Zimbabwean police officers stand guard over ballot boxes at a polling station in Zvimba, March 30, 2008. (AP Photo)
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: LAURA LYNCH
Zimbabwe election redux
Election uncertainty revisits times and friends past
April 1, 2008
Band on the run
Laura Lynch reports for World At Six (runs: 5:15)
This is a land awash in rumours and what would pass in other places as rank paranoia. Much is spoken in whispers and quiet conversations. Little is solid fact of the kind reporters need to portray the real story of what is happening here.
This is the second election I have covered in Zimbabwe. In many ways, it is the same. There are the warnings that you are being watched, that you must step carefully even as you are working with the permission of the government. Coming here for the first time and staying in the historic Meikles hotel, I felt an abrupt disconnect. The grand old building is a throwback to Rhodesian times. The decor, the menu, the safari-style bar were all of an era when the land was ruled by Ian Smith and the white minority. But the white faces in the bar were few, and just outside its doors the streets were filled with people struggling to survive. That, too, remains the same, though the hardship seems greater and much more widespread.
What is different this time, for me, is the sense that something might change. It is generating intense reactions that now roll like waves of worry across the country. It comes in the form of a text message from an activist I know. "Crackdown may be coming, we are going into hiding for now," it says. Knowing what has happened in the past to this person, I cannot discount this level of fear and I cannot criticize the decision to go underground.
The price of change
For this activist and for others I know who have lived and died here, there is and was a price to be paid for fighting for change. Several years ago, I came to know Mark Chavunduka, a Zimbabwean journalist who endured beatings and torture when his newspaper published an article the government did not like. It reported news of plans for a military coup against Mugabe.
I met Mark shortly after he had been released from jail. We were Nieman fellows — two of a group of journalists who were given fellowships to study at Harvard University for a year. Mark was among the quietest in our rowdy bunch of reporters. He had visible scars from the injuries he suffered inside prison. But the worst scars were the ones I could not see. Mark rarely spoke of the terror of those days and nights when he suffered so much at the hands of Zimbabwe's intelligence services.
He did open up once, when our class was mounting a campaign to have criminal charges against him dropped. We decided to interview in an effort to raise his profile. Mark's comments about the after-effects of torture were powerful and disturbing.
"There are times when you wake up in the middle of the night really sweating, almost as if you'd been taking a shower," he said. "You can't think. You just start crying."
Mark was eventually acquitted and when our year at Harvard ended, I thought Mark would stay and seek asylum in the United States. But he was determined to come back here, possibly to start a political career. I remember thinking he was courageous and crazy at the same time. Mark never did run for office. He died in 2002 after a long illness.
I think about him often when I am here, reporting relatively freely despite an undercurrent of intimidation. I do not think I will ever face the kind of treatment he did, nor will I have to go into hiding as others, including the activist, have done in the last two days.
The change that Mark was hoping for may yet come. But even the chance of change has created anxiety and fear among those who want it so much.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Biography
Based in London UK, CBC Radio correspondent Laura Lynch has reported from many continents. She has worked as the CBC's parliamentary reporter in Ottawa, covering the department of justice and the Supreme Court. In 1999 she was awarded a Martin Wise Goodman Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. She is currently assigned to many stories in Africa and South Asia.
