African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [93]
He dismisses what everyone else is talking about, the corruption scandals, with ‘These little incidents…’
He says, ‘Eight years, all this in eight years. It’s a miracle. They’ve achieved so much. I know we said they could but who would have believed it, in such a short time? You go into an office or a bank, you look at them, so full of confidence and ability, and remember the old days, when they had all their confidence knocked out of them. You meet young people now who don’t remember the bad old days.’
He had a sad time in the War, an enemy of the white regime, confined to his farm, forbidden to speak his mind. He helped the fighters when he could, and now sometimes people come up to him and give him presents. ‘Do you remember? You helped my little boy?’ ‘You gave me medicine when I was sick.’ ‘You hid my brother when the soldiers were chasing him.’
This Zimbabwe is his Zimbabwe and he loves it with a fierce innocence. The Unity Accord has made him and his country whole and perfect.
ZIMBABWE
A scene guaranteed to appeal to connoisseurs of political irony…some months later Garfield Todd got badly burned when working on one of his ancient cars: restoring old cars is his hobby. When he was in hospital Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, former enemies, went together to visit him. Garfield Todd, still pretty ill, was being gentled out of a bath. The security guards tried to hurry a nurse into getting her patient quickly out of the bath and into bed. ‘Can’t you see who is here?’ ‘You do your job and I’ll do mine,’ she replied.
‘When those two men, Mugabe and Nkomo, stood on either side of Todd’s bed that day, man, that was the best of Zimbabwe, I tell you, that is Zimbabwe.’
SCHOOL
When Mugabe and his army were still hopeful contenders for power he promised that if he won every child would be given a secondary education. On Liberation he said, ‘When an African country gets Independence Aid money flows in, and then dries up. We, Zimbabwe, must decide now what is most important. First of all Communal Areas, the old Reserves, always starved of money. That’s the priority. After that, the secondary schools. Yes, it is true we do not have the infrastructure to do it well at once, but there is going to be unemployment for a time in any case, and it is better a young person should be unemployed with some kind of education than with none.’
Did he really say this? Who cares!
Comrade Mugabe
Keep your finger in the dyke,
Pull your finger out,
The water flood about,
Comrade Mugabe, Comrade Mugabe,
We rely on you.
(Popular song)
And secondary education was established at once. In 1982 I met teachers radiant with exhaustion and idealism, who said they worked in schools converted from barns, shacks, shops–anything, and there might be two or three shifts of pupils in a day. ‘The benches never had time to cool.’ Parents helped to build schools, giving time, skills, and money, often going without necessities. Secondary education was the key to their children’s future, and there was no sacrifice too great.
Eight years since Liberation. Nothing in the life of a country. Everything in the life of a child. Zimbabwe is now covered with secondary schools. But there are not enough teachers, textbooks, let alone–often–electricity, or even clean water, let alone the facilities taken for granted in Europe. A school may have one teacher actually qualified to teach: the rest may have a couple of O-levels. Many teachers, while they are teaching, are trying to get more O-levels or a precious A-level. And their goal? Certainly not to remain in rural schools, far from the centres, but to get to a big town, preferably Harare. The teaching staff in these schools never stay long, they are always on their way to somewhere better, and many headmasters have turned out dishonest.
The children at these schools believe they are being given a future, but only five per cent (1988) actually