Daniel Howden, Independent (UK), Nov. 17, 2006
A rusted wire fence divides the old Zimbabwe from
the new. On the one side lies Effie Malamba; born
in 1901 she was buried beneath a granite
headstone 90 years later. On the other is Sylvia
Ncube; born in 1974 she was laid to rest just 32
years later. The wire separates Bulawayo's old
Hyde Park cemetery from the extension opened this
February. Effie lies amid ordered ranks of stone
epitaphs. Sylvia lies in a chaos of churned
earth. All around her the mounds of mud and
stones, garlanded with plastic flowers, tell the
story of the shocking disintegration of Zimbabwe,
which now has the lowest life expectancy for women anywhere in the world:
34.
A forest of black metal plates marks the mounting
death toll and their hand-painted white numbers
record the birth dates of a missing generation.
Thulan Sabanda, born 1972; Ozia Moyo in 1971,
Lulu Olomo in 1975, are just three of hundreds.
The World Health Organisation has plotted this
precipitous fall in women's mortality in the
former British colony from 65, little more than a
decade ago, to today's low. Speaking privately,
WHO officials admitted to The Independent that
the real number may be as low as 30, as the
present figures are based on data collected two years ago.
The reasons for this plunge are several. Zimbabwe
has found itself at the nexus of an Aids
pandemic, a food crisis and an economic meltdown
that is killing an estimated 3,500 people every
week. That figure is more than those dying in
Iraq, Darfur or Lebanon. In war-torn Afghanistan,
where women's plight has received global
attention, life expectancy is still above 40.
This cull is not an act of God. It is a
catastrophe aggravated by the ruthless,
kleptocratic reign of Robert Mugabe, in power
since independence in 1980. The Mugabe regime has
succeeded in turning a country once f?ted as the
breadbasket of Africa into a famished and
demoralised land deserted by its men of working
age, with its women left to die a silent death.
With the state in collapse, the evidence of this
tragedy is necessarily anecdotal.
At Hyde Park, one of many cemeteries in one of
many towns, the grave diggers are tired. They say
they are carving up to 25 graves a day from the
baked earth, more than double the figure earlier in the year.
Twenty-six-year-old Shenghi, like almost every
other Zimbabwean, is a member of a burial
society-a kind of morbid Christmas club. These
savings associations bring people together to
meet the costs of burying their sons, daughters,
sisters and brothers at a rate that's
accelerating beyond comprehension. "In the last
three months we've had to bury 14 of the 50 people in our society," she
says.
Zimbabwe is now a place haunted by
incomprehensible numbers: 85 per cent of the
population living in poverty; 80 per cent
unemployment; 90 per cent HIV infection rates in
the army and most unbelievably, 2,000 per cent inflation.
In this man-made chaos it is the women, bottom of
the social heap, who are suffering the most. The
men have the option of leaving children to jump
the border into South Africa. Many return only to
be buried but at 37 years, their life expectancy remains marginally higher.
Eighteen months ago the government launched
operation Murambatsvina-Drive Out the Trash-a
vicious offensive aimed at the poorest sectors of
society. Hundreds of thousands of families were
made homeless in slum clearances and street
vendors were arrested, robbed and driven out of
business. Shari Appel, from the NGO Solidarity
Peace Trust, says that trauma is killing people
before their time: "The stress and misery mean people are keeling over and dying. The health
system has totally collapsed. Now access to
education is going the same way and girls are the
first to miss out. In the overcrowding, domestic
violence and sexual abuse are rife."
Amen is 33 years old. Lying on a stained sheet in
an Aids hospice outside the country's second
city, Bulawayo, she is waiting to die. Her body
is covered in the tell-tale sores of full-blown
Aids. She has three children staying with her
sister in Plum Tree. It is only an hour's drive
away but she has not seen them once since
checking in four months ago as no one has money for transport.
Anna, 25, gets to see her children. Proud is
eight, and out at school, Agrippa, six, is at
home along with his sister, 18-month-old Violet.
Home is a one-room shack with no running water or
electricity. Violet is sitting on the bed that
takes up half of the living space. Like her
mother and brothers, she is covered in sores, her
scalp is ringed with white scabs. There's no
money to get a doctor to tell Anna what she already knows-they all have
Aids.
With proper health care and access to
anti-retrovirals (ARVs) HIV sufferers can now
live with the disease for decades.
But in Zimbabwe the health system is
disintegrating. Pledges of free ARVs from the
government contrast with the reality of corrupt,
incompetent and threadbare health care for those
with money-for those without it is completely out of reach.
State hospitals are unofficially charging to see
patients, dispensaries are empty and the brain
drain has seen almost every qualified nurse or
doctor leave. Even dying comes at a cost.
Families wanting to collect a relative's body
must provide a coffin in order to claim them. Many simply cannot afford
this.
The result is on show at the hospital mortuary in
Nkayi in the north of Matabeleland. Its imposing
metal fridge has only one working motor, so the
bodies are kept just a few degrees below the
boiling daytime temperature outside. Its nine
berths are home to at least a dozen cadavers.
Only a few are fresh enough to be swollen. The
others have decomposed inside the clothing that
was never taken off them. The stench is appalling.
When asked how long they had been there, the
hospital guard shrugs and replies: "More than a year."
Apart from the funeral parlours the only thing
that is booming is the secret police-the Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Its swollen
budget, many times higher than health spending,
has enabled its network of informers and
enforcers to keep a lid on almost all resistance.
They have been credited with infiltrating the
main opposition Movement for Democratic Change,
which tore itself apart this year, splitting into
rival factions. It no longer threatens a repeat
of the election win it credibly claims Mr Mugabe stole from it two years
ago.
In this climate of fear and despair, it is a
women's group that has consistently defied the
regime to go out on to the streets and protest.
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) was set up three
years ago and its founder, businesswoman Jenni
Williams, has been arrested countless times and
had her life threatened on several occasions.
Despite this there are now an estimated 30,000
members, who are demonstrating for basic rights
including access to food, education and
healthcare. And so far Woza's strict creed of
non-violence has made it hard for authorities to
crack down on it too viciously. "It's very hard
for a policeman to intimidate us when his mum,
his sister, or his girlfriend is there as one of
us. It's embarrassing for them," Ms Williams
says. "I'm very proud to be a Zimbabwean woman
right now. Why should a woman carry all these burdens and be silent?"
Some names have been changed to protect individuals.
Nation's decline
4m The amount the population is thought to have
fallen since the last census in 2002. Current
estimates put it as low as 8 million.
34 Life expectancy for women. It was 65 just over
a decade ago. It is much lower than in
neighbouring countries: in Zambia, life
expectancy for women is 40; in Mozambique, 46; in
Botswana, 40; in South Africa, 49.
120/1000 The infant mortality rate. During the 1990s, it was 61/10-00.
7,000 The cost in Zimbabwean dollars of a dose of
anti-retroviral drugs to combat Aids.
50% The amount Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk since 1999.
000% The rate of inflation in Zimbabwe. In 1980,
when the country became independent, the rate was 7 per cent.
73m The size of Zimbabwe's tobacco output in
millions of tonnes. In 2000 it was 734 million.
Original article
(Posted on November 17, 2006)