PRETENDING ALL IS NORMAL
The day to day realities of life in Zimbabwe
The day to day realities of life in Zimbabwe
Oskar Wermter SJ
As we bury the 35-year old father of three, nobody mentions, but everyone knows, why he died so young. Nobody asks what fate might await his young widow.
Everybody knows why the 29-year old single mother of two, only recently returned from UK so sick she needed a wheelchair at the airport, had her life cut short. But we are far too polite to say so.
Roads are no longer passable at Mbare, because of uncollected refuse. We just take another route down a different street. Nobody makes and fuss about it.
We celebrate all the feasts and go to all the parties, and sing all the new tunes as if nothing had happened. No one admits that we can’t afford it, that hiring a bus costs millions, that our standard of living has slumped so much, that we have hardly enough for sadza (the staple food made from maize) and vegetables.
We are told that, even if you are found to be HIV positive, life will go on; just change your lifestyle, avoid stress, eat healthy food, take your medicine, ‘get real’, make your own choices - live (and die) in cloud-cuckoo-land.
How can anyone avoid stress in a situation where people automatically join any queue and, only afterwards, ask what the queue is for? Who can afford special diets, when the most basic food-stuffs are scarce? Medicines: what medicines? Even when the doctors are not on strike, who can buy what they prescribe?
Chipo wants to marry Tonderai. It would be the most rational thing in the world to be tested for their HIV status. But then - what if Chipo tests negative and Tonderai positive? Is she still going to marry him? The truth will make you free - and miserable! To know the daunting truth and act on it is the rational thing to do, but most of us can’t face it; they just don’t want to know. Better take a chance and hope for the best. ‘Maybe I’m lucky!’
‘My husband died five years ago. I know I am HIV-positive. I was tested. I have to provide for my children. So far, I am feeling all right, but the time will come...’ She is speaking in a plain matter-of -fact tone. It takes courage to face the truth. Crowds panic and run. Strong individuals resist - they have the courage to walk alone, following their own insights, making their own decisions. There is a faith dimension in their lives, and from that perspective it isn’t the end of the road - and they aren’t really alone.
The country is gravely ill. It can no longer feed itself. It can no longer offer its children a workplace and security in the community. It has lost the confidence of the young ,who leave in ever greater numbers. People, apparently of the same country, nevertheless live on different planets.
‘Dialogue has been shelved while party leaders are preoccupied with the succession issue’. Old leaders bury more and more of their own generation. But they never bother to inspect a cemetery to see that most recent graves are of people born in the 1960s and 1970s.
AIDS? What about it? The Minister of Health takes care of that. Isn’t he doing a fantastic job? As a matter of fact, what can he do? Poverty and hunger have now joined forces with AIDS - and that is a lethal alliance! AIDS you can fight. AIDS plus hunger means definite defeat. Hunger is not dealt with by one minister. It is the result of years of mismanagement involving everybody. Only a radical change of direction of the whole government can make a difference to that.
That is the tragedy: they pretend that everything is normal. Things run their course. There’s somebody in charge of everything. In the meantime they can play their games as usual. They are in their 70s and 80s, but still playing games to see who comes out on top! Their grandchildren, already dead and buried, have not reached that age, but they have not noticed, - they keep playing games, deadly serious - as if it really mattered; which it doesn’t, of course. It won’t be long before they join their heroes .
For the time being, the old men keep playing their blaming games (Imperialism, Neo-colonialism, etc) and naming games (eg Tony Blair - hardly innocent, possibly foolish, but not really responsible for our children running away, or dying). They even play high-risk deadly games. They play with our lives; play politics, even with the starving who are near death; decide who is to live and who is to die; only give food to ‘reliable cadres’; only allow government agents to distribute the life-saving grain; deny import licences to political suspects. Instead they should be forgetting all silly games and single mindedly working far the survival of all - every Zimbabwean man, woman and child. But the obsession with playing those power games will not go away.
What will ever make them sit up and face the truth? That there is mass poverty and starvation and death, for which they are responsible - they themselves and nobody else. Will anyone have the enormous courage to say, “Yes, we did it. We failed to provide. We were blind. But it isn’t too late. Let’s start now. Even if it costs us position and power; EVEN IF IT IS THE LAST THING WE DO...”
But they won’t do that. They will pretend that all is normal: all is manageable - even without knowing the whole, awful truth. They mean, somehow, to muddle through until the end - their end but not ours. We no longer pretend - or trust to luck. We want to know - and once we know we can start moving again.
As we bury the 35-year old father of three, nobody mentions, but everyone knows, why he died so young. Nobody asks what fate might await his young widow.
Everybody knows why the 29-year old single mother of two, only recently returned from UK so sick she needed a wheelchair at the airport, had her life cut short. But we are far too polite to say so.
Roads are no longer passable at Mbare, because of uncollected refuse. We just take another route down a different street. Nobody makes and fuss about it.
We celebrate all the feasts and go to all the parties, and sing all the new tunes as if nothing had happened. No one admits that we can’t afford it, that hiring a bus costs millions, that our standard of living has slumped so much, that we have hardly enough for sadza (the staple food made from maize) and vegetables.
We are told that, even if you are found to be HIV positive, life will go on; just change your lifestyle, avoid stress, eat healthy food, take your medicine, ‘get real’, make your own choices - live (and die) in cloud-cuckoo-land.
How can anyone avoid stress in a situation where people automatically join any queue and, only afterwards, ask what the queue is for? Who can afford special diets, when the most basic food-stuffs are scarce? Medicines: what medicines? Even when the doctors are not on strike, who can buy what they prescribe?
Chipo wants to marry Tonderai. It would be the most rational thing in the world to be tested for their HIV status. But then - what if Chipo tests negative and Tonderai positive? Is she still going to marry him? The truth will make you free - and miserable! To know the daunting truth and act on it is the rational thing to do, but most of us can’t face it; they just don’t want to know. Better take a chance and hope for the best. ‘Maybe I’m lucky!’
‘My husband died five years ago. I know I am HIV-positive. I was tested. I have to provide for my children. So far, I am feeling all right, but the time will come...’ She is speaking in a plain matter-of -fact tone. It takes courage to face the truth. Crowds panic and run. Strong individuals resist - they have the courage to walk alone, following their own insights, making their own decisions. There is a faith dimension in their lives, and from that perspective it isn’t the end of the road - and they aren’t really alone.
The country is gravely ill. It can no longer feed itself. It can no longer offer its children a workplace and security in the community. It has lost the confidence of the young ,who leave in ever greater numbers. People, apparently of the same country, nevertheless live on different planets.
‘Dialogue has been shelved while party leaders are preoccupied with the succession issue’. Old leaders bury more and more of their own generation. But they never bother to inspect a cemetery to see that most recent graves are of people born in the 1960s and 1970s.
AIDS? What about it? The Minister of Health takes care of that. Isn’t he doing a fantastic job? As a matter of fact, what can he do? Poverty and hunger have now joined forces with AIDS - and that is a lethal alliance! AIDS you can fight. AIDS plus hunger means definite defeat. Hunger is not dealt with by one minister. It is the result of years of mismanagement involving everybody. Only a radical change of direction of the whole government can make a difference to that.
That is the tragedy: they pretend that everything is normal. Things run their course. There’s somebody in charge of everything. In the meantime they can play their games as usual. They are in their 70s and 80s, but still playing games to see who comes out on top! Their grandchildren, already dead and buried, have not reached that age, but they have not noticed, - they keep playing games, deadly serious - as if it really mattered; which it doesn’t, of course. It won’t be long before they join their heroes .
For the time being, the old men keep playing their blaming games (Imperialism, Neo-colonialism, etc) and naming games (eg Tony Blair - hardly innocent, possibly foolish, but not really responsible for our children running away, or dying). They even play high-risk deadly games. They play with our lives; play politics, even with the starving who are near death; decide who is to live and who is to die; only give food to ‘reliable cadres’; only allow government agents to distribute the life-saving grain; deny import licences to political suspects. Instead they should be forgetting all silly games and single mindedly working far the survival of all - every Zimbabwean man, woman and child. But the obsession with playing those power games will not go away.
What will ever make them sit up and face the truth? That there is mass poverty and starvation and death, for which they are responsible - they themselves and nobody else. Will anyone have the enormous courage to say, “Yes, we did it. We failed to provide. We were blind. But it isn’t too late. Let’s start now. Even if it costs us position and power; EVEN IF IT IS THE LAST THING WE DO...”
But they won’t do that. They will pretend that all is normal: all is manageable - even without knowing the whole, awful truth. They mean, somehow, to muddle through until the end - their end but not ours. We no longer pretend - or trust to luck. We want to know - and once we know we can start moving again.