Oh to be in Zimbabwe when spring is in the air, what a gorgeous place
it is. The cold of winter has almost gone and the wind is running
through golden grass, preparing to lift up and shake off last year's
dusty leaves. White Helmetshrikes and Glossy Starlings are back in
our gardens, Cardinal Woodpeckers are tapping in the trees while
Hoopoes spend their days stabbing termites in dry, dusty, scratchy
lawns. In the highveld bush the Lucky Bean trees have lost all their
leaves and are covered in spectacular red flowers. The pods on the
Msasa trees are turning dark chocolate brown and starting to crack,
preparing to spit seeds in all directions. Lining the streets of so
many towns, the Bauhinia trees are bursting with pink and white
flowers and the leaves on the Jacarandas have all gone yellow and are
about to fall.
This year another dramatic aspect of our beautiful Zimbabwe is lining
roads everywhere as hundreds of miles of trenches are being dug for a
communication cable. It is breathtaking to see the magnificent
patchwork of colours of soil piled in heaps along the road. Yellow,
beige, orange, red, brown, grey, black: it leaves you feeling as if
you've seen into the very soul of Zimbabwe.
Sadly, however, all is not beautiful as spring arrives and our chance
in a lifetime constitution making process has turned into a shambles.
Every day the reports just get worse and worse. The words used by one
senior official to describe the outreach programme, expose the truth
of the story: tension, friction, hostile, ugly. We hear of public
meetings turning into shouting matches, of people being abducted,
assaulted, kidnapped and of villagers being frog marched, intimidated
and commandeered. Then there are reports of COPAC (constitutional
outreach) drivers and technicians threatening to stop work as they
say they aren't getting the pay they were promised. Other reports
tell of hotels evicting COPAC personnel or refusing to give them
meals due to massive unpaid bills.
In a country where over 90% of the population is unemployed and civil
servants only earn 160 US dollars a month, its hard to find
perspective in this whole mess. One report tells of COPAC technicians
being very disgruntled at only receiving 55 US dollars a day for their
services and another 15 a day for their meals. For teachers with
degrees surviving on less than 5 US dollars a day, it doesn't really
make sense - does it?