- Dear Family and Friends,
-
- For well over a year I've been wearing a small yellow
ribbon pinned on my shirt in silent protest at what is happening in Zimbabwe
and in support of all those people who are suffering - black, brown and
white. There are many hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering
here now. There are children who can no longer go to school because their
parents cannot afford the fees. There are teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers,
magistrates and judges whose lives have become unbearable due to political
harassment. There are hundreds of brave men and women who continue to suffer
the most extreme intimidation, physical and psychological torture because
they openly support the opposition political party. There are many thousands
of farmers and their workers who have been evicted from their homes and
lost their farms and employment. There are many thousands of people who
have literally nothing to eat and to the outsider all these are mere
statistics. But they are not just numbers, they are real people just like
you and me and this week I am wearing my small yellow ribbon for three
farmer's wives.
-
- I was hot and fed up on Friday morning having
stood for a long time as the 42nd person in a queue at our local Marondera
supermarket for one loaf of brown bread. Long before I got to the
front, the bread was finished so I bought the newspaper instead. On the
front page is the story that the government's much talked about irrigation
of a winter crop of maize that was supposed to be the saving grace of us
all, is about to be harvested. It turns out that at best it will only yield
enough food for the country for one and half days. Leaving the supermarket
with only food for thought I felt pretty low as I passed the arrogant groups
of youngsters wearing Zanu PF T shirts who've been crowding our town the
whole week, ready to harass voters in the weekends' council elections.
As I got into my car a man stood at my window, his hands held as if in
prayer, "Oh please help me with something to eat" he begged.
Then I stopped in at the dentist who told me that he is struggling
to keep going. Yesterday he and his partner saw only 10 patients as opposed
to the 40 they normally see in a day - dentists and doctors have become
a luxury that most of us can no longer afford.
-
- By the time I got home I felt pretty depressed but
then the phone rang. A woman I have never met or spoken to before said:
"Oh please Cathy, can I talk to you, I know I don't know you but please
can I just talk to you?" She is a farmer's wife and through her tears
I listened to yet another story of utter hell which involves 30 months
of extreme harassment and intimidation. This was the third such call from
a stranger that I'd had in a few days and these women are so incredibly
brave that I feel ashamed to be sitting in the comfort of my relatively
civilized Marondera home. Every day they face drunk and doped up strange
men who hurl obscene abuse at them. At night they have to try and sleep
while men sing drunkenly and bang on tins to try and scare them out of
their homes. Some days they are threatened with sticks, pangas and other
crude weapons; other days the men have guns. These horrors have become
a part of every day life for the few commercial farmers still trying
to grow food for Zimbabwe. A woman, arriving on a farm this
week, told the owners to get out and in a hurry as this was now her
home. She was accompanied by five men armed with AK rifles. She refused
to shake hands with the farmer saying she didn't shake hands with
whites and went on to say that she hadn't tasted "white blood"
since 1980. This woman gets away with saying and doing these things not
because she is black but because she belongs to Zanu PF. Not only does
she belong to the ruling party but she is the wife of the Commander of
the Zimbabwe Army. This is the calibre of our new commercial farmers
and while these obscenities go on, the world does absolutely nothing but
use diplomatic double talk. While they do this, more and more people
become victims and go to work hungry and to bed at night on empty
stomachs.
-
- Recently I came across a saying which reads: "What
we do, we become". If this is true about me and my little yellow ribbon
then I wonder what lies in store for the woman who wants to taste
white blood and for the world's politicians who sit back and watch Zimbabwe
dying.
-
- Until next week,
-
- with love, cathy.
- <>http://africantears.netfirms.com
-
- Copyright 2002, Cathy Buckle.
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