Distinctly third class treatment begins as soon as you get to the
departure gates: shouted announcements, dismissive airport staff, not
enough seating and overcrowded buses. This Is Africa, you hear people
saying, a shameful excuse which disguises bad manners and bad service.
It doesn't bode well for international attention coming to South Africa
with the 2010 world cup football.
It is an eye opener looking down on Zimbabwe from the air this January
2009. There is a lot of water to see and the rains must have been
good. Rivers are flowing, dams filling and green is everywhere – but
that's all. Gone are the views of neat fields filled with crops; gone
are those giant cropping circles carved out into the red soil. The view
from above is only of trees, bush encroachment and scrubland and the
feeling is of a broken land whose fields are untended. Welcome home to
a country still in waiting.
Waiting in line at passport control at Harare airport a woman in front
of me struggled to carry three bags filled with bread. I don't want to
be here, she said. How much longer must this go on? I want to bring
my Mum chocolates and perfume, not bread. Her words spoke volumes. In
front of us on the wall two grim faced portraits of Robert Mugabe stare
down at weary travellers who are already bracing themselves for the
nightmare that awaits.
At the exit boom of the airport car park the attendant says I can pay
in South African Rand or US dollars; he takes the foreign bank notes
but has no change and does not give a receipt – welcome home to street
law.
At a road block on the journey home a painfully thin Police woman in
uniform comes to the car window. She does not check the vehicle,
licence or papers but instead says: Happy New Year, have you got
anything for me? Welcome home to a hungry, broken civil service.
Despite being well into the rainy season the view from the window is of
scrawny, yellow, ankle high maize plants in a sea of weeds. Maize
plants which should by now be waist high, deep, dark green and about to
silk. Welcome home to another year of hunger.
Zimbabweans have only one wish for 2009 and that is for an end to this horrible state of affairs.
Until next week, thanks for reading, ndini shamwari yenyu.
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