- Dear Family and Friends,
-
- It is with a very heavy heart and a tear stained face
that I sit and write my letter from Zimbabwe this week. Today is my sister's
wedding day and I am not able to be there. She is a Zimbabwean in exile
and the air fare for my son and I to go her wedding is 10 million dollars.
A few months ago my brother got married and I could not afford to go his
wedding either. I now have two brothers in law, a sister in law and a niece
whom I have never met and it hurts almost beyond words to keep missing
all these momentous family occasions because I choose to live in a country
where inflation is 450%. The personal implications of the four and half
year old crisis in Zimbabwe have destroyed family life, broken up communities
and made relations into strangers.
-
- When you read the statistic bandied about that 3 million
Zimbabweans are now living in exile, it is just a number but when you think
about the impact that it is having on the social fabric of lives and communities,
it is heart breaking. Across Zimbabwe there are hundreds of thousands of
children who are living either with relations or with one parent, as the
other is outside of Zimbabwe trying to make money to send home to keep
the rest of the family alive. In our old age homes there are thousands
of elderly pensioners whose children and grandchildren have been forced
to leave Zimbabwe. In our schools there are thousands of children in boarding
hostels because their parents have been forced to leave Zimbabwe. And outside
of Zimbabwe there are three million people who can't come home, they are
victims of a government whose policies have brought the country to the
very edge of complete collapse.
-
- A few weeks ago I wrote a letter criticizing Zimbabweans
in exile for not doing enough to speak up about the diabolical state of
affairs in Zimbabwe. I apologise for having said that, they were words
of frustration and despair. It is very hard to stay in Zimbabwe now, but
it is even harder to leave and go to a strange country and start again
from scratch with nothing but agonisingly painful memories.
-
- This week I should be telling the world that the Zimbabwe
government have just passed new detention laws. A Zimbabwean can now be
detained for 23 days without the ability to apply for bail and without
a court appearance. One of the "crimes" to which this detention
applies involves "planning to or taking part in civil disobedience."
Zimbabwe now has three pieces of legislation which are a part of daily
life: POSA which prevents us from meeting; AIPPA which prevents us from
writing and now the Criminal Proceedure Act which prevents us from talking
or walking. While I should be writing about such a disgraceful state of
affairs, I find myself rather weeping for families that have been broken
up, friends that have gone, grandparents that are alone and children that
are without their parents.
-
- To my family and all the others who are living in forced
separation all I can say is we must not give up or lose hope because the
end of oppression is inevitable. Zimbabwe will rise up from this ruination
and again become the country we all love so much.
-
- Until next week,
-
- with love, cathy.
-
- Copyright cathy buckle 3rd July 2004. http://africantears.netfirms.com
-
- My books on the Zimbabwean crisis, "African Tears"
and "Beyond Tears" are available outside Africa from: orders@africabookcentre.com
; www.africabookcentre.com ; www.amazon.co.uk ; in Australia and New Zealand:
johnmreed@johnreedbooks.com.au ; Africa: www.kalahari.net www.exclusivebooks.com
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