Letters from Zimbabwe

Letters from Zimbabwe : Latest Posts

06 March 2010 23:18

All are welcome

Tolerance of different beliefs, practices and people is as elusive as ever in Zimbabwe.

They say that a picture speaks a thousand words and the one I picked up on the roadside this morning certainly did. I'm not generally in the habit of picking up litter on public roads but this was different. It was the remains of a poster that had been torn off a street light pole. From the scraps of bright coloured paper left clinging to a number of other poles, it was obvious that a line of the same posters had all been torn down recently. I had travelled along this road just the day before and the posters hadn't been there then so this had only just happened. Picking up the remains of the crumpled poster lying in the grass and turning it over, I knew immediately that the political turmoil in Zimbabwe is still a long way from being over.

The top third of the poster was gone bu...

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28 February 2010 10:08

No go areas

Farms, once the show-piece of Zimbabwe and the life blood of the economy.

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the commencement of farm invasions in Zimbabwe. For me it started with a mob of men who came to the farm gate. Wearing blue overalls and carrying bricks and sticks they whistled and shouted that this was HONDO (war) and that they were taking the farm. The events that followed are history and the seizure of that farm and theft of home, business and assets have been repeated thousands of times across the country in this last decade.

There are thought to have been a million people directly affected by Zimbabwe's land seizures, including farm owners and their employees and extended families. None of these one million people have yet been compensated for what was taken from them or for injuries and abuses inflicted upon them in the process of t...

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22 February 2010 00:59

Funeral insurance

Whether you want it or need it, banks just deduct it from your account.

We have been plunged back into a dramatic, gruelling electricity crisis for the last ten days which has left most areas receiving electricity for 5 hours a day. When electricity is restored it is only in the middle of the night between 11.30 pm and 4 am. Normal functioning has become almost impossible and no electricity means no water can be pumped and many days communication also collapses as mobile phones are unable to pick up a signal. In private homes water supply has dwindled to 2 or less hours a day, geysers are cold, fridges and deep freezers have defrosted and their contents gone bad.

I paid a visit to the main ZESA (electricity supplier) offices and asked the lady at the enquiries desk how many more days or weeks of this we might be facing. "I don't know," she replied. ...

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