Another voice
New history of Zimbabwe
Auberon Waugh
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe On the plane between Harare (formerly Salisbury) and Masvingo (as Fort Vic- toria was renamed on the day of my arrival, having spent the intervening time as Nyan- da; these are great days for Zimbabwean sign-writers), I sat next to a fat, middle- aged Frenchman. He said he now lived in retirement near Tours but came to Zim- babwe every year to shoot an elephant. The Zimbabwe government sells licences for this as part of its programme of culling the 20,000 or so elephants which roam the country (somebody gave me that figure — I have not tried to count the brutes). For the price of a permit, which is enormous, you get whatever parts of the beast you want stuffed, mounted and delivered to your door with the tusks. My French friend now had an enormous collection of these things. He lived for the moment every year when he could point his gun at an elephant, shoot it, and come home again happy as a skylark.
Later, seeing an elephant roaming around the great Wankie Reserve, I tried to imagine what he felt. I watched the elephant, from the safety of my Land- Rover, and the elephant watched me, but neither of us could summon up much in- terest in the other. My guide told me that when they flap their ears it does not mean they are angry, as I thought, but only that they are hot. That was quite interesting, but really the sort of thing one should have learned from Mr Attenborough's excellent television series. For the life of me, I could not imagine any possible joy in shooting it, as it stood 25 yards away flapping its ears. Perhaps it would look funny if it fell down very suddenly, but that was all. Far better leave it alone to lumber around as best it knows how.
There are those who sneer at these game reserves, as if it is a cruel perversion of nature that these splendid, proud, etc wild animals should be gaped at and photo- graphed by tourists. But after several days of watching tourists stare at wild animals and wild animals either staring back or ig- noring them I decided that these game reserves marked an important step in human evolution. Human beings are no longer hunters and at last we are coming to terms with the fact, however many fat young merchant bankers insist on blasting away at pheasants on their weekends. Wild animals — and the animals on these vast game reserves are wild, whatever the critics may say — are now things for humans to gape at and photograph, rather than kill for food or sport. Those who hint darkly that Wankie National Park is aptly named have got it all wrong. Man has evolved the system of factory farming for his simple
nutritional requirements. Whether the new system involves more or less suffering for animals is neither here nor there. Who cares? Lion, warthog and elephant certainly understand their new role in the scheme of things, as they pose in nonchalant attitudes before the safari buses. A new relationship has been born between human beings and wild animals.
And so, it seems to me (although the jux- taposition may not be a happy one), a new relationship is being born in Zimbabwe be- tween blacks and whites. Of course the rela- tionship has not settled yet. After a bitter and prolonged civil war, during a period of crash socialisation and Africanisation, in the middle of a bad drought and with disturbing signs of unrest among the Ndebele minorities, it would be odd if anything had settled. There are still a few ugly noises to be heard on both sides, although amazingly few I thought. The government is still disposed to look favourably on the unattractive collection of white sycophants from the Colin Legum stable which descends like a cloud of cab- bage white butterflies on every new African government. Perhaps the white sycophants' socialist theory and rotton economic advice will combine to produce yet another brutal and incompetent African dictatorship. There are a few signs pointing in this direc- tion (all seized upon by the foreign press, I am sorry to say), but not many.
Those white Zimbabweans who have chosen to stay, however provisionally the new census may give us an idea of how many there are, possibly no more than 150,000 — have made an important existen- tial choice. Despite the shortages and the higher wages they must pay their servants, they still have a pleasanter life than they would have anywhere else in the world. A friendly colleague from one of the Sunday newspapers who invited me to his large home inthe suburbs of Harare showed me his swimming pool, his tennis court, his small but adequate cellar of good South African wines. In London he might be able to afford a two-room flat somewhere north of Neasden. All the whites have to do in ex- change for all this and a glorious climate is to serve a black government which might (but probably won't) turn nasty when things start going wrong.
White anxieties at present seem to revolve around the Minister for Home Affairs, Doctor the Honourable Comrade Herbert Ushewokunze. An attractive, youngish man — at least two of the more beautiful white women I met in Harare were swooning for love of him — he is credited with arranging the torture of people in detention. But nobody really knows. It is all gossip. For
my own part, I can never bring myself to feel too censorious when politicians start torturing each other, or their would-be rivals. If it keeps them busy enough, they might leave the rest of us alone. Or Ushewokunze, a Catholic, is said to have nine sons by nine wives, all of them (the sons) called Herbert. When he was Minister of Health, he sent them all to the same school in ambulances. I don't know if any of that is true. Probably not. But now it belongs firmly to the great oral tradition of African history. Introducing a guidebook to the remnants (for some reason we are no longer allowed to call them 'ruins') of Great Zimbabwe, Or etc Ushewokunze quotes Mugabe's eve of independence message: 'Independence will bestow on us ... a new future and perspec- tive and, indeed, a new history and a new past.' Previously, nobody really knew wh° built these apparently pointless circles of stone and solid towers. Out of politeness to the Africans, it was suggested they might have been built by the Portuguese or Arabs or (my own pet theory) Cathars fleeing from Simon de Montfort's persecutions in Languedoc to practise their foul hersey un disturbed. Now all this has been changed' `In spite of what hired cynics would like the world to otherwise believe,' proclaims Dr the Hon Comrade Ushewokunze, `Great Zimbabwe was built by the Great People f Zimbabwe. So be it known.' Sure enough an obliging white archaeologist has written an official guidebook making exactly this When the history of these times comes t° be rewritten and rewritten yet again, goodness knows what it will tell. At the Serima Mission, in Victoria Province, which my father described as a great beacon, of hope for Christian Africa when he visited it over 20 years ago, I found that the head" master was no longer a Catholic, after the, last one was murdered by the comrades a,` the request of his pupils. The new hean master is a member of something called the Apostolic Sect, and I was told he relies on herbs to give him a second sight into what the pupils are doing and thinking. All the pupils and staff believe this. At present there is a Great Debate ah°tIt whether the foreign press corps should be allowed to continue its negative activities:n Harare. Many whites feel they shouldn t' Then, since Zimbabweans are strictly tioned on foreign currency, their main al: tact with the outside world will be throngll, tourists. Tourism has slumped since scil' tourists were kidnapped by 'dissidents' td Matabeleland last July. Nobody has hear,, of them since. A punitive exchange rate also discourages tourism, although Air Ziln; babwe runs an excellent service four times e from London and the hotels in the rival Goodwood and Zimbabwe Sun groups , are all excellent. Plans for mass tourism are now being mooted. Something tells me tha.f now may be the best moment to go, even ,, your only company is a fat Frenchman drooling about the elephants he has shot Hurry, hurry while stocks last.
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