From Johannesburg
Jan 1982
Dear Mum,
I’ve
just come back from Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls impossible to describe or capture
on a post card. Wildlife is very
plentiful and swimming in the rivers or walking in the bush is dangerous.
Driving through the bush you can see an incredible variety of animals.
Everything rhinos, deer, elephants, warthogs etc. There is some beautiful and
both the blacks and whites are friendly. All this two years after a war in
which 30,000 people were killed.
Down
here the conventional wisdom is that Zimbabwe is not the place for a white. But
if you had money you could live very well indeed. Economically it seems to be
going downhill. Shortages in the shops when even through 15 years of economic
sanctions there were none. At the end of the 8 year war, the war plus the
sanctions were at their most costly. That’s a good time to hand the mess over
to the blacks.
Relationships
with SA have deteriorated which is bad economically for Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe is
well aware of how his country depends on SA. During the war everything went
through SA and trade routes can’t be changed immediately/overnight. Mr Muldoon
was right when he said that Mugabe had been too long in the bush. None of the
blacks now in power has had any experience of running a country. Overnight you
have a whole new cabinet and they make lots of mistakes. Mr Mugabe is not the
problem. It’s the second echelon. The blacks who overnight are promoted high up
in the civil service because they belong to ZANU (PF) @ because whites have
left creating gaps.
There
is no doubt that in order to get the blacks to fight they were promised a lot.
Black expectations were high. Just this week Mugabe aid that they were going to
begin nationalizing parts of industry. They realize that they still have no
economic power and the quick solution is to nationalize. This please the black
masses and depresses the whites with the skills and the money who are now
leaving in their droves. The whites are depressed and every skilled white who
leaves takes with him the jobs of countless illiterate blacks.
Salisbury
is a very nice city and there was a letter in the paper about a white
shop-keeper who asked a black street –sweeper why he was sleeping on the
footpath. The black said that it was his country now and he’d clean it when he
felt like it. This is the attitude you see everywhere. The Africa were nothing
works, is not available or is late. One day he has no responsibility and
couldn’t care about anything. The next day he has all the responsibility and doesn’t
know what to do. That’s why you need strong ruthless leaders and there are so
few democracies in Africa.
In this
respect SA is just like the rest of Africa and definitely not part of the
Western World. In Salisbury some Aussie teachers just landed and displayed
their ignorance on TV. They will soon
learn. One teacher I spoke to had been working in Zim for 3 months. At one
stage they decided to protest about conditions. The police came and locked them
up for the day and that was the end of that. They were lucky. It is still a
very nice country and more natural in that blacks and whites mix freely at all
levels of society. At first it seems odd then strangely refreshing and more
“normal”.
That
reminds me. A lot of people can’t handle freedom. i.e. An Indian or colored doctor goes to England and applies for a job.
Not told why he doesn’t get it and eventually goes home to SA and says the
people in England are more racist. In SA you know exactly where they are. I’ve
heard this story countless times. It’s probably true and the worst racists I’ve
seen are new English migrants. They suddenly realise they can get away with
ordering other people around without doing anything and not having to prove
anything about themselves. They go over-board and lose control. The reverse of
this is the paternalistic treating of every black like someone needing your
help. There are millions of white SA who
grew up on farms with blacks who do neither.
Regards
Alan
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