ZIMBABWE- LETTER FROM THE DIASPORA !

26th September 2008.

Dear Friends,

All week long I have been wandering what I would write about in this week's letter. With so little real news coming out of Zimbabwe during this current impasse, it was hard to see what there was to talk about that the political analysts hadn't already dissected and mulled over all week. Then, Robert Mugabe came to my rescue!

Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Mugabe said : "Once again I appeal to the world's collective conscience to apply pressure for the immediate removal of these sanctions by Britain, the United States and their allies which have brought about untold suffering to our people." No sooner had I read those words and watched the clip on the BBC website when my phone rang. It was a good friend of mine calling from Murehwa. He wanted to thank me for some money I had sent him and to tell me that the gift had enabled him to buy two buckets of maize. With very careful rationing that might last a couple of weeks he told me. One helping of sadza a day and perhaps a little bowl of thin porridge in the morning for the kids before they go to school. No meat, so they supplement the sadza with vegetables from his garden – grown I may add with seeds sent from the UK! My friend is one of the lucky ones but for most of the people in Murehwa it's an early morning trip on foot to the nearest muhacha trees. 'You know muhacha? he asked me. Of course I know muhacha. In this area of the country it is a scared tree and I had often sat under its shade with friends at a rural bottle store. The fruit of the muhacha is edible and sweet. Every child knows that and in the old days it was what you would call a 'leisure' activity, gathering the sweet fruit to munch on the way home. There's a grove of these trees deep in the rural area about eight or ten miles from Murehwa and every morning people trek there to gather the fruit. No longer is it a leisure pastime, now it is the people's only means of survival. 'You have to get there early' my friend told me because people fight, they actually exchange blows so desperate are they for the hacha. It is all they will eat for the day. Like all wild fruits, if eaten to excess, it will have a disastrous effect on the digestive system and acute diarrhoea follows. With nothing else in the stomach such conditions can prove fatal and without drugs or medical intervention people will die - have already died in the area. The local MP for the area is none other than the Minister of Health, himself a doctor. I wonder if he heard his president tell the UN Assembly that "The majority of our rural people have been empowered (by the Land reform programme) to contribute to household and national food security and to be masters of their destiny" If that is the case then why are the people surviving on wild fruits? Why are their own grain huts empty? Why are the huge grain silos in Murehwa housing imported maize accessible only to those with foreign currency to buy the precious commodity?

Mugabe appeals to the 'world's collective conscience' but apparently has none himself as he leaves his people to starve while he struts the world stage accusing everyone else of causing the Zimbabwean people's 'untold suffering.' The contrast between Mugabe's weasel words at the UN and what my friend told me of the people's suffering could not be more marked. This week I listened to two highly respected Africanists, Richard Dowden and William Gumede debating the situation in Zimbabwe and I was shocked to hear Richard Dowden remark that Mugabe cared nothing for Zimbabwe's future, that he was quite prepared to destroy the country in order to save his own position. Of course, I had heard that comment before from friends sitting around under the muhacha tree at the bottle store. I had even been inclined to make the same judgement myself but to hear that view coming from such a scholarly and objective source shocked me. Can it really be true that this great 'Liberation Hero' has become so bloated with power that he is blind to the suffering his policies have caused? Is it the fault of the sanctions against the leadership of Zanu PF as Mugabe claims that have caused the tide of human misery that has swept across the land? Climate change and sanctions have hindered food production, he claims but Mugabe knows that is not true. Has he not himself chivvied the resettled farmers for not growing more food?

I watched the Old Man being interviewed this week in New York. He was asked if he would allow Human Rights monitors into Zimbabwe to see for themselves, "Ah,ah,ah' he replied and shook his head. He was smiling at the time, the smile on the face of the crocodile, I thought. Later he claimed that his government had been falsely accused of human rights abuses. Tell that to the victims and their families, Robert Mugabe. Who else but you gives the orders for your opponents to be 'taught a lesson for not voting the right way.' "We won't stop" said one of his bully boys this week talking of the ongoing attacks on MDC supporters, "until the President himself tell us to."

Like everyone else in the diaspora, we are a long way from home and it's often hard to separate fact from journalistic fiction but that phonecall I received, just this morning, renewed my doubts about the wisdom of negotiating with such a man as Mugabe. Trusting Tsvangirai's personal integrity is one thing but can we be sure that all his top people are similarly motivated by what is best for Zimbabwe and not by hunger for money and power. All we can do from this far away is watch and wait and hope that truth, justice and, above all, conscience will prevail.

Yours in the (continuing) struggle. PH