awicenna
23.03.05, 13:14
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Morsel of Goat Meat
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
inga, Zimbabwe — The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are
gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many,
many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white
racist government that oppressed them in the 1970's.
"If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we'd do it," said Solomon
Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his
village. "Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job."
Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now
he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would
rather put up with any indignity than witness that.
An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger
today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: "I want
the white man's government to come back. ... Even if whites were oppressing
us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today."
His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat
meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn
gruel. "I miss the days of white rule," she said.
Nearly every peasant I've spoken to in Zimbabwe echoed those thoughts,
although it's also clear that some still hail President Robert Mugabe as a
liberator. This is a difficult place to gauge the mood in, because foreign
reporters are barred from Zimbabwe and promised a prison sentence of up to
two years if caught. I sneaked in at Victoria Falls and traveled around the
country pretending to be a tourist.
The human consequences of the economic collapse are heartbreaking. I visited
a hospital and a clinic that lacked both medicines and doctors. Children die
routinely for want of malaria medication that costs just a few dollars.
At one maternity ward, 21 women were sitting outside, waiting to give birth.
No nurse or doctor was in sight, and I asked the women when they had last
eaten meat, eggs or other protein. They laughed uproariously. Lilian Dube, a
24-year-old who had hiked 11 miles to get to the hospital, said that she had
celebrated Christmas with a morsel of goat meat.
"Before that, the last time I had meat was Christmas the year before," she
said. "I just eat corn porridge and mnyi," a kind of wild fruit.
An elementary school I visited had its fifth graders meeting outside, because
it doesn't have enough classrooms. Like other schools, it raises money by
charging fees for all students - driving pupils away.
"Only a few of the kids who started in grade one are still with me in
school," Charity Sibanda, a fifth-grader, told me. "Some dropped out because
they couldn't pay school fees. And some died of AIDS."
As many as a third of working-age Zimbabweans have AIDS or H.I.V., and every
15 minutes a Zimbabwean child dies of AIDS. Partly because of AIDS, life
expectancy has dropped over the last 15 years from 61 to 34, and 160,000
Zimbabwean children will lose a parent this year.
AIDS is not President Mugabe's fault, but the collapse of the health system
has made the problem far worse.
The West has often focused its outrage at Mr. Mugabe's seizure of farms from
white landowners, but that is tribalism on our part. The greatest suffering
by far is among black Zimbabweans.
I can't put Isaac Mungombe out of my mind. He's sick, probably dying of AIDS,
and his family is down to one meal a day. His wife, Jane, gave birth to their
third child, Amos, six months ago at home because she couldn't afford $2 to
give birth in the hospital. No one in the family has shoes, and the children
can't afford to attend school. They're a wonderful, loving family, and we
chatted for a long time - but Isaac and Jane will probably soon die of AIDS,
and the children will join the many other orphans in the village.
When a white racist government was oppressing Zimbabwe, the international
community united to demand change. These days, a black racist government is
harming the people of Zimbabwe more than ever, and the international
community is letting Mr. Mugabe get away with it. Our hypocrisy is costing
hundreds of Zimbabwean lives every day.
