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But all denominations, all the time, focus prayers and singing and scripture on the War and we all ask God to take care of our army guys and keep them safe from terrorists and we assume that God knows this means (without us actually coming right out and saying it) that we want to win the War.

Independence Arch

INDEPENDENCE

Which is why it is such a surprise when we lose the War.

Lost. Like something that falls between the crack in the sofa. Like something that drops out of your pocket. And after all that praying and singing and hours on our knees, too.

Ian Smith rings the Independence Bell thirteen times, one ring for every year since the Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain. He and his wife, Janet, raise their glasses in a toast to “the faithful” one last time.

Even then we have a hard time believing it’s over. That we are giving in after all this time. That we’re not fighting through thickanthin after all.

“Everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth.”

We lost, they found. Our-men.

Independence, coming readyornot.

In March 1978, Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa of the African National Council makes an agreement with the white government and forms an interim government, which combines the weakest of the African political parties with the most determined of the old white guard and in June 1979 he wins elections, which may or may not have been free and fair (depending on who you are, and the color of your skin). We buy T-shirts to replace our old rhodesia is super T-shirts. These new T-shirts read zimbabwe-rhodesia is super and we say, “Especially Rhodesia.” But the War carries on and more and more people die and the fight is fiercer and more angry than before. And the Africans have splintered into political groups and tribal factions and fight one another, on top of also fighting the whites.

So Muzorewa, who is (after all) a Christian man and a Methodist, does a most un-African thing. He gives up power after only six months. He hands Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and the whole damned mess back to the British. In London, December 1979, it is decided that once again we are a British colony except this time, the British mean to give us independence under majority rule. None of this mix-and-match, pick-your-own-muntu style of Rhodesian government.

There is a cease-fire and we have to take Dad’s FN rifle and Mum’s Uzi and all Dad’s army-issue camouflage to the police station. We keep the rat packs and eat the last of the pink-coated peanuts and stale Cowboy bubble gum and we dissolve and drink the last of the gluey coffee paste. The policeman who collects the guns writes our name in a book and apologizes, “I’m sorry, hey.” He doesn’t say what he is sorry for.

There are freeanfair elections in February 1980, just before my eleventh birthday, and we lose the elections. By which I mean our muntu, Bishop Muzorewa, is soundly defeated. He wins three paltry seats. One man, one vote. We’re out.

On April 18, 1980, Robert Gabriel Mugabe takes power as Zimbabwe’s first prime minister. I have never even heard of him. The name “Rhodesia” is dropped from “Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.” Now our country is simply “Zimbabwe.”

Zimba dza mabwe. Houses of stone.

Those who live in stone houses shouldn’t throw stones for fear of ricochet.

The first to go are the Afrikaans children.

The day Robert Gabriel Mugabe wins the elections the Afrikaans parents drive up to the school, making a long snake of cars like a funeral procession, to collect their kids. The kids, fists held tightly by stern-bosomed mothers, are taken to their dormitories, where we are not ordinarily allowed until five o’clock bath time. The matrons have to get the maids to bring stacks of trunks down from the trunk room. The Afrikaans mothers pack. The Afrikaans fathers stay in the car park, leaning against their cars, smoking and talking quietly to each other in Afrikaans. There is a sense of history in their carriage; we’ve done this before and we’ll do it again.

We have learned about the Great Trek in