Hello, hello,
The last official blog post from outside of our adopted home, South Africa, but let’s not think about that just yet.
Zimbabwe is an incredibly beautiful country, so diverse and so different again to what we had seen so far.
Everything is so green and looks so tidy and clean...
The big attraction we could not miss was the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Great Zimbabwe. It is the largest ancient stone structure south of the Pyramids and it given its name to the country.
It was build around the 13th century. Who exactly build it is for some a mystery for others crystal clear so overall a pretty heated topic of discussion. The first historians to discover it believed that it could have been a lost kingdom of Solomon. Views like these are astonishingly considered racist today. The only locally accepted view is that the local tribes build the construction.
Why the local people nowadays still prefer to live in mud huts instead of impressive structures like that one remains a mystery then. It’s good to see that even today not everything can be proven, without any mystery whatsoever life would be boring anyhow.
After spending a couple of afternoons walking through the ancient ruins we headed to the wilderness of the Gonarezhou National Park. We were still travelling with Ron and Sabrina and were happy to have some people with us in this isolated place, we prayed pretty often for Cruisi not to break down there! Its an amazing place, so far off from everything.
Again completely unexpected it is extremely green. Contrary to Hwange one should not come here for any sort of wildlife but rather for the scenery and isolation. Despite this, we saw tones of animals and even the rarrest of all two lions, this just after having a walk on a beautiful setting not knowing that there were mere two meters away from us.
The less you know the better sometimes.
Unfortunately we did not make it to Harare, the capital but instead made a visit to the second biggest city of Bulawayo.
At the time of our visit, the Zanu-PF, the party of Zimbabwe’s “leader” Robert Mugabe had its annual conference there. About one hundred thousand people had gathered to praise the party’s achievements (...) and elect or rather re-establish their leader. Mugabe’s convey drove past us while we were walking on the streets. Maybe it was because of this event that this stop was one of the least pleasant ones of our trip but the atmosphere in the city felt anything but welcoming.
For no particular reason, one was given the overall feeling of being apologetic for being white (and in fact being the only whites walking the streets) and simply wanting to hide away. The humble little bit we know about the recent history of the country might have contributed as well to this perception.
We met Warren, a 25 year old Zimbabwean in Victoria Falls who was returning for the first time after 8 years to his home country after as part of the Land Reform programme, introduced by Mugabe and the Zanu PF in 2000, his and his family’s farm had been confiscated.
In short, the programme stipulated the transfer of white owned farm land to black citizens. The farm on which Warren lived had belonged to his family since 3 generations, his father, grandfather and grand-grandfather had all lived and worked their whole life on what sounded like a farm out of a text book. Now it is in the hands of the vice president and completely ran down (as they were told by a neighbour), years and years of hard work were taken away within days without any sort of compensation. The family went to Australia to make a new start. Warren did not go to visit the farm, he said he managed to come back to Zimbabwe because he missed it but it was still too early to see the place where he grew up. His father is not planning to ever come back.
This is not an isolated story, hundreds of white farmers and their families were kicked out of their homes. The land they cultivated had made Zimbabwe one of the biggest agricultural exporters of Africa, to the extent that it was called the ‘bread-basket of Africa has now lost over 50% of its productivity and nowadays exports are close to zero.
There are always two sides to the story, so yes why should the black population not also have a more equal share of the land? But this radical act was clearly not the solution, as the mismanagement of the newly appointed people in powerful positions had devastating consequences; millions of people lost their jobs, industries and infrastructure broke down, inflation reached a point which made the country’s money completely worthless and it was replaced with the US dollar. Lawyers, doctors, teachers were amongst the 4 million people that left the country with the hope to find a better living elsewhere.
Nowadays, to our tourist eyes signs of this disaster are not evident, things seem a bit more balanced with the present ‘power-sharing’ government in place. The dollar is still there but apart from that everything seems to be pretty much functioning normally. People (outside of Bulawayo) have been extremely welcoming, and we were constantly being stopped on the road and asked where we were from and how we liked Zimbabwe and if we would come back. People seem happy to see that outsiders are not scared of their country and that they are starting to come back to visit this beautiful land which is highly equipped for tourism with amazing facilities that can only be compared to those of South Africa.
Of course one does not want to support in any way a repressive regime like that of Robert Mugabe who despite all the destruction around him is still benefiting from a thriving diamond trade from the rich soil of the country. Knowing that our visa fees as well as the entry fees into national parks go straight into his pockets is not a good feeling. But in the end it does not seem to make a damn difference when countries like South Africa and many Western multinational companies are still doing business with Zimbabwe and buying Mugabe’s diamonds while China is supplying him with weapons to suppress his own people; the few dollars we are spending in his country appear completely irrelevant.
Boycotting tourism (instead of Zim diamonds) seems to only have a negative effect on the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. Tourism used to employ thousands of people who all lost their jobs once the situation escalated. With tourists returning to the country do not only those people profit financially but also morally as it seems that a feeling of normality of slowly returning.
Zimbabwe has been an amazing stop on our trip and we will need to come back to see the rest of the country! For now the ocean is calling us, it has been far too long since we did not see it so we plan to spend some time on the coast of South Africa before heading back to lovely Muizenberg.
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