July 31 August 4, 2005 by Lucy Y. Steinitz*
Flying into Harare s spanking-new airport, you can see vast stretches
of broken rubble where entire neighborhoods once stood. I visited Zimbabwe
last week for work (on behalf of the World Council of Churches, for
their Regional Reference Group on the Ecumenical HIV/AIDS Initiative
for Africa, which I chair). This was my first trip back to Harare
(Zimbabwes capital) since our family lived there in 1994. But
tragically, in many ways this is a different Zimbabwe than we knew and
loved eleven years ago.
THE DIRTY CLEAN-UP
The UN estimates that Robert Mugabes recent Project Murambatsvina
(Shona for clean up trash campaign) cost 700,000 people their homes
and forced 300,000 children out of school. Deaths have not been
accurately counted, but must surely include people who died from the
resultant loss in food, medicine, or shelter during Zimbabwe’s cold
winter-weather. By way of example, one home-based care volunteer I met
told me of a woman she knew who had been forced out of the room she had
been renting and told to go back where she came from. Some days later
the woman reached the rural area where she had been born, only to have
the local chief chase her away again, saying that there was no food to
eat and that the land was already crowded with others who had gotten
there first. Eventually, the woman made her way back to the Harare,
where she pleaded with her former landlord to let her have her old room
back. Im not allowed, cried the landlord, fearful of what would
happen to him if the police found out. Weak with hunger, the woman
simply laid down on the street, a few feet from her former residence.
Two days later, with just the clothes she wore to protect her from the
nighttime cold, she died of pneumonia.
A representative from the International Organization for Migration, Dr
Islene Araujo, reminded our group that since 2000, Zimbabwes land
reform policies have already displaced 800,000 people. The current
campaign comes on top of that upheaval. Since we came to this country
to address AIDS-related issues, however, we focused on this aspect more
than others. It is overwhelming: according to the UN, at least 80,000
of the people who have recently been forced from their homes are
estimated to be HIV+. Moreover, this government-induced tsunami (as
some local people now refer to the disaster) has disrupted virtually
every conceivable network of social support that was developed by or
for people living with HIV: medication-distribution systems,
condom-distribution networks, organizations doing volunteer home-based
care, income-generating groups, and so on.
The end-effect is mass-murder. Lacking a place to live and regular
nutrition, literally thousands of HIV+ Zimbabweans have been forced to
stop treatment for their HIV. As a result, many will die. Even if calm
is restored and people are able to start their anti-retroviral
treatments once again, they will now be required to use a different and
far more expensive drug regimen which is far less sustainable. These
are also the conditions that foster drug-resistant forms of the HIV
virus, which pose a great threat to the entire Southern African region.
And with an estimated 30% of all Zimbabweans now living outside the
country (often as illegal refugees, mostly in surrounding countries),
this can happen a lot faster than I had previously thought.
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
We heard about this first-hand. When we visited one of the worst
affected areas, two women told us that their local Catholic-run clinic
had been bulldozed, leaving them without any anti-retroviral drugs
and to obtain drugs elsewhere they will now have to travel a long distance
and start the process all over again. Similarly, Dominican Sister
Sipiwe Mugadza told us of a couple she had been counseling some months
ago to help them prepare for an HIV-test, accept their illness, and
then start treatment. Finally, they were ready but then the demolition
started. Sister Sipiwei has been looking for the couple ever since,
but they disappeared without a trace. Others also told us of health workers
who have been trying to locate their AIDS-patients in order to continue
their medical treatment, but they cannot find them anymore.
Our group drove out to a field at the edge of town, which had once been
the residential neighborhood of Hatcliff-Extension, housing over 6000
people plus shops, a clinic, and so on. From a distance, all we could
see of the former township were some homemade tents of cardboard and
discarded metal, looking like oversized anthills fit for animals rather
than for human habitat. And yet, the people were moving back to the
area, in most cases because they had nowhere else to go.
In order to enter the area ourselves, we first had to seek permission;
this is because our hosts (Christian Care, an arm of the Zimbabwean
Council of Churches) must tread carefully with the government
authorities in order to retain their own role as an approved
organization that has permission to distribute food, blankets, and
otherassistance. Still, we approached this former neighborhood from the
back, as we had been warned that there might be trouble from some
government supporters who would not appreciate our visit.
Significantly, the government-authorities we did find were guarding a distribution
point where sheets of asbestos roofing had been delivered and were now
being allocated, three and four to a family. What was this all about?
we wondered. Reverend Forbes Matonga, executive director of Christian
Care, explained that most of the residents had been living in this
neighborhood for fifteen years, before the government declared the
settlement illegal and forced everyone out. Some residents moved-in
with relatives in the rural areas, while others got hoarded onto trucks like
cattle and dropped off at a transit camp (Caledonia Farm) which was, in
fact, nothing but an open field.
HOW MUCH MORE CAN THE PEOPLE TAKE?
With the arrival of the special UN envoy Anna Tibauijuka some weeks ago
to investigate the governments clean up campaign, Caledonia Farm has
became an embarrassment to the government and has now been closed off
to
all visitors. At the same time, those former residents who wanted to
return to Hatcliff Extension (which we visited) were suddenly declared
legal and given documents to prove their status. But the residents told
us that they had always had documents to prove their legal status
even
BEFORE their homes were bulldozed to the ground. So what good is a new
piece of paper?” they asked. To call this an exercise in futility
obscures the deeper, insidious impact of Mugabes strategy. It breaks
the spirit of people, obliterates political opposition and the freedom
of speech, makes them dependent on government handouts, and generates a
constant fear of worse things to come.
The end effect is that this is a war not against poverty but against
the poor. Hatcliff Extension, the neighborhood we visited, has always
been badly-off. But now the conditions here have gone from bad to
worse
there is literally NOTHING here. The infrastructure is completely
gone no more streets, nor sewage, nor water-pipes, nor electricity. At
night, it is horrific: dark and cold, with temperatures dropping to
near-freezing (this being winter in Zimbabwe). To obtain wood for a
cooking fire, people have to walk miles away, into a distant forest.
For food, they must beg. As one woman said, the worst part is that they
have taken our dignity. The only certainty that the people have is
that there is no certainty at all.
We also drove to the high-density township of Mbare in the heart of
Harare. I remember this neighborhood from 1994, when our family came to
the Mbare Market in order to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and even
furniture for our rented apartment. But this would no longer be
possible. Street vendors are now forbidden to operate; the government
claims this clogs the streets and creates a bad impression. (The real
reason, others argue, is that the government wants to make way for
cheap
Chinese imports in exchange for Chinese assistance and government
pay-offs.) Visiting here last week, we were struck by the irony of the
government calling their campaign [clean up trash]. In fact, we
witnessed huge piles of trash and rubble everywhere, largely left over
from the housing extensions that the government forced the local people
to dismantle, brick by brick, under the guise of their being illegal
structures. Yes, you got this right: under the threat of death, local
residents had to physically tear down their own homes that they had
painstakingly built of the past ten and twenty years. They might as
well have been digging their own graves. Now people are huddled ten
and
twenty to a room, the perfect conditions for tuberculosis, pneumonia,
and other contagious diseases to spread.
Everyone is affected. This country is so cash-strapped that it can
take days on a queue to buy petrol for your car, and power outages have
become a regular part of daily life. By the end of the year, the
inflation level may well reach 1000%. Prices have so many zeros
attached to them (a coke costs 17,000 Zimbabwean dollars), that I stopped
keeping track. According to Sister Patricia Walsh (one of Mugabe s most
courageous detractors), Zimbabwe s crisis should become a warning bell
to other countries in Southern Africa and beyond. Just as new
drug-resistant forms of HIV are likely to spread across Zimbabwe’s
borders as a result of this disaster, she said, so too are the
effects of Zimbabwes economic meltdown.The rest of us must be prepared to
act.
One industry that is booming is gallows-humor. As I shared a
candlelight dinner with a friend at her home, my friend popped the
question: What did Zimbabweans use before they had candles? Answer:
Electricity.
Here is another. Queen Elizabeth, George Bush, and Robert Mugabe meet
in Hell. Queen Elizabeth asks the Devil if she can phone England to
see how things are getting on without her. The Devil agrees and afterwards
charges her a million dollars for the call. Then George Bush asks to
phone the USA, and he is also charged a million dollars. After Robert
Mugabe asks for the same privilege and is given permission to phone
Zimbabwe, he is only charged one dollar. Why does Comrade Mugabe only
have to pay one dollar? asks Queen Elizabeth and George Bush. The
Devil smiles. Calling Zimbabwe is cheap because it is a local call,
he answers.
FINDING HOPE
Where is the hope, you ask? Against enormous odds, I found great acts
of courage amongst the Zimbabwean people I met, especially amongst those
who had already lost practically everything. By way of example, let me
introduce you to Florence Ndlovu, a widow, who has been HIV-positive
for the past 18 years. She showed me the photograph of the house she had
been building, bit by bit, whenever her savings allowed. It was a
large structure, with at least six rooms. But Florence had the misfortune of
building her house in a neighborhood that the government had decided
was full of illegal shacks and should be torn down. So hers was
bulldozed
to the ground, too. What now? Eventually, Florence said, she found
alternate housing but it is just a single room in which 13 people now
sleep, huddled together like sardines on mats on the floor. Well,
she
added, we started out as eleven, but then I ran across one of my
former
counseling clients, who is also HIV-positive, who was living on the
street with her daughter. So I said they could join us. But our
situation is really terrible. One of the children I took in has a skin
rash. At night, she shares a single blanket with another one of the
children, and yesterday I noticed that the second child has now gotten
the same skin rash. In all the years since I found out Im
HIV-positive,
I have never felt so hopeless. But you keep on going, because
otherwise
there is no future.
I also came away inspired by my visits to the Mashambanzou Care Trust,
a Catholic-run hospice and outreach project that serves 4000 HIV-infected
patients and their orphaned children weekly, and to The Centre, a
holistic nutrition-and-support organization by and for people living
with HIV and AIDS. Remarkably, I even found hope (or, at the very
least, commitment) within Zimbabwe s dwindling white community
(although I am leaving out their names here, not to put anyone at risk). Church
worker John Anderson probably summed it up most succinctly: Im proud
to be a Zimbabwean, he explained. This is where I was born and this
is where I will die. If I left, what could I do to help my fellow
human
being? I wouldnt be any good anywhere else, anyway.
Finally, I asked the people we met what they wanted us as visitors
to do. All had basically the same message: We want our voices heard,
Sister Sipiwe said prophetically. Tell others what you have seen and
learned. Ultimately the truth will set us free
Please feel free to pass this on to others. Some names have been
changed to protect the identity of the individuals involved.
* Lucy Y Steinitz, PhD. Tel: 264-81-270-6528. Home email:
Steinitz@mweb.com.na
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