Prayer for Zimbabwe

Steve Chadenga’s cover story on Canada Free Press (CFP) about upcoming elections, media-dubbed the ‘Make or Break polls’, takes me back through time to the utter, largely ignored tragedy that is Zimbabwe. Chadenga’s story about the real hope of next Wednesday’s general election takes me back to an August 16, 2002 Toronto meeting, at a Canadian media press conference, where I was one of only two reporters to show up for a meeting with Zimbabwean MP Roy Bennett.

A hard-working farmer by trade, Bennett was so popular among local people, he was dubbed with the nickname “Pachedu”--”one of us”. It was the local masses that convinced him to stand in 2000 Zimbabwe elections. And that he did, winning an overwhelming majority in what had been a stronghold of Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party. “The heartbreak that came from his election will haunt his supporters all the way to their graves.” (Canada Free Press, Dec. 13, 2004). “It was only two months later when Charleswood, his coffee farm was for the first time invaded by self-professed “war veterans”. Bennett’s wife, Heather, who was almost four months pregnant, was held hostage at knifepoint and made to dance and sing ZANU PF songs in the rain. Two of the farm’s workers were brutally killed in front of her. When it was finally over, she had miscarried what was never to be their third child.” Charleswood, which hired hundreds of blacks, was driven into bankruptcy, when its animals were slaughtered wholesale and its tons of coffee confiscated and exported to Germany. The invasion of the coffee farm came within months of the bank loans that started it having been paid off in full.

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In 2004, Bennett was sentenced to one year’s hard labour. The MP’s crime? Officially, it was that he angrily pushed then apologized to Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who had most flagrantly insulted his family. Chinamasa had called Bennet’s father and grandfather “thieves and murderers” and taunted him he’d never be allowed to return to his farm, the one and the same described above, taken over by Robert Mugabe’s treacherous ZANU-PF government. Bennett is the Treasurer of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led Movement for Democratic Change Party and a member of the Senate of Zimbabwe. He was set to become the Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Zimbabwe until Robert Mugabe refused to swear him in. Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has had his heartaches too, not the least of them the death of his wife Susan in a mysterious car crash. With his wife at his side, Tsvangirai became Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister--under an internationally pushed power-sharing deal--on Feb. 11, 2009. Three weeks later Tsvangirai and his six children tossed flowers on Susan’s coffin during a private service in the Tsvangirai’s rural home in Buhera. The heartache and misery continue in present day Zimbabwe, where typhoid, cholera and other diarrhoeal diseases have made a deadly return after a similar outbreak that killed more than 4,000 people five years ago. “You’ll be appalled to learn that the violence and evictions are continuing, albeit in a small scale since there are very few white commercial farmers left on the land”, Glyn Hunter of the Mike Campbell Foundation-South Africa,” wrote in a recent letter to CFP.

“And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn of the consequences: hunger and misery as people, notably in the rural areas, struggle to find food in the wake of huge maize (corn) and wheat shortfalls.”

Mrs. Hunter had come across CFP while seeking authorisations for the photo selection for Zimbabwean Ben Freeth’s second book, When Governments Stumble-Lessons from Zimbabwe’s past, hope in Africa’s future, due to be published this October. Freeth and his family were forced off Mount Carmel Farm (owned by his father-in-law Mike Campbell) and their farm was burned to the ground. This is the story behind the Reuter’s picture that will be published in Freeth’s book. “In the continuing political terror of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, who can ever forget the 14-year-old Jack Russell terrier Squeak? (CFP, Oct. 4, 2002).

“The body of Terry Ford, the tenth white farmer murdered by the Mugabe regime was found doubled up beside the gate of his home farmstead with his faithful dog curled next to him on March 19, 2002. “Even in death Squeak refused to leave the side of his master, and was with him until authorities bundled the 55-year-old farmer into a tin coffin. “Squeak, who went everywhere with Terry Ford, was with him in the last desperate moments of his life when he was trying to leave his farm in a vehicle. “Ford also had two border collies taken by the SPCA and turned over to friends of the family. But it was Squeak who was allowed to follow the farmer’s coffin up the church aisle behind his girlfriend and family members. Squeak remained on the lap of Ford’s girlfriend during a ceremony attended by one thousand. There reportedly wasn’t a dry eye when the devoted little terrier went up to sniff forlornly at the coffin before going off to the church garden.”

Pets are considered family members in misery-stricken Zimbabwe just as they are in North America. The emotional upheaval of Zimbabwe farmers and their families is heart-rending. Those who can get out, are forced to flee the country of their birth, destitute and forlorn; the once lively animals of their home farmsteads now pictures to display on the mantels of new homes in far-flung countries. No one recorded it with more pathos than Zimbabwean vet Robert Gordon whose last task before leaving his country was the destruction of the first of 650 former guard dogs. “Dr. Gordon, 42, a veterinarian, is leaving for New Zealand, unable to take the strain of destroying family pets and horses any longer. For the past six months, he has done little but put down the pets of fleeing white farmers. (The Daily Telegraph). “I have nowhere to bury the animals as I was chased off my farm. So the farmers have to take the bodies away. Sometimes we put the horses down mine shafts. “The 650 guard dogs belonged to a security company in Banket, 70 km north of Harare, the capital, which employed more than 400 farm guards but closed its doors because of political unrest.” From untold millions who know about Zimbabwe comes a most hopeful prayer: “Please God, let a Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai victory end the heartache and misery and return peace to Zimbabwe beginning this Wednesday.”