"You can't tie a bell around a cat's neck"

This morning I woke up at six am which as most of you probably know, is very very early for me. But I hadn’t been able to get out to Kachikau yesterday (the ambulance that was supposed to be our ride in from Kasane was full), and I had a meeting in Kavimba (the next village over from Kachikau) at 10 am and I was determined to be there. Kara had said combis (mini bus taxis) headed out there all morning, and given that it was about a two hour ride, if I was at the bus rank by seven in the morning, I should be totally fine. So I was standing there, on a chilly winter morning in a weedy overgrown parking lot in a back part of town with a Spar cinnamon bun in hand, at 7.

Fast forward three and half hours. At 10:30, the packed-full combi slowly crept out of town. This in itself is not a particularly unique story; I’m pretty sure anyone who has taken public transportation almost anywhere in Africa has dozens like it. But what was interesting was the conversation that took place between myself and some of my fellow passengers who had also arrived significantly too early in anticipation of the combi’s departure. The topic, not surprisingly, was the demise of Zimbabwe’s intended upcoming elections, given Morgan Tsvangirai recent announcement that because of the violence and corruption surrounding the elections, he would be withdrawing as the opposition candidate to Robert Mugabe. A young gentleman from Gaborone whose car had broken down and who also had to get to a meeting in Kavimba at 10 (for both of us, read: fat chance) debated the goings-on with a Zimbabwean seamstress who came to Botswana every two weeks to stay with friends, sell clothes and buy basic foodstuffs (a necessary tactic given that a loaf of bread in Zim costs roughly a billion Zimbabwean dollars). She insisted that politics was a dirty game and that as a Christian, she just wanted to stay out of it. He in turn, said that that mentality was part of the problem; that people were just standing by while atrocities happened, and that people needed to act. He disparagingly remarked that that when given the chance to register to vote, most Zimbabweans had not done so. This last comment was one the lady jumped on, pointing out that she knew exactly why this was the case—because when young Zimbabweans went to go register (the age demographic officials knew would vote for Tsvangirai), they were told that their omang (identity) cards were invalid, and thus that they were ineligible to register. So why bother? She said, we in Zimbabwe, we are all praying for peace. The young man voiced my sentiments, saying yes, praying is good, but what about in tandem with action of some sort? She didn’t answer this question directly, but I got her point. She basically said, what am I, as a woman with kids to feed, going to do to make change in the face of escalating poverty and violence? Isn’t it enough just trying to survive? What does this call to “act” really mean on an individual everyday-person level, in such a context? Especially when many people (I’m thinking she meant such as herself, since earlier she said she was part of the Freedom Fighters) have feelings of ambivalence; torn between attachment to a party that liberated their country from colonial rule, and its’ now corrupt leader? Ah, and you can’t tie a bell around a cat’s neck, she concluded, as the conversation came to a close.

And this was the phrase that I mused over on the (very very) bumpy ride to Kavimba, every bone in my body rattling the whole way. Is Mugabe the cat in the scenario? Sneaky and hard to catch? And is she basically saying that it is impossible for anyone to whistle-blow and really call out such a creature? This might explain why SADC has done so little to intervene—many of the southern African countries were helped out by Mugabe in the days of liberation and are now somewhat hesitant to turn their backs and speak out against him, especially since they might be wary of what tricks he has up his sleeve. Is that what she meant? I’m really not sure. But I did make it to Kavimba in one piece (barely), and the Zimbabwean lady wished me well, as I stepped off the bus and she continued on to the village of Parakurungu, another two hours of dusty corrugated dirt road farther.