When home is not best
JERRY BUNGU
Correspondent
| Friday December 5, 2008 00:00
Home is not best. Thinking of going home does not generate any excitement in me and any other Zimbabwean, perhaps with the exception of businesspeople.
The festive season is here when many Zimbabweans are supposed to go home for holidays but the news is not good. Things have come to a grinding halt back home and everything has collapsed. Gone are the days when one would really miss home especially over the Christmas period when relatives would gather and enjoy a feast.
Now with acute shortages of almost everything, it is only parents with children outside the country who can think of a better Christmas. We have to make the Christmas for them. Unlike 10 years ago when Zimbabweans in the diaspora needed only to carry cash when going back home, these days they must go back loaded with all manner of necessities. We now have to carry everything from mealie-meal to small groceries like bath soap, cooking oil to fuel. Of late we have to carry water because it is not available in Zimbabwe and whatever is there cannot be trusted for consumption.
The water utility parastatal, Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) has cut supplies to major towns and cities citing shortage of chemicals to purify water. This has resulted in a health catastrophe of unprecedented levels. An outbreak of cholera has claimed the lives of more that 500 people in less than a month. The disease has spread to neighbouring countries like Botswana and South Africa.
Therefore the greatest fear of going home is contracting the deadly disease and this is not easy to avoid because of poor health and sanitation facilities in Zimbabwe. It therefore means that one has to carry makeshift medical kits since the health system has crumbled. Reports from Zimbabwe indicate that all the referral hospitals and clinics have closed down due to shortage of drugs, equipment, food and staff.
The only good news reaching us is that even the soldiers who have been used to oppress the people have had enough. They have mutinied after failing to receive their salaries from the cash strapped banks. This is good news indeed. The police had to be called to quell the violence by the soldiers. Who is next to revolt? Have the police received their salaries? I doubt. They could be next in line and going home, one might be caught in the crossfire as riots become the order of the day. These are the days when people need money most but the financial system cannot cope. A hungry man is an angry man. Police raids have also netted foreign exchange traders on the parallel market. I swear the confiscated currencies are not forfeited to the state. It ends up lining the raiders' pockets.
Then there is the harassment by the police on Zimbabwe's roads especially when one is driving a vehicle with foreign number plates. At road blocks, the hungry police officers often let local cars pass while foreign ones are made to park by the roadside. A police officer approaches you with a myriad of questions, some of them very silly. They just have to find fault with you to get a bribe. It is quite sickening especially considering the fact that the conditions of our foreign registered cars are by far better than those battered jalopies driven in Zimbabwe. The traffic police officers have become so corrupt. Most police officers are keen to be deployed in the traffic section of the force. They know the benefits.
Customs officers at the border will not spare you by asking a lot of questions about what you are carrying as if they do not know that there are shortages in the country. They would want one to declare everything although the Zimbabwe government has dropped duty on groceries taking into account that manufacturing of goods in the country has stopped. This home is not best, north, south, east or west.