media, the citizens in other parts of the country, and most of the expatriate population kept quiet. The official pretext for the killings was that members of ZAPU had defected from allegiance to the new government and with South African support were seeking to overthrow Mugabe. On the one hand, this was a plausible claim. At that very time the apartheid state was visiting indiscriminate death and destruction on the neighboring countries of Mozambique, Namibia, and Angola. Yet the hard lesson was that plausible doesn’t always equate with true. Far too many supposedly well-meaning and progressive people like myself accepted the Zimbabwean government’s denial of wrongdoing in Matabeleland at face value. We heard the horror stories from friends and colleagues who witnessed the atrocities, but their tales were too unsettling to believe. We clung to our paradigm of triumph and liberation. We had many good reasons for doing the wrong thing.
Ben Dabney did a little bit better than most of us. Flawed character that he was, he still attempted to speak out and paid some price for it, though nothing like the terrible price paid by those thousands in Matabeleland.
The third aspect of Zimbabwe’s history that informed this novel is the role and definition of heroes. Coming from an American society where individualism and celebrity reigned, it was only natural that a youthful historian like Ben Dabney would look for an idol to epitomize Zimbabwe’s liberation. But after a while he realized that some of the ordinary people in this book, such as Florence Matshaka, Mrs. Taruvinga, Comrade Rusununguko, Obert the bartender—folks who didn’t inhabit cabinet meetings and university lecture halls or live in five-star hotels—held more important stories than those who grabbed the headlines.
These then are the themes, ideas and historical understandings, that drove me to write this book. My overarching hope was perhaps a little more ambitious. As readers will notice, different characters use the title phrase in different ways throughout the story. I hope through Ben Dabney and the other characters, Zimbabwe will speak to you and you will find your own understanding of what it means to say: “We are all Zimbabweans now.”
James Kilgore
Champaign, Illinois
March 2011
To my mother and father
Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, 1983
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ the sergeant shouts. He’s right in Moyo’s face. Moyo must be breaking into a cold sweat under the African sun. I can’t see him clearly, though. He’s at the other end of the line-up.
‘No, sir,’ Moyo replies, ‘I’m just saying we are not supporting dissidents here. We don’t involve ourselves in politics. We are teachers.’
‘You’re telling me you’ve never seen a dissident here in Vukani, never heard of dissidents in Vukani?’
‘Yes, sir. Never.’
The sergeant steps back and draws the .45 from his belt. He points the gun at Moyo’s forehead, then pulls back the hammer. The click is almost as loud as the sergeant’s voice. We’re all looking away, hoping that averting our eyes will halt the inevitable.
The sergeant eases the hammer forward. ‘Maybe you need a reminder,’ he says.
He flips the pistol in his hand, grabbing it by the barrel. He raises it over his head, then brings the butt down onto the bridge of Moyo’s nose.
Moyo drops to one knee, blood spraying his fresh white shirt and the dirt of the soccer field where they have forced us to gather.
The schoolchildren, huddled in classroom doorways, let out a collective shriek. A headmaster is a man of dignity in this rural community, not someone to batter like a weary fencepost. One girl throws herself on to the ground weeping.
Why did Florence ever tell me to come here? Her instincts are usually right; not this time.
Nomonde breaks ranks, streaking behind the line of teachers, to try to
rescue Moyo. She’s kicked off her high heels, but even barefoot she’s not fast enough. Two soldiers intercept this diminutive woman with a flying tackle. I am thinking of going to help her when another soldier latches onto my arm and leads me away. Whatever else they’re planning, they don’t want a white foreigner to see.
As I walk away, I’m seized by a dream. My hero, Robert Mugabe, swoops in with his motorcade and rewinds everything back to students sitting at desks while the teacher’s chalk clicks against the board.
Of course, Mugabe and his entourage never arrive. I have to face reality. The new life I’ve created has begun to implode. Dlamini’s visions of me as a great historian evaporate. Now the question becomes: will I end up at the same miserable point where I started?
Chapter 1
I’ve always loved history. While other boys hit home runs and memorised baseball players’ batting averages, I studied the emperors of Rome. I wrote their names and the dates of their reigns on 3×5 cards. By age ten, I could recite them all: Tiberius 14–37 ad, Caligula 37–41 ad, and so forth. I finished reading the eighth and last volume of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War on homecoming night in high school – no quarterback or cheerleader could have made that claim. My parents were not impressed, though. They never are.
Even now, dates pop into my head out of nowhere: 1588, the defeat of the Spanish Armada; 1066, the Battle of Hastings; July 2, 1881, the assassination of President James Garfield.
History remains my obsession, but it’s never made sense to me. I fail to see the plan, divine or otherwise. Why don’t we learn from history? After two world wars, the United States and the Soviet Union keep rattling their nuclear sabres. We suffer from a stubborn inability to improve on the past.
For the moment, however, my historical gloom has receded. Robert Mugabe, elected on March 4, 1980 to head the government of the tiny country of Zimbabwe, has given the world new hope. He’s more forgiving than Mother Teresa, as singleminded as Martin Luther King or the Dalai Lama.
A few months ago I’d never heard of Mugabe. Today his presence dominates my office. His profound wisdom sings to me in Old English lettering that took six hours to paint on my wall:
It could never be a correct justification that because whites oppressed us yesterday when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power. An evil remains an evil whether practised by whites against blacks or blacks against whites. Democracy is never mob rule.
These are the words of a man who triumphed after ten years in a colonial prison. The white authorities tortured him, hooking his genitals to an electric current and rendering him sterile. Once they released him, they made three attempts on his life. Now he forgives them.
I choose my heroes carefully.
On this wintry day in 1981, I am sitting in my small office at Wisconsin State University. My desk has become a storage house for a collection of 1527 index cards containing facts and figures about Zimbabwe. Since this country’s name is so long, I’ve abbreviated it to lof in my notes – Land of Forgiveness.
I typed all the 3×5 cards myself. They’re colour coded – blue for biography, green for geographical topics, yellow for events. Some, like Chinhoyi, have dual categories – it’s a place and an event. ‘Chinhoyi – city in northwest lof, site of first battle of liberation war, 1966; formerly called Sinoia.’
I’m
