The Sunday Mail
Munyaradzi Huni Deputy Editor
Jokes about how Zimbabweans have mastered the art of blaming almost everything that is not going on well in their lives on the Western-imposed illegal sanctions have become the in-thing on social networks. A story is told of a Zimbabwean man who after five years of marriage without children was asked by his worried uncle why he still had no child. He responded: “I have tried everything with my wife, but there is nothing more I can do. The children just won’t come. It’s because of the sanctions. We are suffering.”
The stunned uncle decided to pose the same question to the wife, thinking he would probably get a reasonable response.
But, alas, it seemed the couple really knew where to put all the blame.
“Zvataura baba ndizvozvo,” said the wife.
Well, well, indeed the sanctions are biting hard, aren’t they?
Dear reader, you might be wondering what this is all about. Let me explain a bit. Last Sunday, I was in the departure lounge at the Harare International Airport, waiting to fly to Malawi and later Zambia and what I saw really shocked me. I bought a can of coke and enjoyed my drink as I watched fellow passengers walking into the departure lounge.
Ethiopian Airlines had been delayed by about an hour and so there was a lot of time to wander around the duty-free shops in the lounge.
I went on to buy a book entitled “That Used to be Us,” jointly written by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, who I consider to be two of the most pompous Americans whose drunken love for their country up to this day is making me wonder whether I should hate them or admire them.
In the book, the two brag about how America “has acted as the architect, policeman, and banker of the international institutions and practices it established after World War II”. They add that, therefore, “a weaker America would leave the world a nastier, poorer, more dangerous place.” Crazy bastards if you ask me!
To a large extent, the first chapter in this book entitled “If You See Something, Say Something” where America is presented as the Big Brother of the world, later contributed to my shock and disappointment.
After finishing my coke, I walked to the nearby bin to throw away the empty can and, oohh, my dear Lord, did I see a bin! There was this dirty metal container that appeared as though it had been picked from a junk yard and planted in the departure lounge of our international airport.
This supposed bin was placed randomly in some corner. It looked like an abandoned container someone had forgotten to throw into a proper bin.
My Zimbabwean pride was deflated. Could we also put all the blame on the sanctions? Is this how the sanctions are hurting the economy? Have the sanctions taken away our sense of pride and we now can’t even do little things such as buying proper bins for our international airport?
Is this how bad things have become in my beloved Zimbabwe?
But some people may be saying, “Hey, Huni, what’s the fuss? This was just a bin for goodness sake!”
Of course, this was just a bin, but it was not an ordinary bin in the streets of Mabvuku. It’s a bin at the Harare International Airport. In the departure lounge. As a result, this bin is the mirror of who we are as a people to the departing visitor. It reflects our vision, our ambition and destiny as a country.
Put such a bin in any other office or any other place and I will not care a hoot about it. NOT in the departure lounge at the Harare International Airport. NO.
I know for a fact that many Zimbabweans have far much better bins in their homes. So why tarnish the image of our country in such a way? Zimbabweans can do much, much better. This may appear like a small matter, but it’s such small little things that collectively show how much we have lost it as a country.
Surely, despite the sanctions, better bins can be bought or, better still, be donated by several companies out there.
The Harare International Airport should be our pride as Zimbabweans. It is the face of the country to visitors and surely we just can’t place some piece of metal container in some corner and claim to be proudly Zimbabwean. No. No.
As I stood there wondering why we were making ourselves such a laughing stock, I noticed something even more worrying. Some smart-looking Zimbabweans just threw litter into this metal junk and carried on with their business.
To them there was nothing unusual about this bin.
This is Zimbabwe under sanctions. The abnormal has become normal.
In the book, “That Used to be Us,” Friedman and Mandelbaum clearly show that America has been rattled by China and they accept that their country has been overtaken by China in many aspects, but they remain optimistic that one day America will “come back” and the love for their country is not shaken at all.
Why can’t Zimbabweans do the same? Despite sanctions, why can’t we as Zimbabweans continue believing in ourselves and maintaining our pride?
The Minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development, Obert Mpofu; the Minister of Environment, Water and Climate, Saviour Kasukuwere; and the Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Engineer Walter Mzembi, should have tough words for whoever has the responsibility of looking after the Harare International Airport.
Those pieces of junk at our international airport should be thrown back where they belong — the junk yard.
After the disgrace I saw at the Harare International Airport, I was curious to see what kind of bins they have at the airports in Zambia and Malawi. And, hey, this is Africa. It’s not exactly a lie that despite our different geographic locations around the continent, we are one people.
Zambia passed the test with flying colours because at Lusaka International Airport they have proper and clean bins that show that they take their airports and themselves seriously. The next stop was Lilongwe International Airport in Malawi.
A detour here is necessary to put things into context. To start with, I could have just passed Lilongwe International Airport without seeing the disgrace they call their bins because my final destination was Blantyre and not Lilongwe, but the government in Malawi has some funny immigration laws.
The air hostess politely explained: “Even those who are proceeding to Blantyre have to leave the plane. You are supposed to go to immigration and check out and check in again. You will come back to this same plane.”
“Really? Why?” a visibly irritated Indian traveller asked.
“If you are visiting Malawi, you complete immigration formalities at whatever airport you land first. It’s not the airline but those are the laws of the country.” And so we went to complete the immigration formalities. And the Malawian bins stood there telling a sorry state of affairs. But before focusing on these pieces of junk, we came face to face with one of the most primitive ways of screening and searching passengers.
I am personally against this system where passengers have to remove their shoes and belts before they walk past those metal detectors at airports, but at Lilongwe International Airport, they went a step further to rub it in. “Put your bags there and open them please,” ordered the security official.
“You mean opening my bags?” I asked.
“Yes, please. Open all the zips.”
“You do this to all passengers or what?”
“Yes, we do. We check for bombs. You see, if anything happens, all the blame comes back to us. I hope you are okay with this,” said the official as he searched my bags.
Of course, I was not “okay” with all this and I almost burst into laughter when he said “we check for bombs” because no stupid terrorist would put a bomb right there in the open. If terrorists were such damn fools, troubled America would have contained the menace well before September 11.
That irritated Indian man would not have his bags opened. He flatly refused to open his bags and as I stood there watching, my imagination went into overdrive. I saw human-eating creatures crawling out of his bags. I even saw a few snakes — maybe it was because of that movie Snakes in a Plane. I saw a dirty “item of underclothing” and I agreed that indeed this Indian man was not supposed to open his bags. This was just my fertile imagination but indeed the security official allowed the Indian man to walk into the departure lounge without searching his bags. That’s African security spiced with African hospitality.
And so we sat in the departure lounge at Lilongwe International Airport. While waiting I visited one of the rest rooms and Africa, ooohh, Mother Africa, what did I see? There was this broken down, filthy and smelling plastic container that looked as if it had been dumped by a reckless person.
Unfortunately, this was the bin in this toilet at the respectable Lilongwe International Airport. I shook my head in disbelief. Why do we do such things to ourselves as Africans? Why?
Afterwards, I went back into the departure lounge waiting for the boarding time. As I sat there trying to make sense of all this self-inflicted shame, my eyes came across yet another bin which left me convinced that I was wasting my time getting worried about things that many had accepted as very normal.
I quickly thought of getting another opinion on this matter — just in case I was the one who had gone bonkers.
While seated in the departure lounge I noticed one of Zimbabwe’s prolific writers, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and I thought of showing her what I had seen at the Harare International Airport and Lilongwe International Airport.
After showing her the different bins of shame, Dangarembga made a remark that sort of put things into perspective.
“Zvinonyadzisa, but zvinotori nani pamwe dai marara acho atokandwa pasi,” she said. Indeed, this was better. It actually was a big consolation or even a big achievement that there were these bins. This is the “dark continent” and for all we know paicherwa gomba rekurasira marara just outside the departure lounge.
Cry beloved Africa! I rest my case!
