Zimbabwe Interview

I was always interested in Rhodesia. Initially it stemmed from my interest in firearms and all things military, with the famous, or perhaps infamous, Selous Scouts unit. This interest was at first largely only aesthetic and surface level but over time it turned into a genuine interest in the history of the country, both back then as Rhodesia, as well as now, as Zimbabwe. 

The history of Rhodesia is a very tough topic however, because whenever its brought up it seems to bring out people who want to turn it into a political weapon. Right wing people will use it as an excuse to be racist and claim it was paradise, heaven on earth when "whites" were in control. Left leaning people, instead, will cry apartheid and claim blacks were deeply oppressed and under the boot of Ian Smiths rule and Robert Mugabe was a freedom fighter and the savior of Zimbabwean civilization, which given how the country turned out under his rule obviously isn't very true either. Both of these positions feel almost dismissive of the actual history and as always, the truth is somewhere in the middle, so since it was seemingly so hard to get to, I decided to go to the source. 

I tried getting in contact with actual people from Zimbabwe, thinking that who could possibly know the history better than someone who actually lived through it? Getting any sort of response back turned out to be a tough task, not many people from there wish to discuss such things because as it turns out, freedom of speech is still extremely limited there. After some time I did finally manage to get what I was looking for, which I would like to archive here. The following is a transcript of a series of audio messages recorded for me by a person from Zimbabwe which I've transcribed to the best of my abilities. Due to the previously mentioned lack of free speech in modern day Zimbabwe, the person will be kept anonymous for their safety and privacy. 

Some of the story you listed above are correct and some of them are not entirely accurate. I don't know if we were to say Ian Smith was a racist or not. I know most of the policies he did didn't go down well with Africans but if you wanna look at the current government, if you would ask any person who is 75 or even 65 and above about Ian Smiths government they would tell you that the only one problem was that they were not fair towards Africans. There's an analogy they used back in the day: the Africans were the horse and the settlers were the rider.

Another thing, Ian Smith didn't lose power due to a coup, he lost power due to an election that was held in April in 1980, where ZANU PF won the majority of votes, thus independence was declared on the 18th of April, which Zimbabwe celebrates as the independence day. 2022 makes the 42nd year of our independence, but as compared to the previous regime, if you ask around, like I said before if you ask around old people or guys who are 65 and above they would tell you that Ian Smiths government might have been suppressive to the Africans but in terms of administration and rule and stuff it was quite better than the one we see today. Back in the day when kids went to school in primary school they were offered meals during the day, they were offered books and they learned. Nowadays when kids in primary school go to school there are no meals and sometimes parents have to pay extra to learn. Teachers aren't getting paid enough in a country where most people are barely making ends meet, so like I said, the white government may have been suppressive towards Africans in terms of skin color but in terms of making life, the currency at that time was stable and now we have an unstable currency and most things like jobs are quite difficult to get and to get a job you often have to have relatives already working in that company who can instruct or even make way for you to get a job. So were living in a country where things are not determined by your academic or educational qualifications but with [???], you see, its all bribery and corruption.

Then another thing... yes, Robert Mugabe was a freedom fighter and he did a lot for the independence of Zimbabwe. After 1980 he was named Prime Minister. I remember hearing him and Ian Smith having a discussion of him asking Ian Smith how to run Zimbabwe the way he did, and the way he did I mean whereby one Zimbabwe dollar was equal to one British pound. Mugabe wanted to maintain that status but the thing is that status wasn't maintained because his fellows, ZANU PF party members, you see, these guys became what I would call [???] because they fought in a war for a free country, they saw themselves as the heros of Zimbabwe and that they deserve the bigger piece than the general mass. So back in '83, that's when this mess started. See in that time corruption was minimal but that's how everything is formed. People started taking bribes even back in that day, corruption started to... corruption started to form in our country, that's where all the trouble came from. You know these old guys who fought in the war were demanding more, demanding a bigger piece of the cake and the ordinary citizens were clouded in propaganda about how were finally free, were no longer ruled by whites, they didn't see what was happening, but on a political level obviously something was wrong. So in '87, in the south where Ndebele and Kalanga people live they started having dissidents towards the Mugabe regime, because it was benefiting one group of Africans, whilst the other weren't doing well so they started protesting against this type of rule, which resulted in the Zimbabwean government dispatching soldiers to the region to exterminate what they called dissidents towards the regime. [This part is hard to make out due to heavy background noise, but the person is further speaking about the massacres of Ndebele and Kalanga people]. But from then on there were many programs they were introducing and some of them started taking massive impact on the economy. I mean, by 1980 the British pound was equal to the Zimbabwean dollar but by 89 that was starting to change, you could see that they were no longer equal. In 2000 they tried to fight this off, you see the thing is the Africans or Zimbabweans were taking farms back from the whites, claiming that they were our heritage, our property. But Africans didn't know how to use them, Africans had zero experience using the farms, using the equipment and the whites fled to Zambia, fled to south Africa out of fear cause at that time it was almost like they were inciting racism against whites. So after that whites started supporting Morgan Tsvangirai cause they were starting to see that things weren't going well. In 2002 there was an election, he lost, then he couldn't start again in 2005. By 2005 you could actually see that the picture changed, the political and the economical landscape had changed. Things have now started to take a turn for the worst and in 2008 we really started approaching dark times. In 2008 there were two major candidates contesting for power. There was movement for democratic change which was led by Morgan Tsvangiriai from the party known as MDC-T. The ruling party at that time was the ZANU PF party and this election was when our country began to crumble socially and politically. Businesses were closing, people were losing jobs and people started leaving the country. On the 29th of march they organized an election and before the election everything was calm and quiet. After the election, things took a turn for the worst. Zimbabwe Electoral Commission did not announce the results in time, they announced results from some rural areas but not the general results, so people started asking questions and the people saw something was not right. MDC-T won the election, but the ruling party couldn't accept that result so they decided to use things like fear, intimidation. And like I said back in the '80s these guys wanted the bigger piece of the pie so they were saying [speaking some African language] which translates literally to "this country doesn't go the way of the ballot pen and paper, so they were saying the election votes were void and they would rather go to war than lose power due to an election and this was their stance for the past 42 years. So they ordered a recount of the votes which changed nothing because MDC-T clearly had won.