lived at the illegal camp since about 2001… the demolition comes barely a week after President Robert Mugabe promised during his April 18 Independence Day speech to continue demolishing illegal settlements, … to smash crime and to restore the beauty of Zimbabwe’s cities and towns.’ So ran a news report on the 26th April 2006.
And so we continue our daily life in Zimbabwe. It is not just the squatters who watch in agony. It seems nothing touches the hearts of those who order and carry out these acts. At a time when inflation is rocketing and people’s lives are becoming more unbearable by the hour all the government can think of is to continue its cruel demolition of people’s lives.
Force used on the helpless goes on and on. Do we not have eyes to see the pain and ears to hear the cries? Or is it that those in authority have just hardened their heart and persuaded themselves that all their actions are justified for some distant goal, conjured up by a tiny unaccountable minority for their own purposes. One can persuade oneself of anything if you try hard enough. Amy Tan offers this parable in her book Saving Fish From Drowning:
A pious man explained to his followers: “It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place my fish on the bank where they flop and twirl. ‘Don’t be scared,’ I tell those fishes, ‘I am saving you from drowning.’ Soon enough the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive I buy more nets so I can save more fishes.”
It is so painful, day after day, to hear and read about the suffering of our fellow Zimbabweans. It is so hard to understand why a government, which claims to be elected by the people for the people, does this. Blaise Pascal (1623-62) wrote, ‘Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world.’ He looked for comfort from his disciples in Gethsemane and found none. And so it has always been. Those by the Mucheke river also look for comfort, but find nought.
11.5.2006
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Watching in agony
Armed police at the weekend raided a squatter camp on the banks of Mucheke river in Masvingo city, burnt down the plastic shacks and chased away more than 200 people including children who lived at the camp. The squatters, who watched in agony as their shacks and belongings went up in smoke, had