7 December 2009

Julia Bradford – Chegutu Zimbabwe

Designer clothes, but no conscience

"Nyarara kuchema, Mwari aripo" (Be silent stop crying, God is here). The abusive taunts and threats died away as the words of the Shona song reverberated from the speakers of Simon's pick-up. One of their favourite disks, it had come on with the ignition as they tried to leave the house where Sarah-Jane, now married with three children, had taken her first steps.

Perhaps the fact that Sarah-Jane was crying with her head in her arms lent weight to words in a language they hadn't expected to hear from a murungu's (white person’s) car. Moments earlier they had forced Sarah-Jane her husband and a friend, Ben Freeth, into the car to get them off the farm that Silvester Hunyani and his family had recently claimed as theirs. Now they were in the car the gate was locked and the tormentors were refusing to let them leave.

"Go back to where you belong!" the well-dressed family had shouted: "This is our house now.” More than anything else that had been said or happened before, this cut through the anger, grief and frustration boiling in Sarah-Jane and found the feisty young woman dissolving in tears.

"Where do I belong? I was born here! My mother and father were too and they built this house that you say is yours. I grew up here!"

"Where were you born?" Sarah-Jane demanded, grabbing the teenage girl by the shoulder.

Taken aback the girl said: "Here."

"And you?" to the son Nico.

"Here." The same startled reply.

"I was also born here! I am also a Zimbabwean and this is my home! We don't belong anywhere else. How can you do this to people and think it's right?" The youngest son, who was about 10 years old and had been in the forefront of the nightly drum-beating and tyre-burning, blended quietly into the hedge.

The previous day we had received the expected but dreaded message: 'Mum and dad are packing up, can you come and help?' It would have been rude to ask what danger we might be going into considering Sarah-Jane was already there, and had been for a few days now. Nevertheless it was a relief to find the yard quiet as someone unlocked the gate for us and we walked in with boxes, tape, newspapers, magazines and marker pens. All the necessities to pack up someone's life in a matter of hours.

As I walked into the familiar house with its high ceiling and lovely wooden beams and saw Sue and Thomas trying to decide what should be packed onto which trailer, the injustice of it all struck me anew. I know everyone is tired of hearing about us – the commercial farmers of Zimbabwe - and we're not 'news' anymore.  But tell that to the person who is watching everything they so carefully gathered over decades packed hastily into a box, any box.

My heart went out to Sue as someone asked her what she wanted done with a wardrobe and saw the indecision and confusion flit across her face. I remember when it had been my turn and friends had turned up to help me pack, I had wanted to wrap myself in a curtain and hide in a corner until the chaos around me had disappeared.

Don't ask me where I want something put, I want it where it belongs - back! Of course it couldn't happen and my house, like Sue's and so many other wives before us, became a forlorn shell in a matter of hours. What about the lampshade you made? (Sue is an artist and it's evident in every turn of the house the Hunyani's are so impatient to move into). And the sign so cleverly made out of tractor scrap - is it just scrap, should we pack it?

We almost missed the framed cheque on the closed verandah.  Thomas’s Zimbabwean-bred filly, Island Farewell, who went on to win the Triple Crown.  A lifetime ago, racehorses in Zimbabwe……  The stables outside were empty except for two mares who were too old to walk across to a nearby farm and neither Thomas or Sarah-Jane had the heart yet to do what must be done. Thomas had lived for his horses, sleeping in their stables during difficult foalings. To imagine the yard without horses... Did the Hunyanis comprehend in the slightest the dedication they were so casually claiming to be theirs?

The verandah was charred as was the lawn around the almost empty swimming pool. Packing in the upstairs attic room I saw two young men flop into a wrought iron chair by the dead fire. A teenage girl trotted to the edge of the garden and returned with sticks to start a new fire on the coals. Bemused I saw they really were wearing designer clothes.

A young boy appeared playing with the Beattie's dogs. My friend packing alongside me wryly pointed them out as the family who had abused, threatened, danced around and beaten Thomas with a sjambok (a whip made of animal hide) outside his house. It seemed almost impossible, they looked so normal and so - well, nice. But the soot staining the walls inside the house told another story, evidence of two days of tyre-burning to smoke Sue and Thomas out of their house. I thought it a strange tactic considering they wanted the lovely thatched house for themselves.

I found it hard to comprehend that a family could sit outside and watch another family pack up their entire possessions and not feel the slightest twinge of conscience. To bring along your 10-year-old son and teenage daughter to join in the adventure is just incredible.  

Their education hadn't ended yet. When Thomas arrived the following day with the Sheriff of the court and a court order against Silvester Hunyani, Hunyani locked them in and told them in no uncertain terms that he would kill them both if they came again. Did he tell his watching son “… and that, my boy, is how we deal with the law.”?

On the last night that white people stayed there - it was Tom and Sue’s daughter Sarah Jane, her husband, Simon and Ben, singing started up.  Ben could tell immediately that it was not jambanja singing.  It was most definitely church singing, with all the beautiful rich harmonies that come from African choirs.  The singing started as the sun went down and as they lay half awake throughout that long night, one ear open listening for jambanja fires or drums or even a break-in, the singing continued.  There was not a sound from the invaders to destroy the heart-warming comfort of the singing.  

With first light, Ben looked out from an upstairs window and could see in the dawn a large semi-circular throng of people standing and facing towards the invaders and the house which we were in, beyond them.  They were still singing.  We went out, passing through the invaders, and thanked them.  It was the farm workers wanting the white people to stay….

What every one of us who has gone through the invasions, and are still going through them, finds most difficult to deal with is that there is nothing and no-one to turn to. The police are openly complicit with recent invasions and deliberately harass attempts to file reports or deal with criminal activity. 

At the home of Kenneth and Cathy Bartholomew - also this weekend - Felix Pambukani, who has already moved into their manager's house in the yard, armed a crowd with guns and locked the Bartholomews into their house. When the police eventually did come to the farm, they merely told the crowd they shouldn't be engaging in this kind of activity and left again. 

Kenneth and Cathy lost their seven-year-old daughter to a rare type of muscular dystrophy in August this year. The day after the funeral hearse took Celine away, the Pambukanis had them served with an order to evict them from their home. Two days after his daughter's memorial service Kenneth found himself in the High Court fighting for his home. When the court ruled in the Bartholomews' favour the Pambukanis, in a fit of pique, sprayed their tobacco seed beds with herbicides killing the entire crop. No action was taken against them then, just as none has been taken against them now. 

Silvester Hunyani too, at the Beattie's home, is apparently also allowed to threaten not only an ordinary citizen but also a government official with weapons and death - and walk away unscathed. Home Affairs Minister for MDC-T Giles Mutsekwa put the phone down on our neighbour, Ben Freeth of Mount Carmel farm, when he tried to enlist the Minister's aid in the implementation of court orders against the current lawlessness.  

To find yourself in a boxing ring defending all your possessions, your opponent has every recognized foul on his side, metal in the gloves being the least of them. You, on the other hand have your hands tied behind your back, and according to the rules are only allowed to duck. Retaliatory action of any kind is an immediate foul and your opponent is awarded a free hit. If he lands a punch the crowds roar and wait to see if it's a knockout. If you're still standing the bets are on to see how long you can keep going.

If this happened in other parts of the world the reaction would be immediate and unequivocal. Criminal behaviour and a gross violation of human rights on practically every level of the Human Rights Charter towards blacks and whites. Why this condescending attitude towards Africa and its rulers? Yes, this is Africa, but no, things don't happen differently here. People still cry when they are beaten and are devastated when family members disappear or property is blatantly stolen. If agreements are signed but immediately disregarded and court orders aren't worth the paper they're written on, why is the reaction simply: "Tsk tsk"?

To not hold governments to their word is to be complicit in the acts that are committed.

ENDS