‘Hope’ in Zimbabwe in 2006

2006 is officially here. A little while ago Dad wrote a post on this blog describing how he couldn’t see past Christmas 2005:

For some months now, my mental picture of Zim’s future has been a blank, literally non-existent. Curiously enough, other people have come out with very similar thoughts as myself – that we can’t see anything beyond the end of the year. It’s really weird – as if Zim doesn’t exist beyond midnight on 31st December! I’ve been trying to figure it out, but it’s one of those thoughts that you can’t quite get a clear picture of. It doesn’t feel bad, but then it doesn’t feel good either – it’s so very frustrating.

I agreed then with what Dad said and I find myself here now, firmly and irreversibly stuck in the twilight zone that is the beginning of 2006. New Year’s messages usually talk about predictions and forecasts for the year ahead, but how can I predict what lies ahead if I can’t anticipate tomorrow? How can I talk about where we’ll be going and how we will get there if I’m not sure where we are right now?

Perhaps it is significant that another blogger who writes on Zimbabwean issues chose 1 January 2006 – New Year’s Day – as the day to shut-down his blog and effectively stop writing on Zimbabwe. In his final post, titled Signing Off, he bitterly and angrily wrote:

I am now 100% convinced that the vast majority of Africans get the government they deserve. Except the few who are truly devoted to overthrowing Mugabe’s regime, the rest are cowardly and deserve to live under his boot. They do not vote, they do not protest, they simply complain. The world has had enough of Zimbabwe and frankly I have also had enough of the lack of will on the part of the country to bring about meaningful change.

I absolutely do not share the views expressed here at all. Nevertheless, I believe that all views contribute to a debate and I am saddened that another Zimbabwean voice has fallen silent. I wondered, when I finished reading this final post, what it would take to make me throw my hands up in despair and frustration and give-up all hope for a better future in my country.

I have signed all my posts on this blog under the pseudonym ‘Hope’, and I guess the fact that I carry on writing for this blog every now and then means that I do still retain hope. But what does ‘hope’ mean?

This time last year we were looking forward to the parliamentary elections that eventually took place in March. ‘Hope’ for me could have been defined then as faith in the possibility that we would win those elections and that our deep longing for peace and justice would come.

Sokwanele laboured to produce weekly reports (the Mauritius Watch series) cataloguing and exposing the many and various ways that zanu-pf rigged the elections. It wasn’t long before we realised that the elections had already been stolen and that the theft had taken place long before people started to queue to vote on polling day. ‘Hope’ for me at that point could have been defined as faith in the possibility that the world would read those reports and say ‘no more’ to mugabe and his regime.

But that didn’t happen. The elections were stolen and the world did very little. South Africa and Thabo Mbeki went even further and tried to make out that the twisted lie of elections in Zimbabwe was an honest depiction of reality, and in so doing betrayed every single decent pro-democracy person in this country. Hope was shattered – bludgeoned and murdered – and the despair I experienced with the loss of hope was overwhelming.

So if hope was shattered then, why am I still writing when others have chosen to put down their pens? I think that I am slowly learning that the definition of hope has less to do with optimism and the potential of external sources to do good than I originally thought.

Operation Murambatsvina humbled me to my core. Hundreds had their homes destroyed last year and their means of earning a living stolen from them, and yet they still find the energy to try and survive. I started to define ‘hope’ as survival itself not simply the key to survival. It’s about being able to use the strength of individual free will (the one thing mugabe can’t steal from us) to pick up one foot at a time and keep walking forward, plodding slowly, but to keep moving no matter what is thrown at us.

To the rest of the world this probably looks ineffectual and disappointing and slow. I know, from conversations with friends outside the country, that they long to see the streets teaming with throngs of angry people chanting slogans, defiant and pushing forward, removing zanu-pf from power in a one glorious show of solidarity and unity.

We would all love to see that, and who knows, maybe it will happen one day.

But just because TV screens aren’t filled with those images doesn’t mean that Zimbabweans have stopped fighting. Living in this country involves fighting for the most vulnerable in our society children and the elderly and those too sick to fight for themselves. The people carrying that burden of responsibility are fighting a tremendously difficult battle, one that is much harder than many can ever begin to imagine. I will never reach a point where I believe that the majority of Zimbabweans “are cowardly and deserve to live under [mugabe’s] boot”.

To maintain ‘hope’ – or my will to survive – I keep that thought uppermost in my mind. I don’t know what 2006 will bring and I feel very apprehensive. There is only one thing I am certain of and that is that life in Zimbabwe is going to get a lot harder and probably a lot more dangerous. So I have only one new year’s challenge to myself: I resolve to keep putting one foot in front of another no matter what happens and no matter how dark the days ahead might become. I am going to do my very best to not collapse in a heap with despair.

It isn’t a very glamorous resolution – no firecrackers or witty slogans attached – but I haven’t yet mastered the ability to run through a river in full flood. All I can do is pick my way across slowly and carefully, to fight exhaustion and resist the urge to sink beneath the surface and be swept away.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, South Africa, New Year, 2006, Mugabe, Thabo Mbeki, Operation Murambatsvina, hope, resolution

This entry was posted by Hope on Monday, January 2nd, 2006 at 7:26 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.