Andy Young and the Obama feeding frenzy

Like everyone else on the planet, I was interested, first in the election of Barak Obama to the office of President-elect of the United States. I watched it while visiting my family in Connecticut. This state was pretty solidly behind the Democratic candidate and it was a rare event for me to find myself on the winning side. So many times in my former incarnation in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, I lost. This was because I was, and remain, an unrepentant `liberal'. However, this term is subject to constant re-definition. In Rhodesian-speak this description meant, to those of us who called ourselves liberal, that we were non-racial. I have said this many times before but it bears repeating: in the days of RF rule we were accused of being `commies' and, more ignorantly, by the more racist element of our society `kaffir lovers'.

The term`liberal' if applied to our Rhodesian/Zimbabwean ilk has taken on a negative meaning in the past decade or so because it implies that we were/are bending over backwards to advertise or prove our non-racial outlook, thus offending or irritating people of colour. `Patronizing' is possibly the best word for it.

How to escape all this in the new age of Obama?

I was fortunate to get a copy of Time magazine last week in which leading Afro-Americans gave their views on Barak Obama, before that great `inauguration' event. One of these famous men, Andy Young, visited Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe: he was a part of the `Anglo-American' thrust to end Rhodesian isolationism and bring Zimbabwe back into the international fold. We `liberals' in Rhodesia's Centre Party were privileged to meet him briefly and so it was with great interest that I read his particular `take' on Barak Obama. Of all the acres of newsprint and media-speak, his words were the first to express something I hoped would eventually be admitted by some guru, some individual whose credentials regarding race are untainted by the historic complexities of a racially unbalanced world order. This, in part, is what he said:

"... He [Obama] never set himself up as the saviour of the world. He set himself up as someone who articulates and represents and can hopefully lead us to be the best Americans that we can be. He isn't just black; he's an Afro-Asian-Latin European. [my emphasis]. That means he's a global citizen.... he defies categorization"

That's an attitude I have long awaited - in the hope that some inspired leader would shape it - as the `new world order' we were promised at the end of the Cold War, in the last decade of the 20th Century.





Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

WILL MISHEK SIBANDA BECOME CHIEF SECRETARY TO AN ILLEGAL CABINET?

SIBANDA Mishek

I am prompted to write yet another `People I Once Knew’ entry here, having been reminded some time ago by a VOA News report (Jan 2, 2009 - see ZWNEWS Jan 3) of my encounters in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe with Dr Mishek Sibanda. I know that he has served for some years as Zimbabwe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary. At the time of writing, a new cabinet, shortly to be appointed by the usurper, Robert Mugabe, will be an illegal one.

Mishek was my former lecturer at the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1978 when I was in my final year of part-time studies for a Masters degree in African History. He was employed at that time as a lecturer in the History faculty along with Dr David Beech, a towering scholar. Now sadly deceased, Beech wrote learned books on Shona history. Sibanda had come fresh out of the University of Sierra Leone to teach in his home country but clearly knew little about the particular aspect of history that I was being taught. David Beech rather showed off his very superior knowledge while Sibanda remained mute most of the time. It was an unusual situation: I was the sole surviving M.A.student (two others having dropped out along the way). There were these two pairs of eyes staring at me while I racked my brains to remember what history had been told to absorb and prepare for the lectures.

Dr Sibanda and I were to meet again several times in different circumstances and this was before he was sent off to Moscow as Ambassador for Zimbabwe. The first reunion came in the eighties while he was employed – presumably by ZANU PF - as the private secretary to President Canaan Banana and was resident at Government house in the eighties. I wanted to present Banana whom I had met years earlier during the seventies – (and this is another story which will be to be found eventually in my memoirs) with a copy of my 1980 update of my Who’s Who of African Nationalist leaders in Zimbabwe. The book included a portrait with a brief, captioned CV of the President. I had contacted Sibanda who, to my surprise (and delight at the time), invited me to tea at government house. I was ushered into the presence of his boss who, even more surprisingly, personally served me tea out of an exquisite filigree patterned china tea set AND offered delicate cucumber sandwiches. I think the Reverend Canaan Banana was still performing in Socialist mode but was somewhat confused by the residual protocol of the old colonial Government House. His secretary, Sibanda looked on quietly while we conversed very formally, the President and I, about our past encounters in Bishop Muzorewa’s office in Harare more than a decade years earlier and we exchanged polite views on the future of a country now freed from Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front government.

The Rev. Banana lost his job when Zimbabwe’s Constitution changed in 1987. He was removed from the office of non-executive President while Mugabe was anointed (you could say now that he was self-apointed) as the country’s first executive President.

The next time I met up with Mishek (we were always on first name terms) he was ensconced as a civil servant in government offices in Harare’s Central Ave (Compensation House) - as was my civil engineer husband in another department ( Water Development). Mishek worked for a government Ministry whose description I have forgotten for the moment. This time, the ubiquitous Dr Sibanda had undertaken (moonlighting, I suppose) the editing of the history section of an Encyclopedia of Zimbabwe which was being produced by Quest publishers. Among my contacts and friends was Kay Sayce, overseeing the project, and it was she who suggested that I should be asked to submit updates for the encyclopedia of the current political leaders’ biographies. Mishek was to be in charge of the work which I submitted and for which I was paid 5c per word.

It was an age of innocence: I was truly shocked when, in the course of the work, Mishek corresponded with me using government stationery for what was essentially a commercial operation and for which he too was being be paid. “On Government Service”, writ large across big, brown envelopes had replaced OHMS (On Her Majesty’s Service). Formerly, a colonial civil servant would scarcely have dared to use these for anything but government business. Some time later, postage stamps were added because it had become clear to the postal service that it would be swamped, cleaned out perhaps, by new civil servants availing themselves of what they regarded as a free-for-all postal facility (In the final event, even these stamps went out of fashion and I know not how the system worked after that)

Cautiously, I kept my thoughts about Mishek’s irresponsible behavior, or call it petty thievery, to myself because I needed help from his wife who had a job in the National Art Gallery and I wanted her collaboration with an International Artists Workshop which I had been asked (by Mrs Pat Pearce) to organize. But that is a story for another blog. This quiet man, Mishek Sibanda clearly knew which side his bread was buttered: working for the ruling party may have had its glory at the beginning. What a shame that his name, like the rest of them in that dreadful trough will go down in ignomy when the history of a once great country is written.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

WHAT HAPPENED TO HELEN SUZMAN'S INSIGNIA FROM MANDELA

The Late, Great Lady's Gong from Mandela is in a Harare Township
I have admired Helen Suzman for as long as I can remember. I never dreamed that I would meet her - this long-serving champion of justice and freedom for fellow South Africans who expressed herself so calmly and brilliantly in her career in Parliament. But not only did I meet her, but I shared with her an adventure in Harare's Mbare which I am sure she would have been anxious to forget.

The story goes like this: Wilf Mbanga a journalist who had (still has) a talent for persuading the great and famous - Desmond Tutu, Alister Sparks, Wole Soyinka were among his scoops - to agree to address large audiences of their admirers. Helen Suzman flew in to Harare about fifteen years ago, to address Zimbabweans attending a Willie Musarurwa Memorial banquet in Harare on the subject of Freedom of Expression. I served with Wilf on the committee of the Trust and had been involved in the usual planning and organization of this annual event.

I was more than pleased when Wilf called me the morning after Helen had delivered her speech and asked me to join him and a British journalist, taking Helen in his Mercedes on a tour of Harare's places of interest on her way to Harare's airport. We picked her up, together with her light, overnight luggage from her hotel. She was immaculate in a navy blue suit with matching handbag; her silver hair, groomed to perfection did not conceal the expensive gold stud ear rings. I wore my favourite grey tracksuit and carried a large matching, sack-like bag. It was a hot day and Helen removed her jacket as she entered the car and sat beside Wilf on the front seatwhile I (for reasons I cannot explain) sat on my bag beside the Brit on the back seat.

The tour included a visit to the Borrowdale Shopping Centre (Sam Levy's Village) and an uphill walk from the parking lot to the top of Harare's `Kopje' to see the 180 degree view of the City of Harare and the sourrounding countryside. We made small talk as we passed the Law Courts in Rotten Row, when Helen remarked "What I really want to see is a Zimbabwean African township" Okay, Wilf turned off after we crossed the flyover into the crowded lane behind the Rufaro football stadium. The pavements were filled with street vendors and Wilf had to slow down to make his way along the narrow road. Helen had just remarked "Is this your Zimbabwe's Soweto" when Wilf gave an alarmed shout as a strong black arm came through his window. At the same time a young vendor opened the front passenger door, grabbed Helen's handbag and her jacket from her lap and made off with them. It all happened with lightening speed. Wilf leaped out of the car, picked up a large stone and with the Brit gave chase, disappearing among the buildings on the roadside.

Helen was livid. "My insignia! It was on my jacket lapel - its my insignia from Nelson Mandela!" she wailed and she too leaped out of her seat, and stood beside the car calling down some amazing curses on the thief. Rich language, I thought, and perfectly justified. Meanwhile, what was I doing? I was sure she was going to be mugged on her feet. I leaned over and slammed Wilf's door shut, jumped out and hustled Helen back into the car. My own almost invisible handbag was untouched. Wilf and the Brit returned empty handed, matching Helen's language. A a quick u-turn and we were out of there, shouting at a passing police vehicle that we had been robbed.

Helen's stolen handbag had contained her plane ticket, her cash, her glasses, her keys to her house in Johannesburg's Houghton suburb - everything a woman keeps on her person when travelling.

"I have to get that plane, we've only got two hours before it flies" pleaded Helen. The next couple of hours were astonishing to say the least.

First stop after the robbery is the South African High Commission whose official town offices at the time were in the Sanlam Building in the city centre. But it is a Saturday morning and the offices are closed. We dash into a clothing shop on the ground floor, below the offices. In desperate haste we approach a young woman who is holding a telephone to her ear. She does not recognise Helen and, looking annoyed, says we must wait for attention.. "Where is the manager?" I demand. "I am the manager," she says archly. No progress here and we dash off like a bunch of rabbits to a shop beside the Treasure Trove in second street where we know that there is a Chinese who runs an efficient photograpy business. He recognises the urgency in our wild eyes and allows us to jump the waiting queue. Minutes later we have passport photographs of Helen. No mobile phones on us, we decide to split our forces. Wilf and Helen go in one direction to get a new ticket, using his credit card after I am dropped at the gate of the South African Ambassador's suburban home in Kew Drive, just half a block from my own home in Highlands. The iron barred gate is firmly locked and behind them a startled security guard, sees a middle-aged matron in a track suit dancing about like a monkey, clutching the bars, demanding to see the boss and claiming to be a friend of Nelson Mandela. (I knew the young man would not recognise the name of the famous lady we were trying to rescue). Nervously, the guard picks up his intercom phone and calls the Ambassador the estimable Mamabulo. By great good luck he is in the house. Miraculously, I am allowed inside. The ambassador comes running down the stairs, recognises me as I pace anxiously in his reception area. Getting the message pretty damn quick, he moves into action. We roar off in his official car to the SA passport offices in Princess Drive, the High Commissioner instructing some officer to meet us there, open the gates and the doors and get Helen Suzman a temporary passport.

The great lady, her photos, her passport and her ticket home are united. She catches the plane. Well done Ambassador, well done Wilf.

Helen wrote to thank us after she had replaced her lost possessions - but not the the treasured insignia.

With every one of the multitude of her admirers, I mourn her passing.


Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell