It is a beautiful country, with some wonderful scenery, amazing history and very nice people. It felt safer and more secure than South Africa, not just in the sense of personal safety, but in regards of the political situation, which is not necessarily a good thing. It was quite similar in Swaziland three years ago, but we didn't spend so long there, or meet so many people. The atmosphere has been more as I remember it when I was in Tanzania, predominantly black people just getting on with their lives.
We were surprised by the infrastructure, from the media reporting in the U.K. we expected to find a country where nothing worked, people surviving barely above subsistence level. In fact, all the main roads are tarred and in good condition, and larger dirt roads are well maintained. There is reasonable cellphone coverage and we were able to get a WiFi broadband connection in three of the campsites we stopped at. Clean drinking water was available everywhere, and flush toilets and hot showers. If there is a problem it is with the electricity supply, there are frequent outages. It often went off in the middle of the day and we were told it was load shedding, if industry needed more power then the domestic supply was shutoff. It also went down quite frequently at other odd times. All the campsites we stayed at had their own generators and one guest house has just installed solar panels and backup batteries, which could be the way that things will develop.
There is, of course, rural poverty, but that exists the whole world over. The only large conurbation we went to was Bulawayo and we weren't there long enough to identify urban poverty. It did seem to exist at Victoria Falls, where so many street vendors attempted to sell curios to the tourists. It is always difficult to draw comparisons between urban and rural poverty. Which is preferable, living in an isolated community, without access to electricity, walking long distances to collect water or fire-wood, getting sufficient food from a small piece of cultivatable land and a few animals, or squatting in a town or city, probably relying on passing tourists who will buy a few curios at marked up prices.
The land reclamation issue is a very difficult one. The Ndebele people were cheated out of their land by Rhodes and his group of business men who, in the Rudd Concession of 1888, persuaded King Lobulenula to give them exclusive mining rights to the territory. The small print actually gave them land rights as well. It is reported that for sole access to the land he was paid 1,000 Martini-Henry rifles with ammunition, a steam powered gunboat on the Zambesi and £100 a month. Rhodes then started moving white settlers in, the first were Afrikaaner Boers and they were followed by Europeans. By 1894 Lobulenga was dead, the Ndebele as a nation had been defeated and subdued, they were removed from prime farmland which was then handed over to the settlers.
So we fast forward 100 years to 1980, a turbulent time, for most of which the country was known as Southern Rhodesia, to the election of Robert Mugabe, leader of the previously banned ZANU-PF party, and himself imprisoned under white rule and domination. After an initial honeymoon period when Mugabe was hailed by Western governments as one of a new breed of African leaders, in 1983, fearing a challenge from Nkomo, his political rival, Mugabe began a programme of ethnic cleansing against the Ndebele people, Mugabe and his supporters are mainly Shona. His murderous Fifth Brigade, a group of North Korean trained guerilla fighters, killed up to 20,000 people in a campaign of murder, rape and torture. Western governments, including Great Britain were aware of this but chose not to intervene.
When Mugabe first muted that he was unhappy with land ownership, that a small minority of the descendants of the white settlers owned the majority of the cultivated or farmed land, Great Britain supported the idea of land 'reform', that if a white Zimbabwean farmer chose to sell his land then a black Zimbabwean would receive support to enable him to buy it. £44M of aid money was given by the British government (read tax payer) to assist this programme, but incredibly, considering the size of this sum, there seems to have been little monitoring or evaluation. When it became apparent that most of the money had 'disappeared' in corruption, white farmers were 'persuaded' to sell, and the farms went to Cabinet Ministers and members of Mugabe's circle of friends, and not returning the land to displaced Ndebele people as was intended, Great Britain refused to give any more support and relationships between the two countries deteriorated rapidly. The people taking over the farms had no experience of running such large businesses and during the 1990s the economy of the country crashed completely as the previously profit making concerns, producing enough food to feed their own people and export, were replaced by people struggling to get enough food from the land to feed themselves, with no farming, knowledge, tools, seeds or fertilisers.
Mugabe also had to deal with continued political unrest as black and white Zimbabweans alike saw their previously productive country, often called 'the bread basket of Africa', grind into poverty. Inflation was so out of control that the Zimbabwean currency was replaced by the U.S. dollar. In order to win votes and stay in power he allowed militia groups, such as the so-called 'war veterans' many of whom weren't even born at the time of the war, to run riot, to forcibly take the land from remaining white farmers and kill any who resisted. Homesteads were burnt and animals slaughtered. Elections were held, but the militia groups, in return for the privileges they had been given, beat and intimidated the mainly rural Ndebele people who might have chosen not to keep Mugabe in power.
So where are we now? Following his (corrupt) re-election this year Mugabe is continuing to strip the country of it's resources. Zimbabwe is rich in mineral deposits. We were told that concessions have been given to Chinese companies for mining rights. This could seem like a good idea, but we were also told that the benefits to the Zimbabwean people are negative. No-one seems to know how much the Chinese have paid, what the terms and conditions are, or where the money has gone. We also heard that there is no benefit to local people in terms of employment as gangs of prisoners from Chinese jails are imported to service the mines. Just at the end of our trip, the night before our return to S.A. we learnt that Anglo-American, who bought out De Beers mining company, also have mining rights. At this time we also discovered that an independent British consortium was in the process of undertaking an analysis and evaluation of the Anglo-American operation, presumably looking at health and safety issues, workers rights and conditions.
Another Mugabe initiative, since his re-election this year, is to introduce a law which requires all companies and businesses in the country to be 51% in black ownership. We spoke to several white Zimbabweans with businesses they had struggled to keep going in the difficult times, employing predominantly black Zimbabwean labour, they have to give 51% of their shares to a black Zimbabwean. It didn't seem to matter who that person is, they don't need to have anything to do with the company, or have any input into it, the only criteria is that they are black, and will be able to take 51% of the profits.
We were very careful with whom we broached the subject of politics, but those to whom we spoke seemed ready to discuss the state of the country. The only black person we talked to was Ndebele. Unanimously they all said that the main problem is corruption. Only one person did not condemn Mugabe outright, and interestingly that was a recent European immigrant. The opinion there was that Mugabe is not such a bad man, but he is surrounded by a load of crooks. The others were all third, fourth or even later descendants. The opinion there was that he is a megalomaniac, crippling his own country and people to serve his own interests, a despotic dictator.
So what conclusions can we draw? Those same people who criticised Mugabe are not prepared to be hounded out of the country of their birth and their recent history. In most cases their children have left, mainly to the U.K., but also to Australia and Canada, in search of work, probably never to return. Some had themselves tried living in other countries, but couldn't settled and had decided to return and try and resume their lives in the country of their birth, against all odds and the hard work involved. Everyone, black and white, is determined to make it work, I have nothing but admiration for them. We were told that apart from land ownership there has never been a black/white problem in Zimbabwe, that in their different roles they had always got along together. Two white Zimbabweans we met seemed to be as fluent in the language of their employees, one Shona and one Ndebele, as they were in English, and the laughter and teasing which seemed to go on as they worked together did make us feel that their relationship was good. It was acknowledged that something had needed to happen concerning land ownership and black/white majority, but not in the way that that it has, for purely political reasons. It would seem that the blacks have suffered more than the whites, who would have been more affluent in the first place. Those who wanted to have left the country. Those who are determined to stay have the education and determination to make things change. The blacks, previously comfortably employed in a benevolent patriarchal system, do not have the ability to leave or the life skills required to make changes. Corruption, corruption, corruption. Starting with G.B.s £44M and continuing with the income from mining concessions and the insistence that if concessions are granted there is a requirement to invest in the country, so much could have been done to improve education and social and community support, which might make Zimbabwe once more a prosperous and productive country.
There is a substantial rumour that Mugabe has prostate cancer. His demise and death could lead to an election and a change of government. However I really fear that it will lead to various factions in his corrupt cabinet forming splinter groups, fighting each other for power and control. The greatest casualties will be the brave people of this brave country fighting for it's survival.
Before going to Zimbabwe we thought long and hard about the ethics of contributing to such a regime. I am glad that we went, that we travelled independently, enabling us to have a brief and albeit superficial snapshot of the country. The people there need all the help that can be given and tourism is a good option. Yes, we put money into the government coffers, entry visas, park fees, but we also made a contribution to individual peoples' livelihood, the accommodation we stayed in, the food we ate, the goods we bought. To avoid the country is to turn your back on these people, to dismiss their efforts and courage.
