Going out of their minds

orodze Road. But now nobody hires them. They know why. Somehow they hope the Church might be able to intervene.
A gulf divides the Church and the regime. The one stands for the common good, the other for retaining power come what may. I have no quick solution to offer. That young men without anything to do, bored stiff by hanging around street corners or walking aimlessly from point A to B and back again, just killing time, day in day out, go sometimes out of their minds, is not surprising.
Tafadzwa is a big problem to his family. He gets so aggressive, his mother is afraid of him. She asked the police to take him to the psychiatric ward of Harare Central Hospital. They could not control him. They went away without having been able to handcuff him. When I visited the family in the big hostel – dilapidated and decaying, sewage running all over, rubbish piling up everywhere, without lighting in those long corridors – I found him in a state of deep depression; the aggressiveness had gone out of him.
He refused to talk, adding to the gloom of the narrow corner which this family of five is occupying. I offered to take him in the parish car, but the doctor wanted to see him only the following week. Since then I have heard that he got no treatment after all; there was no one to prescribe him the drug that he needed. So he continues to vegetate in that dimly-lit corner. His family fears he might explode again into aggression.
We have not made any progress in the matter of providing homeless people with shelter. Anything to do with “Murambatsvina” is “political” and therefore taboo. In which case the common good, i.e. the welfare of the people, no longer counts. Some concerned NGO would like to help people to replace demolished “illegal structures” with legal ones so as to increase available living space in Mbare: some homeless people or others living in overcrowded conditions would then have a chance of finding some lodging.
It won’t solve the problem, but if it helps at least a few people we welcome it. Some civic organization which was holding a peaceful gathering with police clearance lost its Mbare office. Ruling party supporters wrecked it. There was no violence until the “wreckers” arrived.
Cross-border trading is still a life-line for many. An old woman from our parish, with a history of heart trouble, went down south on such a trip. Now the family received news that she died there. Maybe the stress and strain of travelling had been too much for her. There won’t be any profit: getting the body back home for burial is going to cost the family a fortune.