When I join in one of those omnipresent ice-breaking sessions, I am sometimes asked to share my most embarrassing moment. I always draw a blank. This is not because I have never been embarrassed in my life.
Rather, I have too many stories of embarrassment. While many of my middle-class friends were having fun on their Play-Stations, going out on dates with their girlfriends, and driving around in their parents’ cars, I stood in the blazing sun queuing for scarce cooking oil, sugar, or money. I walked for miles to grind the little maize we had harvested into corn meal. My heart sank every time my mother called us to dinner, because it meant yet another helping of the same old meal: cooked corn meal with boiled cabbage. My breakfasts were no better: thin porridge, which rarely had any sugar in it. I did not have any fashionable clothes; I was a prisoner of my own self-consciousness every time I walked out of our house.
At school, my father had earned a reputation for begging for mercy since he was almost never able to pay my school fees on time. Our cherished color television and fridge went under the hammer as the family tried to make ends meet. From one week to the next, we robbed Peter to pay Paul. We barely survived. Even more embarrassing, my family’s struggle was there for all to see and ridicule. This was life for me in Zimbabwe when the economy plummeted in 2004 and the political scene grew more and more ugly.
“Our Land is Our Prosperity!”
All of these struggles were not punishment for my family’s lack of financial discipline. They were shared by the vast majority of Zimbabwean families. We were all under the thumb of a despotic government attacking us in all conceivable ways. The houses of the poor were destroyed during a cold, calculated Operation Murambatsvina— “Operation Clean-up” in translation—which razed many houses of low-income citizens, who were suspected of supporting the opposition, to the ground. We could not speak out against the tyranny of the government because of laws which ensured that any uprising landed its participants behind bars.
Innumerable human rights abuses took place, lives were taken arbitrarily, and all the while, propaganda in every form of media overwhelmed us. Every half hour, we were reminded that “Our Land is Our Prosperity!”
The land is where our misery began. In 2000, President Mugabe issued an order allowing war veterans to seize the farms of white farmers. Many owners were given an ultimatum: vacate within 24 hours, or die.
These people being kicked out of their homes had been among the biggest engines of economic growth. And now the farms were occupied by unskilled individuals who had no clue what to do with the fertile land and advanced equipment at their disposal. With time, the seizures began for white-owned and foreign-owned factories. These actions would wipe out almost 17% of the GDP and cause widespread unemployment.
89.7 Sextillion Percent
Inflation made life even more difficult. In 1997, all surviving war veterans and the families of the deceased had been granted ZIM $50,000 packages and promised $2,000 monthly allowances. At the time, $50,000 was a huge amount of money, enough to pay the deposit on a house. The decision to issue these benefits was a result of pressure from the war veterans, who wanted to be compensated for the sacrifices they made to win Zimbabwe’s independence.
Yet there was little to compensate them with. Rumor has it that the government was forced to print money just to pay the thousands of war veterans. From then on, the government developed the habit of printing money in order to temporarily bail itself out. As any economist will tell you, this quickly leads to hyperinflation. The highest annual inflation rate reached 89.7 sextillion (89.7 x 1021) percent on November 14, 2008. By then, the highest-valued note was worth $100 trillion.
The Great Division
I look back and draw at least this lesson from Mugabe: there has been a pervasive division in Zimbabwean society and culture, between “we” blacks and “they” whites. There was virtually no point of convergence: it was a hierarchical relationship, with blacks at the bottom of the food chain. Considering our colonial history, this was not fair. Something had to be done.
But force was not the answer. I have learned that if we are ever to address the effects of our colonial history, we need to take a collaborative, unified approach in which both parties acknowledge the mistakes they have made.
And this principle has wider application, beyond the local case of Zimbabwe. Many Western nations have to acknowledge that they have exploited Africa, and many African leaders have to own up to their greed, corruption, and poor leadership. Only from that point can we proceed, unified and ready to deal with Africa’s problems.
Dalumuzi Happy Mhlanga ‘13 is a Contributing Writer.
Photo Credit: Flickr Stream of Julien Harneis