African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [77]
After ‘Why does Comrade Mugabe…?’ the most often heard set of words is, ‘The women do everything in this country. They do all the work. The men sit about, and the women keep things going. If you want anything done, then you have to reach the women.’
A VISIT TO SIMUKAI
I was taken by Judy Todd to visit Simukai, established and run by ex-Freedom Fighters, men and women. As the War ended, while they waited at the assembly points to be demobilized, they imagined this farm, decided to make it.
Some miles from Harare a sign said, ‘Simukai Collective Farm Welcomes You’ near a small store, a shed-like building whose shelves have on them more soft drinks than the nutritionists would be pleased to see. It was after midday, very hot, and people lazed on the store verandah, mostly women knitting and crocheting. The men were asleep. It turned out that the chairman Andrew was away. He is famous, a man of principle, whose socialism refused to envisage differences between men and women. ‘Here we have only comrades,’ first he–and then they all–decided. This meant that when a certain feminist arrived to discuss the oppression of women, she was told there were no men and women, only people working on equal terms, but probably the person she would like to talk to was the comrade, a woman, who drove the tractor.
This tale has the quality of myth, standing for so much more than its bare facts, symbolizing new Zimbabwe–like other tales about this farm where many visitors are taken.
This was a white farm, and the old pattern of spread-about farmhouse, farm buildings, animal sheds, is here, and it is easy for me to see the old life, the single white family, and its animals–and now the same place is filled with several black families.
The level of poverty, that is the point, and what is so hard to convey: impossible for a person from Europe to imagine, let alone someone from rich America.
A small brick building is the new school and it represents so much hope, effort, work, sacrifice on everyone’s part.
And here I meet, and within a few days of my arrival, that note, or theme, which soon I see as the main one, I think, of Zimbabwe at this time. It is this: how much a small thing, a single building, or animal, or little garden, or a dedicated person can mean, transforming a whole district.
This meagre little school where remarkable people teach, will be remembered by–how many children?
There is a new dam, where they plan to grow fish.
Trees are being planted.
Everything here, which to an eye used to the riches of European farming seems so small and bare is like a step taken with feet that have iron weights on them.
We are taken to see a workshop, once part of a tobacco barn, where a young woman is making overalls. Then to a little house where small children and babies are being looked after. A tiny child, not used to white faces, bawls in terror and is hushed by an older child who sends us embarrassed smiles. In another former tobacco barn meals are cooked and eaten communally.
The farm grows maize, cattle, sheep, pigs, tobacco, wheat, sugar beans.
I asked what, if they were given a wish, they would choose.
This is a question which often gets surprising answers.
We had been driving through rich farms where miles of fields showed the brilliant whirling sprays of irrigation machines. These are now called Commercial Farms, meaning individually-owned high-tec farms, either black or white. I expected the reply would be, irrigation, silos, a new landrover, a refrigerated truck.
Two young men, polite but sleepy, for after lunch on a hot day is not the best time to go visiting, replied in the tones of practised speechmakers, ‘To raise the standard of living.’ ‘To improve the lives of our people.’ This kind of conversation often disappears into mists of misunderstanding and the need for definitions