Part of a painting by Bulawayo artist Marshall Baron was used recently for
the cover of TOGETHER, a book of poetry and prose by the late Julius
Chingono & John Eppel, from Bulawayo. Published by UNO Press,
AmaBooks. To view Marshalls paintings, music reviews, bio, messages see www.marshallbaron.com Also Amabooks, on www.amabooksbyo.com
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=241947612509496&set=a.24177566586002
For more on Julius Chingono
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihr9aPejsqI
poetry reading
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWAj0sjOiUU
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY72HZ3nUes
Friday, September 02, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft library opens in Bulawayo
LIBRARY IN BULAWAYO NAMED IN HONOUR OF RABBI MOSHE SILBERHAFT – JULY 2011
In addition to the economic plight of the country as a whole, HIV-AIDS and illness in general has greatly added to the daily hardship of life in Zimbabwe. Particularly poignant is the plight of countless children who as a result have no-one to care for them. For several hundred such children, last month’s opening of a small library in Bulawayo provided a much-needed educational and recreational facility. Perhaps even more importantly, however, it demonstrated that there are people, not just across the border but across the ocean as well and of different races and creeds, who still care about them.
The opening of the Rabbi Moshe Library at Bulawayo’s Vulindledla Youth Centre took place on 25 July, in the presence of Bulawayo Mayor Councillor T P Moyo and various other dignitaries. Named after Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, Spiritual Leader and CEO of the African Jewish Congress (AJC), it brought to fruition a trans-continental partnership involving the AJC, Australian Books for Children in Africa (ABCA) and the Support Group of Families of Terminally Ill (SGOFOTI). The latter was founded and is co-headed by Ruth Bolnick-Feigenbaum, a prominent member of the local Jewish community of many years standing.
The origins of the project go back several years ago, when Sheryl Furman, formerly of Marquard in the Free State and today living in Melbourne, sent Rabbi Silberhaft several hundred books on behalf of ABCA for distribution in Zimbabwe. After discussing the matter with Feigenbaum, it was decided to give half to SGOFOTI and give remainder to various primary schools in Bulawayo. An approach was then made to ABCA donate a larger consignment of books to SGOFOTI with the aim of establishing a library for primary school learners.
In Australia, David Grieves duly undertook to provide this on behalf of ABCA. As part of his fundraising effort, he sold bookmarks made out of original Zimbabwean currency notes from the hyper-inflation years, when a billion Zimbabwe dollars barely paid for a week’s groceries. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee also chipped in by contributing towards the transport of the books, over 3000 of which were ultimately sent, and shelving for the library.
Grieves, Rabbi Silberhaft and AJC executive member Ann Harris travelled to Bulawayo to take part in the opening function. The latter commenced with prayers from representatives of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities, respected delivered by Hylton Solomon, President of the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation, Father Day and Sheikh Ishmail Jassat. Afterwards, short addresses were given by the mayor, Grieves, Feigenbaum and Rabbi Silberhaft, and the 300 children then sang traditional songs. A film crew from the SABC was also present to record the occasion, with a view to its inclusion in a forthcoming documentary on Rabbi Silberhaft and his first 18 years as the Southern African country communities’ rabbi. The documentary, which is being produced by Gus Silber, is scheduled to be shown in November.
In her closing remarks Patricia Tshabalala, who co-heads the running of SGOFOTI with Feigenbaum, spoke with particular warmth about “her rabbi” Rabbi Silberhaft, whom she described as a kind, loving and caring shepherd of his Master’s sheep. She stressed how much the library meant to the children in her care, since they now had a sanctuary in which to “hide from the evils of this world”, increase their knowledge and no longer be lonely.
“Please tell the Jewish community that I thank them for their love, care and support and for making me and my people part of their family” she said.
Friday, May 13, 2011
James Earl Ray - tried to escape to Rhodesia
[source : http://www.southerntimesafrica.com ]
Harare and Windhoek - The man who killed iconic American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jnr, in April 1968 - James Earl Ray - tried to escape to Rhodesia after the assassination and was arrested in Britain while finalizing his plans.
The revelation that the assassin wanted to secure safety in white supremacist Rhodesia in the book 'Hellhound on His Trail' by historical novelist Hampton Sides last year, lends credence to long-held suspicions that Ray was not acting alone and was paid to murder MLK Jnr.
The claim that Ray was a lone gunman acting on his own volition has been questioned for decades due to the planning behind the assassination and the large sums of cash that were evidently at the killer's disposal.
A jailhouse note allegedly written by Ray states: 'I got a murder charge instead of (US$) 10 000 for listening to promises.'
Re-examining MLK Jnr's murder in 1977-79, a US Congressional Committee found that Ray's 'predominant motive lay in an expectation of monetary gain'.
While there is no direct evidence that Rhodesia itself was involved in the assassination, the revelations provide a fascinating look at how white supremacists appeared to work together towards a common purposes across several countries.
'Hellhound on his Trail' is an intriguing account of the events leading to MLK Jnr's assassination; the international manhunt for the assassin across America, Canada and Britain; as well as the arrest, trial, imprisonment and death of Ray in jail in 1998 due to liver failure.
The author used hundreds of sources - including other books, newspaper cuttings, interviews, FBI files, memoirs, and official documents - to reconstruct how Ray stalked MLK Jnr, killed him and was arrested in London en route to Rhodesia.
Ray developed an interest in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in Puerto Vallarta where he bought a copy of US News & World Report in which he found an advertisement soliciting immigrants to that country, according to 'Hellhound on His Trail'.
'The idea appealed to him so much that on December 28, 1967, he wrote to the American-Southern Africa Council in Washington, DC to inquire about relocating to Salisbury,' Sides writes.
According to Sides, Ray - using the alias 'Galt' - at the time, wrote: 'My reason for writing is that I am considering immigrating to Rhodesia,' adding that 'representatives from the John Birch Society had referred him to the council.'
Another book by Gerald Posner, 'Killing the Dream', says Ray made a number of contacts with the California Chapter of the Friends of Rhodesia.
He was put in touch with this group by the Los Angeles area John Birch Society, which also helped Ray obtain information on how to get to Rhodesia where he could work with Ian Smith who 'was doing a good job'.
Ray made a number of trips to Orange County where he met the Free Rhodesia Committee.
While in Los Angeles, he wrote to the president of the California chapter of the Friends of Rhodesia raising more questions about immigration and inquiring about how he might subscribe to a pro-Ian Smith journal titled 'Rhodesian Commentary'.
Ray was apparently an occasional reader of 'Thunderbolt', a hate rag published out of Birmingham by the virulently segregationist National States Rights Party.
He was enamored of the party chairman, a flamboyant, outrageous race-baiter named Jesse Benjamin Stoner.
Born at the foot of Tennessee's Lookout Mountain, a Ku Klux Klansman since his teens, JB Stoner believed – literally - that Anglo-Saxons were God's chosen people.
Among his more memorable statements, Stoner called Hitler 'too moderate', referred to blacks as 'an extension of the ape family', and said that 'being a Jew should be a crime punishable by death'.
In 1968 Ray became an active volunteer for George Wallace's bid for the presidency.
The former Governor of Alabama - a die-hard segregationist - appealed to people like Ray for whom racism was a fact of life.
Wallace's running mate was right wing Air Force general, Curtis LeMay.
LeMay was also a member of the notorious Orange County Lincoln Club which played a critical role in getting Richard Nixon elected that year.
Another writer, George McMillan in his book 'The Making of an Assassin: The Life of James Earl Ray,' said of the assassin: 'He came to love German politics. He carried a picture of Hitler, his idol. He would show it to people.
'Jimmy talked 'Hitler politics'. Jimmy had become an impassioned proponent of the Nazi philosophy. His pledge to Nazism was itself peculiarly satisfying.'
According to McMillan, James Earl Ray was determined to go to Germany and give up his US citizenship, and he signed up to join the Army at age 17.
'By then he was giving the Heil Hitler salute in public, did it when he visited home. His first army assignment was at Nuremberg, where he served as a jeep driver in an MP unit.
'As MP he would beat up black GI's who flirted with Germans. What appealed to Jimmy in the first place about Hitler was that he would make the US an all-white country, no Jews or Negroes.
'Jimmy had really believed he could be in on reviving the Nazi Party.'
Such influences probably left Ray with the firm belief that he was better off getting Rhodesian citizenship.
He was an ardent believer in the cause of white rule and racial apartheid that he planned, as he later put it, to 'serve two or three years in one of them mercenary armies' in Southern Africa.
According to 'Hellhound on His Trail', after shooting MLK Jnr in April 1968 in Memphis, Ray was headed for Georgia, and possibly Mexico, although the larger goal was to reach Southern Africa.
Sides says: 'Rhodesia – the word dangled before him like a banner.'
He knew that under the pariah government of Ian Smith, Rhodesia observed no extradition treaties with the United States.
Ray liked what Smith was doing in Rhodesia, and he had an idea that if he could ever reach Salisbury, the people there would welcome him as a hero, grant him instant citizenship, and harbor him from any attempts at prosecution.
'I thought I was going to get away,' he is quoted as having said after he was arrested. 'I thought I could get to Africa and those folks over there wouldn't send me back.'
And because Rhodesia was an English-speaking country, he thought he would blend with the population.
Sides says he wasn't exactly sure what he would do once he got to Rhodesia and considered the possibilities of becoming a bartender, a locksmith or serve as a mercenary.
The latter option would have been easy for him to do as largely apartheid and CIA-funded mercenary groups were operational virtually across the whole of Southern Africa and Ray had military training.
Another intriguing link with Rhodesia originated in Ray's hometown of St Louis, through a wealthy patent attorney named John Sutherland.
Sutherland had a portfolio of stocks and other securities worth nearly half million US dollars - investments that included sizeable holdings in Rhodesia.
One of St Louis's most ardent segregationists, he was founder of the St Louis White Citizens Council and an active member of the John Birth Society (he was a personal friend of its founder, Robert Welch).
He had become immersed in a right-wing business organization called the Southern States Industrial Council.
Such associations drew Ray closer to Rhodesia.
'…the idea of Rhodesia burned in his imagination, the promise of sanctuary and refuge, the possibility of living in a society where people understood.'
Before he could get there, however Ray was determined to make a brief detour to Atlanta where he intended to pick up his few belongings.
It may have seemed brazenly risky to head straight for the hometown of the man he'd just killed, yet there was also a clever counter-intuition in such a course.
The move also raised suspicion that Ray was not working alone and was confident his powerful co-conspirators could protect him.
As he passed through Holly Springs, New Albany and Tupelo, Ray trolled radio waves for news on the assassination.
Somewhere along the way, he heard a bulletin that the police were looking for a white Mustang driven by a 'well-dressed white man'.
Hearing this bit of news changed everything and he knew he immediately had to ditch the Mustang and he would have to abandon the thought of going through Mexico.
Instead, he would head for Canada and then try to get to Rhodesia from there.
Ray was also sure that the state of Alabama – from where George Wallace hailed - would praise him for killing MLK Jnr and shield him from his pursuers.
'Hellhound on His Trail' then chronicles Ray's escape into Canada, assuming a new name and passport under the name Ramon Sneyd, before flying to London, then to Portugal, and back to London with the hope of proceeding to Rhodesia.
Ray's brother, John, who was interrogated by the FBI during the manhunt, recalls visiting his young brother in prison during an earlier incarceration in an American jail from where he later escaped.
The FBI agent recalls getting an earful from the young Ray about Ian Smith and the good job he was doing down in Rhodesia.
John Ray characterized himself as 'a mild segregationist' and soon he confided his frustration to the FBI agents.
'What's all the excitement about?' he wondered aloud. 'He only killed a nigger. If he'd killed a white man, you wouldn't be here.'
According to 'Hellhound on His Trail', Ray - using the name Ramon Sneyd - on May 7 touched down at Heathrow Airport in London in preparation for the trip to Rhodesia.
He stayed in London for ten days; holed up in his room, reading newspapers and magazines – and desperately trying to find a way to Rhodesia.
When he was finally arrested he was trying to board a flight from London to Brussels to get more information on how to get to Rhodesia and join a mercenary outfit.
He was also found in possession of a Liberty Chief pistol.
Asked why he was carrying a gun, Ray stammered. 'Uh, well. I'm really thinking of going on to Rhodesia and things aren't too good there just now.'
The contents of his suitcase were quickly inventoried, and - in the words of one Scotland Yard official - 'proved most enlightening'.
Among other items, investigators found a map of Portugal, a guide to Rhodesia, two books on hypnotism, and a well-marked paperback titled 'Psycho-Cybernetics'.
None of the newspapers or newsmagazines later mentioned how close Ray had come to getting away with his crime - or that if he'd made it to Rhodesia, extraditing him would have been nearly impossible.
Ray was never reconciled to his capture at Heathrow and his failure to make it to Rhodesia and kept reliving it in his mind.
If he'd only made it onto that plane to Brussels, he was confident that he could have found a cheap way to reach Rhodesia, or Angola.
He came within a hairbreadth of making it.
'He just hated black people,' one officer recalled. 'He said so on many occasions. He called them 'niggers'.
'In fact, he said he was going to Africa to shoot some more. He mentioned the (French) Foreign Legion.
'He seemed to have some sort of wild fantasy that he was going to do something of this nature.'
• Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr and the International Hunt for His Assassin, by Hampton Sides. Published by Doubleday.Comments
Leave a comment - You have to be logged in first to make comments
Harare and Windhoek - The man who killed iconic American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jnr, in April 1968 - James Earl Ray - tried to escape to Rhodesia after the assassination and was arrested in Britain while finalizing his plans.
The revelation that the assassin wanted to secure safety in white supremacist Rhodesia in the book 'Hellhound on His Trail' by historical novelist Hampton Sides last year, lends credence to long-held suspicions that Ray was not acting alone and was paid to murder MLK Jnr.
The claim that Ray was a lone gunman acting on his own volition has been questioned for decades due to the planning behind the assassination and the large sums of cash that were evidently at the killer's disposal.
A jailhouse note allegedly written by Ray states: 'I got a murder charge instead of (US$) 10 000 for listening to promises.'
Re-examining MLK Jnr's murder in 1977-79, a US Congressional Committee found that Ray's 'predominant motive lay in an expectation of monetary gain'.
While there is no direct evidence that Rhodesia itself was involved in the assassination, the revelations provide a fascinating look at how white supremacists appeared to work together towards a common purposes across several countries.
'Hellhound on his Trail' is an intriguing account of the events leading to MLK Jnr's assassination; the international manhunt for the assassin across America, Canada and Britain; as well as the arrest, trial, imprisonment and death of Ray in jail in 1998 due to liver failure.
The author used hundreds of sources - including other books, newspaper cuttings, interviews, FBI files, memoirs, and official documents - to reconstruct how Ray stalked MLK Jnr, killed him and was arrested in London en route to Rhodesia.
Ray developed an interest in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in Puerto Vallarta where he bought a copy of US News & World Report in which he found an advertisement soliciting immigrants to that country, according to 'Hellhound on His Trail'.
'The idea appealed to him so much that on December 28, 1967, he wrote to the American-Southern Africa Council in Washington, DC to inquire about relocating to Salisbury,' Sides writes.
According to Sides, Ray - using the alias 'Galt' - at the time, wrote: 'My reason for writing is that I am considering immigrating to Rhodesia,' adding that 'representatives from the John Birch Society had referred him to the council.'
Another book by Gerald Posner, 'Killing the Dream', says Ray made a number of contacts with the California Chapter of the Friends of Rhodesia.
He was put in touch with this group by the Los Angeles area John Birch Society, which also helped Ray obtain information on how to get to Rhodesia where he could work with Ian Smith who 'was doing a good job'.
Ray made a number of trips to Orange County where he met the Free Rhodesia Committee.
While in Los Angeles, he wrote to the president of the California chapter of the Friends of Rhodesia raising more questions about immigration and inquiring about how he might subscribe to a pro-Ian Smith journal titled 'Rhodesian Commentary'.
Ray was apparently an occasional reader of 'Thunderbolt', a hate rag published out of Birmingham by the virulently segregationist National States Rights Party.
He was enamored of the party chairman, a flamboyant, outrageous race-baiter named Jesse Benjamin Stoner.
Born at the foot of Tennessee's Lookout Mountain, a Ku Klux Klansman since his teens, JB Stoner believed – literally - that Anglo-Saxons were God's chosen people.
Among his more memorable statements, Stoner called Hitler 'too moderate', referred to blacks as 'an extension of the ape family', and said that 'being a Jew should be a crime punishable by death'.
In 1968 Ray became an active volunteer for George Wallace's bid for the presidency.
The former Governor of Alabama - a die-hard segregationist - appealed to people like Ray for whom racism was a fact of life.
Wallace's running mate was right wing Air Force general, Curtis LeMay.
LeMay was also a member of the notorious Orange County Lincoln Club which played a critical role in getting Richard Nixon elected that year.
Another writer, George McMillan in his book 'The Making of an Assassin: The Life of James Earl Ray,' said of the assassin: 'He came to love German politics. He carried a picture of Hitler, his idol. He would show it to people.
'Jimmy talked 'Hitler politics'. Jimmy had become an impassioned proponent of the Nazi philosophy. His pledge to Nazism was itself peculiarly satisfying.'
According to McMillan, James Earl Ray was determined to go to Germany and give up his US citizenship, and he signed up to join the Army at age 17.
'By then he was giving the Heil Hitler salute in public, did it when he visited home. His first army assignment was at Nuremberg, where he served as a jeep driver in an MP unit.
'As MP he would beat up black GI's who flirted with Germans. What appealed to Jimmy in the first place about Hitler was that he would make the US an all-white country, no Jews or Negroes.
'Jimmy had really believed he could be in on reviving the Nazi Party.'
Such influences probably left Ray with the firm belief that he was better off getting Rhodesian citizenship.
He was an ardent believer in the cause of white rule and racial apartheid that he planned, as he later put it, to 'serve two or three years in one of them mercenary armies' in Southern Africa.
According to 'Hellhound on His Trail', after shooting MLK Jnr in April 1968 in Memphis, Ray was headed for Georgia, and possibly Mexico, although the larger goal was to reach Southern Africa.
Sides says: 'Rhodesia – the word dangled before him like a banner.'
He knew that under the pariah government of Ian Smith, Rhodesia observed no extradition treaties with the United States.
Ray liked what Smith was doing in Rhodesia, and he had an idea that if he could ever reach Salisbury, the people there would welcome him as a hero, grant him instant citizenship, and harbor him from any attempts at prosecution.
'I thought I was going to get away,' he is quoted as having said after he was arrested. 'I thought I could get to Africa and those folks over there wouldn't send me back.'
And because Rhodesia was an English-speaking country, he thought he would blend with the population.
Sides says he wasn't exactly sure what he would do once he got to Rhodesia and considered the possibilities of becoming a bartender, a locksmith or serve as a mercenary.
The latter option would have been easy for him to do as largely apartheid and CIA-funded mercenary groups were operational virtually across the whole of Southern Africa and Ray had military training.
Another intriguing link with Rhodesia originated in Ray's hometown of St Louis, through a wealthy patent attorney named John Sutherland.
Sutherland had a portfolio of stocks and other securities worth nearly half million US dollars - investments that included sizeable holdings in Rhodesia.
One of St Louis's most ardent segregationists, he was founder of the St Louis White Citizens Council and an active member of the John Birth Society (he was a personal friend of its founder, Robert Welch).
He had become immersed in a right-wing business organization called the Southern States Industrial Council.
Such associations drew Ray closer to Rhodesia.
'…the idea of Rhodesia burned in his imagination, the promise of sanctuary and refuge, the possibility of living in a society where people understood.'
Before he could get there, however Ray was determined to make a brief detour to Atlanta where he intended to pick up his few belongings.
It may have seemed brazenly risky to head straight for the hometown of the man he'd just killed, yet there was also a clever counter-intuition in such a course.
The move also raised suspicion that Ray was not working alone and was confident his powerful co-conspirators could protect him.
As he passed through Holly Springs, New Albany and Tupelo, Ray trolled radio waves for news on the assassination.
Somewhere along the way, he heard a bulletin that the police were looking for a white Mustang driven by a 'well-dressed white man'.
Hearing this bit of news changed everything and he knew he immediately had to ditch the Mustang and he would have to abandon the thought of going through Mexico.
Instead, he would head for Canada and then try to get to Rhodesia from there.
Ray was also sure that the state of Alabama – from where George Wallace hailed - would praise him for killing MLK Jnr and shield him from his pursuers.
'Hellhound on His Trail' then chronicles Ray's escape into Canada, assuming a new name and passport under the name Ramon Sneyd, before flying to London, then to Portugal, and back to London with the hope of proceeding to Rhodesia.
Ray's brother, John, who was interrogated by the FBI during the manhunt, recalls visiting his young brother in prison during an earlier incarceration in an American jail from where he later escaped.
The FBI agent recalls getting an earful from the young Ray about Ian Smith and the good job he was doing down in Rhodesia.
John Ray characterized himself as 'a mild segregationist' and soon he confided his frustration to the FBI agents.
'What's all the excitement about?' he wondered aloud. 'He only killed a nigger. If he'd killed a white man, you wouldn't be here.'
According to 'Hellhound on His Trail', Ray - using the name Ramon Sneyd - on May 7 touched down at Heathrow Airport in London in preparation for the trip to Rhodesia.
He stayed in London for ten days; holed up in his room, reading newspapers and magazines – and desperately trying to find a way to Rhodesia.
When he was finally arrested he was trying to board a flight from London to Brussels to get more information on how to get to Rhodesia and join a mercenary outfit.
He was also found in possession of a Liberty Chief pistol.
Asked why he was carrying a gun, Ray stammered. 'Uh, well. I'm really thinking of going on to Rhodesia and things aren't too good there just now.'
The contents of his suitcase were quickly inventoried, and - in the words of one Scotland Yard official - 'proved most enlightening'.
Among other items, investigators found a map of Portugal, a guide to Rhodesia, two books on hypnotism, and a well-marked paperback titled 'Psycho-Cybernetics'.
None of the newspapers or newsmagazines later mentioned how close Ray had come to getting away with his crime - or that if he'd made it to Rhodesia, extraditing him would have been nearly impossible.
Ray was never reconciled to his capture at Heathrow and his failure to make it to Rhodesia and kept reliving it in his mind.
If he'd only made it onto that plane to Brussels, he was confident that he could have found a cheap way to reach Rhodesia, or Angola.
He came within a hairbreadth of making it.
'He just hated black people,' one officer recalled. 'He said so on many occasions. He called them 'niggers'.
'In fact, he said he was going to Africa to shoot some more. He mentioned the (French) Foreign Legion.
'He seemed to have some sort of wild fantasy that he was going to do something of this nature.'
• Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr and the International Hunt for His Assassin, by Hampton Sides. Published by Doubleday.Comments
Leave a comment - You have to be logged in first to make comments
Monday, January 24, 2011
Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past
January 23, 2011 (Source : www.nytimes.com )
Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past
By CELIA W. DUGGER
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe — The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper.
But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago.
“You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people’s hearts,” said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. “It is indelible.”
As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say.
In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government — whether through missteps or deliberate provocation — has rubbed them ever more raw.
Before the World Cup in South Africa in June, a minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, invited the North Korean soccer team, on behalf of Zimbabwe’s tourism authority, to base itself in Bulawayo before the games began, a gesture that roused a ferocious outcry. After all, it was North Korea that trained and equipped the infamous Fifth Brigade, which historians estimate killed at least 10,000 civilians in the Ndebele minority between 1983 and 1987.
“To us it opened very old wounds,” Thabitha Khumalo, a member of Parliament, said of the attempt to bring the North Korean team to the Ndebele heartland. “We’re being reminded of the most horrible pain. How dare they? Our loved ones are still buried in pit latrines, mine shafts and shallow graves.”
Ms. Khumalo, interviewed while the invitation was still pending last year, wept as she summoned memories of the day that destroyed her family — Feb. 12, 1983.
She was 12 years old. She said soldiers from the Fifth Brigade, wearing jaunty red berets, came to her village and lined up her family. One soldier slit open her pregnant aunt’s belly with a bayonet and yanked out the baby. She said her grandmother was forced to pound the fetus to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Her father was made to rape his mother. Her uncles were shot point blank.
Such searing memories stoked protests, and in the end the North Korean team did not come to Zimbabwe. But feelings were further inflamed months later when the government erected a larger-than-life bronze statue of Joshua Nkomo — a liberation hero, an Ndebele and a rival to Mr. Mugabe — that, incredibly, was made in North Korea.
Last September, bowing to public outcry over the statue’s origin (and protests from Mr. Nkomo’s family that its plinth was too small), the statue was removed from a major intersection in Bulawayo. It now stands neglected in a weedy lot behind the Natural History Museum here.
Inside the museum hangs a portrait of a vigorous and dapper Mr. Mugabe in oversize glasses. He turns 87 next month. A massive stuffed crocodile, his family’s clan totem, dominates one gallery, its teeth long and sharp, its mouth agape. The signboard notes the crocodile’s lifespan exceeds 80 years.
Mr. Mugabe signed a pact with North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, to train the infamous army brigade just months after Zimbabwe gained independence from white minority rule in 1980. Mr. Mugabe declared the brigade would be named “Gukurahundi” (pronounced guh-kura-HUN-di), which means “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains.” He said it was needed to quell violent internal dissent, but historians say he used it to attack Mr. Nkomo’s political base and to impose one-party rule.
Mr. Mugabe’s press secretary, George Charamba, said the president had called the Gukurahundi “a moment of madness,” but asked whether Mr. Mugabe had apologized for the campaign, Mr. Charamba bristled.
“You can’t call it a moment of madness without critiquing your own past,” he said. “I hope people are not looking to humiliate the president. I hope they’re just looking at allowing him to get by healing this nation. For us, that is uppermost. Our sense of embitterment, our sense of recompense may not be exactly what you saw at Nuremburg.”
Downtown Bulawayo has the sleepy rhythms of a farm town, but the psychic wounds of the Gukurahundi fester beneath its placid surface. At the National Gallery here, the stately staircase leading to the shuttered Gukurahundi exhibit is now blocked by a sign that says “No Entry.” But the paintings, on walls saturated with blood-red paint, can still be glimpsed from the gallery above, through the bars of balconies. The paintings themselves seem to be jailed.
Voti Thebe, who heads the National Gallery, said the artist, Owen Maseko, created the Gukurahundi exhibit to contribute to reconciliation. There was no money, so Mr. Maseko, 35, did it on his own time. He was just a boy at the time of the Gukurahundi, but he recalls the sounds of hovering helicopters and sirens.
“The memories are still there,” he said. “The victims are still alive. It’s not something we can just forget.”
In a large painting, a row of faces are shown with mouths open in wordless screams. In another, women and children weep what seem to be tears of blood. Three papier-mâché corpses, one hanging upside down, fill a picture window. Throughout the galleries are recurrent, menacing images of a man in oversize glasses — Mr. Mugabe.
The day after the exhibit opened last year, it was closed down. Mr. Maseko was detained, then transferred to prison in leg irons before being released on bail. Mr. Maseko’s case awaits the Supreme Court’s attention. He is charged with insulting the president and communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
David Coltart, a politician from Bulawayo who is arts minister in the power-sharing government of ZANU-PF and its political rivals, said he warned cabinet ministers that prosecuting Mr. Maseko could turn the case into a cause célèbre and inflame divisions. Mr. Coltart, who has long fought the Mugabe government, said he also appealed directly to Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was security minister during the Gukurahundi.
“It is only when nations grapple with their past, in its reality, not as a biased fiction, that they can start to deal with that past,” Mr. Coltart said in a lecture delivered above Mr. Maseko’s show. He called the Gukurahundi “a politicide, if not a genocide.”
The Bulawayo playwright Cont Mhlanga knows the costs of free expression. His play “The Good President” was shut down on opening night here in 2007 when baton-wielding riot police officers stormed the theater.
The lead character is a grandmother who lies to her two grandsons about the death of their father. He had been buried alive in the Gukurahundi. But the boys, ignorant of the truth, become beneficiaries of the Mugabe government, one of them an abusive policeman, the other a recipient of seized farmland. The play’s title refers, Mr. Mhlanga said, to African leaders who call Mr. Mugabe a good president, “this man who has blood on his hands.”
Mr. Mhlanga says he feels “like someone has put huge pieces of tape over my mouth,” but insists that artists must express what people are terrified of saying.
“We live in a society where we’re so afraid, even of our own shadows,” he said. “To create democratic space in a society like ours, we have to deal with fear.”
Art Exhibit Stirs Up the Ghosts of Zimbabwe’s Past
By CELIA W. DUGGER
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe — The exhibit at the National Gallery is now a crime scene, the artwork banned and the artist charged with insulting President Robert Mugabe. The picture windows that showcased graphic depictions of atrocities committed in the early years of Mr. Mugabe’s 30-year-long rule are now papered over with the yellowing pages of a state-controlled newspaper.
But the government’s efforts to bury history have instead provoked slumbering memories of the Gukurahundi, Zimbabwe’s name for the slaying and torture of thousands of civilians here in the Matabeleland region a quarter century ago.
“You can suppress art exhibits, plays and books, but you cannot remove the Gukurahundi from people’s hearts,” said Pathisa Nyathi, a historian here. “It is indelible.”
As Zimbabwe heads anxiously toward another election season, a recent survey by Afrobarometer has found that 70 percent of Zimbabweans are afraid they will be victims of political violence or intimidation, as thousands were in the 2008 elections. But an equal proportion want the voting to go forward this year nonetheless, evidence of their deep desire for democracy and the willingness of many to vote against Mr. Mugabe at great personal risk, analysts say.
In few places do such sentiments about violence in public life run as deep as here, and in recent months the government — whether through missteps or deliberate provocation — has rubbed them ever more raw.
Before the World Cup in South Africa in June, a minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, invited the North Korean soccer team, on behalf of Zimbabwe’s tourism authority, to base itself in Bulawayo before the games began, a gesture that roused a ferocious outcry. After all, it was North Korea that trained and equipped the infamous Fifth Brigade, which historians estimate killed at least 10,000 civilians in the Ndebele minority between 1983 and 1987.
“To us it opened very old wounds,” Thabitha Khumalo, a member of Parliament, said of the attempt to bring the North Korean team to the Ndebele heartland. “We’re being reminded of the most horrible pain. How dare they? Our loved ones are still buried in pit latrines, mine shafts and shallow graves.”
Ms. Khumalo, interviewed while the invitation was still pending last year, wept as she summoned memories of the day that destroyed her family — Feb. 12, 1983.
She was 12 years old. She said soldiers from the Fifth Brigade, wearing jaunty red berets, came to her village and lined up her family. One soldier slit open her pregnant aunt’s belly with a bayonet and yanked out the baby. She said her grandmother was forced to pound the fetus to a pulp in a mortar and pestle. Her father was made to rape his mother. Her uncles were shot point blank.
Such searing memories stoked protests, and in the end the North Korean team did not come to Zimbabwe. But feelings were further inflamed months later when the government erected a larger-than-life bronze statue of Joshua Nkomo — a liberation hero, an Ndebele and a rival to Mr. Mugabe — that, incredibly, was made in North Korea.
Last September, bowing to public outcry over the statue’s origin (and protests from Mr. Nkomo’s family that its plinth was too small), the statue was removed from a major intersection in Bulawayo. It now stands neglected in a weedy lot behind the Natural History Museum here.
Inside the museum hangs a portrait of a vigorous and dapper Mr. Mugabe in oversize glasses. He turns 87 next month. A massive stuffed crocodile, his family’s clan totem, dominates one gallery, its teeth long and sharp, its mouth agape. The signboard notes the crocodile’s lifespan exceeds 80 years.
Mr. Mugabe signed a pact with North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, to train the infamous army brigade just months after Zimbabwe gained independence from white minority rule in 1980. Mr. Mugabe declared the brigade would be named “Gukurahundi” (pronounced guh-kura-HUN-di), which means “the rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains.” He said it was needed to quell violent internal dissent, but historians say he used it to attack Mr. Nkomo’s political base and to impose one-party rule.
Mr. Mugabe’s press secretary, George Charamba, said the president had called the Gukurahundi “a moment of madness,” but asked whether Mr. Mugabe had apologized for the campaign, Mr. Charamba bristled.
“You can’t call it a moment of madness without critiquing your own past,” he said. “I hope people are not looking to humiliate the president. I hope they’re just looking at allowing him to get by healing this nation. For us, that is uppermost. Our sense of embitterment, our sense of recompense may not be exactly what you saw at Nuremburg.”
Downtown Bulawayo has the sleepy rhythms of a farm town, but the psychic wounds of the Gukurahundi fester beneath its placid surface. At the National Gallery here, the stately staircase leading to the shuttered Gukurahundi exhibit is now blocked by a sign that says “No Entry.” But the paintings, on walls saturated with blood-red paint, can still be glimpsed from the gallery above, through the bars of balconies. The paintings themselves seem to be jailed.
Voti Thebe, who heads the National Gallery, said the artist, Owen Maseko, created the Gukurahundi exhibit to contribute to reconciliation. There was no money, so Mr. Maseko, 35, did it on his own time. He was just a boy at the time of the Gukurahundi, but he recalls the sounds of hovering helicopters and sirens.
“The memories are still there,” he said. “The victims are still alive. It’s not something we can just forget.”
In a large painting, a row of faces are shown with mouths open in wordless screams. In another, women and children weep what seem to be tears of blood. Three papier-mâché corpses, one hanging upside down, fill a picture window. Throughout the galleries are recurrent, menacing images of a man in oversize glasses — Mr. Mugabe.
The day after the exhibit opened last year, it was closed down. Mr. Maseko was detained, then transferred to prison in leg irons before being released on bail. Mr. Maseko’s case awaits the Supreme Court’s attention. He is charged with insulting the president and communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the state, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
David Coltart, a politician from Bulawayo who is arts minister in the power-sharing government of ZANU-PF and its political rivals, said he warned cabinet ministers that prosecuting Mr. Maseko could turn the case into a cause célèbre and inflame divisions. Mr. Coltart, who has long fought the Mugabe government, said he also appealed directly to Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was security minister during the Gukurahundi.
“It is only when nations grapple with their past, in its reality, not as a biased fiction, that they can start to deal with that past,” Mr. Coltart said in a lecture delivered above Mr. Maseko’s show. He called the Gukurahundi “a politicide, if not a genocide.”
The Bulawayo playwright Cont Mhlanga knows the costs of free expression. His play “The Good President” was shut down on opening night here in 2007 when baton-wielding riot police officers stormed the theater.
The lead character is a grandmother who lies to her two grandsons about the death of their father. He had been buried alive in the Gukurahundi. But the boys, ignorant of the truth, become beneficiaries of the Mugabe government, one of them an abusive policeman, the other a recipient of seized farmland. The play’s title refers, Mr. Mhlanga said, to African leaders who call Mr. Mugabe a good president, “this man who has blood on his hands.”
Mr. Mhlanga says he feels “like someone has put huge pieces of tape over my mouth,” but insists that artists must express what people are terrified of saying.
“We live in a society where we’re so afraid, even of our own shadows,” he said. “To create democratic space in a society like ours, we have to deal with fear.”
Monday, January 17, 2011
A Jewish Education in Zimbabwe
[Source : published in The Yale Globalist, Yale University's Undergraduate
Magazine of International Affairs.]
A Jewish Education in Zimbabwe
in CULTURE — October 22, 2010 at 9:17 am | 3 comments
by Anya van Wagtendonk:
Clement Mpofu looks out at the camera, smiling broadly. He waits patiently as his interviewers decide where to begin, his shirtsleeves rolled up against the heat of a Zimbabwe spring. Atop his head rests a blue kipah, the skullcap that reminds Jews of their humility beneath the Divine. But Mpofu is not Jewish. Moments before the camera was switched on, he paused, fumbled around in his desk, and came up with the blue garment. It is important that he wear a kipah when speaking to the public. He is, after all, the headmaster of the Carmel School, one of the last Jewish schools in Zimbabwe.
A School is Born
Fifty years ago, members of the Jewish community in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, petitioned to form a school for their children. In 1958, eight students came together in a one-room schoolhouse as the first class of the Carmel School. Within two years, 160 young Zimbabwean Jews were studying Hebrew and the Old Testament alongside math, biology, and the indigenous language, Ndebele.
A class photograph of students at the Carmel School. (Courtesy Gabrielle Elkaim, Carmel '95)
At the time, Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, and a white minority government forcibly ruled over the black majority. After a 14 year civil war, which the white minority lost, the first truly democratic elections were held. Robert Mugabe, who remains the leader of Zimbabwe, was elected in 1979 and sworn into office as President in 1980. At this time, Carmel became integrated and the school committed itself to promoting a diverse student body of all religious backgrounds.
Today, thirty years later, there are hardly any Jewish students left among the 200-person student body. Gabrielle Elkaim, who graduated from Carmel in 1995 and is the daughter of Carmel’s very first student, reported that there is only one Jewish student left. “And by December this year,” said Elkaim, “she will graduate, and there won’t be any Jews there.”
The absence of Jewish students at the school reflects the struggles of the greater Zimbabwean Jewish community, which is but a shadow of what it once was. By the 1970s, the Jews in Zimbabwe numbered 7,500, most of them descendents of the first traders who arrived in the 1890s or of European refugees searching for new homes in the years during and after World War II. Today, the community counts fewer than 300 to their ranks. Most live in either Harare or Bulawayo, cities of a million and a half people. One-eighth live in the Savyon Lodge, Bulawayo’s Jewish retirement home. In 2003, the hundred-yearold Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation burned down; while its walls once sheltered 3000 people, fewer than 120 members now gather for services at Savyon Lodge.
Leaving Zimbabwe
But Zimbabwe is losing not only Jewish residents. A recent BBC survey suggests that, since 1990, millions of Zimbabweans have chosen to start new lives in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and surrounding African countries. Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, spiritual leader of the African Jewish Congress, an organization that sees to the needs of sub-Saharan Jewish communities, insisted that “it is not a Jewish issue.” Rather, he pointed to the “starving masses and fat cat politicians” that have preoccupied news stories about Zimbabwe since Robert Mugabe declared himself the first executive head of state—effectively, dictator for life—in 1987.
Mugabe entered office in 1980 as a champion of the people, an anti-imperialist who had fought against British rule in the Zimbabwe liberation struggle. But over time, his rule became increasingly authoritarian. Today, reports of human rights violations stream across the border accompanied by stories of censorship, corruption, and oppression, of government-ordered assassinations and torture. Ethnic tensions have also increased under his reign: Mugabe has referred to white Zimbabweans as “British settlers… citizens by colonization,” and, in 2000, ordered a land-grab operation wherein 4,000 white farmers watched their land get forcibly taken from them. Mugabe is also largely blamed for the economic turmoil of recent years, wherein hyperinflation rendered the Zimbabwe dollar nearly valueless.
“A lot of people have left the country because of the situation where you know that you cannot, you cannot get any basic food on the shelves… And that’s not fair,” Mpofu explained. The purpose of the video becomes clear: It is a farewell of sorts, filmed weeks before his decision to resign and leave the country in 2007. “It’s a very traumatic situation for me because I never wanted to go. But because of what is happening in the country…” He trails off. “I’m just praying that something is going to happen soon.”
“An Example of True Coexistence”
But something is happening, inside the walls of the very school that Mpofu left. Even in the absence of a sizeable Jewish student body, the Carmel School has remained staunchly Jewish. All students celebrate the Jewish Sabbath, observe Jewish holidays, study the Old Testament, and perform plays from its stories. Among the required school supplies listed in the student handbook is a kipah for the boys. Pork products are banned from school grounds in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws. And although most students come from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or other backgrounds, all students participate fully in this Jewish experience. David W. Rix, who replaced Mpofu and presides over the school today, said the non-Jewish parent body remains “adamant” that the school retain its Jewish ethos.
Consequently, the school serves as a model of multiculturalism. “It’s amazing that the children are all getting along together,” Mpofu observed. “Many parents prefer to bring their children in that type of environment which is more or less a setup of how we want Zimbabwe to be,” Michelle, a non-Jewish student from the mid-1990s who asked that her last name not be used, has put her own children in an international school “to gain the same experiences that I was lucky enough to experience” at Carmel. Elkaim remarked that she has never come across another Jewish school as diverse as Carmel, with students from such varied religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds.
“This is a real reflection of the Bulawayo community,” she asserted, “and as far as I’m concerned, is the most overlooked part of our community which should be an example of true coexistence to the rest of the world.”
Looking Forward
In his departure interview, Mpofu expressed many hopes for the future of the Carmel School. Some, like the continued existence of the school’s Hebrew program, did not come to fruition: although students still learn Hebrew blessings and prayers, the language is no longer taught. But the emphasis on multiculturalism is still very much present, as evidenced in the school charter which holds hateful or discriminatory language or behavior as its highest offense. Mpofu’s biggest concern—that, as the Jewish population continued to dwindle, the school would lose its distinct Jewish character—does not appear to be an issue. The same school charter states its objective to retain “the Jewish traditions and character of the school.” When asked about the current state of Jewish affairs at Carmel, Elkaim echoed Rix’s claim that “the non-Jewish parents have insisted that Carmel stay a Jewish school in nature.”
Ultimately, Mpofu believes that these students, those whose minds and values have been shaped within the confines of a school dedicated to tolerance, harmony, and respect, will be the ones to restore this broken country. As renewed hope promises to turn Zimbabwe around, “we will need them to come back to the country, or even stay here, to actually run the economy in the future. They are the ones who are going to be responsible,” he explained.
The school symbol is the eight-armed menorah lit during Hanukah, the Jewish holiday of light. This candelabra was lit, so the story goes, after Judah Maccabee and his makeshift army led a successful revolt against the Greek Emperor who wanted the Jews—and all other ethnic minorities in the region—to become Hellenized. The Carmel School uses this symbol to represent its commitments to “the characteristics of determination, courage and tenacity associated with the heroic figure of Judah the Maccabee.” With these characteristics Carmel hopes its students will shape the future of their country.
As he gazes out into the camera, it is clear Mpofu doesn’t know when that future will be realized. Until it is, he will not return to Zimbabwe. If conditions do improve, though, he knows what he wants to do. “If I’m going to come back,” he grins, “I want to come back and teach at Carmel.”
Anya van Wagtendonk ’12 is an English major in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at anya.vanwagtendonk@yale.edu.
Magazine of International Affairs.]
A Jewish Education in Zimbabwe
in CULTURE — October 22, 2010 at 9:17 am | 3 comments
by Anya van Wagtendonk:
Clement Mpofu looks out at the camera, smiling broadly. He waits patiently as his interviewers decide where to begin, his shirtsleeves rolled up against the heat of a Zimbabwe spring. Atop his head rests a blue kipah, the skullcap that reminds Jews of their humility beneath the Divine. But Mpofu is not Jewish. Moments before the camera was switched on, he paused, fumbled around in his desk, and came up with the blue garment. It is important that he wear a kipah when speaking to the public. He is, after all, the headmaster of the Carmel School, one of the last Jewish schools in Zimbabwe.
A School is Born
Fifty years ago, members of the Jewish community in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, petitioned to form a school for their children. In 1958, eight students came together in a one-room schoolhouse as the first class of the Carmel School. Within two years, 160 young Zimbabwean Jews were studying Hebrew and the Old Testament alongside math, biology, and the indigenous language, Ndebele.
A class photograph of students at the Carmel School. (Courtesy Gabrielle Elkaim, Carmel '95)
At the time, Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, and a white minority government forcibly ruled over the black majority. After a 14 year civil war, which the white minority lost, the first truly democratic elections were held. Robert Mugabe, who remains the leader of Zimbabwe, was elected in 1979 and sworn into office as President in 1980. At this time, Carmel became integrated and the school committed itself to promoting a diverse student body of all religious backgrounds.
Today, thirty years later, there are hardly any Jewish students left among the 200-person student body. Gabrielle Elkaim, who graduated from Carmel in 1995 and is the daughter of Carmel’s very first student, reported that there is only one Jewish student left. “And by December this year,” said Elkaim, “she will graduate, and there won’t be any Jews there.”
The absence of Jewish students at the school reflects the struggles of the greater Zimbabwean Jewish community, which is but a shadow of what it once was. By the 1970s, the Jews in Zimbabwe numbered 7,500, most of them descendents of the first traders who arrived in the 1890s or of European refugees searching for new homes in the years during and after World War II. Today, the community counts fewer than 300 to their ranks. Most live in either Harare or Bulawayo, cities of a million and a half people. One-eighth live in the Savyon Lodge, Bulawayo’s Jewish retirement home. In 2003, the hundred-yearold Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation burned down; while its walls once sheltered 3000 people, fewer than 120 members now gather for services at Savyon Lodge.
Leaving Zimbabwe
But Zimbabwe is losing not only Jewish residents. A recent BBC survey suggests that, since 1990, millions of Zimbabweans have chosen to start new lives in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and surrounding African countries. Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, spiritual leader of the African Jewish Congress, an organization that sees to the needs of sub-Saharan Jewish communities, insisted that “it is not a Jewish issue.” Rather, he pointed to the “starving masses and fat cat politicians” that have preoccupied news stories about Zimbabwe since Robert Mugabe declared himself the first executive head of state—effectively, dictator for life—in 1987.
Mugabe entered office in 1980 as a champion of the people, an anti-imperialist who had fought against British rule in the Zimbabwe liberation struggle. But over time, his rule became increasingly authoritarian. Today, reports of human rights violations stream across the border accompanied by stories of censorship, corruption, and oppression, of government-ordered assassinations and torture. Ethnic tensions have also increased under his reign: Mugabe has referred to white Zimbabweans as “British settlers… citizens by colonization,” and, in 2000, ordered a land-grab operation wherein 4,000 white farmers watched their land get forcibly taken from them. Mugabe is also largely blamed for the economic turmoil of recent years, wherein hyperinflation rendered the Zimbabwe dollar nearly valueless.
“A lot of people have left the country because of the situation where you know that you cannot, you cannot get any basic food on the shelves… And that’s not fair,” Mpofu explained. The purpose of the video becomes clear: It is a farewell of sorts, filmed weeks before his decision to resign and leave the country in 2007. “It’s a very traumatic situation for me because I never wanted to go. But because of what is happening in the country…” He trails off. “I’m just praying that something is going to happen soon.”
“An Example of True Coexistence”
But something is happening, inside the walls of the very school that Mpofu left. Even in the absence of a sizeable Jewish student body, the Carmel School has remained staunchly Jewish. All students celebrate the Jewish Sabbath, observe Jewish holidays, study the Old Testament, and perform plays from its stories. Among the required school supplies listed in the student handbook is a kipah for the boys. Pork products are banned from school grounds in accordance with the Jewish dietary laws. And although most students come from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or other backgrounds, all students participate fully in this Jewish experience. David W. Rix, who replaced Mpofu and presides over the school today, said the non-Jewish parent body remains “adamant” that the school retain its Jewish ethos.
Consequently, the school serves as a model of multiculturalism. “It’s amazing that the children are all getting along together,” Mpofu observed. “Many parents prefer to bring their children in that type of environment which is more or less a setup of how we want Zimbabwe to be,” Michelle, a non-Jewish student from the mid-1990s who asked that her last name not be used, has put her own children in an international school “to gain the same experiences that I was lucky enough to experience” at Carmel. Elkaim remarked that she has never come across another Jewish school as diverse as Carmel, with students from such varied religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds.
“This is a real reflection of the Bulawayo community,” she asserted, “and as far as I’m concerned, is the most overlooked part of our community which should be an example of true coexistence to the rest of the world.”
Looking Forward
In his departure interview, Mpofu expressed many hopes for the future of the Carmel School. Some, like the continued existence of the school’s Hebrew program, did not come to fruition: although students still learn Hebrew blessings and prayers, the language is no longer taught. But the emphasis on multiculturalism is still very much present, as evidenced in the school charter which holds hateful or discriminatory language or behavior as its highest offense. Mpofu’s biggest concern—that, as the Jewish population continued to dwindle, the school would lose its distinct Jewish character—does not appear to be an issue. The same school charter states its objective to retain “the Jewish traditions and character of the school.” When asked about the current state of Jewish affairs at Carmel, Elkaim echoed Rix’s claim that “the non-Jewish parents have insisted that Carmel stay a Jewish school in nature.”
Ultimately, Mpofu believes that these students, those whose minds and values have been shaped within the confines of a school dedicated to tolerance, harmony, and respect, will be the ones to restore this broken country. As renewed hope promises to turn Zimbabwe around, “we will need them to come back to the country, or even stay here, to actually run the economy in the future. They are the ones who are going to be responsible,” he explained.
The school symbol is the eight-armed menorah lit during Hanukah, the Jewish holiday of light. This candelabra was lit, so the story goes, after Judah Maccabee and his makeshift army led a successful revolt against the Greek Emperor who wanted the Jews—and all other ethnic minorities in the region—to become Hellenized. The Carmel School uses this symbol to represent its commitments to “the characteristics of determination, courage and tenacity associated with the heroic figure of Judah the Maccabee.” With these characteristics Carmel hopes its students will shape the future of their country.
As he gazes out into the camera, it is clear Mpofu doesn’t know when that future will be realized. Until it is, he will not return to Zimbabwe. If conditions do improve, though, he knows what he wants to do. “If I’m going to come back,” he grins, “I want to come back and teach at Carmel.”
Anya van Wagtendonk ’12 is an English major in Timothy Dwight College. Contact her at anya.vanwagtendonk@yale.edu.
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