I had a farm in Africa…

openly of his impending departure. The tragedy of Zimbabwe is that Mugabe is not as responsible for the chaos as some of his opponents like to believe.
Certainly his arrogance, megalomania and perverse philosophies have not helped. His leadership was a necessary condition for the current crisis, but not sufficient in itself to lead to the country’s misery. It takes more than one man to disembowel an economy. The dark side of Africa has been unleashed and that legacy will remain for years – with or without Mugabe. His departure will bring rejoicing but the hard times will continue for a long time yet. There will be huge pressures on whoever replaces him to turn the situation around and it is inevitable that there will be a period of instability as the politicians and the voters work through the crisis of expectations.
Do all countries have the governments they deserve? It seems harsh to assert that a six-year-old who has been living solely on unripe watermelons for the past three months deserves to be so cruelly led. However it is only recently, with the rise of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), that Zimbabweans have demonstrated that they can stir themselves from their apathy (stoicism is a kinder interpretation) and take action. It is this stoicism that is Africa’s saving and its downfall. No people are more abused by their leaders – and yet none are better suited to finding contentment in circumstances that would leave a Westerner with clinical depression. It will be a sign of a maturing nation if they do not allow themselves to forget and demand far greater standards of leadership in the future.
Few of the evicted farmers I spoke to wish to farm in Zimbabwe again, they simply want property rights and the rule of law re-established so that they can sell up and start again elsewhere. They have no confidence that the unlawful killings and evictions will not happen again. The middle class, a necessary bulwark against Africa’s more extreme moments, have either fled or are wheeling and dealing their way through dodgy forex deals and import/export schemes in preparation for their departure.
The flight from Johannesburg lands at Harare’s smart new and near empty airport. There are no immigration forms. Officials wander about as if they have been taken completely by surprise by the arrival of a scheduled flight. While someone searches for the forms the more experienced Africa hands shrug, make themselves comfortable against a wall and settle into Zimbabwean time.
The newcomers mill about anxiously, complain to each other and look for someone with “Customer Service Officer” on their lapel. The forms arrive, we fill them in and we are processed cheerfully if somewhat chaotically. The problem is that the immigration desk has no change in foreign currency. Many visitors pay for their visas on arrival which means that those early in the queue could not be given any change (and no one wants change in Zimbabwe dollars, at least not at the official rate).
The immigration officer has to re-arrange the queue in an order that would enable him to process those with small denomination notes, in a variety of currencies, earlier than those with large notes. It takes some time to establish a near optimal order. The Englishman in front of me is irate, complaining that he had been visiting Zimbabwe for 20 years and has never had to pay US$55 for the privilege before “…and how come he”(indicating me and my blue Australian passport)”…only has to pay US$30?” The immigration officer grins over his impressive collection of rubber stamps, “The more Bob (President Robert Mugabe) dislikes you, the more you pay. Bob does not like Mr. Blair. He does not like Mr. Howard either, but not as much.” The logic seems impeccable and the Brit meekly counts out his notes.
I went for a walk early the following morning. Having not been back for five years I am struck by two things; the bird-song and the smell of the bush. I have missed neither particularly while I have been living abroad for over a decade but now that i am back, both seem just right somehow. Someone once told me that home is where you rode a bicycle as a child and that no place will ever replace the sense memories laid down during that early idle exploration. I will never know the trees and grasses in any other country as well as I know those in Zimbabwe, but it is unlikely I will ever live there again.
Images of white farmers lying bandaged in hospital – or worse under blankets covering their dead bodies – have been widely published around the world. There are far fewer pictures of the half a million farm workers who have lost their jobs and in many cases, their homes. The number of people who have been “resettled” on the farms is possibly a tenth of this number.
The farmers still have their title deeds, however although this means little to a man with a panga. The lawyer of one farmer I know wrote to him after successfully extracting the relevant Court Order saying: “I can now confirm that the farm is legally yours (for what that is worth”). That single phrase sums up the bizarre dichotomy that is Zimbabwe today – a country in which one can still approach a bewigged judge for a Court Order, yet the judiciary is ignored and the police cannot/will not enforce the judicial rulings.
It is inevitable that as the economy and social fabric have both fractured, human behaviour deteriorates and more than once I concluded that it is the best and the worst of my tribe who are now left in the country.
“We have become a nation of cowards, crooks and collaborators” said one friend in despair. I attended a dinner party where one of the guests was boasting how their privately-owned transport company had worked out a way of over-charging one of the aid agencies for delivering food to the rural areas.
The response from around the table was congratulatory, when people see corruption and graft at the highest levels then it becomes easier to rationalise such scams as an extension of private enterprise. As Rhett Butler observed to Scarlet O’Hara when explaining his new-found wealth “There is always money to be made in the making and breaking of a country”. And yet there are those who remain in the country fighting for civilised values, whether they be treating animals humanely or the rule of law, at great personal risk to themselves and their families.
On my final morning in Zimbabwe I ran along a dirt road through my grandparents’ former farm. Mist was rising from the vlei, there were fresh jackal tracks in the dust and the doves were calling. As the sun rose through the msasa trees I reflected on Karen Blixen’s lines on the opening page of Out of Africa “I had a farm in Africa…in the highlands you woke in the morning and thought here I am, where I ought to be”. In Zimbabwe one may have had a farm, but one no longer belongs. More significantly for the country’s future economic prospects, after the experiences of the past few years, a large number of people, black and white, are unsure whether they even want to belong.