Zimbabwe: Talks and tears for Tarisai

Background:

I wrote this story in August 2008, at a time when Zimbabwean politicians were negotiating a political settlement following a controversial presidential election in June 2008. The first election in March 2008 had been marred by controversy over delays in announcing the results. Morgan Tsvangirai won but was adjudged to have failed to reach the threshold required for him to gain outright victory. That meant a second round of voting (the run-off) against Robert Mugabe. Much violence marred the run-up to the run-off on June 28 2008, leading to Tsvangirai pulling out just before the election. Mugabe went on to 'win' and was declared President but given what had happened this was not universally accepted and the regional body SADC, appointed South Africa President Thabo Mbeki to mediate the negotiations that would lead to a government of national unity. This process took very long, with all sides stubbornly holding on to their positions. It was in this context that I wrote this story of Tarisai, to reflect the challenges that ordinary people were going through whilst the politicians haggled for power in their plush hotels. The story was directed at the politicians - an appeal to them, through the voice of the young girl, Tarisai that it was her likes that they were fighting to represent.

Zimbabwe: Talks and tears for Tarisai

First published on NewZimbabwe.com August 15, 2008

Somewhere, in a village nestled in the bushes of Chikomba, there is a young girl called Tarisai. Every morning, Tarisai wakes up early to fetch water from the sandy bed of the mighty Save River. The great river is dry in most parts, so in its vast belly of sand, she digs and digs, until the precious liquid oozes into the hole.

She spends a length of time scooping the dirt, to make way for what passes for some clean, precious liquid. She fills her bucket and carefully places it on her small head, climbing the cliffs and hills until she gets home to Amai. She has already mastered the art that, perhaps, only African women can, of balancing the large load on her head without the need to support it with her hands.

Amai is unwell. She has been unwell for some time and she cannot carry her fragile body anymore, let alone a load of water on her head. Tarisai is eight. Father was called to another world a year ago. The weight of the homestead is upon Tarisai’s young shoulders.

Later in the day Tarisai will go to the woods, to pick the little firewood she can find, to make a fire. She comes home and cooks for mama. There is not much to cook, the few greens that she dried months ago, that pass for relish and a bit of sadza (cornmeal). The good men and women who used to come with supplements have long stopped coming. Someone higher up in Harare stopped them, she heard.

This is Tarisai’s routine. Every day comes and goes, the same way. But even by her dire standards, things have got worse recently. And there is not much she can do to make things better. Every day she prays, summoning God’s help – because she has learnt the hard way, that none of this world can do much to help her.

Late at night she picks up the little wireless radio father brought back from his days in the big city many years ago in the 1990s before his employer told him they were ‘rationalizing’ and that his services were no longer required. They gave him a tie and a few dollars to recognize his long and loyal service.

Tarisai tries hard, very hard, to find a signal. She wants to listen to the news; to know what the big men in Harare have decided for her life. Sometimes, she catches a signal, sometimes, she does not. But whenever she does, the announcers are always harbingers of bad news. Sometimes she does not bother. She just waits. Like everyone else in the village and the many villages scattered across Zimbabwe, she waits. It’s like waiting for Godot.

She is a beautiful girl, Tarisai is. Little boys like to say she was made in His happy hour. But her world, Tarisai’s world, is a far cry from the sophisticated world of the internet and 24-hour news channels. She is far away from the ‘breaking news’. She is never going to be an expert on her life, even though none of the learned men will ever know what it means to be Tarisai. But they are ‘Africa experts’ nonetheless, experts on her life – but what do they really know?

She has no voice in the vibrant universe of internet chat-rooms and forums. Which may just be as well, for she will never see or hear the expletives exchanged there; naked words that can hardly be repeated in these pages; angry young men and women but at least they have choices. Tarisai does not have much.

All she has heard is that there are big men and big women located at some grand hotels in Harare and Pretoria, deliberating about her future. But these deliberations are for the big men and big women only – she, whose future is at stake; whose shoulders carry the dreams and burdens of those whose interests the big men and big women are supposedly fighting to enhance; she is an outsider; she is not supposed to know.

Tarisai is eight, but in those few years, she has lived the lives of many old men and old women. She only saw the world when the dispute over which these men and women are fighting began in earnest. She was on her mother’s back, sleeping, when they queued at Warikandwa Primary School to cast their votes in the Constitutional Referendum. She has seen them return to the polling stations, again and again, since then. Indeed, her life has changed. It has simply got worse.

You have to wonder, when you read all the papers; when you watch the big ‘breaking news’; when you hear the politicians at press conferences, where is Tarisai’s voice?

There are few times in life, when one must yearn for a miraculous transformation, to become, if only for a few hours, the fly that makes uninvited entry into the four walls in which those big men and women are discussing the future of Zimbabwe. And perch oneself in some corner far enough to escape their attention and the possibility of a crushing blow but close enough to hear their every word. It must, surely be in the thoughts of those scribes who have spent days and nights lounging and gossiping in the hotel lobby, for onward transmission to news agencies, for a small fee. It must also, you have to think, be in the thoughts of little Tarisai, as she makes her way to the riverbed of the mighty Save, to fetch the precious liquid every morning.

But then you also ask, could there be just one journalist; at least one scribe who might be tired of waiting for the big secrets from the Rainbow Towers, and instead make way to that village in Chikomba; to spend time with Tarisai and her fellow villagers and ask them what their thoughts are; ask Tarisai if she has a message for the politicians discussing her future at the Rainbow Towers. And perhaps write a story about Tarisai and her fellow villagers, a story which will carry their views and expectations to the decision makers. Perhaps the politicians could read these stories and, who knows, perhaps their views might also guide them in their thought-processes.

Because, you see, Tarisai will never come close to Rainbow Towers. She has never been to Harare and, at this rate, she might never get the taste of city life. And at eight, Tarisai has ten more years before she can exercise her right to vote; never mind that she carries the responsibility of every adult in her homestead; she is a child, but she is also the mother of her mother. She makes decisions and carries out tasks to sustain her fragile family. But the law says she is far too young to decide who can lead her and her country, not even her ward or constituency.

That is the democracy we are taught to believe in; the democracy we have accepted as the answer to our troubles; a democracy that does not recognise Tarisai as a responsible decision-maker in the electoral process notwithstanding her role as the pivot of the modern African family. Those important decisions are for men and women who spend time at the beer hall and the shebeen; men who return home and assault their wives to secure conjugal rights. But not for Tarisai - the little girl who has abandoned school to look after mama.

And when I watched Hopewell Chin’ono’s powerful documentary on the scourge of AIDS in Zimbabwe, and big though I am, an African man taught from a tender age to be a ‘man’ and never cry, could not hold back tears; tears for a broken nation whose politicians continue to dilly-dally about power. There is a temptation, in the topsy-turvy world of politics, to forget these silent victims; victims of a more brutal and sordid violence at the hands of that little but vicious parasite.

I have written many words in the past, far too much to probe the conscience of politicians. There is little to say that has not been said before. But I thought of Tarisai and I thought of her daily struggles – this little girl who has become a mother to her mother; a baby for whom life has been a battle from the beginning and for whom such battles are, at this rate, set to continue long into the future, that is, if and it’s a monumental ‘if’, she is favoured with more time. But having been weighed down by so much in her formative years, you have to wonder if she will have the energy to do so, let alone the will.

Tarisai’s hopes rest on the shoulders of the big men and women in Harare, who are having secret deliberations. But how much do they think of her as they deliberate?

Tarisai, ‘Please Sirs, look at me; look at the state of the country!’, she might be saying, for that indeed is her name.

If Tarisai’s story does not turn something in the hearts and minds of the big men and women in Harare, then, I suppose, nothing ever will. For there are far too many Tarisais in the many scattered villages of Zimbabwe – all looking to Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara.