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Outside Zimbabwe
Part I
by Miranda Post

Living in Southern Africa makes it difficult to escape Zimbabwe. The prophecies and conspiracy theories about Robert Mugabe and the possibility of African or Western intervention, woven with racism and/or sympathy do infinite loops around smoky jazz clubs, conservative dinner tables and earnest activist meetings in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Gaborone. This year the loops tighten round my consciousness daily because Zimbabwe and its people are no longer confined to stories from talking heads on television. They affect the way I live and work.

Zimbabwe and its people's struggle permeate headlines: "Unstoppable Tide - We join the flood of Zimbabweans risking life and limb to reach South Africa".

Robberies are almost always performed by desperate Zimbabweans, especially in Botswana: According to a recent interview with Agence France Presse, Botswana's representative to the United Nations Alfred Dube says, "We are concerned about what is going on [in Zimbabwe]. It is very unfortunate that we have our houses being burgled every day and our children being harassed. We understand why our people are saying that Zimbabweans must go."

Zimbabweans sell bed sheets out of enormous backpacks, trekking around in 40°C heat: "Please madam don't you want to buy a nice sheet set. I'll sell it to you for a good price," pleads a man my age outside a plush shopping complex in Gaborone, Botswana.

Skilled Zimbabweans ply their skills elsewhere because their currency is so weak it is printed on one-sided pieces of paper: The Zimbabwe dollar's street value is approximately $5000Zim to $1US and falling.

The constant stories of economic decline, human rights and social systems in Africa's former breadbasket carve riverbeds of grief through the dust on my cheeks. These narratives emanating from in and around Zimbabwe hold me hostage in a slight case of obsession.

The rapes.
war veterans.
land redistribution programme.
The strikes.
bread queues.
petrol shortages.

To bear my obsession out, it is necessary to tell the stories of Zimbabweans as they are, not just as urban myths or column inches buried in the newspaper, but as truths observed so close I can make you smell the body odour and feel the quiver of angry, fear-full tendons. These Zimbabwean stories of consternation, sadness, and near slavery are not only theirs, but every other Southern African resident's reality, whether we like it or not….

* * *

The cattle trucks and my Canadian privilege

I will now join them
those tossed away
like cigarette ash
those wearing the leaves
those with no blankets
but the sky and the grass
--from "I will join them" by Zimbabwean poet Julius Chingano

* * *

"Eish, these Zimbabweans. You know every year [the government] spends something like half-a-million Pula taking them back to Zimbabwe," says my colleague Jabu as we ease over the moguls of the Botswana Department of Immigration parking lot in Gaborone.

A small collection of portables, cattle trucks, caravans and vast amounts of Zimbabweans gather in the department complex that Botswana locals jokingly call 'Harare', after Zimbabwe's capital. Each morning at 5:00 a.m., Zimbabweans begin to queue for extra days on their visitor's visas in the skeletal shadow of Botswana's nearly completed Ministry of Health building. Many are here as transient labourers, staying with relatives and hitting the streets each day in hopes of earning enough money to send home to Bulaywayo, Harare or Plumtree.

I am here to have my days extended as well. I have a week to go before my one-month visitor's visa runs out. I need another month-and-a-half to finish my two-and-half month contract in Botswana. In my sweaty palm I carry a letter saying that my employers have seconded me to the Gaborone office (from Joburg) to help with marketing and training.

"Sometimes you see officials loading them into the trucks. No water, no belongings," Jabu continues, "When the truck is full they drive them non-stop to the border and dump them off that side." She motions east, towards Zimbabwe. From where we stand the closest border crossing is about 700 km away. It is a fine September day, 11:00 a.m., 30°C and soaring.

We are looking for the end of the slithering line up. Babies play in the dust. Neon-striped beanies perch on rotund little heads. Snotty, button-sized black noses turn our way as they pause for a second before resuming play at the feet of nervous mothers and aunties. These women clutch their passports as I clutch mine. An idle mix of the indigenous languages Setswana and Shona fills the air. Some people look like posh office workers. Others look like 'working girls'. Most are simply the working poor with scarves tied on their heads, teeth missing, and neat but tattered colourful clothes.

Jabu acts as my translator and asks where the end of the queue is for her co-worker from Canada. The immigration guard motions towards a broken-down caravan trailer, where some ladies are selling bananas. We shuffle past the babies, mothers, fathers and grandfathers and out a hole in the fence toward the banana lady. Jabu asks where the 'register' is. On a torn piece of notepad paper, I sign my name next to number 54 and resign myself to a long wait. Only 53 more Zimbabweans before I get to apply to extend my working days in Botswana.

Back through the torn fence, past the over-dressed babies and I start to sweat. Queues and uniforms always make me nervous. Jabu nudges me past the line into the tiny, burglar-barred Immigration office. Some men shimmy down their bench for me, the lone white person, to sit down. Jabu sits in the guard's chair, buzzing away at him, all rolling 'Rs' and complicated 'Ss' that collide into each other and comprise the lilt of Setswana.

The petit man behind the counter motions for me to come over after a mere five-minute wait.

But it's not my turn.

I go to the counter and practice my most demure Canadian please and thank-yous. Within two minutes, 60 more days have been scribbled into my passport over top of my previous Botswana gate stamps. I mutter 'thank you' again and shuffle past the nice Zimbabwean gentlemen who moved over for me. I try to avoid their gaze.

We exit past the queue for the third and final time, me suppressing my own motherly urge to reach down and scoop up one of these perfectly round, raggedy babies. As we pull out of the parking lot an Immigration official swings open the back doors of one of the cavernous cattle trucks, eyeing the group of men lolling under the sparse trade of the trees in front of my car.

Miranda Post is an exception to the rule.

Supporting Documents

i. Mail & Guardian, South Africa, October 3-9, 2003,
Vol 19, No 40.
ii. +++