DIGGING UP THE PAST

My postwars experiences
Enos Nkala, one of the last surviving founders of Zimbabwean nationalist parties is going to dig up some very smelly political bones in a book to be posthumously published, he says. I wonder if I will live to see it. If he has any sense he will be sending his MS off to a safe place even as he writes, or we shall be visiting his forensic laboratory sooner rather than later.
A less parochial past has grabbed my attention this month. I have just returned from Berlin - that great city so magnificently restored after being flattened in WW2. My hosts had memories of Berlin before, during and after the war. Klaus is a gentle doctor (retired), still internally wounded by what happened in his country: "We shall never be forgiven," was his quiet expression of sorrow. His wife, Ushie, also a retired professional, is in love with her little private garden. Five miles from her gracious old house in a Berlin suburb which was spared from the bombing, it had been badly neglected in those cold war years when situated on the wrong side of the Berlin wall. Now we visited it almost daily to save it from the searing, near-forty degree heat of an unusual European summer.

Like my friend Ushie, I was very young when the war started. My experience as a colonial child of the British empire was to hear the dreadful news of the bombing of great cities and the cruelties inflicted on civilian populations - hers was to live in fear of Russian reprisals. I never dreamed that sixty years on I would be trying to comfort my German friends, reminding them that Time heals everything when living memory has passed. Meanwhile they refuse to forget and took me off (entirely their choice)to see how painfully Germany still scrapes at the scars the nation inflicted on Jewish people.
We we refreshed our spirits with a visit to the dredged up remains of a fabulous Egyptian civilization exhibited at Gropius museum. The eathquake that buried it beneath the sea 3250 years ago left the solid evidence of fabulous statuary and artifacts, gold jewellery and coins. None of the evil that must surely have lurked, as it always has, beneath an outward show of wealth and power, has survived. Only the hieroglyphs tell the story and none can say what has been left out. So it will be after our civilization is swallowed up. If it sinks beneath deep waters, everything but stone and gems will rot. There is some comfort in this thought, especially for the survivors of 20th century wars.
I wrote a lighter memoir of my visit and will publish it tomorrow - if my browser doesn't go on the blink again!)
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

WHAT HAPPENED TO `LOOKING EAST' IN ZIMBABWE?

> >
CHINESE BUSES
I wrote this article last year for publication in `The Zimbabwean' and having a look at it now, a year on decided to edit it and update it(since I reserve the right to use my own copyright)When I get my website up and running I shall repeat it there too for maximum exposure. Why do I do it? Because I must.
> > Zimbabwe's silver jubilee came and went last year and a jubilant
> > President strutted and fretted upon the stage at the National
> > Sports Stadium in Harare. He had made it very clear even before he and
> > his ZANU (PF) were nearly dismissed in 2000 by his own internal
> > Opposition that he hates the West. He loves the East (in the broadest,
> > political and cultural – and now economic - sense) and aims to shake
> > off, discard, trash or otherwise remove the remnants of a hated (for
> > him) age of British imperialism in a new Zimbabwe which he and his kin
> > will rule forever. It is also well known that in thumbing his nose at
> > white `settlers' he once had the admiration and covert or overt
> > support of every person of his generation who suffered the humiliation
> > of `imperialist' occupation of African soil. Possibly he was admired
> > beyond Africa - wherever full human rights were not accorded to the
> > indigenous people. At home, the history and causation of all this
> > needs no going over here because, at long last, Robert Mugabe has
> > turned his back on the past. But he is facing what he perceives as a
> > new dawn. "We have turned east, where the sun rises, and given our
> > back to the West, where the sun sets" he says.
> >
> > Mugabe was imprisoned for demanding (most eloquently) `majority rule'
> > and freedom from the`settler oppression' of black people which would
> > flow from that. The well-informed, the liberals and all Africa's
> > subject peoples understood, then, his vitriol, aimed at his country's
> > overlords, formerly the British and later, their settler descendants.
> > But is his naked hatred still in vogue - beyond the limits of certain
> > rulers of African states? Hating the West, he pretends that China will
> > take up where the West left off. The `West', including many nations
> > which had played no part in colonizing Africa, generously assisted
> > Independent Zimbabwe with development programmes. Aid, including money
> > donated and loaned, industrial goods, training, and advanced
> > technology flowed freely from the West. Trade was a normal component
> > of bi-lateral agreements. The Chinese were more keenly interested in
> > sales (or barter) of their manufactures. (See The Zimbabwean's leading
> > article, April 22, 2005, by editor Wilf Mbanga) And here is Alister Sparkes,
> > veteran SA journalist's view:
> >
> > "Mugabe's notion of "looking East" is simply part of [the] great
> > illusion. China is an emerging superpower with a hunger for mineral
> > resources, of which Zimbabwe has a modest amount. But China is not in
> > the business of granting aid to developing countries" (The Star 20
> > April).
> >
> > An insight into the preoccupations of struggling Zimbabweans is one I
> > picked up in ZWNEWS, (20 April) from a story of a Harare man [who]
> > was asked if he had not attended the Independence celebrations at the
> > National Sports Stadium because he felt there was little to celebrate.
> > "No. It was because I couldn't find petrol." "But the government had
> > laid on buses from the usual pick-up points." "I didn't know that."
> > "But they were announced on the radio." "I don't listen to
> > that...radio any more." After a while, the first man said: "Come to
> > think of it, you would not have fitted into the buses anyway." "Why
> > not?" "You are too tall. They are Chinese buses."
> >
> > Unfortunately, while fighting the liberation war, Mugabe climbed
> > aboard a bus carrying a large proportion of the world to a Communist
> > Valhalla. On board were Europe's Eastern bloc and other Communist,
> > anti-West friends. The Communist Chinese, no friends of the Capitalist
> > West, were assisting in the training and arming of nationalists and
> > their fighting forces in the run up to the guerrilla warfare which
> > erupted on Rhodesia's borders during the period of the Cold War. Now
> > both wars are over. The Soviet Union is no more and the Chinese are
> > more friendly towards the West (and vice-versa). Trading and `jaw jaw'
> > rather than `war war' has brought old enemies and former political
> > rivals into new relationships, changing the world's economic
> > frontiers. Even Mugabe's anti-Western friend, the now retired
> > President Mahathir of Malaysia no longer directs his poison into the
> > Zimbabwe `king's' ear. Cuba's Castro is old and in a class of his own,
> > while North Korea's Kim Il Jong is very isolated. Independent and
> > sovereign Zimbabwe, the once `non-aligned' nation has no real enemies
> > in any sphere. Mugabe, the old warrior seems to be lost without them.
> > There is no one left to fight against except his own people.
> >
> > The point of this article, however, is to pick up on Mugabe's
> > declaration that Zimbabwe's future lies with the East and his promise
> > to dump the West in a sort of zero-sum shift in foreign policy. Surely
> > he should first listen to the views of Zimbabweans who are being told
> > that they will be the beneficiaries of this sea change. A serious,
> > national debate on the issue has never been presented. Without freedom
> > of expression in Zimbabwe itself, this debate will, perforce, be
> > carried in foreign newspapers - mostly Western because Zimbabweans
> > cannot read Chinese or any other `Eastern' language. `The Zimbabwean'
> > editor, Wilf Mbanga, has opened a window of opportunity for wide
> > ranging views from Zimbabweans, keeping alive the flame of their
> > freedom and national identity in many parts of the world. We should
> > join this debate in earnest.
> >
> > As for re-colonization, Mugabe's big bogey, Zimbabwe elections since
> > 2000 have shown that in spite of the absence of anything resembling a
> > fair debate, a new generation of Zimbabweans who have never
> > experienced any form of oppression from `settlers' are educated
> > enough, or just wise enough to recognise the fact that they face being
> > `recolonized' by a new minority group. This is the Zezuru, clan (never
> > use theword `tribe') from which Mugabe descends, through his father,
> > Gabriel, (a `real Gushungu' from Zvimba, according to James Chikerema,
> > a close relative).
Not an awful lot has changed in a year except that Chikerema has died and the country, lacking massive investments from old friends in the East, or new ones for that matter is still going economically down the tubes.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

MODELS OF GOOD THINKING ABOUT THE LAW LORDS AND THE FOURTH OF JULY

Lucky, as it turned out yesterday we were out of onions. So I braved the heat and walked to Sainsbury's. I picked up The Sunday Times, almost straining my right arm in the process. After dumping a lot of heavy paper I was struck by the headlines and content of two thoughtful pieces on the leader page. Oh joy! Andrew Sullivan and Simon Jenkins have thrown a bright, shining light where, for me, in this age of anti-terrorist over-reaction on both sides of the Atlantic, there has been a fog of uncertainty about the political performances of Bush and Blair. `The founding fathers save America's soul' says Sullivan. Of course! Its the constitution, stupid. Jenkins' article, focused on Britain, tells us that `Judges cut through the hysteria of rulers made tyrants by fear'. They are talking about American and British responses in dealing with stepped-up international terrorism. Sullivan warns of the consequence of an overkill being counterproductive or a threat to US democracy. Jenkins says that without the constraints of the constitution in the US, with its separation of powers and without similar constraints emanating from the wisdom of the British law lords here in the UK, our democracies are in peril. Their possible demise has loomed large since 9/11 and 7/7 in the US and UK respectively. Until I was reassured by the views of these two thinkers, I had begun to wonder if the end of our world was nigh.

We have already faced, in our former homeland, Zimbabwe, the consequences of the abandonment of the rule of law. Where the constitution sought to guard our freedoms, the ruling party simply changed it. The Mugabe regime manipulated electoral law, while almost simultaneously removing the powers of the judiciary to counter impunity. This was done to sustain the necessary majority of the ruling ZANU (PF)party in parliament and has ultimately brought the constitution and the law into contempt.

There is a parallel here with regard to Bush messing with the the law;a close call on 'constitutional propriety 'for Americans. Sullivan asserts that `...new conservatives are contemptuous of constitutional propriety and limited government' The battle (for the rule of law)is still on in America and he writes,`What will ultimately decide this battle for the soul of America will be the people who elect their own representatives to check the president. The court is as evenly balanced as it has ever been.'

In Zimbabwe, Mugabe's judges have, in the majority, already been bought and sold. Just take a good look the consequences for ordinary Zimbabweans.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell