Zimbabwe: A Country Looking Forward

"That's your problem, Bruce.  That's everybody's problem: you keep looking up."

If you're as much of a film nut as I am, you will recognise this quote as coming from God, played by Morgan Freeman in 'Bruce Almighty'.

Thanks to the help of my friend, Brian, who provided much of the information from my last post on Zimbabwe, I am now in direct contact with Dave Coltart - the Zimbabwean minister for sport and education.  Dave is going to be my mentor, of a sort, at least on the subject of Zimbabwe, starting with recommending reading material.

But what I know of Zimbabwe is this: the people who prospered in the early days of Mugabe's government have now grown old waiting for his regime to wither and die.  And now that they face the prospect of Mugabe's eventual death as he pushes 90 years old, they must wonder with a mixture of hope and fear, what the future of the country will be like when he is gone.

But be that as it may, Zimbabwe is filled with people of a courage I can only dream of; people who refuse to look down, and who know better than to simply look up.

If I have learned anything since my arrival on the human rights scene, it is that the UN is not the forum that will bring peace and stability to Zimbabwe.  If anything, the archaic veto powers of the Big 5 are precisely what will prevent the UN from doing ANYTHING about Zimbabwe's political and economic situation.  China and Russia stand to lose far too much to allow it.

So where does hope come from?  Where do these ordinary people get the strength to laugh at Mugabe and his militias?

As odd a paradox as it may seem, their courage comes from fear.  Whatever fear they have felt, they have been forced to face by the violence exacted upon them under Mugabe.  And in facing their fears, they have overcome them.  In a strangely self-defeating way, Mugabe's tyranny has armed his "enemies" with a courage that only grows with each act of terror he commits.  The stronger he tries to be, the stronger they themselves become.

As disempowering as it feels to me, at least until I know the situation better, there is a strange comfort to knowing that in one of the most miserable national situations on earth, there is still something inside so strong, and it grows stronger even as its enemy tries to bludgeon it into submission.