The week that is

We’ve had a couple of worrying days – Ms Bo has been looking very peaky. I’m putting it down to too many bugs – the trouble is she has an insatiable appetite for bugs and grubs and if it doesn’t move, she’s not terribly interested in eating it. Yesterday we put her on a largely bug free diet (she got a few plump wood lice and that was it – aside from the usual grain and seed). Interestingly, this morning she is looking better but I’m still not convinced she’s “over” whatever has been ailing her – and frankly, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Fly, if you’re reading this, help, please! (Fly is the very nice fellow from the International Guinea Fowl Association.) D is convinced it’s either a “childhood illness” or a growth spurt. But who’s to know, certainly not us, complete novices in the this guinea rearing business. Frankly, I don’t think it helps that the wind is howling – and Bo doesn’t like the wind – I think it brings back bad memories from the night her whole flock were wiped out.

On which note, the fire is still raging on the other side of the bay – fanned by the strong winds. It’s partially under control but hectares of indigenous bush of have been destroyed and several homes have been razed.




For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you may remember my posts about Angela, the Zimbabwean lady who works for me once a week. As you may know, cholera has broken out in Zimbabwe (and is spilling over into surrounding countries, including South Africa). It’s purported that the reported figures of illness and death are being grossly underplayed by the Zim government. The latest news report references 756 deaths and more than 15 000 infections. A Zimbabwean aid agency said on the news this morning that the infrastructure in Zim is no longer on its knees but is lying flat on its face. Hospitals are standing empty, doctors and nurses aren’t working because they’re not being paid (neither are teachers). Last week the soldiers ran riot when they couldn’t draw their salaries – though the generals are, of course, still living it up. I’ve been concerned for Angela because most of her family is still in Zim. I asked her this morning when she came to work how things are going. She says her sister in Harare has been complaining of stomach pains for the past week and yesterday was much worse. The doubly worrying thing for Angela is that her young daughter lives with her sister. Her brother who is out in the rural areas says the water coming out of the taps is green – they are reduced to drawing water from a borehole – though who’s to know whether that is contaminated or not. The situation is beyond ridiculous and absurdly, instead of calling for Mugabe’s resignation, South Africa and neighbouring countries are still looking to broker a power sharing deal – which will still leave Mugabe in charge. It’s nothing short of rank insanity. You can read more about it here.

I think one of the worrying things that stems from this outbreak of cholera is the potential for a resurgence of the xenophobia we saw in South Africa in May this year. Then, local people went on the rampage against “foreigners” who were accused of stealing “jobs”. Now there is a grave danger that locals may once more go against “foreigners” for bringing disease into the country. Angela said that she couldn’t get to work yesterday because there was so much violence in the area where she lives. Once again she is afraid that she and her husband will be targeted because they are Zimbabwean. I think the thing one needs to bear in mind in this situation is that the xenophobia hasn’t “gone”. It has just been brought into check from the madness that flared up in May. The reality is that it is still there, simmering and playing itself out in backstreets where no one really bothers about it. The reality of being a “foreigner” in South Africa from somewhere else in Africa is a harsh one indeed.

If there was ever a time for world pressure to be brought on Zimbabwe’s government, now’s that time – in fact, it’s long, long overdue. Mugabe needs to go, Zimbabwe needs to be restored to the vision all its people once held for it, it needs to become the green and pleasant land that it once was, that it has the potential to be again. One wonders how much more suffering ordinary Zimbabweans will have to endure before the world actually steps in and says “enough!”. One wonders if ordinary Zimbabweans can indeed endure any more.

Hello Xenophobia, my old friend, you raise your ugly head again...

I was pondering what to write about today when Angela arrived.
“Did you see the news last night?” she asked me.
I hadn’t.
“They’re killing Zimbabweans and Malawians – beating them – three people have died.”
“Who?” I asked, “who’s killing them – where?”
“Zulus – in Alexandra.”
Alexandra is a shanty town in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. An estimated 350 000 people live in “Alex”. They occupy 8500 formal houses, 34 000 shacks, 3 hostel complexes, 2 500 flats and numerous old factories and buildings. In the past few days xenophobic violence has flared across the community as local people have lashed out foreigners – Malawians, Zimbabweans, Congolese, Rwandans… Claiming the foreigners take their jobs and their homes. The foreigners, terrified for their lives, have fled to police stations where they are barely getting any food. Some, in fact, have had no food for a few days.
“They say that we must go back to Zimbabwe,” said Angela, “But we can’t, Mugabe is killing us there. Everyday he is killing people. I’m frightened. What if the Xhosas here start doing the same thing here in the Cape. Where will we go? We can’t go back. And if we stay here, South African black people will kill us. I’m worried.”
Worried is an understatement.
“What about Mozambique?” I asked.
“Yes, they are good people in Mozambique, but there are no jobs. You just sell things in the market. I don’t know what we will do.”
And so we face another grim reality of Angela’s daily existence. And that reality is xenophobia - rampant xenophobia which spills and spreads like an oil slick from the north to the south of South Africa. And the interesting thing is this: While, by and large, most white South Africans have accepted the nearly 5 million refugees from various parts of Africa, most black South Africans have not. They view these foreigners as troublemakers who “steal” their homes and their jobs. Ironically, the refugees have aided the South African economy hugely, doing whatever jobs come their way – while many locals would prefer to see largesse simply handed to them on a plate. So, yes, local people may be right in saying the foreigners are stealing their jobs – but only because they can – because many locals are simply not willing to work in the same way. It’s a tragic sort of irony.
“I pray every day to God,” said Angela, “I pray that he will make them not hate us and hurt us. I don’t understand it,” she said, “We are all Africans together.”
And therein lies the greatest irony. Not only are we all Africans together on this benighted continent, but we are all humans together, not just in Africa but in the whole world. And look at us, look at how we bicker and fight. I often wonder what an ET looking at this planet must think.
The simple reality is this, one man feels he is threatened and he attacks the man who lives next door. You see it the world over. You just have to look at the rise of nationalism across Europe. You hear the same arguments in the UK – “these foreigners are taking our jobs, we must have tougher immigration control”. And so it goes. It's a strange phenomenon for a global "village" isn't it, the villagers hating and fighting with one another.
But while most of us sit in our safe houses, with food on the tables, in Zimbabwe – and countless other places - people are starving and living in fear of their lives.
And as the global economic crisis plays itself out the people who are worst hit are the poorest. Local people are rising up at this moment against refugees because food prices have soared as a result of purported global food shortages – but you just have to look at the considerable food waste in the West to really question the reality of that position.
“I can’t go back to Zim,” Angela said as she pushed the iron back and forth over a shirt, “We will die. I know we will die. If Mugabe doesn’t kill us, we will starve to death. But I am frightened to stay here. I don’t know what we will do.”
And I have no answers. I don’t know what to say to her. All I can do is pass on the phenomenal goodwill that so many of you sent her via this blog last week. And when I do so, her eyes soften and she says, “Thank you, thank you, there are good people in the world.”

For more on the Alexandra violence and the plight of African foreigners in South Africa, you can take a look here here, here and here

Angela's Story

It is probably a place so far removed from your consciousness as to be but a distant memory in the foggy enormity of space. The name may be familiar but the place not. After all, those things and places by which we’re not directly affected are places and things for which we seldom spare much thought– unless the media constantly pummels us with them – and even then, they remain “somewhere out there”.

So if I say “Zimbabwe” to you, I wonder what you think. Some place in Africa? Another African country with a despotic dictator as its leader? A country with ravaging inflation of over 260 000%? A place where unemployment, violence and intimidation are a daily part of life? A place where food and other shortages are commonplace? Maybe, if you follow the news, you’re even aware that Zimbabwe had elections several weeks ago where the leading party was finally overthrown by the opposition, but have refused to go quietly.

Zimbabwe lies on South Africa’s northern border. I’ve never been there but I’m told it is a beautiful place. Its people are warm and friendly, hard-working, optimistic and outgoing. The standard of education is high. The land is richly fertile. It is a country that has always sat quietly in my consciousness. I’ve had friends and colleagues from Zimbabwe. I studied with Zimbabweans – back then most had left the country not confident of its future. How right they were.

Today Zimbabwe is in turmoil, in agonizing death throes as its economy collapses and its people suffer unspeakable horrors. Amnesty International said in a recent report that on the genocide scale, Zimbabwe sits at Level 7. Level 8 is the point after it has all happened. Yet does the world realise or recognize this?

For me, the Zimbabwean crisis has suddenly come so much closer to home. It has done so because I met Angela.

Angela works for me. She’s a refugee from Zimbabwe who is sent once a week by a domestic agency to clean and iron. Angela’s roots, her very being, are tied to Zimbabwe, and all she wants to do is go home. But it’s not safe.

Angela used to make clothes and sell them in a market – until Robert Mugabe had the market burnt down because the people who worked there did not support him or his ruling party. Those who oppose Mugabe have much to fear, and so, Angela and her husband, like two million others, left Zimbabwe and came to South Africa to seek work and safety. She doesn’t like it here because many South Africans, predominantly Xhosa people, don’t like foreigners. They view them as a threat; see them as taking their jobs. And this is partially true; Zimbabweans (and Malawians, Congolese, Rwandans etc) like to work and they work hard and well because they want to improve their lives. But while Angela lives here, her little daughter is still in Zimbabwe, with her Angela’s mother. Or so we hope.

You see, last week Angela came to work and told me that she was desperately worried. Her daughter had not appeared at school the previous day. Her mother’s phone had gone unanswered for days.

“They live,” she told me, her eyes dark with fear and sorrow, “in a rural area. That’s where Mugabe is killing anyone who opposes him. It’s okay in the cities and towns, but in the rural areas, he kills.”

This may sound overly dramatic but let me give you yesterday’s excerpt from a South African newspaper, the Mail & Guardian:

Thousands of people have been beaten, thousands more driven from their homes and about 20 murdered, according to the opposition, in an army-led campaign of violence focused on rural areas where the opposition performed well.

And all this because Mugabe lost the elections held nearly six weeks ago – and Mugabe and his generals refuse to accept this loss. They have, after all, been in power for 28 years. They have plundered Zimbabwe of its value (and sold out what is left to the Chinese). They have set themselves up in palatial homes, drive Hummers, Bentleys and Benz’s. Their wives shop in Paris. They’ve shipped considerable funds offshore. And all this while the economy has crumbled, people have died of AIDS and farmers have had their land taken from them in other campaigns of violence and terror. Eight out of every ten Zimbabweans is without work. For those who do work, they inevitably have to pay, yes, pay, for the privilege of having a job*. Almost every Zimbabwean, Shona and Ndebele alike, lives in uncertainty and fear, because like Slobodan Milosovich, Mugabe’s reign of terror affects all his people (given his efforts to make it a cultural conflict failed). And of course, in the way of all self-justifying dictators, Mugabe and his cronies insist that all these outcomes are a direct result of British colonialism and interference.

And this is the thing; despite it all, Zimbabweans live for the day when it will all be better - and Angela smiles. She doesn’t know if her child and her parents are dead or alive. But she lives in hope. She is beautiful, she is strong, she is extraordinarily courageous. And on top of all the uncertainty with which she lives, here in South Africa she has to face outrageous xenophobia and is taken complete advantage of by the company who employs her. That, however, is another story and right now I’m too angry to tell it.

There is plenty of information on Zimbabwe on the web and in recent press reports. Zimbabweans themselves, willing to take the risk, have their own websites describing the reality. My pal Baino also wrote an excellent post on the topic a week ago – I’d urge you to read it. The world is thankfully, and finally, outraged. But what, I wonder, will it do about Zimbabwe? What, I wonder, is to be done?

* In one instance a report told of a man who worked at a supermarket, whose wife had to go out and beg with the children, so she could give him the money to actually get to work because his meagre salary couldn’t afford it. But, he said, he’d sooner have a job than not, as one day when things came right, that job would be a wonderful asset to him.


Postscript: I'm happy to be able to tell you that Angela's daughter and parents are safe. They had gone to the nearest town for safety's sake but have now returned to their village. We can but hope that they will continue to be safe. I think one of the hardest things for Angela is that she's not seen her daughter for nearly two years.