African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [78]
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘What technique or machine or piece of equipment would this farm find most useful now, at this time?’
There was a long silence.
‘The farmer who had this farm was very rich,’ said one young man, offering this to me, I could see, as a starting-off point.
Given this level of poverty, what standard of living did I have in mind? That of the white family who lived here? To give so many families the same would take more money than this farm had even begun to think of. Was I suggesting that every child would have a room full of toys and a bicycle, young people a car each or the use of one, trips to Europe every year or so?
Such questions could be asked, I could see, but I had not been thinking of past white affluence.
Then one young man brought definition to our talk, when he enquired if I had connections with Aid money. Did I work for an Aid organization? Both of them became animated. Some of the amenities on Simukai had been paid for with Aid money. How much money could I give them?
I said I was not connected to an Aid organization.
I saw they were thinking, Here is another visitor, who likes the way we work so hard.
I was thinking that this was rather like being in Pakistan, meeting refugees all day, who had come out from Afghanistan with nothing but what they had on their backs. Our group despaired several times a day: if we had a million pounds to spend, it would all disappear in half a morning, and still do nothing very much.
THE FIGHTERS
Judy Todd has been involved with settling Freedom Fighters in jobs and on farms. Not all the difficulties were foreseen. For instance, a certain young man complained that when he applied for jobs, he was granted an interview but as soon as he gave his particulars a job mysteriously became unavailable. And what name was he giving? ‘Comrade Spillblood’. Other names that proved unappealing to employers were Comrade Instant Death, Comrade Advance Zimbabwe, Comrade Lightning, Comrade Ceasefire, and Comrade Drink Blood.
THE DISSIDENTS
A Swedish journalist was present at that anticlimactic event when the Matabele dissidents gave themselves up under the amnesty.
The scene was a shabby room in a police station. In the middle stood a dozen or so desperadoes slung all over with weapons, including one Gayiguso, famous because he had recently killed sixteen people with an axe. The police accepting their submission were unarmed. The world’s journalists were sitting around the walls. They had been told not to ask provocative questions, because ‘of the spirit of reconciliation under the Unity Accord’. Unable to think of anything more interesting, one cautiously enquired, ‘And how do you feel now?’ Expecting–perhaps?–reflections on the key fact that it is possible indeed, increasingly common, for a few people, even half a dozen, to bring whole countries into civil unrest, or civil war–to destroy the very frail stuff of civilization. The reply from the intrepid Gayiguso was the confidence that they wanted to sleep in a nice bed and have some food. After all, they had been living in the bush for ten or so years, in caves or where they could, raiding food from villages or fields, or forcing villagers to feed them. An uncomfortable life, even when not murdering people and burning homes. Their hardships, they seemed to feel, deserved sympathy. ‘I’ve never seen a rougher crowd of men,’ said the journalist.
When these ‘dissidents’ returned to their villages, their families rejected them, saying they weren’t wanted.
All kinds of people who had supported these men–believed to be an army–now disowned them, including the students who had demonstrated for them.
And now, what to do with them? They were put on to a farm under sympathetic supervision, and soon became good citizens, with a tendency to lecture the Youth on the need to keep the law and respect government.
Reformed Terrorists are often taken like this. Many of the Red Brigades in Italy, who suffered reverse conversions in prison, and demonstrated their capacity for