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INSIDE AFRICA

Zimbabwe in Focus

Aired January 20, 2007 - 12:30:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FEMI OKE, HOST: Hello, I'm Femi Oke. This is INSIDE AFRICA, your weekly look at life and news on the continent coming to you from Johannesburg, South Africa, city that has a very large immigrant Zimbabwean population. Our focus this week is Zimbabwe.
In the past, this landlocked country has been a major producer of agriculture and tobacco. It's home to the spectacular Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world.

Zimbabwe, once so full of promise, is now heading even deeper into an economic and humanitarian crisis. Poverty, massive unemployment, HIV/AIDS and hunger are taking a toll on its residents, both young and old. Jeff Koinange reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: 12-year old Beatrice (ph) is digging the fields around her family's makeshift shack for dinner. And this is what dinner looks like for Beatrice and many others in Zimbabwe these days, shocking in a country once dubbed southern Africa's breadbasket. Now, a rat-infested nation of beggars to whom a rat can seem like a blessing.

Beatrice takes her catch home where her mother, Elizabeth, immediately puts it on the grill. Actually, it's more like three stones, supported by a wood fire. Just enough food, she says, to feed her starving family of six.

This startling footage was shot by a CNN cameraman operating under the radar of the Zimbabwe government, which isn't keen to have stories like Beatrice and Elizabeth's told to the outside world.

"Look what I have been reduced to eating," she says. "How can my children eat mice in a country that used to export food? This is a tragedy."

A modern day tragedy, and, experts say, an unfolding catastrophe.

SHADRACK GUTTO, CENTRE FOR INTL. STUDIES: You know, they were living in heaven when it is actually hell, and the reality is really grinding down and not improving.

KOINANGE: It's hard to imagine how this could have ended up like this. But maybe not so hard to imagine when you consider that the man responsible, who has led this country since independence in 1980, is now, at 82 years old, still ruling with an iron fist. And if he has his way, Robert Mugabe is determined to be president for life, with little standing in his way.

There's no opposition to speak of -- Mugabe's government has made sure of that -- and those in the country's capital Harare who dared to oppose him at the last election, woke up to this one morning a year ago. Their homes, businesses, livelihoods reduced to rubble. The United Nations says more than a quarter of a million people were left homeless in this operation, people like Winnie Gondo who now have to use any means available to survive, including burnt-out vehicle carcasses as shelter.

Gondo says she lost not only her home, but one of her twin sons also died from the conditions they've been forced to live under.

"I've lost everything," she says. "We live like animals here, and there is no relief in sight."

Everything Winnie Gondo does these days is a reminder of just how far things have fallen apart in what was once one of Africa's most stable economies.

We've tried repeatedly to get the Zimbabwe government to respond to our questions. They've ignored us every time. In fact, most Western journalists are banned from Zimbabwe, making reporting out of there increasingly dangerous.

Critics blame only one man for Zimbabwe's current vows, arguably Africa's biggest of the big men, whom they say have lasted long past their sell-by date, a man who now wants to postpone presidential elections scheduled for 2008 until the end of the decade.

President Mugabe blames his country's troubles on the West, and the media, and on the mostly white farmers who formerly controlled Zimbabwe's agriculture.

GUTTO: The key will be when Robert Mugabe moves out of the picture as a leader of Zimbabwe.

KOINANGE: Until such time, Zimbabwe seems set to remain as a nation of fuel queues and food lines, of shacks and squatters, a nation fast grinding to a halt.

Jeff Koinange, CNN, Johannesburg.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: Every day, hundreds of Zimbabweans try to leave their country; experts say as many as 2,000 a week. Most of them end up here in South Africa, as illegal immigrants. Jeff Koinange caught up with some of them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOINANGE: At a tiny church in a Johannesburg suburb, a group of people from Zimbabwe try to comfort each other and rally around a common cause. They're all exiles, fleeing what they call a repressive regime determined to stay in power at any cost.

It's run by this man, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the 82-year old dictator who's been in power now for more than a quarter of century, and this past week, all but rubberstamped his way to continue ruling, at least until the end of a decade.

Among the exiles on this day, Roy Bennett, an outspoken opposition politician forced to flee his country as Mugabe's government continues its crackdown on dissidents and activists.

Bennett addresses the audience in their local language, Shona (ph). He's one of more than 3 million Zimbabweans trying to eke out a living in South Africa while keeping the opposition struggle at home alive. A struggle that to many outsiders seems to be running out of steam. Bennett insists the movement is an evolution, not a revolution.

ROY BENNETT, EXILED OPPOSITION POLITICIAN: It's the whole situation to remove Mugabe's oppressions, and every day we move further down in (inaudible) to remove him. But it has to be a joint process, together with the structures and the parties inside Zimbabwe and those of us outside Zimbabwe, together, to be able to create a critical mass for the people to be able to stand up to say that they've had enough.

KOINANGE: But even if they say they've had enough of Mugabe's 26-year rule, many exiles don't seem to want to openly show it. At this gathering of exiles organized in Johannesburg recently and dubbed "Freedom in Our Lifetime," only a few dozen supporters bothered to show up. Zimbabwe fatigue, it seems, has fast set in.

FARAI MONRO, ZIMBABWEAN ACTIVIST: So, Zimbabwe does tend to fall off the map for people, and so you have to start injecting more kind of creative solutions, not banging - not banging people over the head about Zimbabwe, democracy this, and human rights that, but actually relate people on a realistic level, on a day-to-day level.

KOINANGE: A day-to-day level that experts say have seen the country's inflation level skyrocket to a dizzying 1,000 percent in the last three years. Unemployment hovers at around 80 percent, and social services like healthcare and education are non-existent for the average Zimbabwean.

MONRO: The human stories are what - what hits you, you know. The fact that children are not going to school because theirs parents can't afford it. The fact that people who used to eat three meals a day are now eating one meal a day. The fact that many people don't even have money - money for transport, just to get into town. The fact that there is the whole social service delivery crisis, where the social services, your water, your electricity, are in a constant state of crisis.

KOINANGE: Some, though, like outspoken Zimbabwean archbishop Pius Ncube says in the end, it might take divine intervention to remove Mugabe from power. He insists hope still springs eternal for Zimbabwe's future.

PIUS NCUBE, ARCHBISHOP OF BULAWAYO: As a Christian, I may hope (inaudible) - I think a lot can still be done. If people just muster their convictions, if people just give themselves a bit of courage, they could get rid of these people, bring them down, in a kind of Ukraine-like popular uprising.

KOINANGE: Until such time, experts say, expect the Zimbabwean exile community to grow, even as one of the continent's longest-serving rulers continues his stranglehold on power.

Jeff Koinange, CNN, Johannesburg.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: When we come back, desperate times call for desperate measures. We will look at how far some female universities students are going to avoid a life of poverty. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OKE: Good to see you again. You're watching INSIDE AFRICA. This week, Zimbabwe's Central Statistics Office announced that inflation has reached a new high in December, topping at more than 1,200 percent. The effects are felt right across the board, from price rises at local stores, medical costs, and tuition payments at schools. Some are going to great lengths to make ends meet. Solana Pyne has more from Harare.

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SOLANA PYNE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: 18-year old Tariro (ph) studies accounting at the University of Zimbabwe, one of a lucky minority of Zimbabwean teens to make it to university. But for her, the opportunity has a hefty price tag. She says her tuition, which has more than doubled in recent semesters, costs more than an average government worker makes in a year. To pay for it, Tariro (ph) spends seven nights a week at clubs like this one, and has sex with as many as three men per night for about $5 each. With unemployment hovering around 80 percent, prostitution is the only work girls like Tariro (ph) can find.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was very afraid because when my friends told me that you can do this, (inaudible), fist time I said no, no, no, no. But because I was just looking for the school fees, I started to do this.

PYNE: She says she lost her virginity a year and a half ago to a man who paid her the equivalent of about $10 U.S. Older college students taught her how.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I told them that my parents are - my parents are not going to pay me money for university, they said, ah, this is the way, if you want you can - we can go together to the night club.

PYNE: Tariro's (ph) plight has become sadly common among Zimbabwean students, struggling as their economy crumbles around them. The country once known as the bread basket of southern Africa now has the highest inflation in the world, topping 1,000 percent some months last year. According to World Health Organization, life expectancy for women here is just 34 years, but many still strive for the middle class life they used to take for granted.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, when I finish the university, I will go, I will get a nice job.

PYNE: A University of Zimbabwe professor who's spent five years researching prostitution among college students for an NGO called Shape Zimbabwe, says some 15 percent of the young women at the university sell their bodies to pay for tuition. But that is a problem that is particularly difficult to report on.

For Tariro (ph), talking with me, even alone in a room and in secret, is particularly dangerous. Not only is prostitution illegal, but meeting with a journalist could land her in trouble with the law.

A professor who studied prostitution said she could lose her job for talking with the media. She agreed to discuss her results, including estimates of student prostitution at universities, if I only recorded her voice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the real cost of benefit analysis in their heads and say, you know, I'm better off just doing commercial sex work for three years. When I graduate, I drop it.

PYNE: But in a country where one in five people between 15 and 49 is infected with HIV, many don't make it. Of the six student prostitutes the professor followed through graduation, four contracted the virus.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Two of them died, and two were terminally ill when they graduated of the - of the six students. This is just a tip of an iceberg.

PYNE: But that's not stopping Tariro (ph) from hoping she'll beat the odds.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Things will become easier, and then when I finish my school, I will leave this job, this prostitution.

PYNE: Solana Pyne, Harare, Zimbabwe.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: As you just saw, reporting from and on Zimbabwe is challenging. Issues concerning human rights are part of the discussion on the country. To talk more about that, Isha Sesay spoke to Arnold Tsunga, Zimbabwean human rights lawyer, about conditions in his home country. He joined us from the United States, where he's currently at the University of Minnesota.

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ARNOLD TSUNGA, ZIMBABWEAN LAWYERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: Zimbabwe is going through a catastrophe. I can only say it's a catastrophe because I don't think there is any way in the world where -- you should look at the basic statistics about the condition of the nation, the condition of human life that you can find anything so ugly in terms of statistics.

For example, Zimbabweans now are people who have got the lowest life span in the world. At 34 years, is the average life span, down from 69 in about 1999, and we have about 3,000 to 4,0000 people dying every week as the result of combination of factors centering around the system, you know, the failure in the governance system.

ISHA SESAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Those are indeed grave figures that you mention. And I know that in addition to the high unemployment, the hyperinflation, the poverty in itself, the government in itself - the government of Zimbabwe is targeting people as well. Tell us a little bit about that.

TSUNGA: Yes, in terms of targeting people. You know, with the serious decline in the socioeconomic condition in our country, with high unemployment, all the dead figures, the inevitable factor is that there is the increase in the level of activism on the part of people. Human rights activists increase in numbers, the political opponents of the state increase in numbers, and the government response has been very repressive.

They've passed repressive legislation. They have selectively applied that repressive legislation. But foremost, they've also used what we refer to as organized torture environments, above the administrative persecution. So, for example, our lawyers, as (inaudible) for human rights, we've represented in 2006 alone 1,800 human rights activists. We've been (inaudible), arrested and detained and subjected to - to torture merely for trying to promote and protect human rights.

SESAY: You yourself have been targeted for the work you're doing. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have released statements in the past saying they fear for your life. Can you talk to us a little bit about that situation?

TSUNGA: Yes, it basically centered around my involvement with Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights, but also primarily with the Voice of the People trust, which is the trust that was established according to the laws of the land, to try and contribute towards the preservation of the rights to freedom of expression in our country, and then they arrested myself and a number of other VOP trustees and employees of the VOP, and then they also arrested my workers and subjected them to serious torture before I could sort of surrender myself to the police, because they were being held hostage on the basis that if I didn't surrender myself to the police, then the workers would be detained for as long as I was not in police custody. So that's part of the persecution of professionals as the result of our work.

SESAY: Now, with that situation and with your plight, why haven't you become like thousands of others who've left Zimbabwe in search of a better life elsewhere?

TSUNGA: Yeah. I haven't left Zimbabwean in search of a better life elsewhere yet. What I've simply done is to take a sabbatical. When I made an assessment that the threat factor was high and it was not worthwhile to remain in the country for any longer period than was necessary to expose myself to persecution. I simply took a sabbatical, but I'll be back in Zimbabwe in a few months.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: There is more to come on INSIDE AFRICA. Just ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're losing your most vital citizens, those who can contribute to society.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OKE: Living and dying in Zimbabwe, a photo journalist's story. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In certain areas within Zimbabwe, there is as many as 35 percent of the population living with HIV, and it was difficult for me to really understand what that meant. So I decided to go and try and understand for myself what it was like to - to be a citizen, living in environment where in many ways the medical facilities were completely overwhelmed. And in society also where the unemployment rates are as high as 75 percent, what it was like to live with an illness where resources were not readily available.

One of the things that left an impression on me was this woman who was in a hospice and dying of AIDS, and had been living for - for quite a long time with the illness, and had been completely physically withered down to really skin over bones.

And the last few days before she died, she was continually crying out for her family, who actually lived quite a distance away from the hospital, and over the course of that the time span that she was sick, her family continually came back and forth from their home to the hospital, which financially was quite difficult for them to do, to afford the bus fair to come and see her.

And the day that they came, finally came to see her, she passed away a few hours later. And I just thought, what an incredible spirit, because it really was her - her mind and her spirit that was keeping her alive when her body had given out on her.

So many children are subjected to a very intimate look at - on the death process. And (inaudible) Christina, who was around 32 years old, who was dying at home, was being taken care of by her mother and her sister. And -- but her daughter Chiku (ph) slept in the same bed as her, as she was dying of AIDS. So I just think that, you know, there are in a range of I think 160,000 children in Zimbabwe alone that will experience the death of a parent in 2006. We're not even really considering counseling for these kids.

This image is of a child by the name of Valentine, who actually passed away in 2004. I photographed his entire family. His mother, who actually passed away. And - and then Valentine, who became quite ill following the death of his mother. He was a great student, and he had an incredible vitality, was -- loved kung-fu. You know, a typical 9-year old child who should have had the rest of his life ahead of him, and instead was -- was robbed of that by the fact that he didn't have ARVs, was not given proper medical treatment that he needed.

I hope that people take from my photos the - that they are individuals. That they're real people that are dying, that have something to contribute to our world. And hopefully, to effect change by motivating people to reach out, and to hopefully contribute in some way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

OKE: And that's our show for this week. Thanks for joining us INSIDE AFRICA. We hope that you will let our show be your window to the continent.

I'm Femi Oke. Until the next time, take care.

END

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