African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe Page 21

  A TEA PARTY

  The room is full of elderly people, white, middle class. They are retired civil servants, widows of public servants. The atmosphere is pale, relaxed, and I see I have been meeting only passionate partisans of Zimbabwe, whether for idealism or self-interest. It is often said of these people that they might never have left Tunbridge Wells or Cheltenham. This is only partly true. For one thing their side was badly defeated in a war and that means they have had to accommodate failure.

  The new Zimbabwe, chaotic, ebullient, violent, full of energy, full of optimism, is not a match for their natural temper, which tends toward the ironic, the philosophical. They cannot leave here, because pensions are not paid outside Zimbabwe. But would they if they could? Probably not. People who precipitously left for South Africa have come back. ‘Once we lived in a wonderful country called Southern Rhodesia. Now we live in a wonderful country called Zimbabwe.’ Outside a gate in one of the suburbs the house’s name is announced as ‘The Gap Took Us’–from a family who Took the Gap and returned. Where in the world would these ageing people be able to live as they do here, soaked in sunlight and able to afford a servant? But many do not have servants, pride themselves on their self-sufficiency. The worst is that they cannot now make trips to Britain. The money allotted for travelling is very little. If you do not have well-heeled relatives able to pay for you, then you stay here. ‘There are worse places to be stuck in,’ I observe and am told: ‘It’s all very well for you, you fly in, you fly out, but you have no idea of the cultural isolation. The newspapers only carry local news or if it’s foreign news it’s communist propaganda. Thank God for the BBC. We can’t afford to subscribe to overseas newspapers on our pension.’

  These people do not talk about politics, or say, ‘Why doesn’t Mugabe…’ They cultivate their gardens, and go in for charitable works, just as they would at Home.

  But they are not the only refugees from the past. Today, being driven through the most prestigious suburb of them all, I was told it is full of well-heeled whites who are born-again Christians. ‘Yes, that’s how losing the War took them! They can’t face life just as themselves, without holding on to God’s hand. No, this whole suburb is jumping with God, comrade, jumping with God.’

  GARFIELD TODD

  Garfield Todd, ex-Prime Minister, now a hero of the Revolution, magnificent, white haired, eighty years old and alive with energy and optimism, sits on the verandah of his daughter’s house. But it is not really a verandah. Hearing she meant to build herself a house, he said, ‘You aren’t going to have another of these houses, a string of rooms with a verandah along them? No, I shall design you a house.’ So it is more like a Spanish house, Mediterranean, with a central atrium full of plants, and rooms off it. Where we sit is a room that does not have a fourth wall.

  He dismisses what everyone else is talking about, the corruption scandals, with ‘These little incidents…’

  He says, ‘Eight years, all this in eight years. It’s a miracle. They’ve achieved so much. I know we said they could but who would have believed it, in such a short time? You go into an office or a bank, you look at them, so full of confidence and ability, and remember the old days, when they had all their confidence knocked out of them. You meet young people now who don’t remember the bad old days.’

  He had a sad time in the War, an enemy of the white regime, confined to his farm, forbidden to speak his mind. He helped the fighters when he could, and now sometimes people come up to him and give him presents. ‘Do you remember? You helped my little boy?’ ‘You gave me medicine when I was sick.’ ‘You hid my brother when the soldiers were chasing him.’

  This Zimbabwe is his Zimbabwe and he loves it with a fierce innocence. The Unity Accord has made him and his country whole and perfect.

  ZIMBABWE

  A scene guaranteed to appeal to connoisseurs of political irony…some months later Garfield Todd got badly burned when working on one of his ancient cars: restoring old cars is his hobby. When he was in hospital Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, former enemies, went together to visit him. Garfield Todd, still pretty ill, was being gentled out of a bath. The security guards tried to hurry a nurse into getting her patient quickly out of the bath and into bed. ‘Can’t you see who is here?’ ‘You do your job and I’ll do mine,’ she replied.

  ‘When those two men, Mugabe and Nkomo, stood on either side of Todd’s bed that day, man, that was the best of Zimbabwe, I tell you, that is Zimbabwe.’

  SCHOOL

  When Mugabe and his army were still hopeful contenders for power he promised that if he won every child would be given a secondary education. On Liberation he said, ‘When an African country gets Independence Aid money flows in, and then dries up. We, Zimbabwe, must decide now what is most important. First of all Communal Areas, the old Reserves, always starved of money. That’s the priority. After that, the secondary schools. Yes, it is true we do not have the infrastructure to do it well at once, but there is going to be unemployment for a time in any case, and it is better a young person should be unemployed with some kind of education than with none.’

  Did he really say this? Who cares!

  Comrade Mugabe

  Keep your finger in the dyke,

  Pull your finger out,

  The water flood about,

  Comrade Mugabe, Comrade Mugabe,

  We rely on you.

  (Popular song)

  And secondary education was established at once. In 1982 I met teachers radiant with exhaustion and idealism, who said they worked in schools converted from barns, shacks, shops–anything, and there might be two or three shifts of pupils in a day. ‘The benches never had time to cool.’ Parents helped to build schools, giving time, skills, and money, often going without necessities. Secondary education was the key to their children’s future, and there was no sacrifice too great.

  Eight years since Liberation. Nothing in the life of a country. Everything in the life of a child. Zimbabwe is now covered with secondary schools. But there are not enough teachers, textbooks, let alone–often–electricity, or even clean water, let alone the facilities taken for granted in Europe. A school may have one teacher actually qualified to teach: the rest may have a couple of O-levels. Many teachers, while they are teaching, are trying to get more O-levels or a precious A-level. And their goal? Certainly not to remain in rural schools, far from the centres, but to get to a big town, preferably Harare. The teaching staff in these schools never stay long, they are always on their way to somewhere better, and many headmasters have turned out dishonest.

  The children at these schools believe they are being given a future, but only five per cent (1988) actually pass O-levels. They have nothing in their experience to enable them to make comparisons, do not know what a properly equipped school is, often fail and have to return to their villages where they dream that this half-education of theirs will some day, somehow, earn them the good life. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions by now, of young people who believe they are getting a real education.

  This situation is dangerous, a classic for revolution: numbers of young people who have been promised everything, have made sacrifices and are then disappointed. As the rulers of this country know. It is reported that Mugabe is saying, ‘We made a mistake. From now on secondary education will concentrate on quality.’ And what does he plan to do with these half-educated populations, not fit for employment in the modern world, but educated out of satisfaction with village life? It is said that fear of these young people is why Mugabe is so hard on discontented students. His repressions are signalling: I will not stand for any nonsense from the youth.

  It is also reported, with emotion, that when in Parliament it was announced the budget for education for the first time was larger than for defence, everyone stood up and cheered and wept.

  We drive out of Harare, going west. The roads are still, to eyes used to any road in Europe, empty. You drive along, sole user of the road and then ahead of you is a bus, enveloped
in black fumes. All the public vehicles emit black clouds. Why? Well, there is this question of not being able to get spare parts, and then, they don’t service them often enough. When a large new car overtakes it is a Toyota and belongs to a Chef. These cars do not belch out greasy black smoke that trails across the bush, poisoning plants and beasts. Only public transport vehicles do that, and they often break down, and sit on the roadside surrounded by disconsolate people. There are accidents. This is not because the drivers are bad: the vehicles are. Last week I met a woman whose brother, a driver, was killed because brakes failed and the bus fell over into a ravine. It is astonishing how often you meet people who have been in accidents, or whose relatives and friends have. ‘Travelling on public transport…you need plenty of courage. Of course, the Africans have no choice.’

  The weather is bad. This November is cold and grey. I swear that never, ever, was it cold in November, in the old days. The ITCZ is still in the wrong place, too high, and not engaging with the air masses from the Indian Ocean. I would never have believed I could long for a thick sweater in November.

  Under a low, cold, grey sky we go on west, through small towns that appear at long intervals, and then stop for lunch at a hotel which is the social centre for a large district: the dining room and bars are too many and too large for the number of people who stay in the hotel. The menu is still the old British menu, roast and grilled this and that, meat wonderful, vegetables less than wonderful, salads and fruits perfection. Everything as it was, except that now on every menu is sadza, and a common meal is steak and sadza, fried fish and sadza. Teachers from schools miles around come here for a meal, and to enjoy electric light, and to use the telephone. Hotels in remote towns like this are places of wonder to most people in the villages. They have never been in one.

  In 1956 I drove here on my way to the still being built Kariba dam, through bush that has stayed in my mind as what forest ought to be. Tall and stately trees were full and graceful and above all infinitely various. For hours I drove through this bush, on the look-out for elephants, I saw game of all kinds, and stopped more than once to listen to the birds. On this trip I waited for what I remembered to begin, but it did not. If trees still stood, then every third or fourth tree had been cut down, and the stumps were raw or weathering. Or there were large stumped areas. Or each tree had lost a branch or two branches.

  ‘People have to eat,’ says Ayrton R. ‘People have to keep warm.’ He is as upset as I am.

  We drive through this denuded bush on a large road, then a smaller one, and turn off, and off again, each time on to rougher tracks, past notices that say, ‘The Happiness Secondary School Welcomes You!’ ‘The New Dawn School Welcomes You!’ Now we are on a rutted track in a Communal Area. There are few trees left. On we go, several miles, past a store, over a little bridge where women are washing clothes in a pool full of detergent suds, and there, ahead, is the school. Two schools in fact, the primary school, the secondary school. All the schools in the country are the same, built to a pattern, long, low, shed-like buildings, sometimes with narrow verandahs. This assembly of buildings occupies a large area, several acres. There are trees, most whole, and not mutilated, there are shrubs and even attempts at gardens. What you might think you were seeing, if you had not already learned these patterns of building say ‘school’, could be something on the lines of an army camp or depot or an internment camp, places that have to be quickly and cheaply erected.

  We have been invited by a friend, a young man from England, who contracted to teach for a year, but volunteered for another year, with the possibility of a third. There is Jack, waving from outside a minute shed, or so it looks. The big Volvo makes the house look even smaller. The house has two small rooms. In one is a bed, a corner with hooks to hang a jacket or a shirt, a shelf for books. In the other is a table, gas stove, and a higgledy-piggledy of pots, pans, jugs, cans of water, kerosene for the hurricane lamp, vegetables, bags of mealie meal, tomatoes, a couple of onions. We have arrived in the middle of a school day. Jack goes off to his pupils, putting on a tie, rolling down his sleeves, according to regulation: teachers must set an example. Ayrton R. and I sit crammed among the paraphernalia while people drop in on pretexts, to look at us, for it is known that Jack is expecting ‘important visitors from Harare, from the University.’ They want to borrow a match, get a glass of water, or simply to say they are friends of Jack’s. They are a succession of lively, very young people, mostly boys. Some are teachers, but it is not easy to tell teachers from pupils.

  Then Jack reappears and engages them in conversation in Shona. Ayrton R. who was born and brought up in the country does not know as much Shona as this young man does after a few months.

  The Shona patterns of greeting at once melt you in admiration, and in apology for our gracelessness. Nothing like, How are you? or, Hello!

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘Have you spent the day well?’

  ‘I have spent the day well if you have spent the day well.’

  ‘I have spent the day well.’

  ‘Then I have spent the day well.’

  Jack can now converse in Shona, not, he deprecates, about philosophy or politics, but on the, How is your sister? How is your health? Have you done your homework? level.

  At sundown we walk off to the store about a mile away, over the little bridge where women are still washing clothes, through trees. We sit on a stone under a tree drinking Coca-Cola, watching the comings and goings at the store, and above is the sunset, backlighting heavy black clouds with scarlet and gold rays. The bird calls, the voices of the passing groups of people acquire the softened, distant note appropriate to nightfall, and we walk carefully in the dark over the rough track to the tiny house. On the way we are offered green mealies, sold much harder and older than we would choose to eat them. But Jack says, buying some for our supper, ‘If you are short of food you aren’t going to eat mealies before they have acquired their maximum size.’ We light the paraffin lamp, and in the dim light we eat the hard mealies and talk about the school. This headmaster, like the headmasters of three other schools in the area is ‘suspended’ for embezzling funds. He has also been having sex with the pupils. ‘He is a man without a character,’ says Jack. This diagnosis interests us and we discuss at length whether Jack is saying he is a man without the principles expected of a functionary in a European country with a tradition of public service. ‘But this is a school set up on European principles. That is what they have chosen. It can’t run at all without those principles,’ says Jack.

  ‘But it is running without those principles,’ I say. ‘What about all those young people we were talking to?’

  ‘No, it is not running, it is not running at all. The whole place is neglected, demoralized and dirty.’ And Jack is in despair.

  We then embark on that discussion that I have already been part of several times, but not in a tiny brick room full of insects buzzing around the lamp, the frogs going hard at it outside. These ideas sound different in a house in Harare, not exactly abstract, since Corruption–the scale and the shamelessness of it–is frightening everyone, but certainly not as urgent.

  What is extraordinary about all these embezzlements and thievings is that the perpetrators do not seem able to believe they will be caught. You will see in a newspaper–usually the Chronicle in Bulawayo, not the Herald, which is a conformist paper–a headline like, ‘Minister So and So–99 Counts of Fraud’. This headmaster here was stealing money and sleeping with schoolgirls for months, with everyone watching.

  ‘It is as if they have some area in their minds that blanks out the normal expectations of results of wrong-doing,’ says Jack. ‘If you don’t want to say, They’re barmy–which they obviously aren’t.’

  Is this another Grey Area, where old customs, or ways of thinking, blur in contact with new ideas, new laws? Except that in the old society theft was theft, and severely punished. How is it that sane and intelligent people go in
for large-scale theft apparently believing they are invisible, or that The Law has no eyes? ‘Or,’ says Jack, ‘that everybody isn’t talking about them.’

  As for the schoolgirls, that is easy to understand. A girl of fourteen or fifteen is considered nubile, and, indeed, marriageable. The young teachers often sleep with the older girls, and then marry them.

  ‘But surely a headmaster should set a good example?’ demands Jack. And repeats that the headmaster is a man without character. This formula is allowed to sum up the conversation.

  By now it is half-past seven, nearly time for bed. Jack says he is so tired by the end of the day he is asleep by eight.

  Time to make a last trip to the toilet.

  Zimbabwe has just held celebrations for the 100,000th Blair toilet. This toilet was evolved as part of the War against fly-borne diseases, and, too, against bilharzia, hookworm, dysentery.

  The life-cycle of bilharzia goes like this. It doesn’t matter at what point you enter it. Let us take the moment when the snail that harbours the bilharzia fluke ejects it in the water of the river. This entity then enters the skin of some human bathing or washing clothes in the river. It makes its way to the liver, or bladder, or kidney, or some other suitable organ. There it does great damage. This disease afflicts millions of people in Africa, and in other countries too. But Africa is the worst. People die of it, and suffer all kinds of symptoms, one being lethargy, which is one of the reasons for the accusation that ‘Africans are born lazy’. (This is a white formula from the past.) A friend of my parents, a farmer, an energetic wiry man of the type described as ‘living on his nerves’ dropped dead one day, while apparently in the best of health. He was discovered to be ‘full of bilharzia’. When the fluke leaves the afflicted organ, it is excreted. The excreta is deposited in the bush–or was until recently. The rains wash the excreta into the river, and the bilharzia fluke enters the snail.