African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [163]
During this kind of conversation politicians’ tribal origins always come up. Tekere is from Manicaland, which makes him a representative of Eastern Zimbabwe, just as Joshua Nkomo represents Matabeleland.
But someone gives me a lesson on ethnology. All this talk of the Matabele and the Mashona and the Manicas! There is no such thing as the Mashona. There are four main Mashona groups, the Karanga, the Manyika, the Zezuru, the Kore Kore. The main group is Zezuru from around Harare. Mugabe was Karanga by origin, and brought up as a Zezuru. The battles that go on inside the Party can often only be understood by the balances of power between these groups. At the moment the Karanga are losing out: it is the Karanga versus the rest. But Terence Ranger (Zimbabwe’s prestigious historian) says that before the whites came these divisions were not important: the missionaries exacerbated them. Then each group insisted it was the most important: ‘We are the real people.’
‘Tekere’, says someone, ‘is just as much a Mashona as Mugabe is. They’ll say anything to discredit Tekere.’
During an evening of informal talk with a high official, he insisted Tekere was ‘a Nazi’. Protests at this silliness from everybody. ‘Oh yes, it’s just the same. At first Hitler was just right wing: it was only later that people discovered he was a Nazi.’ (The word ‘objectively’ is implicit.) ‘And so that makes the students who support Tekere Nazis.’ (The university students have again demonstrated–‘rioted’, according to the government press–against corruption. Some carried Tekere party cards and shouted ‘Tiananmen Square!’) The official went on insisting that the students were Nazis. Not once did he admit that the students’ complaints were just. There was an unreasoning hysterical insistence in his talk about the students. Given the law that the same kinds of people say the same things at the same time, then it is likely this students-are-Nazis talk goes on at high levels.
AIDS, AIDS, AIDS
Only eight months before, the atmosphere had reminded me of Brazil in 1986. There were people saying, but privately, ‘AIDS is a time-bomb, ticking away, but our government doesn’t want to know. Brazil might have been invented to please the AIDS virus. It is a ‘permissive hedonistic society, male and female homosexuality–anything–goes. A blood transfusion is a death sentence. Drugs are everywhere.’ A few months later the Brazilian government understood AIDS would not just take itself off, and limited information campaigns began on radio, on television, in the newspapers. Poor countries cannot afford the money for serious propaganda. Compared with Brazil Zimbabwe is well-off with its infrastructure of hospitals and clinics. The point is, no one knows how much AIDS there is. Doctors say there is far more than the government admits to. Politicians let slip damaging figures, but they are not likely to be accurate. Everyone knows that up north, in Zambia, Kenya, Zaire, Uganda, other countries, a whole generation may die of AIDS before the end of the century. Already in Uganda and in Kenya there are empty villages where so many people died of AIDS the survivors fled, from what they see as witchcraft, the evil eye. Zimbabwe believes itself to be fortunate, compared with these countries. But is it? When a subject is almost in everybody’s consciousness, is still a question of ‘I met a doctor who says…’ or ‘They say that in the Communal Areas…’, but is not a matter of accurate facts and figures as is the case in Europe or the United States, then it hovers on the edge of conversations, makes an appearance and takes itself off–people look embarrassed or uncomfortable, as if afraid of an accusation of scare-mongering. And AIDS is still monstrously distorted in political left-wing mythology. Thus, in a group of ideologues, the