ZIMBABWE ENGLISH
Voice:
A long time ago in a beautiful land far from here there lived a king who had bewitched his people.
Mugabe:
Things will never ever change.
Narrator:
I enter Zimbabwe as a tourist. Harare’s International Festival of the Arts serves as my cover. A rare spell of, be it limited, freedom of speech in a country in which criticism on Robert Mugabe’s regime is not a laughing matter.
Voice:
And the only sound to be heard in that beautiful land was the drone of the king’s voice.
Man:
The camera is one thing that the ZANU-PF government is the last thing you’ll want to see is a camera. Believe me it’s really difficult to operate a camera. If someone from ZANU-PF sees you with your ….
Narrator
First mission in Zimbabwe: changing money. To get money from their own saving accounts Zimbabweans have to stand in line, for hours, every single day. Not that there’s much to buy with your money.
Narrator:
The alternative is changing foreign currency on the black market. The official rate offers you 30 000 Zim dollars for one US dollar. The unofficial rate is slightly higher …
Reporter:
How many Zimbabwean dollars gives you one US dollar?
Man:
So this is one billion, this is two billion, three billion, four billion, five billion. So that pack makes five billion which is five trillion because three zeros were taken off last year so it’s actually ten billion, one note. A loaf of bread is fifty-two million. Not even a fifty can buy a loaf of bread.
Reporter:
What about a beer?
Man:
A beer is eighty million.
Reporter:
Eighty million?
Man:
Eight zero.
Narrator:
I ask the boys who helped me change my money what they think about Mugabe and the turmoil after the elections.
Second Man:
Robert Mugabe made it clear on his speech that he’s still the president of Zimbabwe and he’ll not allow-
Reporter:
And he said I will…. Didn’t he say nothing will ever change?
Second Man:
Yeah. He’s not leaving.
Reporter:
Is there any violence involved? Do you know about any of that?
Man:
I only hear stories; you never really see anything.
Man 2:
There’s no violence. People in Zimbabwe are tired of complaining. They just want to live life.
Narrator:
You only hear stories but you never really see anything. And yet, the victims are there by the hundreds. On the run for the violence in the villages all over the country. Seeking refuge in Harare.
Narrator:
Trudy Stevenson is a local politician for the MDC, the party of Mugabe’s main competitor, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Trudy:
And so I don’t know if his relatives are still there, at the clinic, or if they’re still…... Really I don’t want to… But he wanted to interview them and he’s doing a film.
Trudy:
Yeah except that he’s got a camera, whereas the other one didn’t so he wants to make a film.
Narrator:
Trudy hooks me up with someone who can bring me to one of the secret hideaways.
Reporter:
Is it far?
Lady:
Yeah, this is… we’re coming round to ZANU-PF headquarters so I’d put it down now.
Hospitalized man:
Basically they’re looking for you. This is why, this is because you vote for in this.
Reporter:
They beat you bad?
Hospitalized man:
Yes.
Reporter:
With what?
Hospitalized man:
They burn a stick . They say, after that, they said ‘we’re going to teach you how to vote because you have…. we are doing the…’
Trudy:
The message from the authorities is be afraid, be very afraid, you know, we have degrees in violence and all this kind of thing which Robert has want to say, or was want to say – ‘We have degrees in violence’.
Reporter:
They cut off your ear?
Second hospitalized man:
Yes they cut it right off.
Reporter:
Why?
Second hospitalized man:
Their rules.
Cameraman:
Are these people safe here?
Nurse:
We don’t know. We don’t know because you can never know if you are safe because you don’t know what each and everyone is thinking and who is seeing when and where. So we don’t know. We can’t say we’re safe here.
Third hospitalized man:
They say ‘why don’t you so come to America’ so I going to stay in America and I said ‘no I can’t move to America I’m a Zimbabwean, how can I go to America?’ ‘So why did you vote MDC?’ And I said ‘it was free fair elections; everyone’s supposed to vote who… anyone he likes to vote’.
Trudy:
They call ZANU-PF the blood party and they do mean it. They mean this party will use blood.
Narrator:
I can’t leave the capital with my tourist visum. There are too many roadblocks. The violence outside Harare remains hidden to foreign journalists. Two Young MDC-activists take me to one of the slums on the edge of Harare.
Man:
It’s quite a pity because with the possibility of … coming… it’s made you to face your fault, to correct your fault.
Narrator:
I have a meeting with two women who have been kicked out of their house because they voted for the wrong party.
Lady:
We are suffering, there’s no food, there’s no water. Everything is going up!
Reporter:
The shops?
Lady:
The shops are empty.
Reporter:
Transport?
Lady:
Transport, everything, nearly everything in Zimbabwe there is now nothing.
Absolutely nothing. These votes from 2008 show that even as he was beating people and doing everything, beating everyone but the people chose him. We don’t want him.
Mugabe:
Things will never, ever change!
Lady:
When someone is dying, when a horse is dying, and if you come too nearby then it will kick you, a very big kick. (Laughs) This man is dying.
Mugabe:
Forwards ever, backwards never!