Has anything changed much in Zimbabwe?

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: A letter from the diaspora

By Pauline Henson

Another Christmas is over and a new year lies ahead; has anything much changed in Zimbabwe? And, more important, will 2013 be the year in which anything – or everything – changes in the country?

We still have a so-called Unity Government though it is increasingly obvious that Mugabe and Zanu PF still have a firm hold on the reins of power. Mugabe has flown off for his regular medical check-up in the Far East while back home Harare City’s Medical Aid Society is facing financial collapse.

Jacob Zuma has been re-elected in South Africa and the media pundits have been busy discussing whether this is a good or bad thing for Zuma’s next door neighbour, Robert Mugabe. In Zimbabwe’s capital there has been a typhoid outbreak which has allegedly killed 800 people.

Reports of piles of uncollected garbage in the capital can only increase the threat of disease as heavy rain pours down and flies and mosquitoes proliferate in the wet and warm conditions. We hear that the Director of Amenities has gone on leave and that’s why the capital is in such a mess; though why the Director has no Deputy to act in his absence is not explained.

It is deaths from road accidents that have dominated the headlines over the holiday period. This year there have been 134 deaths in an 11 day period compared to just 72 deaths last year. In Masvingo last Sunday, a collision between a haulage truck and a grossly overloaded lorry carrying 63 people resulted in 18 deaths.

Surprisingly, the lorry had apparently passed through several police check points but no police officer had seen fit to do anything about the excessive number of passengers being carried. A ‘little something’ had changed hands perhaps? The fact that 9 police officers have been arrested in Masvingo is surely more than a little coincidental.

In the reasons given by the police for the horrendous death toll on the roads such as over-speeding, inattention to the road, etc, no mention was made of too much Christmas cheer, the sort that comes in a bottle.

Whether it is Zimbabwe or the UK, Christmas is always the time when people imbibe too much and then take the wheel. The UK also had its share of horrendous road accidents despite strict drink and drive laws but it is hard to convince people that one or two drinks impair their ability to drive safely.

The question in everyone’s mind is whether 2013 will be an election year.

Robert Mugabe is convinced that it will and as president he is the one who will decide, as his henchmen keep reminding us. Tobaiwa Mudede, the Registrar General, accused NGOs of tampering with the voters roll but as a Mugabe loyalist his views are more than a little biased.

The Prime Minister has predicted that 2013 will be a tough year and with the deadlock over the new constitution and the country’s dire financial straits, the problems facing Zimbabwe are many and varied. Not least among the problems is the food crisis as more and more commercial farmers are pushed off the land.

Mugabe would no doubt like to have all of them gone before the elections, then he can claim his land reform has been a total success. To add to the gloom, the CFU president predicts a food crisis.

In short, the future looks bleak for Zimbabwe but that does not stop Zanu PF hard-liners saying they will not accept western aid. More realistically, Morgan Tsvangirai says that food and jobs are top of his agenda for 2013.

Without foreign investment to create the jobs, a lot of Zimbabweans are going to be both hungry and jobless, that is the reality.

Yours in the (continuing) struggle, Pauline Henson