in a village 20 kilometres away. The rain hadn’t got to them but the lightning had. Without warning and from an almost clear sky came one single bolt of lightning. It struck the new, shiny tin roof on the extension to their house that they had finished building just a week before. Bricks fell off one of the newly plastered walls; a solar panel mounted on the roof shattered; wiring from the satellite dish started burning; electric cables leading into the house caught fire; a battery used to power lights and TV melted and smoke rose from the radio as internal circuits burnt out. In a split second their precious assets had been destroyed by a single lightning strike and the family were in deep shock, not quite able to believe that no one had been electrocuted.

As the shock receded, the reality of the loss sunk in. Without their satellite dish and battery powered electricity, the family had lost their ability to receive international news. They wouldn’t hear the horrific news that children playing football in the grounds of St Paul Secondary School in Lupane had just stumbled upon a mass grave. The ground had caved in at two points revealing human bones. The Minister of National Healing rushed to the scene and described a mass grave five metres wide and five metres long which is thought to contain between thirty and sixty bodies. Local villagers in the areas said these were victims of the Gukurahundi, a massacre to silence opposition, which was conducted in the early 1980’s by the army’s Fifth Brigade. A massacre which human rights organisations say claimed as many as twenty thousand lives, people whose bodies still remain in mass graves in Matabeleand and other areas.

Hard to believe that thirty years later this national tragedy has still not been dealt with. Perpetrators have not been held to account, victims have not been identified and families have been unable to find peace. The MDC National Healing Minister Moses Mzila Ndlovu said: “We must allow our people to tell the story as they saw and lived through it, followed by reburials which should come as a package of national healing.”

How much longer must Zimbabwe wait, is the question we all ask. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Taking a friend home to his rural village this week, my eyes were wide open to absorb sights that we once took for granted in Zimbabwe, before farming districts became ‘no-go areas.’ How sad it is that eleven years after they were violently taken over, our commercial farming areas have become largely wasteland. Lonely, derelict, desolate places where the overpowering image is mile after mile of nothing-ness. No fences, no farming activity, no production, and in most places, very few livestock and even fewer people.

Sitting on a small anthill, surrounded by blackened, burnt landscape was a young man with a whip in his hand. Four black and brown cattle were snuffling in the dust and ash nearby, searching for green shoots of grass. It was a very hot day, windless and bone dry with hazy mirages shimmering in the distance. The look on the face of the young man was that of utter boredom. Every now and again his hand came up and flicked at a fly on his face or he lazily swished the whip in the direction of the four cattle. Too old to be at school and one of the approximately 80 percent of people unemployed in Zimbabwe, the young man had become the cattle minder. He would only have been a little boy, perhaps nine years old, when this place was turned upside down. I wondered if he could remember the time when this farm had been bustling with life and productivity and employed scores of people. The irony of the young man and his four cattle in this particular location weighed heavy on my mind.

The anthill that the young man was lolling against is on land which used to be a prime dairy farm. Just a decade ago there were sturdy fences and lush green pastures where the young man was sitting. A few hundred fat, shiny black and white Holstein cows used to graze here, so heavy with milk that their udders nearly touched the ground. Every two or three days the milk tankers came, all year round, winter or summer, rain or shine. The fresh milk from this dairy farm was much sought after by everyone in the area, as was the thick, sweet cream it gave and the glossy yellow butter it made. The commonest sight in the early mornings and late afternoons was of people walking to the farm carrying containers, going to buy fresh milk, straight from the cow.

All that came to a stop when the Zimbabwean Ambassador to an eastern European country decided he was going to have that dairy farm. We could never understand why an Ambassador based in another country should be given a seized farm, or how he could be classed as a ‘land hungry peasant’ but common sense made no difference in the greedy political land grab.

My friend’s words interrupted my thoughts as we passed the now deserted dairy farm. “There is nowhere to get milk here anymore,” he said, commenting that he had two large packets of milk powder in his bag. Around the corner, on another seized commercial farm, the fences were all gone and a donkey cart lay abandoned in the dirt with a broken axle and only one wheel. The driveway leading to the farm house which had once been a wide clear road, was so under utilized that it was overgrown with grass and tree saplings and had become little more than a footpath.

Arriving at my friend’s village the contrast to the desolate overgrown farms was dramatic; everywhere people were visible and busy. They were re-thatching roofs before the rain, stacking bricks that had been made and fired during the winter, carrying piles of dark black manure from their cattle pens to the fields. Women were carrying water to their beds of tomatoes and cabbages and everyone was busy getting ready for rain and the new season.  

Later that day I sat reading a book I had bought recently, called “If Something is Wrong.” Published by the Agricultural Workers Union (GAPWUZ), the book presents eye witness accounts of Zimbabwe’s farm seizures as told by the farm workers. It is a seldom heard side to the land reform story which makes for compelling, painful reading. First hand accounts from men and women who had no voice during the land seizures. Men and women who met every criteria for receiving the land that was being seized. But they did not; instead their lives, homes and families were utterly ravaged by greedy, violent thugs doing the bidding of their political masters. Perhaps one day the young man leaning on an anthill watching four cows will hear the whole story.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

The good, the bad and the ugly is a very apt description of life in Zimbabwe this week. The good has come in the form of the fast approaching rainy season. Temperatures have soared over the last few days and the first rain clouds have started to gather on the horizon. Heaven in the garden has come from standing under the drooping, dripping mulberry tree and feasting on ripe, sweet purple berries. Purple fingers, lips and tongue; angry, impatient birds cursing from overhead! A rare treat came for me with the appearance of a carmine bee eater sitting on the electricity lines over my house. Carmines are usually associated with hot lowveld river valleys where they build nests in big colonies, burrowing into sand cliffs and river banks. At first I thought this Carmine Bee-eater must be lost but then I saw another one, and then another two. For a couple of hours they stayed around before swooping high into an invisible current of wind and disappearing. The final treat of the week came with the sound of running feet on the roof just after dark. Not human feet but those of the Night Ape as it headed towards an avocado tree for an early appetizer before starting its nocturnal rounds.

In between the ‘good’ and the bad came the absurd, just to bring us down to earth. First came the story of the four men apprehended by police in Harare. The police forgot to handcuff their captives and then left them unattended in a police car whose engine was running, while they chased after another suspect. The four suspects put the car in gear and drove away, chased by the Police in a second car which proceeded to run out of fuel before the men could be re-arrested. The Herald newspaper described the escape as “the conclusion of an otherwise highly-successful police operation.”

Second came the report that Air Zimbabwe, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, had just received yet another emergency cash injection from the government. The 2.8 million US dollar bail out had finally managed to break the airline’s two month long strike. On one of their first resumed flights, from Victoria Falls to Harare, there was only one passenger on board an aircraft which seats 60 people. Talk about a good way to make a return on government money!

The ‘bad’ this week came with the interception by riot police of women in Bulawayo marching to commemorate the International Day of Peace. The women were singing songs about national healing and  handing out flowers and leaflets when an estimated 50 riot police moved in on them. Eyewitnesses described riot police chasing and beating the unarmed protestors with baton sticks causing a number of injuries and many being taken to hospital. Twelve of the women were arrested, including WOZA leaders Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu.

The downright ‘ugly’ this week came with more reports of Zanu PF youths taking over council properties, car parks, markets, bus and taxi ranks in Harare where they are intimidating people, extorting bribes and using violence against people who report them to the police.  Unbelievably the co Home Affairs Minister, Theresa Makone, whose ministry is in charge of the Police, was quoted in the press as saying there was chaos. She said: there is nothing I can do to stop their invasions.”

This is hardly the picture of law and order that Zimbabwe so desperately needs in the turbulent months leading to another election and hardly the image to attract tourists and investors. Until next week, thanks for reading, love Cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

We are neck deep in Wikileaks cables and the high tide is still flooding in. Every day the leaked diplomatic cables are providing evidence that nothing is as it seems in Zimbabwe. The cables have exposed lies and spies, hypocrisy and duplicity, and double standards of monumental proportions. The nation is holding its breath as we wait to find out the fate of the most senior figures in the country who have betrayed their leaders. The secret whisperings made to American diplomats in Harare have left few big names unscathed.

Predictably, the state controlled ZBC TV are largely ignoring the leaked cables which expose any criticism of Zanu PF’s leadership but the independent press are overflowing with the stories and newspapers are flying off the streets. In the past week the headlines have told the story in all its gory, backstabbing and treachery.

“D Day for Zanu PF spies,” said News Day on Monday, describing officials who support President Mugabe during the day and decampaign him at night. Beneath the headline were the photographs of Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, the two vice Presidents and Jonathan Moyo.

“Dead Men Walking” was the classic headline of the Daily News mid week, with pictures covering their front page of all the ‘sellouts” who wanted President Mugabe out of power. Pictures were of senior figures within Zanu PF including Indigenisation Minister Saviour Kasukuwere and Vice Presidents Joice Mujuru and John Nkomo. Politburo member Jonathan Moyo was there too, described as the ‘serial flip flopper’ due to his continual mind changing about which political party he supports. Moyo then went on to launch a one hundred thousand US dollar lawsuit against the Daily News for their reporting of the Wikileaks cables which exposed his indiscretions.

“Zim politics enters injury time,” was the headline of News Day’s mid week editorial, with the subtitle: “with friends like these who needs enemies.” The Editor spoke of betrayal and treachery within Zanu PF which had made friends more dangerous than enemies. Editor Brian Mangwende ended his piece with an old Arabic saying: “Better a thousand enemies outside the house, than one inside”

“Army Commanders Face Court Martial.” was the top story in The Zimbabwe Independent this week. You could almost hear the national intake of break with the release of the Wikileaks cable concerning the two senior army officials who had criticized their boss, General Constantine Chiwenga. The two, a Major General and a Brigadier General had described Chiwenga as a “political general” with “little practical military experience or expertise”. The whispers started coming in fast and furious, they speak of traitors, investigations and even court martial.

“Forked Tongues,” was the headline of the editorial comment in The Zimbabwean, the article ending with the words: “Only one thing is certain – what has been whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the rooftops.”

It remains to be seen what action will be taken against the top Zanu PF leaders who have betrayed their supreme leader. But one thing that has become dramatically clear is the coming of age of Zimbabwe’s independent press. They have done us proud in what is a notoriously oppressive and dangerous profession in the country.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

It’s that time of year when fires are burning on every horizon, leaving us shrouded in a blanket of smoke almost every day. Bright blue summer skies are permanently smudged with grey, white and yellow smoke and the wind is heavy with dust and ash. Fires are out of control again this year, mostly because there are no longer clear boundaries between all the seized commercial farms and nothing to stop the fires once they start. There are almost no visible fire breaks and even fewer genuine farmers with the will or the inclination to put the fires out once they start. As a result the smallest fire is picked up by the wind and travels scores of kilometres through the dry bush, destroying everything in their path.

On a brief visit to the east of the country this week, the view from the road provided a graphic picture of life in Zimbabwe, leaving you feeling as if you had gone back decades in time. A man and woman waited outside a bottle store in a dusty clearing, holding a length of rope made from tree bark at the end of which was tied a very large pig. Two young men were walking along the edge of the tar road, leading a goat on a length of frayed black raffia string.

Across a newly burnt field a barefoot old woman, wearing a long black dress, was walking through the smoke. A little puff of ash and dust rose at every footstep, her voice carried on the wind as she shouted in conversation with a young woman she passed. This young woman, also barefoot, carried a baby on her back, wrapped in a pink towel, had a toddler at her feet and a basket filled with pots and enamel bowls on her head. Women in blue and white dresses and head scarves walked in pairs on the roadside, heading to a church meeting, their eyes streaming from the inescapable smoke and dust. A little further on a young teenage boy struggled to control the wheelbarrow he was pushing, running to keep up with it as it took on a life of its own down a very steep hill. All around him the tops of the surrounding mountains were invisible, bathed in smoke. The Msasa trees covered in new spring foliage, were also suffocating, their splendour and colour lost in smoke and haze.

A green bus roared past at tremendous speed, rattling and shaking, part of its back fender hanging off, with the words: ‘God Answers,’ written in big letters above the front windscreen. From the other direction came two minibuses, both clearly overloaded and travelling way over the speed limit. One had the words: “Smooth Operator” painted on its front, the other bore the legend: “Check Yo Time.”

Fires were burning on both sides of the road providing a feasting frenzy for black fork-tailed Drongoes which swooped and dived into the flames to catch fleeing grasshoppers. Locusts and beetles flew blindly from the fire, straight into the mouths of birds or pinging and cracking as they hit car windscreens. A slender mongoose ran across the road, from one smoky side to the other, its black tipped tail held high above its sleek burgundy body.

Along a stretch of road passing through communal farms, as opposed to seized commercial farms, the scene was much more orderly. Piles of dry and combed thatching grass was stacked high off the ground on racks. Dry maize leaves and stalks, called mashanga, had been gathered from the fields and was also stacked safely on racks well off the ground. This was the precious food for their cattle and goats, the means to support the animals until the rains bring new green grass in two months time. So far the villagers have managed to save the grazing around them from fires and their cattle and goats have still got full bellies. These rural villagers with their seven acre plots continue to put the fat cats and political land grabbers on the seized commercial farmers to shame. How different things could have been for the country if farm land had been given to farmers and people who knew what to do with it.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Doing a favour for a couple who were leaving the country, a friend and I went to collect a crate of books from their rapidly emptying home. It was a very heavy, slatted plank, wooden crate and contained perhaps fifty books. The books had belonged to the man’s grandfather, Donald Moody, who came to the country in an ox drawn wagon in 1892. He was part of a group of farmers and their families who came from South Africa in what was known as ‘Moodie’s Trek.’ The books were being donated to a small museum in eastern Zimbabwe and were all over a hundred years old. Most of the books were dated around 1910 but some were older, with one published in 1894 and another in 1898. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was there, alongside Charles Dickens, Milton and Faust. The books of poetry and classics provided a unique insight into the type of people who had been on the Moodie Trek a hundred and twenty years ago. Were they all the brutal ruffians, racists and rogues that our children are taught about in Zimbabwe’s classrooms today, or were they, like so many others in our history, tarred with the same brush that marked a few bad characters?

At the top of the crate of books was a photograph album and I couldn’t resist the urge to have a look inside. Carefully I turned a few of the thick, heavy pages and was instantly taken back to the life lived here a century ago. Many of the handwritten captions under the pictures were no longer legible and many of the photographs were similarly faded beyond recognition. Some had survived the ravages of time and weather: a group of men, oxen and wagons preparing for a river crossing; a child sitting on the dusty ground wearing a bonnet; women grinding corn; men carrying spears; the earliest residence of a government official, dated 1915, and a hippopotamus breaking the surface in a wide stretch of river in Inyanga.

As the sun began to move towards the horizon, the electricity went off and it was too dark to see the images in the hundred year old photographs.  I looked through the newspapers of the day instead. It was a strange feeling to have records from 1910 in one hand and newspapers of 2011 in the other. Here was the story of a hundred years of the country right in front of me, a unique encounter.

By a strange quirk of coincidence I came a across a full page declaration in one of the newspapers inserted by the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe.  It was headed: ‘Statement on the Abuse of the National History Curriculum,’ and was a forthright and damning expose of what is going on in Zimbabwe’s classrooms.  The teachers described how politicians in power have corrupted the history curriculum to suit their own ends. The statement said politicians have done this to: “peddle their ideology and to brain wash innocent learners.” The statement said that teachers working in politically volatile areas of the country have “stopped teaching components of the history syllabus for fear of being attacked.”

The closing paragraph of the statement by the teachers’ union read: “We call upon the nation to join teachers in condemning such efforts to convert our children into creatures endowed with political hatred…. We implore parents to ‘unteach’ what has been or is likely to be ‘mistaught’ about the history of this country.”

The statement by the teachers union in 2011 is as much a part of our history as the Moodie Trek a hundred and twenty years ago. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

There’s nothing that can put Zimbabweans into a bad mood quicker than no water or no electricity. Put the two together and you can almost see people’s blood pressure rising. A collapse of the national electricity grid on Wednesday plunged most of the country into the dark. That night the clatter of generators rang out from every direction; the noise was deafening and the air vibrated! ZBC TV ran a crawl line on the screen during the main evening news bulletin calling for people to switch off their geysers and lights to save electricity. What electricity, we all shouted, as we watched battery powered TV’s, because there was no electricity to save.

Ironically the national black out came in the same week that the protest group WOZA delivered 101,000 petition signatures to parliament In Harare for presentation to the Anti Corruption and Monopolies Committee due to sit during the week. WOZA’s ‘anti abuse of power’ petition has long been calling for reduced electricity charges and for a pre-paid metering system to be introduced.

In my home town, calls to the local electricity supply office resulted in a variety of reasons for what very rapidly degenerated into rolling 18 hour a day power cuts. We were told that the hydro electricity generators at Kariba Dam were being maintained, then that the thermal units at Hwange weren’t working and finally, the clearest of all reasons given was that there just wasn’t enough electricity in the country. An article in the press later in the week quoted a Zesa spokesman as saying there was “an unstable grid, resulting in the disconnection of inter connectors.’ The article spoke about a two hour national blackout but in many places it seems the inter connectors are still disconnected because we are still in the dark!

In my home town the power cut continued for the next three days. Lights flickered on between 11pm and midnight and went off again a few hours later, long before sunrise. If you are lucky it flicks on for an hour or two in the afternoon but don’t bank on it! Coping with five hours of electricity a day, and then only in the middle of the night, is gruelling. We had got used to this a couple of years ago when daily extended power cuts were the norm but it comes as a shocker this time round when many of us are woefully unprepared.

You can hardly hear yourself think, let alone hold a conversation with anyone as you walk around town, negotiating the smoking, roaring generators that clutter the pavements. Everywhere except the government buildings that is, where the norm is, as always, no change. Outside the passport office people are ordered to queue on the other side of the road providing a deadly hazard for drivers when suddenly a score or more surge across the road, running to be allowed in the gate in small batches. At the Post Office where civil servants and pensioners get their monthly payments, it is utter mayhem which is embarrassing and shameful to witness. With nowhere to sit or shelter, hundreds crowd the car park, pavements and road, standing for hours at a time in the full sun waiting to get their meagre salaries or even more meagre pensions. Payments seem to be dependent on electricity to power computers and people wait without apology or explanation from officials within.  

To all this mayhem add no water. No electricity means no water can be pumped and for three days my home town has been bone dry. Not a drop in any tap, sink or toilet. Everywhere we go we apologise to people for smelling and at every stream and shallow well, crowds of women scoop water out into containers to carry home.  A borehole has been sunk in the town’s green, a small park which used to have pretty gardens, lawns and benches. Now lines of people wait their turn to get to the hand pump and draw a few litres of water to carry home. The lawns have turned to dust and the plastic water containers are piled up where once the flower beds were. When you have to physically carry every litre of water that you need, everything takes on a very different perspective.

Hard to believe that life is still like this, two and a half years into our so called unity government. Even harder to explain to outsiders who say: but everything’s OK in Zimbabwe now isn’t it? Far from it and after a bad week it seemed inevitable that something daft would happen and it did, on Friday. An announcement came from Zesa – the electricity supplier with no electricity to supply. They said that tariffs are to increase by 31% from the 1^st of September. Pay more for less must be their new slogan. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Zimbabwe was rocked to the core this week by the death of the Commander of the Defence Forces, retired General Solomon Mujuru, in a fire at a farm in Beatrice. General Mujuru’s body was burnt beyond recognition in the early hours of Tuesday 16^th August 2011. General Mujuru was the husband of Zimbabwe’s Vice President Joice Mujuru.

Everything about the fire at Alamein farm has left Zimbabweans whispering and suspicious. The morning after the fire a journalist who arrived early on the scene said the fire brigade had been called but didn’t arrive for some hours and when it did get there, had no water. The journalist said the borehole also wasn’t working and water was being pumped into a bowser from a dam 3 kilometres away. A radio communication system on the farm was apparently out of order and the three policemen stationed just 50 metres from the house were not aware of the fire until the blaze was so intense that asbestos roof sheets began exploding and shattering. One newspaper reported that guards at the farm did not have air time for their cell phones to call for help; another newspaper said that that farm workers had used their mobile phones to contact Vice President, Mrs Mujuru and summon the fire brigade.

No one can understand why General Mujuru, who was a big, strong man, was not able to escape from the inferno as there were numerous doors and windows, none of which had burglar bars.

The Beatrice farm, Alamein, was taken over by General Mujuru who evicted the owner, Guy Watson Smith in 2001. Given just an hour’s notice to vacate his home and farm, Guy Watson Smith said he left with just a suitcase, forced to abandon his life’s work and assets. Guy Watson Smith told the press this week that he has spent the last ten years trying, through the High Court of Zimbabwe, to get payment for his assets that were seized. These included: 460 breeding cows; tractors, irrigation equipment, fertilizer, diesel; coal and vehicles which were valued in the region of two million US dollars. Asked about the flammability of his house on Alamein Farm this week, Mr Watson Smith said it was built of brick and cement with asbestos roofing which made it, in his words, ‘fireproof.’ Mr Watson Smith said: “there were more doors and windows than holes in a colander. Our main bedroom alone had 3 doors out of it and 4 double windows. How do you get trapped inside that?”

The banner headline on the front of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper at the end of the week summed up the feeling prevailing everywhere: “Mujuru allies cry ‘murder most foul’.”

As I write this letter, General Mujuru is being laid to rest at Heroes Acre in Harare. There are more people gathered than I can ever remember seeing there. The stands and grounds are overflowing; people are seated under, around and in the branches of the surrounding Musasa trees whose leaves are red and orange in an early spring flush. The MC at the funeral is Kembo Mohadi and his words perhaps explain far better than I can, the current sentiment in the country. He said: “Before I call on His Excellency President Mugabe to speak may I implore you all to exercise maximum discipline.”

The death of General Mujuru breaches a wall already straining at the seams and we wait to see which way now for the faction fighting within Zanu PF in the succession war and which way now for Zimbabwe.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

A few minutes after starting this letter, I kept hearing the sound of something hard hitting my roof. At first I thought it was one of the little tree squirrels that have taken up residence on my roof this winter. When the days became shorter and colder one squirrel arrived and settled in. Every morning, soon after the sun touched the roof, the little Tsindi set off on its rounds. Leaping from the roof onto low hanging branches of an Avocado Pear tree, scampering along the wall and running nimbly along lichen covered Msasa branches. This was the morning patrol: the squirrel inspecting its territory. Throughout the day the squirrel was busy, running backwards and forwards, chasing off a challenger and then courting a female. Clicking, chattering and chirruping, they chased each other over the roof and it wasn’t long before they were carrying leaves to a nest they built under a protected overhang near a gutter. Inevitably the squirrels grew bolder as the days passed: sunbathing on the roof, fiddling around on the lawn, a bushy tail flicking seductively at my exasperated dogs who stood quivering below. The dogs were taunted to distraction until this week one little squirrel met its end. Another one remains, and probably babies too, but the frenzy overhead is distinctly muted so I knew that wasn’t the cause of the noise on my roof.

After one distinct crack on my roof which was just too close for comfort, I went outside to investigate and soon spotted the young teenage boy. Perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old he had a catapult in his hand. His weapon was home-made: a forked stick, a strip of bicycle inner tubing and a pocketful of stones. I called out to him immediately to stop throwing stones.

Instead of getting the expected reaction of giggling and running away, the youngster stared straight at me, a look of arrogance and defiance in his eyes. Perhaps he’d been watching the English kids looting, I thought. Pointedly he put a stone in the catapult, lifted his arm and aimed.

‘No!’ I shouted, pointing a finger at him.

The youngster stared at me for a few long seconds, before dropping his gaze and walking away.

After watching the horrific looting, burning and rampaging of youngsters in England, it has been very hard not to compare their behaviour to that we have regularly seen in Zimbabwe in recent years. Here they call it political and the perpetrators get away it but behind that Emperors cloak it is plain and simple criminality and everyone knows it. It doesn’t matter where it is happening, who the victims are or why; the adjectives and emotions are the same: selfish, senseless, barbaric.

For the first time in eleven years we got a taste of how it must have felt for our family and friends outside the country. To watch from afar and to feel so helpless. Our hearts go out to people who have had their property destroyed and burnt, their assets looted and their homes lost. We know how you feel, we empathise and hope that justice and compensation will be swift.

For eleven years we’ve been waiting for justice and compensation but they have not come and it continues to be a festering wound in our nation. As a country we cannot heal while people who looted, raped, tortured, murdered and burnt still walk free amongst us. We know who they are, what they look like and even where they live but the Police say ‘it is political’ and they do nothing. How different Zimbabwe could be if the perpetrators of crimes were held accountable and punished for their actions. And so, while the squirrels scamper overhead and winter draws to an end, we watch, we wait and always we hope. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

I am writing this letter in recognition of the life of a young man.

I first met him when he was just a few months old. Warm and safe he was snuggled up against his mother’s back, held tightly in place with a warm, bright wrap. He didn’t wake up when I stroked his fat little cheek, but his mother glowed with pride. The next time I saw the baby he was a chubby little toddler, perhaps nineteen months old. Giggling and chuckling he was into everything and trustingly took my hand when I held it out to him, his sticky little fingers dwarfed in mine

Then came those glorious years before life gets serious, before school and learning starts and when the world is a child’s playground. How clearly I remember the adventures that little boy and his friends had. Riding in the back of the truck when we went to put food out for sheep and cattle; jogging around in the back of the ox drawn cart when we were bringing poles and firewood back from the timber plantations; catching tadpoles and crabs in the shallow water of the stream; running with leafy sticks herding cattle from one paddock to another. The treat of the day was a sweet, sticky bun and a frozen cold drink to suck noisily from a plastic tube. Lying on the carpet watching cartoons on TV, playing with dinky cars in the sand, digging tunnels and climbing trees.

Then came school and it wasn’t easy. Conditions were tough, education was primitive, equipment and facilities almost non existent. Throughout the boy’s school years I followed his progress, helping his parents with school uniforms, shoes, books, pens, pencils and crayons and the never ending school fees. Later came sports kit, exam fees and more pens, books and calculators and then he was a teenager.

I last saw the young man about five months ago. He strode up to greet me, his eyes shining and face beaming in smiles. His huge hand shook mine, my fingers dwarfed in his. His mother watched the meeting, her face glowing with pride, just as it had when she first showed me her baby nineteen years ago. The young man and I laughed and chatted and the pride of his parents was palpable. We parted on such happy terms, smiling and waving; a picture that will stay in mind always.

On a cool and still evening this week, I stood outside looking out over the African bush. The sun had gone and a bronze glow lay on the horizon. A bat flitted in and out of sight, catching invisible insects. A call came on my cell phone and tears ran down my face as I listened to the tragic news of the violent end that had come to the young man. In the background I could hear the mourners gathering: singing, clapping, drumming, wailing

This letter is for Howard, in recognition and memory. May his soul rest in peace. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy 

Dear Family and Friends,

This week I asked a friend who had returned to the country after living in the diaspora for a couple of years if she was still glad to be home. She replied: “I have had absolutely no regrets about returning to Zimbabwe, it’s the best thing I have done for a long time (though I am sure that not everyone thinks that!)” 

I first met Meryl Harrison six years ago, just when she was preparing to leave Zimbabwe. Meryl had risked her life time and time again rescuing the thousands of animals stranded on invaded farms and stuck in the middle of Zimbabwe’s mayhem. Meryl’s courage and bravery then put most of us to shame and we watched in awe at what one totally determined and dedicated woman could achieve.

Leaving Zimbabwe wasn’t what Meryl wanted to do but was something that a quarter of our population had to do, for all sorts of reasons, as the country collapsed into economic and political mayhem. Coming back to Zimbabwe is a huge decision but for Meryl it was right as it gave her back the ability to really make a difference.

Meryl told me this week about a dog called Miss Muffet, the reason her return to Zimbabwe might not be such a popular move.

Miss Muffet was a three month old Labrador puppy, axed to death one night in late February. She was one of three dogs sleeping in the garage of a house in Penhalonga during an invasion of the farm by a mob of 21. Sleeping alongside Miss Muffet at the time were a female Rottweiler which was stabbed in the spine, and a male Labrador which was axed three times in the head by the invaders.

Meryl got involved in her capacity with a private animal welfare organization (VAWZ) and she was determined to see justice. Thanks to swift action and skilled expertise of a vet in Mutare, the Rottweiler and adult Labrador were saved. Tragically for Miss Muffet, it was too late for intervention.

From that point on everything about this familiar and tragic story was different.

Meryl described how the Police in Penhalonga acted very swiftly and arrested the invaders. They said the accused were to be charged with Public Violence but Meryl and her colleagues weren’t satisfied. A long meeting followed and it was eventually agreed that the accused would also be charged under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Then followed eight court appearances, four subpoenas and hundreds of kilometres of travelling between Harare and Mutare. In the VAWZ docket for the court, Meryl included a photograph of a 3 month old Labrador puppy. She told me she did this: “so that the Magistrate could see that the puppy would have been absolutely no threat to anyone - at that age, they think the whole world is their friend!”

The case finally went to trial a couple of weeks ago and nine of the twenty accused, who were the main perpetrators of the attack on the dogs, pleaded guilty. In mitigation the accused apologized for killing the puppy and offered to replace it. They were sentenced to 18 months in prison, 1 year of which was suspended and the remaining 6 months made up of each being given 140 hours of community service.

For Meryl, seeing justice being done for Miss Muffet, a Rottweiler and a Labrador makes all the effort, frustration and grit worthwhile. There are many people, like Meryl, and many organisations, like VAWZ, working tirelessly out of the spotlight, to bring Zimbabwe back from darkness. In them is our hope. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

The view from Zimbabwe’s window is gorgeous at the moment. The bush is gold and bronze and many of the deciduous trees have started shaking off their dusty old leaves as they prepare for a new season. Spectacular sunbirds give flashes of crimson and emerald as they flick in and out of the flowering aloes and succulents which have given us a spectacular show this winter. It’s always such a treat to see the vast range of delicate pink and purple bells, bright yellow spikes and blazing orange and red flowers emerging from these thorny, prickly plants.   

The Paperbark Acacia trees are crowded with pods at the moment and it takes just a glimpse to transport me back to the time before farm invasions, war veterans and greedy, ugly politics ravaged our country. A time just eleven years ago when Zimbabwe was prosperous, peaceful and so very productive. The pods on the Acacia trees remind me of the time when my then young son and I would gather them up by the sack load around our farm; lay them in the sun to dry and then mix them in with the winter feed for the sheep and cattle.

Another sight that always brings back memories is a huge Fig tree growing on the roadside of a main highway. The trunk and branches are covered in thick clusters of figs. They are green and clinging on at the moment but in the next few weeks will turn orange and red and start covering the ground in heady, fermenting carpets. This too reminds me of winter afternoons on the farm. Followed by a straggle of dusty, barefoot kids we would go out to collect wild figs and fill bags with the intoxicating sticky fruits. The kids, of course, would soon get bored and scamper off with home made bows and arrows, reluctantly emerging when it was time to head home. The figs were another natural bounty to add to the winter feed mixture, relished by all the livestock. The gathering of the fruits was a task not without hazards as the figs were always smothered in ants.

Happy memories were banished when suddenly a line of vehicles stopped on the road ahead bought me back to the present. It’s yet another police roadblock and this time they are obviously looking for something as everyone is being stopped. Three or four police stand in the highway questioning drivers while a few metres off the road other police stand, rifles in their hands and hanging from their shoulders. After a cursory glance at the drivers licence, the policeman asks:

‘Any firearms on you?’

No, was the answer.

‘What about behind the seat? Any weapons there?’

Again: no.  

‘In the glove compartment?’ the policeman asks, indicating that it must be opened so he can look inside.

Cars have to open their boots and covered freight is looked at. You don’t ask what’s going on, just quietly, unquestioningly, comply.

For a moment a conversation from a few years ago suddenly came into my mind. I met a woman who had returned to Zimbabwe for a visit. She had left the country in the mid 2000’s when political violence was raging. She had gone to New Zealand and when I asked her if she had any regrets, she said the best thing was that her children had learnt to trust police and not be scared of them. I fear Zimbabwe is still a very long way away from that.

I end this week with a message of condolence for people in Norway engulfed in the horror of bombs in Oslo and mass murder in Utoya. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

You can get very dizzy trying to follow Zimbabwe’s progress towards the next election. This week provided a prime example of our endlessly spinning circles. Just when it looked as if everyone including SADC, Zanu PF and the MDC had come to an agreement about an election being held in the second half of 2012, Zanu PF held a politburo meeting in Harare. Behaving as they have for the past 31 years and ignoring the fact that they are in a coalition government, they made a decision for the whole country. Wide eyed and open mouthed we listened with disbelief to the news headlines mid week. Zanu PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo emerged from the politburo meeting and said:

"The politburo is unanimous that elections should be held this year." 

‘Gobsmacked’ is a pretty good description of how we reacted to Gumbo’s ‘unanimous’ announcement. Political Science lecturer John Makumbe put his finger on it for anyone who might be confused:

“They are clearly living in the past and are refusing to realise that they are no longer the ruling party. Now there is an inclusive government and they are part of a three-legged pot, so it’s no longer the politburo which runs the country.”

Not to be deterred, the best was yet to come. Speaking to the Zanu PF Central Committee a couple of days later, Mr Mugabe said: "Having joined government and tasted the warm sweetness of power, the MDC formations no longer want elections. They want elections suspended indefinitely and their governorship extended to infinite." Coming from someone in power for 31 years that was rich!

As absurd as all the rhetoric and politburo’s unilateral decisions are, events on the ground are already telling the real story of what’s going on in Zimbabwe.

Later in the week, chatting with a man who lives in a rural village, a lot of things started to make sense. Whether elections are held in 2011 or 2012, Zanu PF are readying their game plan. The man described how their quiet lives were being repeatedly disrupted by groups of Zanu PF youths.  It started a couple of weeks ago when Zanu PF officials arrived and all the residents in the village were called to attend a meeting. Democracy doesn’t work at this level: attendance at the meeting was compulsory in that the names of who was present and who was absent were written down. The intimidation has begun. At the meeting it was the same old same old: the same tired slogans and chants; the same clenched fists, the same rhetoric, the same demand: vote for Zanu PF. Nothing new to offer their voters then! 

A fortnight later they were back.  Without warning ten Zanu PF youths arrived, split up into three groups and went door to door, house to house through the village. They called people to come out and said they knew who the MDC sympathisers and supporters were; they said they were writing names down.

“You know what will happen to you if you vote MDC again,’ they said.

And all this when an election is probably still a year away. We shudder to think what lies ahead for Zimbabwe, particularly for the most vulnerable people in remote rural villages. Only one thing will be different this time round and that is the floodtide of technology.  From bustling urban to remote rural, almost everyone’s got a mobile phone now so the news of every threatening visitation spreads like wildfire in the pinging of thousands of text messages. Bravo Econet, you are the fourth vital ingredient in the three legged black pot! Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Winter crept in under the door this week, just when we thought it had
forgotten us. In twenty four hours the day time temperature plummeted from
the mid twenties to a bitter seven degrees Celsius and Zimbabwe shivered. As
the mist and wind swept in and swallowed my neighbourhood, the electricity
went off and plunged us into the cold and dark.

In my home town the electricity supplier, ZESA, said it was load shedding
when we phoned, even when we told them it was a fault. The problem was a
main overhead power cable which had woken the whole neighbourhood when it
broke at around five in the morning. Crackling, banging, flaring and
sparking, the cable had snapped in two places and then fell along and across
a small suburban road. It took a telephone cable down with it and finally
came to a rest on a neighbour's steel gate. What a mess it was and extremely
dangerous. After repeated calls to ZESA telling them there was a live cable
lying on a man's gate and along a few hundred metres of suburban road, they
finally arrived three hours later, at 8.30 in the morning. By lunch time the
cable was still lying across the tar road and ZESA had left a team of tree
cutters to remove branches that were touching the overhead cables. The usual
absurd and extremely frustrating conversation between residents and ZESA
workers wasn't long in coming.

'Why don't you come any do any maintenance on these lines anymore," we
asked.

'Aaah, we don't have money,' was the reply.

'But if you came and trimmed the trees every year, like you used to, the
cables wouldn't get weakened and break and it wouldn't lead to such
expensive repairs.'

There was no reply. It's been at least six years since ZESA have gone around
my neighbourhood clearing vegetation and brush from around their poles and
transformers or trimmed tree branches growing too close to the lines.
Someone pointed to the shoulder high dry grass and scrubby bush growing
right up to the ZESA switching box. Last year a bush fire in exactly this
spot had caused an explosion in the box, the melted green paint proof of the
near tragedy that we had all rushed to avert, extinguishing flames with
branches and sacks.

Just a few metres away the branches of a large eucalyptus tree blowing and
swaying in between the overhead power cables were easily visible.

'While you've got the workers and the ladders here, will you at least trim
the eucalyptus branches,' we asked.  

'Another time,' came the reply. It's exactly the same response they gave us
when we made the same request about the same tree a year ago.

That response was about as comforting as the mid year statement made by the
Chairman of the Zimbabwe Power Company a few days ago. Mr Maasdorp said :
"the only way to compensate for a sub-economic tariff is to cut back on
maintenance and ongoing refurbishment. This is clearly not sustainable and
if the situation is not addressed urgently, the lights you have from time to
time today will go out tomorrow!"

Not mentioned in the Chairman's public mid year statement was the recent
report in The Zimbabwean newspaper that farmers on seized farms owed ZESA
eighty million US dollars in unpaid bills and wanted government to give them
more financial support. While they're at it, I'm sure a couple of million
urban residents won't mind government paying their electricity bills either!

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Coming back to Zimbabwe after a month away is a huge shock to the system.  Conditions in our third world country can probably best be described as surreal, and that’s being polite! The strangeness of the experience starts before you even set foot in the country. Sitting in an international airport looking down the list of departures for destinations all over Africa, your eyes are drawn to the word ‘cancelled’ and your heart goes into your mouth. You look back across the line and are not surprised to see that it’s Air Zimbabwe flights that are cancelled. Our national airline is still on its knees, a litany of excuses continuing to humiliate us with the word ‘cancelled’ on airport departure boards around the world. It could be any number of reasons today: unpaid fuel bills, unpaid staff, striking air crew.

Arriving at Harare International Airport, the contrast with the service you’ve just left behind in the first world is dramatic. Bored  surly and unwelcoming Immigration Officials do not greet you or smile at you; they scowl as they thumb through your passport leaving you feeling as if you should turn round and go away again. In the ladies toilets only one of the door latches on the row of stalls closes; there is no soap in the dispenser and a huge plastic barrel of water stands in the corner, uncovered and exposed to a myriad of germs.

Encountering two police roadblocks in the first ten kilometres from the airport is the surest sign that you are back in Zimbabwe. What do they want? What are they looking for at their incessant roadblocks? It takes just a few minutes to be reminded that these officials have perfected the art of making everyone feel as if they are a criminal. With pity you look at the crowd of commuter omnibuses that are inevitably pulled over at every roadblock. Their passengers tired, thirsty and frustrated as time and again the vehicles are stopped by the police and the drivers have to hand over money.

Out of the long grass on the roadside four school children wearing bright purple uniforms and white shirts emerge. They look to be eight or nine year olds and on their backs they wear little school satchels but this is not their only load to bear. Each child carries a large bundle of sticks and branches balanced on their heads: firewood for their Mum’s to cook supper with. Wood for the fire which will be their buffer against the freezing winter nights and provide the flickering light by which they will do their homework.

After iPods and iPads, trains, buses and aeroplanes, computers, laptops and broadband – this contrast is so dramatic that it leaves you wide- eyed and deeply shocked at just how far behind the world Zimbabwe has fallen.

Arriving home the potholes and gullies on the suburban roads are deeper than ever and there is no water and no electricity in the house. An African Hoopoe stabs the browning grass for the last insects of the day, calling its mate again and again: “Whoop–whoop, whoop-whoop.” The sun turns blood red as it sinks into the dust smothered horizon and for a moment the absurdity and abnormality is banished, because this is home.  Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Something we have become grudgingly used to in Zimbabwe is the knowledge is that in all our cities, towns, villages and neighbourhoods are the perpetrators of bloody crimes and brutal human rights abuses. Up to three decades after they murdered, raped, burnt and tortured, in the name of their political masters, they have gone unpunished and continue to walk brazenly amongst us.

Speaking in Plumtree a few days ago, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai made a dramatic statement on political violence. He said: “My hands are very clean and my conscience is clear. I did not kill anyone during Gukurahundi. I did not kill anyone during Operation Murambatsvina and I did not kill anyone during the 2008 Presidential elections run-off. I challenge Mugabe to come out in public and say the same.”

At the time of writing there has been no response to the Prime Minister’s challenge. What there has been, however, is renewed attention on a member of the CIO, who continues to live in the peace and safety of Wales in the UK. Despite admitting that he had kidnapped dozens of MDC activists and, in his own words, done things to them that :”are too gruesome to recount,” the 47 year old Zimbabwean former spy has been living in asylum in the UK. Phillip Machemedze also admitted in a UK court to rubbing salt into the wounds of a female MDC member before she was taken to an underground cell, stripped and whipped. He admitted electrocuting, slapping, beating and punching a white farmer who was suspected of giving money to the MDC. Despite all of this a Judge in Newport, South Wales, said that Machemedze will not be deported from the UK because his life would be in danger if he came back to Zimbabwe. When an attempt to appeal the ruling was made, a senior immigration judge said in part: “Whatever is felt about Philip Machemedze and his actions, the UK cannot return him to face death or inhuman or degrading treatment ….”

“Death or inhuman or degrading treatment” are just words to a judge. To the relations and survivors of a massacre in Matabeleand in the early 1980’s, they are words describing the slaughter of twenty five thousand men, women, children and babies. To those of us living here, the judges words are experiences that the vast majority of Zimbabweans have encountered again and again in the last decade. We’ve seen our friends beaten and detained, our parents and grandparents destitute and suicidal; our children out of school and our professionals crawling under border fences to survive. We’ve lost our homes and businesses, put our children to bed hungry and been to so many funerals we’ve lost count.

The UK rulings protecting CIO operative Machemedze are apparently because he supplied information about his colleagues. But we are left wondering if the  Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic supplies information about his colleagues will he too be granted asylum in Newport, South Wales?

I will be taking a short break for a while but in the meantime please keep watching Zimbabwe and supporting the efforts of the ordinary, hard working people who make our country great. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear  Family and Friends,

I met a young man back from the diaspora this week and as we talked I knew that if our country’s oppression and economic collapse had done anything good for Zimbabwe, it was this. After some years of living outside the country he had come home full of enthusiasm, patriotism and innovative ideas. Already working to develop a business and improve his neighbourhood, his creative attitude was like a breath of fresh air.  He had seen how democracy works, seen how things should be done and wanted to reproduce that way of life here. I asked him why he had chosen now to return to Zimbabwe. A time when the struggle for political power was intensifying, a time when another bloody and violent election seemed inevitable.

“Zimbabwe isn’t about Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai,” he said, “it’s about you and me; it’s about us, the people.”

The next day this train of thought was reinforced when I received a newsletter from the Friends of Hwange Trust. Thanks to an innovative idea and the determination of a group of people who were not going to give up, a solar system has been installed at a watering point in the Hwange National Park. A truck and crane were needed to move the specially designed stand for the solar panel which will run the water pump at Kennedy 2 pan, A mammoth task that has been years in the making to provide what the Trust describe as: “an adequate, environmentally friendly source of water for the animals that drink there.”

Later in the week I got a message from a friend in Harare who is an astronomer. He described a viewing he had just made of the International Space Station passing through the belt of Orion and then of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Mike wrote: “the event took place only 22 degrees above the horizon, and there was a Full Moon to contend with. The International Space Station came along right on schedule...very bright...so I tracked back along its apparent path with binoculars, and about 90 seconds later, Endeavour popped out from behind the tree-line! It was easy to see in binoculars… I was able to follow it for about 3 minutes before it followed the station into the Earth’s shadow.” Mike ended his message by saying what a privilege it had been to see the last ever flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. What a fantastic experience this was, and seen from the skies of Zimbabwe by a born and bred Zimbabwean who knew where, when and what to look for and then took the time to share his observation.

So, despite the news of yet more disappointment from the latest SADC meeting in Namibia and the absurd detention of top lawyers and a journalist in Windhoek, ordinary Zimbabweans continue to look for and achieve the good. If only the politicians would stop scrabbling for power and look to the people, how great we could again be.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Walking out in the early mornings there are two things you can almost guarantee this winter. One is the delicate, rosy-pink glow at sunrise, announced by the voices of scores of roosters all over the neighbourhood. The other is the thin blue spirals of wood smoke that rise from cooking fires in all directions and fill the dawn air.

Yet again winter has bought gruelling power cuts back to Zimbabwe making marathons out of the smallest of chores. It’s always the Mum’s that carry the heaviest burden and you don’t have to go far to see the proof. Looking out of a small prefabricated wooden cabin I caught a glimpse of a young teenage girl and her Mum one morning this week. It was a cold morning and a thick blanket of white mist was lying in the nearby vlei and across the grassland, waiting to be dissolved by the sun. Through the open door of the cabin I could see that the place was full of smoke and Mum was bending into the flames stirring the contents of a pot. The door and walls of the cabin were covered in black soot and the girl emerged from the smoke to pick up a few branches of firewood that were stacked in a pile outside. It was a little after six in the morning but already the girl was dressed for school, a bright green uniform, brown shoes and a thin green jersey. After breakfast, cooked on a smoky little fire eaten in a smoke filled room, she would set out on her walk to school and later, when she got home, she would undoubtedly have to go and help her Mum collect more firewood and carry it home.

Every afternoon lines of women and girls trudge out of the bush with huge piles of sticks and branches on their heads, balanced on a small cloth ring. It’s not from choice they do this but from necessity. From little wooden cabins to big brick houses and blocks of high density flats – all have the same struggle with cooking food and heating water. Visiting a friend in an upmarket Clinic in Harare this week, I noticed a sign stuck onto the silver doors of the lift. “Due to erratic power supply, we advise you not to use the lifts to avoid the risk of getting stuck.”

When a couple of thousand women in Bulawayo tried to protest to electricity supplier ZESA , they were met with a brutal response from riot police. WOZA estimated that 40 women, unarmed and singing, were beaten by riot police when they tried to present a yellow card (a football warning) to ZESA and tell them to improve their services. WOZA were asking for fair load shedding, an end to 18 power cuts, transparent billing and pre-paid meters. ‘ No more luxury cars, we need transformers ‘ they said. Undaunted by the truncheons of police whose wives, mothers and daughters also go out and collect firewood and cook over smoky fires, WOZA have promised to continue their campaign until their demands are met. The main one being: “ZERO service, ZERO bill.” A slogan that could as well apply to any number of other parastatals and municipal councils around the country.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy. 

Dear Family and Friends,
Travelling to a small country town on a cold and wintery morning this week, my eyes were drawn to a shimmering silver trail running down the smooth, black boulders of a rocky mountainside. Glistening and gleaming on the boulders, I knew the water trail wouldn’t be here for much longer. The last puddles and pools of rain water are now trickling away and disappearing underground, signalling the start of our long dry season.  Flying low overhead was a stunning Auger Buzzard, white wings edged with black, a long stick hanging from its beak. It’s nearly nesting time and the Buzzard had obviously found its spot on a cliff ledge nearby. In the valley below lay a breathtaking panorama of open woodland and bronze grassland; some of the aloes have started flowering providing a breathtaking portrait of the African bush.

But everything is not as peaceful as it seems because, alongside the beauty of this magnificent time of year, is the grim reality that now is the time Zimbabwe’s wildlife species are most at risk. The end of the rainy season; drying up of small water pools and bronzing of the tall green summer grass, forces animals out into the open and makes them easy targets for poachers. Johnny Rodrigues of the Zimbabwe Conservation task Force calls the coming months our “peak poaching season” and recently sent out the most horrific report on rhino poaching in Zimbabwe’s Save Valley Conservancy.

Game Scouts had reported seeing a severely wounded black rhino and when Rangers located the animal they found a gruesome, horrific sight. The rhino had been shot several times by poachers who had then hacked the horn off the animal’s face and left the poor creature for dead. But it wasn’t dead and the rhino was found wandering around with an enormous open wound and obviously in extreme distress.

In situations like this, immediate action is needed, sometimes to save the animal, other times to provide a merciful release. Vets, transport, fuel, drugs, tranquilizers – all are needed in a hurry. After a decade of turmoil in which almost all government departments have been ravaged by economic collapse, paralyzed by the exodus of skilled and professional staff and suffocated by political interference, a few dedicated people and NGO’s have been left saving our wildlife.

Johnny Rodrigues and his wife Cheryl have been doing superb work in this regard.  For the last decade they have been travelling to the remotest of places to see, record and intervene in the plight facing Zimbabwe’s wildlife. They mobilise resources and specialists to save as many animals as they can. This might be in the form of animal feed, veterinary supplies, tools, water pumps or just a few bags of milk powder to save an orphaned baby animal.

Johnny is passionate about conservation and not afraid to expose the big players behind the gruesome poaching syndicates which are decimating Zimbabwe’s big game species including lion, elephant and rhino.

Johnny and Cheryl sent me a list of supplies desperately needed to get them through the “peak poaching season.” Its not your average shopping list and reads as follows: “We need M99 as a priority but are also trying to raise funds for veterinary supplies for the guys in the field who are doing the snare removals. These are: Antiseptic powder; Wash; Creams; Bandages; Wire cutters; Bolt cutters; Dart gun; hypodermic needles; Scalpels and anti inflammatories.”

If you want an example of people working tirelessly behind the scenes and ‘giving back” to Zimbabwe, Johnny and Cheryl Rodrigues and their Conservation Task Force are it! If you would like to help them save animals this season or just be on their mailing list, drop them a line at galorand@mweb.co.zw

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

In the middle of the day when you couldn’t find a news channel that wasn’t covering the royal wedding, ZBC TV were dishing out the same old same old. The daily dose of propaganda jingles praising Zanu PF and Mr Mugabe followed by an assortment of political lectures and finger pointing which is thinly disguised as news reports. While the Royal couple stood at the altar and exchanged vows we were being told that Zimbabwe is a sovereign state and capable of running its own affairs.  Then came a peculiar and ironic lecture from a senior Zanu PF official telling us not to belittle the efforts of SADC and to stop using the media to perpetrate hate speech.

While an antique horse drawn carriage carried the newly married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace, ZBC TV were still ignoring the event.  The real irony in ZBC TV’s non existent coverage of the British Royal Wedding, was the fact that Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to the UK, Gabriel Machinga, was on the official guest list to attend the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. It was a controversial invitation and one British newspaper, the Daily Mail, had described Machinga as a servant of President Robert Mugabe’s “murderous and kleptocratic regime.”

At the end of the day when the worlds news channels were replaying highlights of the Royal Wedding, ZBC TV were still showing the finger in what was obviously a deliberate snub. The evening news bulletin carried repeats of all their midday reports as well as politburo member Simon Khaya Moyo paying tribute to China on celebrating the 90^th anniversary of communism. And then, like a jug of iced water and with an undeniably smug look on her face the news reader told Zimbabwe about the British Royal wedding in a sort of “Oh, by the way” tone of voice. Thirty minutes into the main news bulletin of the day and in a single sentence unaccompanied by either film clip or still photograph, the announcer said Prince William and Kate Middleton had got married. Without drawing breath, the news reader then turned to her colleague and said: “and now for business news we cross to…”

So Zimbabwe won’t remember the Royal Wedding of the 29^th April 2011 even though Britain gives us multiple millions of pounds in aid every year. In fact just two months ago in February, the UK said they were considering increasing aid to Zimbabwe to more than a £100 million a year, as a ‘reward’ for democratic reforms. It was a very controversial proposal which  political analyst Professor John Makumbe summed up beautifully when he said: “Even if they did get the money, you and I both know that ZANU PF are the kind to take the money and still beat you over the head.”

Zimbabwe will remember the 29^th April as one of those strange days when heavy, unexpected, unseasonal rain came sweeping in and sent people running. Not running in, but running out, into the rain to try and cover their newly harvested maize cobs lying out in the open to dry.  We well also remember the 29^th April as the day when Zanu PF finally stopped threatening us with elections which they said were coming before the end of the year. Finally the state controlled Herald newspaper ran headlines that there won’t be an election in 2011 after all and Zanu PF politburo member Patrick Chinamasa said he thought Zimbabwe wouldn’t be ready for an election until 2013. It remains to be seen if this dramatic climb down by Zanu PF will see a reduction in the wave of violence and an end to the widespread arrest of MDC officials.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy. 

Dear Family and Friends,

A day before the start of the long Easter weekend, I gave a friend a lift to his rural village. It was very slow going through the nearby town as huge queues of people were again trying to withdraw their April salaries from building societies and savings banks. It had been government pay day the day before but that had coincided with an extensive power cut. Every time the electricity goes off, the computers go blank and salary withdrawals come to a standstill – a bitter pill for people barely earning enough to survive on, made worse because it was the start of the Easter weekend. One startling image, hard to miss in the crowds and queues, was the large number of khaki police hats that could be seen right at the front of the masses – not to keep order but to withdraw their own pay.

At every intersection on the way out of town the roads were thronged with people trying to get lifts. The commuter minibuses were overflowing with passengers, packed in, sitting sideways, like sardines in tomato sauce, the roof racks loaded high with bags, furniture, bicycles and suitcases.

Before long, under a startling blue, cloudless sky, we were heading into the country. All along the road, for mile after mile, the grass stands higher than a man and it took a little while to understand why. There is nothing here to eat the grass anymore. The herds of beef cattle, dairy cows, sheep and goats that used to graze these commercial farms and crop the grass to ground level have long since gone to the abattoirs and not been replaced.

Every now and again, in the dips and rises of the road you catch a glimpse of a mud walled hut with a thatched roof. Nearby these primitive homes are little patches of stunted brown maize plants surrounded by an ocean of towering grassland. My friend and I talked about the yields from these little maize fields on the seized commercial farms; he says they will be lucky to have grown enough to support their families through the seven, long, dry months ahead. Not a chance there is surplus to help feed the country’s population. He tells me that in his village less than 10 of the 120 families resident there have been able to grow enough maize for their own needs this year. Many planted too late and their crops couldn’t stand up to the heavy rains. Most simply didn’t have the money to get enough fertilizer to boost their crops.

We pass mile after mile of dense grassland where all the fences have been stolen. We don’t see animals or people; we don’t see tractors or combine harvesters; we don’t see gangs of farm workers harvesting summer crops onto trailers or even walking in the lands. All the seized farms here are overgrown, barely utilized and all but deserted. A single monkey jumped out of a tree and ran across the road in front of my car and for a moment I felt like we were in a time warp, in a country that has gone back in time by a hundred years or more.

Arriving at my friend’s village the contrast was dramatic. The grass is shorter, chickens scratch around immaculately swept yards, goats and cows are out in the fields. There are warm handshakes all round, smiles and jokes and everyone willing to lend a hand with unloading and carrying. Everywhere you look you see people busy: harvesting their maize; fetching water, pushing wheelbarrows, tending vegetable gardens. On two sides the village is bounded by seized commercial farms but the villagers tell me they are not welcome on those farms. They cannot graze their cattle there, fetch water when their wells run dry, cut grass for thatching their houses or even gather firewood. “They share nothing with us” the villagers say as they look with contempt at the long grass and inactivity on the seized farms on their boundaries. “They have done nothing, those people, only wasted all these years.”

I end this week with a message of condolence for the family and friends of Rwisai Nyakauru, the 82 year old headman for Nyamaropa in Nyanga who died after being kicked and beaten by war veterans and Zanu PF youth and then spent 25 days in leg irons in police custody. May his soul rest in peace.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

As Zimbabwe arrives at its 31^st anniversary of Independence, the first pre-winter cold snap descended on many parts of the country. It came with thick grey clouds, an icy wind and slanting rain. In my home town, day time temperatures dropped from 25 to 14 degrees Centigrade in a visible plunge of the thermometer. Out came jerseys, socks and extra blankets and the knowledge that winter is drawing closer.

I would love to be able to write that 31 years of Independence have bought tranquillity and bountiful prosperity to Zimbabwe but sadly that is very far from the reality on the ground. But instead of doom and gloom, I paint you a simple picture of our beautiful country in the 31^st year of Independence from Britain.

Zimbabwe’s Independence heralds the time of year when the rain stops, the clouds disappear and we are left with big, bright blue skies stretching to all horizons. It’s the time of year when green, lush grass is replaced with golden fields and the views across open bush are of spectacular savannas and shimmering plains. In amongst the bronze grasses are startling patches of purple and red – the flowering seed heads of Natal grass. The roadside Cosmos flowers which have given us a gorgeous three month extravaganza of pink and white, are coming to an end, their seeds now being feasted on by birds fattening up for winter. Big, gaudy, blue headed lizards are back; scuttling up and down tree trunks in search of food and mates. The first of the termite trails of red soil have started rising up the tree trunks, a sure sign that the dry season has arrived.

Mid April is the time of thick, tall lengths of purple sugar cane for sale on the roadsides and enormous watermelons with dripping red flesh and a million shiny black seeds. It’s the time of year when the maize crop is drying and roadside plots are full of people gathering cobs or putting plants into triangular stooks for the final drying before harvesting begins. 

Independence time is the season when the days are getting shorter, the sunsets are bright orange and shiny copper and the night skies are a wondrous spectacle. It’s the perfect time of year for watching for shooting stars and for satellites tracing across the darkness. It’s also the time of year when the mosquitoes finally start to die down and let us sleep in peace.

This 31^st anniversary of Independence a Spotted Eagle Owl has taken to sitting on top of a street light outside my house in the evenings. Not long after the sun slips into the horizon, the owl arrives, gliding on silent wings to its perch overlooking the neighbourhood. The street light hasn’t worked for at least six years now, perhaps if it did I wouldn’t have the delight of owl spotting! The owl is a very handsome creature, sitting completely still as the last caramel glow of sunset fades from the sky and the bird becomes a silhouette in the twilight. A pair of nightjars with their new young fledgling, swirl and circle, snatching up the last of the day’s insects and the Owl sits unmoving, regal, watching over the countryside.

I end with a message of support for Father Mkandla, the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Hwange. The co-minister of National Healing and Reconciliation said that Father Mkandla was arrested on Wednesday evening at his home soon after a meeting at which he had delivered a powerful sermon on violence. This is the face of Zimbabwe, 31 years after Independence. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Zimbabweans began to take notice of Mike Campbell, his wife Angela and their son in law Ben Freeth in December 2007. Having exhausted their legal options in Zimbabwe, Mike Campbell tried to stop the seizure of his farm by going to the regional SADC Tribunal. Just before Christmas 2007 the SADC Tribunal ruled in their favour. The Tribunal set a hearing date for January and granted interim relief which: “orders that the Republic of Zimbabwe shall take no steps ... to evict from or interfere with the peaceful residence on and the beneficial use of the farm known as Mount Carmel."

Following the interim order, Ben Freeth wrote to JAG (Justice for Agriculture) and his words were invigorating to those of us farmers who had already lost everything, and challenging to those whose turn hadn’t yet come. In his first letter Ben wrote: “Sitting on the sidelines in secret "dialogue" simply will not do. It has failed.  It never had a chance of ever working.  The truth of this may hurt for some…”

The challenge came in his second letter where Ben wrote: “Do we continue to allow these injustices to continue so that we are then wiped off the land without trace; or do we try to stand for justice and the future of this country and indeed our future on this continent?”

A few months later, on the 30^th June 2008, a chilling email came telling of the abduction of Mike and Angela Campbell and Ben Freeth from their home on Mount Carmel Farm in Chegutu. It had happened two days after the presidential run off elections. The JAG message read:

“Mercifully, at midnight, Mike and Angela Campbell and Ben Freeth were released at a house of a black lady in Kadoma.  All three have been severely beaten.  Mike has serious concussion and a broken collar bone and fingers.  Angela has a broken arm, in two places. Ben has a badly swollen and totally closed eye and feet severely beaten…. The purpose for the brutal attack and vicious beating carried out at Pixton Mine (youth militia torture camp) was the forced compliance, under extreme duress, with the signing of a formal withdrawal of the Campbell Case from the SADC Tribunal.  The Campbells and Freeth were taken by ‘war vet’ Gilbert Moyo and approximately twenty thugs to the mine.  They were viciously beaten until they complied with the signing of a withdrawal of the case….”

On 28 November 2008, the SADC court delivered its ruling, with the five panel judges finding the land reform programme to be racist and in violation of international treaties and human rights. Justice Louis Mondhlane said that constitutional Amendment 17 put in place in 2005 to clear the way for compulsory acquisition of land in Zimbabwe had resulted in expropriation targeting only white farmers. “Its effects make it discriminatory because targeted agricultural land is owned by white farmers” Mondhlane said.

Zimbabwe refused to be bound by the SADC Tribunal ruling.

In 2009, Mike Campbell and his family left Mount Carmel farm after it was burnt down by so called ‘land invaders.’ A few weeks ago Mike Campbell launched yet another application to the SADC regional Tribunal. For the first time in legal history, all 15 leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community were cited as respondents.

Sadly Mike Campbell passed away this week but he will not be forgotten. His brave and determined fight for justice will always be remembered; he will not have been wiped off the land without a trace. One day, when Zimbabwe again respects property rights, we will have Mike Campbell to thank for showing us the way.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

They say that good things come in threes and despite all the bad news about Zimbabwe, a few flickering lights have given cause for hope recently.

A few days ago, good news came for a couple of hundred villagers living near a main highway, when a passing beer truck lost its load. Rounding a bend on the main road in the east of the country I came across an accident which must have happened just a few minutes before. A large truck loaded to its maximum height with crates of Chibuku beer had lost at least half of its cargo on the tarmac at the foot of a hill. The brown plastic beer containers, known here as Scuds, had rolled out of dozens of blue plastic crates and were lying all over the road. Many of the Scuds had burst and spilled their contents and the tarmac was running with beer, sticky pools of the thick, cloudy beer forming puddles in the steep eroded cut-offs on the edge of the tar. Some of the crates must have shattered on impact and shards of blue plastic decorated what was rapidly turning into a frenzy in front of my eyes. From out of the bush in all directions people came running: men, women and teenagers. They raced out into the road without even a glance for approaching traffic and feverishly gathered up undamaged Scuds and ran away with them. Some of the more adventurous people were cupping their hands and literally drinking from the beer puddles on the road, while others used tins and empty bottles to snatch a few mouthfuls. Stepping hard on my brakes to avoid hitting any of the manic beer collectors, I slowed as I passed the truck driver; the look in his eyes said it all: despair and a hopeless acceptance that he wouldn’t be able to save much of his cargo. Nearly four hours later, on my return journey, I was astonished to see the beer truck still stranded on the side of the highway. His now empty blue crates had been reloaded and tied down, watched by a sizeable crowd of very merry spectators. Four women came running out of the bush carrying empty twenty litre containers, heading for a spot under a tree where decanting of looted Scuds seemed to be taking place. A great roar of approval went up at their arrival from a crowd of a hundred or more people who stood, sat and danced in the long grass on the roadside. The unexpected party on the roadside made me think of other good news that has given us cause to smile and cheer recently. 

Very good news came for democracy in Zimbabwe when the MDC’s Lovemore Moyo was re-elected Speaker of the House of Assembly.  After being removed from a post he had held for two and a half years by a Supreme Court ruling because his original election had been procedurally flawed, Lovemore Moyo was again chosen by MP’s for the critically important position. The result came in at 105 votes to 93 and has left Zanu PF in an angry tizz as they hunt for which three of their own MP’s` had obviously voted for Lovemore Moyo. Speaking to his ZANU PF committee members a couple of days later, Mr Mugabe said about the mystery voters: “Let us correct ourselves…. They are wrong in being members of our party.”

The last piece of good news came at the end of the recent SADC meeting in Zambia. The summit's final communiqué read in part: “There must be an immediate end of violence, intimidation, hate speech, harassment, and any other form of action that contradicts the letter and spirit of the GPA." Back in Harare Mr Mugabe was quoted as saying in response to SADC: “We will not brook dictation from any source. We will resist interference from any source, even from our neighbours,”  

So SADC, will you be giving us reason for beer drinking on the roadside? Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

For the past fortnight Zimbabwe has been subjected to the most horrific images on ZBC television’s news bulletins. Every evening, during what is advertised as prime time, family viewing, ZBC TV have been showing film footage of hundreds of bodies being exhumed from a mine shaft in Mount Darwin. The same film clips are repeated in early morning bulletins, as children are getting ready for school, and again at lunch time; presenting images of such horror that it doesn’t bear thinking how these gruesome and gory sights are affecting young minds.  

The exhumations are not being carried out by the Ministry of Home Affairs, Department of Museums and Monuments, archaeologists, pathologists or other specialists. There don’t appear to be any independent witnesses, recorders or experts on hand. The Co- Home Affairs Minister, Kembo Mohadi was quoted in the press as saying: “My ministry is not in charge of the project and we are not part of it.” The Director of National Museums and Monuments said the same, resulting in much suspicion and political posturing.  The Co-minister involved in the country’s programme of National Healing really put his finger on the pulse when he said: “The truth must be told during this exercise, but how do you tell the truth when evidence has been exhumed and reburied without involving organisations like churches, the Organ of National Healing, civic society and other groups?”

The exhumations are being carried out by a group called The Fallen Heroes’ Trust whose co-ordinator is George Rutanhire, a member of the Zanu PF Politburo.

On television we do not see images of professionals and specialists carefully recovering the remains, instead we see men in blue overalls wearing gum boots and plastic gloves pushing and shoving bones into plastic bags. We do not see the recovered remains being carefully laid out for examination, investigation and scientific identification; instead we see great mounds of human remains, piled high on top of each other, partly covered with loose strips of plastic sheeting. We do not see ropes and barriers preventing members of the public from disturbing the site, instead we see people in their own clothes clambering in and out of the mine shaft to have a look. And then, horror of horrors, comes the report that schoolchildren, teachers and villagers in the area were forced to go down into the mine shaft to view the bodies close up. The trauma of what they have seen will surely haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Zanu PF say that the bodies in the mine shaft are the remains of people massacred by Rhodesian soldiers in the 1970’s. Eyebrows are raised for many reasons, one of which is that the film footage being shown by ZBC TV is of some corpses with hair still attached; bones still joined; clothes still intact. Journalists described a putrefying stench in the mine shaft; one reporter described fluid dripping from a body and there appear to be many flies buzzing around the exhumed remains. All this from bodies that have supposedly been underground for over three decades?

Perhaps worst of all is that this place of horror and tragedy has been turned into a prime Zanu PF propaganda venue. One after the other speakers are coming forward and castigating the  MDC for not visiting the site and condemning Rhodesians. Speeches criticizing and rebuking Prime Minister Tsvangirai are being made alongside mounds of human remains and we sit and watch in stunned silence at the crass insensitivity and obscenity of it all. Respect is sorely absent throughout this whole gruesome spectacle; respect for the dead, for their surviving relations and for millions of Zimbabwean children seeing such horror on television at breakfast, lunch and supper time. 

Until next time, love, cathy 

Dear Family and Friends,

A three word text message on my phone this week bought the news I had so hoped wasn’t going to come: “Owen is dead.”

The story of Owen is one that has been repeated a thousand times over in the last eleven years and yet it is not often talked or written about.

In the early 2000’s when Zanu PF supporters and war veterans were swarming over the country, grabbing farms and brutalizing MDC supporters, Owen had a good marketing job in Harare. To save money he stayed in a single room in a prefab house in a high density area while his wife and two children kept the family home in a rural village. At every opportunity Owen worked on their rural home; he replaced the roof, built a small extension to the house and invested in solar panels to enable lights at night, television and DVD’s to entertain the children. Owen was rightly proud of the home and life he was enriching for his family.

With every political drama, at each violent election and whenever human rights abuses were raging, Owen would phone every week for news of his family. He sent money, groceries and medicines. His precious salary kept his family alive and he always managed to scrape a few dollars together for his brother and sister in law and their children and other members of the extended family. Tragedy came often for Owen in the first four years of the new millennium. His mother and father passed away within a year of each other; then his brother died, then his niece.

In 2005 Owen lost his job, laid off when the company he worked for went to a four, and then a three - day week. The agricultural ingredients they needed for their products were no longer coming from the farms the war veterans had grabbed. All but a handful of employees kept their jobs, Owen was not one of them. He tried staying in town to look for other jobs  but then came Operation Murambatsvina and Owen’s home was demolished by the government bulldozers. Owen did what hundreds of thousands of others were forced to do that winter, he went to his home in the rural village. Within a few months he knew he had to find work; the needs of his family were too great: food, school fees, clothes, medicines. Owen went over the border and got work in South Africa. 

For the next six years Owen commuted backwards and forwards to South Africa: six months away, two weeks at home. Each time the Reserve Bank governor removed zeroes from the Zim dollar, Owen sent real money home to his family. When the Zimbabwe government ordered price controls and food vanished from the supermarket shelves, Owen sent groceries home. When Zimbabwe was literally starving to death in 2007 and 2008 Owen had a trusted courier who carried food into the country for him and he literally kept an extended family of 12 or more people alive.

Owen finally came home in late 2010. He said he was tired and wanted a rest. We could all see he was sick. By the time he agreed that he needed medical help, Owen couldn’t walk, his feet were burning, his legs were swollen and he had sores in his mouth and throat. For three weeks they struggled to save him but yesterday the message came: ‘Owen has died.’

This letter is for Owen and the millions who had no choice but to leave home and find work in the diaspora in order to keep their families and relations alive. What a sacrifice you have made; it will not be forgotten. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

As each new critic of events in Zimbabwe has spoken out over the last eleven years, the official government response has repeatedly been a barrage of insults followed by the instruction to people here to: “Look East.”

As I write this letter we are trying to look east but state run media are not helping.

Japan is east of Zimbabwe but, 6 hours after the horrific earthquake and Tsunami, our state run media were too busy criticising America and Europe to Look East themselves. Six hours after the earthquake, when all the international news channels were showing rolling film footage of a massive tsunami engulfing a Japanese coastal area and a giant black wave of silt, boats and cars swallowing fields and towns, ZBC TV were carrying headline news of Mr Mugabe’s statement on Libya.

“Libya is an African issue,” said Mr Mugabe. “Africa is for Africans and we took exception to interference by imperialist powers. We resent and absolutely reject interference into Libyan affairs from outside.”

Minute after minute I forced myself to watch the main evening news bulletin. Insults, propaganda and condemnation of the west went on and on until, thankfully, an hour later the news came to an end. The tragedy in Japan had not been mentioned at all.

24 hours after the earthquake in Japan the world began to hear of the extent of the tragedy. Two hundred thousand people in emergency shelters; a nuclear emergency from radiation leaks; over 700 dead and the number growing by the hour. Still ZBC news hadn’t looked east. They replayed the Libyan, Africa is for Africans’ story; they reported Mr Mugabe’s statements about the situation in the Ivory Coast and then followed endless insults and attacks by supposed analysts and experts. Attacks on US President Obama for America’s renewal of sanctions for another year and attacks by a procession of Zanu PF officials condemning sanctions against their leaders. Still there was no mention of the horrors unfolding in Japan. 50 countries had by then offered help to Japan meantime Zimbabwe hadn’t even mentioned that there had been an earthquake.

While the world watches Japan and tries to follow events in Libya and the Ivory Coast, all sorts of mayhem is underway in Zimbabwe. A growing number of senior MDC officials and civic activists are being arrested. Munyaradzi Gwisai and others remain in custody for watching videos of uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and this week the MDC Minister of Energy was arrested. Prime Minister Tsvangirai said the Energy Minister’s arrest was an attempt to obscure massive corruption. Wide eyed and open mouthed we received the news that the Speaker of the House of Assembly had his position nullified by the Supreme Court. The MDC Speaker, Lovemore Moyo, had held the position since August 2008 but now, 19 months later, the Supreme Court have ruled that Moyo’s election did not follow Parliamentary procedures. We now have no Speaker of Parliament and the independent newspapers are overflowing with reports of intimidation, violence, repression and political stalemates. One Editor writes that we are a country under siege again.

Recent events finally turned Prime Minister Tsvangirai back into the firebrand he used to be and he acknowledged that the unity government had irreconcilable differences. “We have come to a time when people with legendary patience like myself say enough is enough.”

Just words again? It remains to be seen.

I end with thoughts and support for the people of Japan. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

At 6 am in the morning, seven soldiers dressed in camouflage stood hitch hiking on the main highway leading to Harare. A few kilometres along the road another group were trying to flag down a lift. This was the day that Mr Mugabe and Zanu PF were holding their much advertised ‘Anti Sanctions Petition Campaign.’ The early morning was cool and overcast, the roadside grass dripping with dew, drenching strings of children as they cavorted along the road towards their schools. Smiling and waving, shiny-faced and innocent, they pushed and giggled, proud in their bottle green, navy blue, and deep purple uniforms.

On the outskirts of Harare there were three Police roadblocks within ten kilometres and an increasing number of soldiers sitting in the back of open pick up trucks. In the centre of Harare some shaven headed youths and a few newspaper vendors were wearing full size Zimbabwe flags strung around their necks and draped down their backs. And so the city braced for what was coming.

The first sign of what lay ahead came , as it always does, with shouting, whistling and banging. These are the Zanu PF  ‘youths’  calling people to come to the Zanu PF function. By 9 in the morning numerous big open trucks full of people were heading towards the venue. A 60 seater bus went past, filled to bursting with people even standing in the aisles. On the roof rack of the bus, sitting in fifteen lines of four, were another fifty or so people. These on the roof rack were the rabble rousers. Wearing the national flag wrapped around their heads and draped like towels round their shoulders, they whistled and shouted, banged their hands on the sides of the bus and waved their fists, the Zanu PF symbol.

A truck filled with white-robed Apostolic church members went past, forty to fifty women sitting on the floor of the truck, watched over by half a dozen shaven headed Church men, also wearing full length white robes. Sitting half in and half out of commuter minibus windows, youths wearing Zanu PF T shirts shouted for people to go to the Anti Sanctions rally. Mostly people did what they have become used to doing: they looked away and tried not to make eye contact.

“Down with Sanctions” the speakers at the rally shouted, clenched fists thrust over their heads. Down with, down with, down with – the same feverish, negative, chorusing that so personifies politics here. Mr Mugabe said there was a Hit List of Western companies he had instructed his Minister of Indigenisation to look into. Companies which include Old Mutual, Rio Tinto and BP. Barclays Bank and Standard Chartered Bank were singled out particularly by Mr Mugabe; he said they were on the Hit List of foreign owned companies to be investigated by Minister Kasukuwere.  

Two days later I popped into my local branch of Barclays Bank. They have installed new security doors since I was there a couple of weeks ago, a fascinating little coincidence considering the Indigenisation Hit List talk.  I thought I’d find the place full to bursting, with worried customers, but there was only one other non staff member in the bank on an otherwise busy Friday morning.  The Personal Banker on duty couldn’t answer any of my questions like: is my account going to be safe here, or, is there a chance you will close your branches in Zimbabwe?, Looking nervously over his shoulder, smiling even more nervously, he talked quickly and quietly:  the Hit List speech was the first time he’d heard about this, he said, they were as much in the dark as I was. I was worried about my account, he was worried about his job. I didn’t tell him that as a farmer I knew all about these Hit Lists and as a result was now a dispossessed farmer. The farm indigenisation Hit List left nearly three quarters of a million people who worked on the land without homes, jobs and pensions.  Three quarters of a million people of whom less than 10 thousand had white skin colour.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy. 5^th March 2011.  Copyright © Cathy Buckle. www.cathybuckle.com

For information on my new book “IMIRE”, about Norman Travers and Imire Game Park, or my other  books about Zimbabwe: “Innocent Victims,” African Tears,” “Beyond Tears;” and “History of the Mukuvisi Woodlands 1910-2010”, or to subscribe/unsubscribe to this letter, please visit my website or contact cbuckle@zol.co.zw

Dear Family and Friends,

On a stretch of road to the south east of the capital city of Harare I was extremely fortunate to witness an uprising recently. It wasn’t an uprising of people throwing off a dictator but an uprising of aerial attackers after a rain storm. It began in the early afternoon when the only visible sign of a possible onslaught was two wide bands of grey on a horizon perhaps 30 kilometres away. The closer I got, the wider the storms seemed to be, looking like dense grey smoke, until suddenly I was right in the middle of one. Big, heavy rain drops pounded down and soon turned into a torrential downpour. Visibility dropped to just a few metres, the temperature plummeted and the noise was deafening. In less than 10 minutes it was all over; the rain band moved leaving pools of water on the verges and clouds of steam rising off the tar.

Before long the view was again of tall golden grass, tips bent over, heavy with their new crop of seed. In amongst the grass the occasional glimpses of pink, purple and white Cosmos flowers. Flowers that will always remind me of the road to my farm where the pink and white extravaganza crowded the verges and were a delight to see, always lifting tired spirits after long days working out on the land. Funny, isn’t it, how a flower in the golden grass a decade later, can provide a flashback to another life: a time when our country was fat and flourishing, healthy and prosperous.

On my return journey a couple of hours after the rain storm, the steaming tar was dry, pools and puddles had disappeared and been replaced by a feeding frenzy, an aerial uprising. The rain storm had prompted millions of flying ants to emerge from underground and embark on their first and only flight. The attackers descended on them from every direction. Dozens of Falcons filled the skies. From trees and bushes they came in their scores and then hundreds to feast on the flying ants. From their perches on overhead electricity lines and pylons they plunged and plummeted on their prey, swooping and circling in so many hundreds they were impossible to distinguish individually or to estimate their number. For a moment it looked like the masses crowded and shouting for freedom in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya ! These birds, once called the Eastern Redfooted Kestrel, have now been reclassified and are known as Amur Falcons. Once a year, for just a few months, the Falcons come in their thousands to Harare where they roost in a gum tree plantation in Tafara, a high density suburb on the outskirts of Harare. Hard to believe that in one poor and overcrowded area of Harare between ten and thirty thousand Falcons stop and rest every year on their way back to Eastern Asia, Russia and China. To see the Amur Falcons rising off the pylons in their thousands is an uprising that must be seen to be believed.

After the rain storm had passed I again turned my attention to the people on the roadsides, looking for signs of another kind of uprising. After Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya, it’s hard not to look for the beginnings. We have all the ingredients needed: unemployment estimated to be over 90%, a civil service earning less than half amount of the poverty datum line, continual water and electricity shortages – if you can afford the services at all - and a very uneasy political situation. They say that an uprising takes a spark but so far it hasn’t ignited. 45 people arrested in Harare for watching videos of Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings remain in detention as I write and lawyers report that at least six have been beaten whilst under interrogation in custody. The spark hasn’t ignited yet in Nyanga where the MDC MP remains in detention and a witch hunt is underway in remote mountainous villages.  The MDC spokesman for the province, says three truck loads of Zanu PF youths were going house to house looking for MDC supporters and hundreds of villagers have fled into Mocambique, crossing the Gairezi river which runs along the border.

While this is happening people try to makes ends meet and women sit on the roadsides selling watermelons: enormous green gourds filled with dripping, sweet, crimson flesh – just the sight of them makes your mouth water! They’re also selling freshly lifted ground nuts and round  Nyimo beans, which when boiled in salted water are oh so more-ish ! Young men are on the roadsides too and the smell of roasting maize cobs, lined up against little fires tempt you with the taste of a country so tired and yet so resilient.

I close with messages of support and condolence for the families of so many hundreds of people who died trying to free Libya, Egypt and Tunisia and to the people of New Zealand whose lives and families have been torn apart in the earthquake. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy,

We have had two years of relative tranquillity under the uneasy governance of a combined MDC and Zanu PF regime but that is starting to change very rapidly. Since Christmas there has been a new wave of property invasions, including holiday cottages in Nyanga and Juliasdale, and weekend and tourist venues around Lake Chivero, including caravan parks, boating clubs and a well known bird sanctuary.

In the last month there have been almost daily reports of violence, intimidation, arson and arrests of senior figures in the MDC for obscure reasons. Some of these include the MDC M.P.’s for Zhombe and Nyanga North and MDC district chairpersons of Chivi district.

The only radio and television stations allowed to broadcast within the country are bombarding us with anti-MDC propaganda and this week, for the first time in a long time, a third of Short Wave Radio Africa’s evening news bulletin was jammed one night.

On a “man in the street” level, there are small signs starting to cause unease. It is becoming increasingly common to see trucks hugely overloaded with young men crowded into the back. Very often the trucks have no number plates or obscured number plates and it is very interesting to drive behind one of these vehicles and look at the faces of the young men: is that fear you can see in blood stained, tired eyes or is it alcohol and drugs? It is equally interesting is to see that these vehicles are never stopped at the numerous police roadblocks on our highways.

Increasingly the feeling is of the noose beginning to tighten and as it does we cannot help but look up, to the top of the continent and watch, and wonder.

The clarion call which started on the roof of Africa is spreading further and growing louder by the day. Leaders of Tunisia and then Egypt fell as their people finally insisted that they go. As I write Libyans are trying to free themselves from a man in power for 42 years. The call for change has spread into the Middle East and the people of Bahrain and Yemen have come out on the streets and say their leaders have been in power for too long and must go.

For those leaders prepared to listen, the message is loud and clear. Ten years in power is enough and these men who insist on staying in power for twenty, thirty and forty years are learning the hard way: in shame and without dignity.

Can this happen in Zimbabwe?  Many think it can’t. Tagged onto the bottom of an article of mine recently on a South African website were the comments that Zimbabweans are a: “pitiful, spineless people” and that” “Tunisia will never happen in Zimbabwe as people there are a bunch of yellow bellied losers.”

Others beg to differ and I end with the words of respected political science lecturer John Makombe who wrote: “Thank you Tunisia and Egypt for making us realize what is possible with people power. The day of the jackal is coming very fast.”

Yellow bellied losers or jackals? We’ll see. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear family and friends

China’s Foreign Minister arrived in Harare just three days after a bunch of Zanu PF youths went running through the streets of central Harare.  According to The Herald newspaper, these men were on a police approved demonstration against foreign businesses and traders and even had a police escort on their route. The demonstration was apparently supposed to be protesting what was called the “slow pace of indigenisation.” The protest which began at the Zanu PF Headquarters was headed by a group calling themselves Upfumi Kuvadiki and it soon turned very ugly. Apparently hijacked shortly before it neared its final destination, the protest against foreign businesses rapidly degenerated into a looting spree.

Shops were ransacked, glass display cabinets smashed, and thousands of dollars worth of goods snatched. Laptops, cell-phones and TV’s were some of the items which disappeared in the arms of the looters. It took just a few minutes of lawlessness to destroy peoples’ livelihoods – something we have become very familiar with in Zimbabwe since the year 2000.

In the days that followed the incident there was much finger pointing, accusing and blaming. Within 24 hours ZBC had fixed their gaze squarely upon the MDC and proceeded to fill their news bulletins with more and more far fetched stories, none of which were backed up by police statements.

The furore had hardly died down when China’s foreign minister arrived to discuss investment opportunities. Foreign investment after we’ve just had protests against foreign businesses – a pall of confusion clouded the capital city! Our  Economic Planning Minister said  that the Chinese were: “looking into mining development, that is exploration and exploitation, agriculture, infrastructure development and information communication technology.”

The air surrounding the Chinese visit was heavy, suffocating with irony. Just three days before we’ve had youngsters protesting against foreign owned businesses and now we’re talking about massive Chinese investment. Even more ironic was the mention, in passing, of Chinese interest in Zimbabwean agriculture. Coming after 10 years of taking farms away from born and raised Zimbabweans because they have white skins, how can we be looking at a Chinese role in our country’s agricultural future?

One answer came in The Zimbabwean newspaper which quoted a speech by the Minister of Youth Empowerment last week. Speaking In Marondera about a white Zimbabwean farmer who had his land seized but was now managing to make a success on a small piece of rented land, Minister Kasukuwere  said:“ New black farmers are struggling to utilize land productively while white commercial farmers are realizing high yields out of our land. Life should be made difficult for such white farmers.”

The irony of a Chinese investment visit in a week of mayhem was exposed in the Independent newspaper in the readers’ SMS hotline which said it all:

“Zimbabwe can never be a colony of the US or Britain but it can be a colony of China. Talk about double standards.”

“It is difficult to say which is not colonisation, the British way or the Chinese way …”

“Zimbabwe must now allow China to take us for a ride…”

“This is another form of colonisation…

The visit is over, the propaganda continues but I am left haunted by the words of one man whose shop was looted : “ How do I come back? I’ve been wiped clean.” His words echo those of so many who have lost everything in the last decade where ugly politics has left multiple thousands of casualties in its wake.  A new war has just started: on one side is foreign investment and on the other is indigenisation, empowerment, racism and xenophobia. Until next week, thanks for reading love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

All eyes are glued on developments to the far north of Zimbabwe. First in Tunisia and then in Egypt we have witnessed what happens when people finally reach the end of their patience with leaders who have been in power for too long.

In Tunisia Mr Ben Ali had been in power for 23 years and protesters said they’d had enough of corruption, nepotism and a leader and government out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. People complained of high unemployment, a lack of political reforms and impunity. Weeks of repeated protests by thousands of people in Tunis ended with President Ben Ali fleeing the country. The people called it the Jasmin Revolution and woke up to a new era in the country and a new chapter in their lives.

Hardly was the revolution in Tunisia over when protests erupted in Egypt. Multiple thousands of protesters took to the streets. They said the wall of fear had been broken and that they were inspired by what they had seen in Tunis. In Egypt the protesters were met by teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Running in alongside the protesters were secret police in plain clothes, wielding fists, boots and baton sticks. Egyptian protesters kept on coming, walls and walls of them: bold, chanting, determined and fearless. Egyptian protesters said they want freedom, jobs, an end to corruption and a change to genuine democracy. They kept pushing forward demanding an end to President Mubarak’s 30 year rule. A glimpse of a news clip from Egyptian state television caused a moment of déjà vu when the country’s leader was described as “the President of the country and commander in chief of the defence forces.”

Everything from the reasons for the uprisings, to the reaction by the authorities, is chillingly familiar to Zimbabwe. Tear gas, baton sticks and water cannons; boots, fists and rubber bullets – all are methods of control well known to Zimbabweans. Familiar too are the complaints of the protesters; in fact they are so similar that they may have been describing the situation in Zimbabwe. Leaders who have been in power for two and three decades, corruption, high unemployment, lack of political reforms and impunity are top of the list of protestors’ complaints.

While these dramatic events were going on in North Africa, President Mugabe was in Addis Ababa for an AU summit and

Prime Minister Tsvangirai was in Switzerland attending a global forum in Davos. Captured for a moment by a top BBC reporter, Mr Tsvangirai was asked a few pertinent questions and his answers left raised eyebrows:

What are your feelings about a free and fair election being possible he was asked. The Prime Minister replied that as long as the AU and SADC played their part then the “Zanu PF dirty tricks will be minimized.”

Asked about the 51% indigenisation of businesses, Mr Tsvangirai said changes had been made to the law, plans were being drawn up and that it was not a compulsory takeover but one of mutual agreement.

Asked about land reform and if farmers were going to be able to return to their properties to farm, Mr Tsvangirai said : “that is gone, we are past that.”

And, back at home while Tunisia and Egypt exploded, and while both President and Prime Minister were out of the country,

the independent press were full of shocking headlines. In the Zimbabwe Independent came reports headed: “Violence flares in Harare,” “MDC T can’t stop Zanu PF abuses,” “Elections – propaganda, lies and deception.”  From NewsDay came screaming  headlines: “70 000 government ghost workers exposed. Of 250,000 civil servants in Zimbabwe, the newspaper reported that a recent audit: “has revealed there are about 70,000 ghost workers.” These are apparently people on the payroll who “cannot be traced.” The US$ 14 million dollars paying ghosts every month is  being swept under the carpet when it could be used to support genuinely employed civil servants  who are continuing to pour out of the country in search of a living wage.

As I write this letter the situation in Egypt has not been resolved and what is being described as a “political tsunami” continues. Where to next?

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

There is a natural swimming pool on a cold mountain river in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands. At a spot where the Inyangombe River cavorts over an outcrop of smooth, weathered, brown rocks, the river settles briefly into a pool below the waterfalls. Sometime in the past, many decades ago, river sand was brought in and deposited on the banks, creating a perfect beach.  The water in the pool is clear and cold, the river base covered in smooth pebbles and when the wind blows in the branches of the overhanging trees and whispers in the pine needles, you can’t help but forget the absurdity of current affairs in Zimbabwe.

When a friend got a hole in the exhaust pipe of his car this week, a simple job turned into a marathon. A visit to a local garage, line the vehicle up, drive onto the ramp and then wait while the car is elevated a couple of metres off the ground and the repair is undertaken. No problem you say? Ah, but only as long as the electricity stays on! Twenty minutes into the job the electricity went off, the car was left stranded 2 metres off the ground. Closing time approached and my friend got anxious. “What about my car,” he asked?

“Nothing to do” the mechanic replied, “I’ve got no way of getting it down. It’ll have to stay there till tomorrow.”

“Haven’t you got a generator?” my friend asked, his wallet, ID and house keys were all locked inside the car which was hanging over his head. The generator wasn’t powerful enough to run the elevator ramp and so the workshop was closed up till the next morning.

Long before opening time my friend was back at the garage. The electricity had come on overnight when no one was around but had gone off again at 5 in the morning.

Close your eyes, can you hear the wind in the pine trees above the Inyangombe River, I thought to myself as I heard the story.

8 o’clock came, 9, 10 and then finally at 11 in the morning the electricity flickered back into life. A simple 15 minute job had taken 19 hours and the loss of business incurred by my friend and the garage owner another incalculable drain on our stone broke, impoverished country.

Every day brings to light another absurdity in Zimbabwe, never more so than now as talk of elections gains momentum. I could hardly believe news reports that a convicted rapist, the leader of an Apostolic Church, has just been released from prison 13 years early because he’s got high blood pressure. My own blood pressure soared at the news, particularly because this church man has long been an outspoken supporter and campaigner for Zanu PF. “High blood pressure!” still the words echo in my head as I close my eyes for a moment and listen for the hiss of the Inyangombe River tumbling over the rocks.

Then came the staggering news from the Zimbabwe Election Support Network who have been conducting research into the state of Zimbabwe’s voters role. One of their findings is that a third of the registered names on the voters roll are of dead people. They also say that 2,344 names belong to people aged between 100 and 110 and that 9 names  are of people apparently aged between 111 and 130 years. This in a country where life expectancy is less than 40 years, leaves us all in no doubt that without a new voters roll, change is certainly not coming to Zimbabwe anytime soon. Are you listening Mr Zuma, SADC and the AU?

Oh to sit on the beach alongside a clear, cool mountainous pool!

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

This Christmas I had the unique opportunity of seeing my own country through the eyes of friends and relations from overseas. It was a very strange experience, often sad and embarrassing, sometimes funny but always met with the statement: ‘only in Zimbabwe.”

My visitors wanted to see everything and so we hit the roads and the shops – not to buy but to look. Is anything made in Zimbabwe anymore, was the most frequently asked question as we looked at shelves crowded with South African food: everything from staples like sugar and flour, to biscuits, spreads and tins. Even the vendors in car parks are selling boxes of South African fruit. We have become a suburb of South Africa, an invasion met without complaint, so relieved that there is food on our shelves.

Within a day of my visitors’ arrival, the water went off. One day, two, three and never a drop coming out of taps. How do you cope like this, the visitors ask, as we line up buckets, basins and baths outside to catch rainwater and runoff. Later we stagger inside carrying the bounty from heaven to wash dishes, flush toilets and have a few precious litres left to work up a quick soapy lather and pour over our heads at the end of the day.

Christmas Day was spent at a once very popular garden restaurant for a meal that had been booked three months in advance. It was a family reunion with people from across borders and continents. The menu advertised traditional Christmas fayre but there was no electricity on the day and the food that arrived on our plates was strangely peculiar to say the least: Very old mutton masquerading as lamb, served with chips and cold cauliflower florets; Fried slabs of salty ham pretending to be roast beef, served with chips and cold cauliflower florets. The meal staggered on largely uneaten until desert came. Christmas pudding and mince pies were “off”, replaced by a suspiciously old, cold chunk of apple pie with a splurge of unidentifiable melted yellow liquid poured over the top.  The coffee, if that’s what it was, was indescribable.

How they did it remains a mystery, but electricity supplier ZESA managed to stay on almost continually over Christmas but soon after New Year came pay back time. Cuts lasting six, ten, fifteen hours at a time. Cold breakfast, lunch and supper. Cooking outside, fridges dripping, freezers defrosting, having to throw food away, How do you cope like this, the visitors ask, this is ridiculous, dangerous?

And on the nights when there was electricity, we suffered a few brief, embarrassing forays into ZBC television. Endless bottom waggling women singing their praises of Zanu PF and its leaders before news reports which are more like party political broadcasts. How can you bear it the visitors ask?

The highlight of the visit was a few days in the Eastern Highlands. Everyone noticed the endless police roadblocks, an average of one every 10 kilometres. You can’t block out the view of what were once hugely productive farms along the road which are now rapidly reverting to bush; no fences or workers or signs of production. A few scrappy little squares of weed- choked, ankle- high yellow maize standing alongside a couple of primitive mud walled huts, surrounded by vast derelict fields. At the cottage in the mountains the atmosphere was tense and on edge. The “war vets” were here just two days before demanding that the owners of the few remaining cottages hand over their keys and vacate. This is THEIR land the so called war vets say. These are THEIR cottages.

The natural beauty of Zimbabwe never failed to heal a wound, relieve the hurt, revive a broken heart. Spectacular rainy season skies which change in an instant from bright clear blue, to low, heavy purple clouds bringing torrential rain storms streaked with lightning, roaring with thunder.

Early in the morning the day before my visitors left, a slender mongoose ran across the garden and feasted on the scattered corpses of shiny brown flying ants lying amid a million abandoned wings. A Hammerkop dropped down to join the feasting and later a crested Lourie arrived, repeatedly chastising my visitors from the diaspora to “Go Away.”

And so, ten years after the start of the mayhem that drove family and friends into exile, they left saying everything has changed but nothing has changed.

I end with special thoughts for people in Australia, Indonesia and Brazil inundated with floods, mud and devastation. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

As Zimbabwe arrives at Christmas 2010 it is opportune to record what some of our leaders have been saying recently. Their words give insight into their thoughts and warnings as to where we may be heading in the 2011.

Speaking to delegates at the Zanu PF annual congress in Mutare, Mr Mugabe said it was time for revenge:

"Why should we continue having companies and organisations that are supported by Britain and America without hitting back? Time has come for us to revenge. ..We can read the riot act and say this is 51 percent we are taking and if the sanctions persist we are taking over 100 percent."

Speaking to the Zanu PF central committee Mr Mugabe said:

“ It is grossly disturbing to learn of the extent to which some of our people have gone towards literally giving back the land to white farmers, all for a pittance of the farm profits at the end of the season."

Speaking on International Human Rights Day, MDC Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said:

“We all know that soldiers, members of the police and CIO are being deployed in the rural areas to harass our parents. The army is not there to beat up and abuse people. It is there to protect them. … These are national security institutions which must not be abused. This must stop. When we go to elections it is not a declaration of war.”

Speaking about her powerlessness and frustration in tackling corruption, the MDC’s Co Home Affairs Minister, Theresa Makone said:

“There is a sense of impunity that pervades the whole government, because the people that ruled this country for the past three decades have not been able to arrest public officials, or to try to address the problem or bring justice to perpetrators of corruption”

And then came this little gem from the Zanu (PF)Bulawayo governor, Cain Mathema, who is apparently pushing for the exhumation of Cecil John Rhodes who was buried in the Matopos over a century ago in 1902. Mr Mathema said:

“I wonder why years after independence of Zimbabwe his grave is still found there.  We are going exhume it and send it to Britain where it belongs.  Right now we are failing to get rains because of Rhodes’ bones buried at Matopo Hills”

The last pertinent quote, and a suitable place to end another year of letters from Zimbabwe, comes from across the world. Released after 7 years of house arrest, the Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, may as well have been talking about Zimbabwe when she said: I don’t believe in one person’s influence and authority to move a country forward. One person alone cannot do something as important as bringing democracy to a country.”

I am taking a short break from this letter and wish all Zimbabweans, wherever you are in the world, a peaceful and happy Christmas filled with love and laughter and hope for real change for our beleaguered Zimbabwe in 2011. Until Mid January, I leave you with sincere thanks for your support of my writing and with the sight of Flame Lilies, the sound of Paradise Flycatchers, the smell of rain and the feel of a million gossamer wings in your fingers as you catch flying ants pouring from the depths of the Zimbabwean soil. Love Cathy 

Dear Family and Friends,

Christmas in Zimbabwe is a sumptuous extravaganza of peaches and plums, litchis and apricots. It’s the time of flying ants and flame lilies, of dark purple skies and vivid, searing streaks of lightning crackling in the air. This year Christmas is coming with some of the most violent and torrential rain storms we have ever seen, with strong winds, hail and sheets of water covering the ground in minutes. It’s a frantic money raising time of year though, and almost as soon as each rain storm subsides the vendors emerge from cover and get back to business. All along the roads women and children sit displaying piles of tomatoes and bowls and buckets filled to overflowing with wild fruits, running out with their wares whenever a vehicle slows down.

In between the vendors and all along our highways there is a very high police presence. Sometimes its road blocks with drums, signs and cones, other times it’s a couple of police on a motorbike waving vehicles down; or a pair of police on foot standing in a lay-by who risk their lives and yours as they just step out into the road and signal for you to stop when you are on the open road travelling at 120 kilometres an hour. In the busiest locations in towns roadblocks have sprung up in the last few weeks with police accompanied by ZBC radio licence inspectors who are fining drivers and making motorists buy a full 12 month licence which is only valid till the end of the year and expires in two weeks time. None are immune from this Christmas revenue collection.

It’s the time of year when prices go up, almost overnight, as shop owners anticipate more customers and increased sales. It’s the time of year when everyone expects a Christmas bonus; a 13^th cheque which is unaffordable and crippling for most employers whose businesses are struggling to stay open but it’s a payment nonetheless that most employees here have come to regard as their right.

This is the time of year when you see people trying to sell the strangest of things. This week two men outside a supermarket were selling what looked like mini tennis racquets but which had a criss-crossed wire gauze in them. “Mosquito swatters” they told me when I stopped for a second, a confused look on my face. Stranger still where the 20 kg bags of seed maize being sold in what used to Zimbabwe’s busiest book shop and stationery outlet. A shop with branches around the country whose slogan is: ‘Leading stationers to the nation,’ but which now stands almost empty stocking only a few political memoirs by Zanu PF figures, a meagre selection of stationery and of course the seed maize!  

Christmas in Zimbabwe is also the time of year when Zanu PF hold their annual congress and the rhetoric is flowing fast and furious, feeding feverishly on each new Wikileaks disclosure. The talk is of traitors and plots, of plans for regime change and at the hidden agendas of foreigners from the west. Fingers are being pointed, accusations are being made and we are being warned that Zimbabwe “will not brook any outside interference.”

This rhetoric aside, Zimbabwe is approaching Christmas 2010 with a growing sense of trepidation and unease. The warnings of what lies ahead for us in coming months as we hold elections, are growing louder by the day.  We are listening, watching and again looking over our shoulders while we try to inhale the magnificence of December in Zimbabwe.  Until next time, thanks for reading and for the wonderful response to my new book, love cathy 11^th December 2010.

Copyright © Cathy Buckle. www.cathybuckle.com

For information on my new book “Imire”, about Norman Travers and Imire Game Park, or my other  books about Zimbabwe: “Innocent Victims,” African Tears” and “Beyond Tears;” or to subscribe/unsubscribe to this letter, please visit my website or contact cbuckle@zol.co.zw

Dear Family and Friends,

Before dawn the sound of wheelbarrows fill my suburban neighbourhood. Around the craters which once were potholes, through cavernous gullies which are consuming the tar and around the muddy swamps where vehicles have skidded and got stuck. The wheelbarrows are negotiated through the deep sand drifts which have gathered on corners, in dips and at the bottom of hills; sand that the rain has scoured off our un-repaired suburban roads; sand that once held our roads together but now engulf the storm drains. In the wheelbarrows are the water containers: white, yellow, blue, green; twenty litre bottles – chigubus- we call them, a most precious possession.

Around the piles of sodden, festering, dumped garbage, uncollected for over two years, the wheelbarrows find and make their own paths – the shortest route to the nearest water. This is usually a shallow hole in the bush, an open well or seepage in a wetland. Or rather what’s left of our precious urban wetlands which have gone unprotected for over a decade as dirty, greedy political power struggles have ignored everything else in Zimbabwe. Wetlands which until recently were filled with wild herbs, flowers, reeds and sedges; home to colonies of nesting Weavers, Red Bishop birds, Herons, Hammerkops and Whydahs. Wetlands that are now a maze of illegal cultivation and are carved up into little strips containing a few mealie plants or sweet potato ridges, climbing beans or creeping pumpkins.

Amongst this ‘allotment gone mad,’ our urban population have no choice but to dig holes and collect water.  As I write this letter our town has just survived ten days without a drop of water coming out of our taps. Every day the municipality had another excuse as they kept on promising: “tomorrow”. Our brand, spanking new pump which worked for just a week suddenly stopped working and for ten days an honest explanation never came to light. The need for new valves was one story; sabotage was another; a worker who hadn’t filled the oil and therefore seized the engine was another story that was muttered. On Thursday, eight days into the hell of empty taps, smelly toilets and bucket-baths in under 5 litres of swampy water, the municipality came around, door to door. Not to offer their humble apologies, explanations, promises or to deliver a bowser of water; oh no, they came only to bring their monthly invoices.

Walking in town the following morning an unkempt man wearing blue overalls and red plastic slip slops came up to me. Clutching a bible he said to me: “We are in hell Mai.”  Ten days without water, electricity only in the middle of the night, a town strewn with litter and everyone talking about the rat explosion, I looked at the man and said: “I Know.” He was delighted!

“She knows!” he shouted to anyone who would listen, and kept on shouting as he walked away, laughing, turning back, pointing to me and calling ” She knows!”

That night I went to a Christmas Carol service with the words of the disturbed man still in my head. The service ended with Silent Night and verses were printed and sung in German, Shona, English and Afrikaans. As I sung I knew that 83 WOZA activists had been charged with ‘criminal nuisance for holding a peaceful protest on International Peace Day; that journalists and newspapers are under renewed threats and that political tension is gathering momentum everywhere. How Zimbabwe longs for and deserves a Silent Night, a new era and a bright horizon.

I end this letter with the news that after a gruelling two month journey and a 12 day stop at Beitbridge border, my books on Norman Travers/Imire have arrived. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

Three months ago a Redheaded Weaver arrived in my garden and began building a nest in exactly the same spot as the last time it had been here a few years ago. The male is a very striking individual with a bright scarlet head, chest and upper back. It’s impossible not to notice him when he’s in the garden. There was nothing left on the telephone line from his last nest, not a wisp of spiderweb or a single strand of vegetation, and yet the little male obviously remembered its place and methods and set to work feverishly.

It was the time of year when the Msasa trees were shedding their leaves and the Redhead built the skeleton and entrance tunnel of the nest exclusively using the midribs of the falling Msasa leaves. A few days into the nest building, a female Redhead appeared. The courting and cajoling began almost immediately. Flitting from tree to tree, fluffing out feathers, tail quivering and body shivering, he chased her tirelessly, trying to impress her with his aerial and physical displays and stunning good looks.

Calamity came when the Redhead saw himself in a window and perceived an enemy in his own reflection.  

The similarity between the behaviour of the little Redhead and the pre election fever now stirring in Zimbabwe is striking.     

The Redhead looked at his apparent opponent and went into attack mode. Sitting on the window ledge he pecked and tapped at his image in the glass again and again and again. You could almost see his headache! Around the house he went, window to window, and it was all out war. Everywhere the Redhead looked there were apparent enemies threatening his territory. Car mirrors, solar panels and even tin lids contained enemies and so the Redhead went into destroy mode, defending his sovereign territory.

Every day the Redhead went to the skeleton of his nest and added a strand or two but every day he got diverted when he saw his own image in the windows. You could almost see the Redhead saying to himself: ‘I’ll build tomorrow,”  but for now it was more important to destroy the perceived invasion. The female Redhead soon tired of her mate’s behaviour. For a week or so she sat alongside him on the windowsills and pecked at the reflections of themselves but it wasn’t long before her instinct to create and produce kicked in and she left her mate to his self destructive ways and disappeared from the garden to look for greener pastures. 

There are scores of reflections in windows and mirrors across Zimbabwe that are undoubtedly about to be attacked as we go into pre election mode here. There are so many onlookers that could come forward and prevent the onslaught against the reflection but they don’t and they won’t. SADC, the African Union and our neighbours are all already turning their backs. How can they stay quiet when our own Minister of Defence spoke in Kwekwe this week and said: “Zanu will rule even if you don’t want it. Zimbabwe belongs to Zanu PF.”

Just like my garden belonged to one single, striking Redhead who attacked and attacked and attacked, becoming in the process his own worst enemy. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

A few weeks ago something really peculiar started happening at the beginning of the main evening ZBC TV news bulletin.  The newsreader would announce a “brain teaser” for the evening, usually the meaning of the initials of some government organisation or other. Night after night we watched in bemused wonder as the brain teaser was posed, feeling a little like a class of kindergarten children. This week the novelty “brain teaser” at the start of the evening news has shot to dizzying heights. Now we have a large brown flashing question mark in a framed box that takes up almost half of the screen. The questions have also upgraded and are usually about nationalist leaders and colonial issues. After the political question is read out we are told to: “Stay tuned for the answer which will be revealed as the bulletin proceeds.” 

That’s not the only strange thing happening on the state controlled ZBC TV – the only television news that the majority of the population have access to. Suddenly, over the last couple of weeks, the ZBC news readers have stopped referring to Morgan Tsvangirai as the Prime Minister of the country and instead almost always refer to him now as the “leader of the MDC (T) party.” Both titles are of course accurate but the inferred loss of status by not using the title ‘Prime Minister’ is glaringly obvious. Perhaps they thought we wouldn’t notice, or perhaps, like so many other things in Zimbabwe, the more you say it, true or false, the more people believe it?

Brain teasers and lost titles faded into insignificance on Wednesday night and I couldn’t believe my ears at the statement read out by the newsreader.  “Mr Morgan Tsvangirai,” she said, “leader of the MDC (T) party, has chickened out of elections,” proposed for 2011.

“Chickened Out!” One can only imagine what would happen if ZBC TV used such a term to refer to Mr Mugabe who is always now called: “The Head of State and Government and Commander in Chief of the Defence Forces.” 

The main ZBC TV nightly news bulletin wouldn’t be complete without the ‘sanctions’ tirade. Every night there is at least one report about “illegal” sanctions on Zimbabwe. Targeted sanctions and travel restrictions, imposed on less than 300 individuals, continue to be blamed for everything. If my maths is correct and assuming a population of 11 million people, 300 sanctioned individuals represent less than 0,003% of Zimbabweans. This week ZBC TV carried a story that sanctions were “hurting the poor;”  another report was that the distribution of  maize and sorghum seed had been hampered by “sanctions.” Then came the report that “sanctions on Zimbabwe” were  having a detrimental effect on Zambia and other countries on Zimbabwe’s borders.  I lost the thread there somewhere as I tried to make a mental list of local foods currently available in our supermarkets and couldn’t think of more than half a dozen items. Sanctions? And yet everything, everything we use is imported.

As the talk of elections escalates in Zimbabwe, we descend ever faster into that strange “Alice in Wonderland” media place again. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Under a wide blue sky a warthog and her three babies ran across a red dirt road below a kopje. The piglets ran with tails straight up, like aerials, as they followed their mum into the surrounding bush. In the sky nearby half a dozen vultures circled low over a clearing and in the distance, the haunting call of a fish eagle promised water, fish and the myriad treasures waiting discovery in our beautiful Zimbabwe.

A couple of hundred people had gathered at the foothills of Castle Kopje in Wedza. A beautiful kopje, her rocks stained orange with lichen and balancing precariously on top of each other. We sat under a great Acacia tree watching a couple of young black rhinos browsing nearby, waiting for the proceedings to begin.

Our host told us this was a traditional Shona burial ground, a sacred place, and that he’d had to get permission from the local Chief to bury his mother here. Just seven months ago we had been in this same place to bury his father, Norman Travers, here.

The service began and one after another the eulogies told of how Gill Travers was a loving, dedicated and endlessly creative woman. A woman who made her home in the African bush, raised her family there and then shared it all with lions, leopards, hyaenas and otters. Gill’s doctor said she was the only patient he had who had been bitten by a hyaena and then an otter; the only patient who needed a leopard’s claw removed from her forearm!

Alongside giraffe and elephants, rhinos and warthogs, Gill and Norman Travers farmed the land and created a game park which attracted tourists from all over the world. They began outreach programmes with rural schools, endlessly spreading the message of conservation, and they held open days for local elders, headmen and chiefs.

Working with the Department of National Parks, they took in black rhinos ravaged by poaching, and embarked on a unique programme, rearing the calves and then and returning them to the wild. Gill and her catering partner Mattheus prepared milk formulas in bottles for rhinos and cream teas and venison casseroles for visiting guests all in the same farm kitchen! The perfect team creating what Gill’s grandson called an “oasis.” Nineteen years ago Gill Travers was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease but she fought on undeterred, always welcoming, cheerful and uncomplaining. Gill finally gave up her valiant struggle this week and watched by family, friends and elephants was laid to rest in the ground she so loved.

I write this letter today in memory of Norman and Gill Travers who lie side by side under an Acacia tree beneath Castle Kopje on Imire Game Park in Wedza. Almost two years ago Norman and Gill invited me into their home and week after week we worked on a book together. They told me the amazing story of how a piece of virgin bush in Wedza was farmed, nurtured and transformed. Norman spoke of a “stream of naughty, smelly, little animals” filling their lives and Gill of how much she loved them all and how proud she was of her family continuing with their life’s work.

“Imire, the Life and Times of Norman Travers,” will be available within the next fortnight, please contact me for further information.

To Norman and Gill Travers: Fambai zvakanaka, thank you for giving us Imire, such a gem. Until next time, love cathy 

Dear Family and Friends,

Not many people can bear to watch the main evening ZBC TV news bulletin these days. Thirty one years after Independence it is still filled with stories that apportion blame for everything that is wrong with Zimbabwe on: “the whites, the neo colonialists, the colonial settlers, the west.”  

Six years ago, in October 2004, instead of my usual weekly description of life in Zimbabwe, I sent out a letter called: “Until we meet again.” It was not written by me, but by my mother, Pauline Henson, a white Zimbabwean who was saying goodbye to her family and friends and her life here which had spanned more than half a century. She is one of an estimated four million people, a third of our population, who had no choice but to leave home in order to survive. In those six years my Mum has not forgotten Zimbabwe for a single day. This week, in recognition of a quarter of our population of all skin colours, who have been forced to live as strangers in strange lands, my letter contains four extracts from Pauline’s column: Outside Looking in”:

“Friday November 5^th 2010.

Six years ago on this very day I left Zimbabwe. I knew as I flew out of Harare that life would never be the same again for me. I was leaving behind a whole lifetime of memories, of friends and family – a daughter and a grandson – to come to a country where I had been born but which was as alien to me as Africa had once been.

Time heals all wounds, they say, but for me the passing years have only emphasised the sense of loss. “I am a Zimbabwean” I tell people here but hardly a day passes without Robert Mugabe or one of his cronies telling white people that their skin colour and their colonial past excludes them from making that claim. I was reminded of that as I watched a re-run of ‘Mugabe and the White African’ this week and heard Ben Freeth ask the question, ‘Can a white man ever be an African?’ For Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF the answer is a resounding ‘NO!’ but for me and thousands like me all over the diaspora, Zimbabwe continues to be the place we call home. I think of all the thousands of children I taught and of the teachers I trained – black Zimbabweans all of them – whose acceptance and friendship filled my days in Mutoko and Murehwa and I wonder how we have arrived at this racial intolerance in Independent Zimbabwe. This week, for example, a female Zanu PF member called for the death sentence for anyone who supports sanctions or is friendly to the west! 

But it was a letter in the Financial Gazette that really attracted my attention this week. “Is this racist?” asked the letter writer and quoted a question from the Grade Seven examination which every child in Zimbabwe sits at the end of primary school. This is what the Grade Seven children were asked in a multiple choice question on the General Paper: “Before Independence blacks and whites failed to live together peacefully because: A. the whites had guns.  B. the blacks liked to strike. C. the whites did not like the blacks and D. all the blacks wanted to live in towns.

 Whether this is racism or not, I do not know but what I do know is that it is a very badly designed multiple choice question, aimed at 11-12 year olds to test not factual knowledge but political opinion with racist overtones.   

As Zanu PF gears up for elections, teachers in rural areas are once again in the frontline. Zanu PF does not care for educated people, they think for themselves and so teachers are beaten up for daring to express alternative views. Three of those teachers are fighting for their lives in a Mission Hospital after a violent beating by Zanu PF thugs in Bikita. All over the country anyone with educational qualifications must be pondering their futures in this divided and intolerant country.  No wonder the International Crisis Group declared this week that Zimbabwe is ‘on a knife edge’ in the run-up to the elections.”

To read Pauline’s full column please visit my website. Until next time, from a Zimbabwean at home and one away from home, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

The first real rain of the season arrived in the last week of October. It emerged from low purple clouds highlighted by vivid streaks of white, crackling, lightning. After six dry months, we sat below, expectant, panting, longing! It was a typically African storm, the rain pounding down so hard that in minutes everything was afloat. Sheets of brown water covered the ground in a few minutes and when they started to run, they carried away the detritus of half a year: soil, leaves, sticks, pods and everything not physically attached. You couldn’t hear yourself think over the noise of the rain banging in the gutters and hammering on the roof. The choking dust of months was washed off trees, walls and windows and in half an hour it was all over.

Thirty millimetres of rain (just over an inch) had fallen and from the cracks and crevices and holes in the ground, life emerged. The voices of a myriad frogs rang out from every direction: some sweet and melodious, others shrill and urgent and then there were the deep, guttural croaks of the big boys. Shiny black Chongololos (millipedes) came from unknown places and were soon everywhere, their millions of red legs moving in a strange undulating wave. All sorts of creeping, crawling, running and flying insects appeared. Some welcome ones like sausage flies and flying ants; some strange ones like rhino beetles and some terrifying ones like huge rain spiders and other furry coated, long legged beasties.

So life returned to Zimbabwe and for the residents of my home town this first rain brought a unanimous, almost audible sigh of relief as we ran outside with buckets, bowls and baths. For five days the whole town had been without water. Dry taps, empty geysers, hollow cisterns and echoing tanks. Not a drop of water in the entire town; not for schools or hospitals, industry or residential areas. This water crisis had been months, years in the making. Corroded pipes, collapsing pumps and the main town dam visibly polluted with running sewage. We’ve been limping on, getting water for two or three hours a day if we are lucky; water that is always discoloured, often greasy and smelly and water that you never, never, drink before boiling and filtering.  The local Municipality chose not to warn residents that we were about to have a major crisis and then not to tell us what was going on or how long it may be before we got water again. The Municipality sent out the monthly accounts, delivered by hand, door to door but didn’t bother to even attach a note explaining the water crisis or advising us what to do. And so we all did our own thing.

Outside gates around the town huge lines of people gathered with bottles, buckets and containers – these were the houses where owners had boreholes and were prepared to share. School children each had to take a 5 litre bottle of water to school every day. The roads in the mornings were filled with children carrying satchels and suitcases and parents and relations following behind carrying their water rations.  The main bakery in the town drew water into bowsers from a private borehole in order to keep producing bread. In vleis and open areas wells were dug by desperate residents of the town. Shallow holes with unprotected walls and uncovered surfaces. Morning, noon and night women with buckets and 20 litre containers trekked backwards and forwards to these open pools to draw water

With no water for toilets people were defecating in the bush, the same bush were wells were being opened up; the same bush where people have been dumping litter because the Municipality have stopped collecting it again. As the days passed people began doing their laundry alongside, or even in, the open wells. Some residents complained to selfish women that they were soiling the water for everyone else, telling them to carry water away and wash clothes at home. The complaints were met with the same absurd rhetoric of life in Zimbabwe: critics were accused of being MDC supporters.

How we didn’t get an outbreak of cholera or another major water borne disease is a miracle. I pray that I am not speaking too soon as our water crisis continues and our uncollected waste and filth festers and rots and runs down into those open wells.  Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

Both Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai are openly talking about elections being held in 2011. Just the word “elections” reminds us of the hell of 2008: a time and place we never want to go back to. 

In January 2008 we were all going across our borders to buy basic supplies because our own shops were empty thanks to government price controls which had resulted in all production coming to a halt. My own shopping list on a trip to South Africa had dozens of items on it and included flour, rice, beans, tinned goods, sugar, salt, margarine, cooking oil, tea, milk powder and even toilet paper.

In February 2008 the monthly salary of civil servants and people in general employment was only enough to purchase one single loaf of bread and a two litre bottle of cooking oil. In March a loaf of bread cost 7 million dollars and a dozen eggs were 30 million dollars. In reality these prices were actually in the billions but Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono removed zeros from the currency just before the elections. On the 29^th March Zimbabwe voted. After casting his ballot Mr Mugabe said: “The moment the people stop supporting you, then that’s the moment you should quit politics.”

Throughout April 2008 the election results were not announced and a tsunami of violence swamped the country. Newspaper headlines screamed: “Murder, torture, terror” and “Hundreds flee Zanu PF.” 

In May 2008, 5 weeks after the poll, election results were finally announced. The MDC had won the majority of seats in parliament and Mr Tsvangirai had more votes than Mr Mugabe in the Presidential vote. It was announced that the Presidential majority wasn’t large enough and another poll was to be held. Violence swept across the land and multiple thousands of people were killed, maimed and tortured for “voting the wrong way.” A loaf of bread soared in price to 40 million dollars.

A run off Presidential ballot was held in June 2008; Mr Mugabe was the only candidate as Mr Tsvangira pulled out because of widespread violence. One man at my local hospital arrived with two broken arms, a broken leg and a fractured skull; he was accused of having supported the MDC. On the 29^th June 2008 Mr Mugabe was again declared the President of Zimbabwe.

In July 2008 hundreds of people arrived at foreign embassies in Harare begging for sanctuary and humanitarian assistance. The MDC said that at least a quarter of a million people had been displaced from their homes by violence. The Reserve Bank Governor set a maximum daily withdrawal limit from banks of 100 billion dollars. At that time a five day penicillin-based antibiotic cost 2 trillion dollars. There was no bread to buy and a single scone cost 140 billion dollars. 5000 people a day were arriving every day at a Home Affairs refugee reception centre in South Africa.

In August 2008, five months after the elections, Zimbabwe was still in limbo with no parliament and no MP’s having been sworn in. In September Zimbabwe began hearing about power sharing where losers became winners and vice versa.

October 2008 saw inflation at 231 million percent and there were only cabbages and condoms to buy in major supermarkets. There was no seed maize or fertilizer to buy as the rainy season began and in November 2008 hospitals didn’t even have disposable gloves let alone medicines, drips or bandages.

Two years later we don’t have democracy, but thanks to an MDC Finance Minister who put the brakes on, we do have imported food in the shops, US dollars in our purses and inflation under 10%. Zimbabwe has not forgotten the hell of 2008, who took us there and who brought us back. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

On a sweltering October day I took a friend to his home in a rural village. It was midday when we left the nearby town and we were loaded down with maize seed, fertilizer, fencing wire, a banana tree, bicycle and a number of bags and boxes. It was one of those days that are so hot, you feel as if you are melting. A day when clothes are dry almost as soon as you hang them on the washing line; when you burn your feet on the sand if you dare walk barefoot. In the deep shade under the newly green Msasa trees, the temperature was 36 degrees Centigrade; in the full sun my thermometer raced up to 46 degrees. It’s that time of year when all we can think of is heat and all we long for is rain; desperately, breathlessly, we look up, in anticipation.

The only route to my friend’s home in the village, his kumusha, meant travelling past my own farm – the one taken over by militant youths and drunk, drugged men a decade ago. The one whose Title Deeds I still own and for which I have never been paid a single cent of compensation for. It wasn’t just the heat of the weather that made my hands sweaty and clammy as I turned onto the first familiar road.

Under a glaring blue sky without even a smudge of cloud, I travelled through what used to be my home neighbourhood. I knew the twists and turns of the road, looked for familiar rocky outcrops, anticipated the deep drifts of loose sand on the verges which accumulate in the same places every year. The names and faces of all the people who had lived and farmed here flashed into my mind as I passed their homes. I could hear their voices and their laughter and remember the embracing welcome that was always waiting whenever I visited. Beautiful homes, gorgeous gardens and everywhere the signs of production and busy farm life: men working in fields and on fence lines; tractors trundling backwards and forwards; big flocks of sheep and goats, herds of beef and dairy cows – all with their heads down, on irrigated pastures, or in troughs filled with hay, mashanga (maize plant residue) and silage.   

In my minds eye it was so comforting and familiar but in reality it has all become so ugly and alien.  

A magnificent purple bougainvillea against the side wall of a farmhouse was the only thing left to look at as I passed a neighbours home. Parts of the roof of the house have gone, the timber and beams have gone; the walls are grey, the gutters gone, security fencing and farm fencing all gone.

On both sides of the road all these seized farms are deserted. No crops, no livestock, no workers, no fences,

We passed a man pushing a wheelbarrow, loaded and wobbling under the weight of a newly cut indigenous tree, the bark still mottled with grey and green lichen. Behind him a woman followed, thin and gaunt looking, she had a toddler wrapped in a towel, tied onto her back. On her head, resting on a small cloth pad, the woman carried a dozen long branches, tied together with strips of bark. They were walking past what had once been a prolific dairy farm where the view had always been of fat, shining black and white Holstein cows, their udders heavy with milk. Now the view is of nothing. Eight years after the farm was taken over by a Government Minister, the view is of black ground and burnt bush. Deserted fields, no sign of workers or machinery, no ploughing, planting or livestock. All along the roadside the fences have gone, the internal paddock fences have gone, the once lush pastures have gone, the contours protecting the soil have gone.     

Farm after farm we passed and the view was the same: derelict, burnt, unploughed and no one out working in the lands. “Where is everyone?’ I asked my friend.

“Now that they aren’t being given all the inputs by government, they are just sitting,” he said.

“But they’ve had ten years,” I responded. “Surely by now they can afford to put in their own crops and produce something on these farms they took?”

My question had no answer.

My heart ached at the sight of so many tree plantations that have been ravaged: felled or burnt. Trees planted by so many of us that farmed along those roads: trees for fuelling tobacco barns; trees for shade, for firewood for staff, for poles for fences.

What I saw of my own farm is too painful to write about.

Arriving at the village, my friend’s family were waiting with big smiles and a warm welcome. We unloaded the makings of their summer crop and parted with handshakes and wishes for good, gentle, soaking rain. As I drove away the chant of patriotism during the rescue of Chilean miners filled my head: “Chi, chi, chi, le, le, le.”

What can Zimbabwe’s chant of patriotism be, I wondered All I could think of was the angry, alarming calls of the Grey Lourie so familiar at this time of year: “Go Away, Go Away,” it screams again and again. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

When South Africa’s Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu turned 79 this week and announced he was retiring from public life, I felt very sad for Zimbabwe. Desmond Tutu has been an earnest, dedicated and unflagging supporter of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. Throughout the last decade he has been consistently outspoken about the abuses inflicted on Zimbabweans by their own leaders. Time and time again when all other African leaders were struck dumb, Desmond Tutu raised his voice for ordinary people. 

In 2002 when legislation curtailing freedom of speech, movement and association was introduced, Desmond Tutu was interviewed on the BBC. He strongly criticised Mr Mugabe and said Zimbabwe was: “On the slippery slope of perdition.” Most of us had to look the word up in our dictionaries to find that it was a religious term referring to eternal death and damnation. 

When South African election observers came to Zimbabwe and their cars were stoned by militant Zanu PF youths, they witnessed at first hand an atmosphere laden with violence, intimidation and extreme harassment. The head of the South African observer mission was jeered and laughed at by journalists when he went on to say that Zimbabwe’s elections had been: ‘legitimate.”  Again Archbishop Tutu stepped forward: “I am deeply, deeply, deeply distressed that our country could be among those who say the election was legitimate or free and fair when we are claiming to be adherents to democracy.”

Five years later, in 2007, African leaders were still dumb struck and tip-toeing around the bloodshed, hunger and chaos tearing Zimbabwe apart but Desmond Tutu was not afraid of upsetting the old boys club. He and Madeline Albright, the previous US Secretary of State, published a joint article in the Washington Post. They appealed, not to the world, but to Africa, saying:

“Given Mugabe's consistent unwillingness to respect the legitimate complaints of his people, this is not the time for silent diplomacy. This is the time to speak out. It is especially important that members of the African Union and Southern African Development Community (SADC) raise their voices, for they have the most influence and can hardly be accused of interventionism.”

Later that same year Archbishop Tutu used the International Day of Peace to again cry out for Zimbabwe. He spoke about the harassment of political opponents, detentions without trial and torture  and said : “It must stop now.”

He closed his speech saying: “We are one family, the human family, God's family. Zimbabwe's plight is all of our plight. To ignore its suffering is to condone it.”

Honest and forthright, Tutu’s unique combination of empathy, humility and humour will be sorely missed in Zimbabwe. We wish him well as he turns his time to reading, writing, praying and thinking; and to drinking lots of tea and watching cricket on television.

As one of the loudest voices for ordinary Zimbabweans falls quiet, there is hope that at last, another has returned. MDC Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has finally made a statement about yet more breaches of the power sharing agreement. Mr Tsvangirai said that all along he had been: “ prepared for the sake of our country to sit alongside my yesteryear’s enemies and tormentors to rebuild a stable and democratic country. “  But now he said, the re-appointment by Mr Mugabe, on a Sunday, of Zanu PF governors was one breach too many. He said that with immediate effect the MDC will refuse to recognize unilateral appointments that have been made by Mr Mugabe including the Attorney General, The Reserve Bank Governor, 10 Provincial Governors, 5 Judges, 6 Ambassadors and the Police Commission. The PM said the continued refusal to swear in Roy Bennett as Deputy Agriculture Minister was a personal vendetta and part of a racist agenda.

The Prime Minister will do well to pick up where Desmond Tutu has left off and raise his voice for us, the ordinary people.  Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

When a Zimbabwean living in the Diaspora asked for a photograph of Bushman paintings recently, the request provided the perfect excuse for an outing into our beautiful bush and kopjes. The brief excursion also allowed me to see what a tourist might see. What an eye opener it was.

On a clear summer morning a friend and I travelled 30 kilometres to a cave painting I’d not seen before. I imagined myself as a tourist in a bus, looking out of the window and the first thing I saw on the journey was all the litter. Everywhere I looked there was litter: on the streets, along the pavements, piled up in heaps outside flats and shopping centres and dumped in ugly, festering piles on the outskirts of towns. Litter removal: such a small thing; the responsibility of local municipal councils, paid for by ratepayers, but not being done. 

Heading onto the open road the first thing you see is that none of the main highways have lane or shoulder markings and there are no warning signs, chevrons or cat’s eyes. Almost every bridge you cross has broken railings and none of the rivers have names anymore, the signs ripped out of the concrete or removed from posts. Isn’t road maintenance being paid for by all the money collected at tollgates, I wondered. 

As we got out into the country the only view was of black. Mile after mile of burnt landscape, black ground in every direction; hills and valleys carpeted in ash, trees scorched, bushes burnt. On both sides of the road farm land lies mostly deserted and derelict and there is no sign of ploughed lands or preparation for the coming rainy season. Boundary fences along the roads have almost all gone and cattle and goats graze right alongside the highway providing a deadly hazard to traffic. These boundary fences were always the responsibility of farmers whose land adjoins highways but now farms have been taken over and regulations about fences are ignored.

Arriving at our destination situated just a few metres off the road and behind the railway station of a small town, we walked towards the small outcrop of rock.  Negotiating our way over burnt ground and around a maze of scorched brambles, I could hardly believe that an ancient national treasure could possibly be situated here. Plastic bags were snagged on bushes and empty beer tins lay on the ground. I had to take a deep breath and try not to look at the piles of human faeces that sat in numerous fly covered heaps around the base of the kopje. I stepped over them and knew without a doubt that if I was a tourist by now I would have turned back in disgust and not continued on this quest to see an ancient painting.

A little further around the kopje, up a few boulders and suddenly there it was, under an overhang of sheared rock. The colours of the ancient paintings beckoned immediately: orange, brown, ochre, yellow, purple. Large, dark brown oval designs in the centre with crowds of animals painted above. A magnificent sable, its long horns sweeping backwards in perfect curves. An unmistakable image, as recognisable to me now as it must have been to the artist thousands of years ago. Leaving the Bushman paintings behind and taking a short drive back to the main road, we passed a plinth and memorial to fallen soldiers of World War Two - the plaque and inscription vandalized and removed in the last decade by men calling themselves Zimbabwe’s war veterans.

Tourism accounted for almost 17% of Zimbabwe’s GDP in 2000 but now contributes less than 5% to our economy. The endless seminars and workshops being held say that billions will be needed to revive the tourist industry. We can all see, however, that a political solution and a few dustbin bags will do very well thank you. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

As the programme to consult people about what they want included in our new constitution draws to a close, we have begun bracing ourselves for what comes next. The drawing up of a new draft constitution leading to a referendum and then an election is now in sight. It is exactly this three-step process where the mayhem began for us all, 10 years ago, in February 2000.

We are bracing ourselves now because in the last few weeks we have seen the re-emergence of the same crude harassment, intimidatory tactics and oppressive practices which tell us that, without a shadow of a doubt, nothing has changed.

The first red warning light went on when the constitutional consultative meetings got to the capital city. The process immediately descended into chaos.  45 meetings were violently disrupted as truck loads of people, apparently bussed in from rural areas, made sure that no one was free to voice their opinions. At one venue Zanu PF youths and ‘war veterans’ barred some people from participating because of their skin colour; at another venue a Zanu PF supporter  reportedly drew a gun in order to stop a resident from delivering an opening prayer before the commencement of the meeting. When the police did not intervene and arrest perpetrators, the MDC’s co Home Affairs Minister, Theresa Makone, finally found her voice. Minister Makone said Zanu PF were “virtually holding the Zimbabwe Republic Police to ransom.” She said the police were too afraid to do their jobs because they received instructions from Zanu PF.

The next red light went on when 83 members of WOZA were arrested whilst taking part in a peaceful march to Parliament on International Peace Day. 76 women and 7 men were held for 2 nights in prison cells, amongst them was a 9 month old baby. WOZA press releases talked of prisoners being held in passageways as the cells themselves were uninhabitable. There were no toilets, no water was available and one man was severely beaten with baton sticks.

The last red warning light came at local level in the form of a strike at the Marondera municipality. It was a strike that hadn’t attracted any sympathy whatsoever from ratepayers or residents of the town who are totally disenchanted with street lights that haven’t worked for over 4 years, roads that haven’t been maintained for 3 years, piles of uncollected garbage dumped on roadsides and under trees and less than 2 hours of dirty water a day if we are lucky. Then there are all the ghost workers still on the municipal payroll and the large amounts of fuel we see being drawn by municipal vehicles every Friday afternoon and Monday morning. Add to this the talk of top council officials each drawing salaries in the multiple thousands every month and you’ll understand why there was no support at all for a strike. All that aside, the warning light came on when the drumming started; clenched fists waving in the air told us this had been hijacked (or perhaps masterminded) by Zanu PF. The signs written on the green cardboard placards were proof. A part of one banner being held up by a dreadlocked man who was probably still in nappies at Independence thirty one years ago, read: ‘Rhodesians must go.’

The warning signs are now clearly visible and we can see the true nature of the beast which has been hiding behind a cloak called “Unity Government” all along. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

My son was 8 years old when we were forced off our Marondera farm by war veterans and Zanu PF youths in September 2000. Richard does not remember those very traumatic months that we lived alongside the men who had invaded our farm. Men who were far too young to have been veterans of war; youths who were almost always drunk, drugged, abusive and threatening. Camped in a paddock within sight of our house, a rabble took over our lives, claimed the farm field by field, destroyed our business, livelihood and pension and finally chased us out of our home. For a long time I have been very glad that Richard does not remember that frightening, horrible time but that all changed this week when I phoned him one morning. Richie said he couldn’t talk just then because he was on his way to help a friend who was being evicted from his farm and had been given until 3 that afternoon to get out.

My heart was in my mouth at the thought of another family going through the devastating anguish of being forced out of their home. With just hours in which to pack and move a home and business of a lifetime, I knew that this Mother and her son would need all the help they could get. Before long, like Richard, I was rushing to help and it took me back in time to that bad place that holds only fear and painful memories.  Just a few kilometres out of Marondera town, down a bumpy, winding, dust road through the most magnificent Msasa woodland adorned in glorious spring leaves, I followed my son’s vehicle. We travelled for a dozen kilometres and saw no one and nothing: no ploughed fields, no sheep or cattle, no crops or greenhouses. A line of fence posts caught my eye: standing in a perfectly straight line they had once been a paddock or a boundary but the wire was all gone and the poles stood as lonely sentinels watching over these deserted, seized farms.

Arriving at the farm of my son’s friend, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as soon as I stepped out of my vehicle. Sitting on stumps and broken plastic chairs under a covered carport a few metres from the house were the land invaders. A tatty rabble they were. Half a dozen of them, mostly youngsters and openly drinking at 11 in the morning; one swigging from a $4 bottle of Vladinoff Vodka, others drinking beer out of cut off plastic bottles. One was drumming and they were singing crude versions of “Chimurenga songs” whose lyrics had been changed to: “They are coming to move you out. By 3 this afternoon this will be our house. We are happy you are going. We are getting our land.”

I recognized one of the men, a scruffy layabout with dreadlocks who hangs around car parks. And these were to be our farmers, I thought with contempt. I did not meet their eyes or respond to their begging calls for cigarettes.

I hugged the woman who was losing her home today but we did not talk, there are no words. All day we worked removing curtains and pictures, emptying drawers and cupboards, loading our vehicles with another destroyed life. Eight years ago half this farm was given to the Zimbabwe government but bit by bit they took more and now this bunch outside wanted it all. Wearing broken green plastic flip flops and woolly hats even in the 25 degree heat, they were determined they were going to have this house, and they were going to have it today.

The Police did not come, would not come, because this, they said, was political, not criminal. As 3pm came and went, tempers flared and the invaders moved into the garden and then some even into the living room. The farmer’s dogs, chained under a shady tree whined and whimpered as they couldn’t protect their owners. A beautiful brown and white cat lay on the floor in the bedroom surrounded by boxes, piles, suitcases, coat hangers.

As the shadows lengthened and with the red setting sun in our eyes I followed my son’s vehicle away from his friend’s farm for the last time. The dust was thick and choking and I felt tears burning my eyes. How can this be? 10 years after it happened to us, it is still going on. Nothing has changed; no attempt to stop the destruction of agriculture; no response from the Police; no respect for Title Deeds, property rights or even a family’s private home.

Who in their right mind would dream of investing in Zimbabwe when a bunch of arbitrary drunken thugs can get away with something like this because “it is political.” Is this Zanu PF politics or Unity Government politics? Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

It’s been a long time since the news broadcasts on Short Wave Radio Africa have been deliberately jammed by loud, repetitive electronic noises but suddenly, alarmingly, its back. 

The jamming of SW Radio Africa began at 7.20pm on the night of the 1^st September 2010. The news bulletin was by then more than two thirds completed and a report on the need for extra funding for the constitutional outreach programme was just about to be aired. A loud interference broke into the broadcast, the repeated tones continuing until 8.00 pm, making it impossible to hear the remainder of the news reports or the following half hour programme.

Suspicions were immediately raised and the automatic question is:  What’s going on? What is it that the Zimbabwe government doesn’t want us to know? 

Its been over ten years since the fight for political dominance in Zimbabwe destroyed agriculture and business, chased 4 million people out of the country and turned our lives upside down; ten years during which we all learned what signals to look out for when something is up. The jamming of SW Radio Africa is one of those very clear signs and eyebrows are up.

You would think that that with the explosion of cell phone lines in the country and the return of an independent daily newspaper there wouldn’t be a need for radio jamming anymore, but that’s not the case. For the vast majority of Zimbabweans a newspaper is a luxury; computers, emails and internet access are a remote dream and sitting listening to a short wave radio station for two hours a night is the only way to get information that’s not blatant propaganda.

So what is that they don’t want us to know?

Could it be the news that a Bulawayo artist is facing charges with a 20 year prison term for an art exhibition?

Or the fact that the former education minister and Mashonaland East Governor is in a renewed land grab on the few remaining farms in and around Marondera ?

Perhaps it’s the continuing reports of intimidation and harassment surrounding the constitutional outreach programme.

Maybe it’s the 24 point document outlining action to be taken to apparently resolve issues outstanding from the tri party political agreement - issues which are 18 months overdue.

Or maybe, the jamming of SW Radio Africa is being done so that we can’t hear the voices of ordinary people trying to live ordinary lives in a country where fear, intimidation and harassment are still all around us all the time and the only real change we see from our huge government is food in our shops.

When SW Radio Africa asked MDC Information minister Nelson Chamisa what was behind the radio jamming, Mr Chamisa said he didn’t know the station was being jammed. His response was a mirror image of MDC co Home Affairs minister Theresa Makone, When asked about the arrest and detention of a Bulawayo artist, Mrs Makone said she didn’t know about it.  How soon they’ve forgotten that SW Radio Africa was their only voice before they got into Zimbabwe’s massive government – a voice they don’t listen to anymore?

Ironically the jamming of SW Radio Africa doesn’t make less people listen to the broadcasts, but exactly the reverse because now even more people want to know what the government are trying to hide. Until next time, thanks for reading, love Cathy.

Dear Family and Friends,

We’ve had an electricity crisis of major proportions this past week which has bought the routines of everyday life to a standstill. Businesses without computers, offices unable to access records, machines that cannot be operated and of course, no electricity means no water which makes things even harder still. Repeated calls to electricity supplier ZESA have yielded nothing: no explanation, apology or excuses just two little words spat contemptuously at you for daring to ask: ‘load shedding’ they say. 12, 15, 18 and even 22 hours a day we’ve been subjected to ‘load shedding’ at a time when the country is desperate for business, production and growth. One man home businesses have come to a complete standstill. Small businesses without the means to provide their own electricity are complaining that they’ve been losing about five hundred dollars a day. Bigger businesses estimate lost income of around five thousand dollars a day, not to mention employees sitting around doing nothing who will all have to be paid at the end of the month. Employees who came to work in the morning without having had a proper meal and will go home to much the same: a smoky fire outside and no water to bath or wash with.

Every outlet that can afford to run them, have resorted to generators. In all shapes and sizes the machines clutter pavements and alleyways and pedestrians have become adept at picking a safe path through the wires and conducting their business over the clattering, thumping and roaring of the engines. The power cuts have become so ridiculous this week that even the petrol stations have resorted to using generators to pump fuel into customers’ vehicles. It’s a slow process if you happen to be in a car though because there is a steady line of people on foot jumping the queue as they wait to fill plastic bottles with a litre or two of petrol for generators.

Craziest of all about this week’s non existent electricity is the sure and certain knowledge that come the end of the month our electricity bills will be as high as they always are. First world bills for fourth world service, or even no service at all.

The knock on effects of these extended power cuts is having a devastating impact on the environment. From early in the morning to last thing in the evening the sound of wood chopping is all around. Emerging from bush and woodland all the time is a steady stream of women carrying huge piles of newly cut wood on their heads. Some is for their own use but more is for sale, a small bundle of half a dozen pieces of indigenous wood costing five US dollars – enough to cook perhaps two or three meals.

Despite it all, Zimbabweans really have become masters of ingenuity when faced with adversity so now, if you know where to go and have a few dollars, you can have a haircut or charge your cell phone on someone’s generator. What a shame it is that ZESA aren’t blessed with a similar ingenuity. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy

Having a meal with friends this week, the conversation turned, as it almost always does, to politics. First the talk was about the constitutional outreach programme which has degenerated into party politics in most areas and left people afraid to attend, scared to speak and facing the consequences of daring to voice their opinions - particularly if they are in rural areas. Then the discussion was about elections - when they should happen; with or without a new constitution and with or without international supervision were a few of many burning questions. Then came the dual citizenship issue and the

disenfranchisement of so many Zimbabweans who now hold foreign passports either because they have been in exile during our country's decade of mayhem or because they've been struck off voters rolls and declared 'alien' if their parents were born outside the country.

Before long our conversation was about the food on the table. A simple meal is still not something any of us take for granted. Memories of 2007 and 2008 when there was hyperinflation and no food to buy are still very fresh in our minds. How well we remember the horror of government price controls, of youth militia going shop to shop forcing prices to be slashed dramatically and then buying up all the stock themselves. We remember walking into huge supermarkets and gazing at aisle after aisle of empty shelves with nothing to sell except perhaps a few wilting cabbages or packets of 'maputi' popcorn, light bulbs or washing up liquid.

How easily this could all happen again, I thought, as we talked about the food we were eating. Almost everything on the table had been grown or produced outside Zimbabwe. The milk was imported from Zambia, where it is produced by dispossessed Zimbabwean farmers. The margarine was imported from South Africa where it is produced by a Zimbabwean company which had no choice but to relocate across the border to survive. The bread was made locally but with wheat imported from South Africa. The eggs were local but the chickens had been fed on imported food. The biscuits were from Mocambique; sugar and coffee from South Africa and even the fruit was imported.

Its been ten years since  Zanu PF grabbed all Zimbabwe's commercial farms and yet we still have nothing to show for it. We are now completely dependent on outside countries for almost everything we eat. A closer look at all the labels on the food in our shops exposes Zimbabwe's continuing inability to stand on its own two feet. Food may have familiar product names and some may have been packaged in Zimbabwe but mostly the contents are imported. How familiar we have become with those little stickers on most of our food which proclaims 'proudly South African.' Browsing around one small convenience and fresh produce shop recently I had to ask if there was anything they sold that was actually locally grown or produced in Zimbabwe. Potato crisps were imported, as were biscuits, jam, chutney, apples, pears, tinned goods, cold drinks and almost everything else.

What a tragedy that ten years after land takeovers, nothing says 'proudly Zimbabwean' because nothing is. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

While international supermodel Naomi Campbell was testifying about a pouch of "dirty little stones" at the war crimes trial of ex Liberian President, Charles Taylor, Zimbabwe's own controversial, dirty little stones, began making headlines.

Everything about Zimbabwe's Marange diamonds is highly contentious including:

- The legal ownership of the mines;

- Supreme Court orders that have been ignored;

- Parliamentary portfolio teams repeatedly barred from visiting Marange;

- At least 30 million dollars from previous sales that never made it to government offers;

- The detention for a month of Farai Maguwu, who publicized abuses at the diamond fields.

Most damning of all is the 61 page report by Human Rights Watch issued in June

2009 which details a litany of abuses perpetrated by the military at the Marange diamond fields. Abuses that include forced labour, beating, torture, sexual abuse and mass killing.

Despite it all, however, Zimbabwe managed to get Kimberley Process approval and started selling diamonds this week. 893 thousand carats, apparently mined during the past two months only, were certified to be "conflict free" by Kimberley Process Monitor Abbey Chikane. Chikane said the soldiers had gone from the two fenced off mines that had yielded the stones and that  "minimum international standards" had been met. The diamonds were sold for 71 million US dollars - a figure from which the government apparently gets around 10% from the sales in royalties, taxes and dividends.

Diamonds from the rest of the Marange mines were not sold this week and are still banned from auction because of ongoing abuses.

A friend asked me this week what I would do if I was given a pouch of dirty little stones from Marange. I didn't hesitate, a brief glance at pages 34 -38 of the Human Rights Watch report  said it all for me. Called:  "Diamonds in the Rough,"  the report described military helicopters with mounted automatic weapons; indiscriminate firing of live ammunition and tear gas; mass graves and piles of decomposing bodies. One extract, given by medical staff in Mutare in November 2008 is horror beyond belief, it reads:

 "..soldiers had brought in 107 bodies from Marange, of which 29 bodies were identified and collected by relatives. 78 bodies we marked 'Brought in Dead"

(B.I.D.) from Marange, identity unknown. We entered cause of death as unknown although many of the bodies had visible bullet wounds. The soldiers who brought them informed us that the bodies were of unknown illegal diamond miners..."

Surely, I thought, if I had a Marange diamond, everytime I wore it I would have blood on my hands and see the letters B.I.D. engraved on the stone. Surely, surely we have lost our way when stones are more valuable than human life. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

As Zimbabwe commemorates Heroes Day, the official remembrance is again dominated by Zanu PF individuals. Every day we are bombarded with Zanu PF propaganda on the country's only television channel: big breasted, big bottomed women wriggling their bodies, waving their fists and singing endless refrains in praise of Zanu PF. We hear nothing of heroes from other political parties; nothing of the thousands who have died in the last decade in the struggle for good governance, democracy and new leadership in our country. We hear nothing of the ordinary Zimbabweans who who are the real heroes in 2010. This letter is for them, heroes of the last decade.

The heroes are mothers and grandmothers who managed to keep homes together and families alive when shops were empty and there was no food to buy. Women who went to bed hungry, made meals from nothing and kept hope alive.

The heroes are our children who lost their childhood in the mayhem of ten years of political violence. Children who watched their families being torn apart as parents, siblings, aunts and uncles fled to the Diaspora to escape and to survive. Children who sat helpless, hopeless outside closed schools. Children who lost ten years of education and as a result are without qualifications and jobs.

The heroes are people in rural villages who have borne the brunt of political intimidation, harassment and violence. Knowing their every move is watched and recorded. Knowing that if their name is not on the "good" list of the village leaders they will not get food, seed, fertilizer. People who continue to endure the most primitive of conditions in homes which are still without piped water, plumbing or electricity 30 years after Independence.

The heroes are the professionals: doctors, nurses, teachers, and so many more who have held their heads high, worked in the most appalling circumstances for miniscule wages, determined to keep giving of their skills which have held Zimbabwe together.

The heroes are the ordinary workers who have toiled for the smallest of wages, wearing threadbare clothes, walking miles to work, struggling through endless power cuts, going for days, weeks and months without water and coping with years of not having garbage collected.

The heroes are the activists who have lost everything, and given everything,to bring freedom for us all. Activists who are not in this massive government we are groaning under; activists who are not driving government cars and earning government allowances but ordinary men and women who are brave, determined, driven.

The heroes are the countless men and women who have worked tirelessly from outside our borders. People who have given 10 years of their lives to exposing events in Zimbabwe, speaking out, lobbying governments, raising money for people in trouble, giving support, encouragement and hope.

Happy Heroes Day to all of us, whatever our race, colour, creed or political persuasion.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

After my letter last week in which I mentioned the enormous disparity between the daily amount being given to constitution outreach technicians (70 US dollars) compared to the daily wage of a civil servant (5 US dollars), I got a very angry email from a company owner.

"I don't know why you keep on about the workers, the employers have it much worse, " the lady wrote.
"You must tell us the answer," she said, referring to her situation as an employer and then describing the dire position her business is in.

Struggling to turn over 3,000 US dollars a month, her company employs 7 people who, in her words, "come to work late and go home early."The monthly wage bill alone is 2,400 US dollars. The company owner does not draw a salary herself because there is no money left after paying the seven wages, electricity, water, rates, rent, fuel.

The anger and despair of this company owner is being repeated all over the country as most businesses remain barely functional while Zimbabwe remains in a perilous economic state.  Property rentals, utilities, wages and costs go up but there is not a corresponding increase in income because people just aren't spending money on anything except essentials. Many companies describe never having had so little work and so few customers since they started operating twenty or even thirty years ago. As absurd as it may sound, employers can't afford to retrench a portion of their workforce either as the exit packages are so high that it will bankrupt the whole company to lay off a few.

Wages are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to employing people in Zimbabwe. Aside from the pay envelope there is the uniform and shoes, the transport, housing and light allowances, the appeals for a meal at work, for school fees, medical assistance and so it goes on and on - desperate workers looking to even more desperate employers whose companies are on the verge of collapse.  

Enter into all of this the pending compulsory 51%  indigenous shareholding of companies and the waves start flooding in over the edge of the floundering boat. Last weekend the Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, threatened to close down 9,000 companies because they hadn't yet submitted indigenisation plans to his ministry. Apparently only 480 out of 9 557 companies had put in the paperwork that effectively gives control of their companies to complete strangers.

I haven't got an answer for the angry company owner, or for the desperate employees whose wage doesn't get them to the end of the month. There's no answer either for the university graduate who has unsuccessfully applied for 50 jobs in the last five months or for the neighbour who recently lost his job. 

Companies, families and individuals are all in the same position as we start August 2010. We are living from hand to mouth, hoping and praying that we don't have an accident or get sick, that nothing gets broken or stolen and that we can just make it to the end of the month. For all of us there is really only one answer and that is a return to good governance, law and order, property rights and real democracy. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy 

This year another dramatic aspect of our beautiful Zimbabwe is lining roads everywhere as hundreds of miles of trenches are being dug for a communication cable. It is breathtaking to see the magnificent patchwork of colours of soil piled in heaps along the road. Yellow, beige, orange, red, brown, grey, black: it leaves you feeling as if you've seen into the very soul of Zimbabwe.  

Sadly, however, all is not beautiful as spring arrives and our chance in a lifetime constitution making process has turned into a shambles. Every day the reports just get worse and worse. The words used by one senior official to describe the outreach programme, expose the truth of the story: tension, friction, hostile, ugly. We hear of public meetings turning into shouting matches, of people being abducted, assaulted, kidnapped and of villagers being frog marched, intimidated and commandeered. Then there are reports of COPAC (constitutional outreach) drivers and technicians threatening to stop work as they say they aren't getting the pay they were promised. Other reports tell of hotels evicting COPAC personnel or refusing to give them meals due to massive unpaid bills.

In a country where over 90% of the population is unemployed and civil servants only earn 160 US dollars a month, its hard to find perspective in this whole mess. One report tells of COPAC technicians being very disgruntled at only receiving 55 US dollars a day for their services and another 15 a day for their meals. For teachers with degrees surviving on less than 5 US dollars a day, it doesn't really make sense - does it?

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.