Silent resignation has fallen across Zimbabwe

They are painting white lines on the last stretch of road before it turns into dirt and heads towards the Heroes’ Acre cemetery on the outskirts of my home town.

On the side of the road, a wheelbarrow with a 20-litre bucket of paint, a mixing stick and a bottle of water were the tools of the trade.

Watched over by two supervisors wearing woolly hats and blue overalls with green fluorescent stripes and orange reflective vests, two men were bent double, hand-painting the road.

It was four days before the official commemorative speeches were due to take place on Heroes’ Day.

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As the tar ends and turns into a potholed dirt road, littered with eroded gullies, a grader was raising a huge cloud of red dust, scratching out shrubs and saplings and pushing down a tree.

It was a typical end of winter day under a deep blue sky and two women with babies on their backs, one in a bright orange track suit and the other wearing a little pink bonnet, stood on the roadside watching the grader.

‘Just stay quiet’

If looks could talk, I thought.

Everyone knows that this is the traditional annual window-dressing that takes place once a year before the dignitaries arrive and have to travel down this road – a time when they fill the potholes, paint the road markings and pretend that everything is quite normal in Zimbabwe.

Everything is far from normal in Zimbabwe. We listen to the words but watch the actions.

Last week, when constitutional protection groups under the People’s Coalition – ‘Sungano Yevanhu’ – called for a national stay-away, their spokesman Jacob Ngarivhume received a box of dog faeces with the message: “Next time the parcel will go boom.”

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In the days before the stay-away, the government put up a show of force, with police, provincial ministers and security personnel making big statements.

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The police said they had “made deployments to all parts of the country for effective maintenance of law and order”.

An air force chief said: “Security Forces are on high alert to ensure peace and tranquility prevail.”

Zimbabweans all know what happens when they take to the streets to protest, so people stayed at home and stayed quiet. That’s the familiar catchphrase in Zimbabwe: “Just stay quiet.”

Five days after the stay-away, the Sungano Yevanhu spokesman had red spray-painted messages daubed on the walls around his house, including the words: “You will die for nothing.”

Back to survival mode

And so we go on, back into survival mode. A silent resignation has again fallen across Zimbabwe.

Every night, orange flames trickle and run across the horizon, and every day smoke rises in the blue sky as people burn the land, preparing a place where they can plant their maize (corn) and try to grow enough to feed their families for another season.

One subsistence farmer I met this week told me the big shock that has come this season is the price of fertiliser.

Last year, AN was $35 a bag; this yea, it’s gone up to between $42 and $47 a bag. Last year, Compound D was $29 a bag and this year it’s gone up to $37.

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He needs six bags, $250 dollars.

“Is there any hope, any relief, with the news about the tractors?” I asked him.

He shook his head: “None.”

Promises without relief

Last week, Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka said the government was going to be distributing 35 000 tractors across the country – one for each village – “ahead of the summer cropping season”.

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It’s a big promise to be making now, when preparations for the new season are already under way. If there are going to be 35 000 tractors for this cropping season, now is the time they are needed.

And so, for the time being, our attention turns from constitutional changes made without a referendum to trying to grow a crop to survive on.

I end my column this week with a message of remembrance for the six Zimbabweans who were shot and killed by soldiers in the centre of Harare eight years ago, on 1 August 2018, during post-election demonstrations: Sylvia Matambo Maphosa (age 53); Ishmael Kumire (43); Gavin Dean Charles (48); Jealous Chikandira (21); Brian Zhuwawo (26) and Challenge Tauro (20).

You are not forgotten.

© Cathy Buckle

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