The Last Resort

by Douglas Rogers

  I sipped the strong Vumba mountain coffee Dad had brought me.

  ‘It’s on Saturday. Give Brian a call. He says Tsvangirai’s going to be there.’

  ‘Really? Wow. Ja, I’ll definitely go.’

  I had the chance to meet Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition.

  Brian James was a white friend of my parents’ who’d become a prominent MDC member in town. He and his wife, Sheelagh, a slender brunette whose aristocratic demeanour belied a wicked sense of humor, had lost their chicken farm in the early days of the land invasions. Brian had never considered himself remotely political – ‘I just wanted to farm and play cricket on weekends.’ But he joined the MDC, and by 2006 he had became treasurer for the Manicaland province, replacing Roy Bennett, the famous Shona-speaking farmer from Chimanimani, known to his legion of rural black supporters as Pachedu, meaning ‘one of us’. Bennett was perhaps the most popular member of the MDC after Morgan Tsvangirai and Tendai Biti, and he had won a seat in Parliament in 2000 in a landslide, thrashing the ZANU-PF candidate. In 2004, however, he was sentenced to a year in a maximum-security prison in Harare after he ‘pushed’ the justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, during a confrontation in Parliament. After his release, fearing assassination, Bennett moved to South Africa, where he became the party’s treasurer in exile and a prominent spokesman. Brian had big shoes to fill.

  I knew him from my cricket-playing days as a good medium-pace bowler. An intense, soft-spoken man with wire-rimmed glasses and sandy hair, he’d always struck me as more academic than agricultural. My father said he was fearless, though – which helped explain his rise in the MDC. Sheelagh, whose brother Terry Coughlan was my former provincial cricket captain, strongly supported his new high-risk political career while at the same time managing to affect an air of amused detachment, as if it didn’t worry her. Brian had spent four days in jail on trumped-up treason charges (several of my parents’ friends had now been in prison). When Mom phoned Sheelagh to ask her how he was doing, she said, ‘No idea, Ros. I don’t do jail.’

  I was excited about attending an MDC rally and seeing Tsvangirai speak, but I was nervous, too. I had no media accreditation, and I knew I would stand out in a crowd, the only white person apart from Brian, who was already well known in the area. MDC rallies were filled with informers, CIO spies. I phoned Brian.

  ‘I definitely want to go, as long as no one finds out I’m a reporter.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘Just bring a packed lunch.’

  ‘Where’s the rally?’

  ‘Buhera.’

  My heart sank. Buhera was a remote, arid rural area two hours’ drive southwest of Mutare, far from any town. It was Morgan Tsvangirai’s home district and it was there, one night in 2000, that two of his organisers, including his driver, Tichaona Chiminya, were burned to death in a firebomb attack on their vehicle by ZANU-PF hit men. I had also heard rumours that it was the home district of Joseph Chinotimba, a ruthless thug who, although he had never fought in the liberation war, had branded himself a war-veteran leader and become a feared government enforcer, leading many farm invasions and attacks on opposition activists.

  There would be no hiding place in Buhera.

  ‘Okay, just as long as I am not identified as a journalist,’ I reminded Brian.

  ‘So you are the journalist! Welcome. Welcome!’

  It was 6:00 am. I was standing outside an MDC safe house in a suburb of Mutare, surrounded by a dozen young black activists in T-shirts emblazoned with the open-hand symbol of the party, all waiting for a lift to the rally.

  They were thanking me for joining them, excited that a foreign-based reporter would be coming along for the ride. So much for being incognito.

  ‘Guys, guys,’ I hushed them, ‘don’t tell anyone I’m a reporter. Keep it quiet.’

  They laughed and slapped hands with one another.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. You are safe with us!’

  I was struck by the lack of fear. Rather, there was a sense of excitement, as if we were going to a soccer match. Which, in a sense, we were. Soccer was the country’s national sport, and the MDC’s symbols mimicked those of a soccer referee: the open hand was the signal a referee made when sending a player off. MDC members also brandished red cards and blew whistles, exhorting Zimbabweans to ‘send Mugabe off ’.

  To the side of the group I noticed a handsome dreadlocked guy, similar in age to me, a notebook in his hand, calmly smoking Madisons. I introduced myself.

  He said his name was Sydney Saize. He was a local journalist who filed radio reports for Studio 7, the Voice of America station that I had listened to down at the camp the night before. Sydney also wrote for local newspapers, but he mostly survived on assignments for VOA because they paid him in US dollars.

  ‘Is it safe for me out there without accreditation?’ I asked him.

  ‘It should be,’ he said. ‘The police hassle the leaders and the supporters more, try to stop the rallies. Hide your notebook. You should be fine.’

  ‘Have you ever been arrested?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, in January. I have to go to court for breaking the Access to Information Act – ‘peddling falsehoods’. A story I did on some teachers who were beaten up by ZANU-PF youths in Marange. I filed my report by cellphone from the school, and a war veteran overheard and made a citizen’s arrest.’

  ‘What could happen to you?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Twenty years in jail.’

  Then he smiled and offered me a cigarette.

  It was humbling to meet people like Sydney. Hundreds of local journalists worked in Zimbabwe for little money or recognition, and at great risk to their personal safety. Few of them could afford cars, offices or computers; they would hitch lifts and catch buses to interviews and political rallies. The stories I did for British and American newspapers were relatively well paid, and I risked little reporting them compared to these guys. They were on the front lines: followed, threatened, their offices bugged, their newspapers banned, even bombed, their friends bribed to become informers. But still they did it; it was their life. Just how brave they were would become horrifically apparent in March 2007 when Morgan Tsvangirai, the man we were about to see, would be brutally assaulted at the prayer meeting in Harare where the MDC activist Gift Tandare was shot dead. Tsvangirai’s skull was cracked by police truncheons; he blacked out several times during a later assault in prison. The world never would have seen images of his bruised and battered face if Edward Chikomba, a freelance cameraman, had not smuggled out of the country footage he’d shot of Tsvangirai in the hospital. That one act might have helped change Zimbabwe’s history: the MDC’s struggle suddenly became a major news story. Tsvangirai was a symbol of resistance to brutality. Two weeks later Edward Chikomba was abducted from his home; his mutilated body was found dumped in the bush, on a farm south of Harare.

  We drove off, Brian behind the wheel. I sat with an organiser from Buhera named T Chimonya in the front seat; the others piled in the back of Brian’s truck, happily waving the open-hand salute at passing pedestrians as we left town.

  Half an hour later we turned onto a rutted dirt road, and suddenly, as if we’d crossed a border, the cool green of Mutare’s mountains and valleys gave way to the hot, dry breath of the communal lands. The earth – parched, cracked, the colour of bright copper – was semi-desert here; only baobabs, scrub and thorn survived the ruthless onslaught of the sun.

  We passed no other cars and few people except, occasionally, at dusty settlements of mud-and-thatch huts set in the shade of rocky outcrops. And as we drove past these huts, a strange thing would happen. On hearing our vehicle, scores of villagers, most of them beaming middle-aged women in bright white skirts and neat red headdresses – the MDC colours – would run out at us, waving both hands high in the air in the open-hand salute, imploring Brian to stop and give them a lift to the rally. We piled so many of these women into the back of the truck that soon the chassis scra
ped over the bumps in the road, and we slowed to the pace of an ox-cart. They began singing in Shona as we drove. We must have sounded like a travelling gospel choir.

  I noticed there were few young people in the villages we passed. Most had moved to the cities or out of the country to send back those remittances. But at one stop a group of snotty-nosed kids, barefoot children wheeling the rims of bicycle tyres through thick sand, ran up to my window to ask me for food, money – ‘Mari, sa, mari, sa!’ – and writing implements. ‘Please, mister, give me pen! Give me pencil! I need pencil. Books. Books.’

  I had hidden my notebook under the car seat in case of a police roadblock, but I pulled it out now, gave a spare pen to one of the kids, and tore out several pages. I found myself thinking of John Agoneka during the war; how he’d hidden in terror as Rhodesian helicopters strafed his village, how guerrillas had forced him to carry weapons on his back when all he wanted to do was go to school, to study, to learn, to read. The urge to read is not uniquely Zimbabwean, but under Robert Mugabe in the 1980s and 1990s, Zimbabweans did learn. The country became one of the most literate in Africa. Now it was regressing. Schools were closing, textbooks were too expensive and pens and pencils were in short supply.

  After two hours we came to a series of low, windowless cement buildings fronted by the parched grass of a soccer field. It was the Buhera high school, and the rally, I learned, would be held on the field. A white tent covering a row of dirty plastic chairs had been erected beside one goalpost. We were in the middle of nowhere; scrubby bush and sand stretched to the horizon.

  I had always been under the impression that the MDC was an urban party, strong in the cities and among the young and the educated, but with little support in rural areas, where an older population with deep memories of the horror of the liberation war supported ZANU-PF, the party that had won freedom from white rule. And yet by midday five thousand people had gathered on that field in the blinding sun, many of them old men and women, wizened as prophets. They arrived like pilgrims – on foot, in creaking donkey carts, emerging from the thorny bush around us, dusty and bedraggled, yet triumphant. One old man smiled as he told me he had walked throughout the night, more than thirty kilometres, to hear Tsvangirai. He called him ‘my president’.

  I left my notebook and tape recorder in the truck, bummed more cigarettes from Sydney, and sat, a little self-conscious, on the grass to the side of the field, the only white person in the world, it seemed, apart from Brian.

  Tsvangirai arrived suddenly and without fanfare in a bullet-proof red Isuzu twin-cab. He stepped out looking busy and purposeful in a floral dress shirt and a black leather cowboy hat. A frisson of excitement rippled through the crowd, a murmur that rose to a crescendo of whistles and open-hand salutes. He waved as he walked with his wife, Susan, two bodyguards, and Brian and T, and took his seat under the tent. Sydney sat at the back of the tent, the only official reporter present.

  The rally turned out to be more a traditional Shona celebration than dull political stump speech. The crowd and the activists ran the show. Slogans were chanted in Shona by an activist near the stage, and the crowd responded, knowing every word. Since the MDC’s formation in 1999 its manifesto, as its name suggested, had been democratic change, and the most common slogan at a rally, done in call-and-response style between an

  activist and a crowd, was ‘Chinja maitiro! Maitiro ako ayo chinja, hezvoko bwaa!’ Change your deeds, bad ones, your deeds should change.

  I knew this slogan fairly well by now, but soon the entire crowd had broken into song, a beautiful, mournful Shona ballad that I saw brought tears to the eyes of those singing it around me.

  I asked the man next to me what it was about.

  He whispered in broken English. ‘A man and a woman were burned here some years ago. It is to them.’

  Tichaona Chiminya and Talent Mabhika had been attacked at dusk, not far from this field, as the sun set. They had been trailed from a local bar by CIO agents and war veterans. Stones were thrown at their vehicle, then petrol bombs. Engulfed in flames, they stumbled screaming from the vehicle and rolled in the sand on the road trying to put out the blaze. They burned to death.

  It was the same weekend that the farmer David Stevens was murdered. A message had been sent; Zimbabwe would never be the same again.

  Another song was about Operation Murambatsvina – Operation Drive Out the Trash. Starting in April 2005 and continuing into the frosty mists of that year’s freezing June and July, more than two million Zimbabweans living in slums and shantytowns on the edge of the country’s cities were violently driven out by police and soldiers who arrived in bulldozers and tractors to demolish their shacks and homes. Many of the slum dwellers were former farmworkers already displaced in the land invasions, and after their shacks were destroyed they wandered the country, homeless, haunted, ghostly nomads. Some would have been in this crowd. It was said that the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who lived in asylum in a posh Harare suburb, advised President Mugabe on the removals, since he knew the destitute

  slum population was a strong MDC base. However, the man who was really in charge of the removals was much closer to home: the Top Man.

  The song described the Operation Murambatsvina clearances in nearby Mutare: ‘Mutare residents were living peacefully until ZANU-PF came and destroyed their homes in cyclone tsunami style.’

  I was so taken by the spectacle, the effortless repartee between crowd and stage, that I failed to notice someone standing over me, blocking out the sun.

  ‘What media organisation are you with?’ a voice commanded.

  I looked up. A man, about fifty, in a filthy, torn white T-shirt, hovered over me. His face was hidden by the glare of the sun behind him.

  ‘I’m not with any media organisation,’ I said, shielding my eyes.

  He cursed.

  ‘You are! What media organisation are you with?’

  I stood up now. He had a stringy beard, bloodshot eyes and alcohol on his breath. I was conscious of the people around me whispering and murmuring. For a moment I thought this might be Chinotimba himself.

  ‘I’m not with any media organisation,’ I said, more annoyed than afraid.

  He moved his face close to mine.

  ‘You are! You are a journalist!’ I felt flecks of spit.

  He grabbed my forearm and squeezed it, trying to pull me away.

  Some of the people around me stood up, talking excitedly now, but the rally continued; our mini-commotion was too far from the stage to be noticed.

  I am not a brave person. I try to avoid conflict, to run from confrontation. But, perhaps inspired by the people around me and the stories told in the songs and chants, or perhaps simply because the man was not in uniform, didn’t have a weapon and was drunk, I pushed his hand off and shoved my face at his.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘I am a farmer. A farmer from Mutare. Fuck off.’

  And then, out of the crush of bodies now standing around me, another hand appeared, grabbed mine, and pulled me away.

  It was T, one of the organising officials we had come with.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘That man is CIO. You are safer sitting in the tent.’

  I was dizzy, pumped with adrenaline, and more paranoid than ever. I sat next to Sydney and told him what had happened. My hands were shaking.

  ‘Spies,’ he whispered. ‘Everywhere there are spies.’

  By the time Tsvangirai rose to speak, a dozen uniformed policemen had gathered on the goal line some way off. They were talking to two men in white shirts. I was worried it was about me. Was one of the white shirts the man who had confronted me? He pointed to the stage. This was it. I wanted to run.

  Sydney shrugged again.

  ‘Relax, Douglas. This always happens. The MDC have to get permission to hold a rally. They get it, then the police arrive and say, ‘It was not for this time,’ or ‘It is too late,’ or ‘You have five minutes left.’ They are always harassing. They want to stop Tsvangirai
from addressing the crowd.’

  The white shirts were MDC organisers trying to persuade the police to allow the rally to continue. I saw T among them. He had his work cut out for him.

  Despite my paranoia and the constant threat of menace, it was inspiring being at the rally, watching the crowd. The open hand is a joyous sign – the very opposite of the violent clenched-fist symbol of the ruling party – and while the songs about struggle and resistance were emotionally wrenching, there was also great humour displayed at the proceedings, a remarkable ability to laugh at one’s enemies. Sydney explained another song to me: Tambirai Morgan pamusika weMbare, Bob NdiWhindi, pamusika weMbare. ‘It references Tsvangirai as a dignitary while Mugabe – Bob – is a tout at a bus terminus who should carry Tsvangirai’s luggage.’

  What struck me most powerfully, though, was that the supporters, the activists and Tsvangirai himself were not victims. There was none of the belligerent self-pity everyone now associated with the tirades of the ruling party, a party that constantly blamed the West, Britain, America, Blair, Bush, Tsvangirai, sanctions, sellouts, puppets, stooges, whites, the weather or the drought for the chaos in the country. They had held power for more than twenty-six years, they controlled every aspect of the state to the extent that you couldn’t openly say what you thought, and yet someone else was always to blame. Aggressive victimhood is a mark of tyranny, an ugly and dangerous thing to behold.

  The rally finally ended with a comic one-act play so shocking in its audacity – given the police presence – that I found myself too nervous to laugh. The crowd had no such fears. A skinny old man in a worn-out suit stood up unsteadily in front of the crowd. He held a walking stick in a bony hand and wobbled on it while reaching into his pocket with his other hand for a pair of sunglasses. The crowd whispered excitedly as they watched. The old man put on the glasses and staggered about, groping, falling, pretending to be blind. The crowd was laughing now, hooting their approval, and I suddenly heard what they were saying: ‘Mugabe … Mugabe …’ The man was playing President Mugabe as a lost, blind, out-of-touch old man. The policemen looked on sullenly from the side. I wouldn’t have wanted to have been that old man afterward.