Cathy's letter from Zimbabwe

SO FEW ARE LEFT.

Saturday 4th June 2005.

Dear Family and Friends,

For the last five years the Zimbabwe government have insisted that there has not been a breakdown of law and order in the country. As the critics talked of anarchy, a partisan police force and widespread lawlessness, the government repeatedly disputed the claims saying they were all lies, damned racist, colonialist lies. It is ironic that now, as Zimbabwe's horizons are obscured by the smoke from a thousand fires, the police and government say they are simply" restoring order" to Zimbabwe. Hello, did I miss something here?
All everyone can think about and talk about is the massive destruction, the smoke that fills our skies and the multitudes of people who have been affected. There continue to be TV pictures of bulldozers knocking down brick houses. There are heart breaking, eye witness reports of families sitting in the filth, dust and rubble of what used to be their homes. All week there have been people desperately trying to save what they can of their lives. People carrying planks, boards, sheets of tin, bundles of plastic - the things that were their homes.Everywhere people are desperately looking for somewhere to sleep, somewhere out of the cold to shelter, somewhere to store their belongings. The police tell them to go back where they came from, to go back to the rural areas. It is ironic that these are the same rural areas that the government said were so overcrowded five years ago that the congestion was used to explain the seizure of 95% of the country's commercial farms.
I remember writing a letter like this about two years ago when I described newly evicted commercial farmers driving around in lorries filled with their furniture, desperately looking for somewhere to stay. Then it was self employed white commercial farmers whose lives, homes and jobs were being destroyed, now it is self employed black family traders.
First they came for the farmers.Then they came for the judges.Then they came for the opposition.Then they came for the media.Then they came for the traders.Next ???.........................

So few are left. Until next week, with love, cathy.