Rise Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe, Parliament has passed a bill, under the so-called indigenization of the country’s resources, that requires foreign owned companies in the already impoverished country to hand over at least 51% of their shareholding to black Zimbabweans.

For Kenyans who are aware, this strikes a new low in the sadness and grief for the people of Zimbabwe.

The indigenization process started out with the driving out of the white minority farmers from their farms, once rich with tobacco and other cash crops - and once the bedrock of the country’s economy. This has brought the country to its knees and anyone who has been watching will confirm that that land was not given to the black squatters but to President Robert Mugabe’s friends and supporters. Indeed, the squatters are not even squatters in many of those farms now. Certainly, the crops are long dead.
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once we were kings

The situation in Zimbabwe is special to Kenya because it is reminiscent of the dark days of 1980s Kenya, when the autocratic governance of former president Moi’s government saw the suppression of the people’s human rights, wanton disregard for justice and the proactive bullying (an understatement) of the government’s critics, who were arrested, tortured, jailed and killed in an effort to quell any resistance to the government.

Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation is exactly reminiscent of Kenya’s Special Branch in those days. It has a huge budget to fund its ruthless operations (even while children lose their hair and skin in the worst - and final - stages of Kwashiorkor), it has unfettered access to the latest technology the world has to offer and it has carte blanche from the president to do whatever it takes to protect the government interests.

People who criticize the government, even in private, are intimidated, arrested, tortured and killed. Their lives, livelihoods, reputations and families are at great risk - and this is why most Zimbabweans choose to stay out of it and remain silent, letting the grumbling of their hungry stomachs voice their discontent. And they are hungry.

The streets of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare are dark at night because there is no electricity but even in the shadows at 3 am you will see hundreds of people walking purposefully. These people represent the one in five people in Harare who still have jobs. There is no fuel for the cars and bus rides are today a distant memory, but they walk to the bus stops and street corners where they wait for pick up trucks and the occasional passing car for a ride to work. It takes five hours to get to work on most days for some people.
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petrol queue

At dawn, silent queues form in different places in the city - at petrol stations in the hope that some expensive petrol will be poured into tanks and jerry cans for cars that almost never move, at shopping centres where rumours have it that there may be bread or sugar or rice or some other scarce commodity and at hospitals, where there is the hope that at least a doctor will give some remedy, even if drugs cannot be found - or worse still afforded.

At the shopping centre, even if the bread does come, the people queuing may not get it because the rumours also reached the ears of the also hungry police and ZANU-PF youth wingers, who loot the food as soon as it arrives.

Many Kenyans can remember this sort of thing - even though we were lucky one might say - it did not get to be quite so bad. But this situation touches the raw nerves of many Kenyans. And yet, we are silent. Why has our leadership said nothing against Zimbabwe’s president Mugabe? Where are the voices of the likes of Koigi wa Wamwere, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, David Onyango Oloo, James Orengo, Raila Odinga and all those other patriots who felt the brunt of the atrocities of the 1980s in Kenya?

Why is South Africa silent, yet a great number of Zimbabweans flee to South Africa - legally and illegally to seek sustenance for themselves and for the families they leave behind? Politicians and leaders only speak up when it is in theirs’ or their countries’ interest to take a stance. What do we have to gain from the continued degradation of Zimbabwe’s people? Are we waiting to see how comrade Bob does and if he is successful we can emulate him?

Meanwhile, back in Zimbabwe, the new law that now awaits to go to the senate, Zimbabwe’s higher house, where it is sure to pass will achieve little. Foreign companies that are already doing little business in light of the high inflation, the people’s much diminished buying power and the difficult environment, will have little choice but to close down.
The only upside to that, perhaps, is that that worker can sleep more hours and conserve the energy that his malnourished body will need to find food for his children - if he can.