PLEASE Mr President

Week Forty – seven: Sunday 19 – Saturday 25 August

Just as two new friends departed from my life last week, so an old friend re-entered after a six-year absence. The ebb and flow that is life.

Mike is a guy I know from my days in Zimbabwe. His partner, Ulla, is also a Zimbabwean, as is my wife. So inevitably the conversation got round to the complete and utter carnage of a country and its people that is currently the state Zimbabwe finds itself in.

I'm coming at it from an outsiders point of you, as someone who lived and worked there as a traveller passing through for a few months. Yes, I believe President Robert Mugabe is mad in the extreme and is single handily responsible for the viscous disregard of the people of Zimbabwe over the last twenty odd years. A disregard that has seen the country plunge like an out of control roller coaster into 4500% inflation, (and rising) 85% unemployment (and rising), acute food shortages, little or no fuel, and all the rest of the many depressing statistics that add up to untold and unimaginable suffering for millions of people.

Mike was born and brought up in northern Zimbabwe, a white guy, with privileges. Toni, my wife, was born and brought up in south-west Zimbabwe, a coloured (too white to be black, and too black to be white), she knew her place. Yet life was not without pleasure, with two educated, working parents and a country that could and would reward independent endeavour. Ulla was born and brought up in south-east Zimbabwe, a black woman from a family with diplomatic connections.

I learned a lot, and heard deep, diverse and differing arguments about the reasons for Zimbabwe's decline, Mugabe's role, African politics, tribal differences and what's needed for the future.

Reconfiguring all of the countries borders in Africa, so they take cognisance of the indigenous rural peoples, not just of, as they did, the colonisers looting requirements, may be a complete non-starter today. And many other possibilities, options and outcomes may never come about either. But one thing is for sure. Mugabe is destroying, if he hasn't already destroyed, Zimbabwe, economically, socially, politically, psychologically and spiritually. If someone doesn't stop him soon, and prevent anyone from doing the same ever again, it will be too late.

Too late for eleven million people, the economically fortunate, because they were able to leave, already part of a global diaspora. Too late for a country blessed with some of the most beautiful, breathtaking and bountiful nature and wildlife. Too late to convince this saddened soul that the human race, as a collective, has any hope of securng its own future.