The Fear

by Peter Godwin

  As the last-minute hitches are papered over by South African mediators, the police brass band plays on and on. Inside the VIP marquee, white against the brilliant blue sky, Mugabe reclines in his wing-backed armchair, laughing at some bon mot from Grace, who lounges next to him in an orange headscarf, white-framed sunglasses, a multi-stranded pearl choker, and a leopard-print dress—the leopard eyeing the goats.

  The first goat Mugabe swears in is Arthur Mutambara, a large jocular presence in a beige shirt, dark suit, striped tie, and fulsome grin. Then it is time for him to read the oath for Tsvangirai to repeat. Mugabe’s eyes dart from side to side, refusing to meet the steady gaze of his nemesis. When it is done, the raucous ranks of opposition MPs and their families applaud and whistle. The two men shake hands and stand together for photos, Morgan a genial bouncer under Mugabe’s raven-hard eyes. Even Mbeki, midwife to this dubious deal, smiles through his pensiveness.

  Roy’s mood has darkened and is overlaid now with flashes of anger. “These guys,” he says, “they’ll never give up voluntarily. Look at who they are, how they behave, and what they’ve done, even to each other.”

  As the camera pans across Mugabe’s senior henchmen, Roy keeps up a dyspeptic commentary. Chihuri, the police commissioner, “was held by his own people in a pit in Mozambique for some transgression during the guerrilla war…” Vice-President Msika “is on my farm, in partnership with the Russians, looking for diamonds.” Gideon Gono, head of the Reserve Bank, “told the interior designer who did his house: do what you like, there are no restraints on your budget,” he claims. “The landscape gardener was given a luxury Pajero as a tip!” And when we see Mugabe and Grace again, Roy says, “An Air Zim guy told me that a big box of cash goes with the President’s entourage whenever they travel overseas. They had fifteen tons of personal baggage when they last came back from Singapore.”

  A young Zimbabwean student ends the event with a lengthy poem she has penned for the occasion. “Arise and shine, Zimbabwe,” she exhorts, “for a new era has come.”

  After the inauguration, I pile into the pick-up truck with Roy’s son, Charles, and his cousins, and head for the MDC rally—the first they’ve been permitted by the police in many months. Tellingly, there is no equivalent ZANU rally; their leaders retreat to their mansions to strategize. Roy too stays at home—grounded by the party to prevent his arrest.

  The rally is at Glamis Stadium, in the agricultural show grounds (though there’s little real agriculture left to show) on the western side of town. The MDC have instructed that there be no party regalia—this is to be “a national event.” But apart from the Zimbabwe flag hung from the podium, this event is entirely partisan—a victory parade of the MDC party faithful. They come in open trucks and in buses, but mostly they come on foot—chanting phalanxes jogging down the middle of the streets from the “high densities,” the townships that are the repositories of black working-class Zimbabwe. They are smothered in MDC regalia: party T-shirts and flags and posters. Some have fashioned the posters into tall stovepipe hats, emblazoned with Morgan’s grinning face. Wearing any of this would have brought them beatings, home burnings, imprisonment, and torture just a few months ago.

  We are swept along in the human current, through the turnstiles, frisked by party marshals, and deposited in the arena. In a holding pen, just below the VIP stand, stand seven plump black bullocks, a traditional gift to Tsvangirai from his supporters, for the feasting that will follow. High above the sun-bleached billboards for Coca-Cola, Blue Circle cement, and Castle Lager (“Africa’s finest”), supporters are clinging to the lighting gantries for a better view. At the very top they unfurl a banner: New Zimbabwe—New Beginning. For several hours they wait, with the uncomplaining patience of an African crowd.

  When the newly elevated MDC political gentry eventually percolate in, fresh from the inauguration ceremony, women kneel at their feet with clay pots of water for the ritual washing of hands. Overhead, heavy clouds gather. Party marshals stand at the red-and-white-striped tape that separates the crowd from the sheltering canopy of the VIP stand, with its chairs cloaked in white covers, tied at the back with peach bows.

  I am next to the VIP section, in an area populated by party organizers and journalists, many of whom have come up for the first time in years from South Africa, the closest they could get hitherto. At the moment Tsvangirai is scheduled to take to the podium, the bulging clouds finally release their payload and bright umbrellas blossom in the crowd below. But most are unprepared, and just stand there, in the rain, regardless.

  The cloudburst is short-lived—and soon the plastic sheeting is peeled back off the loudspeakers and the crowd is singing and dancing along to “Makorokoto [Congratulations] Zimbabwe!” The marshals throw sweets into the crowd. Paul Madzore, known as “the singing MP,” urges, “However rough the road of democracy, we should never look back,” and sings “The Battle of Jericho.”

  Thousands of open hands are raised—turning the crowd beige. A hefty man in a red baseball cap and checked shirt shuffles to the mic and begins crooning—it is Raymond Majongwe, President of the Teachers’ Union.

  Tendai Biti, the party’s crown prince, now in the key post of Finance Minister, waves to the multitude and they ululate back at him. “Chisa, MDC, chisa!” yells Nelson Chamisa, who has masterminded the MDC’s media effort, and the crowd bellows back, “Chisa!” It means hot.

  “The power has been transferred from President Robert Mugabe to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai,” he announces. “This is the beginning of our new identity. You can meet anytime you want. Even in the middle of the night!”

  Rev. Dube, a blind pastor, blesses the event and quotes Deuteronomy, the passage that ends with the summons: “Enter the land that the Lord promised your forefathers in the desert for forty years.” It’s only about ten years off in our case, but who’s counting now.

  Tendai Biti invokes those who fought so hard to get us to this point—so that we celebrate today those who sacrificed so much. “Cognizant of the protracted struggle we have gone through… Let the people of Zimbabwe be free to associate with whomsoever they wish—it is a God-given right. We plead for transitional justice. Yesterday we visited detainees languishing in Chikurubi—we demand the immediate release of these people. There can be no reconciliation without justice, no reconciliation without truth.”

  Finally, Morgan rises, both hands aloft, and the crowd swells with noise. He gestures at his wife next to him, and she obliges by standing. “I want to recognize amai Tsvangirai, my better half,” he says. “We are opening a new chapter in our country, we are starting afresh. On this day nineteen years ago Nelson Mandela walked free from Victor Verster Prison. It was an historic day. But freedom was not achieved on that day. For far too long Zimbabwe has endured violent political polarization. This must end today. For too long our people’s hopes for a bright and prosperous future have been betrayed. Instead of hope, their days have been filled with starvation, disease, and fear. A culture of entitlement and impunity has brought our nation to the brink of a dark abyss. This must end today.”

  He promises that the political prisoners will not stay in “those dungeons a day more than I can manage.” That emergency aid must be distributed regardless of tribal and political affiliation. All schools must reopen, he says; all civil servants must be behind their desks on Monday. “I will ensure that there will be a distinction between party and state, that there will be an open and transparent government.” He ends with an invitation “to walk with me on this promising phase of our journey to a true and lasting democracy.”

  As we chug slowly away through the crowds after the rally, our pick-up truck filled mostly with young white Zimbabweans, the black crowds cheer and give us open-handed salutes. “Go back to the farms now,” they shout. “Go back and grow food.”

  AND YET, despite all Tsvangirai’s fine words, the noose around Roy is tightening as state agents fan out across the city looking for him. He insists he’s not really in hidi
ng. He’s staying openly with his sister in Borrowdale.

  Kerry Kay, the MDC’s welfare officer, calls to say that the CIO has just visited her—six agents bursting out of a Mercedes. “We are here to look for Bennett,” they tell her. A veteran of dozens of such encounters, Kerry is now a little volatile. “Search. Go on search! Search the whole damn house—I’m sick of you people,” she says, and storms from room to room, flinging open cupboard doors and flicking up bedspreads.

  They go on to other houses looking for him, but not to this one in Borrowdale, which doesn’t appear to be on their radar—yet. That’s the tricky thing about dealing with Mugabe’s spies, who, like all spies, are paid to be professionally paranoid. They are so hard to predict—there are islands of competence (backed up by Israeli Web-monitoring software, and Chinese-installed surveillance systems) within a sea of bungling, dim-witted, racist bullies, who rely indiscriminately on a vicious, smash-mouth MO.

  With Charles, Roy discusses escape routes from the house if CIO arrive. There is thick foliage along the back fence and a hole through into the neighbor’s yard. They discuss his other options. He could ask friends still out on the farms to hide him, though he would be putting them at enormous risk. But he also hates the danger in which his presence is putting Cynthia and her family. Roy’s mood oscillates from pugnacious to resigned and back.

  “I’m sick of hiding,” he says, exasperated. “If they’re gonna arrest me, let them come.” He turns to Charles. “I dunno. What do you want me to do? I’ll do whatever you want me to.” Charles concludes that of the options, the best is an offer from the new German ambassador, Albrecht Conze, to stay at his residence, which will offer Roy a safe house with minimum risk to his host. They phone Albrecht. “Good. We’ll have bratwurst,” he says. “Where else would you be declared a minister one day, and be in hiding from the secret police the next!”

  GEORGINA arrives the next day, a week later than planned, having finally shaken off her pneumonia. She unpacks and lights up a Madison on the Beatties’ veranda. “Yes,” she pre-empts me, “I’m smoking again. So sue me.”

  “But the pulmonary embolism scare…”

  “Well, I’m not on LighterLife powdered food anymore either,” she sighs, turning away to exhale.

  Lance Dixon, a young Zimbabwean with an IT business in Dubai, is here for tea. He has flown up from Johannesburg in a rented plane for the inauguration, with a bunch of others in MDC Support, who help with logistics, and will fly back late this afternoon.

  “We’re holding a seat for Roy,” he says. “The swearing-in of deputy ministers has been delayed. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and it’s his birthday on Monday, so he wants to go down for a long weekend to be with Heather.” Morgan has met with Roy today and okayed the trip.

  After Lance leaves, I let Georgina sleep off her flight, while I go foraging with Richard. There are rumors of meat in Marondera, that—“Alleluia!” cries Richard—turn out to be true. Dougie’s butchery has actual red meat. Word has spread and a line has formed. Men in white coats and rubber gloves are cutting it up. The whirring of their saws changes tone as they encounter bone. They pass back and forth through fly curtains of plastic ribbons, carrying sharp instruments, and I almost expect a stretcher to burst through, laden with a corpse, a label tied to its big toe. At the desk, a large black man taps fluently on calculator keys so worn that they have no numbers. We pay in U.S. dollars and Richard packs the cuts methodically into his cooler box.

  Back in Harare, Lance Dixon calls on my cell phone. He sounds panic-stricken. “They’ve got Roy!” he says.

  “What!”

  “We were taxiing on the runway, with Roy on board, when suddenly a white Toyota single cab—reg AAP 4581—came hurtling onto the runway and the next thing we knew, the tower ordered us to abort take-off. These plain-clothes guys, who said they were from the President’s office, came on board and pulled Roy off and drove him away. Now we’re under arrest here at Charles Prince Airport.”

  I drive out to the airport in Penny Beattie’s red Suzuki, while next to me Georgina phones lawyers, journalists, MDC people, anyone she can think of. By the time we get there, the Pilatus plane, from Sefofane Air Charters, is standing silently on the apron, chocks wedged under its wheels. Grizelda, the pilot, and her passengers are no longer under arrest, and have repaired to the bar of the Mashonaland Flying Club. But they’re worried that if they leave now, the CIO will allege that Roy was trying to “escape arrest,” by attempting to sneak out of the country illegally.

  “Did he go through immigration?” I ask Grizelda.

  “Yes,” she assures me. “I gave them a full passenger list, with all the passport numbers. Including Roy’s.”

  I walk out to the small immigration shed to find the immigration officer. It turns out that he is an MDC member, who was arrested himself during a previous election. He shows me his original of the departure document. Roy’s name is number three on the passenger list. And it is all duly stamped. He even lets me photograph it.

  Meanwhile we are getting calls updating Roy’s whereabouts. Charles has followed him to Goromonzi, the infamous “swimming pool” interrogation center. Then Roy is bundled into a different vehicle, a silver Vigo twin-cab, and driven away on the Mutare road, fast, very fast. MDC spotters follow his vehicle, and others sit along the way to see if it turns off.

  “What do you think?” asks Lance.

  The day is fading fast, and Charles Prince closes at sundown, as it has no runway lights. They must leave now if they are to get out today.

  “I don’t want to abandon Roy,” says Lance. He is almost in tears.

  “There’s nothing more you can do here now,” I say. “You can do more back in Johannesburg.”

  Grizelda swings into the cockpit and runs her final checks. The rest of them climb up into the Pilatus. Lance waves from the top of the stairs, and the door swings shut. Grizelda feathers the prop and eases the plane out onto the darkening runway. We watch as she lifts off due west, directly into the bulging yolk of sun, just as it slides below the edge of the Earth, and then the plane banks sharply to the south.

  twenty-seven

  Lassoing the Moon

  WELL, THAT DIDN’T take long to go wrong, did it?” says Georgina, unsurprised to hear that Roy has now been thrown into the cells of Mutare Central Police Station. We will go down on Monday morning, once we have surmounted all the logistical hurdles. But for now, we are hyped up, frustrated, dismayed, confused, worried. The MDC condemn Roy’s arrest, but beyond that we wonder how they will respond to this instant challenge to GNU? It makes a mockery of all Tsvangirai’s fine words at Glamis Stadium, and of the South African guarantee to Roy, “Touch Bennett and the whole thing’s off.”

  We sit drinking with the Beatties, at a place called Thai Thai. You enter it through a concrete drive-through supermarket, stocking the most random selection of stuff, jelly pops, spare-rib marinade, Quality Street, three choices of Carex condoms (“rough ’n’ tough,” ribbed, and strawberry flavored), samosas, honey, biltong, cans of “freshpikt” baked beans, dog food, and local plonk called Bon Courage.

  Inside, Thai Thai has a nautical theme. Wall-mounted marlin, tiger fish, and barracuda arch above a makeshift stage. The proprietress, Wanphen MacDonald, a young Thai woman with a bird of paradise tattoo settled on her left shoulder, supervises the clearing of the tables and chairs to the sides, as the restaurant morphs into a night club. The place is already heaving, keeping the butch staff in perpetual motion. Wanphen explains to Georgina that lesbians make the best bartenders. They can lift heavy crates; they don’t steal, drink to excess, chat up the customers (or get chatted up), have child care crises, or provoke fights, but can break them up pretty well.

  “Who are the clientele?” I ask Georgina. She does a quick tour d’horizon.

  “Divorcées in poly-cotton with sun-beaten faces, blond highlights and bingo wings, smoking Berkeley extra-mild, drinking cane-and-Coke, chatting about their last shopping trip
to Joeys. A divorced father, out with his underage son on access day. Some medical NGO types, hating it, and hard-core fans of the Tourette’s,” she concludes briskly.

  The band—yes, it’s Tourette’s, like the syndrome—are refugees from other bands, from the Nouveau Poor, the URJ, the Herb Boys, the Rusike Bros. The guitarist used to be a professional Zambezi River guide, until one sweltering day when his clients took a dip in the river and one had an arm bitten off by a crocodile. They’re doing a creditable job, covering Alanis Morissette, Natalie Imbruglia, and the Grays, Macy and Dobie.

  Calls start coming in about trouble in Mutare. Several hundred activists have gathered outside the central police station, where Roy is being held in the cells. Singing and dancing, they are determined to keep up their vigil all night, to make sure he isn’t spirited away to a secret location, as is the CIO habit. By the end of the evening, the police have attacked the demonstrators with dogs and tear gas, baton charges, rubber bullets, and live ammo. Several people are badly hurt.

  On Sunday we prepare to travel east, and in the evening we go to supper in Glen Lorne, right out on the city limits. It is already dark as we drive, and with almost no traffic, I become aware that we are being tailed. I speed up, slow down, make a series of illogical turns, and double back down dark empty streets, but the headlights behind stick to us. So I head back into town, toward the U.S. ambassador’s residence, where there is a guarded gatehouse; as we approach, our tail peels off, and I loop back north, driving fast, to the supper.

  “I need a drink!” announces Georgina as we finally get inside Kundisai’s house, both of us feeling quite unnerved. Kundisai Mtero is a talented a cappella singer and ophthalmologist, and her companion, DJ, is a Dutch tour operator. We sit round a low table on their flagstoned patio, lit by an elaborate Liberace candelabra. The barbecuing ends up being done by Jordan, the only other local white there, “because he’s a Boer,” jokes Kundisai, “so he knows how to braai.”