Hi!
Here is another letter from Zimbabwe.
Looks bad there.
Should we get ready to invade before the Fedayeen get too powerful?
Naaaaaaaa!
We’ll pass a strong resolution at the UN.
After all, we have Christmas to enjoy and Africa is none of our business.
Incidentally, a naartjie is a tangerine.
Harry
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Subject: Irrigating nothing
Dear Family and Friends,
It has been a diabolical week for Zimbabwe. The Abuja decision to
renew our suspension from the Commonwealth caused a tidal wave of
recriminatory statements, propaganda and threats.
First President Mugabe pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth
altogether and then he, his wife and two dozen officials went to a UN
Information Summit in Geneva. President Mugabe used this world forum
to publicly slate his critics saying that the email and internet were
being used to destroy Zimbabwe and recolonise the Third World.
Meanwhile back at home Zanu PF turned up the temperature. First they
pushed through Parliament a ratification of the decision to leave the
Commonwealth. Then a Zanu PF caucus meeting resolved to expel the
foreign diplomats of Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand from
Zimbabwe. Finally, having used the fear factor to the limits, Foreign
Minister Stan Mudenge announced that the diplomats would not be
expelled "at this time."
Sitting on the edges of our seats and praying for sanity, wisdom or
just plain common sense, these are extremely worrying days for
Zimbabwe. The consequences of statements and decisions made in anger
and to try and soothe hurt pride, are almost too awful to contemplate
and describe. And, through it all, the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans,
just plummet ever downwards.
One night this week the usually pitch black view from my window was
disturbed by a brilliant but un-natural spotlight. The light came from
the direction of a nearby cemetery and I didn't stay to inspect it,
rapidly closing the curtains and praying that the light was in fact
coming from further away.
Goose bumps covered my arms as I thought about the latest horror story
in Zimbabwe. At night grave robbers are descending on cemeteries and
digging up newly filled graves. They are removing the corpses and
taking the empty coffins for resale. I don't know if this appalling
practice is being conducted by money making entrepreneurs or just by
desperate people trying to get enough money to stay alive.
With unemployment now at well over 70% in Zimbabwe, people are
resorting to desperate means in order to feed themselves and their
families and stay alive. Zimbabwe has now entered the fourth growing
season in a row without any sort of decent agriculture being
practiced. Every half hour, 72 times a day, our state radio churns out
the latest propaganda jingle telling us that "Our Land is our
prosperity".
The government have seized 11 million hectares of prime agricultural
land and yet, for the fourth year in a row, half of our population
needs world food aid and people are starving and digging up coffins
for re-sale. The majority of the seized farms have not been ploughed,
the resettled people have no seed, no chemicals, no fertilizer and no
money with which to buy the inputs they need to grow food.
A recent overseas visitor to my home walked around my small garden and
said it felt like looking at something from World War Two. In every
flower bed, between daisies and lilies, there are vegetables: onions,
carrots, cabbages, beetrots and spinach. Along one wall, standing tall
and about to blossom are sunflowers which I am growing in order to
supplement the feed I give to my half a dozen chickens.
In flower pots are chillies, strawberries and climbing beans. Up and
down my driveway my six laying hens patrol and scratch, crop the lawn,
dig out worms and beetles, feast on flying ants and eat weeds.
From my kitchen pelmets hang great heavy strings of home grown onions
cropped from one small bed in the corner of the garden. In my pantry
cupboard are two dozen jars of home-made marmalade, jelly, jam and
chutney made from the jealously guarded single naartjie and paw paw
trees in my back garden. In the fridge is home-made butter and in the
deep freeze home grown chickens.
You have to be extremely hard working in order to survive in Zimbabwe
these days but mostly, you have to have access to a small piece of
land and learn to become very inventive. This is the ironical tragedy
of Zimbabwe's so called agricultural revolution.
With so much land having apparently been given to the people, why the
hell are we all starving? Why are people digging coffins out of newly
filled graves? Why are young boys sitting in filthy rags on pavements,
starving and begging? Why are people living in cardboard boxes in shop
doorways? Why are families of four or six living in one room with
neither toilet or kitchen and without even a window in which to put a
flower pot and grow one strawberry or tomato plant ?
The biggest tragedy of all is that we are wasting the fourth growing
season in a row. In Marondera we have already had 8 inches of rain
this season and yet it is irrigating nothing. It is tragically clear
for anyone who cares to see, that this supposed agricultural
revolution has turned Zimbabwe into a nation of beggars, thieves,
racketeers and grave robbers. These are the realities of our daily
lives here and as we struggle to cope with them it is hard to look at
the bigger picture and to concentrate on caucus meetings, diplomatic
decisions and UN Summits.
Until next week, with love, cathy.
Copyright cathy buckle 13th December 2003.
http://africantears.netfirms.com
My books on the Zimbabwean crisis, "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears"
are now available outside Africa from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;
www.africabookcentre.com ; www.amazon.co.uk ; in Australia and New
Zealand: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Africa: www.kalahari.net
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