• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1527 0

the birth of Zimbabwe. This war was headed by Frelimo, or the Liberation Front, whose leader was Samora Machel, a man with every quality of the popular hero. He was clever and brave, handsome and witty, and it seems would have successfully headed a government able to make Mozambique a comfortable place to live in. He was killed in a plane crash in 1986 that was almost certainly engineered by the South African secret police. When white Southern Rhodesia ended, Renamo, which was a creation of the white Southern Rhodesians to undo Frelimo, was taken over by the South Africans. Renamo–National Resistance Movement–that is, resistance against Frelimo–was armed and financed by South Africa and it destroyed Mozambique, and forced millions of refugees out into Malawi and Zimbabwe. Renamo bands continue to burn, steal, rape and murder: South Africa may have called its dogs to heel, but not effectively. When Samora Machel was killed, he was succeeded as President by Jaochim Chissano, a man with probably the least enviable job in the world.

Southern Rhodesia, landlocked, had its railway to the port in Beira, and landlocked Zimbabwe has been largely dependent on this railway, this port, and the pipeline bringing in oil. It is Zimbabwe’s armies who have protected railway and pipeline, repeatedly repairing both as they were blown up during the fighting. And, too, just as poor and precarious Zambia helped the guerillas fighting the white governments of Southern Rhodesia and Malawi, which meant its territory was bombed and sometimes even its towns from Southern Rhodesia, so, now, Zimbabwe has helped Frelimo against the common enemy, South Africa.

The bond between these countries was nominally marxist, but the real bond remains–how to keep control of their countries and their policies against outside pressures.

And what will happen now that South Africa has had its change of heart? I think it should be asked what those hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women are doing whose occupation has gone–trained to sabotage, destroy, undermine, destabilize their neighbouring black countries. Are these clever and cunning and brutal people now sitting back smiling benevolently while Mozambique, which they have destroyed, tries to restore itself? While Botswana, where they sent agents to murder and sabotage, becomes prosperous? While Zimbabwe, where they fomented every kind of disaffection, becomes peaceful and united? Well, how are these people spending their time these days?

THE AGRICULTURE

Under the whites most Africans lived in the Native Reserves, where they were put when the whites took the good land for their own farms. There were also Native Purchase Areas where blacks could buy land. The existence of these prosperous black farmers is one reason for the success of Zimbabwe’s agriculture. After Liberation the Reserves became Communal Areas. The Resettlement Areas are where blacks are settled on previously unsettled land (of which there is still a great deal left) or on previously white-owned land. The Resettlement Areas were originally meant to be something like the Kolkhozes in the Soviet Union, never mind that they were so conspicuously unsuccessful. Now the exact terms on which these newly settled farmers will hold their land is being debated.

GLOSSARY

Words borrowed from Afrikaans

vlei

a valley

kopje

a hill

skellum

bad person or animal, a rascal, a crook

lager

a camp, a defended place

mealies

maize

donga

a gully

drop

a small town or village

spoor

tracks–of animals, of people

biltong

dried meat

Word borrowed from Swahili

boma

a safe place, a headquarters

Words borrowed from the Portuguese

Chef

a boss, a leader

povos

the poor

viva!

hail! hurrah!

Indigenous words

mombies

cattle

sadza

a stiff porridge made of maize meal

nganga

a shaman, male or female, a ‘witchdoctor’

mudzimo

a spirit or soul

musasa

the most common tree in Mashonaland

guti

mist

honkey

slang word for a white. Because whites talk through their noses, say Africans. Should