By Peter Godwin
"Frances uses a phrase I've started to hear: 'smart genocide,' a grotesque science that Mugabe is apparently honing. There's no need to directly kill hundreds of thousands, if you can select and kill the right few thousand. Is this really a 'refining' of genocide? As Stanislaw Lec, a Polish-Jewish poet, once wondered, 'Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?'" Page 109
"Bed after bed, in ward after ward, on floor after floor, is filled with Mugabe's victims. A hospital full of those he has injured, tortured and burned out of their homes." Page 137
"And as these shattered people recount their full experiences in a complete narrative, many for the first time, they sometimes break down. It is as if, until now, these brave men and women have concentrated on staying alive, by taking each minute, each hour and day, at a time, and only now, as they join it all together for a stranger, into a complete narrative, do they see the enormity of the whole thing, of what they have been through. And their stoicism can sometimes suddenly dissolve, surprising even themselves, as they get a view of the trajectory of their own suffering. But it seems cathartic too." Page 138
"This is how little his own kith and kin now mean to Mugabe. He holds them in such low regard that he will decimate them, even as he chunters querulously on, lecturing the world about historical wrongs, raging like an aggrieved adolescent, casting blame everywhere except where it most belongs, with himself." Page 149
"As well as the torture itself, a case is being made by a Boston-based advocacy group, AIDS-Free WOrld, that the mass rape in Zimbabwe also rises to the level of a crime against humanity. The extent of these gang rapes takes longer to emerge - the stigma so great, the victims so deeply ashamed, and in danger of being rejected by their husbands." Page 198
"'Who should be punished for Gukurahundi?
. . . .'If ever we should all die, it will be forgotten now. We were left - but many were killed. I am still so angry about it today.'" Page 290
"Chenjerai's bravery is beyond doubt. But what is this other quality, the one that allows him to sit here with these venal people, his persecutors. Is it forgiveness? Reconciliation? I think not. At least, not yet.
Is it fatalism, a quality that Westerners see in Africans? Westerners often mistake African endurance, and the lack of self-pity, for fatalism. No, I think the other quality in Chenjerai Mangezo is patience, a dogged tenacity. He hasn't given up on getting justice." Page 354
Book 44
No comments:
Post a Comment