- Dear Family and Friends,
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- Zimbabwe is breathtakingly beautiful this spring. Everyone
is talking about the spectacular colours of the new leaves on the trees.
Perhaps its because we are all just so utterly worn out after a decade
of decay and horror or maybe we are finally allowing ourselves to see beauty
again and begin feeling hopeful about the times ahead. One friend who is
back in the country for a month after having spent 3 years in exile in
the Diaspora, said that just sitting under the Msasa trees was enough to
decide her.
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- 'I'm coming home,' she said.
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- The wide blue sky and warm sun, the open spaces and rugged
beauty and the calls of hoopoes, sparrowhawks and bulbuls is enough to
weaken the hardest of Zimbabwean hearts.
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- Coming home will not be easy. The flush of saved money
doesn't go far in these times when every American dollar that we have buys
food and pays bills with nothing left over for the other essentials necessary
for life and health. It will not be easy learning to negotiate the flood
tide of officials in every government department and building who want,
need, demand, a bribe in order to do their job. For many who come home
it will be a bitter pill seeing the evil still walking free amongst us:
the men (and women) who beat, burnt, raped and murdered us and our families,
friends and relations this last decade.
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- Perhaps hardest of all for people coming home from democratic
countries will be accepting that lawlessness still exists depending on
your political affiliations and that mayhem and thuggery continues in farming
areas where "land" is still used as a smokescreen for theft,
looting, arson and murder.
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- Events of this week are likely to put paid to thoughts
and plans of coming home for many Zimbabweans in the diaspora. Hardly had
the fire died down and the ash settled from the suspicious fires which
destroyed the farms and homes of Ben Freeth and Mike Campbell when yet
more dire news came. These two farmers who have endured so much and fought
so hard for their legal rights - and who have won their cases in Zimbabwean
and SADC courts are now bereft. The farmers and their farm workers and
all of their families have lost everything - homes, jobs and futures. Listening
to Ben Freeth talking on an independent radio programme this week, the
tears filled my eyes.
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- "I told my workers I'll be back. I promised them
we'd rebuild," Freeth said.
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- They are words that many thousands of commercial farmers
have said to their faithful and loyal employees as they've been evicted,
dispossessed and lost everything this last decade. Promises that farmers
have been unable to keep as Zanu PF have changed laws, amended the constitution
and disregarded rulings made by their own courts. This week legal Affairs
Minister Patrick Chinamasa hammered in the last nail. Zimbabwe, he said,
will no longer appear in front of the regional SADC courts, will not recognise
their rulings or respond to any actions or suits instituted by the SADC
tribunal.
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- As beautiful as Zimbabwe is this spring we are still
a long way from being free of the clique who cling to power and fill their
pockets. But, as every day passes, we are closer to the day when this arranged
marriage of inconvenience can be over and we can hold free, fair and democratic
elections and start again. Until next week, thanks for reading,
-
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- love cathy.
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- 5th September 2009
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- Copyright 2009 cathy buckle
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- www.cathybuckle.com http://www.cathybuckle.com/> For
information on my new book: "INNOCENT VICTIMS" or my previous
books, "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears," or to subscribe/unsubscribe
to this newsletter, please write to:
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- cbuckle@mango.zw
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