Zimbabwe - A letter from the diaspora

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29th November 2008
Dear Friends.
Not a week goes by in Zimbabwe without some so-called minister demonstrating to the country and the world how ridiculous and incompetent they are as they delve more and more into the world of make-believe. Anyone with half a brain can see that the stories they continue to tell the world to explain Zimbabwe's collapse are nothing more than downright fairy stories. And always there is the wicked ogre - the west and western sanctions in particular - to justify their every ludicrous claim that things are just fine in Zimbabwe. There is no crisis, it's all a western plot designed to undermine Robert Mugabe and give credence to the opposition. Never, will these tellers of tales admit that they themselves might be just a little responsible for the absolute breakdown of every aspect of life in Zimbabwe. Last week we had Gideon Gono, surely one of the chief story tellers, blaming the country's astronomical inflation rate on Zimbabweans themselves! It's all because they haven't worked hard enough on the farms they were given, they have not made sufficient use of all the benefits that were bestowed on them by a munificent Reserve Bank which had bankrolled the country's noble and patriotic land reform programme - at the behest of one Robert Mugabe, of course.

This week we had more fairy stories. It was those wicked sanctions that were the cause of the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, the Deputy Minister of Health Muguti claimed, "It is very regrettable that people are dying of cholera. Maybe the ones who created this situation have decided to kill us softly." Declaring that "The situation is under control", Muguti added with the usual absence of logic that we have come to expect from the regime that there was no need to declare the cholera outbreak as a national emergency - because it is under control. The very next day after this extraordinary statement Muguti contradicted himself by saying, " The outbreak will worsen with the rains." The fact that it has been raining for over a month seemed to have escaped his attention! Not once have the authorities admitted that it is ZINWA's failure to provide clean and safe water for the country that is the direct cause of the epidemic. Without forex they cannot buy the chemicals to purify the water and the only source of legal foreign exchange is the Reserve Bank headed by none other than Gideon Gono. Mugabe extended his term of office for another five years this week despite the Agreement signed by all three political parties that had clearly stipulated that no such appointments would be made without the agreement of all the signatories.

It is Gideon Gono's refusal to increase the withdrawal rate that has made life such hell for people who spend their lives standing in line waiting to withdraw amounts so small that they will not even buy a quarter of a loaf of bread, let alone medicines. The ZCTU is right to point out that Gideon Gono's failure to increase the amount people can withdraw may well account for the huge number of deaths from an entirely preventable disease. 'Killing them softly' as Muguti described the actions of the imagined enemy is perhaps a more apt way to describe what Mugabe and his cronies are doing to their own people. As Eddy Cross pointed out this week, Didymus Mutasa's words some years ago about having a population of only six million are fast becoming a reality. Mutasa had said it would be preferable to have a reduced population if they all supported the liberation struggle, ie Zanu PF.

The combination of lies and downright stupidity reached a crescendo with the refusal to let the Elders into the country to see for themselves the humanitarian situation. By refusing them entry the Zanu PF regime demonstrated to the whole world their arrogant contempt for any opinion other than their own. That action more than any other showed the world that Mugabe will bow to no one; he really believes that he can take on the whole world and win. A certain Adolf Hitler had the same belief. Did not Mugabe say that if his enemies compared him to Hitler that did not bother him one bit? Surrounded as he is by clownish, incompetent and unelected ministers who faithfully echo his every wish it is not surprising that he now believes himself to be invincible. SADC's cowardly failure to bring him to book have merely supported him in this view. We have only to look at how the government-controlled media covered the disgraceful refusal to admit the Elders to understand the extremes they will go to defend Mugabe's stance. Personal abuse and downright lies about the Elders may have satisfied Mugabe's ego but they did nothing to ease the suffering of the people or bring a solution to Zimbabwe's problems any nearer.

If the reports coming in that the MDC have officially pulled out of the talks are true then I for one applaud their decision. Today the UK Daily Telegraph reveals that buried deep in Zanu PF's version of the Constitutional Amendment, Mugabe as President reserves the right to abandon the Inter-party Agreement if 'for any reason' he sees fit. Such a presidential decree would immediately nullify the Agreement and leave Prime Minister designate Morgan Tsvangirai out of office. Despite all the suffering the people have endured, I do not believe that is what they wanted when they voted for the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai on March 29th.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle, PH

24th October 2008
Dear Friends.
Another week gone by and still no settlement in Zimbabwe while the agony of the people continues with even greater ferocity. Despite the heart breaking reality of starving children and villagers surviving on wild fruits and roots, the rising death toll from of cholera and water-borne diseases and supermarket shelves empty but for 'Cabbages and Condoms' as Cathy Buckle describes the situation in her hometown, Robert Mugabe still had the crass insensitivity to make a joke at the nation's expense. Speaking after the failure to reach agreement last weekend, Mugabe commented, "It went very well - in the wrong direction." This supposed off-the-cuff witticism by the Dear Leader was greeted with sycophantic mirth by his hangers on.
That was just the start of a week of humorous 'jests' by various Zanu PF functionaries. When Morgan Tsvangirai was denied a passport to allow him to travel to Swaziland to attend the meeting of SADC leaders, the explanation given was that there was no paper to print passports. The reason of course was Sanctions; that was why the country was running out of bond paper! Tsvangirai applied for a passport five months ago and during those intervening months the Reserve Bank Governor has issued thousands of new bank notes - printed on bond paper! Instead of telling Mugabe to behave himself and issue the new Prime Minister with a valid passport, the cowardly SADC leaders decided to postpone the talks for a week and then resume in Harare. The king of Swaziland offered to send his personal jet to collect Morgan Tsvangirai. Another joke perhaps but Morgan wasn't falling for that one and remained in Harare while Mugabe flew off to a summit in Kampala where the situation in Zimbabwe was high on the agenda. So now we see why Morgan was denied a passport, another sick joke on the regime's part.

Then it was the turn of a group called Zimbabwe Lawyers for Justice. No joke intended! They are a group of pro-government lawyers, heaven knows what justice they stand for. They issued a statement accusing the MDC 'of sowing seeds of chaos and mayhem' and called on Mugabe to go ahead and install a new government, urging him to declare a State of Emergency. Someone should tell this self-serving bunch of lawyers that the outstanding emergency in the country is impending starvation. 'Nzara', hunger, is the word on everyone's lips while Mugabe and his cronies play games with the country's future and condemn five million people to starvation.

Nothing changes in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. Back in 1992 I was teaching teachers on a remote mission station. Now that really was a drought year and I remember that commercial farmers were carrying grain out to starving villagers in the rural areas. The then Minister of Agriculture announced that in order to pay for drought relief the price of food would go up and people 'Should adjust their lives accordingly'. The sick humour of that remark incensed me into writing the following poem. I make no apology for copying it here, the message is as relevant now as it was then.

He who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

To pay for drought relief The price of foodstuff will go up, the Honourable Minister said, adjust your lives accordingly. Hear the Honourable Minister's words all you good Zimbabweans.

Tighten your belts another notch. Rest assured drought relief is on its way– only accept that someone always has to pay. Harden your hearts to hungry children, explain to them in simple terms, times are hard. They will surely understand- and adjust their appetites accordingly. Mothers hush your crying infants, their cries disturb the peace. Stretch the food a little further, make it last another day! Remember drought relief is on its way. only accept that someone always has to pay. In town your husband's lost his job, your kids at school faint clean away. The old ones in the village totter slowly to the grave. Tell them to be patient, explain to them in simple terms, times are hard.
They will surely understand – and adjust their deaths accordingly.

Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH

17th October 2008
Dear Friends.
Zimbabwe is not alone in its distrust of politics and politicians. In the west too there is widespread scepticism about politics; here in the UK a commonly heard remark is that 'Politics is a dirty game, it doesn't matter which party is in power, they're all the same.' Power is the key word and the ongoing impasse between the two sides in the current negotiations in Zimbabwe is characterised in the media as a 'struggle for power' as if power in itself was a dirty word and the two sides are no better than dogs fighting over a bone. I would argue, however, that the desire for power is not necessarily harmful in itself. The desire for political power for its own sake, for personal gain and self- aggrandizement is very different from wanting power in order to bring about change in people's lives; to make life better for the majority of the population.
Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF have been in power for twenty eight years. They have become used to the trappings of power; they are richer than their wildest dreams. All of this has been made possible through their unquestioning support for Mugabe and the ruling party. Personal integrity has gone by the board; judges have delivered their judgements not in accord with justice but according to the political dictates of Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF; policemen have long forgotten their true mandate to serve and protect the people and have instead become no more than party functionaries willing to beat and kill the people they deem to be the enemies of the state. In Zanu PF's eyes they are the state, all power is theirs and the people are merely appendages to be used and abused as the state sees fit. Absolute power has corrupted Zanu PF absolutely. After twenty eight years of unchallenged power they simply cannot accept that any other party is entitled or competent to share power. A statement in the government mouthpiece, The Herald, this week claimed that: "The MDC is too inexperienced to run finance…Government" they added "is formed by the President …the MDC is not fit to oversee security agencies. We urge them to get into government to learn the ropes and build trust." Unintended irony perhaps, I wondered as I read the Herald comments alongside the list of ministries that Robert Mugabe abrogated to himself in an Extraordinary Government Gazette, issued late one evening just before Thabo Mbeki arrived on yet another attempt to rescue the floundering negotiations. Could anyone, even within the ruling party, with a modicum of intelligence claim that the Ministries of Finance, Foreign Affairs, Defence, Home Affairs, Justice and Information had been competently run by the present holders of power? The evidence of financial mismanagement is clear for all to see. You don't need to be an economist to know that inflation makes your salary worthless before you have even withdrawn it from the bank or bought a loaf of bread or paid the bus fare home again, let alone put food on the table or paid the school fees. Are we seriously supposed to believe that the MDC is 'too inexperienced (ie.incompetent) to run finance' as the Herald would have us believe? And what of Home Affairs, the Ministry that runs the elections? The electoral roll is stuffed with names of long dead voters and under the hopelessly incompetent Mugabe puppet, Tobiwa Mudede, has reduced the country's electoral system to a laughing stock. The police, the army and the justice system have similarly been reduced to nothing but caricatures under Zanu PF mismanagement but still Mugabe claims he wants all of them and his puppets at the Herald and ZBC continue to spew out their poisonous lies to the effect that 'no one could have done it better'

But, you can't fool all the people all the time and this week there are signs that Hungry people are indeed Angry people. Civic society appears to be on the move, sporadic as yet and certainly not free of police violence. It was the students on Tuesday in Harare trying to present a petition as the House re-assembled and getting beaten and gaoled for their trouble; on Tuesday and Wednesday it was journalists thrown out of the Talks venue for supposedly not being accredited; on Thursday it was the Woza women in Bulawayo, inexplicably beaten and arrested this time despite last week's peaceful demo and today, Friday, the residents of Chitungwiza take to the streets in an action organised by NANGO and titled Do the Right Thing, designed to send a message to the government about the desperate lack of water and sanitation in their home town. "The government has always been doing the right thing," claimed one Clever Mutukwa a senior civil servant and war veteran, "The crisis is directly linked to the imposition of sanctions. Instead of calling on the government to do the right thing it is the NGOs and their allies in the opposition who should do the right thing and call for the lifting of sanctions."

You have to hand it to Robert Mugabe; the one ministry he has really run well is his (mis)Information Ministry. Those pesky sanctions must really be hurting him and the other listed Zanu PF top people. For the rest of Zimbabwe, it is not sanctions that are making people's lives unbearable, it is one old man and his power hungry Zanu PF followers who are unable to see beyond their own greed. A heart-breaking story from the eastern district of Nyanga tellingly illustrates that very point. A group of MDC officials had managed to gather donations of food for starving AIDS orphans and were busy distributing the food when a lorry load of police and war vets in Zanu PF shirts arrived and drove the Good Samaritans out claiming they were not licensed to distribute food. The biblical parallel is painfully clear: Suffer the little children. Such gross inhumanity, such blatant abuse of power defies belief; yet still Mugabe and Zanu PF claim they are the only ones fit to govern Zimbabwe.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH



10th October 2008

Dear Friends.
I have been writing this Letter from the Diaspora for one whole year now. This is Letter No 52. I have no idea who reads the letter or whether it makes any difference but for the first time in 52 weeks I have to admit that I am lost for words. There are no words to express my horror and disgust at what is happening in Zimbabwe. Horror at the level of hunger and poverty being experienced by ordinary Zimbabweans and disgust at the politicians who continue to play their childish power games while all around them the country sinks further and further into the abyss.

The World Food Programme yesterday issued an appeal for 140 million dollars to save 5 million Zimbabweans from imminent starvation. With the international economies in such disarray and billions being spent by governments to rescue failing banks it is hard to see this WFP appeal succeeding in raising sufficient funds to rescue Zimbabwe from its self-inflicted wounds. The rainy season is less than a month away in Zimbabwe and there is still no seed and no fertilizer in the bankrupt country for the new agricultural season. The country faces another disastrous crop failure which Robert Mugabe will no doubt once again blame on sanctions and greedy white farmers. In a carefully researched piece in the UK Times this week Jan Raath estimated that less that 400 white farmers of the original 5000 remain on their farms. Since the Agreement was signed on September 15th some 60 farmers have been forced, often at gunpoint to abandon their farms. 'Land grabbers' Jan Raath call them. " Army officers, magistrates, agricultural officials, local government officials are walking into homesteads and settling in, commandeering farmers' vehicles, furniture and the food in their fridges." All this while the people of Zimbabwe die slowly of starvation, of AIDS or water-borne diseases. The forthcoming rainy season can only increase the misery as malaria takes its annual toll and health care system collapses for lack of resources. A whole generation is being wiped out while the land grabbers and fat cats look the other way, blind and deaf to the cries of the suffering masses.

What of the next generation? The pupils at primary schools, the bright young men and women at universities and colleges who will be the future leaders of the country. What hope for them? This week four major institutions of higher learning failed to open their doors for the new semester citing 'budgetary constraints', the collapse of basic infrastructure and the absence of lecturers who, along with secondary and primary school teachers, have fled the country in their thousands. In educational terms, 2008 has been declared a 'non-year'. There will be no Grade Seven exams and possibly no O's or A levels either. Pupils and college students will just have to repeat a year in 2009 they are told. And what guarantee do they have that things will be any different next year? Without a political solution, nothing will change. So while Mugabe and Zanu PF continue to hold on to power there is no end to Zimbabwe's misery in sight. The official inflation rate is an unimaginable 232 million percent, twenty times more than it was a month ago. None of Gideon Gono's attempts to bring down inflation and rescue the economy have succeeded; in fact; they have made things worse. The sight of food outlets laden with goods for sale in foreign currency right next to empty shelves for local currency sales proves the point.
The country is being held to ransom by Robert Mugabe and his gang of thieving supporters who continue to plunder the country's resources while the people die a slow and lingering death. More than anything else, it is the total lack of humanity, the callous indifference to the suffering of the African people by the president and his party that leaves me lost for words. In his determination to cling to power at all costs Robert Mugabe is committing silent genocide while Africa and the rest of world look the other way. There are no words to convey that horror.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH.

3rd October 2008

Dear Friends.
On Monday 29th September Robert Mugabe returned, earlier than expected, from his ego-boosting trip to the UN. It's hard to see what else the expensive jaunt for himself, his wife and forty of his closest associates was intended to achieve except to reassure the Old Man that he could still strut his stuff on the biggest stage in the world. During his absence his friend Thabo Mbeki had been forced to resign as President of South Africa. Who would facilitate the talks now we wondered? Some journalists inside the country declared that he had come back early to stall an attempted coup by the military, alarmed that they would lose all their ill-gotten gains if he implemented the deal with the MDC. Whatever the reason, Mugabe declared to the party faithful, all arrayed in shirts and zambias reflecting the Dear Leader's image back at him, that there was no deadlock in the talks. He expected a Unity government to be in place by the end of the week, only four Ministries remained in contention, Mugabe affirmed, "There is no deadlock" and later Chinamasa, his erstwhile Minister of Justice declared that the mediator was not needed. So, despite all Mugabe's praise for Mbeki's mediation at the UN, the former president is no longer needed. Not surprising really!

On that same day, Monday 29th, the women and men of WOZA marched in an entirely peaceful demo through the streets of Bulawayo. 600 people marched, unimpeded by the police who, according to Jenni Williams, the WOZA co-ordinator, simply looked the other way. There were no arrests, no beatings, none of the horrors we have seen before at WOZA demos. Instead, the women and men were allowed to march in support of their demand for the immediate installation of a new government. The marchers stopped at all the major government offices in the city and civil servants rushed out to join them. Bystanders joined in too and shouted 'Well done, well done, good job' and greeted the brave women and men of WOZA with broad smiles. Could there be a more potent demonstration of people's power I thought. What is wrong with Zimbabweans if they cannot see that they have the power in their own hands to end their suffering now?

On that same day, Monday the 29th after Gideon Gono had announced the bank withdrawl maximum was increased to $20.000, there were literally thousands of people on the streets of all the cities and towns standing in snaking, sprawling queues to withdraw their money. My friend in Murehwa told me he got up at 4.30 to get in line outside the bank for his number. 29 it was, and then rushed home to search for something to eat. When he returned, that number had risen to 300! Teachers had come all the way down from Uzumba, about 40 kms away, to collect their salaries, sleeping overnight anywhere they could lay their heads waiting for the banks to open at 8.0'clock. The new notes, $10.000 and $20.000, had not reached many of the banks and at least one building society in Murehwa remained closed because they had no cash at all. It was the same all over the country. Scenes of unbelievable chaos as desperate, hungry people waited to withdraw their own money before the inflation giant swallowed it up. Morgan Tsvangirai visited the queues to see and hear for himself the people's misery. Not so the Zanu PF fat cats; they probably knew that they would have heard loud and clear the people's opinion of them and that was not something they wanted to hear. They live in their own fantasy world where as Mugabe would have it "Nothing has changed."

We are told that he is under huge pressure from his AU colleagues to implement the agreement; we are also told that his top generals and police chief have told him they will resign if he installs Morgan Tsvangirai as Prime Minister. They will not serve under the 'colonial puppet' they tell him. All week long, opinionated commentators have argued that the deal is dead in the water, they have blamed Morgan Tsvangirai for his naivety in signing the Agreement in the first place. The NCA and ZCTU have both said they would take to the streets. But where are they? Nowhere to be seen; words are cheap but what is needed now is action. Why can't they follow WOZA's example? Those brave women and men have shown the whole country that there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

The one pressure Mugabe could not withstand is the pressure of thousands of people telling him to go. If people can take to the city centres to withdraw their money from the banks then what is stopping them from taking a few more steps to become an unstoppable tide that would drive out the dictator forever. They voted against him in March, he knows that, however much he may claim otherwise. What is needed now is one final push, not by the political players but by the ordinary people taking to the streets in their thousands to show the Old Man that we want our country back. 'Now Is the Time' as the anti-apartheid activists used to say. They did it against a much more powerful regime, why can't we?

Friday October 3rd as I write this and still no unity government in place; in fact, no government of any kind for months now. Only when the Zimbabwean people themselves peacefully demonstrate to the country and the world that they want change and they want it now can there be any hope for the future. The situation is too serious to leave to the politicians alone.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH