HomeOld_PostsSame place, same war? ...memories from Hwange

Same place, same war? …memories from Hwange

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IT was a scorching 1988 October afternoon, after an earlier outing to Mtoa Ruins in the Hwange National Park.
After a welcoming cold shower in our lodge at Hwange Main Camp, we decided on a sundowner at the neighbouring plush Hwange Safari Lodge.
Casually to scruffily dressed blacks generally attract suspicious attention among both white hotel patrons and the black employees.
A year before, a Bulawayo supermarket teller had insisted on seeing my money first before she could serve me.
I was all dusty and in shorts, coming from an archaeological dig.
It was no different on this occasion; the four of us only escaping entrance interrogation by having a British muzungu in our midst.
We made ourselves comfortable at a table that would afford us a good view of game coming for early evening watering.
Again, thanks to the Briton’s presence I think, we were served fairly efficiently.
As we enjoyed the chilled lagers, the Briton remarked at the oddity of our table being the only one with black patrons.
All the other patrons were white and besides us, the only other blacks were the waiting staff.
Eight years after independence, I found the demographics quite alarming. After a short discussion, we were all in agreement that poverty was the main culprit.
Leisure spending capacity among blacks was still way below that of their white counterparts.
To sum up my revulsion, I shared with colleagues my dream.
One day I will be rich and will bring all the elders from my village (tusekuru netuchembere) and unleash them on this space to eat and drink using village etiquette.
My anger and revenge planning were clear testimony to the black against white part of the war not having ended with independence in 1980.
Hwange Safari Lodge was inadvertently still a war zone.
A decade before, in 1978, the lodge was giving its owners sleepless nights as the war escalated, especially in these remote parts of the country.
Wankie, as Hwange was known then, had in 1967 witnessed the first military battle in the area, pitting Rhodesian forces against a group of Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army and Umkhonto weSizwe guerillas.
Since then, there had been several encounters and by 1978, the area had become quite unsafe.
As Meikles Sun toyed with idea of closing down the Wankie operation for security reasons, the hotel people had a meeting with the Minister of Defence during which they requested for round-the-clock army protection.
The request was turned down due to resource constraints.
The Rhodesian army was already in final retreat as many parts of the country were fast turning into ZANLA or ZIPRA liberated zones.
The hotel then opted to train its own militia, perhaps becoming, in John Moore’s words, ‘the only hotel company in the world with its own private army’.
The hotel perimeter was also fitted with powerful spotlights to give the hotel militia a clear view of the hotel surroundings.
During the war, light was a potent tool for the Rhodesian army.
Everyone in the village knew about the bloody search light.
Eventually the war got the better of the hotel which had to close down in 1979 as Ian Smith’s army beat a hasty retreat.
The hotel spotlights became an attraction for big game, much to the delight of white tourists.
During my 1988 visit to the hotel, I had remarked to the waiter how I had now spent close to a week in the park without siting an elephant.
He urged me to stay a little longer, for the elephants would definitely make their ritual visit to the lodge at night.
Of course, they would come, thanks to the wartime spotlights still in place.
We made our way back to our main camp lodgings before we could witness the spotlights/wildlife spectacle.
In the morning, over breakfast, we agreed blacks at the lodge were, as they had been in the 1970s, still at war against whites.
I promised to carry through my threat to one day unleash my kinsmen on this faulty peace.
Nearly two decades later, I am still to gather the financial wherewithal and I keep wondering whether the place is still a warzone.

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