War Living: Part 4

Independence - that's what the whole messy situation was about. You'd expect there to be hatred between black and white, and yet that was not at all the case!

Here in South Africa there is an ongoing sense of dis-ease between black and white as images from the Apartheid years are thrown up again and again, reminders of the struggle keep hatred going, injecting it into a generation that knows little or nothing of what their parents went through. I don't deny it was a hard time for non-whites in SA, and that the struggles were very real. And yet it seems to have been so different in Zimbabwe. There was the same struggle against white rule, but at ground level blacks and whites got along very well!

I'm no expert on politics, so I cannot explain the in's and out's of it, I just know that we seemed to live in peace although the fighting went on and on.

There were still vestiges of colonialism left of course - it's not something that fades away overnight, and I see many of the street names in Zimbabwe still reflect their colonial roots. We often attended the very-British polo matches, everyone had "servants" (though they were more a part of the family than underlings!), cricket and rugby were approved persuits, as was afternoon tea at the club.

Perhaps as kids the underlying tensions passed us by, but we played happily with our best friends from many races, seeing far below skin colour to souls we connected with. We loved the guy that worked in the garden as much as we loved a favourite uncle. We ate with him and hugged him and laughed with him. I will never forget Tobias - a regal and elegant gentleman who was the last man in our employ before we left for South Africa. He cried when we left, and we did too. And there was Happy - who truly was happy! She helped raise us kids in our early primary years, taught us the intricacies of "sudza and nyama" (stiff maize-meal porridge and a sauce made from all sorts of goodies, that one dipped balls of porridge in) and listened patiently as my semi-senile gran mouthed off on "sensitive" political issues.

I'll never forget my grade 2 friend Carol, or Farai with the big-popping-bug-eyes, or my first black teacher Mrs Ncube - she taught me my times-tables! We were required to say our tables, standing in a row, with our right hands held out, palm-up. A wrong answer and a wooden ruler would come down on our hands with force! I LEARNED my times-tables! :) Those were the days when it was still OK to be sent to the principal's office for "cuts"...

Years down the line, it seems the relationships between black and white are still intact. Sure, there are some serious problems in Zimbabwe - but somehow those relationships survive. Perhaps it's a miracle...