I was leaving behind a whole lifetime of memories, of friends and family a daughter and a grandson to come to a country where I had been born but which was as alien to me as Africa had once been. Time heals all wounds, they say, but for me the passing years have only emphasised the sense of loss. I am a Zimbabwean I tell people here but hardly a day passes without Robert Mugabe or one of his cronies telling white people that their skin colour and their colonial past excludes them from making that claim.
I was reminded of that as I watched a re-run of Mugabe and the White African this week and heard Ben Freeth ask the question, Can a white man ever be an African? For Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF the answer is a resounding NO! but for me and thousands like me all over the diaspora, Zimbabwe continues to be the place we call home. I think of all the thousands of children I taught and of the teachers I trained black Zimbabweans all of them whose acceptance and friendship filled my days in Mutoko and Murehwa and I wonder how we have arrived at this racial intolerance in Independent Zimbabwe.
This week, for example, a female Zanu PF member called for the death sentence for anyone who supports sanctions or is friendly to the west! Addressing the Chiefs at their annual conference Mugabe resorted yet again to racist rhetoric, referring to Britain and America as Damn fools for saying that the GPA had not been properly implemented. Speaking in Shona he talked about how the west, Sevarungu, as whites, came to Zimbabwe and expected to have the upper hand as they once had. Mugabes inability to forgive the racial injustices of the past gives him a convenient excuse to blame the whites for everything that is wrong in Zimbabwe after thirty years of his misrule. He conveniently forgets that these very varungu are the donors whose dollars are keeping his people fed and providing reading materials for schools where kids share one book between four and teachers are subjected to mindless harassment for no other reason than the belief that all teachers are MDC supporters.
Ever since Mugabe announced that elections will be held in 2011 war veterans have been giving orders to transfer teachers out of their areas. That was going on in Mash East long before I left Zimbabwe; nothing changes it seems. And in my old home district, police and CIO this week confiscated radios donated to villagers on the grounds that the radios came from an unknown source and customs duties had not been paid. Any excuse to silence the source of independent news; nothing changes in Mugabes Zimbabwe.
But it was a letter in the Financial Gazette that really attracted my attention this week. Is this racist? asked the letter writer and quoted a question from the Grade Seven examination which every child in Zimbabwe sits at the end of primary school. This is what the Grade Seven children were asked in a multiple choice question on the General Paper: Before Independence blacks and whites failed to live together peacefully because: A. the whites had guns. B. the blacks liked to strike. C. the whites did not like the blacks and D. all the blacks wanted to live in towns. Whether this is racism or not, I do not know but what I do know is that it is a very badly designed multiple choice question, aimed at 11-12 year olds to test not factual knowledge but political opinion with racist overtones.
As Zanu PF gears up for elections, teachers in rural areas are once again in the frontline. Zanu PF does not care for educated people, they think for themselves and so teachers are beaten up for daring to express alternative views. Three of those teachers are fighting for their lives in a Mission Hospital after a violent beating by Zanu PF thugs in Bikita. All over the country anyone with educational qualifications must be pondering their futures in this divided and intolerant country. No wonder the International Crisis Group declared this week that Zimbabwe is on a knife edge in the run-up to the elections.
Yours in the (continuing) struggle PH. aka Pauline Henson.
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