Why Africans Love Mugabe
[Written by a friend who travels regularly to African countries on
behalf of charitable foundations].
If you go to suburban Dar es Salaam you'll see Mugabe High School,
Mugabe Hotel and Mugabe Gardens. When you ask why these are so named,
they tell you it's just because he happened to officially open these
buildings. Enquire why the Zimbabwean dictator was invited to open them
and Tanzanians will talk amongst themselves in Swahili. Since these
people know that Mugabe is unpopular in the West, they are reluctant to
voice their admiration for him, an affection that spreads across this
vast continent. The truth is that the 84 year old dictator has rock-star
status in most parts of the continent. Not for nothing does Mugabe thumb
his nose at opponents with supreme confidence in his impunity. Why else
is Zimbabwe allowed to be destroyed without local intervention or even a
neighbourly reprimand? The question is simple though the issue is complex.
Religion is not the answer. Dar is a staunch muslim city where 90% of
the men are in the mosque at 4am every morning. Walking in the street,
womens heads and faces are covered. It may be religious but the AIDS
rate is 17% so the veils and prayer mats aren't working. Arabs are
welcomed more than English speakers for their common ethnicity which
stretches back 400 years. Yet this is not the reason why Mugabe is a
hero, as he isn't muslim.
Colour isn't the cause. Dar residents aren't pure black like Zimbabweans
because they have Semitic blood from the days when the Sultan of Oman
ruled the trade in slaves brought from what is now called Zambia and
Malawi. Eastern Tanzanians are a coffee colour not black, though this
alone does not explain their admiration for the Zimbos leader.
Nor is it a question of money. Africans don't despise us solely on
material grounds, though some might. Envy is certainly not unknown
here. They beg and plead for cash from tourists like any other poor
people, though that alone doesn't mean they resent us having banknotes
to give away. Many Dar folks work for western corporations, meaning some
have more money than we do.
The unique reason behind African's love of Mugabe has more to do with
the way he frog-marched white farmers and businessmen out of the
country. Africans cheer at his audacity to forcibly supplant paleface
landowners with local Shona tribe pastoralists. Jack's as good as his
master? No, Mugabe says he's better.
What's going on there? How can such a self-defeating act arouse such
fervent loyalty, identity and warmth? The answer is because Mugabe
strikes a cord with all Africans when he becomes the one who barks out
the orders to the white man. Africans love to see one of their kind in
all the positions of power, regardless of whether they have a clue how
to discharge it.
Most Dar folks retain a smouldering bitterness at not being educated,
trained and experienced enough to assume positions of authority. Its
their country, damn it, and here are these mezungos making decisions for
them. Their selective amnesia overlooks that the departure of white
Zimbabwean farmers means that the nation now starves, for the heady
rhetoric of abusing whites while sending them packing blocks out all
logic. It also overlooks that there are no short-cuts to development,
only the persistent education of children, the solidarity of families
and community building in partnership with selective benefactors.
Suffer the Children
There are 50,000 people camped in the Showgrounds at Eldoret, in dusty
western Kenya. 35,000 of them are children under 16. If personal space
matters to you, then lifestyle considerations may mean you wouldn't want
to be living in one of the 10,000 primitive tents crammed into an area
the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground [MCG]. With no lighting
available, it's pitch black once the sun goes down, leaving the refugees
with no way of moving around at night if they're ill or need help. It
also exposes them to assaults and robbery. Women heading families are
vulnerable to rape.
Refugees have been there since January when the too-close-to-call
election aftermath saw an explosion of tribal violence. For ordinary
people, the Kikuyu government war that has since been waged with the
Luo opposition has seen 81,500 homes torched, 7,000 women raped
(reported), with a nationwide 370,000 homeless. The Charitable
Foundation is supporting Mulli Childrens Family [MCF] with an up-front
$100,000 and $50,000 a month to care for the 50,000 at Eldoret.
These people have lost everything. I mean everything: homes, household
goods, livestock, children and other relatives. We talked to Jacinta for
half an hour. She had lost her husband and home in the fighting. After
she bedded her family down at the refugee camp, she sent her 10 year old
son back to the charred ruins of their former home to salvage what he
could. Young boys alone are at risk here anytime from a range of
predators, but when you're from the wrong tribe and the cauldron of
hatred is boiling over, it's double jeopardy. So we listened while the
mother sobbingly explained how her little fellow had been set upon by
tribal mobs, beaten with a machete and chopped into bits. Then they sent
a message to her to come and get the pieces. She is a broken woman,
losing the struggle to hold it together for her family, but well
supported by MCF.
Estelle who lost her husband was raped before her 15 year old son. He
was so traumatised he ran away and she can't find him. On the rare
occasions that she does see him, he runs away and she tells us that she
can't run after him because of her rape damage. We suspect she has a
fistula or worse that needs urgent medical attention, though there is
no doctor let alone surgeon to care for the teeming mass of Eldoret
refugees.
When homes burn down, so does their documentation, leaving them with no
ID and no insurance policy. You think insurance companies will pay
without documentation? That's a big Maybe. The clever, the well
connected and the persistent will eventually receive some compensation,
but if your husband has been killed and your kids are sick and injured
on the MCG, you may not have the ability to mount a verifiable claim.
The absence of a place to go back to afterwards will make rehabilitation
costlier and take longer.
Food is scarce in a nation prolific for its agriculture. We saw pastures
where maize storks had neither been used for fodder nor turned in by the
hoe because the farmers were in the refugee camp. Even if the guys could
recover from injury and resume work today, their fertiliser would cost 3
times what it did last year. As farmers will buy less superphosphate,
there is a commensurate drop in yield-per-hectare. Any way you cut
it, food on the table will halve in 2008 for all but the rich. Of
course, the spiralling food prices are not confined to Kenya or even
East Africa. It's just that the rest of us are much better positioned to
deal with it. When you're a poor refugee and maize costs 3 times what it
did last year, it means you starve.
Yet there is food for these destitute people. Each family living at
Eldoret showgrounds receives a monthly ration pack from MCF comprising 7
kg of maize, 5 kg beans, 4 kg wheat flour and 4 kg fresh vegetables. The
cereal and beans have been bought with the $US50,000 The Charitable
Foundation sends, which is boosted by local church support. The
vegetables being distributed have been grown at the 2000 hectare MCF
farm in Ndalani under intensive cultivation -- also supported by The
Charitable Foundation.
Their massive hyperbonic bean production capacity will increase by 400%
this year. We will pay for Estelle to see a gyno and whatever else she
needs. The Charitable Foundation also put its hand in its pocket so
Janicta's son could have a decent burial. Most of the 50,000 people will
need us for the rest of 2008, though by year end we hope that emergency
relief will turn into resettlement and rehabilitation. The primary
prerequisite will be peace -- national reconciliation and an absolute
end to tribal violence. That's a big ask but it's slowly dawning on
Kenyans that there is no alternative.
Kevin Gray
May 2008
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
Blogs - http://rowlandsblogs.blogspot.com/
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