ALONG THE SOUTH AFRICA-ZIMBABWE BORDER — Sarah Ngewerume was driven to the river by despair.
Seeing South African military truck, two women, with their babies, fled back to Zimbabwe after trying to cross into South Africa.
Seeing South African military truck, two women, with their babies, fled back to Zimbabwe after trying to cross into South Africa.
More than 1,000 people cross the border from Zimbabwe into South Africa every day.
She said she had seen gangs loyal to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, beating people — some to death — in the dusty roads of her village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters.
“It was terrifying,” said Ms. Ngewerume, a 49-year-old former shopkeeper.
It has been said the strength and morality of a nation, is revealed by the fate and circumstance of the weakest among them.
I therefore must ask - Is there indeed, no conscience nor sense of a higher purpose among the men of Zimbabwe?
How be it that this sad fate of women and babies, fails to arouse the valor of any man in Zimbabwe?
How can the fate of an 84 yr old man be more important than the future, of millions of Zimbabwe's children?
To borrow from Mathew Arnold's "Dover beach" -
How can a nation- that lay before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And now Zimbabweans are before us, as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
