April 17, 2008
Patriotism is a strange passion. Pride brings it out — that collective pleasure in being part of something admirable — but fear brings it out, too, the heartache when what we hold dear is threatened. As Jews and Americans, who hasn’t been buffeted by those waves?
Elaine Durbach at age three, ready for the family’s departure from Harare (then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia) Photo courtesy Elaine Durbach
For me, the dynamic is complicated by two more cords of attachment. My parents and siblings were born in South Africa, where I spent my teen and young adult years, but I was born in Zimbabwe, the beautiful gem of a country in Central Africa.
In the past two weeks, since the country’s elections on March 29, that cord was been tugged by alternating yanks of optimism and anxiety. I didn’t know how deeply I cared.
For the first time in years, memories have been resurfacing of the mauve froth of jacaranda trees lining the streets of Harare (or Salisbury, as it was called when we lived there), of the hazy rainbows that arch over the towering Victoria Falls — even in the moonlight if you catch the right night — and of the gracious friendliness of the people, both black and white. It made me want to be there — at first.
Our family moved to neighboring Zambia when I was only three, but we returned often over the years to visit family who were still part of the vibrant Sephardi-Ashkenazi Jewish community there. Driving into Harare in our dusty Rover, after the 300-mile drive from Lusaka, I always felt as if I was coming home.
In the days after the March 29 election, it looked as if Zimbabweans might finally be wresting back their democracy. To everyone’s astonishment, after 28 years of Robert Mugabe’s increasingly repressive and destructive rule, change seemed possible. Most foreign journalists have been barred from the country, so the coverage was patched together from eyewitness accounts of voters and statements from the opposition party, but even the jaundiced correspondents in Johannesburg were voicing a euphoric hope.
By last week, that hope had begun to cloud over. As of this writing, the final vote count has still not been released. Fears have been voiced of violence erupting like that which followed Kenya’s recent election, though commentators have mentioned how extraordinarily peaceful the Zimbabwean people have always been.
Even through the years of the liberation struggle, most of the country stayed calm. Mugabe took on the presidency in 1980, after leading that fight against a white government that itself had wrested unilateral independence from British colonial rule in 1965. An erudite, sophisticated man, he seemed committed to reconciliation and prosperity. With its fertile agriculture and local industry that had thrived during the years of isolating international sanctions, there were high hopes for the country.
Our relatives had made aliya to Israel in the mid-1970s, rather than have their sons forced into military service against Mugabe’s fighters. Most of the Jews we knew left within the next two decades, heading for South Africa, Israel, Australia, the United States, or Canada. Those staying behind called it “the chicken run.” For all the whites’ insecurity, there was none of the vengeful racist violence whites had feared when Mugabe took power.
And then began the downward spiral. Apparently infuriated by Britain’s failure to fulfill promises to finance land transfers, and subversive plots led by white mercenaries from apartheid South Africa, he became more brutal and authoritarian. As he grew older, his policies seemed geared to benefit only his closest supporters, and to undermine everyone else, from the wealthy white farmers who generated its abundant food supply to the poorest black city dwellers.
In the past few days, my inbox has been filling with e-mails passed on by fellow expatriates.
One came from a desperate farmer’s wife, holed up in their home, surrounded by apparently drugged and drunken militiamen demanding that they hand over their land. She finished: “So for now please keep all of us in your prayers and we will send a follow up tomorrow if we are able.” I haven’t received any follow-up.
Another came from author Cathy Buckle. She wrote: “Armed men [and] drugged youths with lists of opposition supporters and activists — a wave of fear sweeping over our country. None are being spared: men, women, children. Beating, burning, threatening and intimidating is the result of the brave voices of Zimbabweans across the country who voted for change.”
And the same questions accompany all the e-mails: “What can we do?”
On Wednesday, April 16, the United Nations was expected to take up the subject of the Zimbabwe elections. Campaigners are urging South African leader Thabo Mbeki, who has made only the most tepid calls for electoral fairness, to step up pressure on Mugabe. Whether out of traditional reverence for his elders, or some mystifying solidarity against the West, Mbeki has refused to criticize him, despite the hundreds of thousands of desperate Zimbabweans flooding into South Africa in search of food.
But if the insanity of Mugabe’s rule can be brought to an end, people will go back. This was one of the most promising countries in Africa. My birth country could be wonderful again.
Elaine Durbach is the NJJN’s Central bureau chief.
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