Death of a hero: Zimbabwe’s sickness

ben freeth. Death of a Hero: Zimbabwe’s sickness; Zimbabwe’s prison 9 July 2014

Before flags around the country went down to honour the death of Nathan Shamuyarira, a former Zimbabwean nationalist, journalist and academic, I heard the news. I knew that the flags would all be at half-mast for days as soon as the headlines came out.  It was a foregone conclusion that he would be a “National Hero”, buried in Heroes’ Acre.

He had to be a hero.  He was a ZANU founder member, a senior Cabinet Minister for the first 15 years of Independence, a senior member of the politburo, the spokesman of the Party and Mugabe’s official biographer.

Like so many of the Mugabe elite, Mr Shamuyarira joined the land grab.  He was already in his late 70s and, with no farming experience, he set his sights on taking over Mount Carmel farm [see endnote].

In his prolonged and ruthless takeover he destroyed my father-in-law’s home, as well as ours, with everything in them.  He also destroyed some of our workers’ homes with their entire contents.

He stole all the crops and tractors, generators, pumps and other equipment.  He had many of our workers beaten so viciously that their bones were broken and they had to be hospitalised.  My elderly father-in-law was so badly beaten during our abduction and torture that he subsequently died.

It therefore irked me to see all the flags flying dutifully at half-mast as I went past government buildings, businesses, clubs, schools and, of course at Heroes’ Acre on the outskirts of Harare.

It was a sign of the malaise.  Were all the businessmen, club chairmen and school headmasters really so respectful of this man and what he stood for?  Did they truly believe he was a hero? Were all the glowing obituaries really being so very truthful?  Was this not all part of the sickness that we in Zimbabwe are stricken with?

It was sad though.  Here was a man who had it all going for him.  He was an academic, had travelled internationally and was the first editor of the Daily News.  He was close to the President and he had every opportunity to be a man who would be a driving force for good in building Zimbabwe.

He made a different choice though.  A journalist I spoke to who was trying to expose the Gukurahundi massacres [when more than 20,000 civilians were murdered by government forces in the early 1980s and Mr Shamuyarira was Minister of Information], told me: “The press knew him as someone far, far worse than Jonathan Moyo [the current Information Minister] ever was.”

As Minister, Mr Shaumyarira instituted monthly work permits for all foreign correspondents and eengineered a total news blackout of the thousands of murders that were taking place.  As in the time of Hitler’s Goebbels, the stories of the women who had their stomachs ripped open and their babies torn out by Mr Mugabe’s 5^th Brigade were not allowed to be covered by the media.

The example that was made of those shockingly “torn-open” women is part of the sickness that lingers over the land.   Mr Shamuyarira knew the sickness so well because he was one of those who created it.  He was a master at it: the Satanic science of instilling fear into people.  This is the curse that is part of his legacy.  Later, he praised the Gukurahundi and said he had no regrets.

Never have I personally known so much fear as during the prolonged farm invasions when his men were using his “tactics” to create terror around our home: the midnight raids; the guns pointed at our windows; the gun shots; the beating of our workers; the death threats…

And then there was the arson; the fires on the lawn; the breaking down of doors and the bringing of burning tires through our home; the slaughter of livestock; the jambanja drums through the night; the beating of plough discs with metal bars outside our bedroom windows; the stealing of crops and tractors; the bloodthirsty threat hurled into the night: “We will eat your children”…

I remember well my legs shaking uncontrollably when his men surrounded our home at night.  It was pure unadulterated terror at the hands of those who, before they came to power, were called terrorists.  It was a fear that has been deliberately spread throughout the entire nation through so many years.

Yes, the sickness has taken a firm hold on us all.  The fear remains strong.  It peers through the gloom at our every turn.  It lurks in the shadows threateningly.  It lingers long into the night and beats its persistent drum to echo far into the hinterland.  It makes heroes out of its own – to be buried in a ground that is modeled on the ultimate tool of terror, the harbinger of death in the hands of a terrorist – the AK47.

Everyone in Zimbabwe is afraid.  That is our sickness.  That is our jail.  Many do not admit it, but why is it then that the flags fly at half-mast throughout the land at the death of someone who has caused or supported so much terror in the nation?

The flags and the obituaries said it all.  People in Zimbabwe have become too cowardly to speak out boldly with the truth about the acts of terror in our land; and sadly, so long as the cowardliness remains in the hearts of so many, fear will continue to hold Zimbabwe to ransom.

The day that we have the courage to not count the cost of doing what is right and speaking truth to terror will be the day Zimbabweans will break out from their prison of fear into freedom.  That day is yet to dawn; but I am convinced that it will come.

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