Growing up in the rural Marondera district of Zimbabwe, the first white man I recall seeing was Peter Fry. He was a graduate student from the University of Cambridge, UK who came to live among us while he worked on his thesis towards a PhD in anthropology.
Separation of the races in the Rhodesia of that day was viciously enforced. Furthermore, many people in our neighbourhood did not know what anthropology was. So the purpose of his presence among us became the subject of considerable speculation. You can read more about it at: http://assets.cambridge.org/97805210/40754/excerpt/9780521040754_excerpt.pdf . It is quite a readable article even if you are not into anthropology. In a sense, Peter Fry was the “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” of that time.
Later in my life I was a kind of Dr Livingstone in reverse when I travelled to Finland. I was probably the first black man that some of the children there ever saw. My hosts were visibly embarrassed by the children’s blatant curiosity, especially in the sauna.
More recently, I overheard a white friend Stan ask: “What do you call a white man on First Street, Harare?”( First Street is the “Oxford Street” of Harare, or at least used to be.)
The answer was, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” There is a profound irony in there. I am told that as recently as the seventies, Blacks were not allowed on First Street after sunset, in a dilute analogue of South Africa’s apartheid pass laws. Mr Ian Smith, the last premier of Rhodesia, would turn in his grave if he knew the species that inhabit First Street and its environs today. There are street children sniffing solvents, vendors selling mazhanje, masau and tsubvu (wild fruit),
consumers spitting mazhanje, masau and tsubvu pips onto the pavement, and beggars’ toddlers relieving themselves on the pavement.
First Street is essentially the epicenter of general decay that pervades Harare’s Central Business District. Even Africa Unity Square (formerly Cecil Square) has not been spared.
Last year a friend was distressed when he found me sitting in there. I was early for a meeting in a nearby building, so I sat on a park bench for a while. The friend was cutting across the park on his way to a nearby bank. When he saw me he asked if everything was alright in a concerned voice. That is when I looked around me and realized I had predominantly vagrants and riot police for company! The riot police are gone now but the decay remains inexorable.
There are at least four road junctions in Harare that work a lot better when there are power blackouts, i.e. when the traffic lights are out. These are at the corners of Seventh St and N Mandela Ave; Fourth St and R. Manyika Ave; Fourth St and J Moyo Ave; R Mugabe Rd and Chiremba Rd. As soon as lights are restored, traffic tailbacks usually start building up again. These are examples of badly tuned utilities that eventually emasculate potentially good systems.
Another example is the medicines control infrastructure in Zimbabwe. While the Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe’s headquarters looks deceptively intact,
actual control is out of control! The retail pharmacists are so desperate for business that they have pulled out all the stops to promote sales. That includes not insisting on doctors’ prescriptions. There is a silver lining here though. Some pharmacists used to be overzealous. In my running days I found that an anti-inflammatory drug called piroxicam would fix pulled muscle pain very easily. However if I sustained injury over a weekend, I would have to wait until the Monday to get a prescription first. So when I travelled to India I made the most of an opportunity to stock up on piroxicam without a prescription. Now I can buy it anytime I want without having to find passage to India!
South African pharmacists are a lot worse. On one occasion I was travelling to a malaria zone from South Africa. So I popped into Dischem Roodepoort for malaria prevention tablets. They wouldn’t sell them to me without a prescription! They suggested I go to consult a doctor across the complex for R300 in order to get a prescription to buy tablets worth R10! Fortunately I eventually found a small village pharmacy that was more than eager to get my business without erecting any barriers.
In my life I have endured considerable tyranny at the hands of overzealous pharmacists. So I am not entirely sorry to see the drug control system in Zimbabwe collapse. It is like watching a bully’s castle getting breached. It is cause for discreet celebration if not outright gloating.
A motif that reverberates through most of the decline in Zimbabwe is devolution. Devolution is topical in political debates but it is already a reality in many domains. For example the national electricity supply grid has been devolved to private generators; municipal water supplies have been devolved to private boreholes in people’s gardens; railways, pipelines and other public transport systems have been devolved to notorious minibuses
and menacing lorries. The transfer of heavy freight from railways to the roads has done to our road network what myxomatosis did to rabbits. Even the government has got in on the act, acquiring a huge fleet of buses
for ferrying civil servants to and from work. The buses run in the morning and again in the evening. For the rest of the day the huge investment is lying idle. The state school system is giving way to a plethora of fragmented private colleges. Central municipal rubbish dumps have bee
n replaced by informal dumps on road verges all over the city.
The smell has also been devolved all over the city. As usual there is nothing new under the sun. Similar trends have already run their course in other African countries that attained independence before Zimbabwe. For example the railways of Zambia collapsed long back. So now the output of the Zambian Copperbelt is conveyed by road through Zimbabwe to South African sea ports. Copper cathodes are extremely heavy. This can only compound the sorry state of our road network.
Banks have been devolved to people’s pillows. Once-vibrant banking halls are now eerie ghost towns. It is easy to understand why. Depositors endured untold suffering trying to access their life savings two years ago.
Most of them lost out badly. For as long as the villains from two years ago remain empowered, potential depositors will remain wary. Investor confidence is often debated as if it applies only to foreign investors. I think local investor confidence has to be restored first before we can ever hope to attract foreign investors. For now, funds remain buried in mattresses and inaccessible to the business sector.
Department stores have been devolved to a plethora of Chinese shops across Harare. The other week I got a sudden realization of how much the Chinese have made inroads into Zimbabwe when I got this till slip at a Harare shop.
I understand historically the Chinese did not have the freedom to leave China. Now that the lid has been lifted they are everywhere. Meanwhile the debate as to whether the new Chinese immigrants in Zimbabwe are a net asset or liability rages on. Personally I think they could be a net asset. One factor that has hampered them is endorsement by some unpopular elements in the Zimbabwe Government. In a desperate bid to spite Western governments, the elements have incessantly espoused the so called “Look East Policy” that favours the Chinese (but curiously does not seem to include the Japanese). This has no doubt been a kiss of death for the innocent Chinese immigrants who have no interest in political bickering but are just seeking a new life. Fortunately they are resilient and astute enough to forge ahead in spite of this setback.
I see the Chinese immigrants helping our welfare both in the short term as well as in the long term. The have already raised the bar in the retail sector, to the benefit of the consumer. Their shops may not be the best laid-out but their prices are no doubt the best in town. Sometimes I wonder how they make any money at all! They bring even heavy goods like crockery and sanitary ware all the way from China and still land them in Harare infinitely cheaper than local producers. As expected the local producers are crying foul and canvassing the government to erect trade barriers. For the best part of my life, Rhodesian and Zimbabwean governments alike raped their citizens in order to protect or even subsidize inefficient local industries. It is like a breath of fresh air to have that era behind us. It took a horrendous crisis to give this change a chance, so I hope protectionism never comes back. Industries are supposed to serve the people not the other way round. Inefficient businesses should be allowed to die.
Not long ago, the Chinese were a novelty in this part of the world. The few that were here probably greeted one another as, “Dr Lee, I presume?” Not anymore. They are coming in fast and furious. They appear to be integrating into Zimbabwean life with relative speed and ease. They have settled in Borrowdale (an up-market suburb of Harare) as well as Chitungwiza (a dormitory town) and the continuum in between. It is only a question of time before intermarriage kicks in. Even that won’t be such a bad thing. Culture may kick against it for a while but in the end biology always wins. The population of Zimbabwe a hundred years ago was less than a million. We have now made twelve million from that limited gene pool. So we are probably inbred already. Therefore any significant injection of new genes can only be good for the country.
I am now on the board of the Harare Inner City Partnership,
a partnership between businesses and the municipality seeking to encourage inner city regeneration.
Maybe if we are successful, plenty of Dr Livingstones and other decision drivers will be attracted back to the central business district of Harare again. There is so much to do and so little done. The insight I have gained in the little we have done has left me aspiring to join the ranks of municipal councillors as opposed to members of parliament (MPs).
It may be more glamorous to be an MP but there is infinitely more opportunity to make a difference at local government level. This discovery is likely to have far reaching influence on my future political thrust.
For now my immediate worry is exams. I am taking computer science, a subsidiary subject, this year. I expect to be back to core mathematics next year. I am due to finish my exams in a couple of weeks’ time. Then life can begin again. You won’t see me for the dust after then.
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