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Zimbabwe: Mugabe Held at Gunpoint, Says Exiled Writer

Charles Cobb, Jr

7 May 2008

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interview

In Chenjerai Hove's novels and poetry one finds deep passion for ordinary people under the lash of oppression and struggling against poverty. That very passion has forced him into exile from Zimbabwe, where as both newspaper columnist and novelist he butted heads with the government of President Robert Mugabe.

In a wide-ranging conversation with AllAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr., Hove, now a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University in the United States, discussed the failure of regional leaders to respond meaningfully to Zimbabwe's ongoing turmoil, as well as his thoughts on why the 84-year-old Mugabe clings to office. Excerpts:

Tell us a little about your background. You're a native Zimbabwean. You grew up there?

I started as a teacher, a high school teacher during the liberation war, in the countryside in 1977.

Where in the countryside?

In the southern parts near Masvingo, in an area called Bikita. We didn't teach much because that was the height of the war and so we were always in the mountains, taking food or carrying messages from this guerrilla group to another one and that sort of thing. When the school was closed in 1978 I got a job teaching in the Lowveld in the sugar cane plantations, in a school owned by the [sugar] company, and of course the war was there also. So it didn't quite stop. Then after independence I decided to leave teaching because when we went on strike to ask for equal pay...

The teachers went on strike?

Yes, black teachers went on strike because there was a teacher's college for whites, coloureds [people of mixed race] and Asians, and a teacher's college for blacks who were studying the same curriculum – education, English, languages and all that – and then when we went to teach, the white teachers would get four times our salaries. So we wanted Mugabe to regularize these salaries in 1981. The transitional government of [Abel] Muzorewa in 1978 had done a little to try to improve the situation but didn't go the whole way.

So when we went on strike to demand that these salaries also acknowledge our years of experience where we were underpaid – we went on strike the same time as black nurses – Mugabe came out on television and radio and said these teachers and nurses contributed nothing to the liberation movement.

Now when I was teaching in the countryside, there was a month for example, when I remained with 23 cents because my whole salary had gone to buying shoes, shirts, trousers for the fighters – some of them wanted sunglasses and things like that too. And then the man stands up and says we contributed nothing! I was so annoyed, I decided to leave teaching.

So I got a job as editor at Mambo Press in the Midlands in the town of Gweru. I worked there as a senior editor until 1985 when I went to Zimbabwe Publishing House. We had political differences with the owners so I left and became a journalist, because at Mambo Press I had also been editing the magazine called Moto, which was a monthly.

After Mambo, in 1985 I went to Zimbabwe Publishing House as senior editor in charge of literature, education and training of younger editors. Then because of ideological differences – the owners relied and depended on the patronage of the Minister of Information – I refused to continue because when the minister, Nathan Shamuyarira, was removed to be foreign minister we were concerned about our books because he was the one pushing the books, especially political books.

So I left and became a journalist for Inter Press Service. I was the regional editor for Southern Africa in charge of culture. From there I was appointed writer-in- residence at the University of Zimbabwe from 1991 to 1994, after which I went as visiting professor at Lewis and Clark College [in Oregon in the U.S.]. Then later on I went to teach at Leeds University [in Britain] and I was also a guest writer for the whole of the Yorkshire region. When [Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher closed the coal mines, [trying] to weaken the trade union movement, there was a lot of unemployment. People were just sitting there so I would go and try to help them [use] their potential skills in writing poetry or short stories or essays and things like that.

Would it be correct to say you're in exile from Zimbabwe or can you go back?

I'm in exile but I have not been sent out. I left on my own. I had a column in the newspaper called The [Zimbabwe] Standard and after the parliamentary elections of 2000 [amidst] the violence which was happening, I was writing, satirising the political system and how some people like President Mugabe were so power hungry that they didn't care whether people were being butchered.

Then we were heating up [ahead of] the presidential elections in March 2002, I was continuing to write [and] began to be informed by friends who were in the secret police that there was no way they could arrest me because that would draw a lot of international public attention. They could only find a way, like an accident.

Assassinate you? Accidentally!

So there was a lot pressure from my friends, like Wole Soyinka. Wole would say "Listen, why are still sitting there? Do you want to be another Ken Saro Wiwa? Do you want to be a dead hero? Get out of that place." And I remember they sent me a ticket, and said, "Okay, this is an open ticket, don't give us the excuse that you didn't have any means."

So when things were bad I called Wole Soyinka and [American writer] Russell Banks and I said, "Listen I am now going to leave. Where should I go?" They said, "We've found a place for you in France. There's a town there just outside Paris which wants a guest writer." So when I left, of course I left on a 10-day ticket... but I knew I was not going to go back. I can't go back. It would be suicidal.

I wrote an article in which I said the president has ruled the country through the use of fear and force, now the tragedy is that he fears even himself because he has frightened others so much that he fears himself. If you look at his motorcade, there's is no president I have seen with such a motorcade. It's such a performance – over 45 cars, motorcycles, now it includes a mobile clinic.

He [Mugabe] responded. He said, "There's a writer who says I am afraid of myself. I don't hear anybody. That writer is the one who is afraid. He's outside the country." I wouldn't go back.

As somebody who is native to Zimbabwe, who joined the war for liberation, who was among those celebrating independence of Zimbabwe, is the way things have turned out today surprising to you? Could you have imagined this in 1981?

I could have, yes, especially because I was in the countryside at the height of the war in 1977-78. And I saw, you realised, you know, [guerrillas] murdering people. They used either to say you are a sell-out, or you are a witch, and then they would get villagers and say okay get sticks and bash their heads. Or just take bayonets and kill...

For what reason?

They would say you are a sell-out, giving information to the Rhodesians. A lot of people died... That's why Mugabe didn't want to have some kind of truth and reconciliation commission. And of course at the same time I also saw the brutality of the Rhodesian Army, just coming to a village at night where the guerrillas had been and burning down the whole village with people inside. I saw all that.

Then I got worried about the behaviour of the guerrillas and also the intimidation. In the 1980 elections the people who were actually put in the transition camps [in terms of the agreement which governed the independence election] were not the real fighters. They took villagers, girls and boys, and said you just go in there. The real fighters remained in the villages and said to villagers, "If you vote for Bishop Muzorewa" – who was put there by the Rhodesians – "if you vote for him, we are going to kill you." So people in 1980 did not vote because they liked Mugabe or Joshua Nkomo – especially Mugabe. They voted to stop being killed, to stop the war. They wanted somebody who could stop the war.

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