Zimbabwe Trip 4 - Part J

Thursday- May 25, 2006

Africa Day was all I expected it to be. Harare was dead. The streets were empty and everything was closed. It’s ironic that the whole country shuts down on a holiday when in the US and other western countries, it’s a time for consumption and shopping. Not in Zimbabwe! The van was nearly empty today, but somehow the secretaries did show up, just late.

The state owned newspaper was full of articles about the evils of western capitalism, and how the West is horrible, keeping Africa in chains. The West is solely blamed for slavery and poverty. What I remember of history is that the West was definitely culpable in the slave trade. But who originally sold the slaves? The Africans sold EACH OTHER into slavery! The West is to blame for creating a demand for slavery, but the tribes of Western Africa especially were responsible for selling each other into slavery. The paper would have a point if European armies had invaded Western Africa and forcibly started the slave trade. That, however, was not the case. African tribes sold each other out to meet an evil demand by white people for cheap labor in the “New World”. This does nothing to exculpate the guilt of the Western nations, including the USA in the slave trade. But do white people in particular own 100% of the guilt? No. Everyone has guilt here.

There were more diatribes about how Africa must be afro-centric and unite to demand from the world its due. There is a point to be made there. A united Africa would make the continent stronger both politically and economically. But Africa is rife with tribal tension, ancient jealousies, and warfare. Of course, the paper blames this on white people creating tribal jealousies and tensions where there were none. Oh really? So tribal warfare never occurred until Africa was colonized in the late 1800s? Gee, I guess the history I’ve been taught was wrong. There was no tribal warfare anywhere. There are no tribal jealousies to this day.

But what about Rwanda, you ask? The Tutsi were randomly selected by the Belgians for advancement because they were tall. The Hutu were treated like shit, and this did create horrible jealousies between the two tribes. And in independence, this eventually boiled over with the Hutu trying to exterminate the Tutsi in 1994’s genocide. An argument can be made that whites lit the fuse that ended in the genocide of 1994. Lord knows the West did nothing to stop the massacre. But the idea of extermination did not come from white people, did it? The Hutu planned and executed that particular plan on their own.

Here in Zimbabwe, the two dominate tribes are Ndebele and Shona. The Shona are the majority, constituting 60% of the population. The Ndebele are the other 40%. This is because of the random borders drawn by colonial powers. The West is to blame for forcing disparate tribes into the same countries and expecting nothing to happen as a result. After Mugabe came to power, there was an opposition party until 1987 when ZANU-PF was formed. The parties were ZANU and ZAPU and both had fought the war against Rhodesia’s white government. One of the parties (not sure which) was mostly Ndebele and the other Shona. Of course, the Shona party won power in elections. To weaken the opposition, Mugabe systematically murdered the leaders of the Ndebele until they finally agreed to merge and form the Zanu-PF in 1987. Did white people for that kind of “cleansing”?

Until Africa can get past these petty jealousies and see everyone as Africans first and forget those old tribal differences, there’s no way Africa will unite. I can just imagine the fight that would occur in locating a federal capital. Would it be in Anglophone or Francophone Africa? What about the nations that speak Portguese?

Another irony is the paper’s call for strings-free aid from the West. They hate the West and openly want to punish white people and economically defeat the West…but in the meantime, just give Africa all your money and don’t ask for repayment or any accountability. Lord knows that Africa has a perfect record of no corruption, no stealing by government “leaders”, and no graft. Please note my sarcasm.

I’m not sure what’s responsible for my relatively foul mood today. Perhaps I am getting tired of reading articles about how horrible white people are, how we are responsible for everything bad in the world, etc. Perhaps I feel this mission has been a waste of time. There’s no way there will be a product that will satisfy anyone, and apparently Balcha had to fight really hard to “allow” me to come here. Well, if they didn’t want my help, why the fuck ask? I can answer that. This task has been tedious as HELL and requires the patience of a saint. It also requires someone trained in forensic accounting, which I am not.

Casey has done the best she can to keep up with all the different accounts and the flow of money. Over time, she has added innovation to the record keeping which has added the value of information available for partners. The early records are a mess. I worked with Casey a bit this afternoon, and I really need access to the online “sticker” system to reconcile these records. I’m over it. I think what Casey really wants from me to tell and show Balcha how difficult this process is, not to mention time consuming. Hopefully, he’ll back off on wanting old records to be reconciled. We’ll see.

I did find out that Leo had offered to have me stay longer. That’s nice. He didn’t mention that to me. Good thing too. I will not be staying here one minute longer than I’m scheduled to stay. I’m ready to go home now, let alone just extend my visit. I have a life, after all. I have places to be and people counting on me right after I get home. I can’t just “extend” like it’s nothing. If I have to, I will refuse to extend. I have the tickets in my hand, after all. I won’t change them. If Leo gets angry, so be it. Already, the PAHO people are yelling because they didn’t get to approve the cuts in the cooperative agreement we made. I’m pretty sure that I did inform them, but I couldn’t afford to wait for them to “approve” it before I submitted. We were under a tight time pressure, so I gave it to them, and then had to submit it shortly afterward if the money was to be released on time. I could do more in Atlanta than here. Here I feel like I’m largely wasting my time.

Went home, had an early dinner in my room. I then watched the live CNN report on the verdict in the Enron case. Skilling and “Kenny boy” Lay were found guilty and will be going to prison for many years. It was sweet vindication against the Bush way of doing business. I hope it extends to the elections this fall.

I’m worried about the fallout from the Cathy Cox situation on the marriage amendment. I think we’re still in emotional turmoil, but I also sense that our goals are still the same. The tactics on how to deal with Cathy will differ, but we still want to see GOP power lessen in this election. It’s another reason I wish I was home, so that I could be with my friends and help sort all this out.

I saw a great movie tonight called “Iron Jawed Angels” about the women who pushed through the Women’s Sufferage Amendment (19th Amendment) to the US Constitution. It was fantastic, and really showed how Wilson tried to squash the voting amendment and used his powers much as Bush has to abuse his authority and trample the rights of the women demanding their rights. Hilary Swank was fantastic in the lead role.

At least the week is coming to an end, and this time next week, I’ll be well on my way back home.