CurrentAffairs
Letter fromZimbabwe: Sick at heart
By R.W. Johnson
HARARE, Zimbabwe, (UPI) -- Harare, afterthe declaration of President Mugabe's re-election 10 days ago,is a city sick at heart. The fanfare of his inauguration simplypassed most people by here, as did Mugabe's usual tirades againstcolonialism, Britain and whites in general.
Almost everyone in the capital voted againsthim; the official voting figures show sizeable minorities votingfor the president in all the Harare constituencies, but theseare almost certainly bogus votes, added in to make things lookbetter.
What is quite indubitable is that many morein the capital would have voted against Mugabe had they been ableto -- but given the reduction in the number of urban polling stationsthis was simply impossible. Many waited 10,15 and 20 hours inqueues to vote and still failed to do so in the end.
The worst place of all was the Harare townshipof Budiriro. Here the number of polling stations was reduced sothat each voter had 5.6 seconds in which to vote. Even when thecourts ordered the polling stations to stay open another day,they opened five hours late there.
But Budiriro authorities still seemed tofind the sight of vast queues of opposition voters provoking sothe police were sent in to harrass the voters. They set up a vastwire cage in the blazing heat of the sun and then began to grabpeople and throw them in it, accusing them of trying to vote twice.There was no evidence, no formal charge -- it was just a way oftormenting them and being able to throw doubt on the poll here.I spoke to people through the wire strands, some of them all daywithout water. Some had not even been standing in queues whenarrested: one woman, the wife of a local preacher, had been pulledout of her kitchen and thrown into the cage.
Some people have cursed rural voters forbeing credulous enough to vote for Mugabe again. Others have justshrugged and said people were afraid, one can't blame them. Butfor many the notion of ever getting rid of Mugabe had become hardto believe. After 22 years he's just a fixture. "Mugabe isour king, you don't elect a king," said Didymus Mutasa, organizationsecretary of the ruling party ZANU-PF, the Zimbabwe African NationalUnion-Patriotic Front.
Many foreign observers and even some correspondentsasked me: do you expect trouble, mass disorder in the streets?My answer, having spent much of the last three years in Zimbabwe,has been always no. It's not just that the Shona, the dominanttribe, are a passive and patient people. More to the point, peopleare scared, battered, hungry, consumed by the need to stand inalmost equally long queues for mealie meal (maize), sugar, cookingoil, soap, milk or candles, usually without finding them.
The Amani Trust, which exists to help torturevictims, defines trauma as torture, severe beating or being forcedto watch your family members suffering similarly or being raped/killed.On that definition 30 percent of all Shona over the age of 30have suffered trauma, and among the minority Ndebele the figurerises to 50 percent.
So it's not surprising that the generalstrike, which began Wednesday, has seemd thinly supported. Andwhen the president's youth militia goes on the rampage in themiddle of town, people scatter and run even though those who votedagainst Mugabe must outnumber their opposites by 10 to one ormore in any street situation. For those who can choose, this isjust a reason not to go into the center of town.
People are desperate for jobs, for the meansto feed their families: political protest comes low on the list.Many whites and those blacks who can are planning to leave andsmuggle themselves into South Africa or Botswana if they can.Salvation, in such a situation, is individual. Already old peopleare dying from hunger in thousands a week and there are reportsfrom all over the country of children fainting in school for lackof food. It seems unlikely that Mugabe or the ZANU-PF elite whorun the country care much about this. They are insulated againstsuch things themselves and the really top people are profitingfrom the blood diamonds trade from the Congo or Angola.
It is all unbearably sad. Despite its run-downcenter and its endlessly potholed roads Harare is a beautifulcity: tall trees, wonderful vegetation, large gardens. Walkingin the center one is endlessly accosted by curio sellers who havehardly seen a tourist in months. When you tell them you don'twant to buy their wares they switch immediately to telling youhow many hungry children they have.
In part this terrible sadness stems fromthe fact that so many believed -- briefly -- that Mugabe mightbe beaten. But this disappointment and anti-climax is greatlyadded to by a conviction that only external forces will be effectivein getting Mugabe out... and that the rest of the world doesn'tseem to care.
"The news that the Commonwealth hassuspended Zimbabwe is good," one Movement for DemocraticChange (opposition) supporter told me, "but we need realhelp now, not gestures. The President is a torturer and murdererand his supporters are taking revenge all round the country onthose who voted against him. Even people like me, who have foughtwith all I've got against him have now to think of my wife andkids. Should we run? If so where to? Surely it would be easierand cheaper for the world to help now than have to pick this countryup from the dead later on?"