African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [76]
A BETRAYED LOVER
‘I expected a period of incompetence. I expected every kind of mess and muddle. I knew nothing would work for a time. How could it when they didn’t have the trained people? But what I didn’t expect was that these bastards would get into power and then not care about anything but feathering their own nests. There are dozens of them, noses in the trough, getting rich quick. Do you imagine they care about those poor bastards out in the Reserves–yes, they are still the reserves, you can give them a new name if you like–but they don’t give a shit. And if you imagine the students were rioting last term because of corruption, don’t you believe it. Oh yes they sound pure and noble but that isn’t it. They know the layer of jobs in the civil service and the government they ought to get themselves–but they’ll never get in there, because all these jobs were filled by the Comrades coming in from the bush, still in their twenties, who have got decades of working life in front of them, and the students will have nowhere to go and they know it. They want to get their noses in the trough too…’ So he raged.
THE AESTHETIC APPROACH
TO REVOLUTION
‘They have all this money, they build themselves houses that would be seen as shocking taste even by Thatcher’s nouveau riche. You simply wouldn’t believe what they are building, nothing to do with the country or the climate, stupid little windows, a mincing suburban refinement, but boastful and ostentatious at the same time. They fill these houses with furniture that no one would be seen dead with in Britain. There isn’t one thing in their houses that isn’t hideous. You stand there looking at these houses and you want to weep at the awfulness of it all.’
‘But surely that is how it always is? First there is the generation that makes the money, all vulgarians full of crude vitality, without scruples. Then their children, who don’t make money, they spend it, and who laugh at their parents for bad taste. Then the third generation who go in for art and liberalism and fine feelings–history often describes them as effete. So why are you so upset this inevitable process is taking place in Zimbabwe?’
Because this is Zimbabwe–is the real reply. This man, a white born and brought up here is in love with the dream of Zimbabwe and he was supporting it when to do so meant ostracism from his own kind. He cannot endure any blemish on his love.
To be in love with a country or a political regime is a tricky business. You get your heart broken even more surely than by being in love with a person. You may even lose your life. I knew a woman political activist in the old days - in this case, the 1950s. She spent her days and her nights working to undo the white regime in South Africa. Needing a rest, she went to visit Nigeria, to see her dream made flesh, found it was run by human beings, and committed suicide. Everyone who has been involved with idealistic, rhetorical, politics knows a thousand versions of this story, from all over the world.
It has to be recorded that Dorothy admires the new house being put up half a mile away, a horror of a house you would think had been designed to illustrate how many mistakes could be made in a single building–she loves it to the point her eyes go all misty at the sight or even the thought of it.
‘And Zimbabwe has all these fine architects. Did you know that? Our architects are some of the best in the world. They win prizes–in