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Late in 2006 I met a young Zimbabwean student here in Wales. He was on masters degreee course in creative writing. As well as studying hard, he worked in the college library and sent the money home to support his parents, brother and sister, who, like most Zimbabweans, despite being qualified and willing, had no jobs, becasue the Zimbabwean economy is in ruins.

Despite being a talented and published writer, completing his masters degree and getting accepted for a PhD at more than one British University, he was unable to get the funding to do the course and stay in the UK legally. When his 12 month visa ran out in October 2007, he chose the least worst option of returning to Zimbabwe.

With daily reports of the violence and intimidation of opposition supporters in the days leading up to the re-run of the Presidential election, and with communication becoming increasingly difficult (1 minute on the Internet costs Z$30 million), I’m publishing this account of his homecoming to Zimbabwe airport.

October 2007

I dreaded coming back home, ekhaya. There were only two choices available to me – to overstay my visa and disappear in London’s underbelly or come dance to Robert Mugabe’s paranoia. I chose the latter, not because I am a brave hero, but that was the only choice plausible at the time. No organization was prepared to slice their budget for my PhD studies. Even personal referrals to former Labour leader, Lord Neil Kinnock and his office staff, yielded nothing. A year in Wales had fizzled into a blur. So I came back.

The Harare International Airport is now a big white elephant. A bird’s eye view of the airport is of a grand architectural design, but once inside you realize how underutilized the place is. It is a big empty space, understaffed, though milling security operatives’ swarm around when a plane touches down. As you walk towards the Returning Residents desk, you’re faced with the Hitlerite grin of Robert Mugabe’s image pasted in every government complex.

What is surprising is that I never told anyone of my imminent arrival in Zimbabwe except my immediate family members; because

1) I had premonitions of harassment because of my contributions to The Zimbabwean

2) I had already been forewarned to expect an extra welcoming party in the form of Mugabe’s henchmen. Zimbabwe is mine as much as it is Mugabe’s. Though I checked in without incidence it was only the calm before the storm. We had to wait half an hour for bags. There was no electricity in the airport building to power the conveyer belt.

Just as I walked out to my father’s waiting embrace, a coal Black Hand tapped on my right shoulder as I pushed my luggage trolley out and demanded I reproduce my passport. I was asked to walk back into the airport building and led to a room, misleadingly labeled ‘BUGGAGE ENQUIRIES’. It was a small toilet, possibly the same toilet/room, in which opposition MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa was bashed by ‘unknown assailants’ earlier in the year. The faces were not friendly. The other face belonging to a woman took my passport and disappeared for a few too many minutes while the other face, the guy, did the macho thing – grill me. He asked questions and I had to answer all of them.

He insisted on taking my laptop, notebooks and diary. ‘For what?’ I asked. Macho face said, ‘iwe hauzivi here kuti uri security matter.’ Why do you pretend as if you don’t know you’re not a security matter? They wanted to know if in my possession I was carrying any British sterling, what kinds of investments I had made in Zimbabwe, why I was coming back to Zimbabwe, if ‘my bosses’ had sent me. They even wanted to know why I was carrying in my possession books like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Ngugi’s Wizard of Crow, which incidentally is a scathing attack on dictatorship in twentieth century Africa. After more than two hours of questions, of being passed from one nameless superior to another, I was left to go. When my father asked why they had taken me for this long, he was told it was just ‘another random security check.’

My father does not own a car so the only alternative to get into town was to bargain for a taxi but after being told the frightening figure of $10,000 000 we decided to hitch-hike into Harare’s CBD. We lugged my heavy bags and flagged down a battered kombi from Manyame to Fourth Street Bus Terminus but just a few meters from the airport, the kombi was parked on the roadside as it had run out of fuel. Commuters shouted, ‘asi mota haichina network.’ The bus has no network as if it were a phone, this is commuter talk, this is Harare talk, people trying to make light the challenges they’re facing. The long airport road is bordered by an untidy tangle of grass and shrubs and, further down still, by dusty buildings that look exhausted

Harare does not look the same anymore. The buildings have a sickening off-colour look. Harare is now dull and tired. The people truly zonked. Most Harare faces show stunned smiles. There are some who do not smile at all, who seem indeed, as if they will never smile again. They are goners. No, it’s not the hunger and poverty that has sapped the life in them. Something essential is gone. The stuffing has been knocked out of the people.

But there’s still hope too. I saw people carrying, on their shoulders, packets of maize seed in anticipation for the sowing season. Though the blazing sun may suggest we may have to wait for Charles Mungoshi’s rain for a long while to come.

The panoramic drive to Gweru from Harare was enough overview of Zimbabwe in a day. The three hour drive left me in tears. Our country is now like a big concentration camp, people being asphyxiated by a thuggish political regime but striding on with ounces of sheer will power in their hearts and minds. Along the long stretch of the Bulawayo Road, stranded commuters jostled for the little transport there was. Talk in the bus was that there was no fuel and hence few buses on the highway. We arrived in Gweru after 10pm. There was a blackout in the city, another of the daily power cuts.

I am convinced Zimbabwe will not remain this hell. When something is permanent you learn to live with it, to accept its ominous presence. This is not a permanent condition. This is a human orchestrated famine of the flesh and spirit. The spirit of humanity will triumph, and Mugabe’s reign will lead him into eternal banishment.

Comments

13 June 2008 - Emile de Ravin, Johannesburg.

As a South African, I am stunned by the attitude of my government, in particular Robert Mugabe’s foreign minister Thabo Mbeki’s attitude toward the vampire regime to our north. Walking hand in hand with one of the greatest tyrants of the modern age is indeed not cool, contrary to what the South African president may think.

Down here, our feeling is that Mbeki’s quite diplomacy toward Zim has been a dismal failure, as have his policies regarding AIDS and the power crisis of late. We all fear a full out war after June 27 if Tsvangirai wins the election - but even if he doesn’t Zimbabwe will go down in flames in much the same way as Nazi Germany did, and this entire region will suffer.

And in much the same way as the conflict ended in Europe with the death of the Fuhrer, the ONLY way to avoid conflict and “rivers of blood”, as Tendai Bhiti put it, is the death of the Vampire of Harare. But that’s all wishful thinking. Other than that, we can only hold our breath and wait for Mbeki’s buddy to bury the rest of his people alive for even thinking of voting for the MDC.

But when Bob finally goes to meet his maker Satan, I will personally fly to Harare and piss on his grave!

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