A year later…

The defeat of another lost election, Operation Murambatsvina, the shambles within the MDC, and the highest inflation rate in the world (estimated by economists to now have reached 1000%) has left most Zimbabweans dazed. Unemployment rates are high and, as a result, theft of anything and everything is rife. We regularly experience power cuts - those caused by faults and breakage, and also as a result of load shedding because the government cannot pay the bill. Some residential areas still have no water.

Looking back over this year of blogging, it’s very sad to remember the many friends and business acquaintances we have lost over a period of just 12 months. Every week there is another garage/boot/household goods sale - another family selling up and moving on. It’s abnormal to have to say goodbye to so many people who have become part of our lives.

People living outside the country often say things like ‘in our country this would not happen’, or they ask, ‘why do the Zimbabwean people not do something?’ People living in normal environments just cannot understand why things have not changed, and everyone has a piece of advice on how to make things happen.

I wish it was as easy to solve as it is to say it, but that’s just not reality. Believe me, if Zimbabweans knew how, we would have done it; if it was possible, it would have happened. No one wants to live the way we do, and no one knows better than Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe how desperately change is required. It’s hurtful in a way to be treated like ‘fools’ - as if we are somehow responsible for what has happened because we are ‘accepting’ this.

Zimbabweans are a peaceful people. A friend of mine said the other day that the problem was that so many of us had been naively trusting of a government that had ‘liberated’ us from a terrible colonial past. She asked me: “Is a child responsible when a parent that it trusts beats it?” That same government went on to spend 25 years lining their pockets while ordinary citizens were left dealing with steadily increasing unemployment, inequality, poverty and hunger. The government has us by our throat: it controls the newspapers, radio and television channels as well as the police force and army. Now the government wants to control the internet and email too. How do we share ideas or communicate with each other when information is so controlled? A person can be arrested and held for days without charge in our country. In Zimbabwean prisons, as well as out, people are beaten, intimidated and tortured.

Most Zimbabweans now live from day to day, trying to make ends meet. When you battle to feed yourself and your family just one meal a day (if you are lucky) then how do you possibly find the strength to fight a ruthless, cruel regime? Living is a fight for survival.

So, why do I stay in this country that has deteriorated so badly? Because I was born here, because my children were born here, because my extended family live here, because this is my home. We continue to live in the hope that something will change. Evil never prevails.

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