The (Almost) Last Resort

There is not really much to write about these days. The glamour of the GNU has worn off, the excitement of having real money to spend instead of worthless bundles of Zimbabwe dollar notes is no longer exciting – in fact it is all a bit depressing because there is far too little money around. Mugabe and his ZANU PF are firmly in control of the future and Tsvangirayi is being hammered at every opportunity.

His attempt to sign a BIPPA with the South Koreans has given George Charamba – a ZANU PF civil servant – an opportunity to lambast him for daring to assume that he could sign a BIPPA with anyone. For me, it is not clear that Tsvangirayi did sign a BIPPA with South Korea. What I think happened is that he organised some trade relationships with them and The Herald reported that he had signed a BIPPA. Thus followed all sorts of further speculation on what he might or might not have done. Tsvangirayi and his press spokespeople are saying nothing, mainly because whatever the MDC say, is construed as ‘Treason’ by someone in ZANU PF.

I am reading a book called ‘The Last Resort’ by Douglas Rogers who was at school with my sons here in Zimbabwe. Rogers is a journalist in the USA today. He writes well about the life of his parents, Lyn and Ros Rogers who hail from Mutare. Lyn Rogers was a lawyer (well known to a good friend of mine) and on retirement he purchased a farm the Harare side of Christmas Pass which he turned into a back-packers lodge and called it ‘Drifters’.

In 2000 when ‘the trouble’ started, Douglas living then in the UK was concerned about is parents’ welfare and future so he came back several times to see how they were getting on. In those periods he met a lot of diverse people from both sides of the Zimbabwe political spectrum and he had many interesting experiences. He writes well. His book is both hilarious and tragic. Mostly it rings of truth and it is first hand and it is a valuable history of the country between 2000 and 2009.