"Today you're going to cry." The doctor, prodding Grace roughly with his nicotine-stained fingers, is matter-of-fact, there's no malice in his voice. And, afterwards, when she begs him not to let her see the fetus, he's considerate enough to cover it with a paper towel as it lies in a bloody puddle at the end of the examination table, before helping her to her feet. When he returns to the leather armchair in his consulting room, she notices that he doesn't bother to wash his hands before lighting a cigarette, blowing smoke in her direction as she leans over the desk to hand him his money.

"Be careful not to tell anyone about this," he says as she turns to leave, his eyes slits through the blue blur of cigarette smoke, "the jails are full of women like you."

He was right. That day she did cry. And for many days afterwards. There was clotting and cramps that had her balled up in pain in a corner of the sofa for the next two days, but, mostly, she cried because of the agony of an infection which festered where the doctor's unsterilised equipment had torn at her private parts.

The series of events that led to Grace finding herself in the deserted surgery that late Saturday afternoon once all the regular patients had gone home, is irrelevant. She could have been a teenager who fell pregnant the first time she had sex with her boyfriend. But, as it turned out, she was a mature single mother, unable to face the birth of a third child she had no means of supporting. Whatever her circumstances, Grace, like many other Zimbabwean women, found herself risking her life and her freedom to terminate a pregnancy she believed impossible to sustain.

[If you wish to leave comments on this article please add them to the blog post. This paper is part of the Zimbabwe Land Series]

By Dale Doré, a discussion paper in the Zimbabwe Land Series

Executive Summary

A narrative is a selection of simplified stories that supports a particular interpretation of history. It expounds a moral 'truth' in order to legitimise authority and power.¹ In Zimbabwe an African nationalist narrative has been constructed around the 'lost lands' to justify the government's land reform programme. It recounts how British colonists stole the best lands without compensating the indigenous African peoples. It speaks of a culture where land, sanctified by custom, cannot be owned, but is shared equally by wise traditional leaders for the benefit of the community. It celebrates heroic struggles to recover the lost lands, regain the dignity of a wronged people, and defend the country's independence and sovereignty. And, like all good propaganda, the narrative has a kernel of truth that is repeatedly reinforced by leaders to convince their followers that any means are justified to claim their moral right.

[If you wish to leave comments on this article please add them to the blog post. This paper is part of the Zimbabwe Land Series]

By Mandivamba Rukuni

“..1953-58 was a period of hope for those whites who recognised that, in the long term, safety and progress for all depended upon a sharing of political power – theirs for the time being – with an ever-increasing number of blacks..”. Garfield Todd in foreword to book by Hardwick Holderness (1985). “Lost Chance- Southern Rhodesia 1945-58” ZPH.

Introduction

In this article I take a 60 year historical perspective (2012-1952) of hindsight to discuss the lost opportunities to de-racialise and resolve the land issue. This article is the second of 12 instalments, concluding the introductory and historical context to the series.

The historical thesis

In this article I offer additional insight beyond the popular theses as to how Zimbabwe eventually ended up with the fast-track land reform programme. By adding the contentious component of ‘race’ to my thesis, I hope to persuade the reader on the need for Zimbabwean society to address this issue head-on and openly, if we are to improve prospects for stability and prosperity moving forward. On the land issue, race is by no means the whole story, yet race accounts for the greater part of decades of tensions as well as ‘cat-and-mouse’ games within the greater scheme of local and global politics.