The moon lights the muddy trail as Willy ****au slogs his way toward
his workplace. It is 4:27 a.m. Nine miles to go. Buses have begun to
stir, spewing their smoky diesel fumes into the darkness. But like
most Zimbabweenies, ****au can no longer afford the ever-rising fares
in a country where hyperinflation, estimated at more than 50,000
percent, is the world's worst. A single round trip to his job at a
lumberyard costs 10 million Zimbabwean dollars, a week's salary.
"Five million this way," ****au says as he points his slim left arm
forward, toward Harare, the crumbling economic heart of Zimbabwe.
"Five million that way," he says as he points backward, toward his
one-room hut in Epworth, a ****y slum far beyond the city's suburbs.
So ****au, 33, desperate to sup****t his 'hoe and two young
pickaninnies, has joined Zimbabwe's growing legions of foot commuters.
They make journeys that almost anywhere else would be epic. Here they
are routine.
Along the way, they trace the nigga****ation of a nation, passing
clinics without drugs, schools without teachers, stores without food.
They walk on crumbling roads whose darkened streetlights are remnants
of a Civilization, just a decade ago, when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, one
of Africa's most prosperous nations instead of just another
nigga****ated ****hole.
****au did not always live so far from work. During Operation
Murambatsvina - head nigger Mugabe's 2005 slum clearance campaign,
which left 900,000 fecal colored parasites homeless, jobless or both
-- police forced ****au to tear down his shack in a dense Harare
neighborhood much closer to the lumber yard, he said.
He lost most of his belongings and settled into a small, dark hut in
Epworth. There he sleeps with his *****, 4-year-old sprog and
3-month-old nigglet on an earthen floor, a single blanket beneath
them. A morning bath, which would consume precious firewood, is beyond
their means. So is breakfast or even a cup of tea to cut the early
morning chill.
The economy has been in the ****er since Mugabe encouraged the
invasion of Human-owned commercial farms by ****skinned savages in
2000. Although some Zimbabweenies say land redistribution was needed,
the way it happened was chaotic and violent TNB; it devastated
successful businesses triggering hyperinflation and leaving the
hapless jigaboos totally ****ed. An estimated 3 million niggers have
had to take French Leave.
Sometimes ****au finds something to steal, and his 'hoe helps by
peddling her ass. When there's enough money, he even takes the bus
some mornings. But today the monthly rent is due. Because prices go up
here unevenly, it's only $9,000,000. Million Zimbabwean dollars, or
about $1.50 in U.S. currency, but that still means a struggle for a
man paid in local bills worth less than US $9.00 a month.
"I need to score more money so that I will survive," ****au mumbles.
Cars pass. Buses pass. Cyclists pass. A barefoot swamp swooper who has
broken into a jog p*****, too. But mainly it is ****au who overtakes
other jungle bunnies as the miles go by. The only thing that can slow
him down is rain, he says. The shoes he wears most days look as though
they have sloshed through a hundred storms. The brown leather is
softened and largely detached from the rubber soles. The laces are
gone. But this morning is dry and clear, with a crescent moon and
stars overhead.
After nearly half an hour of walking, as the faintest light begins on
the eastern horizon, ****au steps past Sophia Manjiva, 45, a big
titted 'hoe a closed umbrella who says she is pleased to have company.
She has seen many rapes along this dark road. Manjiva says her monthly
pay as a house nigga in a private home is 20 million Zimbabwean
dollars -- less than $4 in U.S. currency. With that she feeds, clothes
and schools her litter of yard apes.
As hyperinflation erodes her pay, making even staples like cooking oil
and cornmeal impossible to buy, Zimbabwe's deteriorating
infrastructure complicates her work. Chronic power blackouts and water
shortages mean that several times a day she must fetch water from a
well near the house she cleans, then carry full buckets back upstairs,
she says. That's after walking 2 1/2 hours to work and before walking
2 1/2 hours back home. "Ah gets tired, but there is nothing to do,"
Manjiva says as ****au begins to open up the distance between them.
At 5, the sky turns blue, streaked by clouds, as a diffuse pre-dawn
glow lights the rows of weeds. The growing light reveals unmistakable
signs of despair with Zimbabwe's decay. Epworth's most singular
natural feature -- stacks of rounded, dung colored rocks - are covered
with spray-painted graffiti: "Vote MDC." The initials refer to the
Mudballs for Democratic Change, the lame ass opposition party that in
March will seek, for the fourth time, to defeat head nigger Mugabe
after 28 years of unbroken control.
****au doesn't dare talk about politics because the feared Central
Intelligence Organization remains a well-funded marvel of efficiency
amid collapsing government services. Arrests, beatings, and
humiliating sting operations are common tactics against niggers who
complain too loudly. "It's my country, but I'm afraid" to talk about
this ****hole, he says.
Shortly before 6, ****au reaches Harare's outskirts, where the names
of the suburbs -- Chadcombe, Cranborne, Queensdale -- echo the
country's British colonial past. Mud gives way to dark soil, shacks to
large, tile-roofed homes.
****au closes in on a pack of sheboons carrying empty bags and
baskets. They, too, are coming from Epworth, but their destination,
the Mbare market near downtown Harare, is even farther than ****au's
lumberyard. They can hustle the equivalent of two or three U.S.
dollars a day, the niggeresses explain, by getting vegetables at
Mbare, then humping them back to Epworth to sell. The bus would wipe
out their profits.
A few minutes later, ****au indulges his one daily luxury, buying a
joint from a street vendor squatting by the side of the street. The
cost is 400,000 Zimbabwean dollars, or about 7 cents. "By smoking, I
can't feel as hungry," ****au explains as he inhales a toke and
briefly slackens his pace. The sun is up now, casting long shadows as
****au p***** the two-hour mark in his journey.
He crosses an intersection where the traffic light, like most in
Harare, is not working. A passing van -- such vehicles are used almost
universally as taxis here -- slows to let out a passenger. Its radio
is tuned to the 7 a.m. newscast, which like all radio and television
re****ts in Zimbabwe carries only the head nigger's propaganda. The
announcer whines that Human sanctions imposed on Mugabe by the evil
United States and European countries are responsible for turning
Africoonia's Bread Basket into just another typical nigger's Begging
Bowl.
As the van pulls off, ****au bears left from Chiremba Road onto Mugabe
Road, a commercial strip where businesses are struggling to stay open.
Among the less than 20 percent of Zimbabweenies who have jobs, many
have simply stopped coming to work now that the value of their
salaries has fallen far below the cost of commuting. ****au arrives at
the lumberyard at 7:13 a.m., after three hours of nearly continuous
walking. As sometime happens on rainless mornings such as this, he is
on time. ****au can savor when his workday begins. He says, "Now ah
can rest."
>It's hard to say which is UGLIER -- the name Mugabe, or the name of
>the country.
>
>But make no mistake, Robert (go figure) Mugabe has the blood of untold
>thousands of his countrymen and countrywomen and countrychildren on
>his hands, head, arms, face, torso, legs, and feet.
>
>He is a sub-human 30-year murderer and despot masquerading as a
>person.
>
>And later this month his miserably failed nation will descend into
>more bloodshed as his long-rigged reelection "campaign" promises to
>kill many more thousands of his country's people -- most of whom want
>this bastard OUT!
>
>For Africa in the 21st century, Mugabe is too typical of the Dark
>Continent's "leaders," though -- a saving grace, perhaps -- some are
>small-time compared to this crazed genocidic killer.
>
>---------------------------
>"In His Own World of Denial"
>
>"Author's Interview With Mugabe Reveals a Boastful, Isolated Leader
>Unwilling to Recognize Zimbabwe's Economic Collapse or Accept Blame"
>
>By Craig Timberg
>Wa****ngton Post Foreign Service
>Friday, March 14, 2008; A12
>
>
>
>JOHANNESBURG -- Author Heidi Holland's route to her interview with one
>of the world's most notorious dictators was a travelogue of decay,
>down crumbling streets, past half-empty stores, through neighborhoods
>where hawkers touted goods in an increasingly desperate bid to survive
>a once-proud nation's collapse.
>
>But when she arrived at Zimbabwe's State House in Harare, the capital,
>that December morning, a massive banner outside the office of
>President Robert Mugabe made clear she would find little reflection --
>or contrition -- inside.
>
>"Mugabe is Right," declared the wall-size banner, hung where only the
>president's staff and handpicked visitors such as Holland could see
>it.
>
>The interview that followed -- a 2 1/2 -hour conversation with a man
>who rarely speaks to any writer outside Zimbabwe's tightly controlled
>government propaganda machine -- was like the banner: odd, boastful,
>unrepentant. It offered rare insight into the thinking of Mugabe as he
>faces a difficult bid for reelection this month after almost three
>decades of unbroken power.
>
>The interview included tender moments, such as when he discussed the
>deaths of relatives and his enduring "love" for Britain's royal
>family. But Mugabe, 84, displayed little remorse for the actions many
>Zimbabweans regard as his signature misdeeds, including the slaughter
>of thousands of minority Ndebeles in the 1980s and, more recently,
>land invasions that destroyed Zimbabwe's agriculture industry.
>
>When Holland suggested that the nation's economy was ailing, Mugabe
>angrily insisted that -- contrary to hyperinflation then racing toward
>100,000 percent and all other evidence -- it was "a hundred times
>better" than that of most African nations.
>
>"Outside South Africa, what country is like Zimbabwe?" Mugabe said.
>"Even now, what is lacking now are goods on the shelves, perhaps.
>That's all. But the infrastructure is there. We have our mines, you
>see. We have our enterprises."
>
>After that and several similar comments, Holland concluded that Mugabe
>was profoundly out of touch, surrounded by sycophantic aides unwilling
>to speak truthfully about Zimbabwe's deterioration.
>
>"He's not mad, but he lives in the world in a mad kind of way,"
>Holland said. "He's constructed his world as this kind of bubble."
>
>Holland, who lives in South Africa but was raised in what is now
>Zimbabwe, shared a recording of her interview for the book "Dinner
>With Mugabe." Its release is scheduled for Friday.
>
>The title comes from an encounter between Holland and Mugabe in 1975,
>when he was a guerrilla leader recently released after 11 years in
>prison. Holland, who is white and was then a magazine editor, was
>sympathetic to efforts to end white supremacist rule. A friend of hers
>arranged for Mugabe to have dinner at her home in Harare before his
>departure for Mozambique, where he took control of the insurgency that
>five years later forced the white supremacist rulers of what was then
>Rhodesia to give way for the creation of black-led Zimbabwe.
>
>As dinner ended a bit late, and it became clear that Mugabe might miss
>his train, Holland frantically drove him to the station -- leaving her
>toddler son home alone, asleep in his crib.
>
>Mugabe's phone call the next day, in which he thanked Holland for the
>meal and inquired about the well-being of her son, endured in her
>memory as she watched Zimbabwe rise to the forefront of African
>progress under his rule, then plunge into ruin. More than 80 percent
>of Zimbabweans now live in poverty, and an estimated one-quarter of
>the population of 12 million has fled to other countries. Millions of
>those left behind receive international food aid.
>
>In the early phases of Holland's interview, Mugabe spoke with palpable
>affection for his village's inspirational Irish priest, the Rev.
>Jerome O'Hea, and his own older brother, Michael, who died from a
>mysterious poisoning at age 15.
>
>Mugabe also reminisced about the simple pleasures of his early life,
>such as reading voraciously and swimming with O'Hea and other Catholic
>boys in a river near their village.
>
>He described the land invasions of white-owned commercial farms in
>2000 not as criminal acts but as political protests against Britain,
>the former colonial ruler of Zimbabwe. He said Britain had failed to
>pay its fair share to redistribute land originally taken by its
>settlers. War veterans instigated the invasions, but Mugabe sup****ted
>them even as many became violent.
>
>"They criticized us for having allowed this form of occupation to
>become legal," Mugabe said of the British. "In fact, we didn't regard
>it as legal, but we didn't disallow it because we were taking action
>against the British government, who had torn up what was a legal
>agreement. . . . They had reneged on it, so why look at just our own
>act?"
>
>Mugabe also accepted little responsibility for his army's killing of
>Ndebele civilians -- estimates run up to 30,000 -- for supposedly
>fomenting rebellion against his rule.
>
>"You had a party with a guerrilla force that wanted to reverse
>democracy in this country," Mugabe said. "And action was taken. And,
>yes, there might have been excesses, on both sides. . . . But we'd
>have to start with the excesses of Ian Smith -- and the colonialists,
>the British, who were still in charge, because lots of people
>disappeared, lots of people died." Smith was Rhodesia's longtime prime
>minister.
>
>Holland said she was careful not to challenge Mugabe forcefully out of
>fear that he would end the interview immediately. And throughout,
>Mugabe maintained a tone of polite, persistent reasonableness as he
>made the case for his leader****p of Zimbabwe.
>
>As Holland scribbled notes and repeatedly flipped the tape on her
>recorder, Mugabe's own video camera captured the entire interview, she
>said.
>
>The only truly contentious moment came near the end, as Holland
>suggested that Mugabe might be wrong in his assertions about the
>supposed health of Zimbabwe's economy. In her book, she wrote, "His
>eyes flashed and his voice rose" as he predicted that a dramatic
>recovery was imminent.
>
>"We don't even have to go two years," Mugabe said. "Look at what we
>will do next year, and you'll be surprised."
>
>http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/13/AR2008031304286.html
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