Country life
Daily terror
Leanda de Lisle
You write so much that I can relate to,' I am told in a letter from rural Zimbab- we. 'You can well imagine that I am quite horrified by the actions of the hooligans in London,' an e-mail from the same country informs me. But they tell me other things too. I hear about the funeral of a murdered friend, the criminals that lounge in their sitting-rooms, the stripping away of their dignity. Stories the authors are sure won't interest me as much as the news on my rab- bit numbers or the antics of Etonian class warriors interest them.
Zimbabwe's place on our front pages has been supplanted by the WI's 'forces of con- serves' turning the 'PM to jelly'. Great headlines that cheer us all up, not only because it is very satisfying to read about ladies in cotton dresses drubbing the top dog of the chic elite, but because the WI represent a normality that we all cleave to. What we see in Zimbabwe is a glimpse of its antithesis. The ladies in cotton dresses are weeping widows whose tears have con- siderably less effect on Mr Mugabe than half-hearted jeers have on Tony Blair. However, ordinary country life is being destroyed not in a big bang and a news flash, but bit by bit.
People don't suddenly stop cooking lunch, enjoying a sunset or talking about their families when they are under the jack- boot. 'You complained about your children sitting around the house instead of enjoy- ing nature. I had exactly the same problem with my children,' one Spectator reader writes — but being a Zimbabwean farmer he has other, more serious troubles as well. 'My wife and I are unwilling hosts to sever- al hundred "War Vets" who do as they please: building huts, setting snares, leaving gates open so the cattle can stray, scatter- ing fitter everywhere.' That is bad, he tells me, 'but the really hard part is when they come uninvited into the house and we are powerless to do anything'.
African farmers read my thoughts on how the law should deal with teenage bur- glars in England. In Zimbabwe state-spon- sored anarchy has spawned its own crime wave and, since one can't tell who are the criminals and who the vets, people dare not defend themselves against either. 'The problem is not knowing if and when all this will end and at what point one just aban- dons a lifetime's work,' one farmer says. But for another it's too late. 'I am sure you will be sad to hear that my best farmer friend has just died from wounds he received when he was shot at his farm,' an electronic correspondent informs me. The dead man was 'a committed Christian and very well thought of by his large work- force ... ' I reply saying I am indeed sorry to hear such news.
A few days later I receive an e-mail telling me that my condolences were passed on to the murdered man's family at his funeral. I was a bit worried about my name popping up, uninvited, at such a time. But perhaps it mitigated the appear- ance of English indifference. An indiffer- ence that is still more felt when the victims are black. A letter posted in England because 'our phones are tapped and mail opened' notes that the international press seems unaware 'of the daily terror (for the black population) in rural areas'.
One of the author's black farm workers 'whose father was killed in the "Guku- rahundi" genocide of the early 1980s [and] was so buoyant a month ago that the MDC would win the election, this morning received news that his brother had been murdered by Zanu/PF thugs. He confided in me that few will dare vote against Mugabe.' If one good thing has come out of this it is that the situation 'has united black and white in a way never seen before'. But like a sane man in a lunatic asylum the letter's author wants to tell someone on the outside what it's like. 'I feel I have no right to subject you, who I assume have no interest in Zimbabwe, to my moans and complaints — but I needed to get it off my chest.'
Back on the e-mail I'm told that the funeral of the murdered farmer ended with prayers for Zimbabwe, 'Despite every- thing,' his friend told me, 'we love this country.' I hope it becomes as dull a place as this one, sometime soon.
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