- Dear Family and Friends
-
- Early these mornings the mist lies in thick blankets
across the vleis, giving a surreal, dreamlike start to the February days.
The tops of the Msasa trees with their twisting branches and low, spreading
canopies are first to emerge from the mist as the sun comes up. Then the
grassland, tall and gold now, with heavy, bursting seed heads comes into
sight and the first birds appear. At this time of year the Paradise Whydahs
are about early and the breeding males are wonderous to watch. Their flight
is frantic and laboured, it has to be to carry their magnificent black
tail feathers which are longer than their bodies. Tails which stream behind
them in a spectacular display. Just spending a few minutes looking out
at the beauty every morning has to be enough to give strength and courage
to face another day in the disaster that has become life in Zimbabwe.
-
- For a long time the analysts and commentators have been
saying that it will be the economy that eventually brings an end to the
situation in the country. I don't know if most of us ordinary Zimbabweans
have understood what this would actually entail but recently we have all
started learning very fast.
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- This week it was officially announced that inflation
in January soared to 1593%. This staggering rise of over three hundred
percent in one month, from December to January, has crippled us all and
has made the situation in the country completely unsustainable. On Monday
a friend priced a pair of work overalls and they were forty thousand dollars.
On Wednesday, when he went with the cash to buy them, the price had gone
up to seventy five thousand dollars.
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- None of us are able to cope with these sort of price
increases and so we go without. We put the little money we have back in
our pockets, not yet really understanding that we must spend it when we
have it as its buying power is shrinking every day. It is a lesson we are
learning fast and it is hard one because it contradicts principles of saving,
careful spending and budgeting.
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- As the days pass and the deprivations increase, the discontent
is rising and so too is the presence of police, army and Border Gezi youths
on the streets. The air of intimidation and control is all around us. In
just five blocks of a small town this week. I counted twenty eight police
and army personnel in uniform. They stroll and patrol, on foot, bicycles
and in open pick up trucks. At one supermarket there were between 250 and
300 people queuing for sugar. The line did not go to the front of the shop
but to a back door where all these multitudes of people were being controlled
by two scruffy youths wearing Zanu PF T shirts, two policemen and one soldier
in army camouflage.....
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- From the sugar queues the police, army and Gezi youths
go to the road
-
- blocks and from there to the scramble for fertilizer
or the lines for maize meal. And everywhere you look the feeling is of
the increasingly fragile hold on control. In this one week over 170 women
from Woza were arrested for Valentine protests; teachers union leaders
were arrested and 14 student union leaders were arrested. Seven years of
misery are coming to a head.
-
- Until next week,
-
-
- thanks for reading,
-
-
- love, cathy
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- Copyright cathy buckle17 February 2007.
- http://africantears.netfirms.com
- My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond
Tears" are available from
- orders@africabookcentre.com. To subscribe/unsubscribe
to this newsletter,
- please write to: cbuckle@mango.zw
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