The Last Resort

by Douglas Rogers

  ‘There are lots of stories here, Walter,’ I said. ‘Lots of stories.’

  Walter nodded. Then he smiled and said softly, ‘After the election you are going to have – I don’t know – more stories.’

  ‘Like what, Walter? What’s going to happen?’

  I wondered if he meant what I hoped he meant. That the results were going to surprise everyone, and the MDC was going to win. That would be a story. Dad had told me that when he’d last met up with Walter he was shocked when Walter turned to him in the car and said: ‘Tell me, Mr Rogers, what kind of president do you think Tsvangirai would make?’

  But of course the soldier wasn’t thinking along those lines at all.

  ‘Rogers junior. We have spoken of this before. Only one party can win this. Only one party has a history. We are organising. If you want to see a big story you should wait until then.’

  ‘What do you mean, Walter?’

  I had an inkling of what he would say, yet my gut still twisted when I heard it. He turned to me and in a throaty whisper said, ‘It is going to get very violent.’

  Then we turned and walked down the hill, back to the car, and drove away.

  The clouds had cleared by the time I got home, and the valley was bathed in a resplendent glow. Dad opened a farewell bottle of red, and I recognised the label. It was the same Oregon pinot noir Grace and I had served at our wedding in 2005. Dad had taken two bottles of it all the way back to Zimbabwe, opened one while Grace was here, and saved this for now. We sipped it on the veranda, Mom occasionally checking on dinner. By some miracle the power stayed on all night and she was able to prepare a roast beef she had saved for months. We moved to the dining room when it was ready and I raised a glass in a toast.

  ‘To you guys. To getting through this. And to the election – let’s hope.’

  We clinked glasses.

  And then my mother said, ‘This time we’re going to win.’

  ‘You mean win the election?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Absolutely. This time. I have no doubt.’

  Usually my father was the optimist; Mom kept her cards close to her chest. I had never seen her confident about an election – nor had she ever been wrong before, even back in 1980, when we all believed Bishop Muzorewa would win. It had been the same in 2002. Yet now she was convinced the MDC would triumph.

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘Mark my words. Who is going to vote for these bastards this time?’

  We didn’t speak much more about politics that night. We didn’t have to, for the pendulum had swung again. My parents looked exhilarated. Dad was back to his fighting weight; with his beard trimmed, he looked dashing. Mom seemed to have grown into the lines on her face; she had worn them as scars, and now they were part of her story. Only five years ago they had both seemed so old and frail. Now they looked invigorated.

  And it occurred to me that something remarkable had happened here. The very predicament they had found themselves in, the very chaos engulfing them, had given them purpose, a reason to live. Every day for the past eight years they had woken up to plot and plan their survival, and yet, instead of being crushed by this struggle, beaten down, they had been buoyed by it. In fighting back they had found a rare energy, passion and lust for life that had kept them young, active and alive. And for the first time in eight years I allowed myself to wonder: Might they get through it after all? Might they come out the other side into the light?

  Dad raised a glass.

  ‘I just want to survive this thing,’ he said. ‘I want to see the end of these people who are responsible. I really do. I want to see their end. What could be more enjoyable than that?’

  Mom smiled.

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ she said. ‘There’s not much longer to go.’

  Outside the crickets chirped a ragged chorus. But it was the words of the soldier that whispered to me: It is going to get very violent. Very violent.

  SEVENTEEN

  Endgame

  THE 29 MARCH 2008 election went according to plan. Actually, it went better than that, far better than even optimists like my father expected. The campaign of terror they all were braced for didn’t happen. For the first time since its formation in 1999, the MDC held rallies free of intimidation. Tsvangirai drew massive crowds – not only in the cities, but in rural areas, ZANU-PF strongholds. A sophisticated ground operation swung into action that stunned those who claimed the party was weak and divided. Tens of thousands turned up at those rallies: onlookers saw waves of red cards in a sea of open hands. And on election day, a Saturday, they voted en masse. Turnout was only fifty percent of the official number of registered voters, but since an estimated one million names on the voters’ rolls were either deceased or had left the country, it was a massive showing.

  And then the masterstroke: the results were displayed at each polling station at the end of the voting day, as stipulated by new electoral rules. MDC monitors, prepared for this, made sure to take cellphone pictures of the ballots and to phone in the tallies. According to the MDC, the result was clear: they had won in a rout! ZANU ministers Joseph Made and Chris Mushowe, who had taken the Kondozi farm, both lost their seats. Rumours soon spread that the Top Man had been defeated; that Air Marshal Perence Shiri, who’d led the slaughter of twenty thousand Matabele by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in southern Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, had committed suicide; that the president had fled to Malaysia.

  My parents rode a wave of euphoria. Brian James was elected mayor of Mutare. It was extraordinary: a white farmer who’d lost his land had been voted in by a black constituency in Zimbabwe’s third-largest city. On the Tuesday after the poll my parents received a surprise visit at the house from an elderly black gentleman. ‘My name is Misheck Kagurabadza,’ he told them. ‘I am your newly elected MDC MP. Thank you for your support over these years. I’m honoured to represent you. Let’s work together to fix our beautiful country.’

  Mom and Dad stared at each other in amazement.

  ‘It was like living in a normal country,’ Mom said later. ‘Your MP actually coming to visit you, to tell you that he’s there to represent you? Now that’s democracy.’

  On April 2 the electoral commission confirmed that the MDC had won a majority in Parliament, but the presidential result was still not being released. What was happening? Why was it taking so long? Suspecting the regime was massaging the ballots at the counting offices in Harare, as they had done many times before, the MDC pre-empted the commission by producing their own result: they claimed they had evidence, those cellphone photos taken at polling booths, that Tsvangirai had won 50.3 percent of the vote – an outright majority. He would be the new president.

  But the regime lashed out and accused the MDC of staging a coup. And slowly, as the days wore on, it dawned on everyone that it wasn’t over at all. Not even close.

  The Top Man, it turned out, had won his seat. Perence Shiri was still very much alive. The president appeared in public; he hadn’t fled the country at all. The regime was clearly stunned, but they conceded nothing and circled the wagons. A war veterans group marched menacingly through Harare: ‘We will not allow the country to be returned to whites!’ they raged. The Herald ludicrously reported that hundreds of white Rhodesian farmers were flooding back into Zimbabwe to reclaim land that had been returned to the masses. The president said, ‘We are prepared to go to war.’

  And go to war they did. It was called Operation Where Did You Put Your X? – a statewide wave of terror masterminded by Mugabe and his senior military leaders to punish those who had marked ballots for the MDC. Former ZANU-PF strongholds that had swung over to the opposition were singled out. That meant my parents’ area – the valley. Air Marshal Shiri was not only alive but had checked into La Rochelle, the mansion and botanical garden built by two liberal British philanthropists in the 1950s, and in whose home the first ZANU constitution was signed. From there he conducted the mayhem in the east. A Chinese ship carrying thousands of
tons of arms and ammunition for the regime soon docked in Durban. The South African dockworkers, in an extraordinary show of solidarity with Zimbabweans, refused to offload the cargo. Mbeki’s government wanted it unloaded. The dockworkers won out.

  By the time official presidential results were released, five weeks late, on 2 May, the terror was in full swing. MDC activists were abducted, beaten, tortured, murdered. Supporters in rural villages were burned with molten plastic, the soles of their feet clubbed until they could no longer walk. Hundreds of thousands were burned out of their homes. Tsvangirai had indeed won the ‘official’ poll, but his 47.8 percent over Mugabe’s 43.2 percent wasn’t an outright majority. There would have to be a runoff. Tsvangirai reluctantly agreed to compete in the runoff. It was set for Friday, 27 June. Zimbabwe drew a collective breath. The country knew what was coming.

  The terror campaign went into overdrive. Now the soldiers, war vets and militia weren’t simply punishing those who had voted MDC but were instructing them to vote for Mugabe in the next round. ‘Your vote is your bullet,’ soldiers told terrified villagers in Rusape, in the west of the valley. I recalled Walter the soldier’s words to me on top of the granite hill, barely thirty-two kilometres from Rusape: It is going to get very violent. And I realised now that Walter had known all along what was coming. Likely he was part of the planning. The regime was going to mete out punishment to those who had voted against it even if they won the election. Now that they had lost, the reprisals were simply more brutal.

  So where was I for this big story? Where was I during my country’s – and my parents’ – darkest hour? In Zimbabwe? Not a chance. Six years on, I still wasn’t the fearless foreign correspondent Zimbabwe clearly needed. I could say that I had a book to write, a deadline to meet, which was true. But who am I kidding? I was too frightened to go. I didn’t have the stomach for it. And when I tucked Madeline into her cot at night and saw her beautiful face stare up at me with such love in the morning, I was glad not to be there. The United States was my home now.

  Fortunately, many journalists, far braver souls than I, were there, and I followed the reports out of Zimbabwe with a dedication bordering on obsession. There was no shortage of sources. By April 2008 it had become one the biggest news stories in the world. I read the Zimbabwe reports in the New York Times on the F train on my way to work in my writers’ space in Manhattan, then spent the morning downloading Zimbabwe news websites, blogs, British newspapers, radio reports. I joined chat rooms; I e-mailed and phoned friends who had contacts on the ground, in the government, in the MDC.

  And, of course, I spoke to my parents.

  It wasn’t easy. Two days before the 29 March election, their telephone line was stolen. With the line gone, so went their Internet dial-up. They were isolated, alone. My father finally bought his first-ever cellphone, but he had to drive three kilometres up the road to get a decent signal, and it wasn’t always safe to stand on an open road in the middle of a simmering war. We worked out a routine. I would call him every morning at 10:00 am New York time, 5:00 pm Zimbabwe time. Sometimes the signal worked; mostly it didn’t. Sometimes he could get to the roadside; mostly he couldn’t. When he didn’t answer, I feared the worst. When he did answer and told me what was happening around them, I felt sick with anxiety.

  The violence in the valley started slowly, then gathered strength, like a deadly virus working its way through the bloodstream. On Sunday, 6 April, a week after the euphoric election, my parents received their first ‘visit’. Six young men appeared out of the blue at their back door in the middle of the day. Dad was in his study, Mom in the kitchen. ‘They were here so quickly we didn’t have time to be afraid,’ Dad said later. ‘They actually looked a little nervous themselves.’

  ‘Yes, can I help you?’ Dad asked.

  The leader was a well-spoken dreadlocked man in his early twenties.

  ‘We have information you are celebrating,’ he told Dad, his eyes darting about the place.

  ‘Celebrating what?’

  ‘The election results.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any election results. Why would we be celebrating?’

  The youths muttered amongst themselves.

  Dreadlocks held up his finger and pointed at each of them in turn.

  ‘We are warning,’ he said. Then he handed them a note.

  Dad read it.

  To: Rodgers [sic] – Drifters

  If you are celebrating the outcome of the harmonised elections partial results in unison with your brethren before the outcome of the final polls be advised that you risk vacating that location unceremoniously forthwith within 10 hours from this moment.

  By order of the National Homeland War Veterans

  Christ, thought my father. The National Homeland War Veterans? This guy wasn’t even born during the war. He passed the note to Mom. Her hands were trembling as she took it. After she read it she tried to sound calm, but her voice quivered.

  ‘No, gentlemen. As he says, we are not celebrating anything at all. Just surviving.’

  Dreadlocks jabbed his finger again.

  ‘We are warning.’

  And then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone. Mom and Dad looked at each other, hearts pounding.

  ‘Last kicks of a dying horse,’ Mom said. ‘Last kicks of a dying horse …’

  But the euphoria of the past week had already worn off.

  At times my parents were literally living the stories I was reading in New York. One morning in late April Dad answered my call at the arranged time.

  ‘It’s hotting up here,’ he told me from the roadside, trying to sound chirpy. ‘They’ve just burned out two hundred workers on a farm up the road. Ran through it at night torching huts, beating people with iron bars. I’ve just been to see Brian at the MDC offices in town. They’ve got two hundred people sheltering there. Battered heads, broken legs. Half of them are just kids. These guys from the US embassy came. They were taking pictures. Anyway, I’ve taken in three of the workers and given them jobs.’

  ‘You’ve taken in the farmworkers?’

  ‘Ja, they’ve got nowhere to go. Muranda’s a bit nervous. He reckons if the war vets find out they’re staying here, they’re gonna come give us shit. I told him to keep quiet about it.’

  I worried about that myself.

  A few days later, on 28 April, I read about the same farm attack in the New York Times and about the US embassy officials coming to document the stories of the victims. ‘At the time of our visit to the Mutare MDC office, there were 106 children under the age of 12 and 113 adults camped in the open at the office grounds,’ an official was quoted as saying.

  On 12 June, another story (by Celia Dugger) in the Times made my mouth fall open on the subway. ‘Zimbabwean authorities confiscated a truck loaded with 20 tons of American food aid for poor schoolchildren,’ it began. I shrugged. What was surprising about that? They did that all the time. Then the article went on to quote a man named Misheck Kagurabadza. I recognised the name instantly: my parents’ new MP, the man who had come up to the house to introduce himself.

  ‘Kagurabadza [is] one of many opposition leaders who have gone into hiding to avoid a sweeping crackdown by ZANU-PF,’ the story explained.

  My head was spinning. I called my father at the appointed time and got him.

  ‘Jeez, Dad, are you okay? It sounds crazy there. I’ve just read about your guy Misheck. He’s apparently had to go into hiding. Have you heard from him?’

  A bus blew past. I heard the whistle of the wind down the line. My father’s voice came to me from the other side of the world.

  ‘Heard from him? Of course I’ve fucking heard from him. Where do you think he’s hiding?’

  ‘Christ, don’t tell me …’

  ‘Yes, at the camp. And not just him. We’ve got two other guys. And sometimes their wives. They’re on death lists. They can’t go home at night. They’re basically fugitives.’

  I couldn’t believe what I wa
s hearing. Drifters had now become a safe house, a haven for opposition activists on the run.

  My father told me Misheck had come a few times, but the other two were regulars. At first he only referred to them on the phone to me as ‘the two Ps.’ But he told me later their names were Pishai Muchauraya and Prosper Mutseyami. They had both won seats in ZANU-PF strongholds and Pishai was the MDC spokesman for Manicaland. I would soon read them quoted everywhere from the Guardian to The New Yorker.

  I wondered how it worked, this arrangement. Weren’t they being followed to the Drifters gates?

  ‘They have a few safe houses around the area,’ my father explained. ‘I told them they can check in here whenever they want, just sign in under false names. They arrive at dusk and leave in the morning. John knows who they are. He puts them in the chalets near the back, in case they have to do a runner. The staff are in awe of them. They see them as heroes.’

  ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Who knows? But you should meet these guys. They’re about the same age as you, late thirties, and utterly fearless. They hide at night and go out and campaign during the day. They search for missing people, file reports on abductions, speak to torture victims, hold rallies. What’s amazing is they’re being hunted but they go out every day with these huge smiles on their faces. They’re convinced they’re going to win the runoff. They say the rural people are so pissed off now that they’re still going to vote MDC no matter how much they get beaten up.’

  I suddenly thought of the soldier.

  ‘But what if Walter turns up and sees them with you? Then you’re in the shit.’

  ‘Fuck Walter. I’ve been trying to call him all month now and he doesn’t answer. I’ve got the feeling he’s probably involved in this. Probably leading some of these attacks.’

  I had had that feeling, too, but I didn’t tell him so.

  Occasionally my father would warn his fugitives. He told me how one Saturday night Tendai had held a party in the bar. It sounded bizarre to me that there might be a party at Drifters in the midst of a terror campaign, but Tendai was a businessman. He hired a DJ from Harare and dancing girls from Bulawayo. It was advertised in town. He apologised in advance to my father about the noise. But Dad knew exactly the kind of clientele who would be coming to a party at a time like this. He immediately called the two Ps.