Dear Family and Friends,
A barking dog, a bang at the gate and all sanity and equilibrium is gone as a young man hands over a piece of paper saying he’s come to disconnect the electricity. The printing on the disconnection notice is so faint it is almost illegible. Even with glasses it cannot be read and it takes a magnifying glass to expose the absurdity.

The notice was issued on the 11th of September but is only being delivered five days later on the 16th of the month. “Where have you been for five days?” I ask. He shrugs and says nothing. The date is not the only thing wrong with the notice from ZESA, the electricity company. Something called an ‘extra deposit’ has been crossed out by hand. The re-connection fee has been changed, by hand and the total amount owing has been crossed out and re-written, by hand.

I hand over my last statement from ZESA to the youngster at the gate and politely tell him there must be a mistake. “Look, Zesa issued me with a credit balance last month, there’s no way I owe them 757 US dollars (473 British pounds) for one month’s residential consumption.”

The youngster who is not in uniform or marked clothing and has no identification of employment, shrugs his shoulders boredly and tells me to go and see the accounts office in town.

The nightmare begins.

In an hour I see 5 different ZESA employees in their offices and not a single one even has manners enough to say good morning. This simple absence is shocking in a country where courtesy and greetings are everything. It is disgraceful in a public company and at a time when the country is trying to attract investors and restore confidence after a decade of collapse.

My requests for explanation as to how a credit balance on my account one month could lead to such a huge debit on the next, were met with hostility and aggression. I am passed from one rude and bored employee to another until finally a man who does not greet me or look at me, takes my account and taps numbers incessantly into a computer. After some time I ask him what it is that he is doing and he says he is spreading the debt out over the last six months and working out a payment plan. “What debt?” I ask. “Where has this huge debt come from?”

By now I am not the only angry customer in the office, there are half a dozen other desperate people also trying to get explanations for massive electricity bills. Voices are raised.

ZESA have been under-charging since February, we are told. The rates have gone up and been backdated 7 months. When we ask for proof, Zesa tell us the new rates have been approved by the Minister of Energy, Mr Mudzuri. When we ask for written notice of the new rates and for the Ministers approval of the back-dating, we are told to come back another day. For now the growing crowd of angry customers all have to pay 10 US dollars to be reconnected and have to agree to a debt re-payment plan. Its a ridiculous plan because the monthly repayment is already more than most people’s entire monthly income.

As hard as we fight our way out of the deep hole the previous government pushed us into, so the parastals and utilities suppliers fight just as hard to destroy us again. Many people are saying there’s a hidden agenda here, perhaps there is ?
Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Swine Flu has officially arrived in Zimbabwe. A ZBC TV news bulletin this week reported that there were a number of confirmed cases of swine flu in Mutare. The report said that people should not panic because hospitals were prepared, staff had been trained and information would soon be disseminated to private practitioners. Special attention is apparently going to be given to critical areas like the country’s border posts.

This latter cannot come soon enough and I am sure that every poor soul who has had to endure the horrors of Beitbridge border post will agree with me. In the last few days I have met two Zimbabweans who have been through the Beitbridge border post this month. They say it is hell, a nightmare, a national disgrace, a shame on our country, a deep embarrassment to Zimbabwe. And this is being polite!

When you arrive at Beitbridge from South Africa you are overwhelmed by touts. Aggressive young men in their twenties who swarm around you and solicit bribes in order for you to proceed through the formalities. The touts control the speed and progress of everything: the queues, the forms, the stamps and signatures, the customs inspections and the final scrap of paper, the gate pass, that allows you get through the boom and into Zimbabwe. Both of the travellers I spoke to said they simply found it impossible to proceed without giving in to the demands for bribes. Every time they got near the counters in the border post the touts and their customers would push in ahead of them with great piles of papers and none of the officials on duty were interested in intervening, not immigration, security, customs or tax collectors. Touts appeared to be making an average of 500 Rand, or 50 US dollars per customer – half the month’s pay of a trained teacher in Zimbabwe.

The toilets at the border are apparently a swamp, there is no toilet paper, no towels and no way at all to keep yourself clean. Everyone waits till they are through the border and then pull up on the roadside and relieve themselves in the bush. If we are to believe ZBC, it is into this madness of Beitbridge border post that there is going to be swine flu detection and control. Pardon the pun, but pigs might fly!

Zimbabwe’s unity government has been in place for six months but it is still the thieves, con-men, blackmailers and bullies that are manning the entry points into our country. Until they are gone and until Zimbabwe can clean up the shop window to the country we haven’t got a hope of controlling swine flu, of tempting tourists into the country or of getting any of the overflow of visitors from the 2010 World Cup football games in South Africa. Its about time that some of our senior leaders went incognito to Zimbabwe’s borders and saw the thieves and bullies holding tourists, visitors and returning residents to ransom.

This is a letter from Cathy Buckle which I received a few minutes ago. I’ve immediately e-mailed her asking if she is able to pass on US$, which I’d transfer to her, to assist that family. If she is able to do this does anyone wish to join me in helping these poor souls out?

Dear Family and Friends,

Late in the afternoon a friend got a call on his mobile phone. The words were garbled and broken up, the call lasting just a few seconds before cutting off. The musukuru (grandson) is serious, come now. You have to be a Zimbabwean perhaps to know that the word ‘serious’ usually means very sick. What would be a problem, even an emergency in the “normal” world was destined to be a nightmare in our broken country.

Again and again my friend tried to phone for more information about his grandson but after numerous attempts gave up. He was wasting time. His grandson is in a rural village, it was almost dusk and he knew he must go. A fifteen kilometre bicycle ride got him to the village. It was completely dark when he arrived. By the light of a candle he looked at his precious little musukuru. Teeth clenched, face in a grimace, body curled in taut foetal position, the two year old boy obviously needed help. He had been vomiting copiously, shaking and arching his back and now the slightest movement caused him to scream in pain.

The nearest clinic is 3 kilometres away. There is no transport, private or public. No telephones. No electricity, not even any running water to wash away the vomit. An ambulance will not come from the nearest town, not unless you can pay cash, in advance, up front: 50 US dollars. As gently as possible the musukuru was laid in a box which was lifted onto the back of the bicycle and tied securely with strips of old car-tyre inner tubing. Blankets underneath and on top of the musukuru in the freezing cold winter darkness, the journey from hell began. Every stone, bump and gully on the disintegrating gravel road caused a scream of agony from the child. Words of comfort were measured against the urgency of the journey. At the clinic at last, there was no sign of attendance. Calling, shouting, knocking finally produced a youngster: No nurses here, he said.

The next clinic is another 7 kilometres away. The grandparents finally arrived, pushing their grandson in the box on the bicycle at 2 in the morning. Shivering and with frozen fingers their lifted their precious musukuru into the hands of the nurse. They knew what to expect and had bought a small sheet for the bed, their own blankets, a towel and even maize meal and a small pot to make porridge for the child. A drip went in, that’s 14 US dollars, payable immediately. An intravenous antibiotic was given, that’s 12 US dollars, payable immediately.

Two days later my friend was back in town and stone broke. The musukuru is still in the clinic, still on a drip and still has a problem. There are no doctors there. The nurses say that sekuru must pay for more drugs. His cell phone is flat. He has no money, no airtime left and back there, down the dusty pot-holed road the life of his little grandson is in his hands.

Dear Family and Friends,

On the side of the main highway near Harare there’s a hand painted sign on a piece of battered tin. ‘Bricks 4 Sale,’ it says, the message wedged into a forked stick. Standing in a forlorn heap alongside are the very bricks. Its a sad little assortment of rubble: lumps of red, odd sized, second hand bricks with eroded edges, cracks and chips and some even with splotches of white paint on them.

A few kilometres away a very battered blue pick up truck with no number plates and a seriously twisted chassis is below a bridge across the main road collecting water from a stream. The stream bank is full of litter – plastic bags and drinks bottles, broken glass and beer tins. In the back of the truck there’s a huge white plastic container that must hold a thousand or more litres. Three women and four men are working in a line with buckets, pouring murky water from the polluted stream into the water tank.

A little further along the road a crooked tree branch is propped up with chunks of cement, a thin plank nailed onto the top. Standing in a line along the plank are six old plastic jam jars. They have no lids and are half filled with a murky brown liquid. “HUNEY” is the sign that’s written in charcoal on a stone nearby.

A group of soldiers stand right in the road trying to wave down a lift and as you swerve to avoid them you see how very young they are, almost children still and yet wearing army camouflage. No private cars stop, no one knows who’s who these days. The big 4×4’s flick past, windows closed, doors locked, huge aerials swinging. On their car doors are the stickers announcing that they are the people keeping Zimbabwe alive, the international aid organizations.

Strange scenes are everywhere in our broken country after a decade of collapse, even in upmarket suburbs. Rounding a corner in a quiet residential neighbourhood its not unusual to come across a great gathering of people. At the hub is whichever house in the street is fortunate enough to have a borehole, and whose owner is gracious enough to share. A hosepipe over a wall fills countless buckets, tins and twenty litre plastic containers. Patiently men and women wait for a share, some carrying their containers in aching hands, others pushing wheelbarrows and hand carts.

Even with such abnormality around us, not to mention the disgusting scenes of hooliganism at the constitutional conference recently, there are little glimmers of light
coming into view. The removal of 20 US cents worth of government levies from fuel is one, the lifting of import duty on newspapers, mobile phones and computers is another. A breath of fresh air is blowing into our country and lets hope it turns into a gale and blows away what newspaper owner Wilf Mbanga calls Yesterday’s Men. Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Saturday 30th May 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

The unity government is being torn apart over the retention of the Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono. While they argue, threaten and grandstand, we look at our tattered lives.

In a box, abandoned and covered in dust and fluff, lies the evidence of my lost life savings, seizure of my home and property and destruction of my pension. I am not alone but am one of ten million Zimbabweans who find themselves in the same position, one that has unfolded in just 9 ugly years.

At the bottom of the box are the last accounts from our farm that was seized by the Zimbabwe government in 2000. The accounts show no income and there is a note attached with a rusting paper clip which says: “No compensation paid for house, fixtures, fittings, infrastructure, fencing etc.” That statement remains true 9 years later.

Next in the box is a tattered orange cardboard file. Most of it’s contents are still too painful to revisit. One section deals with lost life savings which had been invested in a bank that was closed down by Zimbabwe’s banking authorities.

In dog eared, dirty bundles held together with melting, perishing elastic bands there are piles and piles of money. Purple 500 hundred dollar notes, olive 1,000 dollar notes and then strange things called ‘bearers cheques. They are blue, red, brown, purple and green bits of paper with expiry dates and values ranging from 5 to 100 thousand dollars. They bear the signature of Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono.

Then other bundles with even higher denomination ‘bearer cheques’ ranging in value from 1 to 500 million dollars. These too have expiry dates and are signed by Gideon Gono.

There in the box are the records of new attempts to save money – futile efforts because Mr Gono slashed three zeroes from the currency and thousands became single dollars overnight.

More bundles of money, this time they are in billion dollar denominations and are called Special Agro Cheques. they too have expiry dates and are signed by Mr Gono: purple, green, brown, blue, valued from 5 to 100 billion dollars.

Then more records of how everything was lost again when Mr Gono imposed daily withdrawal limits from the banks. We could only draw out enough of our own money to buy half a loaf of bread a day; the queues were in the thousands and our money lost all its value before we could get it out of the banks.

Again Mr Gono removed zeroes from the currency; in a single swipe billionaires became paupers. New bank notes which started at one dollar soon got bigger as mismanagement continued and again we had bank notes for 500 thousand, 1 million, 1 billion. We went dizzy as notes were issued by Mr Gono for 1 trillion, 10 trillion. When Mr Gono’s presses physically couldn’t print the money fast enough, all out trillions, quadrillions and septillions were lost when trading in Zim dollars was suspended and we moved into US dollars.

At the top of the box is a small newspaper cutting. It quotes Mr Gono admitting that he removed money from private bank accounts to fund government expenses.

And after all this there is cause for argument?
Until next week with a view of scarlet poinsettias, love cathy

Dear Family and Friends,

As Zimbabwe struggles out of the darkness of a decade of dictatorship and political mayhem we are beginning to see how hard the return journey is going to be. And how long. Little snapshots tell the story:

Two policemen, in uniform and on foot, did a walkabout tour of some local businesses this week. They want to improve relations, they say, but need assistance with the basics. They desperately need tyres for their vehicle and are looking for donations from the public. If you can’t run to tyres then how about typewriters, or paper they ask, saying they have no stationery.

Typewriters! Can you imagine modern policing being done, not on computers but typewriters! For a couple of years members of the public have had to provide their own fingerprint forms, vehicle clearance forms and even their own affidavit forms when visiting a police station and then wait endlessly as records are handwritten. With such problems as pens and paper, it doesn’t bear thinking how long it might take to restore law and order at higher levels, in regard to things like property rights, human rights and farm invasions.

Two well known shops with branches all over the country went into darkness this week as their electricity supply was disconnected. Having no tills, computers, lights or other equipment took them back into the dark ages in a hurry. They had been disconnected for non payment because the amounts being demanded by ZESA (the electricity supplier) are in the thousands of US dollars – more than a company’s entire monthly turnover. Similar exorbitant amounts are being charged by the state controlled fixed line telephone company and everyone is reeling and then despairing as they are disconnected. It appears that the electricity and telephone suppliers are trying to recoup 10 years worth of collapse in just a few months but their greed and speed is putting business and the rebuilding of the country into a new cycle of shutdown.

Cause for much excitement this week has been the availability, suddenly, of telephone lines for mobile phones. For more than eight years these lines have been non-existent, available only on the black market. In January this year a line on the black market cost 135 US dollars.This week phone lines are available legally for 35 US dollars – still ten times more expensive than in our neighbouring countries but they are selling like hot cakes. Oppressive Zanu PF legislation concerning access to information and the free press has not been repealed but the sudden boom in phone lines is a dramatic step forward for Zimbabweans who can now send and receive their own information without the political shackles.

Until next time from the land of golden grass, thanks for reading, love cathy