Zimbabwe: Real Fiction

    He was pulled up from the water gasping and screaming.
    “Please no more. Please, dear God!”
    The dark skinned man in sunglasses began to circle his victim again and grinned, a silver tooth gleaming on the side of his mouth “All you need do is tell me who made you vote for Tsvangirai,” he said in a thick Zimbabwean accent.
    “I don’t…no one…told me,” the man garbled as thick sobs clutched at his throat. “I swear. Please believe me!”
    In one smooth motion, the dark skinned man delivered a thunderous punch to his victim’s jaw. The crunch of bone on bone echoed in the vacuous room followed by soft splatters as blood hit the ground.
    “Lie to me again and you will go back in the bucket,” the man said as he pointed to a container filled with murky water. At this, his white victim began screaming, a pitiful lamenting sound of pure terror. I shivered as I watched the oppressor smile. He was enjoying this.
    “Do you love President Mugabe? Is he the right man to lead this country?”
    With tears falling down his bloodied and bruised face, the light skinned woman screamed, “Yes! President Mugabe forever! I’m so sorry. So so sorry. Of course. Mugabe. Please God! Please!”
    “And when the revote comes, you will vote for him, correct?” The torturer pressed.
    But his victim had finally cracked. He was sobbing and screaming, his voice ringing out. He began to convulse in the chair he was tied up in, urinating himself in the process.
    But instead of pity, he got a slap in the face. “Will you vote for President Mugabe in the revote?”
    Somehow, the poor tortured soul managed a pitiful, “Yes.”
    He looked close to losing consciousness, but his tormentor walked up to him and held his head up so their eyes were level. The white man’s eyes filled with fear and desperation, as if he was looking death in the face.
    The silver toothed man whispered into his ear, “You better. I’ll be watching.”
********
    As I opened the door a wave of heat hit me full in the face. Despite being in the African country for almost a month now, I had still not adjusted to the climate. My snow-white skin was now a brick red and no matter how much sunscreen I seemed to put on, I came back to my apartment looking like a cherry.
    It had been quite a week in Zimbabwe. My eyes had large circles under them from late nights. Even when I went to bed early, I was never able to achieve sleep. The face of the terrorized white man always haunted me.
It was a mistake on a routine interview. I had arrived at a village to interview some of the habitants. I walked in on someone being tortured in his own home.
    Nowhere was safe in Zimbabwe. The election controversy had turned the country upside down. There were few people on the streets and, even when people ventured out of their houses, they were always looking over their shoulder. If you so much as voted for Tsvangirai (the opposition candidate) you were in severe danger (Dugger, 1).
    I had done a lot of research before I came to Zimbabwe to work for the New York Times. Robert Mugabe is the President of the country, the first black leader. Many Zimbabweans know him as “the old man”. But, the thing many do not know is that the election controversy started in 2002, when Mugabe’s party won 2/3 of the seats in the House.  The elections were called “deeply flawed” by the opposition. (Country Profile, 2)
    Since then, Mugabe’s policies had become more and more paranoid and extreme. He authorized a destruction of slums in 2005: a well-known spot for opposition supporters. This left 700,000 people without homes or jobs. (Country Profile, 8-9) Mugabe also proceeded to seize land from white farmers, which led to a collapse in the agricultural industry. (Country Profile, 5)
    Because of all these failed policies, the economy is now in turmoil. Inflation is now at 100,580%, and people are carting wheelbarrows full of money to pay for groceries. (Facts, 6)
    I hailed a taxi on one of the lonely streets and got in. The sweltering heat made my clothes stick to the seat, as sat down. I pulled out a wad of bills from my pocket to pay with. The taxi driver eyed the American currency greedily and tore off before I’d even given him the full directions.
    As I sat, more ideas for the article I was writing popped into my head. It was going to be a groundbreaking piece, that was for sure. No reporter I knew had ever witnessed a government official committing torture. I’d even been able to snap some pictures with my camera before being running off. Hopefully my editor would understand and let me write a longer piece.
    As I exited the taxi, the man drove off without a word. It was about a mile hike from where the road ended to the village I was going to. I hoped to get some information on the condition of the lives of some of Zimbabwe’s underprivileged white minority.
    The sound of squealing breaks made me stop. I looked back to see two men in military garb standing by the taxi that had just dropped me off. The driver exchanged a few words before one of the military men pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and handed it to the driver, who sped off.
    I suspected I had just witnessed a drug deal. It would not surprise me with how corrupt the police and military officials were in Zimbabwe.
    So, I began the long hike to the small refugee city. The smothering heat had me panting after five minutes, and the only thing that kept me going was the thought of what this trip would add to my article. These people had had their houses and livelihood destroyed by the government; the village must be a hotbed for opposition leaders.
    On the way, I was phoned by the Times Bureau on my satellite phone to inform me of some late breaking news. The election results had just been released, stating that Tsvangirai had won 48% of the vote, which gave him a higher percentage than Mugabe. However, this did not give him the 50% needed to avoid a run-off election. The two would now run again, directly against each other. The opposition party was already disputing the results, saying they were rigged and that Tsvangirai had in fact won 50% of the vote (Tsvangirai, 1).

    It made sense that the government would try to push the election into a run-off. This meant they would have more time to do the dirty work to get Mugabe reelected. Then another call came in. Mugabe was claiming there was not time for a run-off and he would remain President. Things were going to get interesting.

    When I arrived, I found a shabby little village. There were a few tents for shelter and one small well about two hundred yards from the center of the camp. The place smelled like unwashed bodies and there was not enough shelter. Most people relied on the government food rations for sustenance, of which there were not enough (Country Profile, 6). Yet, there was one thing I noticed that was radically different than all the other places I had visited: 90% of the refugees were white.
    In India, the darker your skin, the worse off you are socially. In Sudan a genocide continues towards a darker skinned minority. It seemed throughout my research that around the world racism goes one way.
    Yet Zimbabwe is different. While it used to be the blacks who were discriminated against, it is now the whites. The whites are a minority who have had their land and political will taken away from them by the African government. It is in retaliation for the racism white leaders imposed on black Zimbabweans for so long.
    And, while I understood the animosity between the races, do two wrongs really make a right? Is new racism a way to fight against old racism?
    I tried to think what it would be like to be discriminated against. As a privileged white man, it was difficult for me to ever imagine being in the minority. Being surrounded by people who look, speak, and act differently, would be a scary experience for me.
    It gives us all reason to think: what if it were happening to us?
********
    I began to interview an old woman about her livelihood in the village. She knew little English, but her rage was clear. She had lost her family and her home, everything of value in her life. She also had AIDS and seemed to be fighting a losing battle. She was weak and clearly did not have much time left. She could not wait for Mugabe’s reign to be over. But, when I asked her whom she voted for, she refused to comment and walked away.
    The social stigma around AIDS was clearly here, as it was in many African nations. It is one of the reasons that treatment is difficult as people do not want to be tested and face public ridicule. In fact, Zimbabwe contains 12.3 million people, with 1.8 million of them living with AIDS (Facts, 14).
    As I approached my second interviewee, the sound of distant screaming came to my ears. I whirled around to see smoke billowing to the sky. One of the tents was on fire, and, as I watched, another went up in flame. Through the dark thick smoke, I saw men on horseback riding through. One swept by me, his uniform the twin of the soldiers’ uniform I had seen by the taxi.
    I now knew that was no drug deal I had witnessed, it was an exchanged of information. I cursed the taxi driver under my breath. If I was caught with the photos of the torture scene in my backpack , I would be jailed or possibly worse.
    I dove behind a stack of rice, and pulled out my camera as the smoke made my eyes water.
    Click. A man and woman running from their tent screaming. Click. A little boy crying over his mother’s body. Click. A man on horseback hitting someone with the butt of his gun. Click. A man on fire. Click. People stuck inside the burning tents…
    I put my camera away and coughed and wretched on the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was the smoke I was inhaling or the images I had seen. I had heard about another city called Manicaland where police had told the people to leave their homes before burning them to the ground (Dugger, 9). This particular attack had come without warning.
    I tried to run but could not. The smoke was clouding my eyes and choking my lungs. I kept wheezing and coughing and finally collapsed on to the ground and blacked out.
********
    I awoke to rough shove. “Time to move,” the man in uniform said and I groggily got up. I was brought through a stone hallway into a room which reeked of must and old sweat. There was a lone damp bench sitting in the room, with no facilities. (Bearak, 4)
    There were a few other Western looking men mulling around the cell. They looked at me with a mixture of sympathy and relief. I tried to smile but somehow could not find the right muscles.
    “Socks off!” The Zimbabwean police officer yelled into my ear.
    I opened my mouth to question but this guy meant business. I slipped off my socks and handed them to him. My naked feet shivered as they hit the cold stone floor.
    “Pants too!” He screamed just as loudly.
    “You gonna buy me dinner first?” I grumbled under my breath as I took them off and handed them to him. As he walked away, I remembered.
    “Wait! My backpack! Where’s my backpack!?” I screamed towards him flailing my arms madly. He kept walking down the hallway and disappeared.
    I sat down on the floor, defeated. Everything had been in that backpack: my
passport, my wallet, and my phone. But worst of all, the photos. I still had copies of the
torture photos back at my apartment (if it hadn’t been raided) but the pictures of the burning town were most certainly being destroyed.
    “You a journalist as well?” One of the men walked over to me.
I nodded. “New York Times.”
    He let out a low whistle. “That’s quite the credentials. I’m from San Francisco Chronicle myself. The name’s Jim.”
    “Barry,” I said, giving him my name back. I shook his hand and shivered.
    “Ya, they take your pants and your socks and you’re only allowed one shirt,” Ben added noticing my discomfort (Bearak, 4). “All of us here are being charged with the crime of ‘committing journalism’” He spat as he said it. “It’s the way of keeping foreign reporters from tattling on the government. You have to have a permit to practice journalism in Zimbabwe, though I don’t know anyone who has ever gotten them” (Bearak, 1).
    “So what happens now?” I asked desperately.
    “They’ll hold us here for a few days and then deport us I suppose,” Jim said. “Until then, I’d get used to that bench if I were you.”
********
    I arrived back at the apartment and was relieved to find it hadn’t been rummaged through. In all the confusion, they must have forgotten to find out where I lived. The pictures were still there and the government wanted me out of the country so badly, they had got me on a plane the next day even without a passport
    I worked the rest of the night at my laptop, writing up an article on my trip. The
things I had seen amazed me. I saw both hope and despair. Despair because democracy had gone so wrong as to have people dying for the votes they cast. But hope because people were willing to risk so much to fight for their rights and to fight for their country’s freedom from an oppressive dictator. The Zimbabweans had turned out to vote in higher numbers than the US did. They risked their lives to vote yet we, with all the privileges of a free democratic system, find it hard to get off the couch to exercise that right.
********
    I awoke in the morning with my head laying on the computer. I had finished the article last night but had been too tired to get into bed.
    I frantically looked at my watch to find I only had an hour to get ready. I quickly grabbed the phone to call my editor. The phone rang three times before my editor (Joe) picked up. “New York Times editors desk.”
    “Joe! It’s Barry. I’m calling from Zimbabwe. I’m about to get on a flight back home but I’m gonna send you the article. It’s a groundbreaker and I know it’s long but…”
    “Barry, how long?”
    “I don’t know, a couple thousand words…”
    “It’s got to be five hundred Barry.”
    “Five hundred?! But Joe…”
    “Obama just unveiled his healthcare plan. That’s our top story. Shorten it down and send it to me. No photos, either. I got to go, Barry. Maybe we can find space for a longer piece in a couple months.”
    The phone slipped from my hands. I sat down in the chair head in my hands. The man being tortured and his smiling oppressor, the woman with AIDS, the frightened opposition supporters, the burning village, the journalists stuck in the jail…all their pictures flashed through my mind. And then I realized: Nobody cares.

Bibliography:
Bearak, Barry. “In Zimbabwe Jail: A Reporter’s Ordeal.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/world/africa/27bearak.html?ex=1367121600&en=c760456044159fa7&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Bowley, Graham. “Tensions Rise Over Disputed Zimbabwe Vote.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/world/africa/18zimbabwe.html?ex=13662576
00&en=d2d4b3586a9039e0&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink.

“Country Profile: Zimbabwe.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
africa/country_profiles/1064589.stm.

Dugger, Celia W. “Signs of Attacks on the Opposition Rise in Zimbabwe.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/world/africa/28zimbabwe.html?ex=1367121600&en=e7a57a0a0ef6c3d8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

“Q&A: Zimbabwe Elections.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7293810.stm

“Residents Urged to Fairly Share Available Food.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008.  http://www.chronicle.co.zw/inside.aspx?sectid=1218&cat=1&livedate=4/28/2008

“Tsvangirai ‘leads’ Zimbabwe Vote.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/
2/hi/africa/7378829.stm.

“Zimbabwe in Facts and Figures.” Web page. 2008. Apr 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7304635.stm