Zimbabwe, how it was before

There was a Zimbabwe, once, where its people could dream of a better future. That future is now and it8217;s worse than the past

The smell of millet beer, the smoke from cooking fires, Oliver Mtukudzi singing at a club downtown, the grasses of the veld waving in the breeze. Drone of ceiling fans. Sadza meal, rolled up in the palm to eat. Rain, so hard it explodes in the dust, droplet shrapnel. People walking alongside the roads at first light, gin and tonics on safaris. Termite hills as tall as your head. Women back from South Africa with things to sell in street markets. Children with no parents, and 42-year-olds dying after a 8220;short illness,8221; a 8220;long illness,8221; a 8220;sudden illness.8221;

This was 1997.

Zimbabwe, how it is now:

Life expectancy is 36, the lowest in the world. Annual inflation is at an unofficial rate of 4 million percent, the highest in the world. Grocery store shelves are empty. Power failures every day and water shortages most days. Roadblocks on most main roads, many run by armed thugs who steal your food. No tourists to speak of. A presidential election the other day doesn8217;t mean anything because the old man running the country will kill any number of black people so he can spend the few years he8217;s left in a deranged version of comfort. There aren8217;t enough white people left to make any difference. The nation is one of the world8217;s AIDS epicentres, a crisis that doesn8217;t rate headlines anymore because so much more is so much worse.

I was one of the few Western reporters based there from 19978212;2000. I left before I was expelled. I have talked to Morgan Tsvangirai, presidential contender who shelters in the Dutch Embassy, as well as Robert Mugabe, the old man president.

Mugabe8217;s hands shook, at a conference when he talked to reporters 8212; you could reach out and touch him. I don8217;t think his hands shake anymore, and I know reporters are no longer able to get so close.

I haven8217;t been there in eight years and I miss it. Mostly I miss the way it was then only because it looks good by comparison.

It was no paradise. It wasn8217;t romantic. White farmers owned way too much land and the government was corrupt. AIDS was catastrophic and there was a sense of something vaguely ominous in the sunlight. But the nation could sleep, it could dream and there was room for hope.

By 1998, the Zimbabwean dollar fell to 15-1 against the U.S. dollar. People talked about the nation8217;s 8220;malaise,8221; about how you couldn8217;t get a mortgage without passing an AIDS test.

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Today, it takes one trillion Zim dollars to make 100 U.S., and nobody bothers with words like 8220;malaise8221; anymore.

8220;Every day is just a grind of hunting and gathering, getting food, petrol, soap.8221;

This is Angus Shaw talking, the Zimbabwean reporter who heads the Associated Press operation there. Angus is white, and though he8217;s known the government leaders since the early 1970s, they accused him of being a spy and imprisoned.

He fled the country in 2005 to avoid another stay in prison allegedly for practicing journalism without a license. You have to have a license to be a reporter in Zimbabwe these days. Also, they don8217;t allow any more foreign reporters to be based there.

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Angus came back home in 2007. What was life like now?

8220;I8217;ve had threatening phone calls, there are unmarked police cars parked outside my house, militia members in my car park. But I haven8217;t been in jail for two years.8221;

So now the election is done and things will go on like this until it all collapses. Until Mugabe runs out of money to pay his thugs? Until South Africa8217;s president, Thabo Mbeki, decides Mugabe is too much of a problem? Yeah. Some time like that.

This brings to mind a feeling, something like Fritz Kreisler8217;s arrangement of Dvorak8217;s 8220;Songs My Mother Taught Me,8221; the violin and cello slow and mournful, and the sense that there once was a time when you could turn to someone older and stronger and wiser for comfort and they would make it all OK. Now that time is like e e cummings little lame balloon man, whistling far and wee, and it8217;s something you can8217;t even see anymore, it8217;s just a feeling you used to have.

Zimbabwe: uneasy its sleep, uneasy its dreams.