Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [But who will guard the guards themselves?]

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by John Eppel

Juvenal had adultery in mind when he wrote that, but I use it in a Zimbabwean context where the distinction between those who administer the law and those who break it, has become blurred.

Do not underestimate the guilt that runs through the veins of half-decent white people who, for decades, benefitted from the exploitation of black and brown people. But do not take advantage of their guilt too often, like my erstwhile friend, Assistant Inspector Takesure Mararike [not his real name], who robbed me of my Toshiba laptop, my soul.

One morning I heard a banging at my gate, and there was Takesure with his pretty young wife, Cleopatra. He was a radio technician with the Zimbabwe Republic Police, and he had recently been transferred from Gwanda. He needed temporary accommodation, until the Force found him a house, and he had heard that my servant's quarters were vacant. Indeed they were; for good reason--they consisted of one cramped room, a toilet without a seat, a shower without hot water, and a grimy fireplace. These kayas, as they were called, symbolise the contempt with which settler employers treated their indigenous domestic workers.

I said I was ashamed of the place, but if he was desperate he was welcome to stay there, free of charge for as long as necessary. That very afternoon he moved in, with his wife and three little children. I asked him to go easy on the water and electricity, both scarce and expensive commodities in Bulawayo, but said he could help himself to as much firewood as he needed. (It was only after they had left that I discovered his wife had sold my entire woodpile to passers-by.)

The next day there was a knock on my door and I ushered in Takesure, looking very smart in his police uniform. He told me, over a cup of tea, how tough things were in these days of economic meltdown in Zimbabwe. He had heard that telecommunication companies in New Zealand were keen to recruit radio technicians from African countries, and could I help him with enquiries? | sat him down next to my Toshiba laptop and together we surfed the Net until we found some friendly and helpful New Zealand websites. It looked as if there were indeed jobs going for radio technicians. I helped Takesure create a neat resume, and we used my email address to apply for a job through Telecom Human Resources.

A week later, Takesure and his family were gone and so were my Toshiba laptop (my entire database), my son's bicycle, 25 litres of petrol, my backpack, my torch, and a change of clothes, which included my colourful woven belt from Guatemala, the only one in town. The police would not touch the case, and passed me on to the C.I.D., who invited me for questioning the following day.

My immediate concern was to visit my Internet server in order to download any emails that had accumulated since the theft. There was one from the Telecom Recruitment Team:

"Dear Takesure

A job opening matching your profile for a position to help Kiwis get connected has just been posted in our Career Section. If you would like to apply ..." etcetera.

O the satire of circumstance!

The Chief Inspector, wearing dark glasses in a dimly lit room, was sitting at his typewriter when he motioned me inside. Laboriously he took down my statement, shaking his head, as if in denial, at the mention of my chief suspect. He assured me that they would do everything they could to recover my property, and when he stood up to shake my hand I thought I saw my Guatemala belt around his waist.

To this day, nothing has come of the investigation. My black colleagues at the school where I teach tell me that whites are fair game when it comes to the 'redistribution of wealth'. The reasoning is that we (the whites) took everything from them (the blacks), so why should they not take everything from us?

The issues here are property (ownership), and the breakdown of law and order, and I should like to connect them with the burning question of the land and the Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe which, we are told, is not yet over.

The historical view of the land is that the whites looked upon it as property to exploit for material gain, and the blacks looked upon it as a source of spirituality. In his interview with Ranka Primorac, Chenjerai Hove speaks for all white settlers (peaking at approximately 270 000) when he says: 'For white people it was just a place where you put seeds, grow crops and sell them and make big money and go to holidays in Portugal or London or South Africa.' The worst thing he can say about black people who were given farms forcibly taken from white commercial farmers, is that they are behaving like whites: 'People who now have land don't know the spiritual meaning of land. They are trying to behave as if they were settlers. To just go in there and grab a piece of land.... "The idea that white settlers are, by definition, greedy exploiters of the land, ripples into literature, where white poets who express in words a love for the land of their birth are sometimes called 'insincere' or 'morally questionable'.