Fighting Talk In Frightening Times 

Dear Family and Friends,

Come and sit with me on the banks of the beautiful Runde River in the lowveld today. It helps you forget, for a little while anyway, the very alarming situation unfolding in Zimbabwe this April 2025. I should be telling you about a failed attempt to introduce an impeachment in parliament, or about calls for an ‘indefinite stayaway’ by war veteran Geza which didn’t happen or about the continuing whispers of a constitutional amendment to extend the Presidential term of office to 2030. Or about Mr Geza’s latest warning a couple of days ago that: “citizens should stay at home for their own safety in case they become collateral damage if there is an exchange of gunfire between security forces sympathetic to him and those guarding the corrupt individuals they intend to confront.” Fighting talk in frightening times when there is no viable opposition party in the country. The news is changing by the day and as we brace ourselves for what may be coming, it is a comfort to sit by the river momentarily, hope that Zimbabwe is not heading for another coup, and soak in the beauty of our country.

There are not many minutes, day or night, when there isn’t something to see or hear along the banks of the beautiful Runde River. Along the high-water line, the trees are tall, green and dense and constantly alive with birds. The calls of the Ring-necked Dove and the Emerald-spotted Wood Dove are your constant companions here, repeated continually throughout the day, hypnotic, mesmerizing and calming. On the flood plain on the far bank waterbuck are grazing, warthog are lying in mud wallows, impala are cropping the green grass and a beautiful Nyala bull with his stockinged legs and curled horns is alert, watching over a female and two youngsters as they graze. Close your eyes for a moment and feel the heat of the sun on your skin and breathe in the beauty and serenity.

Sand spits and islands are emerging in the river as the water level drops and enormous crocodiles emerge to sunbathe, mouths open, eyes closed. Herons, Egrets, Ibises, Spoonbills and Storks are tirelessly busy here, preening, resting or fishing in the shallows, striding, waiting and striking.

There’s a ruckus going on somewhere near the elephants’ rubbing tree where the dust and mud from the elephants’ shoulders and hips has left a distinctive smooth, brown stain on the trunk. Half a dozen francolin are chattering in alarm as a squirrel and slender mongoose chase each other round and round and up and down the trunk of the tree squabbling over something in the narrow hole in the branch of the tree; babies perhaps, or birds’ eggs or maybe it’s just territory. The squirrel looks impossibly small and insignificant against the much bigger mongoose but it is fierce and unrelenting, hair on its tail all puffed out and it doesn’t give up until finally the mongoose runs away.

A big bull elephant is walking in the shallow water of the river making for a sandy spit where a large turtle has just emerged from the water and is sunning itself. The elephant’s skin is black from the water and it curls its trunk around tufts of lush green grass, pulls, twists, lifts and chews, again and again. Ears, eyes and noses of hippos pop up and down in the water all the time, always watching, checking, grunting, snorting and blowing bubbles. In the late afternoon a pair of elephant bulls walk across the river, knee deep, then thigh deep and then only the top of their heads visible, the tips of their trunks above water. They swim and play, flopping and cavorting, splashing and squirting water, stirring up the mud, constantly touching each other with their trunks.

As the sun drops into the horizon the sky is washed with gold and orange and pink and I light my campfire. The nights are indescribably beautiful, sky ablaze with stars, a waning moon reflected in the river, a hyena giggling and whooping away in the distance and at dawn and dusk the call of a nightjar. When you wake Venus shines bright above the horizon until dawn begins to break and another beautiful day begins on the banks of the Runde River.

This is our beautiful Zimbabwe in the same week as the warnings of ‘collateral damage’ and ‘exchanges of gunfire between security forces.’ Please keep Zimbabwe in your thoughts and minds as we head into these worrying and uncertain times.

There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate please visit my website.

Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 25th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting.

Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)

Love Cathy 24 April 2025. Copyright © Cathy Buckle  https://cathybuckle.co.zw/

All my books are available from my website https://cathybuckle.co.zw/  or  www.lulu.com/spotlight/cathybuckle2018. Please visit my website for further details, to link into my social media sites, to contact me or to see pictures that accompany these Letters.