- Dear Family and Friends,
-
- On Friday morning in small town Zimbabwe, the big ten-tonne
trucks were visible soon after nine in the morning and they were filled
to overflowing with weary "cheer leaders." Men, women and youths
who looked dusty, wind tossed and tired and theirs was certainly not a
position to be envied. It was hard to know where all these people had come
from but they weren't familiar faces so they must have been collected from
somewhere in the surrounding rural areas. Crammed into two open topped
trucks, there were perhaps 50 people in each, sitting on the floor , squashed
up against each other like livestock going to slaughter: without dignity
or individuality - just faces, numbers to swell the crowd.
-
- It only took a few seconds to work out what was going
on when the vehicles turned into the local ruling party offices in the
town. The trucks were from a well known parastatal and had the Zimbabwe
flag wrapped around and tied onto bumpers and roll bars. These vehicles
aren't buses and undoubtedly don't have permits to transport people but
they have become very familiar to us in the past eight years, disgorging
great crowds of people at ruling party rallies and meetings.
-
- When the worst of the farm invasions were going on, the
big white vehicles with the red and blue stripes on the doors bought fear,
dread and a feeling of finality to farmers and their workers. They trucks
came carrying masses of people who would swarm over fields, camp outside
gates, barricade roads and sing, drum and shout, throwing stones at walls,
windows and roofs until the occupants were beaten into submission and left.
-
- Some of the people in the trucks on this last day of
November 2007 were wearing clothes and head scarves adorned with the President's
face and that gave the game away. They were here on a brief stop over but
were on their way to Harare for what had been advertised as the "Million
Man March" - a show of support of President Mugabe's candidature
in the 2008 elections.
-
- As I passed the loaded trucks, for a brief moment I tried
to catch someone's eye to see if I could spot political fervour, a dedicated
zealot, even a believer in the cause but it wasn't there. I saw weary images,
lean faces, pronounced cheek bones - tired people, the same as the rest
of us. Like everyone else they are also surviving with the bare minimum
of food and money; their children are malnourished and many are no longer
in school ; their hospitals and clinics have few staff and even fewer drugs
and they are scratching out a living in hard, primitive conditions.
-
- So why, then, after seven years of chronic decline
would anyone willingly support a party which cannot even ensure basic food
in the shops? Undoubtedly, those big trucks would be empty if the ruling
party had not taken such pains to ensure that as we went into the next
election they had complete control over the supply, price and availability
of food, seed, fertilizer, fuel, water, electricity and now even of bank
notes.
-
- Until next week,
-
- thanks for reading,
-
-
- love cathy.
-
-
- Copyright cathy buckle December 2007. www.cathybuckle.com
My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available
in South Africa from: <mailto:books@clarkesbooks.co.za>books@clarkesbooks.co.za
and in the UK from: <mailto:orders@africabookcentre.com>orders@africabookcentre.com
To subscribe/unsubscribe to this newsletter, please write to: <mailto:cbuckle@mango.zw>cbuckle@mango.zw
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