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By Root 1395 0

as he speeds comfortably enough along the new good road, is that the road was so recently a dusty or muddy track, that the groups of brick buildings that occur here and there are new, though the idea and the name Growth Points, originated under the whites; that these Growth Points, consisting of clinic, administrative buildings, schools, are expected to develop into little towns, feeding services into the area; that the little fields of maize and cotton and sunflower which seem so unimpressive compared to the great rich red fields of the Commercial Farming areas are growing every year more and more of the country’s food–that, in fact, here is a transformation that can be valued and understood only by people who know what it was all once like.

THE SHED

Peter Simbisai wants me to see a certain shed. It is a large plain lock-up shed with a cement floor. It is communally owned. At its start, a great many families wanted to be in on this scheme. In the impetuous early days of Liberation everything seemed effortlessly possible, all kinds of people wanted to join all kinds of communal schemes, which sounded easy, because in any case working in groups was part of their tradition. But each family not only had to put money into the materials to build the shed, but then help build it, and afterwards look after it. Someone always had to be there: this afternoon it was a young woman whose turn had come on the roster. She said that most families had left the scheme, leaving a nucleus who had built it up, and now people wanted to join it again, because it was changing the life of the area.

In the shed is a weighing machine for the sacks of produce, and to weigh people when doctors and nurses come. There is a heap of maize, seed maize, tinted blue and green as a warning not to eat it or feed animals with it. This seed maize is numbered R-201 and SR-52, developed in old Southern Rhodesia and valued now. We are expected to share ironical appreciation of the fact that this precious maize is expertise from the bad old days. In the shed, too, political meetings are held, educational classes of all kinds, and parties. The owners of the shed are proud its facilities are available to everyone, members or not, that it is a centre for the whole area, and such a success that other people in neighbouring areas are talking about building a similar centre. ‘In good time this shed will become a Growth Point,’ says the young woman, but she and the others are advising caution, having experienced the difficulties. Only people who seem likely to stick with it should be invited into the scheme.

Most of all, the problems of transport have to be solved. Having grown the crops and bagged them and weighed them and stored them here on the good cement floor where the animals cannot get in and eat them, ‘and the white ants cannot tunnel, after all that–transport.

LORRY SERVICES

Everyone, anywhere in Zimbabwe who gets together a bit of money buys a lorry and sets up a transport firm. It is one of the quickest and easiest ways to get rich. The farmers living far from the markets, often far from Growth Points, are easy prey. They are forced to pay more than they should to get their produce transported. They are helpless until they can afford to buy their own lorry, and meanwhile they feel they are being bled by these conscienceless transport firms–which might very well be run by members of their own families. There is no legislation regulating what is charged for transport. ‘Why doesn’t Mugabe do something to protect us? He says we are the hope of Zimbabwe, we, the black farmers.’ ‘We are slowly building the infrastructure the whole country can build on…’ ‘The government should match their words with their deeds.’ ‘Comrade Mugabe should…’

THE STORE

This unimpressive shed was changing lives in a large area. Now we were to see something equally important. Again we drove through thinned and impoverished bush, full, however, of fat and contented cattle, because of the rains, to a village where there was a communal store, owned by the usual nucleus of families