Mugabe’s death zone

That’s fine, I think to myself, secretly delighted. If visa papers have gone by the wayside, then the likelihood of paperwork recording our arrival and being sent to Harare is surely slim.

We’ve made it in undetected, a great relief for any international journalist wanting to get a story about conditions in what’s left of Zimbabwe’s society and economy.

Outside the passport control office, the desperate try to sell trillion-dollar notes. The notes are worthless but there’s obviously no shortage of paper at the mint. President Robert Mugabe seems to have an ample stock to print the ludicrous denominations.

"Five trillion dollar notes for $US100, madame?" A young man tries to accost me as I move towards our taxi.

Poor bloke, I think, we’re probably the only tourists he’s spotted for weeks. "Please, madame, I need money to feed my family," his head tilts down and his dark brown eyes look up at me. He’s clearly a seasoned beggar but, I have no doubt, in real strife. As I fend him off, knowing I’ll encounter many more like him, a trail of Zimbabweans pass with piles of goods balanced on their heads, attached to their backs, hanging from their necks, squeezed under their arms and clutched in their hands: they bring across the border as much as they can carry. Shop shelves are empty in most places in Zimbabwe.

We’ve come to cover the cholera epidemic, the latest catastrophe to be overseen by Mugabe and his ZANU(PF) regime. The death toll is more than 4000.

One public health expert tells us it’s a disease that normally thrives in wartime, an indication of the extent of Zimbabwe’s rot and a good reason for the 85-year-old dictator to deny its existence. He doesn’t want the world to know about it and certainly doesn’t want journalists seeing the carnage and filming it.

But we’re prepared. We’ve got a couple of small domestic cameras and, our trump card, a hidden camera. But it’s not easy. People are incredibly scared. The last thing they want is to attract the attention of Mugabe’s mob.

If they speak out publicly, they know what will happen.

Frank Tore is a case in point. An organiser, during last year’s presidential campaign, for recently installed Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, Tore was hunted down by ZANU(PF) heavies. He tells us how his genitals were burned to ensure he’d never have more children to challenge the regime. His brother was killed and his wife and two daughters, 18 and 14, were repeatedly raped and abused for days. You have to wonder how someone who endures such horror is able to continue.

But Tore and his family do. Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, he teaches his four-year-old son to somersault as his wife and eldest daughter look on and occasionally chuckle at the cute sight. But the longer we’re with Tore, the more his past trauma seems to invade his face. And there’s more heartache for him and his family. Tore’s sister-in-law and her two children died of cholera late last year.

He takes us to the inner-city apartment block where they live. The air is heavy with the smell of human waste. Sewage pours out of broken pipes and pigeons pick in the piles of garbage surrounding the building. You could call it a slum, but the people who inhabit the area are considered lower to middle class, certainly not the worst off. It’s in such filth that cholera thrives. The bacterium lives in human faeces and, if ingested, the disease can kill in a matter of hours unless treated. The undernourished and those already weak from other illnesses such as HIV (which means a large percentage of Zimbabwe’s population) are the most vulnerable.

A Physicians for Human Rights report, release in January, argues Mugabe has knowingly allowed the cholera epidemic to happen and should be charged with crimes against humanity. It’s not difficult to see how this conclusion was reached.

Across the country, streets are flooded with sewage. The water supply, where there is one, is contaminated. Pipes have not been maintained, engineers and sanitation workers have not been paid, inexpensive chemicals have not been procured to treat the water and the health system is defunct.

Yet Mugabe manages to put together hundreds of thousands of US dollars to celebrate his 85th birthday and taunt hungry Zimbabweans as he tucks into his lavish cake.

There’s no doubt Mugabe is a villain, but on our journey into the country we find there is also another monster whom many people consider culpable. I don’t want to say too much before our story goes to air tonight because I want you to watch it.

I will say, however, that the UN humanitarian effort in Zimbabwe seems to be more about pleasing and befriending the brutal regime than helping the people. You can hear it tonight from a senior UN insider who puts his career on the line to speak out. Many people back him up, but few will go on record. It seems Mugabe also holds a tight rein on the wider international community.

You really have to wonder about comments by UN Assistant Secretary-General of Humanitarian Affairs Catherine Bragg at a press conference after her recent trip to Zimbabwe, for example. She was delighted at how co-operative Mugabe was in her talks with him and boasted that he’d invited her back. She seems to have forgotten that a year ago he refused her entry into the country.

How easily are these people convinced? How must it feel, if you’ve been persecuted by Mugabe, to hear the UN fawning over him?

We travel far and wide to makeshift cholera clinics: some are a cluster of tents, others are in run-down hospitals, some have the disease under control, others are struggling without medicine, disinfectant or beds. Victims lie on the floor or on bare wire springs or, if they’re lucky, on plastic-coated camp beds with a large hole halfway down and a bucket underneath; there’s no dignity in this disease.

Nursing staff tell of 24-hour shifts and no pay but, if appearances are anything to go by, few have dropped their standards. In many places, uniforms are crisply starched and fluorescent white.

The only way this epidemic can be eradicated is if the sanitation and sewage systems are repaired. Tsvangirai has promised to do that, but the problem is he has no money and faces a political landscape as treacherous as one of Africa’s jungles.

A couple of days after his inauguration, we receive a call early in the morning from one of his advisers summoning us to a location for an interview. When we arrive we’re told to tell our driver not to wait outside the building; we’re not sure why, but we don’t ask questions. We’re then quickly shuffled inside the front door and taken to a side room.

It’s filled with foreign journalists or, rather, ostensible tourists.

They ask us to keep quiet. Apparently the Prime Minister will be escorted to the office by Mugabe’s intelligence officials, the same men who run terror campaigns against the opposition, not to mention the media. We hear voices entering the building. Is it them, we all wonder with some dread. Then silence as we strain to listen through the walls. The Prime Minister’s adviser sticks his head around the door to let us know all is fine: Mugabe’s hounds have been detained in the front room and the big man will be in to see us soon.

All that to get an interview with the country’s Prime Minister. But it worked. We get away with an interview in the can.

Such tricks may overcome small hurdles, but to fix the serious humanitarian crisis the country faces Tsvangirai will need more than subterfuge. He’ll need to work some magic.

Mary Ann Jolley is a producer with ABC television’s Foreign Correspondent. The report screens tonight at 9.30.

The Australian