Songs for My Country 2

“Lelilizwe khalila mali…hee khalila mali…Lelilizwe ligcwele olovha, hee ligcwele olovhola”. This country has no money, hee it has no money. This country is full of loafers/unemployed people, hee it is full of unemployed people”. Lovemore Majaivana was way ahead of his time when he sang this one in the early 1990s. He was wrong on one thing though, this country is awash with money. It is just that it is held by a tiny minority. A week into my holiday, and am exhausted from listening to stories of poverty. Out of guilt, empathy, or both, I just keep giving away cash. This one’s child needs school shoes if she is to go back to classes, that one needs $20 to get good medical treatment. By the end of my holiday, I start borrowing to survive in Zimbabwe myself!

Out of a sense of duty, I accompany my mother to church. Jesus and I have an on-off relationship. We are currently in an off phase. I don’t understand how with all the piety that fills this country he and his father can turn their backs on people like this. Why can’t they hear the Methodists lift the roof with hymn 191. I hope against hope that we will not sing this song today. But right on cue the voices go up, the wailing begins. Ulabantu bakho Nkosi, kuzozonk’izkhathi….You are with your people Lord, all the time. I can’t bear this. I stick an I-pod speaker into my good ear. It’s not my lucky day. I land on UB40, I am the one in ten number one on a list, I am the one in ten even though I don’t exist, nobody knows me but am always there, a statistic a reminder of a world that doesn’t care….
Has Jesus cared to look at all the beautiful churches that have been built in his honor in the last ten years in Zimbabwe? Beautiful, grand edifices, in the middle of townships and cities, fast deteriorating into shanty towns. The chandeliers in my mother’s church are fit for a diplomat’s residence. The congregation is in various states of need and want. I feel over-dressed.

My aunt’s congregation is building a pastor’s manse fit for a prince. The prosperity gospel types are a sight to behold. Just standing outside one is like being on the sidelines of the Oscars’ red carpet. Prayers seem to be answered on that side of town. In the poorest communities churches are under trees. No frills there. I don’t remember which verse says class division of this sort is ok. I should brush up on my psalms when Jesus and I are on again.
I hope against hope again that the preacher won’t ask us to “pray for our leaders”. First they have to define who they mean. Then they have to provide a rationale. My NGO proposal writing nonsense won’t wash here though. A rather over-dressed woman (thank God I have a partner in crime!), stands up to pray for the so called leaders. I don’t want to be part of it. This time I deliberately scroll through the I-pod.
We’ve been taken for granted much too long,
Building church and university,
Deceiving the people continually,
Tell the children the truth,
Tell the children the truth right now.
Bob Marley is most apt in times like these.

“Zimbabwe will never be a colony again,” they like to proclaim on big placards at Mugabe’s rallies and speak-a-thons. Whoever came up with that outdated slogan should be court marshaled by the generals. Everywhere I look my country has quickly, quietly and yet so visibly become one country or another’s colony. The mere fact that we no longer have a national currency is evidence enough. I do a double take when I see American dollar notes and South African rand in the Sunday collection plate. I am yet to be convinced that a US$2 is legal tender. I have never seen this note anywhere. Not even in America itself. Someone seems to have printed two tones of them and dumped them in Zimbabwe. There is a story there…..
It is so ironic that South Africans, particularly white business were so loud in their condemnation of Thabo Mbeki’s role in Zimbabwe. Yet they seem to be the clearest winners from our crisis. From the goods in the shops, to the best cars on the roads, Zimbabwe could very well be a province of South Africa. Bulawayo was long taken over, the rest of the country is following suit. Young men in Mr. Price jeans and thuggish beanie hats speak in Xhosarized Ndebele in Mpopoma township it’s not funny. My friend Sophie’s dad gives me bubble gum and potato crisps from his shop. The rather strange gum which oozes some yoghurt tasting liquid is from China. The chips are South African. Where is a nation going if it can’t even produce and sell its own sweets? Sweeties! Everything is over priced. A mere litre of Cape juice is US$5. Forget good quality, two-ply toilet paper.
A poorly made Zhingaz (as we call Chinese stuff in slang), polyester blouse will set you back US$40. I wonder how many months it will take a civil servant to save up for the skirt to go with said blouse.

Everybody keeps talking about how things have improved. At least things are full in the shops. I am outraged by the prices. There’s no consistency, I feel cheated most of the time. I eventually stop trying to understand this new economy. I ask friends and family to find me what I need. They know where to go and what a fair price is. I feel hopelessly incapacitated. This is my country for heaven’s sake! I was born here. I grew up here. I should find my own way around it. I am angry. “I can’t navigate myself around my own supposed home anymore”, I post my update on Facebook. Nobody “likes”.
Tell me what can you say?
Tell me who do you blame?
No matter what you say it never gets any better,
No matter what you do, we never see any change….

Phil Collins and I are on the same page. Maybe my eyes are clouded by Johannesburg pollution I can’t see this change they all talk about.

The government no longer controls what people read, watch or listen to. There is a silver lining there! Anyone who can afford to, work for it, or steal it, has a satellite dish to watch DSTV (cable). At the lower end of the spectrum everyone who has electricity has the little gadget for pirating South African television stations. Zimbabweans are up to speed with Generations, Isidingo, and the goings on in the South African body politic. An old portable radio is an asset if you want to hear unofficial Zimbabwean news. You catch the offshore radio stations on Short Wave, not on FM. My 75 year old uncle stumbles upon one such station and he is in news heaven. He can’t stop telling me about it.

“I only buy The Herald and Sunday Mail for the obituaries, and business tender opportunities”, a friend tells me. True the obituaries page in state controlled papers are a marvel. We get to know which of the dead people has five sisters all in London. Which of the late woman’s children are all in Canada and or Australia. Who said there was no glamour in death? A chance to show off your diaspora links.
The fictionalized accounts of political goings on are even more entertaining. But I can’t waste a good US dollar on such painful entertainment. I will save it for the toll-gates.
Zimbabwe is a little outpost for media products from across the border as well. The Sunday Times (SA), Mail and Guardian have Zimbabwean editions. I am happy people have alternatives to State controlled media. I worry about the long term consequences. Acquired tastes are hard to drop.
I am ecstatic when I finally lay my hands on the new independent daily, News-Day. I text Trevor Ncube, (the publisher), based in Johannesburg, “your newspaper and sweet potatoes are making my stay enjoyable”. Finally, a paper with an alternative and factual view. But the steady stream of bad news can be depressing. Senior officials paying themselves obscene salaries. Ministers buying yet more new fancy cars. Nothing gives a sense that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Or as someone said, to even tell us that we are indeed in a tunnel, and of what shape?

After two and half weeks I am constipated from all that starch. I am equally constipated from the litany of bad news. I miss my morning fix, Kaya FM and the very loud traffic outside my window on Corlett drive. Isn’t that bizarre? The former gives me a great laugh, the latter reminds me that I am living in a ‘happening’ country. I begin to miss having a proper bath, not splash my rather substantial self from a small bucket. I can’t get a handle on when electricity goes off and comes back on. I have become a big city rat. I want convenience.

I am happy to go back to Johannesburg. I am deeply sad to leave. I want to go. I want to stay. I don’t want to be in South Africa. I don’t want to be in Zimbabwe. If my relationship with God was in a good phase I could sing a hopeful hymn, or even talk to him. I turn to the next best thing I know. I chose Beres Hammond;

The sun, is gonna shine again
Nine out of ten
Remember,
It’s gonna shine again
Your day will come come
Don’t worry about the rocky road its gonna be
At the end of your tunnel
Is gonna be a light

I sure hope that light is not from an on-coming high speed train.

Songs for my country 1

You can always tell the state Zimbabwe is in from the paper in public toilets and government offices. In December, when I was last here, it was coarse single ply dull beige. The kind that comes apart between your fingers before it even gets to do the job. This August, the public toilets in Harare international airport have a slighter softer pink, but still single ply. A slight improvement but no soap to wash your hands after. The diamond money clearly hasn’t trickled this far down then. “I am a-longing to see you I wanna know how you’ve been doing …..I am gonna catch this flight and when I get home I hope you will be smiling…” Freddie McGregor had sung in my ears, as I got ready to go home for my annual pilgrimage as I call it. So a lack of adequate ablutions is not going to dent my spirits.
August is a great time to be here. Schools are closed, the harvest is done, sweet-potatoes are three dollars for a substantial bucket. That is 3 genuine Obamas as we call the Green buck here, not the Zim dollar which of course no longer exists. It is spring time. Nothing beats the sunshine of a spring day in a Harare garden. It seeps into your bones. Thaws your soul, gives you hope even when there is nothing in the political realm to make you this optimistic about life. For a lazy-bone-sun-lizard like me, it is a good time to forget about the office.

Or maybe I am much more patriotic than I realize. August is Heroes’ Day month. Cynical as much as I try to be, those liberation war songs get to me all the time. “Taigara mumakomo tishingirira Zimbabwe". (We hid in the mountains, determined to free Zimbabwe). The tunes are danceable too. But it is not just music. It is my country’s history. When ZANU keeps reminding us of the 16 years of hard struggle, and you see the endless footage of the war, replayed, over and over again on ZTV, and repeated every half hour on ZBC radio stations, you have to be the most cynical idiot not to feel what it all meant and what it still means to whole generations of us who are still alive.

I love radio, and go to sleep with my MP3 plugged into my ears. I wake up on Heroes’ Day itself to loud commentary from Heroes’ Acre. My friend Nozipho has long left the house to go to the ceremony. Her uncle is one of our national heroes. Every year her family is picked up and taken by the state to breakfast, the ceremony, and then lunch afterwards. All the heroes’ families are given this treat. Thank God the electricity is on today. I curl up on Nozi’s sofa and watch the whole thing on television, from beginning to end. I steel myself to be cynical, I want to dismiss it all as ZANU PF propaganda. After all, Heroes’ Day used to be called Rhodes and Founders, after the big colonialist and his band of merry enslavers. But I can not be cynical. This is real. The commentators read us the histories of the women and men lying on that hill and what their contribution was; JZ Moyo, Albert Nxele, Ruth Chinamano, Herbert Chitepo, Leopold Takawira. I look at their families crowding around the graves, laying flowers, saying prayers. I suddenly find myself weeping. I text my friends Percy and Nyaradzo in Johannesburg; “This is just too painful. Where did it all go wrong? How did we betray all these people?” I ask rhetorically. Percy sends me a rather unsympathetic response, and Nyaradzo tells me she is on Plett Bay having such fun. I am now in a foetal position and howl even more. I console myself with Bunny Wailer;
You better stop this power struggle….it’s causing the nation too much trouble endangering lives of innocent ones…With all this knowledge and education we are in a sad situation…so you better stop this power struggle….”

Dreadful and yet insignificant as this sounds, the one thing that cheers me about Heroes’ Day is seeing Morgan Tsvangirai, Thokozani Khupe, and Arthur Mutambara being saluted by members of the armed forces. The cherry on top is seeing each one of them getting into their own Benz! If inclusive government is only measured by how included every political party is at the trough, I will hide my values under the pillow and cheer. For one day only.

We will, we will rule you

My cheering is short lived though. The day following Heroes is Defence Forces’ day.
We fast forward from the people’s revolution to the men in uniform’s moment to remind us they run and own this country, including us, what we think, hear, feel, and the minerals underground. There they are, goose-stepping just the way Caucescue and Kim Il Sung taught them. They are armed to the teeth. They flex their muscles and their arms, sending chills down the spines of citizens. The words of Chairman Mao, sung by the ZANLA choir over radio Mozambique suddenly ring in my ears, “Kune nzira dzemasoja dzekuzvibata nadzo….Tisave tinotora zvinhu zvemass yedu. Dzoserai zvinhu zvose zvatorwa kumuridzi….” (These are the ways we must conduct ourselves as good revolutionary soldiers. Don’t take things from the masses. Return anything you take to its rightful owners”. Yah right Chairman Mao, have you seen what this lot has been up to in the last 10 years? You think they remember any of your exhortions?


That this is a militarized state is consistently shoved in my face for the two weeks I am in Zimbabwe. State media refer to Mugabe His Excellency the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. We always knew that. We just need to be reminded about the militarization of our state, lest we forget who is in control.

There are eight roadblocks between Harare and Bulawayo. There is no consistent pattern nor ny reasonable explanation for the search and questioning at each one. At one, we (all three of us in the car), are ordered out of the car while they turn my rickety Mazda 323 inside out. At the next one, the policeman/soldier (same difference), demands identification documents, questions me earnestly about my seemingly too long South African work permit. Driving back towards Bulawayo in a friend’s fancier car, we are told that there is some document missing. We can all tell he wants a bribe since the policeman has decided we must be swimming in American dollars. Arguing with a fully armed, testosterone filled group of men is a no win situation. I have been away for too long though. When they say “make a plan” in Johannesburg or at Beitbridge border post I know exactly how much to take out. I can even haggle to get a good “deal”. I don’t know the code word or what the appropriate amount here is. A dollar? Twenty rands? Blasting the man’s ears off with Peter Tosh’s “ I am an honest man and I love honest people…” won’t help. From the look on our driver’s face and the shocked smile on the policeman’s I know I have over done it. I reason that I have increased his measly wages by 10%.

Even at the extortionate toll-gates, there are armed men sitting, watching from the sidelines. In case someone tries to drive off without paying, I am told. They will shoot to kill. Why doesn’t Zuma send General Bheki Cele up here on secondment? I hand over the dirtiest looking one dollar note from my little stash. At least there is evidence that these little dollars are being used to repair some roads where huge craters characterized our highways.

Zvakaoma

I am struck this time by the absence of political conversation. Everybody I meet and hang out with only wants to talk about the just ended football World Cup, family issues, or just pointless gossip. When I do ask the political questions, I get the very cryptic Zimbabwean response, zvakaoma. I love and hate that word in equal measure because it means and says so much, yet at the same time, it means or says absolutely nothing! You the listener have to divine what the speaker means; it is hard, it is unspeakable, where do I begin, it is too complicated, why do you have to ask a question like that as if you don’t know the answer? Shut up sweetie. Take your pick.

Besides the media and NGO types, most of the nation doesn’t hold its collective breadth, as the SADC heads of state summit in Windhoek rolls past. Meanwhile the constitutional road show seems to be chugging along with nary great excitement amongst normal folks who are too busy chasing that elusive dollar. It is the NGO types like me who want to talk about the mechanics of the sham exercise. But no substantive issues thank you, we are not Kenyans. What had I expected? Rip roaring debate? Over what? All the big political milestones have come and gone. None has delivered meaningful change.

I am not sure which song is the most apt for this phase Zimbabwe is going through. I can’t even think of any that comes close to describing this feeling, this state of nothingness. Not hopelessness. Nothingness. This is where that little cryptic word is useful, but used in a joke-sentence – zvakaoma sekupema mupositori. It is as hard as trying to perm the hair of a member of the |Apolostic sect, (who are normally clean shaven). But then again trust Zimbabwean humor, perming a mupositori is not that hard, you just wait for the hair to grow, and hope that someone; the policeman, the soldier, the politicians, don’t chop it off before you get to it with your perm lotion.
It’ll be a hell of a wait. There are many songs to sing while we wait. Bob Marley’s “Zimbabwe” will do for me. Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary…