Over the ashes of history, a fresh wind blows

IN THE low, late afternoon sun, the grey track winding its serpentine way into the thicket of teak trees had a golden allure, a snapshot of an Africa long past.

But, as I sat in the game drive vehicle wallowing its way through the loose sand, I had a sudden chill which had nothing to do with late winter temperatures that can quickly dive near sundown in this part of south-western Zimbabwe.

Someone walking across my grave, the Irish genes within me might have said.

That slice of teak forest in Hwange National Park reminded me of another time. Of other places, not far from there. The things which, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Like the people with limbs hacked off by pangas, a young boy with his face hideously shrivelled from burns after he was thrown into a fire. Another man in a wheelchair – an old-fashioned type that had a high back and leather seat, but with an extension for his plastered leg – who had been shot. Suppurating wounds from a whipping; destroyed teeth and jaw…

Those I saw getting treatment from the doctors and nuns at St Luke’s Mission in Lupane were the lucky ones, though.

On one foray I went into the communal lands alone, 15km from the Lupane police station, and not far from the Victoria Falls-Bulawayo Road. I spoke to people, in slow English, with many pauses – for them to repeat themselves or to stop crying – and they told me about those from their burnt-out village who had been killed. Eight had died in that small settlement.

The women had been raped. They would not say so in so many words.

One, who couldn’t have been more than my age, kept looking at her feet as I tried to pry it out of her (good colour there, Brendan…)

“Master,”she said (it was only three years since Zimbabwe got independence after a bloody civil war and I suppose those old colonial habits of subservience died hard), “those soldiers they hurt me…”

It didn’t occur to me then that I was writing the first draft of a history of brutality – some say even genocide – which befell the province of Matabeleland after Robert Mugabe deployed his North Koreantrained Five Brigade to punish its people for “dissident” behaviour.

In my early twenties, life was one big Boy’s Own adventure, following from two years as a soldier in the bush war, carrying a machine-gun and jumping out of helicopters… and when death was less of a concern than girls and disco dancing.

Three decades later, I get scared just thinking about where I went – a lone white boy with a camera.

My children are in their twenties now and I hope they never have to see the things I did. But I want them to know about it, and to know about their father. So I am writing a book. If it gets published or not is irrelevant – they will one day want to know my history.

In a week spent in Zimbabwe and Zambia, I was aware the memories haven’t dulled. They remain there – just beyond the firelight.

Zimbabwe today is in a time of political ferment. There is, for the first time I can remember, the real smell of change in the air. It is a political spring.

This far into the 21st century, Robert Mugabe is as much of an anachronism as the portable Olivetti typewriter I used to lug with me on my reporting travels.

In the field in the 1980s, I occasionally hid exposed spools of film in my socks… I am blessed with high arches and no search ever went that far.

To get film out, I often approached complete strangers at Bulawayo Airport, asking them if they were going to Joburg and if they wouldn’t mind carrying film for me. I don’t remember anyone refusing. (If you are reading this, and remember – thank you.)

Today, smartphones and cellular networks mean that news gets out quicker, and from more sources, than we could have dreamed of. The protests spread virally and even the most draconian measures to stop them won’t be able to keep a people’s will at bay forever.

Zimbabweans and Zambians I spoke to are far more aware of our politics here in South Africa than we are of theirs.

They know Zuma. They know Malema. And they see shades of Mugabe in both of them.

“Why,” one wanted to know, “does Malema want to throw out the farmers? Mugabe did that and look what happened to us. We must stop this racism because it destroys all of us…”

His comments were underlined by the fact that Zimbabweans – once residents of the “breadbasket of Africa” are now forced to cross over from Victoria Falls into Livingstone in Zambia to buy affordable maize meal.

Another said, in reference to Mugabe’s policy of “indigenisation” – where all businesses have to be 51 percent owned by black Zimbabweans – “How will that make people bring their money to this country?”

The message of Zimbabweans – as well as people I spoke to in Zambia – was: don’t make the mistakes we made.

As I landed in Joburg, it was to see that the political landscape was being re-shaped in South Africa. Voters – whether they were ANC supporters who abstained or those who voted for the DA and EFF – were sending a clear message that the thinking people of this country want to break away from the old Africa.

That old Africa is great for people on safari. But the new Africa is here. It’s about progress, it’s about technology.

But more than that, it’s about freedom and democracy and the end of the era of the “Big Man”.