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By Root 1411 0

who had risked every bit of money they had to set it up. There was a regular store, doing well, and this new communal store was in competition with all that capital, wrung from them, the former customers. Their problem was of course the shortage of capital, and so their new clean scrubbed shelves had fewer goods on them than the commercial store. Peter had helped set this store up, and was proprietary and proud, and we were introduced to the owners, all proud and anxious, and there we stood about drinking Coca-Cola, or was it Pepsi-Cola, while I contemplated the cola revolution, for everyone drinks the stuff. These people who may not have enough money to feed their children enough protein will pay money for soft drinks, and on the shelves of the remotest stores are ranks of bottled tooth-rot and gut-rot and there too are the piled loaves of white bread. While I stood there gossiping, up came a young man all smiles and good nature with that immediate childlike lovableness that says, This person is not one of Nature’s successes. He wanted to know if I would drive him to a place many miles distant. The people I was standing with watched me to see if I had understood, and when I replied in the formula of the country that I would take him ‘just now’–which is like the Spaniard’s manana– they nodded approvingly. The young man went off, satisfied, and one of the men said to me, not ‘He is one of the afflicted of God’, or ‘He is simple’, but ‘He has a short wire’. The use of this phrase seemed to me to sum up pretty adequately what has happened to this society in one hundred years.

MEAT, SADZA

We had lunch in Greendale Shopping Centre. These centres are the equivalent of the Growth Points of the Communal Areas. We ate meat. This was always a meat-eating culture. You may begin a visit saying you’ll stick to your near-vegetarian habits, which suit you, but in no time give it up: it gets too difficult. We ate beef. The beef grown in Zimbabwe is marvellous and, when exported, one of the country’s successes. So strong is the bias of the whole culture towards meat-eating it is hard to believe they could ever agree it is wasteful to feed grain to cattle instead of eating it direct, as grain. That really would be a revolution. The whites have eaten meat ever since they maintained themselves, or at least part fed themselves, on shot game. The blacks were hunters when the whites came, as well as farmers. Their main food now may be sadza, but they always eat meat with it when they can.

During lunch we talk politics, but politics mostly as gossip. This Minister had done this, that Minister is doing that. Never has there been a ruling caste so visible to its people, never have followers been so intensely and personally involved with its leaders. Mugabe is owed one tone of voice, but the new caste of fat cats are talked of with a sardonic appreciation of their comic possibilities. Is this, perhaps, politics as theatre? Yes, when politics are followed in places like Zimbabwe, in this close and personal way, it is the dramatic sense that is being fed. Characters really only life-size, are on an enormous stage where they are bound to seem ludicrous, pompous, laughable. But there is charity too: Let’s see how they turn out–that’s the feeling.

For several days I am driven around and about by people able to take time off work. We always come to rest outside the house or farm of a Chef, for a bout of the scandalous, relishing gossip.

‘This house has been bought by…’ ‘That farm belongs to…’ A Minister, or a businessman.

‘The first thing they do, when they move in,’ say the whites, ‘is a mealie patch. That’s how you can tell a Chef’s house.’

‘And why are you surprised?’ demands the black man who is driving me one day. ‘Of course we plant mealies.’

‘But damn it, they aren’t even African. The Portuguese introduced them.’

‘And I believe roses were introduced into Europe from the Middle East?’ he says, laughing with pleasure at going one better.

‘Touché.’

‘So why shouldn’t we love our mealies?’

‘No reason at all.’

‘That’s what I think.’

We