63. Zimbabwe: Bulawayo, Harare to Lake Kyle

This is one of our longer posts, and possibly one of more general interest. As we hitched out of Harare, we got a ride with a white former “tracker”, or special forces Rhodesian soldier, who was at the time we went through, warden of a National Park. We had a long ride with him, and then he invited us to spend the night, so we got a fairly detailed point of view, only a couple of years after the war officially ended.  We have put his words in a different font, because it is definitely not our point of view. Do not forget that even our own point of view is of young backpackers.  Helena was 26 and Dan not quite 23 at the time.

 

Our route through Zimbabwe: red for train and yellow for hitchiking

Bulawayo - Guelo, Zimbabwe, Thursday, June 30, 1983

(DAN) We awoke to some more beautiful, sunny weather. It was chilly enough early on that we ate breakfast and wrote inside the tent. Then when the sun hit us --ah. The fairly cheap and efficient mail service has prompted us to do a couple of chores. We are still carrying around all the letters we have received on the trip; they amount to three considerable packets. After completing our clothes-washing, we headed down to mail them home.

First stop was the big, fancy store that has everything imaginable in the way of paper and office supplies. We chose the proper envelopes and got up our courage to ask the (white) counter woman if we could use their tape. She was most helpful. The post office does not allow tape, so she brought out a tube of glue. And for the next 10 minutes kept our ears bent. So we had been to Vic Falls? She used to live at the falls--before the problems, you know. “We used to have the trucking contract for the Caprivi Strip. I’ve been to the homelands, you know. They get treated quite well, you know. Their town hall is as nice as ours here! But you have to live with them to know them. Did you hear about the Canadian girls killed at the falls? Aye, that was the start of it all; they were wading in the water, and they were riddled with bullets from the Zambian side. Then the terrorists knew they could get away with anything. That was 1969, I believe. Yes, you have to live with them to know them”, etc.

Thanks for the, ah, glue, ma’am.

An otherwise pleasurable visit to the post office. When we asked the woman at the window if we could please have an assortment of stamps, she went to great pains to accommodate us. Another similar experience changing money at the bank.

After another stray into the Swiss Confectioner’s, we headed over to buy tonight’s train tickets to Harare. On the way back we stopped for lunch at “Sithihiso Fish and Chips” in the black area of town. They were out of fish and chips, so we had meat stew and some kind of greens. Sadza is the local version of corn fufu or THICK mush that in different forms has been the staple food since Haute Volta. When we ordered this, they said, “but we have no rice”, as if whites were unable to eat sadza. It was one of our best purchased meals on the whole trip and at $.40 one of the very cheapest. I wonder what significance this has in a country where a WIMPY’S hamburger costs $2.

Well satisfied, we headed back across the center of town to take in the National Museum. There was, of course, information there for at least a couple of days. We started with the natural history. They have a remarkable collection of stuffed animals includ­ing the second largest elephant ever mounted (huge!). Helena and I agreed that this was much more enjoyable than visiting a zoo. They were mounted among assorted objects from their habitat that, combined with the backgrounds by a talented artist, really was more lifelike than a tired lion pacing a stinking cage. One display, for example, had about ten different species of vultures huddled around a kudu carcass that had been half eaten and preserved just so, entrails half exposed, ribs, etc. It was especially interesting for us to see close up what we glimpsed in the wild yesterday. It took us over an hour to see it all.

Next we visited their antiquities rooms which were entirely of African artifacts from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th. They had by far the most well preserved artifacts we have seen on the trip; much of it seemed to be from private collections donated to the museum. About half of the antiquities seemed to have been donated by one man.

They had quite a section on Cecil Rhodes, about two rooms full. The history of this country is kind of “different”. The his­tory was basically presented from the white point of view. Rhodes started the British South Africa Company and began sending “columns” of settlers north, the reason being to en­circle the Boer States and bring them back to the crown. These columns started about 1890, and by 1897 “Rhodes” already had a railroad to Bulawayo.

The history of the indigenous groups is also different. We are in Matabeleland, but the Matabeles only came up from South Africa in the mid 1800’s. They had been defeated by Zulu expansion under Shaka and in turn came and conquered the people (never really mentioned) already here. It did not go into the history of the Shonas and the eastern part of Zimbabwe known as Mashonaland. All the land settlements Rhodes made were with the Matabele in the area of Bulawayo. There were two “Matabele Wars” in the days of Rhodes, and the second he is supposed to have ended in Matopos by approach­ing the Matabele chief in Matopos unarmed. It is as a result of this that the “Europeans” got title to virtually all of the commercially arable land. The history of Bulawayo appears to have been pretty quiet from then till 1965.

On display was the Ziederburg Coach which was the stagecoach, made in Concord, Mass., that made the Bulawayo-Kimberley run. We later learned that they sometimes used zebras to pull it?!

It was closing time when we walked out, and only three hours till our train was to depart, so we made a beeline across Centenary Park to our campsite. We had tea before breaking camp, in all about two hours, so we are getting better.

We arrived at the train station an hour ahead of time, but all of the third class compartments in about four cars were partially occupied. We joined a very shy woman, and later an exceedingly polite man came in with us. Soldiers were all over the place in full uniform, carrying their automatic weapons. Some of them, perhaps one hundred, were going on the train (some as escort, some as a transfer) but a good-sized group stayed in the station when we pulled out. The compartment next to ours was filled with soldiers on leave, I guess, as they had military equipment such as sleeping bags and footlockers but were out of uniform. They made CONSTANT noise through the night, yelling and running in the aisle. They also jiggled the door quite a bit.

We hauled out the sleeping bags and our pajamas and got the most comfort­able we have been on a train, but the noise was so persistent that we did not get to sleep until perhaps after 0300 hours. They were well supplied with 2 quart carton con­tainers that we thought was milk but were promptly informed was Zimbabwean beer. There appears to be no control exercised over these soldiers during the night.

Harare (formerly Salisbury), Zimbabwe Friday, 1st July, 1983

(HELENA) So in spite of a comfortable night (albeit with a lot of stops) we were not at all rested upon arrival in Harare at about 8:00. Our map of Harare suggested that the information office was fairly close, so we went there first to find out about the campsites and the Youth Hostel. The person there was again very helpful, and we de­cided to try the hostel. It was 14 blocks away but closer than the campsite. Besides, we have just one day we can spend here, and it would be good to stay at a place where we could get some more done on the journal and not have to spend time setting up the tent and packing it away.

No. 6 Montagu Avenue, a neat old house complete with a bay window with a window seat. The hostel is run by an older “European” couple. I am afraid the $5 apiece for dormitory accommodations is pretty steep, especially after the cheap, sparkling campgrounds we had just left in Bulawayo, but there is a kitchen we may use and two bright and airy rooms where we may read and write. They seem to have had some problems here because there are signs up all over the place telling people to clean up the kitchen, not to leave clothes on the line during the day, etc., etc. We think their main rule here is one of the strangest we have seen: the hostel is closed, com­pletely locked up, every day from 10:00 to 17:00 hrs. Apparently it is so things do not get stolen, but we think it would be mighty inconvenient to stay here if one wanted to spend a day relaxing around the house.

While we were drinking our café con leche in the kitchen a young man from the U.K. who is apparently living there came in and asked if we wanted to change money. We were surprised because we had not seen any evidence of a black market. He offered $Z l.50 for $U.S. 1 instead of the official $Z .99. I guess it is nearly impossible for persons earning Zimbabwe dollars to get foreign currency, or at least the quantities they can obtain are very limited. We were pretty certain we had enough, so we had to say “no”. We won’t need any more unless we come across some expensive souvenir that we really want.

Because of our limited time here, we had to get moving. Sort of at random we decided we wanted to visit the Botanical Gardens, so we got out the map and headed that way, put­ting Dan’s expert navigational powers to use. We stopped for a few minutes to watch some girls playing field hockey. They were all dressed up in short, pleated skirts, and it looked like pretty exclusive stuff, although there were two black girls playing among the whites.

Just beyond that playing field was the corner where we were to turn, but when we got there, we found the street blocked off with bars and a sign saying “POLICE”. We planned to continue down that street, but to be polite and sure, Dan walked up to the man in uniform and asked the way to the Botanical Gardens. He told Dan that he should turn left and keep turning left, and there it would be. When Dan remarked that it would be infinitely closer by going straight through the neighborhood, the man refused. He never would say why we could not go down that street, and he insisted to the bitter end that it would not be far to walk around the other way --a long way. Before long we came to a military com­pound whose gates were closed to unauthorized personnel. We stood there with our map, feeling tired and disappointed and mad, and not really wanting to go those many blocks out of the way. A middle-aged white man in his shorts and matching socks, of course, saw, stopped his car, and asked what the problem was. He told us that Robert Mugabe’s house is on that particular block, so no one can go through there. He advised us to take a taxi as there was no short way. We decided to give that idea up.

Next we headed back toward the center of town in search of a park where we might have a bite to eat. I spotted a sign with R.W. Robison on it, so Dan walked into the appliance store and asked for Mr. Robison. He was out, but talked with his friendly young wife; all she knew was that he had originally come from South Africa. We stopped at a busy corner to buy bread and ended up having a drink and buying a dozen eggs. They were ex­pensive, but since we have a stove, we are going to use it.

We found the park, and once more we realized how much drier things are here than in Bulawayo. There the parks were constantly watered and very green while here they are very, very dry. Near the center of the park they had a pretty little fountain that is a replica of Victoria Falls. We priced the drinks at the restaurant there and decided to go have our lunch on the grass before returning for that. Just as we were finishing, a man informed us that we should not be there. Then at the restaurant out under the trees, we settled down only to be informed not too politely that it was lunch time and we had to order something worth more than 70 cents. Grrr.

Our various maps and the information Dan had gotten this morning told us where to find a market. We walked across the railway tracks and found a lot of stalls selling belts and rubber sandals and some fruits and vegetables, but apparently the market was farther from the center of town. We wanted to see the “African” part of town, but it is accessible only by bus.

To top off our day of successes, we walked another “fur” piece to the showgrounds where they were to be opening an aloe and cactus show. As before, the entrance turned out to be clear around on the other side. Groan; we just wanted to go home, so we did just that. The hostel door was still closed, so we sat outside writing until 17:00 hrs rolled around. It was another very chilly evening, so we were glad to be inside a house. It was mighty nice to have soft boiled eggs on good brown bread.

At bedtime Dan ended up sharing his room with a Japanese bloke who has been on the road for more than two years. My room was empty, so I latched the door. Rather an un­important detail except that I awoke later to find two European women installing them­selves. I still cannot figure how they unlatched the door!

(DAN) Distances are much greater in Harare than Bulawayo. We realized too late that we had some information about the Methodist Church in Harare, and we let it slide. Harare has many more tall buildings and entire neighborhoods of medium-height fairly ex­clusive apartment buildings. Not far from the hostel there are huge blocks of land that are the grounds for several prep schools. We have neglected to mention the phenomenon of school uniforms here in Zimbabwe. Most of the boys and young men wear sport coats, white shirts and ties with shorts while the girls have jumpers of different colors with matching caps of different styles. There was at least one school where the girls had to wear flat straw hats (a la political convention) with their brown jumpers. Elaborate uniforms seemed to be the rule with both races.

Harare - Lake Kyle, Zimbabwe, Saturday, July 2, 1983

We got up early and had eaten a hot breakfast before anyone else really stirred in the hostel. It took us about 45 minutes to walk to the bridge over the railroad tracks, and after another 15 minutes we stopped to try for a ride. We were far from out of town, but it was a kind of wide open industrial area. We waited there perhaps 40 minutes. There was a good bit of traffic, but people just weren’t stopping. Hitching was reputed to be very good in Zimbabwe, especially if you’re white. However, we found that only the black drivers made any signs of recognition, indicating they were soon turning or not going very far. White drivers just got over in the other lane and sped by. Finally, two men in long robes stopped their Citroen and offered to take us to a crossroads which was 10 km farther down and virtually out of town.

We asked them where they were from (once we got going) and it turned out that one of them had been to Nigeria (Kaduna) and he must have been converted to Islam while there; it was all he said about that.

When they dropped us off we ran into something new to our travels. There was a group of about eight to ten black Zimbabweans thumbing rides. They seemed to be successful as cars would pull over from time to time and pick them up. We waited for almost two hours or until nearly 1200 hrs and no vehicle even stopped. Again we got almost no response from white drivers.

Finally, a light blue Land Rover pulled over for us. It turned out to be the warden in charge of Kyle Lake, which is, in part, only a few km from the Zimbabwe Ruins. He agreed to take us as far as Masvingo (formerly Fort Victoria).

It was in many ways a pleasurable ride, and in many others very uncomfortable. He was most hospitable; in fact, before many kms had passed, he invited us to spend the night at his house, and then he could take us by boat across the lake in the morning. He was quite eager to talk, which we did all the way. We got, I guess, the white Rhodesian side to the story.

Now we didn’t get it all in this order, as we talked for hours, and I’ll compact it a bit. He joined Parks and Wildlife and the army at the age of 20 in l972 (from what we could tell, he was most happy as a soldier). He belonged to the unit known as the Trackers, who had the responsibility of going to the scenes of terrorist incidents and tracking the terrorists (gooks) down. One of his first stories was about a cousin of his who farms up in the Wankie area. Their homestead came under attack by the “gooks” and early in the fighting both the father and the mother were incapacitated. While the 6-year-old girl plugged up her mother’s femoral artery, the l0-year-old son held the attackers off with the gun that was the general issue machine gun used in the war.

Tom’s (our driver) unit was flown in by helicopter from Victoria Falls to help in the situation, but it was over when they arrived. According to Tom, the boy had killed 4 “Afs” (short for Africans) and wounded nine. When they counted the firing sights they found he had fought off 32 armed men.

Tom went into great detail of how European houses were all installed with sophis­ticated alarm and defense systems, including electric fences, heat detectors connected to automatic mortar launchers, etc. He illustrated this with a story of when he (and his ex-wife) were living in the Park at Victoria Falls. Some young woman arrived from Britain and Tom was responsible for showing her around. He said she was always criticizing the way we treat Afs, and how cruel we were, etc. But one night their house came under attack. Unfortunately for the gooks, they attacked from a position between three well defended houses. When the fighting started they were caught in a crossfire of these automatic mortars. The next morning they found five of them dead. The girl from England just couldn’t take it and they put her on a plane home that very day.

Tom was really proud of the sophistication of weaponry achieved during the war. He described the various armored vehicles we’ve been seeing and how it was all homegrown designs, etc. What is amazing to us is the extent and expense to which these people went to defend their legal superiority. “They never beat us militarily,” Tom said, “they just beat us politically, and with the entire world helping them.”

When he talked about black Zimbabweans we just had to nod and mutter “uh huh,” or “that’s terrible,” etc. because there was no way we were going to change his outlook, just antagonize him. One thing that was a little hazy was it was hard to tell when he said, “He’s a good black” or “He’s a good bloke.” It was almost as though, if a black was very good, maybe, he achieved bloke status.

At one point he went on about how lazy the Afs were. “Most of them will never amount to anything, etc. On and on. Then he changed tacks. He said proudly, “I’m a Matabele, you know” (because he’s from Bulawayo, not because of color), “they’re good blacks, you know.” “Not like these Shona.”  (Mugabe is Shona, along with app. 70% of the population.) The Matabele are hard workers, dignified, and have a lot of self-control.” “When I got to this Park, all of my employees were Shona; I fired the whole lot. They did not want to do anything all day, and then I hired Matabeles. I had to be hard with them at first, if they wanted to earn $108 a month they would have to work for it. Now they are a good bunch of blacks. I wouldn’t change it for anything. But the Shonas! Do you know what they are doing? They sit back on their homelands and breed like rabbits. Pretty soon they will run all us whites out of the country. (Robisons: “Oh, my, isn’t that a shame!”)

He was, of course, very critical of Mugabe’s government. Some of his criticisms might be valid, but most appeared to be of somebody sour now that the wealth is being spread a little better. He mentioned that, “At the funeral of that Commie Yito or Toti or whatever (Tito, I would imagine), Margaret Thatcher went with two other officials. Mugabe went with over 20 officials. Thatcher told him that if he could afford to bring that many people, then Zimbabwe did not need foreign aid. Mugabe immediately sent most of them back.” He says that Mugabe does not go anywhere without a huge motorcade of Mercedes Benz motor­cycles and Land Rovers with soldiers. Tom said when they went to the International Trade Fair in Bulawayo, Mugabe had a motorcade with over 50 vehicles (motos included), and had two helicopters overhead at all times. Officially, this is to counter the South African threat. Unofficially, it is because he was in Matabeleland. Tom says he even has a motorcade to go to and from work, whereas Smith never had more than one accompanying car, even during the worst years. “Most of the time he rode a motorcycle to work.” We observed ourselves that there were about 20 city blocks closed to traffic around Mugabe’s residence. When a person begins to think he is indispensable to his country’s progress, next step is to get his picture on all the money. We shall see.

 

I just checked the internet, and though Mugabe is still president, 32 years later, his picture is not on the bills.

One thing I kind of pumped him on was the business of emigration, what were the trends, etc. He said, “Most of the people who are left want to stay here, this is our home, but the government is making it very difficult for people to stay. On the other hand, they have made it difficult to emigrate as well.” “I know one farmer, a real hardcore, wants to stay and help out and all that. But you see, squatters have moved onto his land and built with bricks. The government has made some kind of promise that if people have permanent homes they should own the land. Now these squatters expect the government to buy the land. But the government won’t buy it and they won’t make the people get off. What’s a bloke to do? We have the same problem in our national parks. We have homelands beside many of the parks. The homelands are invariably overgrazed, almost desert, so squatters move onto our land. But they invariably poach, so we prosecute them on that, and we have the power to evict them. A farmer just can’t do that.”

The farther south we drove, the drier and more overgrazed the land got. However, about 1300 it became overcast and started to drizzle. Later it even began to rain. It was cold front familiar to us from Bolivia, but here it is called a Southeastern. It was the first rain this area has experienced in many months. Most of the country we drove through was what they call the High Veld which turns out to be wooded savannah similar to what we’ve been seeing since Zambia. It is all range land in this area.

We explored the subject of hitchhiking a bit. He said whites won’t pick us up for two reasons. 1. They don’t know “what you’ve got on you.” 2. “There have been a lot of Danish volunteers who work in the homelands with development and all that. But there were some bad incidents where they forced people to take them all the way to their destination.” Now that is hard to believe. Probably they got into trouble for their liberal views and possibly a few did try to a make the whites see the homelands for themselves. Tom says he picked us up because ‘‘we were obviously a Team!’’

One thing Tom complained about was under the present government he was having to lower his standard of living. When we drove up to his house we really felt saddened by his plight. He lives in the middle of a game preserve, up on a hill overlooking Lake Kyle. He has a large bungalow with two spare bedrooms, a long, carpeted living room and dining area and a large kitchen where his “boy” was soon bustling about cooking supper. There was a young Af in a Parks uniform that brought in a shovelful of coal and many armloads of wood and got a roaring fire going in the fireplace to hold back the cold, damp weather. Tom soon had his fancy stereo system going and we were listening to the sounds of US Country and Western.

Aloe garden and view near Lake Kyle (apologies for the quality of the image).

  The house was decorated with several of Tom’s collections: 1. military hats, 2. military belts, 3. campaign plaques from “the war”. He said his biggest collection is of ammunition, but he has not yet been able to get it mounted. Later, when we had gotten warmed a bit (the boy started a pot of tea as soon as we arrived) he said to me, “Now we’ll look at my rifles.” (Ah, right.) In one cabinet he had 4 rifles of varying caliber. They were made in Czechoslovakia (Bruno) and I took it I was supposed to be impressed. They go from a 22 to his elephant gun. He is definitely a purist, and does not believe in scopes. “When you are out for lions and elephants you need a full view.” Then he opened the second cabinet and brought out his machine gun. It was the one issued to him during the war and he was obviously fond of it. This one, to my relief, he did not give to me to handle and remark on. I forgot to mention that when we got our lift he was in full uniform (khaki) and sported a revolver and dagger.

About that time the TV came on so we spent the rest of the evening half watching. The news came on but he didn’t turn on the sound until “Mork and Mindy” came on. He said, “Oh this is quite good,” and turned up the sound. Later on was “Dallas”, but Helena and I hit the sack before it came on.

He spent quite a while showing us his picture albums. And he couldn’t have had a more different upbringing from ours. His father was a professional hunter (for a couple of years he and his father hunted crocodiles professionally in Malawi), but for 15 years or so has worked for tsetse control. As I under­stand it, they go into tsetse-infested areas and virtually eliminate all of the possible vector animals (he mentioned elephants, buffalos, zebras, basically all large game). If the fly doesn’t feed on blood for a certain period of time, then it cannot reproduce. After the proper period of time, all of the species are reintroduced.

He had a picture of the time they killed 19 elephants in 25 seconds, the picture of when he killed his first elephant at 17, his first buffalo at 16, etc. They also have to do mass eliminations within game parks to keep numbers down. They had to kill over 1000 elephants in Gonarguzer National Park due to overpopulation. Tom says it is not because they populate quickly, but because of the increase in population in the homelands, the national parks are the only place they can go anymore. In Wanki recently they killed a herd of 60 in 40 sec. I take it there is a special team which does this sort of job. And there was so much more to tell, but....

(HELENA, AFTER A LONG TIME!) Tom was obviously very lonely and we were glad our being there to listen could repay him a little for his hospitality. I would say his is a rather sad life because today he was returning from spending a month with his parents. His father had had an operation on an aneurism, had nearly died, so he’d been with him at the end of last year because of that. This time his father had had a breakdown and threatened to “take out himself and two of his mates”. He also casually mentioned that his father’s brother had committed suicide.