Zimbabwe

I have written very little about Zimbabwe, despite having spent the best part of four years living in Harare from 2000-2004. On the whole, it was not a happy time for me. Professionally, it was a time of great stress, and it was also during my stay in Zimbabwe that I realised that I had been and was suffering from a chronic health problem. But my problems were minor in comparison to the overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans, for whom it was, and still is, a time of disaster.

Zimbabwe has a sad history, dating from the colonial land grab to the disaster of UDI and the long, brutal and bloody bush war, before the brief optimism of independence and majority rule unravelled in hatred, enmity and, latterly, corruption on a grand scale. The economic collapse over the last decade, accompanied by the inevitable deterioration in generally accepted measures of human development - life expectancy, education, health and welfare - is tragic.

Recently, I made a very brief visit to Zimbabwe, in transit to Western Mozambique. Perhaps not surprisingly, given its economic position, it was apparently unchanged. The best barometer, after all, of economic growth and development is new construction. From the wealthy suburbs of Harare, through Ruwa, Marondera, Rusape and Mutare to the border, the road surface still excellent, the grasslands unaltered, the buildings the same....... A country frozen in time, somewhere in the late 1980s, with its old-fashioned courtesy and air of quiet despair.

Back at the beginning of the decade, "it can't get any worse" was a familiar refrain from older white Zimbabweans, their faces prematurely lined from the dry air and hot sun of the Southern African climate. Sadly, the truth is that it can and always will get worse, until enough people decide that it is time to take responsibility. And that is Zimbabwe's history. Only Zimbabweans can ensure that it is not the future.

But Zimbabwe is not representative of wider Africa. Elsewhere, the winds of change are blowing, in politics, in the media, in business and in the unstoppable forces of youth and technology. In this at least, Bob Dylan’s finest lyrics from "The times they are a-changing" could have been written for Africa.

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

Don’t criticize what you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.

Your old road is rapidly agein’

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand

Oh the times, they are a-changin”

The Zeitgeist is for change, even for Zimbabwe.