Zimbabwe dispatches: can the country stand alone?
Updated on 04 August 2009
There have been two rallying calls made by Zanu PF consistently for the past nine years.
Calls that have covered a multitude of sins and provided a smoke screen for a decade of oppression and bad governance:
"Zimbabwe will never be a colony again!"
"Zimbabwe is a sovereign state and will brook no interference!"
Now, six months into a transitional phase of governance where the MDC election winners have been forced to share power with the Zanu PF losers, the rallying calls of the old order are still being peddled but are more absurd than ever before.
Zimbabwe’s official currency is the US dollar, the South African Rand, the British Pound or the Botswana Pula. We will never be a colony again and are a sovereign sate but don’t even have our own money!
Despite being born and raised in Zimbabwe and living here all my life, I am one of millions who has, in the last five years, been classified as an alien because my parents were not born in Zimbabwe.
I am a permanent resident paying rates and taxes but am no longer allowed to vote and once a year have to go to the immigration department and have my passport stamped.
Here, in the premier shop window of Zimbabwe’s home affairs department, the stairs and walls are filthy, the benches broken, the floor tiles lifting and the windows grey with grime.
The toilets are locked, the door handles gone and none of the lights work.
One bored woman serves, she does not look at you, greet you or acknowledge your presence as she takes documents, stamps them and pushes them back at you.
Attached to the wall overhead is a TV. It is tuned in either to BBC or Sky News, not Zimbabwe television – but, we will never be a colony again!
For the last few years, as conditions have dropped to catastrophic levels leaving us with the lowest life expectancy in the world, Zanu PF have consistently said that we are under threat from neo-colonialists.
Everything that is wrong is blamed on the west, particularly the UK, EU and USA and, of course, on sanction. Sanctions which in reality are not a blanket measure against the nation but only involve visa bans and an assets freeze on 243 named, targeted individuals.
The lack of medicines and equipment in hospitals are blamed on sanctions; the shortage of fertilizer, seed and spare parts for machines are blamed on sanctions. Water shortages, broken street lights, missing intersection traffic lights and even non existent refuse collection are all blamed on sanctions. Schools without books, chalk and furniture – yes, sanctions again!
This week the old order propagandists on ZBC TV are even blaming sanctions for the maze of cavernous pot-holes littering our roads.
They stay quiet, however, about who it is fixing the chaos left by bad governance.
Everywhere the big cars in all our villages, towns and cities tell the story of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty: UN, Care, Concern, World Health, World Vision, World Food, US Aid and dozens more.
This week an American NGO, Messcorps, are even fixing the public toilets in my home town.
So much for never being a colony again when we can’t even fix our own loos!
And then of course, the final veneer of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty is displayed for all to see in our supermarkets.
Milk, margarine, biscuits, flour, maize meal, potatoes, sugar, washing powder – everything is imported, almost nothing is made in Zimbabwe anymore.
Supermarket shelves are a veritable united nations of imported products and someone said that in his local supermarket even the radio is tuned to a South African station.
What was that about never being a colony again?
