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In the chaotic days after Zimbabwe's national elections on March 29, I stole an hour to go and visit a friend who lives in a scrappy, struggling slum of Harare. I made my way up the dirt path to her two-room cement brick house, stuck my head around the half-open door and called, "Hello?" There was no answer, so I stepped inside and opened my mouth to call again. But the words died: My friend Prisca was lying on the battered old sofa. I could barely recognize her. She had lost 40 pounds since I had last seen her, a bit more than a year earlier. She'd lost her hair. There were oozing lesions on her raw, exposed scalp. And as she struggled to stand and greet me, I realized she could no longer walk.
Like one in five people in Zimbabwe, Prisca has HIV. She paid an almost unimaginable cost for her infection, losing nearly all her family and living with years of shame and ostracism. She fought back, and pioneered a new openness and acceptance for people with the virus. She is an activist of legendary reputation. A year ago, she terrified me as much as she impressed me, so steely was her will.
Now, she crumpled into sobs at the sight of me. Prisca has progressed to having AIDS. Because of Zimbabwe's political and economic implosion, she can no longer reliably obtain the anti-retroviral medication that kept her healthy. The AIDS support centre where she was a counsellor stopped paying salaries some time ago, when the Zimbabwe dollar passed the point of about five million to one, and it has since folded altogether. She has no money to feed the two AIDS orphans she is raising, no money to send them to school, no money for her drugs. She will not live long, like this.
But two weeks ago, Prisca used two canes and a couple of friends to get to the polling station, voting for Zimbabwe's opposition for the fourth time. Like many of her fellow citizens, she has vivid memories of the brutality of the war of liberation, and they are determined to stick to a peaceful path. For the past eight years, they have tried to improve their lives and bring change to the country through the ballot box.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe
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Prisca is the primary reason why Zimbabwe matters — she and the 12 million people trapped along with her in the nightmare that is life under Robert Mugabe. But this country is important for other practical, geopolitical reasons as well — it has disproportionate significance for a southern African state with a few deposits of copper and platinum, and some once-lovely tourist destinations.
CONJURING UP A BRITISH MENACE
Mr. Mugabe, about to enter the 29th year of his rule, is not only sucking the life from his country — "the vampire," they call him, in the neighbourhood where Prisca lives — but also holding back an entire continent.
In his constant railing about colonialism ("We have to keep the country out of the hands of Gordon Brown," I heard Mr. Mugabe say, at campaign rallies before the vote — as if the British Prime Minister were hunched over a map at 10 Downing St., plotting to get his hands on the charred remains of Zimbabwe), he keeps the country and the continent looking backward. Of course, many of Africa's problems can still be traced directly to colonialism, but today, most people would like simply to look forward. "I don't think there's anyone in Zimbabwe or the continent that would deny that we are a product of colonialism, the good and the bad," said Godfrey Chanetsa, once Mr. Mugabe's spokesman, now campaign manager for the independent presidential challenger Simba Makoni. "But I think there's also recognition that much now depends on us and what we are able to do for ourselves. People are looking for a way to move on."
Mr. Mugabe, larger and louder than life, is the chief obstacle.
He is one of the last leaders of a liberation struggle to hold power in Africa, and he regularly invokes those credentials, appearing on the state-owned broadcaster in his fatigues even though it has been nearly three decades since his movement put down its guns, and in any case, Mr. Mugabe never carried one himself. With his incessant reminders to his people of how much he sacrificed for them, he insists on a now outdated reverence for his generation.
