Posted on 03/07/2010 9:51:34 AM PST by greyfoxx39
All are welcome Saturday 6th March 2010
Dear Family and Friends, They say that a picture speaks a thousand words and the one I picked up on the roadside this morning certainly did. I'm not generally in the habit of picking up litter on public roads but this was different. It was the remains of a poster that had been torn off a street light pole. From the scraps of bright coloured paper left clinging to a number of other poles, it was obvious that a line of the same posters had all been torn down recently. I had travelled along this road just the day before and the posters hadn't been there then so this had only just happened. Picking up the remains of the crumpled poster lying in the grass and turning it over, I knew immediately that the political turmoil in Zimbabwe is still a long way from being over.
The top third of the poster was gone but that didn't matter to me. I knew who the woman on the poster was and that the missing words must have been her name: Amai Susan Tsvangirai.
In the characteristic black, red and white colours synonymous with the MDC, the poster was advertising a commemorative gathering to be held at Glamis Stadium in Harare on Saturday 6th March to remember the life of Mrs Susan Tsvangirai, who died tragically in a car crash outside Banket exactly one year ago.
At the bottom of the poster in clear white lettering were the words: 'All Are Welcome,' a message that obviously didn't need to be advertised as a few minutes later I witnessed a number of trucks, crammed with people, streaming past on the nearby highway to Harare. The message 'All are Welcome' told a story in itself in a country where we aren't used to being invited but are more familiar with being threatened if we don't attend.
The wide smile on the face of the late Mrs Tsvangirai told another story - no anger, hatred or arrogance here. How refreshingly different and what a loss to our Prime Minister and to the nation.
I wondered why anyone would feel threatened enough by the posters to need to tear them down. The simple act of tearing down posters of people from different political parties, even commemorative posters, shows just how far away from democracy Zimbabwe still is. Tolerance of different beliefs, practices and people is as elusive as ever. That's a frightening reality at a time when all the talk is of elections - again.
It is looking increasingly likely that we are not going to get a new constitution before another election after all as both the MDC and Zanu PF have started talking about a new poll. At first we heard 2013 being mentioned, then 2012 but this week Mr Mugabe said there would be elections in 2011, with or without a new constitution.
If tearing down posters to remember the life of Mrs Tsvangirai is any indication, it's impossible to see how Zimbabwe will be ready to have a free and fair election without intolerance, intimidation and violence. An election where losers are forced to step down and winners are allowed to accept the people's choice and get on with rebuilding our country. Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.
I plan to post the weekly letters from Cathy Buckle on the situation in Zimbabwe.
If you would like to be on the ping list, let me know here or via FReepmail.
Almost every one of them were taken down within the first day up, ha ha. I think that's awful common in the USA.
I'm more prepared for the violence and collapse of the dollar though; but sure hope it doesn't happen for a few more years.
No go areas
Saturday 27th February 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the commencement of farm invasions in Zimbabwe. For me it started with a mob of men who came to the farm gate. Wearing blue overalls and carrying bricks and sticks they whistled and shouted that this was HONDO (war) and that they were taking the farm. The events that followed are history and the seizure of that farm and theft of home, business and assets have been repeated thousands of times across the country in this last decade.
There are thought to have been a million people directly affected by Zimbabwe's land seizures, including farm owners and their employees and extended families. None of these one million people have yet been compensated for what was taken from them or for injuries and abuses inflicted upon them in the process of the seizures. It wasn't only those million that paid the price. It is widely believed that a further four million Zimbabweans had to leave home in the last 10 years. There is not a family in the country who does not have relations living in political or financial exile in this massive place called 'diaspora' which encompasses most corners of the world where abused, dispossessed, and disenfranchised Zimbabweans now live.
Tragically, 10 years later farm invasions are still going on and the inclusive government does nothing to stop them - unable or unwilling to stop the lawless monster unleashed a decade ago. Zimbabwe now imports almost it's food including the most basic of staple goods such as wheat, maize, cooking oil and sugar.
Farms, once the show-piece of Zimbabwe and the life blood of the economy are now no-go areas. Why? What is it that the beneficiaries of the seized farms have got to hide? What are they ashamed of? What have they being doing these 10 years that leaves our shelves barren of Zimbabwean food?
Perhaps one person who knows is Gertrude Hambira, Secretary General of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (Gapwuz). Mrs Hambira was in hiding again this week days after she'd been called to a meeting and interrogated about a documentary and report published by GAPWUZ recently. The report called 'House of Justice," exposes evidence of human rights violations against farm workers in the decade of land seizures and details the involvement of senior government officials.
This week I had the privilege of going for a walk in the bush - a rare treat these days after everything that has gone on here. Tall, thick vegetation, lush grass heavy with raindrops and drooping with seeds. Everywhere you look there is another delight to see and for me it was like meeting old friends: exquisite mushrooms of every description from thin stalks with delicate ivory heads to bright orange spikes erupting from a bare sandy patch; red toadstools, brown balls, little white beads glimmering in the grass and huge brown and orange bracket fungus clinging to trees.
There is so much to do out there in the Zimbabwean bush, so much to preserve, conserve, protect and so much for our children to learn - if only the politics and greed of a few could be stopped.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy
Somebody used to do that before, however, I haven't seen anything here by her in a long time........maybe I just missed them.
thank you jimmy carter. one can only wonder which CF 0bama is going to leave for future generations to deal with
Her account of the Real stolen election and the days of hyperinflation are Required Reading ...
Thank you.
I haven't seen any for a long time, and most likely would have since I have followed Cathy off and on for several years.
Please put me on the list.
If you can find that info and post here, that would be great.
You are added to the ping list.
Cathy Buckle makes no sense. QUESTION - how does she survive there? What does she do for income? Anyway, as I understand it she used to support the leaders of the present regime - be careful what you ask for?
“There is so much to do out there in the Zimbabwean bush, so much to preserve, conserve, protect and so much for our children to learn - if only the politics and greed of a few could be stopped.”
Ms. Buckle’s extraordinary naivety regarding the prospects of Zimbabwean democracy puts me in mind of Monty Python’s delimbed knight - “It’s only a flesh wound!”
Eat the Quelia birds
Saturday 13th August 2005
Dear Family and Friends,
In a report this week the Washington based Centre for Global Development said that the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean had plunged to levels that prevailed over 50 years ago in 1953. The CGD, which tracks economic and developmental trends, said that gains made by Zimbabwe over the past five decades had been wiped away in the last six years. The CGD said that the scale and speed of income decline in Zimbabwe was greater than that seen during recent conflicts in the Ivory Coast, the DR Congo and Sierra Leone. These are chilling figures to try and take in and it is very, very hard to see how Zimbabwe can come back from where it is without radical and dramatic changes at every single level.
Ever since the March elections, we have been slipping backwards and the pace has accelerated with each passing week. Inflation is soaring again, almost all basic commodities have disappeared from our shelves, fuel is virtually unobtainable, electricity supplies are erratic and the water, in my home town anyway, has literally been unfit to drink for the last fortnight. The country is in a state of almost complete paralysis and it is utterly absurd that we are sitting here like beggars waiting for a multi million dollar loan from South Africa when right there, on our front door step, nature is again holding out the key to change as summer arrives.
For the last half century Zimbabwe has fed itself from her own fields. We have survived crippling repeated years of drought. We mastered the art of growing crops that we could export in order to earn foreign currency; we filled our silos and warehouses in abundant years to see us through the bad seasons we knew would invariably follow. We built dams and reservoirs and dug wells and boreholes to give us water in dry times. We learnt to grow flowers under floodlights and exotic vegetables in plastic tunnels, to rear ostriches for their leather and to make fuel from ethanol and jatropha.
And now, hah, what shame upon Zimbabwe and her leaders with their masters degrees and doctorates. Now, in 2005, we wait for South Africa to give us food. We have no foreign money to buy fuel. Our fields are unploughed, our lands unprepared for the new season. Every year, as we get poorer and hungrier there is an excuse, a reason why, having produced more than enough food for fifty years, now we can't do it anymore. Our national newspaper tells us that our winter wheat crop has been severely depleted this year because Quelea birds are eating the grain. It does not tell us how, for half a century, our commercial farmers managed to keep bread on our tables and flour in our shops. Instead it tells us that this week the price of a loaf of bread went from four and half to seven thousand dollars and it tells us that instead of going hungry we should eat the Quelea birds that are stealing the national wheat crop. The Herald newspaper tells us we should find ways of catching, killing and canning Quelea birds and then exporting them to Europe for gourmet restaurants. Oh please, what shame, what utter shame.
Until next week, love cathy
When you post, point out that the Buckles were two of the original supporters of mugabe & thug rule in Rhodesia. After getting their wish, her husband at least had the sense to abandon his family and flee to Britain.
We should save our sympathies for the victims of what's happening in that hellhole, and Buckle ain't one - she bears as much responsibility for what goes on there as mugabe, jimmy carter and the rest of the scum that destroyed the former "breadbasket of africa".
Please post a link to that info.
If you have a better source for articles of what is happening on the ground there, please share it.
I’ve got an old high school acquaintance - was a US Marine, turned leftist looney (I know, go figure). On election nights he walks around the neighborhood knocking down Republican campaign signs. n his on words, “hefting a 10 pound slede I like to call ‘the wind’”. Then he complains about Republicans stealing elections.
Sorry, I looked into her background years ago, when I first came across her writings on the situation in Zim. The info is out there, but you'll have to dig for it yourself.
I think the deal with her husband was, he went to England to work to support the family after their farm was seized. She didn't want to leave, so she (and her son?) stayed behind. After a while, he just decided he preferred civilization. I think they divorced, but I'm not sure.
I don't really have any sources of info about the area, other than friends who have family in South Africa. That's where my interest in the region come from. I spent some time in SA and just feel that it's a tragedy what's taken place there over the last 20-30 years.
There are a couple of freepers (clive, backhoe) who might be able to help you out. I thought it was clive who used to post the Cathy Buckle stuff, but I may be mistaken.
Put me on your ping list if you will - I'd be interested to see what you come up with.
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