Zimbabwe: The Long Night Ends

The opening act in the world’s longest-running coup drama has come to an end, just a few paces removed from where it all started. Perhaps what saved the entire process from dissolving into a bedroom farce was the absence of the chief female interest, Grace Mugabe. Luckily, the action remained firmly in the public arena where an elderly, now-isolated despot was seen desperately trying to cling to power. Eventually, someone convinced him that the game was up and that there was no other dignified option but for him to submit his resignation letter.

The constitutional shenanigans that enabled this coup by another name are OK by me, but what bemuses me the most is the hypocrisy of it all. Everyone knows that the membership of ZANU-PF has been the facilitator of the processes that made Zimbabwe an impossible place to live in. And this is not just me saying so. The wide diaspora of Zimbabweans living all over the world, particularly in the neighbouring SADEC countries is testament enough. Zimbabweans who have stuck it out inside the country have had to be very careful to avoid the crushing jaws of the man  they call “The Crocodile” and who now stands ready to preside over the country. I hope I am wrong, but how can a crocodile change its spots overnight, to mix my metaphors? Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa is unlikely to become a model citizen-president overnight, just because he no longer has Robert Mugabe pulling his strings. Or Mrs Mugabe yanking them, for that matter.

What needs to happen in Zim now is pretty obvious. Zimbabweans have to find a way of getting their government party to deliver prosperity for them in an environment where they are free from harassment. Is ZANU-PF the party to do so? This is the party that the people ostensibly supported against themselves during the dark days of the Mugabe reign of terror. I say ostensible because I don’t really know how the system worked. Were threats delivered? Or were threats of actual bodily harm combined with inducements, thrown in the direction of just key people or spread around more randomly throughout the country? Or indeed, did the the inflicting of actual physical harm, including beatings, imprisonment and torture take place?

Whatever the case, there are lessons to be learned because there are at least 20 other countries in Africa today, this hour and this very minute, where leaders and their parties are virtually permanently installed, oppressing people and grinding their economies into the ground. Evidence for this can be seen in the droves who risk life and limb across the Sahara and Mediterranean to escape to Europe. And yet, some of us are quick to praise and defend them against critics, howling some rubbish about “neo-colonialist” and “imperialist” or “slavish” impulses that are trying to “undermine sovereignty” or “destabilize” independence.

Nonsense.  We Africans must have the courage to look at budding dictatorships in the eye and call them for what they are and nip them in the bud when they are still not so dangerous. After all, dictators are never fully formed. They have their beginnings when they are not so dangerous and frightening.  And we must stop protecting them because, if given the latitude, they will turn on the very people who elected them or gave them permission to govern. We must have the courage and the good sense to snuff them out at the earliest indication that they are getting out of hand.

The Zimbabwe drama has many acts to play yet. The people of Zimbabwe remain the principal players; let's make no mistake about that. This is their chance not only to rewrite the script, but to take the play in a whole new direction.

Tell Fren Tru

 

Slumming it

I can’t get this out of my mind.

A Slum quarter in Freetown

The last time I wrote, it was immediately after the latest “natural” disaster that had befallen Sierra Leone, in which untold numbers lost their lives. Up to this day, the precise casualty figure has not been determined.

The first lesson we learn from the tragedy is that when things go wrong it is the poor who cop it. They not only just die; they also lose identity as well. There is nobody to account for them or advocate on their behalf. As their corporal remains are washed away or consumed by fire, their humanity itself is not only diminished but is frequently erased entirely. Another recent example of this kind of erasure is the Grenfell Tower fire in London last June. In that disaster too, many victims remain unnamed and uncounted.

          And, as if to manage our guilt-ridden conscience for our failure to recognize lives lost or diminished, we quickly assume a posture of blaming the victims for what has befallen them. I cannot absolve myself from this failing, as a reading of my last posting amply demonstrates. Since that posting, however, I have had time to reflect on the predicament of those who live in the precarious margins, not out of choice, but of necessity. However, I cannot extend this admission of mea culpa to what I feel for the rich man sitting in his villa perched on the same hillside as the slum dweller whose abode was a shack in the same neighbourhood. That rich man had, and has, at his disposal, choices, including the benefit of expert advice that should have informed him of the foolishness of building where he did. Rather, it would appear, he ignored good, sensible engineering and environmental advice and went ahead and did what he did. He may have been a denier of facts, who might have interpreted attempts at dissuading him from doing something stupid as an instance of “fake news” and who, at the end of the day, probably congratulated himself on succeeding to manouvre his way around those pesky rules and regulations that inconvenience ordinary mortals. Similar to avoiding paying tax, as some openly brag.

          But what about the poor? When I wrote last, I dumped all those affected into a single basket of deplorables. Yes, the poor’s lack of foresight is to be deprecated. But how did they get to where they did? Sierra Leone has seen a number of upheavals, the most severe and enduring of which was the 10-year civil war that ended more than a decade ago. That war displaced tens of thousands, the majority of whom ended up in and around the capital, Freetown, seeking safety. And there they have remained, eking out a life of sorts, but building communities nevertheless. While doing so, they did things to the environment that unwittingly put their own existence and wellbeing at risk. What is certain is that those living hanging by the mountainside or in the path of an unstable land mass, or along a coastal strip, are bound to become victims again. And again, and again... Until and unless something is done.

          We demand that poor people living in these hazardous locations be moved elsewhere by whatever means, including by force, if necessary. However, an enterprise such as that is bound to fail if the new destinations provide no opportunities for productive employment and community-building. But we don’t pause to ask the important questions as to where the resources to pay the rent and maintenance will come from. Money will be required to pay for life in the new homes. Money for rent, money for maintenance, money for utilities (if the environment is to be protected). It would be lovely if this money could fall from the sky. But we all know that there is no money tree, especially in a country where it is estimated that over 70% of people have to live on less than a dollar a day.

        

Like someone said: “It’s the economy, my friend”.

Tell Fren Tru

The Environment Fights Back

In September 2015, I wrote in a post, labelled Consequences , about the danger we face when extreme weather events occur in a backdrop of environmental vandalism. What provoked me to write then was the loss of life and property that occurred in Freetown as a result of flooding that followed several days of heavy rain. Although the city of Freetown is used to rain during its rainy season, the intensity and quantity of rain on that occasion was unprecedented. At the time, I wondered whether the increasing ferocity of the rainy season could be a result of climate change associated with increased CO₂ emissions which began at the start of Europe’s industrial revolution and which has continued through to the present day.

And here we are again, barely two years on, facing exactly the same environmental circumstances with considerably greater human suffering: More than five hundred dead, six hundred others missing and thousands made homeless. How bad does it have to get?

Now, I am no geographer. Nor am I a climatologist. But, as a concerned citizen, when experts tell me that significant, and probably irreversible, climate change is imminent, I sit up and listen. And if they tell us further, that the threat is mostly due to unregulated increase in the accumulation of atmospheric CO₂ brought on by reckless human behaviour, that, I reckon, should instil in us a sense of urgency and make us want to modify our behaviour immediately.

But reducing CO₂ emissions is just one side of the equation. The other side is the protection and preservation of the naturally-occurring mechanisms that soak up CO₂ as part of the normal cycle of life. And, notwithstanding my lack of deep knowledge of climatology, I do retain elements of secondary school biology that taught me that green plants absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere to use for food, with oxygen as a by-product. All very neat, and consistent with maintaining a life-sustaining equilibrium. 

 We mess with this equilibrium at our peril. But everywhere around the world there are examples of man-made environmental degradation. And nowhere is this more glaring than in and around the city of Freetown. The hills overlooking the city, once covered in lush tropical forests, have been brutally stripped of their cover in a continuing act of environmental vandalism that the government of Sierra Leone has been complicit in. It is not certain whether this dereliction of duty has been deliberate or just negligent, but the result has been the same. It may be that the direct consequence on the micro-climate surrounding Freetown is insubstantial, although the direct effects on the stability of the ground itself has been all too obvious: Erosion of land without its trees and shrubs to anchor it to its substratum is inevitable. Indeed, no rain is required for this kind of topsoil loss to take place. The merest breath of wind is enough to remove the topsoil and blow it into the sea.  And then, if the terrain becomes sodden with the heavy rain that is typical for the months of July and August, the only predictable outcome is the one that we have just witnessed: A massive shifting of the land down towards the sea, sweeping everything in its path.

Quite possibly, the current disaster might have been mitigated had it not been that dwelling houses, if such structures can be so designated, had been built in the same ground that has been denuded of vegetation, weakening the land’s cohesion even further. Once again I have to deny any expert knowledge in engineering this time, but the dictates of common sense would preclude building in such locations without proper precaution and adherence to regulation that, not to put too fine a point on it, is stupid.

But what kind of stupid would lead to a catastrophe of this magnitude, right in front of our eyes? I will answer the question. It is the kind of stupid that is compounded with a corrupt system of land allocation and building codes regulation presided over by a government system that is, if not out and out corrupt, certainly languidly supine. I have no direct evidence of this. I am just saying. But if you look at the predatory tendencies of those who grab land, there is only one conclusion to draw. Namely, that those in charge have been complicit in the evolution of this disaster.

One might well ask, what is the purpose of government, if not to protect its citizens from death and destruction? Successive Sierra Leone governments have failed, and failed again, almost on a yearly basis, to meet this fundamental duty.

Tell Fren Tru