WHEN the bright white lightning flashed across my living room, crackling and sizzling, it wasn’t a good time to be holding a cup of tea. It ended up all over me, along with a terrified dog trying to get on my lap, panting and quivering in fear.
It’s one of those kind of rainy seasons in Zimbabwe this year when everything is just big. Pounding, drenching rain, big floods, fierce lightning, crashing thunder and sky filled with low hanging dark purple clouds.
These are storms such as we haven’t seen for a long time, storms where you only travel if you have to, you never ever cross flooded bridges or rivers, you stay away from red muddy roads, and you always wear rubber-soled shoes.
The mushrooms are popping up all over the place, some as big as dinner plates and others just tiny little beads in the leaf litter or under the trees. They are all colours you can imagine, from creamy white to pink, purple, orange, scarlet and neon green.
In the mornings the Hammerkop flies in making a racket as it scoops up flying ants, beetles and frogs from ponds and pools.
Every bit of standing water is alive with mosquito larvae. Standing upright in the water they wriggle downwards at the slightest disturbance.
No matter how precious the water, you must tip it out before the larvae turn into adults screeching in your ears at night, making you itch like crazy and bringing malaria too.
Out in the game park a baby giraffe is a few months old and now walking out in the open with the adults, a beautiful sight for eyes pained from watching recent events in Harare.
Shameful
Reporters Without Borders has just ranked Zimbabwe a shameful 116th out of 180 countries surveyed on the Global Press Freedom Index, stating that: “Extremely harsh laws are still in effect and when new laws have been adopted their provisions are just as draconian as those they replaced.”
It said the 2023 Patriot Act, which criminalised any attack on sovereignty and national interest, had threatened the work of journalists.
At the same time as the Reporters Without Borders account was released, Zimbabwean journalist Blessed Mhlanga was detained in police custody after broadcasting an interview with war veteran Mr Blessed Geza, who is challenging Emmerson Mnangagwa’s presidency.
Mhlanga was arrested on two counts of “transmission of data messages, inciting violence or damage to property”.
Bail denied
Bail was denied by a Harare magistrate, who, according to the Commission to Protect Journalists, said “the release of the accused will put the nation in unrest and undermine peace and security”.
International TV journalist Hopewell Chin’ono wrote: “Where in the world does a journalist get arrested for what someone else said?”
He added: “Blessed [Mhlanga] is not HSTV [Heart and Soul broadcasting] which broadcast the so-called interview, neither is he AMH [Alpha Media Holdings], the parent company for HSTV.”
AMH publisher Trevor Ncube said “Blessed is not AMH. He’s just a journalist practicing his profession which is constitutionally protected.”
“I am the one who should be brought before the courts, not the journalists who transmit the message.”
Remanded in custody until 14 March, Mhlanga wrote a letter from prison last week, which said in part:
“They say when you are arrested, you are alone. That’s not true. I was never alone, your voices were with me. I stood proud in my dark hours. My wife, my family were with me … To those behind my persecution, including prosecution, aiding and abetting injustice, I wish to say, the sun will set. It won’t last forever.”
In Zimbabwe beauty and shame have walked side by side for so long that the abnormality of it has become almost accepted. Please keep Blessed Mhlanga in your thoughts.
© Cathy Buckle
