The Fear

by Peter Godwin

  Belinda escaped to Texas for ten years but returned to Africa after her divorce. In 2002, when Zimbabwe had already gone into its tailspin, she turned down another opportunity to get away, this time to Australia, and instead joined the MDC. “More care to stay, than will to go,” concludes Georgina, quoting from Romeo and Juliet. She is on a Shakespeare riff, in honor of our address.

  Effervescent and indefatigable, Belinda has coordinated much of the monitoring of the political violence here, and it motivates her with a quiet rage. After supper, she flips open her laptop, and shows us a sickening sequence of torture victims, some dead, and some barely alive. She’s also worked a lot with the women gang-raped by Mugabe’s men.

  “There was this one woman, Memory,” Belinda tells me, “who was raped twenty-one times by Mugabe’s youth militia, and basically lost her mind. She was in a terrible way, a cage of silence.” Belinda started visiting her every day in hospital. “She had rosary beads and a Shona Bible, and if you stroked her hand she eventually relaxed, and over time I got her to tell me the names of seven of the men who’d raped her.”

  Belinda wrote up the case in detail, including the perpetrators that Memory could identify. She shows me the list:

  Pepukai Magera

  Trymore Magera

  Tavaira Gavazi

  Chipo Muyapwa

  Trymore Pinukai

  Sorobi Musa

  Nowell Musa

  “I wonder if anything will ever happen to those names,” she says.

  IN THE MORNING, we sit on the balcony on Shakespeare Drive watching the mist burning off Christmas Pass. “And jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops,” declaims Georgina, in her best drama-school voice, from Romeo and Juliet again. Vervet monkeys drink from the birdbath on the lawn, and then leap up into the branches when the yellow Labrador puppy yaps at them and the Maltese poodle pogoes up and down below. The gardener sweeps bright yellow cassia blossom off the driveway and off the cover of the “Bushbaby,” a plane that John, a pilot, is building from a kit. “The wings are in our bedroom,” Belinda complains mildly.

  THE COURT, that first day of Roy Bennett’s trial, 18 February, is packed with his supporters, crammed together on the benches, and standing, lined against the wood-panelled walls. I sit sweating in my borrowed jacket and tie, trying to look like the lawyer I was, briefly, a lifetime ago.

  On the wall behind the magistrate’s chair is the coat of arms, with its motto Unity, Freedom, Work. Zero for three, by my score. Twin eland hold up a shield, which bears the conical tower of Zimbabwe ruins, the stone Zimbabwe bird that guards its walls, and a red star (all that’s left of the communist DNA of the liberation movement). But presiding above that, in the totem pole of state symbols, is a lopsided portrait of Robert Mugabe, not the geriatric one we see today, his eyes rheumy with cataracts, but a youthful, plum-faced one, with one hand placed fastidiously upon the other. The clock above him has stopped at twenty to twelve. “It’s been like that for the last thirty-odd years,” says Brian James, following my glance.

  Roy is escorted in by prison guards. He bows to the magistrate and smiles at his supporters. He is still in the same T-shirt and shorts, though they have allowed him to wear leather flip-flops for court. I notice that his right hand is closed around something. It is the little silver cross that Brian James smuggled to him through the chicken wire of the police cage, a gift from his friend Monty Hunter, a talisman of his faith.

  Trust Maanda, Roy’s lead lawyer, starts by arguing that Roy was arrested illegally, in effect abducted. That he had a gun put to his head by plain-clothes agents who seized him on the plane, and wouldn’t identify themselves, and so he should be released immediately. The magistrate, Livingstone Chipadza, his eyes owlishly magnified behind thick black-framed spectacles, promptly overrules that, so Trust then complains about the conditions Roy and his fellow inmates are being held in, overcrowded and food-deprived. The prosecutor, Mr. Nkunda, tall and thin, with a black suit that hangs off his shoulders, says, “Roy Bennett is not being singled out, the whole nation is starving, not just the prisoners.” The other prosecutor nods vigorously. He is as fat as his colleague is thin, and the prosperity rings at the back of his neck tremble as he nods, somewhat undermining that argument.

  Chipadza takes copious notes by hand (there is no court stenographer), while the prosecutor outlines the state case against Roy. He is charged under Mugabe’s infamously draconian POSA (Public Order and Security Act) with possessing weapons intended to be used for “insurgency, banditry, sabotage or terrorism.” The maximum sentence is life imprisonment. The charge centers on an alleged plot to assassinate Mugabe when he visited Mutare on 6 March 2006. And Roy’s coconspirator is alleged to be Mike Hitschmann, the local gun-shop owner, who, the prosecutor outlines, was found in possession of an “arms cache,” and an email from Roy to him, detailing the plot. Apparently they were to pour engine oil on the road down Christmas Pass so that Mugabe’s cavalcade slid down it, at which point (unknown) assassins would open fire on him.

  There are so many holes in the case that Trust Maanda struggles to know where to begin. But the elephantine one is that Hitschmann was acquitted of this very same “plot,” yet the state is relying on him as their main witness. They have approached him in jail, where he is locked up on other charges, and offered him a deal: his testimony against Roy, in return for his own freedom. So far, Hitschmann is refusing.

  There’s also the small matter of Hitschmann’s torture, already proved at his trial and as such, res judicata—accepted as fact by any court.

  Throughout the back-and-forth, there is, however, a worrying sign. The judge only writes when the prosecutor speaks, which he’s careful to do at dictation speed. When Trust Maanda lays out the defense case, the judge’s pen remains mostly still.

  My pen is soon stilled too. Constable Magaya, the court cop, comes over and peers crossly at my lap, where I am jotting in my notebook. “Why are you writing?” she inquires. “It is not allowed. If you do it again, I will throw you out of court,” and she shuffles back to her high chair.

  The second charge against Roy presents me with a dilemma. As I’d suspected they would, they are accusing him of trying to leave the country illegally. It’s a charge that’s useful in denying him bail, by showing he’s a flight risk. I have the photographed departure forms, correctly filled out, to refute this. But to give evidence, I will have to break cover and appear as a defense witness. I’d much rather not do it, with all the risks it entails, the CIO scrutiny, and the consequences that may unleash. But surrounded by people making such overt sacrifices of their own, how can I possibly refuse? So I tell Trust I have the photos, and he is elated. We download and copy the departure forms, and Trust duly introduces them as evidence, and adds my name to the witness list.

  THAT NIGHT we repair to the Mutare Club. Founded in 1890, it occupies on old colonial house on Herbert Chitepo Street. “London Bridge Is Falling Down” chimes when you press the door bell. A framed letter from Churchill, thanking the “Royal” Mutare Club, as it was, for “your kind thought of me on my ninetieth birthday,” hangs on the wall, and a photo of the bunting-strewn “Steam Engine Number One,” the “Cecil J Rhodes,” in Umtali, prior to pulling the first train to Salisbury. The banner on the front declares: “Now we shan’t be long to Cairo.” In the event, of course, they still haven’t made it. The dress requirements, prominently displayed, specify “Smart Casual at all times—shorts may only be worn with long socks. No T-shirts, boxer shorts.”

  When Georgina arrives, the barman sheepishly points out another large sign. “Gentlemen Only. By Order of the Committee.” He smiles and shrugs. “It is not my rule,” he says. “I am not on the Committee. Women are allowed on the veranda.” So, we all troop out to the veranda, and the power promptly cuts out.

  Over beers in the dark, Brian James traces his curious political trajectory. He used to be a “mainstream white,” no great liberal or activist, he says. “During the war, I thought
a gook was a gook, and that they were going to stuff the country up.” He served in the Police Reserve, running patrol boats up the Zambezi. Now he’s found himself pretty far upriver again, the white mayor of a black city.

  His politicization began when ZANU-PF minister Oppah Muchinguri (once Mugabe’s secretary) decided she liked the look of his poultry farm, the Grange, near La Rochelle, and decided to jambanja it. James joined the MDC, and helped provide logistical support to Oppah’s rival candidate, Giles Mutsekwa, who trounced her in the following election. Their victory party was invaded by a crowd of Oppah’s supporters, who took James hostage.

  When the MDC members tried to mount a rescue, Oppah’s vets tied James up, doused him with petrol, bound him to a fuel tank, and placed dried grass underneath him, threatening to set him alight and explode the tank.

  “The police did nothing. They just watched. I was lying there, praying that the local matches wouldn’t light, ’cos they’re so shit! Eventually the war vets allowed me to call George Lock, my lawyer, and I asked him to bring a ransom or I was going to be burned alive. He arrived with Z$90,000.” He takes a swig of his Zambezi, and his voice lowers. “Later I found out that my neighbor, Tom Martin, had cut a deal to feed the ‘war vets’ on my farm,” he says, bitterly, “on condition they stayed off his.”

  Mugabe appointed Oppah Muchinguri, roundly rejected by her own people, as Governor of Manicaland. James was taken hostage a second time and forced off the Grange. “Oppah gave a TV interview posing on a tractor on my farm, declaring that she would wear down the mabhunus [the Boers] and kick us out of the country.” James hasn’t been back to the farm since March 2003. “Whenever we drove in the vicinity, I would say to Sheila, my wife, shall we go through the farm, and it was always a venomous ‘No!’ ”

  Both their adult children left Zimbabwe, for Australia and New Zealand, but Brian and Sheila wouldn’t go. “You know, I was determined not to cower,” he says. And then he was approached by Roy and other senior local MDC leaders, and asked to stand for Roy’s position as MDC Manicaland treasurer (because Roy was going up to Harare). “After much deliberation and, more importantly, having been accepted as a Zimbabwean by the people, I accepted the challenge.” And from there he was voted in as a Mutare city councillor, and finally, in March 2008, its mayor. He still seems somewhat surprised at the turn of events. It was also overshadowed by personal tragedy—Sheila, his wife, was killed in a car accident just months after his mayoral election.

  “O Great One, how may we serve you?” his cell phone strikes up again in the dark. It is a friend in Harare to say that the person who had given Grizelda and Lance Dixon a ride out to the airport, when Roy was arrested, has now been picked up by the CIO. They are systematically going through the airport sign-in sheet from that afternoon. “Well,” says Georgina, “it’ll only be a matter of time before our names come up, then.” I call Penny and warn her to expect a visit by the CIO, because we were in her little red Suzuki at the time. She is sanguine. Richard has been arrested before.

  Pete Musto, another of the MDC logistics guys who comes down once a week with boxes of MDC newsletters to distribute, takes up from Brian. He was hardly a blushing liberal either, especially after losing his brother in the war, at seventeen. “He had just come back from boarding school for the hols, and took the dogs out for a walk, and he was killed by terrs,” the guerrillas, he recalls.

  “In all my life, I’ve never been as close as I am now to the people,” he says, meaning black people. “Before, there was an us-and-them gulf—but that’s been bridged now. I’ve become very close to Pishai and Prosper. It’s changed my attitude. I think this applies to a lot of us. This process, as tragic as it is, has brought us close together. The population must understand that they can change the government. Having a common enemy and facing common threats, we are on the same team, rely on each other. They feel safer to have a murungu there, among them, it’s that much harder for them to be knocked off.”

  THE NEXT DAY we reconvene at the court. Roy, now in his khaki prison uniform of baggy shorts and shift shirt, is led to his little wooden pen, and the Hon. Livingstone Chipadza reads from his handwritten notes. “The state,” he decides, “has succeeded to establish the reasonable suspicion” that “the accused person, acting in concert with Hitschmann, had unlawful possession of weaponry intended to be used in insurgency, banditry, sabotage, terrorism.” Roy turns to us, and seeing us crestfallen, he gives a broad wink. He is trying to cheer us up. The judge tosses out the other charge of trying to skip the country illegally. Still, he remands Roy in custody, initially for another two weeks, while awaiting trial. Roy is led back to prison.

  Now Pishai Muchauraya must take the news to the waiting crowds lining the street under the stucco overhang of Frank Gammon House, against the wall of Mutare Toyota and Duly’s Nissan. The cops are grouped together nervously behind the fence of the police station, tear-gas canisters hanging from their stable belts. A troop of Support Unit officers wait near their vehicles, rifles at the ready. And police dogs sit panting under the flame tree.

  Bruise-dark clouds have gathered up over the Bvumba, and lightning flickers restlessly between them. And then a perfectly sharp rainbow develops just as the convoy bearing Roy to prison drives out of the police station, with paramilitary cops and water cannons front and back. The crowd all cheer and bay as the vehicles grind by, down past the Courtauld Theater and the Museum, to the Mutare Remand Prison.

  Later, with Brian James, I visit Roy there. We talk to him through the iron bars, worn smooth by the grip of many captive hands. “Leave me here for as long as it takes,” he instructs. “Don’t trade me for anything.”

  twenty-nine

  Blood Diamonds

  GEORGINA AND I are waiting outside Meikles Park in the center of Mutare early on Saturday morning, waiting to meet the Hon. Lynette Kore-Karenyi, another of the new crop of local MDC MPs. She thinks she may be able to sneak us into the Marange diamond fields. Control of these diamond fields is now the key to the country’s future. With the economy shattered, the farms looted, and the death of the Zimbabwe dollar snuffing out the black market in foreign currency, diamonds—ngoda—are one of the very few remaining sources of wealth. Mugabe and his men need to keep control of them to finance their political machine.

  The granite obelisk in the center of the park is plastered with AIDS sensitivity posters, part of the “Zimbabwe National Behavioural Change Strategy: 2006–2010.” I rummage beneath the accretion of posters, to find the original carved inscription, For King and Empire 1914–1918.

  One of Brian James’s orange-uniformed municipal street-sweepers methodically works her way past us, down the runnel of the road, assembling little mounds of detritus, scooping them up in her dustpan, and emptying it into her hand-cart.

  Above us, the Bvumba Mountains are still wreathed with cool morning guti. Yet, here, along the central island of Herbert Chitepo Avenue, deferential ilala palms sough softly in the sunny breeze. Georgina is window-shopping across the road in the tragically under-stocked Meikles Department Store. Behind the glass, frozen in time, stand naked white mannequins under twirling yellow smiley-faced cardboard discs declaring, “Going Summer!”

  A soldier strolls down the road and stops at the bus stop. He is tall and straight-backed, in his early thirties, wearing a sharply ironed one-piece camouflage jump suit with the insignia of a Zimbabwe bird within a laurel wreath looped through his epaulettes. “How are things in the army, Major?” I ask tentatively.

  “We are happy since yesterday”—he grins—“when we were paid for the first time in Usahs. We got $100 each.”

  “Where did it come from?” I ask disingenuously.

  “From Tendai Biti, and the MDC,” he laughs, and high-fives me. He has trekked all the way from Harare to give some of his hard-currency bounty to his grandmother, who lives in Zimunya, the arid communal land at the foot of the Bvumba. In Harare, he is in charge of a Yugoslav-made artillery battery. “It has forty mis
siles,” he says proudly, “with a range of twenty kilometers.”

  Lynette’s husband drops her off, and we drive south, past Sakubva township. Its roadside market, where mounds of donated clothes end up for sale, is just cranking up. We drop down into Zimunya. On the left, freshly painted, is the New Cannibal Inn and Butchery. “What kind of flesh do you think they sell?” Georgina asks Lynette, and she giggles.

  Lynette is thirty-four and wears cork wedges, a calf-length brown corduroy skirt, glasses, and straightened hair. Georgina is complaining to her about the sexist policies of the Mutare Club. “Shona men have a saying,” replies Lynette. “Mhamba inonaka navamai mudhuze. It means ‘Beer tastes better with a woman by your side.’ ”

  Lynette was educated at a Catholic mission school, St. Patrick’s, Nyanyadzi, worked as a doctor’s PA and, in 2003, became the MDC’s first woman local councillor. It was Roy Bennett who suggested she stand for national office. She comes from a political family—her mother had worked for Ndabaningi Sithole’s party, for years the sole opposition voice in parliament, but still, she had reservations about Lynette’s candidature, “in case I lost, and people laughed at me.” But Lynette didn’t lose, and she was reelected in the recent elections.

  She’s had a tough time of it, though. As well as fighting various recounts and court challenges, she’s been arrested four times, and beaten up by the police. She’s had to send her three kids—the youngest, a girl of eight—away to boarding school, for their own safety. “They’re proud of me becoming an MP,” she says, “but scared that I will be killed.” The last time she visited her fourteen-year-old son at school, he said it was lovely to see her, but he’d rather she didn’t come in her official MDC vehicle, in case he got into trouble.

  Things got particularly bad for her two years ago, she says, when Inspector Marume, the hefty policewoman from Mutare, set the CIO on her. They raided her house, hunting for her, so she fled for a while to South Africa. She crossed the Limpopo and then climbed through the razor-wire border fence—ripping her clothes and slicing her back; she still has the scars—and then walked five miles, with a guide Roy had sent to assist them. Three times they had to fight off maguma-guma, robbers, armed with knives and iron bars, who prey on border-jumpers. “I had no idea getting across would be so horrible,” she says. Finally, torn and terrified, she met up with Roy at a service station at 2 a.m.