Despite the excesses of Mad Ol’ Bob and his “amazing” Grace, a normal Zimbabwe does exist, says Don Makatile.
Harare - The biblical Thomas had a point with his penchant for incredulity. Seeing is believing.
I went in and out of Harare on Wednesday and I’m beginning to think there’s a side of Zimbabwe the news media is hell-bent on keeping away from the consumers.
This is the normal Zimbabwe. The first thing I did when we touched down was to buy the day’s newspapers. This is what normal people do - and there are a lot of regular people in Harare.
The Herald, which I know from memory is state-owned, had “President meets war vets today” splashed across its front page, with a picture of Robert Gabriel Mugabe that could easily have served as a billboard.
The editorial was so favourable to Bob you’d have thought they were referring to the angel Gabriel. And then it happened: all traffic had to pull to the side of the road.
Why, you ask. Well, because the president was driving past. It is a circus of such tinpot despotism last read about in the era of Idi Amin.
Our hosts, who included a pastor and the mayor of Gwanda, a semi-rural mining town about 600km from Harare, explained it this way: “The road is narrow. We must give right of way to the president.” I did not laugh.
The time it takes for an entourage of roughly 10 motorbikes - sirens blaring - and about 14 cars, including two ambulances, to pass can be very long if all you’re expected to do is twiddle your thumbs at the side of the road.
We’re used to it, the priest and the mayor said in unison.
The closest description for this obsequiousness is Louis Farrakhan’s notion of “suffering peacefully”.
They are so inured to their suffering they were astounded when asked how they could be so blasé about this absurdity.
“If you don’t stop they will shoot you dead.”
Well, on our way we went after the Big Man had passed.
That the world has to come to a grinding halt simply because President Mugabe, the patron saint, is going to meet war veterans is comical to say the least.
Other than this Third World show of force, the Harare that unfolded before my eyes was as cosmopolitan as the next big city. I did not fail to notice that a book fair had been under way since Monday, with the theme “Reigniting Interest in Reading for Sustainable Development”.
We went to a complex in Borrowdale for a bite. If you woke up here after a coma, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in Sandton.
The white housewives still do what their species does best - shop. There’s a guy driving in with the milkiest white Porsche Cayenne in town, a Jeep Grand Cherokee or three and a Mercedes-Benz E Class so brand spanking new it had not yet been allocated number plates.
People work on their laptops and grab a meal à la Rosebank and Hyde Park. It is such a commonplace world, but you’d be hard-pressed to find footage of it in the news media.
Every conceivable South African supermarket and fast-food franchise is represented in Harare, and Borrowdale seems to be home to the best of them.
Later in the day we’d be introduced to a genial old man of about 70. He was the respectable headmaster type. When he took leave of us, he got into his stately Mercedes E Class sedan, driving himself.
This was Samuel Undenge, the minister of energy and power development. No blue lights; no extravagant security detail. The powerful vehicles parked side by side with the wheels of the ordinary folk outside the John Boyne Building at the corner of Inez Terrace and Speke Avenue belong to cabinet ministers.
No chauffeurs. No blue lights. Exposed to the elements!
I couldn’t see any of President Jacob Zuma’s so-called communist ministers, masters of conspicuous consumption, surviving a day in this pedestrian setting.
By the afternoon peak hour, the roads are chock-a-block with traffic. There’s life on the side of the roads as people get by as best they can. The fruit and vegetable vendors are doing a roaring trade. The congestion at the main taxi rank could be anywhere in Joburg or Durban.
This is the capital I saw. Standard, average, routine.
Despite the excesses of Mad Ol’ Bob and his “amazing” Grace, this normal Zimbabwe does exist.
The Sunday Independent