African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [160]
Trading practices in this part of the world would not satisfy political moralists. Botswana has favouring trade agreements with Zimbabwe and South Africa, imports goods from South Africa, relabels them, sells them to Zimbabwe. South Africa puts Zimbabwe labels on fruit and sells it overseas. Zimbabwe’s citizens travel to Botswana to buy goods in short supply in Zimbabwe: these are often South African.
‘And why doesn’t Comrade Mugabe…?’
Comrade Mugabe doesn’t approve of all this, and says so, but King Canute couldn’t stop the tide rolling in.
MOZAMBIQUE
And what else are people talking about?
Last year Mozambique sooner or later appeared in every conversation. Now few people mention it. This is because the problem is on the way to being solved. Maputo is coming to life again: people are beginning to travel. Some of the braver Mozambicans are going home to ruined villages. Yet the refugee camps in Zimbabwe and Malawi are still full and more refugees arrive all the time. People starve in Mozambique. Bands of bandits threaten the villages. Policing the oil pipeline to Beira and bolstering the Mozambique army still costs Zimbabwe over a million pounds a day. No one seems to grudge this aid, but there are jokes that Zimbabwe, ex-colony, has a colony of its own: Zimbabwe is proud of itself and its support for its ruined neighbour. For instance, the pipeline. It is reckoned that if ‘they’–that is, Renamo, blow up the line the Zimbabwe army can get it back into working order in seventy-two hours. It is impossible to guard the line for its whole distance, hundreds of miles. The most recent blow-up was last month, and it was back in operation almost at once. The Zimbabwe troops are now trained by the British: the infamous days of the Fifth Brigade are over. ‘They are good chaps now, our Zimbabwe soldiers…’ (It is the Coffee Farmer who speaks.) ‘Well, look at who trained them! They’re ready for anything, anti-personnel mines, bomb attacks, air attacks, the lot. Do you remember when you were here the pipeline was cut and there was no petrol for weeks? That couldn’t happen now.’
According to the politically-correct, ‘bandits’ in Mozambique are always Renamo. But the tale of the crocodile hunter suggests otherwise. The hunter was issued a permit to trap crocodiles in the lakes in Mozambique for live export. He took a boat out into the lake, but first Renamo, then Frelimo, bands shot at him, forced him to the shore, demanded a percentage of the earnings. Several times he was nearly killed. So he gave up. ‘So neither Renamo nor Frelimo got anything out of him. Serves them right.’
CORRUPTION
From one end of Zimbabwe to the other, people talk about corruption.
It seems people have come to terms with it. On a white farm verandah: ‘What are we blaming Mugabe’s lot for? Smith’s lot all feathered their nests. The only honest man was Whitehead and he died a pauper.’
‘And Smith?’
‘Oh, he was honest, but he’s all bone behind the ears,’ cheerfully says a former enthusiast for Smith’s cause. ‘Look at the trouble Smithie got us into! We need never have had a war at all! Only a minority of whites wanted that war but then we had to go along with it.’
Or: ‘The whole country is on the fiddle. No, I don’t blame Mugabe. We all learned it under UDI. You had to lie and cheat then to survive and now it’s our national style. You can’t survive under Mugabe’s financial laws without fiddling. Everyone does it.’
A variation on the old joke: Two Zimbabwe Cabinet Ministers are standing outside the Pearly Gates. ‘Zimbabwe?