Zimbabwe's first 30 years - a generation of failure (News Feature)

Apr 15, 2010, 13:18 GMT

By Jan Raath, dpa Eds: 30th anniversary of independence is Sunday, April 18

Harare (dpa) - They call them the 'born-frees,' the generation of Zimbabweans born after the day 30 years ago when the former British colony of Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia) was declared an independent nation after ninety years of white minority rule.

The dream had arrived where they were free to vote and choose their own leaders, to determine their own future. With that came the right to receive a good education, health care, and housing, and to work and earn a decent living, instead of being consigned to life as second-class citizens because of their skin colour.

Thirty years down the line, the reality is rather different. The generation born in hope still finds itself oppressed and driven into poverty and deprivation.

'We are not free,' said Billy Makamwe, who was born a month after independence. 'If you talk politics on a bus there will be someone listening, and when you want to get off, they will arrest you. We live in fear.'

In the same time, President Robert Mugabe has turned from a middle-aged Marxist, who invested heavily in education and healthcare, to an 86-year-old despot showing no sign of being ready to retire gracefully, despite having been forced into a coalition government with his sworn enemy, pro-democracy leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

What was Africa's second-most developed economy, after South Africa, is struggling to recover from spectacular economic collapse in 2008 that saw inflation hit 500 billion percent and the currency - at independence on par with British sterling - plunge to a rate of 4 trillion Zimbabwean dollars to 1 US dollar.

Makamwe grew up in the shantytown of Epworth south of the capital of Harare. 'When I was at primary school, things were normal,' he said. 'My father was able to give us money, we ate good food, three meals a day.'

But by the time he left school after four years of high school, life was tough. Money was short and two meals a day had become a luxury.

His ambitions were modest enough. He wanted to become a driver. But by the mid-nineties, the economy under Mugabe's control was contracting sharply. The best he could find was a succession of manual labour jobs and finally a job as a security guard.

At the same time, the first glimmerings of political opposition to Mugabe's rule were beginning to show - and were met with fierce resistance by his ruling Zanu-PF party.

'Now there were Zanu-PF youths on the streets, forcing people to come to meetings, threatening us.'

'We don't want this,' he said. 'When we were born, the war was over. Mugabe had been fighting the whites, and then we got a black government.

'But the war is going on,' he continued. 'These youths are singing 'hondo, hondo' (Shona for 'war, war') all the time. Mugabe is making war against the people. We don't understand what war is for. That is old politics.'

By 2008, Zanu-PF had unleashed an offensive to destroy Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. In Epworth, it took the form of dragging MDC supporters out of their homes for public 'punishment' beatings.

When they came for Makamwe at 1 a.m. one night, he managed to slip out through a back window and hid in a large avocado tree. The next day he moved his family out of the area.

Many thousands had the same fate, but Makamwe was lucky - he escaped and found a job as a gardener.

Independence Day in Zimbabwe is usually celebrated by a rally of Zanu-PF faithful in a stadium, a military display and a speech by Mugabe, in which he usually tilts at the West.

Makamwe says he won't be participating.

His main concern, he says, is for the next generation, and a good education for his daughter, Annie.

'I want her to be able to grow up to be a teacher, a doctor, even a pilot,' he said.

'But that can never be while Mugabe is there. We are not independent, we are dependent on all those Western countries that Mugabe hates. He made it like that. We have to have change.'