Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

I don’t think I have ever really known why I have been following you. Maybe to fill a hole in me with another man’s life, maybe natural curiosity, or perhaps just to feel the proximity of history, touching the same paper, stones, hands that you touched. Sitting in the Red Cave in the Eastern Highlands I thought I would never know the true stories, because true stories pass away with the moment. But here, I think I have finally got close to the true story and whatever the reason I came looking, I think I have found you.

♦

The next morning, I am woken by singing once more. Many of the people have not slept for three nights and as I walk out to wash again they have a slightly crazed, disorientated look in their eyes. There is another service after breakfast, a smaller one, and then the festival begins to ebb away. Families begin packing up their belongings and pans in blankets, a pick — up arrives and takes a load of young men, sitting in facing rows in its back, down to the town. An hour later it returns and I realise it is a shuttle service, getting people down to the bus station in Chivhu. By midday the VIP toilet has been dismantled and there is a steady stream of people walking away down the track through the trees towards your road. The seven-tonne truck starts up its engine, working up to speed like a grumpy titan woken from a long sleep. The children from the Children’s Home pile into its back and disappear under blankets as Leonard and Jodi roll up their sleeping bags and get into the hire car which I have driven round to the front of your rondavel. We follow the truck up to Leonard’s homestead, where Leonard and Actor present the Home with their annual contribution of grain. I have seen how little grain he has to spare in the back room, but Leonard gives the sack to Sister Dorothy with one of his huge smiles, and then as the children sing a song of thanks he dances a shuffling, twisting dance in reply.

Half an hour later Leonard is still smiling, one arm around Actor, the other waving high above their heads as they both diminish in the shaky frame of the hire car’s rear view mirror. We bump away from them, down Leonard’s track towards your long straight road, turning yellow in the evening sun. I indicate left, but I don’t know why. No one is watching.

♦

My second visit to Zimbabwe ends strangely, but perhaps appropriately. After a flat tyre (picked up on your road — you never did like cars) and dropping off a couple of boys from the festival in one of the high-density housing estates on the edge of the city, Jodi and I are back in Harare. We are staying at the Cresta Oasis hotel on Nelson Mandela Street, and tomorrow morning we will fly out of Zimbabwe, Jodi to Johannesburg and me to London. The modern country is all around us. The long carpeted corridors lead to bedrooms with power showers and a business suite with an internet connection. Businessmen with shiny leather briefcases and Disney ties stroll through the lobby or shake each other’s hands and pat each other’s backs, a deal well done.

Jodi and I are sitting in the hotel bar which has a long window that looks out onto the deserted pool, its umbrella shades furled until summer. The sound of the city filters through to us: car horns, newspaper vendors, people on the pavement, a commuter minibus blaring out jit dance music that rises then falls as it passes. It is hard to believe this is the same country as the one I woke up in this morning.

The mobile phone of the man sitting next to me rings and a few tinny bars of’The Ride of the Valkyries’ cut through the murmur and chatter of the bar. He looks at the number on the screen and frowns. He is Zimbabwean, in his early fifties, wearing a smart dark green suit, and he is partly bald, so when he frowns I watch the wrinkles pass like ripples right to the top of his head. He looks up at me and smiles a massive smile. ‘You are British, aren’t you?’ he says. Yes, I say, I am. He holds out the ringing phone to me. ‘Then you answer this, tell them I am drinking with a British man, they will like that.’

I take the phone, uneasy at his request and aware he seems to find it a little too funny. He laughs with the men around him as I press the green telephone button and answer the call. The woman on the other end of the line is from South African Broadcasting, and she wants to know if Dr Hunzvi is available for interview. I put my hand over the phone and ask him if he knows Dr Hunzvi.

He laughs again. ‘Tell them Dr Hunzvi will call them back.’

And that is how I discover I am drinking with Dr ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi. I have heard the name before. When the men at the festival were talking about the intimidation during the election. And I have seen it before too — in the papers, where it was always preceded by his self-invented moniker: Dr ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi, Zanu PF MP, leader of the War Veterans and organiser of the farm invasions. The leader of Mugabe’s unofficial private army and responsible, according to the whispers I have heard, for recent torture and intimidation. I remember reading a letter in The Herald asking Dr Hunzvi to declare exactly which regiment he fought with in the War of Independence. Many veterans have no memory of fighting with him, and some doubt lie fought at all.

Dr Hunzvi takes back his phone. ‘They have been calling me a terrorist,’ he says, ‘the most dangerous man in Africa! Hah! Well, would I be drinking here with you if I was a terrorist?’

I admit he probably wouldn’t, but somehow I don’t think he would mind if I disagreed with him on this point. He pronounces the word ‘terrorist’ with a hint of disgust but with more than a dash of pride as well. Jodi tugs at my arm and tells me to keep him talking while she goes and gets her camera, so I turn back to Hunzvi and try to flatter him into conversation.

As we talk he reminds me of a child. He is obviously clever but seems to have a slight grasp on lots of subjects and no firm hold on any one, as if he is repeating dictums and ideas he has heard elsewhere. He is keen to let me know of his power in the country.

‘I can get anything done and anything changed in this country. I have the power to do what I want.’

Judging from the nervous laughter from around the bar, I believe him. I ask him about the popular support for the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party, and for its leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

He laughs again and, taking out a piece of paper and a red pen, says, ‘Shall I tell you what MDC stands for?’ He writes the three letters down the page, then adds a word to each, turning it into a mnemonic. He hands me the paper but I do not understand the Shona, so he tells the barman to translate for me. The barman leans over from where he is cleaning glasses and reads the three words. He smiles weakly and says quietly, ‘Morgan Tsvangirai eats shit.’ Hunzvi laughs hysterically at his own joke.

When Dr Hunzvi asks me what I am doing in Zimbabwe I tell him about you and your festival. At the mention of your name he nods slowly, and his smiling face clouds over. He says he knows you, and then, turning to his drink, he dismisses you with a wave of his hand. Another ‘colonist’, one of the whites who took the land in the first place. I tell him I think he is wrong, and that, however different his means, he actually shares some of the same aims as you. You wanted land for the Africans and, at least publicly, so does he. He turns back to me and tells me that no, I am the one who is wrong. ‘Your uncle came here and stole from us, like everyone else.’

I feel my anger rise and I realise that your name undermines his oversimplified view. Your rare talent a hundred years ago was for seeing in colours other than just black and white, while Hunzvi’s vision is solidly monochrome.