Zimbabwe

It’s troubling to write about Zimbabwe now, when the election is still, several weeks on, all up in the air. I was recently listening to a correspondent’s report from the region who said that at polling places, people were putting up impromptu pieces of paper and recording their votes outside, so there was a popular exit-poll. Delays on official reporting, supreme court decisions, and in the last 24 hours, the first public speech from Mugabe since the elections denouncing the opposition. I’m interest to read today that dock workers in South Africa are refusing to upload a shipment of arms from China destined for Zimbabwe. There is uneasiness all around.

That said, independence is the reason we’re here: Zimbabwe first declared independence from the United Kingdom as Rhodesia on 11 November, 1965—however, the independence they celebrate is their reemergence as Zimbabwe on 18 April, 1980.

The British arrived in Zimbabwe in the 1880s—with Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company. (Cecil Rhodes himself is a troubling figure…) When independence was declared, during the period that colonial rule was ending all over Africa, the white-minority government declared independence from the UK. This regime declared itself a republic in 1970, though it wasn’t recognised by Britain or any other state, but (then white-led) South Africa. A civil war ensued from this period, in which Mugabe and ZANU (as well as Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU) played key roles.

Given this situation, the 18 April independence day is the more meaningful, as the country gained independence that was recognised internationally, as well as its new name, new flag and new government. The first president was Canaan Banana, with Mugabe as Prime Minister. After a 1987 constitutional amendment that abolished the office of Prime Minister, on 1 January 1988, Mugabe became President of Zimbabwe. From 2000 Mugabe began an effort to redistribute land from white holders to Africans, a process whose legality has been repeatedly questioned from within Zimbabwe and from without. In 2002 Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations on charges of human rights abuses and election tampering.

On the human rights fronts, there have been reports that the goernment of Zimbabwe violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and protection of the law. There are assaults on the media, the political opposition, civil activists and human rights defenders. The life expectancy, as of a 2006 report, is the lowest in the world. An estimated quarter of the population (3.4 million) have fled Zimbabwe as refugees, mostly to neighbouring South Africa. A further 570,000 people are internally displaced.

All this serves to illustrate that independence and its aftermath is an ongoing process. If you need any further illustration of this, I recommend Ryszard Kapuściński’s writings—he witnessed 27 coups and revolutions during his time as a reporter covering Africa, the Middle East and South America.

Today's poem is by Chenjerai Hove - I found it on at Poetry International Web, a resource that has poems from several different countries.


A Poem for Zimbabwe

i am the only one
you are the only one.

the birds and the rivers
sing to me,
they speak in your voice.

if i fall silent
you will be silent too.
if i fall silent
your wounds will be named silence.

i am a piece of you
and you are a piece of me.

the blood in my veins is you.
listen to the rhythm
of the stream of my blood
and the echoes from the hills,
mixed with gentle ripples
of the waters in the fast stream.

but with time
you will hear your voice
in the blue skies of my heart.

in the dark clouds of my soul
you will hear a voice
that tells the story of your forgotten voices
of birds long dead
of elephants crippled by guns
of orphans you do not deserve.



—Chenjerai Hove
From Poetry International Web