SHE WENT, SHE SAW AND SHE WEPT

Yes, one Evelyn Brown of the Global African Congress (GAC), some obscure Pan-African organization based in Canada, is said to have wept for her beloved Zimbabwe.

The story, as told by the Zanu PF government-controlled newspaper, The Herald, last week, is that, Ms Brown was part of a team that traveled to Zimbabwe to see for itself the reported human rights violations by the government of Zimbabwe.

Suspiciously though, the group was hosted by the same government whose persecution of the innocent it had come to investigate. The government officials took the group supposedly to see houses being built by the government under the so-called Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle.

The said operation is government’s feeble attempt to provide proper housing to more than 700 000 people it rendered homeless last year when it embarked on Operation Murambatsvina/Clear Filth, euphemism for ridding the urban centres of most of the opposition’s supporters.

So, we are told, Ms Brown openly wept after realizing that what she sees and reads in the western Press is totally different from what obtains on the ground."I am glad to be home. I am glad to be seeing all these good things," she said, according to The Herald.

Frankly, I want to believe that the reporter got it wrong. Ms Brown must have been crying that she had seen for herself how the western press actually down played the atrocious living conditions of the Zimbabweans, not the other way round.

I mean, the evidence was clearly there for her to see. She and her group were taken around by the enemy of the people who made efforts to show the group what it has done, which is nothing.

In Herald speak; Acting director of works for Harare City, James Chiyangwa said council organized people into cooperatives and sold them land on which to build. The cooperatives would build infrastructure such as roads, water and sewer reticulation. But because of economic problems, the city had decided people could service land on their own. In ordinary language; The group was shown bare land, which was intended to be sold to the displaced people (who have no jobs and no money) and then the people were supposed to develop that land on their own. Talk about giving a dead body a shovel to dig its own grave.

At this moment, Ms Brown, having realized that the people would remain poor and homeless for a long time if not forever, she broke down and cried.

The antics of Ms Brown and her group remind me of another group from Harlem called the 12th of December Movement. Those of my generation might remember Cde Chimurenga and sister Violet, the only two members of the group as far as I was concerned. A rather shifty two-some if you ask me. They always came to attend Zanu PF conferences and give solidarity speeches, on whose behalf I never got to know.

With thanks to my sister Eunice Mafundikwa.
TO READ MORE OF MY WRITING, PLEASE VISIT; www.torontosun.ca/News/Columnists/Madawo_Innocent/
http://www.catholicregister.org/
http://www.durdesh.net/issue002/page24.pdf
http://www.canadiannewcomermagazine.org/
http://www.thecanadian.ca/
http://www.zimcanada.com/
http://www.jexcanada.com/