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| | Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! -'''Doris Lessing''' | | Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! -'''Doris Lessing''' |
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| − | '''Dedication'''
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| − | This book is for my Dr. Goremusandu & Christine (Nyasha), whose happiness is the wind that powers the sails of my life’s ship.
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| | '''Acknowledgements''' | | '''Acknowledgements''' |
| | I would like to thank my dear grandmother, Ambuya Nekete, whose belief in my potential has made me into who I am this day. | | I would like to thank my dear grandmother, Ambuya Nekete, whose belief in my potential has made me into who I am this day. |
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| | South Africa was the destination that many of those without the stomach to spend months on end waiting in line at Makombe building to apply for a passport, or with no money to apply for visas or by the plane tickets. Once they reached the border town of Beitbridge, they crossed into South Africa across the Limpopo River, illegally. At this point, it is important for the reader to know that the movement of people from Zimbabwe into South Africa was nothing new. People from all corners of the country, from the Zambezi to the Shashi and the Sabi valleys, they had always moved south at one time or another in their life times. They had all journeyed there to join Zambians, Malawians, Namibians, Basuotos, Mozambicans, in the days of old to work like ants digging the yellow metal in deep and hot and soggy mines on the rand of Johannesburg and crystalline and burnished diamonds in Kimberly for the white man. The only difference was that, whereas exclusively men had made the perfidious journey very few at that in the past, the present migration involved large numbers. Even pregnant women were crossing the border. | | South Africa was the destination that many of those without the stomach to spend months on end waiting in line at Makombe building to apply for a passport, or with no money to apply for visas or by the plane tickets. Once they reached the border town of Beitbridge, they crossed into South Africa across the Limpopo River, illegally. At this point, it is important for the reader to know that the movement of people from Zimbabwe into South Africa was nothing new. People from all corners of the country, from the Zambezi to the Shashi and the Sabi valleys, they had always moved south at one time or another in their life times. They had all journeyed there to join Zambians, Malawians, Namibians, Basuotos, Mozambicans, in the days of old to work like ants digging the yellow metal in deep and hot and soggy mines on the rand of Johannesburg and crystalline and burnished diamonds in Kimberly for the white man. The only difference was that, whereas exclusively men had made the perfidious journey very few at that in the past, the present migration involved large numbers. Even pregnant women were crossing the border. |
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| − | During one dark night, when the stars hung like diamonds in the heavens above and dark clouds moved in menacingly from the east to leave the savannah land in pitch darkness, darkness so deep that if one wanted one could have stabbed at it with a viciously curved knife and hear it heave in anger, Insp. Shumba stood high on a cliff on the north bank of the Limpopo River, the river of Crocodiles. Behind him, the vlei that represented the country of his birth, stretched into the night and in the distance a jackal on the prowl howled. Across the river in front of him, stood South Africa, the promised land and below him, the placid waters of the Limpopo flowed on the sandy riverbed through the tall lanky reeds that concealed the crocodiles that lain in wait to prey on the would be wader, the would swimmer, their bowels bloated to the rafters with human flesh. As the storm moved in and the scarf Insp. Shumba wore fluttered in the wind, he followed his cohort down the cliff into the riverbed hoping to take his chances past the crocodiles, the South African army patrolling the border, vigilante white farmers, hungry man-eating lions and hunger and thirst, for his sights were dead set on reaching Johannesburg, the city of gold—no matter what the cost. | + | During one dark night, when the stars hung like diamonds in the heavens above and dark clouds moved in menacingly from the east to leave the savannah land in pitch darkness, darkness so deep that if one wanted one could have stabbed at it with a viciously curved knife and hear it heave in anger, Insp. Shumba stood high on a cliff on the north bank of the Limpopo River, the river of Crocodiles. Behind him, the vlei that represented the country of his birth, stretched into the night and in the distance a jackal on the prowl howled. Across the river in front of him, stood South Africa, the promised land and below him, the placid waters of the Limpopo flowed on the sandy riverbed through the tall lanky reeds that concealed the crocodiles that lain in wait to prey on the would be wader, the would swimmer, their bowels bloated to the rafters with human flesh. As the storm moved in and the scarf Insp. Shumba wore fluttered in the wind, he followed his cohort down the cliff into the riverbed hoping to take his chances past the crocodiles, the South African army patrolling the border, vigilante white farmers, hungry man-eating lions and hunger and thirst, for his sights were dead set on reaching Johannesburg, the city of gold—no matter what the cost. |
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| − | '''Crossing the Border~2'''
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| − | The early African night was not essentially hot just like any other thousand nights. In fact, a fresh, placid, and invigorating breeze blew pleasantly from the east, rustling the evergreen leaves of the big blue gum trees on the anterior of the commodious colonial train platform. Nevertheless, the young Inspector Timothy V. Shumba indolently fanned his moon face with his police hat in a vain effort to cool himself. Under the thick dual layers of the blue cotton ankle length trench coat and his police regulation issue uniform, his obsidian skin felt sticky, cloaked in a thin film of sweat. Beads of the salty sweat had coalesced and now dribbled down his wide brow and smooth cheeks gradually, flooding into his dark eyes and thick-lipped mouth. It tasted metallic salt on his tongue. His face was contorted into a grotesque scowl, a cursory look into it gave one an inkling that he was crying or in extreme discomfort.
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| − | The fat mosquitoes pitta-pattered above and about the platform added to Timothy’s extreme discomfort. He frenetically groped around his person for his brown handkerchief on the inside breast pocket of the trench coat. He found nothing. He had bought an amber hued handkerchief because those people who would be lucky enough to see him using it would never know if it was soiled or not. He shifted slightly from where he stood to relieve the weight on his left leg but a human body swiftly checked his motion, pressing against his side. He felt the small lumpy form of the handkerchief in the back pocket of his brown police regulation pants. He twisted his athletic frame to try and grasp it with his free arm, but the human bodies that pressed against his frame blocked his reach. He was sanguaged between them. “God!” he swore under his breath in displeasure. He diffidently used his free arm to swab off the sweat on his face with the back of his hand.
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| − | There are situations in life that capture the true pulse of life in a country. Take South Africa for example, a picture of men streaming out of a mine is all that one needed to define that country in the sixties. For didn’t the black men in the photo represent the poor blacks who made South Africa a wealthy country although none of that affluence reached them but instead enriched that white man in the background of the photo with a corrosive frown on his face? If one wanted, one could have taken a snapshot of the humanity that stood around Timothy and everything about hi that night and obtained the true picture of life in contemporary Zimbabwe. Here was amassed the poor, the many who worked day and night to support the lifestyles of the likes of the first lady, whose shopping trips to distant Paris, Singapore, and London were legendary in the days before the sanctions set in. The people stood at a platform built during the colonial era, a fact that demonstrated that time had stood still, in some respects, once the white man had been kicked off the golden throne of the country.
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| − | Standing inflexibly amidst the heaving bodies around him, Timothy half-heatedly tried to promise himself never to take the train again, but from experience he knew that and empty promise. Over the years he had come to accept as veracity that the train was the only avenue in all the land where he could find not only ecstasy but meet colourful characters too. Taking the train, with its inexplicable stoppages, passage through the dead of the night, rowdy and drunk passengers, and tardiness, changed the trip from Harare to Kwekwe from just another journey into a real adventure—he desperately craved for escapades to escape from his sedate and lacklustre life. He liked not only the unadulterated bliss one found aboard a train but the ambiguity that was involved in train travel—getting on board the train was no guarantee that one would get to their chosen destination, more so during the Zimbabwe of that day. Unlike Timothy, the majority of the passengers pressed around him took the train because it was not only reliable but cheaper than buses. Naturally, the train was a favourite with the low income families in the country, who crowded its bowels on its laborious and marvellous course to distant Bulawayo. They turned the train into a circus where whole families travelled in groups for the holidays and other special occasions. Being a Sunday at the end of the month, the train that day was jam-packed with drowsy people returning from business or from visiting husbands in the city.
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| − | In the blindingly lucid light of the platform floodlights, Timothy glimpsed the entrance to the coach, directly in front of him. Eight or so heaving and cloaked human figures separated him from it and remembered the rant his grade six teacher, Mr. Chapwanya, repeated to him whenever he failed to get a passing grade by a point: “So near Shumba, yet so far! Maybe next time.” All around him, people were desperately trying to reach the same door of the coach just like him. The mass of bodies, jostling and shoving, resembled cattle at a dip tank. Suddenly, he inched forward as people behind him pushed hard, disgorging a few stragglers in the process. A baby strapped on the back of her mother started wailing and a man behind the infant’s mother cursed them: “What are you doing, you will kill the baby,” the man shouted with a boisterous voice, his teeth even and white in the light of the floodlights. There was another force from the left which swung Timothy away from the door, but the group of bodies on his right swiftly countered that force and he was jerked back to the centre, now no more than two human bodies away from the door. The twisting and jerking motion of the mass reminded Timothy of being trapped in the belly of a python coiling on itself. A moment later, he felt like he was spat by the serpent into the train car.
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| − | Timothy painstakingly shuffled over to the door opposite the platform, threading his way through a wall of humanity. His gait revealed his weariness. He straightened out his ruffled cotton coat for he was particular about his looks. He surveyed the expansive coach. “Just like what I thought” he mused petulantly. It didn’t surprise him to see that all the space inside the coach was occupied. All the seats were filed and the nooks and crannies were taken up by people standing or bundles of monstrous bags. Maybe it’s the working policy of the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) to sell more tickets than the number of seats available, he thought morosely. Despite this astuteness, the government controlled national rail carrier operated in the red every year, in style with all the other government operated companies. Critics of the government likened ZNR to a leech that was latched to the dwindling government treasury eternally, where it sucked millions of dollars in bail out money year after year.
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| − | It was the calibre of people like Timothy who saw to it that the doomed NRZ never made any profit. They rode the train free of charge. Even though he was not on police business Timothy was clad in a uniform to avoid paying the tariff to Kwekwe. Everybody in the uniformed services did it. It was a silent code that everyone in the country understood simply: a soldier, policeman or a prison warden in uniform got free rides to anywhere from any quarters, be it government or privately owned vehicles. Even his father, the eminently decorated war veteran Choice Bonda, used to do it when he was still in the army. “You can use the money you save for other things” Choice had told Timothy several times when he was young, a crafty smile dancing on his face. “Never part with your money if you can avoid it.”
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| − | Timothy watched apathetically as more people squeezed into the moribund blue coach. He knew from his few years as a police officer that most of those pushing and shoving to get inside were not travellers, but shrewd pick-pockets out for some easy pickings in the melee. Nearby, agitated men passed their children and luggage standing on the platform to those already inside through the large windows. A man carrying a Castle Lager beer, formerly reserved for the white man before independence, staggered by blindly. Choice, his father, eager to make them see how things had changed in the country following the revolution from the British, always told Timothy and his three young brothers that the white man deprived the black man the pleasure of imbibing the clear beer because he thought he was a child, whose behaviour was unpredictable when drunk. A middle-aged woman with an infant strapped on her barrel shaped back forced her way in the other direction, a white buddle balanced precariously on her dhuku draped head.
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| − | It is the mentality of the African to use something without servicing it until it breaks down, a story Timothy had read sensationally declared. The report had even gone further, citing as impeccable proof the disrepair of formerly superb infrastructure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi and a whole slew of other countries across Conrad’s Dark Continent. At that time, Timothy had dismissed the report out-rightly, but now he was not so sure that the statement was fallacious after all. Although the blue train coaches had been introduced by the government with pomp and fanfare three years before, Timothy could clearly see sings of decline already. Some of the interior lights were dead and whereas the television monitors had shown pictures and attention-grabbing wildlife documentaries in the past now they hung from the ceiling of the coach, black and quiet, probably not working. The toilets stunk, as if the train staff had used Skunk urine to cleanse them. Every time somebody opened the little toilet door two meters behind him, the repulsive odour wafted to him and enveloped them like a curtain. It was not use holding his round, fat nose. He opened the door to dilute the air lest they all suffocated.
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| − | A female melodiously timbered voice, calm and composed, came on the public address system and informed them in English, Ndebele and Shona that the train to Bulawayo was departing and a few minutes later the diesel engine—the electric engine had fallen into disuse because of intermittent power supplies—at the head of the twelve coaches whizzed and groaned and they were on their way. The voice, its sound augmented a thousand times by the amplifiers, calculatingly forgot to tell the weary and drowsy eyed passengers that it was sorry that the train was leaving the city two hours behind schedule. Timothy remembered a time in the past when NRZ trains ran on time, its workers running over each other eager to please the train passengers, and accidents on the NRZ steel tracks were as rare as the white rhinoceros. Like everything in life, those glorious days could not last forever. In the eyes of certain academic pundits, the country had lost its innocence when it severed ties with its former colonial masters, for then, the African mentality, which cared little about punctuality, soon took over.
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| − | A tall and burly and avuncular man clad in an ill-fitting black great coat came and dropped the bag he was lugging beside Timothy’s feet and sat on it with a sigh of exhaustion. “I can’t find a place to sit,” he said, his deep voice tinged with disgust and contempt. Two men and a skeletal woman with knobby joins took over the small space on the other door of the cheap class coach. Timothy always travelled in the lowest cheap third class, aptly dubbed the ‘economy class.’ He thought real people were found in that class, whereas those in the upper first and second classes would sit with strangers tight lipped for all twelve hours of the journey, there was no such antics in the third class, where people spoke and fraternized with strangers like they had known them for eons, minutes after meeting them. There were no rules in the third class, even now as he thought about it, men in the coach lit and smoked their cigarettes with relish—despite large clear posters stuck on the ceiling of the coach prohibiting people from smoking inside the train. All these attributes attracted him helplessly to the cheap third class like carrion to Hyenas.
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| − | With steel crunching against steel, Timothy looked outside the moving train through the small square door window. A forest of lights spread out into the distance spectacularly, like a carpet of stars. He knew they were passing the working suburbs of Kuwadzana and Warren Park. Carrying over a thousand people, the train itself resembled a small suburb on the move. Lights at night always ushered an optimistic, hypnotic and exhilarating feeling to Timothy, they lightened up his mood. They gave him hope and promise that the future would be alright and that life in the country will improve. One of his dreams was to go to Paris, whose array of decorative lights he saw on the television were to die for.
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| − | Everyone in the land-locked country needed hope more than anything—investors and everybody else outside the country had lost it soon after the invasions of white owned commercial farms had began seven years prior. After years of corruption, nepotism, mismanagement, and poor leadership, the country was unravelling and the decimation of commercial agriculture following the invasions, the backbone of the economy, nudged it over the edge. There were shortages of everything; sugar and flour and maize meal and cooking oil and petrol and meet and eggs. The infrastructure, inherited from the supremacist Ian Smith and his henchmen, after years of cosmetic shore-ups, was dilapidated. Even as Timothy gazed outside, some suburbs were plunged in darkness; there was no electricity. The moment one’s hope turned feeble and snapped, they left the country on the next bus. Although figures were contested, conservative estimates pegged the number of Zimbabweans who had left the country to escape the economic chaos at over three million. His young brother, Tichaona, had left for South Africa two years before. The idea of leaving the country had already crossed Timothy’s mind on more than one occasion.
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| − | Timothy was a decorated young police officer attached to Mbizo police station in Kwekwe, just over two hundred kilometres south of Harare. He had regular Negroid features, medium height, brown piecing eyes, smooth obsidian genteel skin, strong white teeth that gleamed like polished ivory, fleshed limps, and an amiable face bedecked with thick lips. As per police regulations, his hair was neatly barbered. He was a prime exhibit of Shona manhood. Good-looking, he attracted his fare share of giggles from bevies of young ladies he met in the course of his work, who were ready to present him with their virginities on a silver platter. He did his police work with tremendous accuracy and efficiency, and his superiors had noticed it. Although he had been with the force for only two years, he had already risen through the ranks to become an inspector. Recently he was awarded a merit of honour by Chief Supt. Mawere in recognition of his valiance after he successfully apprehended two armed bank robbers following a protracted foot chase through a dark alley. Educated at Epworth High, he was the eldest son of Rosemary and Choice. They were a middle income family who just managed to get by. Rosemary had hawked vegetables on the streets of Epworth to see Timothy through school and now that he was working, they expected him to help them in sending Thomas and Talent, his young brothers, to school.
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| − | He had just completed his yearly one week leave, which he was entitled to as a junior police officer. Instead of spending it in benign Kwekwe, he had journeyed back to Epworth to visit his parents and two young brothers. He had been away from Epworth for all eight months but when he got back two weeks before, nothing had changed. People still lived in squalid hovels built out of scrap lumber, open drains and cesspools where still pervaded the place, naked little children still ran in the streets, at night darkness still descended on the slum, and people still fetched water from rustic wells sunk in the meadows of the slum. Although he had grown up surrounded by this poverty and squalid conditions, he had never noticed them before. Timothy’s formative years had been spent playing soccer on the dusty streets of the slum, pinching mangoes from Jairos, their neighbour and designing and building toy cars out of stolen copper wires.
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| − | Epworth is a slum where his father, Choice, had moved his family in 1990. Located south-east of Harare, it is a poor suburb home to thieves, suspicious looking city slickers, and self employed vendors, cobblers, mechanics and electricians. Choice had moved the family there because of the cheap rentals he had found there in his search for lodgings. In addition, he liked the fact that he didn’t have electricity or water bills to worry about. He still worked in the army then, but now he was retired. When Timothy saw him that first week of his leave, Choice was basking in the sun on a wood stool close to the shade of the huge Avocado tree at the centre of their home. Timothy saw that his father had aged, with wisps of grey hair on the edges of the black hair on his head, eyes sunken into their sockets, and his skin, like parchment, hung loosely on his face like an ill-fitting silky coat.
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| − | Soon the forest of lights outside Timothy’s window gave way to rolling savannah grasslands that were draped in bluish-hued moonlight. The grey moon was high and full in the eastern night sky, the light from its glow bathing the rolling savannah grasslands that lay adjacent to the railway tracks, bestowing upon them a silvery luminous radiance. The tall elephant grass swayed to and fro in the gentle breeze of the night. Here and there, Timothy saw mud huts silhouetted against the silvery landscape like termite sculptured anthills on the formally productive commercial farms: these were the dwellings erected by the government backed New Farmer.
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| − | “Those people who built those huts,” the man sitting beside Timothy suddenly said, pointing at the thatched huts with a bony accusatory, tremulous finger, “they are a shame to this country.” He said it more to himself than to Timothy who stood beside him. He had introduced himself as Marko Burutsa, a middle aged man drifting across the country in search of work. Timothy sized him up and kept quiet.
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| − | “Why do you say that?” the taller of the two men who stood behind the other door opposite them asked. Timothy turned his head around to face the direction where the sound had come from. “Or rather, what makes you say that? Do you know something we don’t?” the man continued. He wore a black fedora hat, and a three-piece suit of matching colour. A thick beard and side burns dominated his face. Marko opened the lid of his Scud and took a long draught, seeming to ignore the questions from the man. The Scud was the name of the local opaque beer made from maize grain. He gingerly wiped his mouth to remove the beer suds on his upper lip.
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| − | “Let me tell you something,” Marko started, looking up at the man. “Although one can find that there are some subtle differences in the characteristics of the New Farmers across the country, it is their similarities that are shocking.” Timothy looked at him sceptically, trying to get his drift.
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| − | “Really? What shocking similarities? I thought the New Farmer is part of the peasant vanguard force that is helping the country?” The other man begged to differ. Timothy smiled furtively, knowing from experience that he was in for some heated debate. In the short history of the young nation, nothing had been more divisive of the populace than the violent seizure of white commercials farms by the government without compensation. Everyone’s gaze was fixed on Marko, who cleared his throat and smiled with a knowing look on his face, enjoying being the centre of attention. Marko relished intellectual arguments. When he worked in the coal mines in Hwange, his co-workers always made it a point not to argue with him. They knew he was a formidable adversary, who could argue with anybody over the colour of water for years if necessary.
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| − | “The New Farmers across the country were cut from the same cloth. They are villains and opportunists,” he intoned, his hands jabbing the air. An inscrutable smile briefly settled on his face. “You see, they are barely educated and they vote for the ruling party in every election, irregardless of whether that party serves their best interests or not.” His voice carried over to Timothy and everyone in the small door space, over the clamour and clatter made by the moving train. Marko hadn’t finished his small lecture yet. “They cry to the government for support in procuring fertilizer, diesel and seed at the beginning of each new farming season.”
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| − | They turned and looked up at the man, who was now stroking his beard with a thoughtful look on his open face. “Yah, that is true, I can’t argue with that. I have read it on several occasions in the government newspapers,” he agreed with Marko. “But, I don’t understand why you are branding them villains and opportunists.” Timothy watched and listened in silence, like a witness to a game of chess.
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| − | “It’s simple,” Marko replied, shifting on the bag he was sitting on. “The moment the government gives them these...these farm inputs, they immediately sell them on the black market,” he said with a contemptuous gurgle. “I have seen it with my own two eyes,” he added, pointing into his eye sockets with his left index finger for greater effect. “I know this from experience,” Marko finished holding his hands above his head with the pink palms open in a gesture of honesty. The debate went on to and fro for a while, until sleep took over and the men dropped the subject. Nonetheless, Marko went on to explain other features of the New Farmer to Timothy. By and large, Timothy realized that most of what Marko had said was factual.
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| − | The government had touted the New Farmer as its redeemer against those who argued that the expropriation of white commercial farms without compensation was ill conceived and poorly implemented. At the height of the farm seizures, the minister of agriculture had even put his reputation on the line, preaching to all who could listen that the peasant farmers were the future, able to produce more food that what the commercial farmers did. As the years rolled by, everybody in the country had come to accept the unpalatable reality that the New Farmer was a shame. He was the first in line to receive food aid from donors. When the government gave him a tractor so that he could till his allotted land, he used it as a taxi. The New Farmer produced no food, lounged about waiting for hand-outs and decreased the value of the land by logging all the trees in sight for sale as firewood. This traitor, scoundrel, scheming individual, trusted by the government despite is string of failures, was forcing the country to beg for food donations year and after year. He had single-handedly destroyed a formerly prosperous country.
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| − | Close to the town of Chegutu, their words drifted to them. The three men were engaged in animated discussion. They were sitting at ease in the middle of the coach, directly below the overhead dead television monitors. Everybody close to the centre of the coach had their eyes riveted on them. Timothy cocked his ears towards them and heard one of them saying, “—Yah, I blame the president. The collapse of the economy is the fault of president, that foolish and power hungry man,” The man was probably drunk, but people expected Timothy to do something, since he was a police officer. Marko and the others looked at him to see what he was going to do. As it was, a clause in the constitution provisioned that nobody was allowed to denigrate the person of the president. A number of ill-fated men whose tongues had slipped by mistake had already been arraigned before the courts on charges of denigrating the person of his excellence. Timothy assessed the situation. He could arrest the three men now or he could just let them be. He settled on the latter. It’s not my prerogative to enforce stupid laws, he thought morosely. Let Mugabe come and arrest them himself. Timothy believed in the rule of law and he took his work serious. However, de didn’t accept government’s enactment of Ian Smith era laws to harass its own citizenry. This attitude put him on a direct collision course with the government and his superiors. He knew that sooner rather than later, his ideas will lend him in trouble.
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| − | Just before Kadoma, a man was thrown out of the train for riding it without a ticket. He had tried to seek refugee in the stinking toilet behind Timothy, but the broad-shouldered, short ticket inspector, with the help of the train guards sniffed him out and kicked him out. If I had the money, I would have paid for him, Timothy thought helplessly. A few seats in front of him, a group of women, belonging to the prolific Jehovha Mosowe Church, were singing gospel songs, their shallow tenor voices carrying through the whole coach. People in the country had turned to God for solace in their daily struggle to survive. Vendors selling fruits, fizzy drinks, bread, opaque beer, and jewellery wove their way to and fro in the crowded aisle. A small man selling jewellery under his coat offered to sell Timothy a nice wrist watch. Timothy had held the Rolex imitation watch, stroking it in deep thought. He had to let it go, his salary was too little for him to buy it. After teachers, the police were the least paid government employees in the country with an eighty percent unemployment rate.
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| − | Through the unexplained stoppages in the middle of nowhere, the noise, and the cold that had soon taken hold of the coach after they had departed Harare, Timothy sighed with relief when he saw the unmistakable lights of ZIMASCO, the steel maker, which signalled that the train had arrived in Kwekwe. As he alighted from the train and braced himself to face the chilly night air, Timothy never knew that he would never go back to Harare again—not in a long time.
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| − | '''Crossing the Border~3'''
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| − | Kwekwe, a small, quaint and bucolic municipality of a hundred thousand people located at the centre of Zimbabwe astride the mineral loaded Great Dyke, has a distinctive frontier feel to it. It is a place chock-a-block with opportunists of all streaks, where people still persistently engage in death-dealing skirmishes over gold claims, get wealthy overnight inscrutably, and middlemen hauling briefcases stuffed to the seems with bank notes are frequently robbed. It has one main street, one traffic light and one central bus rank that is grimy with rotting banana and orange peels, discarded spinach leaves and gapping potholes on its roads. Barefoot women and sickly, small girls swarm the bus rank, selling oily lemon flavoured cup cakes and boiled eggs and roasted peanuts and fruits and thick sugar cane stalks.
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| − | If one walks for less than a quarter of an hour north following the busy highway that dissects the downtown area in two, the adjoining area is poke-marked with enormous holes, the handiwork of illegal gold diggers. One can spy these illegal gold miners standing about their newly tunnelled holes within their ‘claims,’ dressed inexpensively in soiled and tattered clothes. Wasted, exhausted and skeletal, some of the miners would be leaning lethargically on shovels and hoes, the foremost tools of their trade. When they are not playing cat and mouse with the police, these gold miners compete for gold extraction from the mineral rich earth with established multinational companies like Globe & Phoenix.
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| − | The gold miners, being natural risk takers dreaming of making it big in life, engage in some comical escapades none too often. A report in the town weekly newspaper recently told of a story in which students at a local primary school returned from their month long school break only to find their school grounds poke-marked with five meter deep water filled holes, relics of the gold diggers. Apparently an unconfirmed but juicy rumour had started floating around town asserting that a pupil at the school had picked up a gold nugget in the school grounds while playing. On the whole, gold diggers are treated like pariah dogs by everybody else in the town, accused of escalating the prices of basic commodities in the city by their unrestrained spending.
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| − | Mbizo Township is a high density suburb east of city the centre of Kwekwe, where mixes of low and high income families reside in economical and luxurious homes. It is made up of twenty sections of diverse sizes, numbered from one up to twenty. Sections one and two are the oldest, built by the municipality in the halcyon days before the country gained independence to house cheap labour for the gold mines uptown. The sections progressively get newer as the numbers increase until one reaches section twenty, whose posh houses sprung up in the last two years. Together with the other high density suburb of Amaveni west of the city centre, they house the largest share of the town’s inhabitants.
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| − | A large number of the residents of Mbizo are employed in the informal sector, dutifully working as cobblers, radio and television repairmen, auto mechanics, carpenters making cheap household furniture, and vendors. By night, some of these informal sector employees shed their day images and supplement their incomes moonlighting as prostitutes, muggers and night gold excavators. Those struggling to make ends meet keep gardens on the banks of the small streams that criss-crossed the township. A small percentage of the labour force is legally employed in the formal sector as clerks, city planers, bank tellers, and police officers.
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| − | Tucked away in a corner of the high ranking police officers’ common office room, police Insp. Timothy V. Shumba sat contentedly on a straight backed chair behind his desk, his face gloom with weariness. He had just finished writing the report on the two arrests he had made on that day during his patrols. He had made the first arrest at Msimbe Shopping Centre in section five, where a middle aged man had been caught red-handed, shoplifting. The second incident involved a raid on a former fuel service station, where he apprehended a man for selling petrol on the black market above its government stipulated price. He sighed nosily and closed the report book. The thick hot air in the room enervated him; it sucked all the energy from his muscles. The solitary five-bladed wood ceiling fan didn’t help cool the room at all, making it seem like it was deliberately nailed there to merely move the calescent, sluggish air around the capacious room purposelessly. Sweat oozed and flowed down his armpits and chest even though he had loosed his tie. He gazed at his newly acquired digital time piece for the umpteenth time and discerned with relief and glee that it was just half an hour before the end of his shift.
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| − | He glanced outside the office through the large awning window near him and saw that the sun was low in the western horizon, its rays filtering through the canopy of the giant, tall blue gum trees that ran in front and parallel the security fence that marked the perimeter of Mbizo Police Station. Pedestrians walked by languidly in the humid, debilitating weather past the entrance to the police station while a few cars rowed by beside them on the pot-holed tarmac. Although the unpleasant, humid weather required people to labour to reach their destinations, it also signalled hope and good times to come, for such weather was always followed by bountiful rains.
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| − | Timothy withdrew his gaze from the serene scene outside and looked at his disorderly desk. He decided to kill the time left before the end of his shift by cleaning and organizing books and folders on his diminutive, simple mahogany desk. He had recently been promoted from the lowly rank of constable to sergeant, an event that came with its own perks; a personal desk that he shared with nobody and a mandatory move to the high ranking officers’ common office room, out of the constables’ sty. Since he was a somewhat fresh arrival he was self-conscious, feeling that he didn’t belong to the group of the conceited high ranking officers who sat on their desks in the common room, chatting raucously. These same officers aggrieved secretly, angry at him for being promoted straight to sergeant from a constable in a short time when they had waited for upwards of four years for their promotion to sergeants from constables. Timothy regarded them with unease, still unsure of which ones among them to give his trust to. He spoke in monosyllables in answer to their questions. The common room was just a large hall, the six officer’s desks arranged neatly adjacent to its walls, three on either side. The centre of the room was taken by a lengthy table where one shared telephone and an assortment of office documents sat. The light that poured in though the hefty colonial awing windows lit the room tastelessly, exposing the white walls with peeling paint.
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| − | Timothy’s promotion to the rank of inspector had been occasioned by the timely recognition by his superiors in the department that one way or another they had to advance somebody to take the place of the copious number of officers who were deserting the force en masse. Most of those who were leaving the force left overnight like phantoms, just vanishing into thin air without being granted proper leave. The majority of the deserters were fade-up with the low pay and too much work. Being one of the few serving constables at the station who had completed their GCE A-level before joining the force, Timothy’s name had appeared at the apex of the list of those people up for promotion that year. It was common knowledge that the majority of the police officers across the length and breath of the country had barely completed their high school education before joining the force. In the rural areas, unconfirmed reports suggested that some officers recruited into the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) could barely read or write. The reports were of course dismissed by the commissioner of police as frivolous and a figment of the rumour peddler’s imagination, whoever it was.
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| − | As he fussed about his desk, he eavesdropped on the banter of the other officers in the room. ‘—so we forced them to sing the national anthem,’ Sgt. Machikinya said and they all burst out laughing boisterously. Sgt. Machikinya was zealously relating the story about a group of illegal gold diggers that his squad had captured during their latest night raid. Sgt. Machikinya masked the turmoil in his private life with smiles. He had many regrets gnawing at his soul in addition to problems with his wife who accused him of having made bad judgments for the family in the past. Personally, Sgt. Machikinya never forgave himself for refusing to be transferred to his home village of Marange six months before. Those who were in the environs of Marange swiftly became wealthy overnight following the discovery of diamonds in the area. His brother Enoch now moved around in a Toyota Hilux Single Cab five-speed manual DLX, all of a sudden affluent from the money he had made during the diamond rush before the Ministry of Mines expropriated all the lucrative claims in the area. Timothy looked up at him, and saw his huge mouth wide open, his thick lips hanging about like roasted sausages. He was burly with a moustache that he took great pains to sustain. Since he came from Manicaland Province, everybody called him Samanyika, a way of endearment.
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| − | As a rule, the officers at the station never joked about thorny issues like politics, opting instead to focus on jokes about the events they encountered while out on patrol. Politics was a thorny and perilous issue in the country at that time, where one had to tread with the utmost of wariness. With the emergence of a new vibrant opposition political party seven years prior, the ruling party was still losing a considerable number of its supporters to it and it didn’t like it. The government often made predacious forays into the police centre, firing officers found to be supporters of the opposition party at the drop of a pen. In that tense atmosphere, it was difficult to know which officer was a spy or who supported which political party, the opposition or the ruling party. However, all the fifty officers under Chief Inspector Gaza, the officer in charge of Mbizo Police Station, knew very well that he was not only a sympathizer of the ruling party that had been in power for more that a quarter century, but was one of its dedicated foot soldiers. Chief Insp. Gaza, according to those who had insight into his ignominious activities, harboured ambitions of becoming a member of the powerful ruling party central committee once he retired from the police force, hence his support for it now.
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| − | The automatic electric type thirty-four mono-phone on the long table in the officers’ share room rang, jolting Timothy from is thoughts. Sgt. Nharira made two quick fervid strides with his long legs from his desk and reached it at the centre of the room. He answered it on its third ring. Sekuru Zhou, Chief Inspector Gaza’s office assistant, was on the other end of the line. Sekuru Zhou, whom rumour had it that he had been an office boy to the former illustrious Governor-General of Southern Rhodesia Sir. Humphrey Gibbs told Sgt. Nharira that Sgt. Shumba must report to the chief’s office at once. Sgt. Nharira’s face broke into a knowing smile before he politely relayed the message to Timothy. Timothy wondered what was in store for him as he walked up the stairs to the second floor to see his boss. He knew that being summoned to Gaza’s office was always an ominous sign, especially at the end of one’s shift.
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| − | “He is here Sir,” old Sekuru Zhou said in a low, feeble voice, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. His expression was forlorn, tired of scurrying to and fro on his boss’ errands. Chief Inspector Samuel T. Gaza looked up from the newspaper he was reading and stared at Sekuru Zhou solicitously. What is he still doing in the force at that age? I will have to send a recommendation to my superiors at Kwekwe Metro so that they can make him retire, Gaza thought furtively as he looked at the old man standing in front of his desk. As a patriotic officer and an exceedingly decorated former war veteran, Chief Insp. Gaza read the government sanctioned daily newspaper, The Herald but today, he thought he would know better about what the opposition is doing by reading the anti-government paper, The Standard. He had spread it across his massive ornate mahogany desk. He sat comfortably on a high-back black executive chair.
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| − | “Send him in,” he bellowed and the gaunt Sekuru Zhou quickly left the spaciously furnished office, his departure followed immediately by a rapping on the door. “Come in, come in Sgt. Shumba.” Gaza invited Timothy into the office avidly. He had deliberately instructed Sekuru Zhou to remove the guest chairs from his office so that whoever visited him in his office would stand, forcing them to cut their meetings with him short. He wanted to show them who the real boss at the police station was. Did they think I got to this rank by luck? Let them stand! He had been in a bad disposition over the past weeks, under pressure from his superiors, Chief Supt. Mawere specifically, in the Kwekwe Metropolitan Police who wanted him to quell the politically motivated violence that had been flaring up all over the ghetto like suburb of Mbizo for the past several weeks. Instead of civilized dialogue, supporters of both the opposition and had taken to the streets, where they pounded each other with fists and sticks.
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| − | Timothy walked in dubiously and stood stiffly at attention, his chin held high and his shoulders square and straight. He wore the standard issue police uniform of brown pants and grey shirts, rounded up with a brown police hat with a wide, black brim. His athletic body filled the uniform comfortably. Gaza took his time, letting Timothy marinate at attention. Timothy moved his eyeballs only and looked down at him. He felt rage building up inside him. What was he doing making me stand at attention this long? What is he reading from that newspaper that is so important anyway? Timothy didn’t see eye-to-eye with his boss. He resented him for the way he ran the police division as if it was part of the ruling party. Gaza regularly used the police vehicles to run errands on behalf of the ruling party. Look at his large nose, looks as big as that of a gorilla. Yes, a gorilla Timothy thought and laughed secretly. After what seemed like an eternity to Timothy, Gaza finally put him at ease, and folded his newspaper.
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| − | Gaza pushed away his wheeled chair and stood up and strolled to the large window of the office. He looked outside and saw people walking on the street. Where did these opposition people come from? Gaza thought. We fought for this country from the British. People paid the ultimate price so that today there could be a country called Zimbabwe. This country was won through the barrel of a gun; we are not just going to give it up to them without a fight. He shuffled back to the desk and looked at the story in the newspaper. He could recite it word for word:
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| − | -Mbizo Police have come under criticism from the opposition and civil society after they harassed peace loving civilians going about their business at Msimbe Shopping Centre. Eyewitnesses who spoke to this reporter on condition of anonymity said the trouble started when police drove up in police Land-Rover Defenders at the centre around five in the afternoon. They proceeded to beat up anybody in sight. Half an hour later, with the shopping centre deserted, the police constables where seen looting goods from the vendor stalls and stores. The civil society has called on Chief Insp. Gaza to reign in the unruly officers under his jurisdiction.
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| − | They deserved it, Gaza thought. They are active supporters of the opposition and until they renounce their allegiance to the opposition, I will keep sending my men to loot their goods. They can do nothing against me.
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| − | This punishment on the business community of Mbizo Township had been prescribed to Gaza by Chief Supt. Mawere. If the time comes for him to answer for his crimes, Chief Insp. Gaza reasoned that he would tell the world that he was following orders from the top. He had read in the press that officers in Rwanda who participated in the genocide were acquitted after they convinced the jury that they killed people following orders from their superiors.
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| − | Gaza looked up from the newspaper, and cast his gaze of Timothy. Timothy had been standing all this time that Gaza had been lost in his thoughts. You have to watch this one very carefully, he thought of Timothy, remembering the intelligence he had gathered on him. Sgt. Machikinya, a fanatic with an inscrutable desire to be liked and get promotion, had reported to him that Timothy never participated in the looting of stores or the disruption of opposition meetings with enthusiasm. This is an excellent opportunity for me to see where his allegiance lies, Gaza thought exultantly.
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| − | “Shumba I want you to lead a detachment of men to Mbizo Stadium.” Chief Insp. Gaza said. He spoke in a business like manner, his voice deep and guttural. Timothy knew that he had a reputation for a no nonsense attitude when it came to dealing with his junior officers. Chief Insp. Gaza had joined the police three years after the country’s independence in 1980.
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| − | “Sir, what are we to do there when we get there,” Timothy enquired, showing excessive police etiquette. Gaza smiled at him, exposing a fine set of teeth stained yellow by cigarette smoke. He pursed his tongue over his lips, which were thick as if they had been stung by bees.
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| − | “Slow down Shumba, I’m not yet finished,” he said amiably, trying to present himself has Timothy’s friend. Over his long years in the police force, Gaza had learned that the best way gain the trust of somebody was to appear as if you are friends with them. He opened one of the drawers on his executive desk and retrieved a packet of Madison cigarettes, his favourite brand. He pulled out one cigarette from it and threw the white packet back in the drawer. He reached for a box of matches under the newspaper on his table and lit the cigarette with the ease of a chain smoker. He made no effort to proffer a cigarette to Timothy because he knew he didn’t smoke.
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| − | “Err…Shumba, I’m sure you know as well as I do that there is going to be an opposition rally at that soccer stadium this Saturday. My superiors believe that there is going to be violence at that rally,” he continued, noisily exhaling the smoke from his lungs through his small round nose. He watched as the smoke rose gradually towards the high ceiling of the room. Timothy cleared his throat, inviting him to continue.
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| − | “The political atmosphere in this suburb is very tense. You know very well that in the last parliamentary elections, a ruling party commissar lost his seat to that upstart from the opposition party,” he said in a voice tinged with regret, his face partially obscured by his exhaled smoke. The cigarette smoke spreading around the immense room made Timothy’s eyes water. Gaza, although a staunch supporter of a government that vilified everything western, he was an unadulterated gentleman at heart. He always made time to watch cricket on the television and was a long time member at the exclusive Kwekwe Polo Club, that very British of spots. He played in the polo team representing his club and his strong left arm enabled him to consistently start in the first team.
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| − | “My superiors don’t want a repeat of that humiliation again. They have asked me to make sure the upcoming rally does…err, well what shall I say…succeed as it were.” Gaza paused again, and pulled another long draught on his cigarette, filling his voluminous lungs with the nicotine filled smoke. He lived alone in a massive house, having divorced his wife eight years prior. He told close friends that he discovered very late in life that marriage was for weak willed men, those who needed somebody to turn to when they cry. He was no such man. “I’m detailing you to provide security at that rally. Take as many men as you want.”
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| − | “Very well, sir,” Timothy replied with feigned avidness. He saluted him and made for the door.
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| − | “Shumba,” Gaza called after him.
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| − | “You do understand what I meant by ‘provide security,’ right?” He looked at Timothy coolly and held his gaze, trying to read his thoughts.
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| − | “Yes, sir, we will keep the peace at the rally… like we have always done, sir.” Timothy grinned. Gaza realized that the young sergeant had totally failed to get his point.
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| − | “Wake up and smell the cheese man! Don’t be naive,” Gaza roared at him, slamming the folded newspaper down on his desk indignantly. His figure and manner had changed. Timothy looked at him, a perplexed look on his face.
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| − | “What do you mean, Sir?” Gaza pushed away his office chair and stood up. He strolled over to where Timothy was standing and stood directly in front of him. Pound for pound, they were matched both in stature and height, although Gaza’s body sagged, showing its advanced age.
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| − | “I want you to disrupt that rally, make sure it doesn’t happen,” Gaza said belligerently, his brown eyes dancing over Timothy’s face. Timothy was perceptibly shaken and confused and beads of sweat covered his lithe, youthful face.
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| − | “But, sir, they have approval to hold the rally from the high court,” Timothy countered him, shifting his weight to his left leg, unsure of himself. He knew it was never a good idea to argue with superior officers, even if what they were asking you to do was blatantly wrong and outside the normal police modus operandi.
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| − | “My superiors have clear instructions from the top; the courts can say whatever they want. This police force follows orders from the top, not from some thin magistrate waiting to apply for asylum in some other imperialist country.” Gaza said dismissively, his thin limps shaking, showing the angry emotions building up within him. Globules of saliva spattered out of his gapping mouth, landing on Timothy’s lips and starched police uniform. He walked over to the wide window and looked outside again. He put out the half smoked cigarette and discarded it into a round bronze ash tray on one side of his table.
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| − | “But, sir ...” Timothy tried to reason with him.
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| − | “But, but, but what?” Gaza cut him, whirling away from the window to face him, his hands shaking and planted firmly in his pockets. Timothy braced himself and stood to his full height. His timidity evaporated and in its place confidence rose up in wafts like smoke in a windless sky. He was the only one at the police station who could hold his ground, however feeble, against Gaza.
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| − | “With all due respect, sir, I thought the duty of the police was to uphold the rule of law by being non-partisan and impartial?” Timothy stammered. Gaza looked at him with venomous eyes.
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| − | “Trying to be smart heh, Shumba? You are quoting the rule book at me now, is that it Shumba?” Gaza asked, shock and outrage in his voice. He chuckled contemptuously.
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| − | “No. Not at all, sir” Timothy said. Gaza placed his left hand on Timothy’s shoulder calmly.
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| − | “You are paid to follow orders man, not to argue.” He said and removed his hand from Timothy’s shoulder. There was a note of finality in his voice. A lull settled in the room. The lovable sound of a cooing of dove in the gum trees outside drifted into the room.
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| − | “You are dismissed, and I want a full report of your activities first thing on my desk Monday.” Gaza said, and waved him out of his office with a theatrical shake of his right hand. Timothy’s spirits sank, and he walked away, closing the door carefully despite his bitterness, leaving Gaza standing in the middle of his office. If I were a dog, my tail would be between my legs right now, he thought morosely. He had committed the carnal sin of countermanding his superior officer, something that could see him court marshalled if Chief Insp. Gaza wanted.
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| − | '''Crossing the Border~4'''
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| − | As Timothy made his way away from the police station to Section Six where he rented a single room, he crossed the main boulevard that joined Mbizo suburbs to the city, less than ten kilometres away. School children from the nearby Manunure High walked past him on their way home. Although the sun was bright orange and very low in the western horizon with shadows rippling in the trees like phantoms, dusk appeared to gathering fast in shadows under a briefly yellowish wide sky, aided by the fine sand hanging in the air. He bought a small packet of tomatoes from the vendors who now housed their vegetable stalls under the shade of what once was a Shell gas station. He chatted gaily with one of the garrulous vendors, although his mind still dwelled on his earlier confrontation with Chief Inspector Gaza. He was growing weary of working propping up the government of President Mugabe; a government he felt was to blame for the economic upheaval in the country.
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| − | He had had countless arguments with Choice, his father. Choice had participated in the war of liberation from the British in the lat 70s. At independence, he joined the newly formed Zimbabwe National Army. In the face of rampant evidence pointing at the hand of the government in the demise of the country, he rejected it. No matter how Timothy explained to him the reasons behind the shortage of fuel in the country—that corruption at the national oil company had deprived the country of fuel—he rejected it. Instead, he accepted President Mugabe’s explanation that the ‘challenges’ as he put it, that the country is growing through was engineered by Tony Blair, the prime minister of Britain. Choice even accepted Mugabe’s outlandish claim that oil tankers carrying crude oil destined for Zimbabwe were being intercepted on the high seas by the British Royal Navy. Timothy found that it was hopeless to argue with him and as a result no politics were discussed the last time he visited his parents in Epworth.
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| − | He was getting used to life as a bachelor. He cherished the boundless freedom it provided him, wherein he was free to do as he pleased. He did what he wanted most of the times, like cooking dinner every day for a whole week followed by a week without dinner. He was free to watch the small black and white television set he had bought anytime, free to go and watch Lancashire Steel, his favourite soccer team, play at Baghdad Stadium, its home ground. He had never been this free in his life. It felt like a release. Following the completion of the mandatory officer training program at the Morris Depot, the police academy in Harare, Timothy had been promptly deployed to Kwekwe. That was almost a year and half ago. His squad was expected to bolster the depleted ranks of the police force in that town, a hot bed of political violence, intimidation, and murder. Up to now, he had enjoyed his stay in that small enclave, located equidistant between the major metropolitan centres of Harare and Bulawayo.
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| − | “Afternoon Ambuya,” Timothy called out to Ambuya Nekete, who sat on the veranda of the house left to her by her first born son, Aaron. In order to supplement the income she made from the sell of her vegetables, she rented one of the four rooms of her house to Timothy. She gave him a melancholy smile and casually returned his greeting.
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| − | “Oh, Timothy, I was wondering if I might have a word with you.” She said good-naturedly. Her Shona was very cultured, one she had learned to speak in the old days when she worked as a maid at Jackson Lloyd, a former cattle rancher who left the country at independence. Timothy walked over to where she was sitting, and hunched his knees, as was required by Shona customs. “I just wanted to let you know that the rent will be going up next month.” Timothy just squatted there, numb and unsure of what to say. She saw his doubt and annoyance and quickly she decided to justify herself, “I have no choice you know. Everything is going up everyday these days.”
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| − | “I know how hard it must be for you,” he said good-naturedly. “I understand you have to keep yourself afloat.” He made to walk away, but he stopped.
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| − | “Ah, I said this before but thought I would remind,” she said, baring her small mouth. Her face was lined with age and Timothy could see that some of her teeth were missing. “Would please to keep the volume of you television down?” There we go, Timothy thought morosely. He thought all she did was complain. She had accused of sorts miner misdemeanours in the past.
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| − | “I will remember that.”
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| − | Ambuya Nekete loved and respected Timothy because she felt he was an upstanding young man with a bright future. Since he moved in and word spread around the neighbourhood of Section Six that he was a police officer, she hadn’t lost anything to burglars. This was better, unlike in the past when thieves broke into her living room and made of with all the electronic equipment, including the large expensive plasma television that her son had sent her from the UK where he worked as a doctor. In contrast, over the time he had come to know her, Timothy now loathed Ambuya Nekete. He hated her when she sent Nyarai, her ten year old niece over to his room to beg for salt or a pinch of sugar. It had started innocently two months after he moved into his room and now it had reached its peak. Only two days ago, Nyarai had come to him and said, “Ambuya wanted to know if you would somehow help her manage to buy maize meal.” It infuriated him a lot, but he couldn’t refuse to help her and so he bottled up and curbed his anger towards her.
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| − | He left her and stepped behind the house where the door leading to his room was located. He unlocked the pale blue coloured door, pushed it ajar, stepped in and shut it. He threw the small bundle of tomatoes on the lone coffee table in the centre of the tiny kitchen, and pushed his way into the cubicle that served as his bedroom. He removed his uniform and folded it nicely. He was very hungry but languid to cook. If he could afford it, he could go up two miles to the shopping centre at Msimbe and purchase something from one of the restaurants that specialized in cooking tasty fried chicken and sadza. Regrettably, the meagre income he received from the government was barely enough to cover his basic needs, let alone fancy foods at some restaurants. So instead, he retrieved the Peter Becker paperback he had borrowed from the public library a week before. He shuffled over to his small bed and set on its edge and started reading. He read it very unhurriedly, trying to make it last him more than two weeks. He didn’t want to walk the long distance to the library for another book just yet.
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| − | He tired of reading the book, Hill of Destiny and so he threw it away. He lay down on the bed thinking. It sickened him to realize that he was part of a tainted, corrupt police force. A force that was failing to execute is mandate of protecting the citizens of the country. As he lay on his small bed, he wondered what would happen if he disobeyed Gaza’s explicit order. I would be court marshalled for sure. He turned and lay on the thin mattress on his stomach. He realized that it was a Thursday night and there was still two days left before the rally. Who gave Gaza those orders? Well, even I knew who ordered him to make sure the rally doesn’t take place; there is nothing I possibly could do since I’m was just a junior ranking officer in the force. With his thoughts wondering about how best to break up the rally or to prevent it from happening, Timothy fell asleep.
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| − | Although he had finished school at Epworth High, he had done it through fits and starts. Timothy liked to think that his primary school years across the street from Epworth High at Kubatana Primary were pure hell. For all those that could listen, he always told them about his horrible grade six and seven teacher, Mr. Chade. The highlight of his chequered relationship with him was his baptism in a tack of cold water early one June morning. “Timothy, you are not only lazy, you also stink.” Mr. Chade had shouted at him as usual. He had a light skin complexion and was married to a woman ten years his junior. His most distinctive feature was his limp; his left leg was three centimetres shorter than the right one. He claimed that a hand grenade exploded on his feet during the war of liberation in the late seventies. He took every opportunity to remind the whole class that he had fought for this country, liberating it from the “white British imperialist who had enslaved the black populace for nearly a century.” And ever since he had realized that Timothy’s father was in the army, he had flogged him all the time because he knew Timothy wouldn’t have the nerve report him. Army dads actually loved teachers who flogged their children for wrongdoing at that time in the early nineties. His dad was no exception.
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| − | “When did you last shower?” Mr. Chade had demanded to know. His breath was rancid and foul. When he smiled, a fine set of yellow teeth shone through. His chin was always clean shaven, a habit probably acquired during his many years in the army.
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| − | “I don’t know.” Timothy had said. He didn’t know when He had last showered. At home nobody checked on him to make sure he showered since he only lived with his dad while my mother and young brothers lived in the countryside. His was a typical migrant family with two homes, one in the city and another one in the countryside. His dad came home at night from work when he was already in bed, and left very early in the morning before he woke up.
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| − | “Well, come with me,” Mr. Chade said, grabbing him by his right arm. All the other students in class sat in silence, watching the unfolding drama with kin interest. He could see Simba Gudo his arch enemy grinning, his fat body heaving with pleasure. Mr. Chade dragged him out of the class, and took him to the only water tap at Kubatana School. Before he could realize what was happening, he instantly threw him into the water, clothes and all. The tank was dug under the water tap and it was Principal Banda’s novel idea. In his capacity as the headmaster of the school, he had decreed that there was to be no water wastage at the school. The water collected in the tank under the water tap they used to water the flower beds around the school. Algae grew on the sides of the tank. Timothy gasped for air. As it was in June, the water in the tank was almost frozen. It chilled him to the bone. Mr. Chade reached over and pulled him out of the water, lest he drowned. Since Timothy couldn’t swim at that time, he had already gulped mouthfuls of the dirty, slimy algae filled water. He was shivering and students from his class looked at him and Mr. Chade through the classroom windows, some cheering while others jeered.
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| − | “Now you have learnt your lesson. If you come to school without showering again I will throw you in there again,” Mr. Chade had threatened him, pointing to the tank, his face contorted with fury. Timothy couldn’t understand why anybody would be incensed by his hygiene. He just stood there shivering, and looked at him with extreme revulsion. He had never loathed a teacher that way before. Anger and frustration ate at his nerves. “You can go home now if you want,” he said his hands rising up and down in a dismissive way. Timothy turned around and left. His clothes were damp; the chilly morning air didn’t help. It was the lowest point in his life. It was bad, but what made the situation worse was that he had lost face in front of his friends at school. Nastiest of all, he couldn’t imagine how he was going face Sandra, the girl that he loved who was in his class.
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| − | '''Crossing the Border~5'''
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| − | While he slept, he dreamed of Maria. On his visit to Harare months before, he had sneaked away from Choice’s humdrum stories about preparing for the new farming season and extending the family house and rushed to see her at the home where she lived with her parents and sisters.
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| − | “Oh, my darling you are the best, you brought me a flower!” she had crooned as they walked side by side down the dusty road from Domboramwari Shopping centre. She had led him to one of the bushy meadows nearby where they had embraced and made love in the twilight of the hot pitiless day. It had been an experience that Maria had cherished and which Timothy had waited for a long time for impatiently.
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| − | “Why did you agree to do it now, after all these years?” He had asked her puzzled, hastily pulling up his black pants.
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| − | Buttoning up her multi-coloured blouse, she had smiled at him in the semi-darkness. “I just felt like I can’t wait another minute,” she had said matter-of-factly.
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| − | “I will never understand how you women think,” Timothy had said, throwing up his hands in the air in mock exasperation.
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| − | Suddenly but surely, there was an inaudible rapping on the door to Timothy’s single room a few hours later. Timothy was sound asleep already, still dreaming about Maria, although it was only a little after nine in the evening. He had had a long emasculating day, the climax of which was his berating by Chief Insp. Gaza. The rapping on the pale azure coloured wooden door repeated itself, but this time a little louder than before. Timothy woke up with a start and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He yawned, adjusting his eyes to the darkness of the room. “Hold on one second, I’m coming,” he yelled. He threw off the sheets that covered him, jumped off the rickety bed and staggered towards the door, fumbling for the light switch. He found the switch, and opened the door carefully. He wondered who would visit him at such ungodly hour, a time when witches exercise their Hyenas before their arduous nightly escapades.
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| − | He peered outside. His lower jaw dropped as soon as he recognized her in the semi-dark gloom. He stood rigid, staring at her with shock. She looked at him with her brown orb-like eyes and never said a word. She handed him the heavily laden green, JanSpot polyester bag and pushed herself inside the room. She sighed and sat down on the solitary chair available. Timothy followed her into the room clumsily and promptly proceeded to deposit the medium sized bag behind the dark brown cotton sheet that served as the screen dividing the small room into two cubicles, one a kitchen and another a bedroom.
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| − | “Maria, what are you doing here?” Timothy said as he stepped out of the small bedroom. The question sounded like a threat. He stood in front of her in his brown night boxers and matching vest. Instead of looking at him, Maria was studying the peeling walls of the tiny room. She ran her right index finger on top of the small coffee table at the centre of the room and examined it. As she expected, it was covered in dust.
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| − | “You should try and keep your room clean my love,” she said seeming to ignore his question. She blew her nose on the small white handkerchief she carried and looked at him with her round piercing eyes. She had ethereal beauty that turned heads wherever she went. She had brown eyes, long shaved legs, a supple downy face, waist like an hourglass, smooth lips, and was liberally breasted. When she walked, her hips defied her motion, instead swinging to and fro independently like the cheeks of a chipmunk chewing nuts. She wore a red frock that reached to her knees and the gold imitation necklace that Timothy had given her during the last Valentine’s Day hung on her long slender neck. Her breasts filed her chest like melons. “It was a surprise,” she finally said, looking at him with her tender eyes.
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| − | “You could have at least called and let me know that you were coming,” he protested, feigning exasperation.
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| − | “Timmy, how could I? Your cell phone is always out of service. I have since stopped trying to get hold of you using that avenue.” She shrugged lightly, pursed her red-lipstick-painted lips and grinned at him. He liked it when she called him Timmy. She was the only one who called him that name, everybody else preferred Tim. Timothy hadn’t found the courage to tell her that his phone is always out of service because he had discontinued his cell phone service with Econet Wireless because it was too expensive.
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| − | “You know my number at work. You should have used that,” he said grudgingly. Maria dropped her shoulders in resignation. She hated it when he failed to understand simple things. This infuriated her, forcing her to argue with him over trivial issues. She decided not to tell him that the people at his work have been rude to her in the past, why she never called him at work no more. Instead, she chose to surrender and placate him.
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| − | “I’m sorry honey. I thought you would love the surprise. Most of all, I came because I missed you a lot,” she said. Instantly, he relaxed and his shoulders drooped. He started walking towards the chair where she was sitting. She liked the way she was able to handle him, to quell his arguments, and to make him happy like a small child.
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| − | “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the surprise visit. I do,” he said, now squatting in front of her, holding her hands reverently. “You know I always miss you.” He yanked her up from the chair effortless, and gave her a passionate bear hug. Soon his mouth searched for hers. He found it and kissed her lightly. Her lips were rubbery and tense at first but soon they were moist and tender. Maria’s tongue moving in and out of his mouth, Timothy grabbed her by her slim waist and backed into the bedroom. Timothy kicked off his boxers, while she wiggled out of her frock and frilly petticoats. They fell on the tiny bed and suddenly Timothy was on top of her.
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| − | Afterwards, subdued by the sadness of after love, they lay in each other’s arms their skin still sticky with sweat, content and listening to the night sounds. Maria felt pleased with her life. She had been with many men in her life, but Timothy was the only who knew how to take her places that other many could never manage. When she thought she had reached the apex of that pleasure, he always surprised her and took her further and further into the stars. She loved him more than anything else in the world. The world didn’t matter, as long as she was with him. But something in her stomach was threatening to tear apart that love. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear, her voice silky smooth and erotic. They had met while they were both a-level students at Epworth High School. Taking the same combination of subjects and seeing each other everyday of the week, their puppy love had quickly blossomed.
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| − | “I love you too dear,” he said drowsily. He yawned and, moved his leg away from her bosom. Her skin was tender as that of a small baby, and it glowed like refined ivory. Timothy, like many young adult men his age, looked at his relationship with Maria as something that will come to pass. He planned to stay with her for as long as was necessary, until such a time when he meets somebody better than Maria. If that was not possible, he was happy to get married to her, at some point in the years to come when he has enough money to care for her. After a prolonged silence, Maria finally blurted the issue that ate at her soul.
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| − | “When are we going to get married, Timmy?” There was no response. Supporting her upper body with one elbow, she looked down on his face, and realized that he was already fast asleep. Once fed, straight to bed I guess, she thought and smiled to herself. She covered him with the milky white sheets and snuggled close to him. She resigned herself to tell him about what was in her belly at a later date, when the right opportunity presented itself.
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| − | The following morning, Maria stood by the door and watched Timothy leave for work. She looked dreamy-eyed. When he was by the gate, he looked back and waved at her. She blew a kiss at him and beamed. She hadn’t been truthful when she told him the night before that her visit was a mere surprise. To celebrate his departure from Harare, they had had wild nights at a cheep motel. A month after he had left she had missed her menstrual period. Since she didn’t have regular menstrual cycles, she ignored it and assumed that everything was okay. But in the weeks that followed, she had feelings of her breasts swelling, becoming tender, and sometimes becoming painful in the morning. She had fatigue, tiredness, nausea and vomited on more than one occasion. She told her mother what was happening. Rosemary, her mother quickly whisked her to see a doctor, who confirmed their worst fears. Maria was pregnant.
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| Crossing the Border |
| Author: |
Trymore MacVivo |
| Genre: |
Fiction. African Fiction. Zimbabwean Fiction. |
| Publisher: |
MacVivo & Nzira Press |
| ISBN: |
|
| Publication Date: |
2008 |
| License: |
(c) Trymore MacVivo |
| CC-Licensed Version: |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ |
| Print version for purchase: |
{{{pvfp}}} |
| Pages: |
300. |
Synopsis The novel is the first book attempting to address the effect of the strife in Zimbabwe to the young people around the country who suddenly find their hopes and dreams crushed by Mugabe's government. It is set in contemporary Zimbabwe against the backdrop of poverty, company closures, political violence, social and economic unraveling. It is it about the struggle to survive, love, and one man's quest to escape from all that he loathes. It follows the life of the young Insp. Timothy J. Shumba as he tries to deal with issues in his private and those of a police officer. He has very limited financial resources to support his parents and his expecting girlfriend. As an officer in a corrupt police force that dances to the whims of an autocratic government, he struggles to find meaning in life.
In the end, he follows the road that many of his countrymen had taken by running away to South Africa, the Promised Land. On his heels is Chief Insp. Gaza, a man sent by the government to stop Insp. Timothy J. Shumba from leaving the country. Powerful people want him stopped from leaving the country fearing that he might expose the government's heinous crimes to the outside world. Along the way, Insp. Timothy J. Shumba dices with death as he escapes from man-eating lions, the South African Army, and Alistair Summers, a former Rhodesian Selous Scouts officer turned vigilante who has vowed to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe into South Africa by any means necessary.
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- Below is the first five chapters.
CROSSING THE BORDER
the Escape
by MacVivo, Trymore
Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance! -Doris Lessing
Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dear grandmother, Ambuya Nekete, whose belief in my potential has made me into who I am this day.
Crossing the Border~1
Never had a mood of desperation descended on the country like that before. It was a sullen mood that came so sudden and so unexpected that it took many by surprise and overnight, holding a passport endowed one with a sense of ease and feelings of being different from the common man, like a mark of high academic achievement. Those who didn’t have the little green passport book scurried to and fro like meercats desperately trying to get their hands on it. The small green book had become the most sought after document in the whole country. In Harare at Makombe Building, long lines of people waiting to apply for passports stretched into the distance. People resorted to camping outside the little colonial building’s gates to be well placed when the gates opened in the morning to apply for the document. The registrar-general, Tobaiwa Mudede taunted them. In his stern voice he said: “Having a passport is a privilege that the government endowed on you as a citizen...which can be taken away from you if the government so wishes.” It was no wonder that people claimed the government was deliberating issuing the little green book slowly to frustrate people. In those difficult times, the people working at Makombe Building rejoiced as they became millionaires overnight, beneficiaries of the underhand deals they made in broad daylight. It was said one could smell the corruption rampant at the little colonial building in central Harare from a mile away, or before one’s plane even landed at the airport.
“Why did having a passport in one’s hands put one at ease?” one might ask. The reason is that there was a mass exodus from the country. All across the country, people were leaving. Analysts equated the movement of people as equal in magnitude to what had happened in the Subcontinent when it was partitioned in ’47. Those were years of rapid change and turmoil and loss in the country. One had a sense that something had snapped, something fundamental that defined the psychic of the genial and easy going and amiable Zimbabwean people. Somehow, their mood, usually optimistic and resilient, had suddenly turned acerbic. It was as if they had woke up as sudden pessimists and cynicists. Was it hope that they had lost? Trust perhaps? Whatever it was, nobody could deny that the people’s mood had changed. The country had turned into a country of emigrants. The people left en masse to seek liberty and the pursuit of happiness abroad, in fact anywhere as long as it was outside the country.
Leaving—fleeing is the exact word for ‘leaving’ implies that one had an option of staying whereas those people that left felt they had no choice—the country became en vogue. Suddenly, foreigners—Nigerians, Americans, Britons, South Africans—once derided and ostracised and frown upon, became popular idols. These men buoyantly walked down the streets of Harare by night flashing the green back. Young nubile women, ripe and ready, threw themselves at the feet of these men from abroad, lusting for the money they possessed or the riches marriage to them entailed. For these desperate women, getting married for love had apparently ended with Cinderella.
Those who were lucky enough to flee the country, they left behind their families and their businesses and their homes, some never to return. At that time, an observer wouldn’t have been derided nor cursed by sharp quick tongues had he dared to rise poised atop the highest kopje and cried: “Hear thee hear thee son of the soil. Hear thee son of Zimbabwe. I say if you keep leaving the country, within weeks nobody will left behind to tend the graves of our ancestors.” Everywhere one looked, people were leaving, the old, the grey haired, and the young, they all fled.
A question one might have asked those fleeing the country would have been: “Where? Where are you fleeing to?” With a closely guarded look, the prospective emigrants would have pursed their lips and said: “I’m leaving for Britain, my uncle Jimmy lives there,” or “Aish...I’m moving to Australia, my this and that moved there when Mugabe came to power years ago. I should have left then with them, but I didn’t.” Doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, the whole lot, they all were leaving. They all began leaving for distant countries about the turn of the new millennium or there about. When ZANU-PF won another controversial five-year mandate in 2002, the stream of people leaving turned into a flood and the next five years saw the greatest movement of people out of the country.
During those momentous times, if one had gone to Roadport or Makombe Building in central Harare or any other border posts around the country and ventured to ask those who were fleeing: “Why? Why are you fleeing the country?” The people would have given one ready made answers of course. “Aish, things are tough man,” they might have said, or, “Tsk tsk tsk, nothing is working in the country,” they would have said, shaking their heads, their expression suddenly deadly serious and their voices solemn, tinged with sorrow and feelings of betrayal and devoid of any hope.
By ‘things’ they meant the shortage of fuel at the gas stations, the collapsing education system, the corruption that pervaded and dictated all facets of their lives, rampant inflation, the highest in the world which led to increases of prices of goods and services daily, the shrinking economy, the scarcity of goods—cooking oil, sugar, break, flour, mealie meal, electricity blackouts, water shortages, the moribund healthy system. In fact, the list of ‘things’ not working was endless. The disintegration of the economy had turned the social fabric of the country on its head. The collapse of the economy was terrible. It was sad. It was cruel. And somehow, it was even beautiful for it brought out the best out of the people who struggled to survive in the face of adversity.
Those a little less timid or down on their luck or just plain angry with the situation they found themselves in would have been blunt. “Why am I leaving?” they would have repeated the question, as if not believing that they were hearing the question. They would then have adopted a stern expression and furtively cast glances over their shoulders and said, choosing their words carefully: “Things are too bad. I can’t wait to leave this sorry situation,” using ‘too’ in place of ‘very’ as is the Zimbabwean way.
“Why at things this bad? Whose fault is it?”
“It’s the government,” they would have quickly pointed
out and swiftly added, “The leader of the government in particular, he is the one to blame. He is busy fighting with Tony Blair and George Bush while the country burns on his watch.”
“But why is the leader doing these things that you accuse him of doing?”
“Power!”
“What? Surely one can never rule forever?”
“The old man wants to stay in power forever, which is why the CIO has been working 24/7 to crush elements of the opposition. In fighting to stay in power in perpetuity, he has destroyed the country in the process.” They would have paused to catch their breath and then added: “There is no hope for us, that’s why I’m leaving the country.”
It is a fact that the majority of those who were fleeing the country were leaving because of the shrinking economy. However, there was a considerable number among them who were fleeing the country because of the persecution that they had received at the hands of government supporters and CIO and police. Analysts the world over were quick to point out that: “The problems in Zimbabwe start and end with politics.” Politics had destroyed the economy, they said to whoever had the patience to listen. For in fighting to stay in power, the ruling party had inadvertently destroyed the country’s judiciary. The jungle law that his government had then adopted in lieu of the real thing meant that investors lost faith in the protection of their investments by the courts and soon their confidence had fizzled away, precipitating the decline of the economy.
Inspector Timothy V. Shumba, as you will see in this story, was an average officer for whom life took a turn for the worst when his superiors found that he was reluctant to tow the line, to enforce some of the outlandish laws that the justice minister had put in place to entrench his master’s hold on power. Insp. Shumba’s was of the derided ‘born free’ generation, born after 1980. Even the president loathed this generation, accusing it of being wayward and impatient and judgemental. To show them his anger, the leader of the country regularly ordered the police to teargas the University of Zimbabwe residence halls a million times. As Christmas presents, he routinely sent in riot police to beat up the students, disrupting classes and the general running of the university. He punished them by closing the university at every opportunity.
The problem was that this generation assessed the worthy of a person by his present deeds and results than by his past conquests. They had no respect for the president because he had spent eleven years in prison fighting white racists rule, that was the past and they didn’t care. Generally carefree and lusting for an easy life just like their namesakes in countries the world over, they were the first to openly clash with the president once they realized he was taking the country on a road to hell beginning in 1998. This generation, they had grown up in freedom and were not prepared to see it denied them, unlike their elders who resigned themselves to government’s brutal rule. This generation, this born-free generation, it was the fuel that powered the opposition political party that sought to dislodge ZANU-PF’s hold on power.
For those who knew him, they were not surprised to hear that young Insp. Shumba was not inclined to enforce some of the outlandish laws that protected the government against the wrath of its own people. Chief Insp. Gaza, Insp. Shumba’s superior, knowing full well that having men under his command who didn’t support the government—refusing to enforce POSA was tantamount to not supporting the government—reflected poorly on his service record, decided to test the young man. In the process, Insp. Shumba was forced to beat, to kill his country men, just like what the white man had done before he was born. When the time for reckoning came, Insp. Shumba felt that he had no choice but to leave the country like what everybody was doing, running away from Chief Insp. Gaza, and the CIO who meant to capture and make him an example. The fact that he was being paid tiny wages living in an area with high rentals, exorbitant goods prices and other ‘things’ that were bad only served to bolster his decision to flee the country. He liked to think I was crossing the border into South Africa to flee everything that he loathed and to start a new life.
South Africa was the destination that many of those without the stomach to spend months on end waiting in line at Makombe building to apply for a passport, or with no money to apply for visas or by the plane tickets. Once they reached the border town of Beitbridge, they crossed into South Africa across the Limpopo River, illegally. At this point, it is important for the reader to know that the movement of people from Zimbabwe into South Africa was nothing new. People from all corners of the country, from the Zambezi to the Shashi and the Sabi valleys, they had always moved south at one time or another in their life times. They had all journeyed there to join Zambians, Malawians, Namibians, Basuotos, Mozambicans, in the days of old to work like ants digging the yellow metal in deep and hot and soggy mines on the rand of Johannesburg and crystalline and burnished diamonds in Kimberly for the white man. The only difference was that, whereas exclusively men had made the perfidious journey very few at that in the past, the present migration involved large numbers. Even pregnant women were crossing the border.
During one dark night, when the stars hung like diamonds in the heavens above and dark clouds moved in menacingly from the east to leave the savannah land in pitch darkness, darkness so deep that if one wanted one could have stabbed at it with a viciously curved knife and hear it heave in anger, Insp. Shumba stood high on a cliff on the north bank of the Limpopo River, the river of Crocodiles. Behind him, the vlei that represented the country of his birth, stretched into the night and in the distance a jackal on the prowl howled. Across the river in front of him, stood South Africa, the promised land and below him, the placid waters of the Limpopo flowed on the sandy riverbed through the tall lanky reeds that concealed the crocodiles that lain in wait to prey on the would be wader, the would swimmer, their bowels bloated to the rafters with human flesh. As the storm moved in and the scarf Insp. Shumba wore fluttered in the wind, he followed his cohort down the cliff into the riverbed hoping to take his chances past the crocodiles, the South African army patrolling the border, vigilante white farmers, hungry man-eating lions and hunger and thirst, for his sights were dead set on reaching Johannesburg, the city of gold—no matter what the cost.
