[source : New York Times]
December 25, 2010
Fears Growing of Mugabe’s Iron Grip Over Zimbabwe
By CELIA W. DUGGER
HARARE, Zimbabwe — The warning signs are proliferating. Journalists have been harassed and jailed. Threats of violence are swirling in the countryside. The president’s supposed partner in the government has been virulently attacked in the state-controlled media as a quisling for the West. And the president himself has likened his party to a fast-moving train that will crush anything in its way.
After nearly two years of tenuous stability under a power-sharing government, fears are mounting here that President Robert Mugabe, the autocrat who presided over a bloody, discredited election in 2008, is planning to seize untrammeled control of Zimbabwe during the elections he wants next year.
“Everything seems to point to a violent election,” said Eldred Masunungure, a political scientist and pollster.
Having ruled alone for 28 of the last 30 years, Mr. Mugabe, 86, has made no secret of his distaste for sharing power with his rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, since regional leaders pressured them to govern together 22 months ago.
In recent months, Mr. Mugabe has been cranking up his party’s election-time machinery of control and repression. He appointed all the provincial governors, who help him dispense patronage and punishment, rather than sharing the picks as promised with Mr. Tsvangirai. And traditional chiefs, longtime recipients of largess from his party, ZANU-PF, have endorsed Mr. Mugabe as president for life.
Political workers and civic activists who lived through the 2008 campaign of intimidation and repression — in which many foot soldiers in Mr. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change were tortured or murdered — say ZANU-PF will not need to be so violent this time around. Threats may be enough.
In Mashonaland West, Mr. Mugabe’s home province, people said they were already being warned by local traditional leaders loyal to Mr. Mugabe that the next election would be more terrifying than the last one, when their relatives were abducted and attacked after Mr. Tsvangirai won some constituencies.
“They say, ‘We were only playing with you last time,’ ” said one 53-year-old woman, too frightened to be quoted by name, repeating a warning others in the countryside have heard. “ ‘This time we will go door to door beating and killing people if you don’t vote for ZANU-PF.’ ”
But even as many voice a growing conviction that Mr. Mugabe is plotting to oust his rival and reclaim sole power, he has retained his ability to keep everyone guessing. His political opponents and Western diplomats wonder if Mr. Mugabe is bluffing about a push for quick elections, perhaps to force the factions in his own party to declare their allegiance to him and extinguish the internal jockeying to succeed him.
Further complicating the picture, Mr. Mugabe struck a statesmanlike pose on Monday at a news conference where he graciously shared the stage with Mr. Tsvangirai. The next day, the state-controlled newspaper quoted him as boasting that he, Mr. Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara had brought peace to the country after the 2008 elections. But he also said that new elections would be held after the process of crafting a new constitution was completed, and that the power-sharing government should not be extended beyond August.
The contest between Mr. Mugabe, a university-educated Machiavellian, and Mr. Tsvangirai, 58, a former labor leader who never went to college and is often described as a well intentioned but bumbling tactician, lies at the heart of Zimbabwe’s tumultuous political life.
Not long after Mr. Tsvangirai quit the June 2008 runoff in hopes of halting the beating and torture of thousands of his party workers and supporters, the two men suddenly found themselves alone in the same room. Thabo Mbeki, then South Africa’s president and the mediator in the Zimbabwe crisis, vanished during a lunchtime.
In his resonant, cultivated voice, Mr. Mugabe invited Mr. Tsvangirai to join him for a traditional meal of sadza, greens and stew, prepared by Mr. Mugabe’s personal chef, but Mr. Tsvangirai, who had been viciously beaten by Mr. Mugabe’s police force the year before, refused to eat, aides to both men say.
“I can assure you,” Mr. Mugabe said, according to his press secretary, George Charamba, “I’m not about to poison you.”
In 2009, under excruciating pressure from regional leaders, Mr. Tsvangirai agreed to a deal that some in his own party saw as a poisoned chalice. It made him prime minister, but allowed Mr. Mugabe to retain the dominant powers of the state.
Mr. Tsvangirai admits he initially found Mr. Mugabe “very accommodative, very charming.” The men met privately each Monday over tea and scones. When Susan, Mr. Tsvangirai’s wife of more than three decades, died in a car crash just weeks after the government was formed, Mr. Mugabe comforted him. Mr. Mugabe also complained about problems in his own party, and the two men commiserated about how to deal with their hard-liners, Mr. Charamba said.
But Mr. Tsvangirai said in a recent interview that he had come to believe it was Mr. Mugabe himself, not military commanders or other members of the president’s powerful inner circle, who was the principal manipulator.
“He goes along,” Mr. Tsvangirai said, “pretends to be a gentleman, pretends to be accommodative, pretends to be seriously committed to the law, and turns around, sending people, beating up people, using violence to coerce and to literally defend power for the sake of defending power.”
After a decade resisting Mr. Mugabe’s rule from the outside, Mr. Tsvangirai, other leaders of his party and a small breakaway faction have found themselves at the table with him in Tuesday cabinet meetings. They have studied the qualities that have helped Mr. Mugabe hang on to power for 30 years: stamina, mental acuity, attention to detail, charm and an uncanny instinct for the exercise of power.
“Let me tell you, that man’s brain is still very, very, very sharp, but his body is frail,” Mr. Tsvangirai said.
While polls show that Mr. Tsvangirai remains the country’s most popular politician and the likely victor of a fair election, analysts say Mr. Mugabe has been emboldened by a major development: the recent discovery that diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe, which fall under a ministry controlled by ZANU-PF, may be among the richest in the world.
The minister of mines, Obert Mpofu, insisted in an interview that “ZANU-PF has not gotten a cent from diamonds, not one cent.” But Mr. Tsvangirai and analysts here say they assume that illicit diamond profits are enriching the party’s coffers and helping buy the loyalty of the security services that enforced ZANU-PF’s violent election strategy in 2008.
Mr. Charamba, the president’s press secretary, rejected the assertions, saying there would be “an all-out deployment to assure there is no violence” by any party.
Since Mr. Tsvangirai joined the government, Mr. Mugabe has openly tested the limits of their deal, unilaterally appointing many senior officials and refusing to swear in one of Mr. Tsvangirai’s closest advisers. Mr. Mugabe, in turn, claims that Mr. Tsvangirai has not held up his end of the bargain: lobbying the West to end travel and financial sanctions on him and his coterie.
Mr. Tsvangirai admitted that after leading the struggle against Mr. Mugabe’s rule since 1999, he had no ready answers for establishing “a democratic struggle without guns, without using violence” in the country.
“There’s no template about the solution to the Zimbabwe crisis,” he said. “We have learned this over the last 10 years. There is no template for how we’re going to deal with Mugabe.”
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Saturday, December 25, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Zimbabwe Health Care, Paid With Peanuts
December 18, 2010 [Source : New York Times]
Zimbabwe Health Care, Paid With Peanuts
By CELIA W. DUGGER
CHIDAMOYO, Zimbabwe — People lined up on the veranda of the American mission hospital here from miles around to barter for doctor visits and medicines, clutching scrawny chickens, squirming goats and buckets of maize. But mostly, they arrived with sacks of peanuts on their heads.
The hospital’s cavernous chapel is now filled with what looks like a giant sand dune of unshelled nuts. The hospital makes them into peanut butter that is mixed into patients’ breakfast porridge, spread on teatime snacks and melted into vegetables at dinnertime.
“We literally are providing medical services for peanuts!” exclaimed Kathy McCarty, a nurse from California who has run this rural hospital, 35 miles from the nearest tarred road, since 1981.
The hospital, along with countless Zimbabweans, turned to barter in earnest in 2008 when inflation peaked at what the International Monetary Fund estimates was an astonishing 500 billion percent, wiping out life savings, making even trillion-dollar notes worthless and propelling the health and education systems into a vertiginous collapse.
Since then, a power-sharing government has formed after years of decline under President Robert Mugabe, and the economy has stabilized. Zimbabwe abandoned its currency last year, replacing it with the American dollar, and inflation has fallen to a demure 3.6 percent. Teachers are back in their classrooms and nurses are back on their wards.
But a recent United Nations report suggests how far Zimbabwe has to go. It is still poorer than any of the 183 countries the United Nations has income data for. It is also one of only three countries in the world to be worse off now on combined measures of health, education and income than it was 40 years ago, the United Nations found.
For many rural Zimbabweans, cash remains so scarce that the 85-bed Chidamoyo Christian Hospital has continued to allow its patients to barter. Studies have found that fees are a major barrier to medical care in rural areas, where most Zimbabweans live.
“It’s very difficult to get this famous dollar that people are talking about,” said Esther Chirasasa, 30, who hiked eight miles through the bush to the hospital for treatment of debilitating arthritis. Her son, Cain, 13, walked at her side carrying a sack of peanuts to pay for her care.
Mrs. Chirasasa said her family of seven was nearly out of the food they grew on their small plot, so she needed to get her pain under control to work in other farmers’ fields to feed her children.
Bartering helps plug some of the holes. A May survey of more than 4,000 rural households found that each of them, typically a family of six, spent an average of only $8 for all their needs in April, the cost of a couple of cappuccinos in New York. To help them get by, more than a third of households surveyed in September 2009 had used bartering.
Still, United Nations agencies estimate that 1.7 million of Zimbabwe’s 11 million people will need food aid in the coming months. And Mr. Mugabe’s continued domination of political life, along with persistent violations of the rule of law and human rights, have deterred foreign aid and investment needed to rebuild the nation’s shattered economy, analysts say.
Here in this rustic outpost with no phone service and often no electricity, the Chidamoyo hospital and the people who rely on it have entered an unwritten pact to resist the tide of death that has carried away so many. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe, plagued by AIDS and poverty, has fallen to 47 years from 61 years over the past quarter century.
Patients provide the crops they grow and the animals they raise — food that feeds the thousands of patients who use the hospital — and the hospital tends to their wounds, treats their illnesses and delivers their babies. Its two doctors and 15 nurses see about 6,000 patients a month and have put 2,000 people with AIDS on life-saving antiretroviral medicines.
Even during the hyperinflation of 2008, when government hospitals ceased to function as the salaries of their workers shriveled, the Chidamoyo hospital stayed open by giving its staff members food that patients had bartered.
“People are helped very well and the staff cares about the patients,” said Monica Mbizo, 22, who arrived with stomach pains and traded three skinny, black-feathered chickens for treatment.
The hospital, founded over four decades ago by American missionaries, from the Christian Church and Churches of Christ, receives limited support from a government that is itself hurting for revenue. The hospital also gets up to $10,000 a month from American and British churches, enabling it to charge patients far less in cash or goods than the fees at most government facilities. The hospital charges $1 to see the doctor — or a quarter bucket of peanuts — while a government hospital typically charges $4, in cash only.
Short of cash like the people it serves, the hospital practices a level of thrift unheard of in the United States. Workers and volunteers steam latex gloves to sterilize them for reuse, filling the fingers with water to ensure against leaks. They remove the cotton balls from thousands of pill bottles to swab patients’ arms before injections. And they collect the tissue-thin pages of instructions from the same bottles for use as toilet paper.
But there are limits to what even stringent economies can achieve. For most of the past year, the hospital did not have enough money to stock blood. Ms. McCarty said women who hemorrhaged after giving birth or experiencing ruptured ectopic pregnancies were referred to bigger hospitals, but often they had no blood either. Eight women died, she said. Just recently, the United Nations has begun paying for blood at the hospital to improve women’s odds of surviving.
Standing over an anesthetized woman before a Caesarean section, Dr. Vernon Murenje recalled how frightening it was to operate without blood in stock. “You’re operating,” he said, “but then at the back of your mind, you’ll be thinking, ‘What if we have significant blood loss?’ ”
As he prepared to make the incision, the hospital was in the midst of almost two weeks without power. Its old generator, already used when the hospital bought it 20 years ago, lacked enough juice to run the X-ray machine or to keep the florescent lights from flickering. It was turned on just before the Caesarean section. The air-conditioner coughed weakly to life in the stifling room.
When a boy emerged, Ms. McCarty cried, “Welcome to Zimbabwe!” But the newborn made no sound. She pounded his back and suctioned his nose until he let out a cry like a quavering baby bird.
“Oh, you finally realized you were born in Zimbabwe,” she said. “He thought he was born in South Africa, and he was happy.”
Postscript: The Community Presbyterian Church of Ringwood, N.J., has raised $24,000, and the Rotary Club of Sebastopol, Calif., contributed $7,000 to buy the hospital a generator.
Zimbabwe Health Care, Paid With Peanuts
By CELIA W. DUGGER
CHIDAMOYO, Zimbabwe — People lined up on the veranda of the American mission hospital here from miles around to barter for doctor visits and medicines, clutching scrawny chickens, squirming goats and buckets of maize. But mostly, they arrived with sacks of peanuts on their heads.
The hospital’s cavernous chapel is now filled with what looks like a giant sand dune of unshelled nuts. The hospital makes them into peanut butter that is mixed into patients’ breakfast porridge, spread on teatime snacks and melted into vegetables at dinnertime.
“We literally are providing medical services for peanuts!” exclaimed Kathy McCarty, a nurse from California who has run this rural hospital, 35 miles from the nearest tarred road, since 1981.
The hospital, along with countless Zimbabweans, turned to barter in earnest in 2008 when inflation peaked at what the International Monetary Fund estimates was an astonishing 500 billion percent, wiping out life savings, making even trillion-dollar notes worthless and propelling the health and education systems into a vertiginous collapse.
Since then, a power-sharing government has formed after years of decline under President Robert Mugabe, and the economy has stabilized. Zimbabwe abandoned its currency last year, replacing it with the American dollar, and inflation has fallen to a demure 3.6 percent. Teachers are back in their classrooms and nurses are back on their wards.
But a recent United Nations report suggests how far Zimbabwe has to go. It is still poorer than any of the 183 countries the United Nations has income data for. It is also one of only three countries in the world to be worse off now on combined measures of health, education and income than it was 40 years ago, the United Nations found.
For many rural Zimbabweans, cash remains so scarce that the 85-bed Chidamoyo Christian Hospital has continued to allow its patients to barter. Studies have found that fees are a major barrier to medical care in rural areas, where most Zimbabweans live.
“It’s very difficult to get this famous dollar that people are talking about,” said Esther Chirasasa, 30, who hiked eight miles through the bush to the hospital for treatment of debilitating arthritis. Her son, Cain, 13, walked at her side carrying a sack of peanuts to pay for her care.
Mrs. Chirasasa said her family of seven was nearly out of the food they grew on their small plot, so she needed to get her pain under control to work in other farmers’ fields to feed her children.
Bartering helps plug some of the holes. A May survey of more than 4,000 rural households found that each of them, typically a family of six, spent an average of only $8 for all their needs in April, the cost of a couple of cappuccinos in New York. To help them get by, more than a third of households surveyed in September 2009 had used bartering.
Still, United Nations agencies estimate that 1.7 million of Zimbabwe’s 11 million people will need food aid in the coming months. And Mr. Mugabe’s continued domination of political life, along with persistent violations of the rule of law and human rights, have deterred foreign aid and investment needed to rebuild the nation’s shattered economy, analysts say.
Here in this rustic outpost with no phone service and often no electricity, the Chidamoyo hospital and the people who rely on it have entered an unwritten pact to resist the tide of death that has carried away so many. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe, plagued by AIDS and poverty, has fallen to 47 years from 61 years over the past quarter century.
Patients provide the crops they grow and the animals they raise — food that feeds the thousands of patients who use the hospital — and the hospital tends to their wounds, treats their illnesses and delivers their babies. Its two doctors and 15 nurses see about 6,000 patients a month and have put 2,000 people with AIDS on life-saving antiretroviral medicines.
Even during the hyperinflation of 2008, when government hospitals ceased to function as the salaries of their workers shriveled, the Chidamoyo hospital stayed open by giving its staff members food that patients had bartered.
“People are helped very well and the staff cares about the patients,” said Monica Mbizo, 22, who arrived with stomach pains and traded three skinny, black-feathered chickens for treatment.
The hospital, founded over four decades ago by American missionaries, from the Christian Church and Churches of Christ, receives limited support from a government that is itself hurting for revenue. The hospital also gets up to $10,000 a month from American and British churches, enabling it to charge patients far less in cash or goods than the fees at most government facilities. The hospital charges $1 to see the doctor — or a quarter bucket of peanuts — while a government hospital typically charges $4, in cash only.
Short of cash like the people it serves, the hospital practices a level of thrift unheard of in the United States. Workers and volunteers steam latex gloves to sterilize them for reuse, filling the fingers with water to ensure against leaks. They remove the cotton balls from thousands of pill bottles to swab patients’ arms before injections. And they collect the tissue-thin pages of instructions from the same bottles for use as toilet paper.
But there are limits to what even stringent economies can achieve. For most of the past year, the hospital did not have enough money to stock blood. Ms. McCarty said women who hemorrhaged after giving birth or experiencing ruptured ectopic pregnancies were referred to bigger hospitals, but often they had no blood either. Eight women died, she said. Just recently, the United Nations has begun paying for blood at the hospital to improve women’s odds of surviving.
Standing over an anesthetized woman before a Caesarean section, Dr. Vernon Murenje recalled how frightening it was to operate without blood in stock. “You’re operating,” he said, “but then at the back of your mind, you’ll be thinking, ‘What if we have significant blood loss?’ ”
As he prepared to make the incision, the hospital was in the midst of almost two weeks without power. Its old generator, already used when the hospital bought it 20 years ago, lacked enough juice to run the X-ray machine or to keep the florescent lights from flickering. It was turned on just before the Caesarean section. The air-conditioner coughed weakly to life in the stifling room.
When a boy emerged, Ms. McCarty cried, “Welcome to Zimbabwe!” But the newborn made no sound. She pounded his back and suctioned his nose until he let out a cry like a quavering baby bird.
“Oh, you finally realized you were born in Zimbabwe,” she said. “He thought he was born in South Africa, and he was happy.”
Postscript: The Community Presbyterian Church of Ringwood, N.J., has raised $24,000, and the Rotary Club of Sebastopol, Calif., contributed $7,000 to buy the hospital a generator.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
THE HONOURABLE Abe Abrahamson, a stalwart of the South African Jewish community
4 SA JEWISH REPORT 19 - 26 March 2010
LIONEL SLIER
PHOTOGRAPH: ILAN OSSENDRYVER
THE HONOURABLE Abe Abrahamson, a stalwart of the
South African Jewish community, a former Rhodesian
Cabinet minister and in later years chairman of the board of
directors of SA Jewish Report in Johannesburg, passed
away on Shabbat March 13, after a long illness, at the age of
87. He was a fighter to the end - small in stature, but with a
heart the size of Table Mountain.
He relinquished his position as chairman of the board of
SAJR towards the end of last year due to his failing health
and was succeeded by Stanley Kaplan. The Hon Abe passionately
believed in the Jewish Report and the ethos it
espoused.
In 2004 Paul Clingman wrote a biography on
Abrahamson, with the intriguing title: “The Moon Can
Wait”. This was a reference to breaking the space barrier,
which was hailed at the time as such a great advance for
mankind. Abrahamson was invited to address a meeting of
the International Labour Organisation in Canada in 1961 -
the first ever Rhodesian to do so. In 1962 he told the ILO in
Geneva: “The moon can wait, but social justice cannot
tarry.”
Helen Suzman in 2003 wrote a foreword for the book: “He
may have become the Hon Abe (a title bestowed on him by
Queen Elizabeth), a minister holding three portfolios of
Labour, Housing and Social Welfare in the government of
Edgar Whitehead in Southern Rhodesia, and risen to
become deputy leader of the governing party, but he
remained a modest and committed man with liberal principles.”
She made mention of Abrahamson’s “deep aversion
to the doctrines of racial superiority”.
Abrahamson called himself “a progressive conservative”
who approached his hurdles “cerebrally rather than emotionally”.
The years 1958 to 1961 were to prove definitive in
Abrahamson’s political career. He played a prominent part
in the conference held at Lancaster House in London in 1960,
at which a new constitution was negotiated to meet the
demands of rising African nationalism and which envisaged
the handing over of power to a truly democratically elected
government in Rhodesia.
The constitution was accepted in a referendum held in
Southern Rhodesia in 1961, but in a general election the following
year the liberal Edgar Whitehead was ousted as
prime minister and the right-wing Rhodesian Front
emerged, first under Winston Field and then under Ian
Smith. Abrahamson was one of only a handful progressives
to retain his seat and they became the opposition in parliament
- but they could do nothing to prevent Ian Smith’s
Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.
With opposition effectively silenced, UDI for Abrahamson
heralded the end of a political career which had begun in
1953, at the age of 31.
Abrahamson then became more active in business, first in
Rhodesia and later in South Africa, where he developed a
major industry in optical manufacture. In South Africa - as
had been the case in Rhodesia - Abrahamson became
immersed in Jewish affairs and was elected chairman of the
SA Zionist Federation in 1991. He was a man who rose to the
top of every organisation in which he became involved,
either as president or chairman. His curriculum vitae reads
like a summary of Jewish institutions throughout southern
Africa.
Rabbi Yossi Chaikin of Oxford Shul, who had known
Abrahamson for 12 years, conducted the funeral service. He
told of how Abrahamson had compiled a book of photographs
of his family and forebears - again with the aid of
Clingman. The book was due to be published within days of
Abrahamson’s passing. In fact, Abrahamson, when he was
admitted to hospital, showed Rabbi Chaikin the draft. He
was determined to leave something “of worth” behind.
Rabbi Chaikin pointed out that Abrahamson was successful
in three areas: as a businessman, as a Jew and as a community
leader.
At the Abrahamson residence, after the funeral, Rabbi
Avraham Tanzer spoke of Abrahamson as “a man small in
stature, but a giant”. He also mentioned how much
Abrahamson loved people. He was always surrounded by
people.
Beyachad in Rouxville, Johannesburg, the hub of all
Jewish organisations in the city, has a reception/lecture
hall named after Abrahamson, thus ensuring he will never
be forgotten by the community he served with such loyalty
and dedication.
Abraham Eliezer Abrahamson was born in Bulawayo in
1922 to Leah and Morris, immigrants from Eastern Europe.
He went to the prestigious Milton School and furthered his
education at the University of Cape Town where he read
law. At the university he was on the committee of the Zionist
Youth Society and was head of the Students’ Jewish Society.
He was secretary of Cape Town NUSAS (National Union of
SA Students) and also president of the debating society.
When he finished his studies he joined the Rhodesian
army and after his army service went into his father’s business.
Out of uniform he became chairman of the Chovevei Zion
group. At the age of 35 he became president of the
Rhodesian Board of Deputies.
He went into politics in Rhodesia and when just 30 he was
elected to Parliament as an MP for the United Federal Party.
In business in Rhodesia he was president of the Bulawayo
Chamber of Industries as well as president of the
Federation of Rhodesian Industries, and after Federation he
was the chairman of the Federal Council for Industries.
As a Cabinet minister, between 1960 and 1962 he was in the
forefront of removing all discriminatory legislation from
the Statute Book. However, when the Rhodesian Front came
to power in the next election soon thereafter, what he had
instigated came to naught.
When Abrahamson and his wife, Anita, left for South
Africa in 1986, Dr Bernie Tatz, vice-president of the Central
African Jewish Board of Deputies spoke of the esteem in
which the couple were held. Abrahamson had been a member
of the Board for over 40 years, 17 of them as president.
In 1989 he was made honorary life member of the Central
African Zionist Organisation.
By 1986 in South Africa, he was a member of the SA
Zionist Federation executive. Three years later he was senior
vice-chairman and by 1991 he was chairman and in 1994,
president. In 1998 he was made an honorary life president.
Abrahamson was unmovable in his concern for the South
African Jewish community and its support for Israel.
In 1993, at the SA Board of Deputies’ conference, he said:
“There can be no dichotomy between a Jew and a Zionist.
We are one people with one destiny and Israel is central to
our lives.
“Our local institutions and our links to Israel - religious,
historic, cultural, social and national - all make up the whole
Jew and it is our joy and constant concern to ensure the continuation
of that totality.”
Abrahamson was a family man par excellence, spending
his life passionately committed to his wife, Anita, his three
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The late Solly Yellin, a prominent member of the South
African Jewish community, once said: “The Honourable
Abe Abrahamson is entitled to a seat at the Western Wall.”
This small man in stature, who would take on anyone in a
cause he believed in, will be sorely missed. He is mourned by
the Jewish community in South Africa and by the wider
Jewish community. We salute a great man.
Small in stature, but
with the heart of a lion
Community leader, businessman, politician and family patriarch - Abe
Abrahamson, former chairman of the SA Jewish Report, who passed away
last Saturday, had been all of these and more in his long and rich life.
Personal tributes to Hon Abe Abrahamson
Gill Marcus
Governor of the South African Reserve Bank:
“It is with a deep sense of loss that I learned of the passing
of Abe Abrahamson. I have had the privilege of interacting
with Abe over a number of years, particularly
through Jewish Achievers.
“His passion, commitment and service to the community
was a hallmark of the man who gave so generously of
his time and ideas. Abe will be sorely missed. I wish his
family long life in this difficult time.”
Rebbetzen Ann Harris
Widow of the late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris:
“How sad I am for Abe’s family, but at the same time, how
proud they must feel with all the memories of such a special
husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
“All of us who knew Abe as a friend and colleague loved
and respected him and were privileged to be a part, in
some small way, of his monumental achievements in
South Africa and Zimbabwe, for the Zionist Federation,
for the Board of Deputies and for the Jewish Report,
indeed for our community as a whole.
“We are all the poorer for his passing.”
She added that ours is a community fortunately rich in
young leadership who are able to instil a lot of confidence,
and that Abe had the wisdom and dignity to step aside for
them.
Stan Kaplan
Chairman of the board of the SA Jewish Report:
“The most important characteristic of Abe Abrahamson
that stood out was his ability to care for the well-being of
everyone.
“My own relationship with him began as a colleague on
the Jewish Report’s board; it turned into a warm and very
great friendship. Abe did not discriminate - he was able to
overlook shortcomings.
“We all could learn what human behaviour should be
from a man like Abe. He was genuinely interested in other
people, not out of a sense of obligation. I feel privileged to
have had him as a friend and will miss him so much.”
Ilan Baruch
Former Israeli ambassador to South Africa:
“Abe was a man of high regard to all, of deep respect to
most, of personal friendship to many and invaluable individual
guidance to several. I owe Abe the success of my
assignment as Ambassador of Israel to South Africa.
“There is no argument over the fact that the relations
between our two countries are uniquely complex. It is not
a secret that pitfalls are many on the road the
Ambassador of our country in South Africa needs to take.
“I arrived in Pretoria on a Monday. Tuesday morning
Abe was at the embassy. Day one, I received from him the
inspiration I needed for the entire posting of three years.
“Abe was a dear and unique friend, my mentor and
guide on South African Jewish community affairs.
Zev Krengel
National chairman of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies:
“What a stalwart to our community Abe was. The work he
did to protect and grow us was invaluable and we are so
grateful that we were able to honour him during his lifetime
by naming our boardroom for him, which we did late
last year. Abe had amazing composure. He was truly a
man for the community.”
Avrom Krengel
Chairman of the SA Zionist Federation:
“Abe was an absolutely wonderful man and an utter gentleman,
an elder statesman and mentor to the whole community.
“I was 32 when I took over chairmanship of the Zionist
Federation and he was wonderful in the help and guidance
he gave me over the years.
“I always referred to him as the Jewish Renaissance
man - in all the key areas of life he excelled - in business,
politics and family, and the way in which he and Geoff
(Sifrin) built up the Jewish Report to be such a vital community
aspect to reflect who we are today, attests to this.”
Reeva Forman
Chairman of the Israel Now Tour and vice-chairman of the
SAZF, member of the SAJBD:
“It was such a great honour to work with a man of his
integrity. His commitment to the welfare of Jews, not only
in South Africa but further afield; to Zionism and Israel
was legendary.
“Abe was always able to see a clear moral path through
conflict. I can only compare his greatness to that of the
late Mendel Kaplan - men of this calibre give 100 per cent
to the community, 100 per cent to Israel and 100 per cent to
family.
“So often, power and the achievement of accolades can
go to a person’s head, but this was never the case with
Abe. He was a giant.”
LIONEL SLIER
PHOTOGRAPH: ILAN OSSENDRYVER
THE HONOURABLE Abe Abrahamson, a stalwart of the
South African Jewish community, a former Rhodesian
Cabinet minister and in later years chairman of the board of
directors of SA Jewish Report in Johannesburg, passed
away on Shabbat March 13, after a long illness, at the age of
87. He was a fighter to the end - small in stature, but with a
heart the size of Table Mountain.
He relinquished his position as chairman of the board of
SAJR towards the end of last year due to his failing health
and was succeeded by Stanley Kaplan. The Hon Abe passionately
believed in the Jewish Report and the ethos it
espoused.
In 2004 Paul Clingman wrote a biography on
Abrahamson, with the intriguing title: “The Moon Can
Wait”. This was a reference to breaking the space barrier,
which was hailed at the time as such a great advance for
mankind. Abrahamson was invited to address a meeting of
the International Labour Organisation in Canada in 1961 -
the first ever Rhodesian to do so. In 1962 he told the ILO in
Geneva: “The moon can wait, but social justice cannot
tarry.”
Helen Suzman in 2003 wrote a foreword for the book: “He
may have become the Hon Abe (a title bestowed on him by
Queen Elizabeth), a minister holding three portfolios of
Labour, Housing and Social Welfare in the government of
Edgar Whitehead in Southern Rhodesia, and risen to
become deputy leader of the governing party, but he
remained a modest and committed man with liberal principles.”
She made mention of Abrahamson’s “deep aversion
to the doctrines of racial superiority”.
Abrahamson called himself “a progressive conservative”
who approached his hurdles “cerebrally rather than emotionally”.
The years 1958 to 1961 were to prove definitive in
Abrahamson’s political career. He played a prominent part
in the conference held at Lancaster House in London in 1960,
at which a new constitution was negotiated to meet the
demands of rising African nationalism and which envisaged
the handing over of power to a truly democratically elected
government in Rhodesia.
The constitution was accepted in a referendum held in
Southern Rhodesia in 1961, but in a general election the following
year the liberal Edgar Whitehead was ousted as
prime minister and the right-wing Rhodesian Front
emerged, first under Winston Field and then under Ian
Smith. Abrahamson was one of only a handful progressives
to retain his seat and they became the opposition in parliament
- but they could do nothing to prevent Ian Smith’s
Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.
With opposition effectively silenced, UDI for Abrahamson
heralded the end of a political career which had begun in
1953, at the age of 31.
Abrahamson then became more active in business, first in
Rhodesia and later in South Africa, where he developed a
major industry in optical manufacture. In South Africa - as
had been the case in Rhodesia - Abrahamson became
immersed in Jewish affairs and was elected chairman of the
SA Zionist Federation in 1991. He was a man who rose to the
top of every organisation in which he became involved,
either as president or chairman. His curriculum vitae reads
like a summary of Jewish institutions throughout southern
Africa.
Rabbi Yossi Chaikin of Oxford Shul, who had known
Abrahamson for 12 years, conducted the funeral service. He
told of how Abrahamson had compiled a book of photographs
of his family and forebears - again with the aid of
Clingman. The book was due to be published within days of
Abrahamson’s passing. In fact, Abrahamson, when he was
admitted to hospital, showed Rabbi Chaikin the draft. He
was determined to leave something “of worth” behind.
Rabbi Chaikin pointed out that Abrahamson was successful
in three areas: as a businessman, as a Jew and as a community
leader.
At the Abrahamson residence, after the funeral, Rabbi
Avraham Tanzer spoke of Abrahamson as “a man small in
stature, but a giant”. He also mentioned how much
Abrahamson loved people. He was always surrounded by
people.
Beyachad in Rouxville, Johannesburg, the hub of all
Jewish organisations in the city, has a reception/lecture
hall named after Abrahamson, thus ensuring he will never
be forgotten by the community he served with such loyalty
and dedication.
Abraham Eliezer Abrahamson was born in Bulawayo in
1922 to Leah and Morris, immigrants from Eastern Europe.
He went to the prestigious Milton School and furthered his
education at the University of Cape Town where he read
law. At the university he was on the committee of the Zionist
Youth Society and was head of the Students’ Jewish Society.
He was secretary of Cape Town NUSAS (National Union of
SA Students) and also president of the debating society.
When he finished his studies he joined the Rhodesian
army and after his army service went into his father’s business.
Out of uniform he became chairman of the Chovevei Zion
group. At the age of 35 he became president of the
Rhodesian Board of Deputies.
He went into politics in Rhodesia and when just 30 he was
elected to Parliament as an MP for the United Federal Party.
In business in Rhodesia he was president of the Bulawayo
Chamber of Industries as well as president of the
Federation of Rhodesian Industries, and after Federation he
was the chairman of the Federal Council for Industries.
As a Cabinet minister, between 1960 and 1962 he was in the
forefront of removing all discriminatory legislation from
the Statute Book. However, when the Rhodesian Front came
to power in the next election soon thereafter, what he had
instigated came to naught.
When Abrahamson and his wife, Anita, left for South
Africa in 1986, Dr Bernie Tatz, vice-president of the Central
African Jewish Board of Deputies spoke of the esteem in
which the couple were held. Abrahamson had been a member
of the Board for over 40 years, 17 of them as president.
In 1989 he was made honorary life member of the Central
African Zionist Organisation.
By 1986 in South Africa, he was a member of the SA
Zionist Federation executive. Three years later he was senior
vice-chairman and by 1991 he was chairman and in 1994,
president. In 1998 he was made an honorary life president.
Abrahamson was unmovable in his concern for the South
African Jewish community and its support for Israel.
In 1993, at the SA Board of Deputies’ conference, he said:
“There can be no dichotomy between a Jew and a Zionist.
We are one people with one destiny and Israel is central to
our lives.
“Our local institutions and our links to Israel - religious,
historic, cultural, social and national - all make up the whole
Jew and it is our joy and constant concern to ensure the continuation
of that totality.”
Abrahamson was a family man par excellence, spending
his life passionately committed to his wife, Anita, his three
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The late Solly Yellin, a prominent member of the South
African Jewish community, once said: “The Honourable
Abe Abrahamson is entitled to a seat at the Western Wall.”
This small man in stature, who would take on anyone in a
cause he believed in, will be sorely missed. He is mourned by
the Jewish community in South Africa and by the wider
Jewish community. We salute a great man.
Small in stature, but
with the heart of a lion
Community leader, businessman, politician and family patriarch - Abe
Abrahamson, former chairman of the SA Jewish Report, who passed away
last Saturday, had been all of these and more in his long and rich life.
Personal tributes to Hon Abe Abrahamson
Gill Marcus
Governor of the South African Reserve Bank:
“It is with a deep sense of loss that I learned of the passing
of Abe Abrahamson. I have had the privilege of interacting
with Abe over a number of years, particularly
through Jewish Achievers.
“His passion, commitment and service to the community
was a hallmark of the man who gave so generously of
his time and ideas. Abe will be sorely missed. I wish his
family long life in this difficult time.”
Rebbetzen Ann Harris
Widow of the late Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris:
“How sad I am for Abe’s family, but at the same time, how
proud they must feel with all the memories of such a special
husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
“All of us who knew Abe as a friend and colleague loved
and respected him and were privileged to be a part, in
some small way, of his monumental achievements in
South Africa and Zimbabwe, for the Zionist Federation,
for the Board of Deputies and for the Jewish Report,
indeed for our community as a whole.
“We are all the poorer for his passing.”
She added that ours is a community fortunately rich in
young leadership who are able to instil a lot of confidence,
and that Abe had the wisdom and dignity to step aside for
them.
Stan Kaplan
Chairman of the board of the SA Jewish Report:
“The most important characteristic of Abe Abrahamson
that stood out was his ability to care for the well-being of
everyone.
“My own relationship with him began as a colleague on
the Jewish Report’s board; it turned into a warm and very
great friendship. Abe did not discriminate - he was able to
overlook shortcomings.
“We all could learn what human behaviour should be
from a man like Abe. He was genuinely interested in other
people, not out of a sense of obligation. I feel privileged to
have had him as a friend and will miss him so much.”
Ilan Baruch
Former Israeli ambassador to South Africa:
“Abe was a man of high regard to all, of deep respect to
most, of personal friendship to many and invaluable individual
guidance to several. I owe Abe the success of my
assignment as Ambassador of Israel to South Africa.
“There is no argument over the fact that the relations
between our two countries are uniquely complex. It is not
a secret that pitfalls are many on the road the
Ambassador of our country in South Africa needs to take.
“I arrived in Pretoria on a Monday. Tuesday morning
Abe was at the embassy. Day one, I received from him the
inspiration I needed for the entire posting of three years.
“Abe was a dear and unique friend, my mentor and
guide on South African Jewish community affairs.
Zev Krengel
National chairman of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies:
“What a stalwart to our community Abe was. The work he
did to protect and grow us was invaluable and we are so
grateful that we were able to honour him during his lifetime
by naming our boardroom for him, which we did late
last year. Abe had amazing composure. He was truly a
man for the community.”
Avrom Krengel
Chairman of the SA Zionist Federation:
“Abe was an absolutely wonderful man and an utter gentleman,
an elder statesman and mentor to the whole community.
“I was 32 when I took over chairmanship of the Zionist
Federation and he was wonderful in the help and guidance
he gave me over the years.
“I always referred to him as the Jewish Renaissance
man - in all the key areas of life he excelled - in business,
politics and family, and the way in which he and Geoff
(Sifrin) built up the Jewish Report to be such a vital community
aspect to reflect who we are today, attests to this.”
Reeva Forman
Chairman of the Israel Now Tour and vice-chairman of the
SAZF, member of the SAJBD:
“It was such a great honour to work with a man of his
integrity. His commitment to the welfare of Jews, not only
in South Africa but further afield; to Zionism and Israel
was legendary.
“Abe was always able to see a clear moral path through
conflict. I can only compare his greatness to that of the
late Mendel Kaplan - men of this calibre give 100 per cent
to the community, 100 per cent to Israel and 100 per cent to
family.
“So often, power and the achievement of accolades can
go to a person’s head, but this was never the case with
Abe. He was a giant.”
Abe Abrahamson - a man with a smile who kept striding
Editorial - The SAJewish Report - www.sajewisreport.co.za
Abe Abrahamson - a man with a smile who kept striding
A person’s essence cannot be distilled into a few words. But certain phrases can point in the right direction. About Abe Abrahamson, former chairman of the Jewish Report’s board, who died on Saturday, a “profound sense of balance” would be fitting - between the deadly serious versus the hilarious and ironic; the intimacy of family versus the worldliness of business; the individual domain versus public, community involvement; and personal morality versus the “public morality” of politics.
Abe was the patriarch of a huge family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and equally, the consummate “man-of the world” in business, politics and community life.
We at the Jewish Report knew him since 1998, when he was part of the initial founding committee of the paper; for many years he was chairman, resigning in late 2009, when Stan Kaplan took over. His impeccable balance was always there: board meetings would be conducted with the utmost seriousness, but at the end of them, out would come a bottle of whisky and those present would spend a relaxed half-hour chatting about anything and everything.
Abe was the perfect chairman for a newspaper - strong and clear in his vision, yet with a profound respect for its editorial independence. He never attempted to bully the paper into carrying particular articles to his liking and understood that a newspaper is a living, breathing, robust thing, hard to keep up with.
It demands a personal relationship, a love affair with its readers - which can be tempestuous at times. Abe had that connection with the paper, but also brought a calmness, an ability to see the big picture - the wood, not just the trees.
A serious paper covering a wide spectrum of issues, news and open debate will inevitably sometimes enter turbulent waters and be attacked from various quarters when people, for their own reasons, may object to part of the content.
There may be attempts to control it or, in extreme cases, even shut it down - as we have certainly experienced. Abe was always outraged at these attempts. He believed passionately in the importance of the media’s independence. He was always ready to jump to the Jewish Report’s defence, as long as it stuck to its mandate of serving Jewry as a whole with quality content. “You can’t please everyone,” he would say, “nor should you try to.”
Abe’s infirmity eventually forced him to resign as chairman of the newspaper’s board, to the sadness of its members. But, true to his dignity and impeccable sense of duty, he did not simply send a letter to the board informing them of his decision: at the next meeting, he arrived in a suit and tie and was helped up the stairs to the boardroom. He sat down in his chairman’s seat and went through the agenda methodically until it came to the relevant item, then announced his resignation.
He loved a glass of whisky, particularly combined with a chat about something interesting. By an ironic twist of fate, after arriving in South Africa from (then) Rhodesia, Abe and his wife Anita lived for many years within 100 metres of a major outlet of a well-known whisky company on Oxford Road, Johannesburg, where a huge banner portrays an image of the “striding man”. At Abe’s funeral, the rabbi commented with a sorrowful smile that Abe was the ultimate “striding man”. With his passion for life and his intelligent, open mind, he “kept walking” until the last.
On Monday, when he was extremely frail, I asked if I could visit him. “Yes!” said Abe with a “twinkle” in his voice. “Come tomorrow. I’ll have a drink waiting for you!”
The next day he was too ill for visitors. Those last words epitomised him - despite his frailness, he projected a smile to the world and an invitation for a “l’chaim!” with a glass of wine or whisky. A gracious and welcoming host, an astute businessman, a man of immense integrity, insight and wisdom, Abe was not just a man, but a mensch for all seasons with a giant heart and giant vision.
We salute him.
Geoff Sifrin
Editor
Abe Abrahamson - a man with a smile who kept striding
A person’s essence cannot be distilled into a few words. But certain phrases can point in the right direction. About Abe Abrahamson, former chairman of the Jewish Report’s board, who died on Saturday, a “profound sense of balance” would be fitting - between the deadly serious versus the hilarious and ironic; the intimacy of family versus the worldliness of business; the individual domain versus public, community involvement; and personal morality versus the “public morality” of politics.
Abe was the patriarch of a huge family of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and equally, the consummate “man-of the world” in business, politics and community life.
We at the Jewish Report knew him since 1998, when he was part of the initial founding committee of the paper; for many years he was chairman, resigning in late 2009, when Stan Kaplan took over. His impeccable balance was always there: board meetings would be conducted with the utmost seriousness, but at the end of them, out would come a bottle of whisky and those present would spend a relaxed half-hour chatting about anything and everything.
Abe was the perfect chairman for a newspaper - strong and clear in his vision, yet with a profound respect for its editorial independence. He never attempted to bully the paper into carrying particular articles to his liking and understood that a newspaper is a living, breathing, robust thing, hard to keep up with.
It demands a personal relationship, a love affair with its readers - which can be tempestuous at times. Abe had that connection with the paper, but also brought a calmness, an ability to see the big picture - the wood, not just the trees.
A serious paper covering a wide spectrum of issues, news and open debate will inevitably sometimes enter turbulent waters and be attacked from various quarters when people, for their own reasons, may object to part of the content.
There may be attempts to control it or, in extreme cases, even shut it down - as we have certainly experienced. Abe was always outraged at these attempts. He believed passionately in the importance of the media’s independence. He was always ready to jump to the Jewish Report’s defence, as long as it stuck to its mandate of serving Jewry as a whole with quality content. “You can’t please everyone,” he would say, “nor should you try to.”
Abe’s infirmity eventually forced him to resign as chairman of the newspaper’s board, to the sadness of its members. But, true to his dignity and impeccable sense of duty, he did not simply send a letter to the board informing them of his decision: at the next meeting, he arrived in a suit and tie and was helped up the stairs to the boardroom. He sat down in his chairman’s seat and went through the agenda methodically until it came to the relevant item, then announced his resignation.
He loved a glass of whisky, particularly combined with a chat about something interesting. By an ironic twist of fate, after arriving in South Africa from (then) Rhodesia, Abe and his wife Anita lived for many years within 100 metres of a major outlet of a well-known whisky company on Oxford Road, Johannesburg, where a huge banner portrays an image of the “striding man”. At Abe’s funeral, the rabbi commented with a sorrowful smile that Abe was the ultimate “striding man”. With his passion for life and his intelligent, open mind, he “kept walking” until the last.
On Monday, when he was extremely frail, I asked if I could visit him. “Yes!” said Abe with a “twinkle” in his voice. “Come tomorrow. I’ll have a drink waiting for you!”
The next day he was too ill for visitors. Those last words epitomised him - despite his frailness, he projected a smile to the world and an invitation for a “l’chaim!” with a glass of wine or whisky. A gracious and welcoming host, an astute businessman, a man of immense integrity, insight and wisdom, Abe was not just a man, but a mensch for all seasons with a giant heart and giant vision.
We salute him.
Geoff Sifrin
Editor
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Lost Jewish tribe 'found in Zimbabwe'
Lost Jewish tribe 'found in Zimbabwe'
By Steve Vickers
BBC News, Harare
The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions.
They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.
It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin.
These tests back up the group's belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.
And they also have a prized religious artefact that they say connects them to their Jewish ancestry - a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant known as the ngoma lungundu, meaning "the drum that thunders".
The object went on display recently at a Harare museum to much fanfare, and instilled pride in many of the Lemba.
"For me it's the starting point," says religious singer Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave.
According to Genticists the Lemba women do not have Jewish DNA
"Very few people knew about us and this is the time to come out. I'm very proud to realise that we have a rich culture and I'm proud to be a Lemba.
"We have been a very secretive people, because we believe we are a special people."
Religion vs culture
The Lemba have many customs and regulations that tally with Jewish tradition.
They wear skull caps, practise circumcision, which is not a tradition for most Zimbabweans, avoid eating pork and food with animal blood, and have 12 tribes.
“ Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science ”
Tudor Parfitt University of London
They slaughter animals in the same way as Jewish people, and they put the Jewish Star of David on their tombstones.
Members of the priestly clan of the Lemba, known as the Buba, were even discovered to have a genetic element also found among the Jewish priestly line.
"This was amazing," said Prof Tudor Parfitt, from the University of London.
"It looks as if the Jewish priesthood continued in the West by people called Cohen, and in same way it was continued by the priestly clan of the Lemba.
"They have a common ancestor who geneticists say lived about 3,000 years ago somewhere in north Arabia, which is the time of Moses and Aaron when the Jewish priesthood started."
Prof Parfitt is a world-renowned expert, having spent 20 years researching the Lemba, and living with them for six months.
The Lemba have a sacred prayer language which is a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, pointing to their roots in Israel and Yemen.
Despite their ties to Judaism, many of the Lemba in Zimbabwe are Christians, while some are Muslims.
"Christianity is my religion, and Judaism is my culture," explains Perez Hamandishe, a pastor and member of parliament from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science - Tudor Parfitt University of London
Despite their centuries-old traditions, some younger Lemba are taking a more liberal view.
"In the old days you didn't marry a non-Lemba, but these days we interact with others," says Alex Makotore, son of the late Chief Mposi from the Lemba "headquarters" in Mberengwa.
"I feel special in my heart but not in front of others such that I'm separated from them. Culture is dynamic."
Crowds
The oral traditions of the Lemba say that the ngoma lungundu is the Biblical wooden Ark made by Moses, and that centuries ago a small group of men began a long journey carrying it from Yemen to southern Africa.
“ Hearing from those professors in Harare and seeing the ngoma makes it clear that we are a great people and I'm very proud ”
David Maramwidze Lemba elder
The object went missing during the 1970s and was eventually rediscovered in Harare in 2007 by Prof Parfitt.
"Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science," he says.
Carbon dating shows the ngoma to be nearly 700 years old - pretty ancient, if not as old as Bible stories would suggest.
But Prof Parfitt says this is because the ngoma was used in battles, and would explode and be rebuilt.
The ngoma now on display was a replica, he says, possibly built from the remains of the original.
"So it's the closest descendant of the Ark that we know of," Prof Parfitt says.
Large crowds came to see the unveiling of the ngoma and to attend lectures on the identity of the Lemba.
For David Maramwidze, an elder in his village, the discovery of the ngoma has been a defining moment.
"Hearing from those professors in Harare and seeing the ngoma makes it clear that we are a great people and I'm very proud," he says.
"I heard about it all my life and it was hard for me to believe, because I had no idea of what it really is.
"I'm still seeing the picture of the ngoma in my mind and it will never come out from my brain. Now we want it to be given back to the Lemba people."
To hear more about the Lemba people, listen to the BBC World Service
programme on Saturday 6 March at 0830 GMT.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8550614.stm
Published: 2010/03/08 11:15:10 GMT
© BBC MMX
Print Sponsor
By Steve Vickers
BBC News, Harare
The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions.
They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.
It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin.
These tests back up the group's belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.
And they also have a prized religious artefact that they say connects them to their Jewish ancestry - a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant known as the ngoma lungundu, meaning "the drum that thunders".
The object went on display recently at a Harare museum to much fanfare, and instilled pride in many of the Lemba.
"For me it's the starting point," says religious singer Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave.
According to Genticists the Lemba women do not have Jewish DNA
"Very few people knew about us and this is the time to come out. I'm very proud to realise that we have a rich culture and I'm proud to be a Lemba.
"We have been a very secretive people, because we believe we are a special people."
Religion vs culture
The Lemba have many customs and regulations that tally with Jewish tradition.
They wear skull caps, practise circumcision, which is not a tradition for most Zimbabweans, avoid eating pork and food with animal blood, and have 12 tribes.
“ Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science ”
Tudor Parfitt University of London
They slaughter animals in the same way as Jewish people, and they put the Jewish Star of David on their tombstones.
Members of the priestly clan of the Lemba, known as the Buba, were even discovered to have a genetic element also found among the Jewish priestly line.
"This was amazing," said Prof Tudor Parfitt, from the University of London.
"It looks as if the Jewish priesthood continued in the West by people called Cohen, and in same way it was continued by the priestly clan of the Lemba.
"They have a common ancestor who geneticists say lived about 3,000 years ago somewhere in north Arabia, which is the time of Moses and Aaron when the Jewish priesthood started."
Prof Parfitt is a world-renowned expert, having spent 20 years researching the Lemba, and living with them for six months.
The Lemba have a sacred prayer language which is a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, pointing to their roots in Israel and Yemen.
Despite their ties to Judaism, many of the Lemba in Zimbabwe are Christians, while some are Muslims.
"Christianity is my religion, and Judaism is my culture," explains Perez Hamandishe, a pastor and member of parliament from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science - Tudor Parfitt University of London
Despite their centuries-old traditions, some younger Lemba are taking a more liberal view.
"In the old days you didn't marry a non-Lemba, but these days we interact with others," says Alex Makotore, son of the late Chief Mposi from the Lemba "headquarters" in Mberengwa.
"I feel special in my heart but not in front of others such that I'm separated from them. Culture is dynamic."
Crowds
The oral traditions of the Lemba say that the ngoma lungundu is the Biblical wooden Ark made by Moses, and that centuries ago a small group of men began a long journey carrying it from Yemen to southern Africa.
“ Hearing from those professors in Harare and seeing the ngoma makes it clear that we are a great people and I'm very proud ”
David Maramwidze Lemba elder
The object went missing during the 1970s and was eventually rediscovered in Harare in 2007 by Prof Parfitt.
"Many people say that the story is far-fetched, but the oral traditions of the Lemba have been backed up by science," he says.
Carbon dating shows the ngoma to be nearly 700 years old - pretty ancient, if not as old as Bible stories would suggest.
But Prof Parfitt says this is because the ngoma was used in battles, and would explode and be rebuilt.
The ngoma now on display was a replica, he says, possibly built from the remains of the original.
"So it's the closest descendant of the Ark that we know of," Prof Parfitt says.
Large crowds came to see the unveiling of the ngoma and to attend lectures on the identity of the Lemba.
For David Maramwidze, an elder in his village, the discovery of the ngoma has been a defining moment.
"Hearing from those professors in Harare and seeing the ngoma makes it clear that we are a great people and I'm very proud," he says.
"I heard about it all my life and it was hard for me to believe, because I had no idea of what it really is.
"I'm still seeing the picture of the ngoma in my mind and it will never come out from my brain. Now we want it to be given back to the Lemba people."
To hear more about the Lemba people, listen to the BBC World Service
programme on Saturday 6 March at 0830 GMT.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8550614.stm
Published: 2010/03/08 11:15:10 GMT
© BBC MMX
Print Sponsor
Monday, March 08, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
First Mugabe took the farms now it is white-owned firms
First Mugabe took the farms now it is white-owned firms
Published Date: 13 February 2010
By Jane Fields in Harare
WHITE people will no longer be able to open hairdressers, advertising agencies or bakeries in Zimbabwe under black empowerment regulations hastily signed into law by president Robert Mugabe's side of the government.
Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr Mugabe's estranged prime minister, described the new law as "null and void" because he had not been consulted. But analysts say he will likely be unable to reverse it.
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Regulations force executives of white-owned companies with assets of more than £320,000 to commit to hand over 51 per cent of their shares to black Zimbabweans within 75 days of 1 March – or face five years in jail.
The executives cannot choose their new shareholders: they must pick from a database set up by the empowerment ministry, headed by former secret service operative Saviour Kasukuwere, who has vast business interests of his own.
"This says to investors: Don't you dare come here," said political analyst John Makumbe, of the University of Zimbabwe.
The new regulations will affect several London-listed banks and mines: Barclays Bank and Old Mutual have a significant presence in Zimbabwe. The law also sets out an impressive list of traditionally lucrative smaller sectors now reserved for black Zimbabweans.
Among the "sectors reserved against foreign investment" are hairdressers, beauty salons, employment and advertising agencies and bakeries. Whites and foreigners will no longer be allowed to open estate agencies or valet services, nor will they be allowed to engage in the retail trade or grow cash crops.
"This comes down to loot and pillage," a Tsvangirai aide said.
"It disqualifies a lot of black-owned foreign companies, including ones from South Africa, which shows it has nothing to do with black empowerment. They (Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party] just want things for free like the farms."
Mr Tsvangirai, the head of the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, met Mr Mugabe to register his disapproval of the new law. The 84-year-old president made the astonishing claim that he "knew nothing about it".
The regulations were passed by the Zanu-PF-dominated parliament in 2007 but put on ice, leading many to believe they'd been permanently shelved. They were quietly published last Friday, exactly a decade since Mr Mugabe launched a violence-riddled land reform programme that has turfed about 4,000 white farmers off their land and seen Zimbabwe's agricultural production plummet. The first white farm invasions were in February 2000.
South African lawyer Willie Spies, who has fought to protect white farmers from Mr Mugabe's land grab said: "The new development calls for more drastic measures by the South African government to assist its citizens affected by Mugabe's controversial policies."
Mr Tsvangirai said: "The regulations would have scared off foreign investors, already jittery about Zimbabwe, as well as disenfranchising citizens."
Only this month the former opposition leader assured the World Economic Forum in Davos that "confidence has returned" to Zimbabwe's battered economy.
Analysts said the regulations represented another slap in the face for the premier from his rival, who has been bolstered by South African president Jacob Zuma's recent taking of sides during negotiations to revive a stalled unity deal signed in September 2008.
Mr Zuma told Mr Tsvangirai he should be "more flexible" in what looked like a plea for the MDC leader to drop his demand that Mr Mugabe's central bank governor and attorney general be replaced.
Mr Mugabe insists he will make no concessions until western sanctions on him and 200 close associates are removed.
Published Date: 13 February 2010
By Jane Fields in Harare
WHITE people will no longer be able to open hairdressers, advertising agencies or bakeries in Zimbabwe under black empowerment regulations hastily signed into law by president Robert Mugabe's side of the government.
Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr Mugabe's estranged prime minister, described the new law as "null and void" because he had not been consulted. But analysts say he will likely be unable to reverse it.
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Regulations force executives of white-owned companies with assets of more than £320,000 to commit to hand over 51 per cent of their shares to black Zimbabweans within 75 days of 1 March – or face five years in jail.
The executives cannot choose their new shareholders: they must pick from a database set up by the empowerment ministry, headed by former secret service operative Saviour Kasukuwere, who has vast business interests of his own.
"This says to investors: Don't you dare come here," said political analyst John Makumbe, of the University of Zimbabwe.
The new regulations will affect several London-listed banks and mines: Barclays Bank and Old Mutual have a significant presence in Zimbabwe. The law also sets out an impressive list of traditionally lucrative smaller sectors now reserved for black Zimbabweans.
Among the "sectors reserved against foreign investment" are hairdressers, beauty salons, employment and advertising agencies and bakeries. Whites and foreigners will no longer be allowed to open estate agencies or valet services, nor will they be allowed to engage in the retail trade or grow cash crops.
"This comes down to loot and pillage," a Tsvangirai aide said.
"It disqualifies a lot of black-owned foreign companies, including ones from South Africa, which shows it has nothing to do with black empowerment. They (Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party] just want things for free like the farms."
Mr Tsvangirai, the head of the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, met Mr Mugabe to register his disapproval of the new law. The 84-year-old president made the astonishing claim that he "knew nothing about it".
The regulations were passed by the Zanu-PF-dominated parliament in 2007 but put on ice, leading many to believe they'd been permanently shelved. They were quietly published last Friday, exactly a decade since Mr Mugabe launched a violence-riddled land reform programme that has turfed about 4,000 white farmers off their land and seen Zimbabwe's agricultural production plummet. The first white farm invasions were in February 2000.
South African lawyer Willie Spies, who has fought to protect white farmers from Mr Mugabe's land grab said: "The new development calls for more drastic measures by the South African government to assist its citizens affected by Mugabe's controversial policies."
Mr Tsvangirai said: "The regulations would have scared off foreign investors, already jittery about Zimbabwe, as well as disenfranchising citizens."
Only this month the former opposition leader assured the World Economic Forum in Davos that "confidence has returned" to Zimbabwe's battered economy.
Analysts said the regulations represented another slap in the face for the premier from his rival, who has been bolstered by South African president Jacob Zuma's recent taking of sides during negotiations to revive a stalled unity deal signed in September 2008.
Mr Zuma told Mr Tsvangirai he should be "more flexible" in what looked like a plea for the MDC leader to drop his demand that Mr Mugabe's central bank governor and attorney general be replaced.
Mr Mugabe insists he will make no concessions until western sanctions on him and 200 close associates are removed.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Soul train visits Zimbabwe - report by Lior Kaminsky
כנר על הגולה
קומץ של יהודים חיים בין שמונה מיליון תושביה השחורים של זימבבואה. בית הכנסת נשרף בנסיבות לא ברורות, ההתבוללות צמצמה את הקהילה והתקשורת עם העולם רעועה - אבל צלילי כינור יהודי חודרים אל הלב. יומן מסע אישי
ליאור קמינצקי
פורסם: 26.08.09, 21:02
אני נוחת בבולאוויו שבזימבבואה. לא ממש ברור לי אם זהו באמת שדה התעופה או אוהל מתכת מאולתר באיזה מחנה נוער. כמו בכל מקום אחר במסעי בדרום-אפריקה, אף כאן מחכה לי אשת הקשר בשדה התעופה, אלא שהפעם אני נתקל בבעיה: פקיד הקבלה מסרב לתת לי להתקדם בטענה שאין לי ויזת עבודה.
הניסיונות להסביר שמדובר בשליחות, במסע הופעות שנועד לגעת בליבותיהם של יהודים בקהילות נידחות ברחבי העולם לא ממש עוזרים. רגע לפני שנראה היה שזהו הסוף למסע, אשת הקשר נכנסת פתאום פנימה ומתערבת בנעשה. בעברית קלוקלת היא אומרת לי "שתוק, ואל תוסיף לדבר". במיומנות ובביטחון היא מדברת על לבו של השומר ומרגיעה שלא מדובר בהופעה אלא באירוע פרטי של אחד מידידי הקהילה. אירוע זה כשלעצמו לאו דווקא דבר חריג, סתם ביורוקרטיה מוכרת המעצבנת את כולנו, אלא שזו רק ההתחלה בביקורי במדינה.
לבן בחלום שחור
אל זימבבואה הגעתי כחלק ממסע מטעם ארגון "ציפור הנפש" השולח אמנים למקומות נידחים כדי להביא אליהם את ישראל והיהדות. האמנים מעניקים לחברי הקהילות מעט מזון רוחני - מזון של שייכות, שמספק להם כבוד וגאווה דרך האומה והמסורת אליה הם משתייכים, אך ממנה הם גם כל-כך רחוקים.
מאחר שמדובר בקהילות קטנות, פעמים בעלות משפחות ספורות בלבד, לרוב אין מורה דרך רוחני ואקטיבי שיפיח חיוּת במבני בתי הכנסת היפים, אך שוממים. נישואי תערובת ומחסור בחינוך יהודי מכלים עם הזמן את העבר העשיר, ועתיד כמעט שאין בטווח נראה לעין. אלה פניה של הגולה המרוחקת, לא ה"מיין סטרים" שאנו מכירים בניו-יורק או לוס אנג'לס - שם אני חי בשנים האחרונות לצורך לימודי הדוקטורט שלי כמוזיקאי, וכמובן לצורך הופעות.
בזימבבואה, מדינה שבה שמונה מיליון שחורים ורק כ-30 אלף לבנים, פנים מערביות הן מראה בולט לעין. אנחנו נכנסים למכונית ישנה, להערכתי כבת 20 שנה, ורק במהלך הנסיעה הארוכה אני מבחין שאני בעצם זוכה לשבת באחת ממכוניות הפאר כאן בעיר הגדולה. כשאחוז אבטלה עומד על 94 אחוז, לרוב התושבים אין מכוניות כלל, והם פשוט מהלכים ממקום למקום כשסליהם על ראשם ובגדים מרוטים על גופם.
עכשיו אני קולט במלוא העוצמה: אנחנו באפריקה. זו אפריקה שרואים בסרטים, לא קייפ-טאון היפה, אלא שכונות עוני ומצוקה. אנחנו מגיעים לאזור הקהילה היהודית, מחנים ונכנסים לאזור מוגן עם שלושה בתים גדולים. בבית המארחים שלי בריכה, ושני פועלים שחורים העמלים על תיקונה. אשת הקשר מראה לי את הדרך לחדרי ומתחילה לטרוח בהכנת הארוחה. היא מציעה לי עוף שהיא מוציאה מן המקפיא ואומרת שבקרוב נאכל, אלא שאז מתברר שיש הפסקת חשמל. "ברוך הבא לזימבבואה", היא אומרת, "ואל תחשוב שזה מקרה, זה קורה כאן כל הזמן ואין מה לעשות". היא מניחה את העוף בנקודה שטופת שמש כדי שיתחמם מעט, אך העוף בשלו ואנחנו אוכלים אותו כמעט קפוא.
דרור יקרא ברחוב
יש לי כשלוש שעות פנויות עד להופעה ואני מעוניין להסתובב בעיר ולהתרשם. אנחנו נכנסים למין שוק פתוח עמוס במוכרים אלא שהסחורה של כולם היא גרביים ונעליים, וגם קצת בגדים. כולם יושבים בצפיפות, מחכים לפרנסה שאין מי שיביאה. הביוב זורם חופשי לעיני כל, את הבורות בכבישים אף אחד לא טורח לכסות, וריקשות שנמשכות בכוח בני-אדם משמשות כמוניות.
ברחוב של בולאוויו אני פוגש קבוצה של ילדים מקומיים שמסכימה להצטרף אליי לקונצרט מאולתר. יחד אנחנו מנגנים ושרים את "נקוסי סיקללה", המנונה של דרום אפריקה. לאחר מכן אני מציע מעט ממרכולתי ומנגן להם את "דרור יקרא" התימני, בעוד שהם מוחאים כפיים ונהנים מהחוויה. כאות תודה אני קונה לכל אחד תפוז - דבר טריוויאלי לכאורה, שנראה כי עבורם היה מאורע משמעותי.
הקונצרט המאולתר ברחוב בבולאוויו (צילום חובבים)
אני שב לאזור הקהילה, שמורכבת מקומץ של משפחות. מצבם אמנם טוב פי כמה מרוב תושביה של זימבבואה, אבל כשהמדינה בגרעון עצום וללא אמצעים - המצב משפיע ישירות על כל המערכת והשירותים האלמנטריים הנדרשים לקיומה. אינטרנט כמעט שאין, וקווי הטלפון המשובשים מקשים על הקשר עם העולם החיצון.
תרבות הפנאי - סרטים והופעות - אינם מצרך נפוץ, ובשל כך אני זוכה לתפוסה מלאה באולם בו מתקיימת ההופעה. בקונצרט נכחו חברי הקהילה, אנשים מבוגרים בני 70-80, שאליהם הצטרף גם קהל לא-יהודי, שחורים ולבנים. אני מופיע לבדי, אך מזמין גם את הקהל להצטרף ולשיר ולנגן בכלי הקשה שונים שהבאתי במיוחד כדי לעשות שמח ולהעשיר את ההופעה. הצלילים עושים את שלהם ומוצאים את דרכם אל לב האנשים, ששוב ושוב מודים לי על תרומתי לקהילה.
מה עשיתי רע?
זימבבואה היא מדינה עם צורת שלטון דיקטטורית, שלטון שלא התחלף מזה כ-30 שנה. פציית פה על הממשל הינה עבירה על החוק ודינה כלא - וכלא זה לא נעים, בלשון המעטה. אני קולט את האווירה, את החשש באוויר, ופתאום החשש לשלומי מתחיל לחלחל. לא שעשיתי משהו מיוחד, אלא שכדרכי אני מדבר, מסתקרן וסומך על האחר, ובמדינה עם חוקים אחרים, יש דברים שאסור לומר, ובפירוש מומלץ להיזהר.
בדרך מהרארה, עיר הבירה, אל עבר שדה התעופה אני עובר בראש על שאלותיי התמימות, על ההופעות ועל האנשים שפגשתי ומקווה שבאמת לא עברתי על כל חוק או עיצבנתי בדבריי מי מבעלי השררה. אני נותן לנהג, חבר הקהילה, את מספר הטלפון שלי ואומר לו ברצינות גמורה: "אם אני מתקשר בלי ממש לדבר, סימן שאני בצרה צרורה, תרים מיד טלפון לקונסוליה". אני לא סומך רק עליו ומוודא גם עם אשתי שיש לה את מספרו של איש הקשר הנוכחי.
אני נכנס לשדה התעופה, שולח את המזוודות ועובר בשלום את דלפק הקבלה, נשימה לרווחה. אני עובר הלאה דרך השער המגנטי והנה אני שם לב שמעיינים היטב בדרכוני הישראלי. מגיע אליי אדם שנראה כאחראי ושואל אותי מה קורה בארץ ולמה יש כל-כך הרבה הרוגים, כשברור לי שאינו מדבר על ישראלים. אני עונה לו כדרכי ש"בעזרת השם, יבוא שלום במהרה והלוואי ונחיה כולנו בשלום ובאחווה". הוא לא משתכנע ודורש ממני להמתין. רגע אחרי הוא אומר לי לקפל את הדברים וללכת בעקבותיו. בלי הסברים.
אני אורז את הציוד האישי ואנחנו נכנסים למעלית ויורדים שתי קומות, הרחק מהמפלס הציבורי. יוצאים מן המעלית ואני רואה דלת המובילה למסדרון חשוך. אני עוצר ואומר שאני רוצה לקבל הסבר ולא מוכן עוד להמשיך. הוא אומר שיש איזו בעיה במזוודה,
חפץ לא ברור ומסמן לי לא לדאוג. אני דואג עוד יותר ומתפלל שחששותיי לא יתממשו. ידיי רועדות, אני משנן פרקי תהלים ומקווה לטוב. אנחנו נכנסים למסדרון החשוך ואני מבחין במזוודות, מתחיל מעט להירגע. יושבת שם פקידה ששואלת אותי אם אני זוכר משהו חשוד במזוודתי. אני אומר שלא, והנה מבין הבגדים היא מוציאה אבן גדולה. "מה זה?" היא שואלת, "קניתי את זה כמזכרת", אני עונה ומראה לה תווי אדם חקוקים עליו בצורה אמנותית. היא מסתכלת עליי שוב ושולחת אותי לדרכי.
על המטוס אני שמח שזה מאחוריי, ולאט-לאט נרגע. אני יכול לסכם שביקורי בזימבבואה בהחלט היה חוויה - אולי קצת מפחידה, אבל גם מרתקת ונפלאה. היעד הבא: הקהילה היהודית בנמיביה.
ליאור קמינצקי, בוגר ישיבת הסדר, מתגורר מזה כשלוש שנים בלוס אנג'לס לצורך לימודי דוקטורט בביצוע כינור באוניברסיטת דרום קליפורניה.
קומץ של יהודים חיים בין שמונה מיליון תושביה השחורים של זימבבואה. בית הכנסת נשרף בנסיבות לא ברורות, ההתבוללות צמצמה את הקהילה והתקשורת עם העולם רעועה - אבל צלילי כינור יהודי חודרים אל הלב. יומן מסע אישי
ליאור קמינצקי
פורסם: 26.08.09, 21:02
אני נוחת בבולאוויו שבזימבבואה. לא ממש ברור לי אם זהו באמת שדה התעופה או אוהל מתכת מאולתר באיזה מחנה נוער. כמו בכל מקום אחר במסעי בדרום-אפריקה, אף כאן מחכה לי אשת הקשר בשדה התעופה, אלא שהפעם אני נתקל בבעיה: פקיד הקבלה מסרב לתת לי להתקדם בטענה שאין לי ויזת עבודה.
הניסיונות להסביר שמדובר בשליחות, במסע הופעות שנועד לגעת בליבותיהם של יהודים בקהילות נידחות ברחבי העולם לא ממש עוזרים. רגע לפני שנראה היה שזהו הסוף למסע, אשת הקשר נכנסת פתאום פנימה ומתערבת בנעשה. בעברית קלוקלת היא אומרת לי "שתוק, ואל תוסיף לדבר". במיומנות ובביטחון היא מדברת על לבו של השומר ומרגיעה שלא מדובר בהופעה אלא באירוע פרטי של אחד מידידי הקהילה. אירוע זה כשלעצמו לאו דווקא דבר חריג, סתם ביורוקרטיה מוכרת המעצבנת את כולנו, אלא שזו רק ההתחלה בביקורי במדינה.
לבן בחלום שחור
אל זימבבואה הגעתי כחלק ממסע מטעם ארגון "ציפור הנפש" השולח אמנים למקומות נידחים כדי להביא אליהם את ישראל והיהדות. האמנים מעניקים לחברי הקהילות מעט מזון רוחני - מזון של שייכות, שמספק להם כבוד וגאווה דרך האומה והמסורת אליה הם משתייכים, אך ממנה הם גם כל-כך רחוקים.
מאחר שמדובר בקהילות קטנות, פעמים בעלות משפחות ספורות בלבד, לרוב אין מורה דרך רוחני ואקטיבי שיפיח חיוּת במבני בתי הכנסת היפים, אך שוממים. נישואי תערובת ומחסור בחינוך יהודי מכלים עם הזמן את העבר העשיר, ועתיד כמעט שאין בטווח נראה לעין. אלה פניה של הגולה המרוחקת, לא ה"מיין סטרים" שאנו מכירים בניו-יורק או לוס אנג'לס - שם אני חי בשנים האחרונות לצורך לימודי הדוקטורט שלי כמוזיקאי, וכמובן לצורך הופעות.
בזימבבואה, מדינה שבה שמונה מיליון שחורים ורק כ-30 אלף לבנים, פנים מערביות הן מראה בולט לעין. אנחנו נכנסים למכונית ישנה, להערכתי כבת 20 שנה, ורק במהלך הנסיעה הארוכה אני מבחין שאני בעצם זוכה לשבת באחת ממכוניות הפאר כאן בעיר הגדולה. כשאחוז אבטלה עומד על 94 אחוז, לרוב התושבים אין מכוניות כלל, והם פשוט מהלכים ממקום למקום כשסליהם על ראשם ובגדים מרוטים על גופם.
עכשיו אני קולט במלוא העוצמה: אנחנו באפריקה. זו אפריקה שרואים בסרטים, לא קייפ-טאון היפה, אלא שכונות עוני ומצוקה. אנחנו מגיעים לאזור הקהילה היהודית, מחנים ונכנסים לאזור מוגן עם שלושה בתים גדולים. בבית המארחים שלי בריכה, ושני פועלים שחורים העמלים על תיקונה. אשת הקשר מראה לי את הדרך לחדרי ומתחילה לטרוח בהכנת הארוחה. היא מציעה לי עוף שהיא מוציאה מן המקפיא ואומרת שבקרוב נאכל, אלא שאז מתברר שיש הפסקת חשמל. "ברוך הבא לזימבבואה", היא אומרת, "ואל תחשוב שזה מקרה, זה קורה כאן כל הזמן ואין מה לעשות". היא מניחה את העוף בנקודה שטופת שמש כדי שיתחמם מעט, אך העוף בשלו ואנחנו אוכלים אותו כמעט קפוא.
דרור יקרא ברחוב
יש לי כשלוש שעות פנויות עד להופעה ואני מעוניין להסתובב בעיר ולהתרשם. אנחנו נכנסים למין שוק פתוח עמוס במוכרים אלא שהסחורה של כולם היא גרביים ונעליים, וגם קצת בגדים. כולם יושבים בצפיפות, מחכים לפרנסה שאין מי שיביאה. הביוב זורם חופשי לעיני כל, את הבורות בכבישים אף אחד לא טורח לכסות, וריקשות שנמשכות בכוח בני-אדם משמשות כמוניות.
ברחוב של בולאוויו אני פוגש קבוצה של ילדים מקומיים שמסכימה להצטרף אליי לקונצרט מאולתר. יחד אנחנו מנגנים ושרים את "נקוסי סיקללה", המנונה של דרום אפריקה. לאחר מכן אני מציע מעט ממרכולתי ומנגן להם את "דרור יקרא" התימני, בעוד שהם מוחאים כפיים ונהנים מהחוויה. כאות תודה אני קונה לכל אחד תפוז - דבר טריוויאלי לכאורה, שנראה כי עבורם היה מאורע משמעותי.
הקונצרט המאולתר ברחוב בבולאוויו (צילום חובבים)
אני שב לאזור הקהילה, שמורכבת מקומץ של משפחות. מצבם אמנם טוב פי כמה מרוב תושביה של זימבבואה, אבל כשהמדינה בגרעון עצום וללא אמצעים - המצב משפיע ישירות על כל המערכת והשירותים האלמנטריים הנדרשים לקיומה. אינטרנט כמעט שאין, וקווי הטלפון המשובשים מקשים על הקשר עם העולם החיצון.
תרבות הפנאי - סרטים והופעות - אינם מצרך נפוץ, ובשל כך אני זוכה לתפוסה מלאה באולם בו מתקיימת ההופעה. בקונצרט נכחו חברי הקהילה, אנשים מבוגרים בני 70-80, שאליהם הצטרף גם קהל לא-יהודי, שחורים ולבנים. אני מופיע לבדי, אך מזמין גם את הקהל להצטרף ולשיר ולנגן בכלי הקשה שונים שהבאתי במיוחד כדי לעשות שמח ולהעשיר את ההופעה. הצלילים עושים את שלהם ומוצאים את דרכם אל לב האנשים, ששוב ושוב מודים לי על תרומתי לקהילה.
מה עשיתי רע?
זימבבואה היא מדינה עם צורת שלטון דיקטטורית, שלטון שלא התחלף מזה כ-30 שנה. פציית פה על הממשל הינה עבירה על החוק ודינה כלא - וכלא זה לא נעים, בלשון המעטה. אני קולט את האווירה, את החשש באוויר, ופתאום החשש לשלומי מתחיל לחלחל. לא שעשיתי משהו מיוחד, אלא שכדרכי אני מדבר, מסתקרן וסומך על האחר, ובמדינה עם חוקים אחרים, יש דברים שאסור לומר, ובפירוש מומלץ להיזהר.
בדרך מהרארה, עיר הבירה, אל עבר שדה התעופה אני עובר בראש על שאלותיי התמימות, על ההופעות ועל האנשים שפגשתי ומקווה שבאמת לא עברתי על כל חוק או עיצבנתי בדבריי מי מבעלי השררה. אני נותן לנהג, חבר הקהילה, את מספר הטלפון שלי ואומר לו ברצינות גמורה: "אם אני מתקשר בלי ממש לדבר, סימן שאני בצרה צרורה, תרים מיד טלפון לקונסוליה". אני לא סומך רק עליו ומוודא גם עם אשתי שיש לה את מספרו של איש הקשר הנוכחי.
אני נכנס לשדה התעופה, שולח את המזוודות ועובר בשלום את דלפק הקבלה, נשימה לרווחה. אני עובר הלאה דרך השער המגנטי והנה אני שם לב שמעיינים היטב בדרכוני הישראלי. מגיע אליי אדם שנראה כאחראי ושואל אותי מה קורה בארץ ולמה יש כל-כך הרבה הרוגים, כשברור לי שאינו מדבר על ישראלים. אני עונה לו כדרכי ש"בעזרת השם, יבוא שלום במהרה והלוואי ונחיה כולנו בשלום ובאחווה". הוא לא משתכנע ודורש ממני להמתין. רגע אחרי הוא אומר לי לקפל את הדברים וללכת בעקבותיו. בלי הסברים.
אני אורז את הציוד האישי ואנחנו נכנסים למעלית ויורדים שתי קומות, הרחק מהמפלס הציבורי. יוצאים מן המעלית ואני רואה דלת המובילה למסדרון חשוך. אני עוצר ואומר שאני רוצה לקבל הסבר ולא מוכן עוד להמשיך. הוא אומר שיש איזו בעיה במזוודה,
חפץ לא ברור ומסמן לי לא לדאוג. אני דואג עוד יותר ומתפלל שחששותיי לא יתממשו. ידיי רועדות, אני משנן פרקי תהלים ומקווה לטוב. אנחנו נכנסים למסדרון החשוך ואני מבחין במזוודות, מתחיל מעט להירגע. יושבת שם פקידה ששואלת אותי אם אני זוכר משהו חשוד במזוודתי. אני אומר שלא, והנה מבין הבגדים היא מוציאה אבן גדולה. "מה זה?" היא שואלת, "קניתי את זה כמזכרת", אני עונה ומראה לה תווי אדם חקוקים עליו בצורה אמנותית. היא מסתכלת עליי שוב ושולחת אותי לדרכי.
על המטוס אני שמח שזה מאחוריי, ולאט-לאט נרגע. אני יכול לסכם שביקורי בזימבבואה בהחלט היה חוויה - אולי קצת מפחידה, אבל גם מרתקת ונפלאה. היעד הבא: הקהילה היהודית בנמיביה.
ליאור קמינצקי, בוגר ישיבת הסדר, מתגורר מזה כשלוש שנים בלוס אנג'לס לצורך לימודי דוקטורט בביצוע כינור באוניברסיטת דרום קליפורניה.
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