THE title of the first lesson was Patriotism. It began with raised-fist salutes and chanted slogans in praise of \u201cGreat Leader Robert Mugabe\u201d and ended with denunciations of Britain\u2019s prime minister. <\/p>\n
\u201cTony Blair is a pig and we don\u2019t want to associate with the pig and his gay playmates,\u201d the class was told. Later they learnt how to strangle enemies of the state with their shoelaces. <\/p>\n
Such classes, taught by uneducated war veterans from the ruling Zanu-PF and attended by teachers against their will, are Mugabe\u2019s latest and most insidious weapon against his own people in the country where the England cricket team is scheduled to play in the World Cup this week. The players were meeting today to decide whether to boycott the match on moral and security grounds. <\/p>\n
In the past few weeks hundreds of teachers in the central highveld and eastern highlands of Zimbabwe have been rounded up and sent to \u201creorientation\u201d camps. <\/p>\n
Having used his youth militia to beat opponents, rig elections, deny food aid to supporters of the rival Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and rape their wives and daughters, Mugabe is now trying to brainwash the population through a sinister re-education of teachers.
\nMyheart Muusha, 31, was so disgusted that he escaped from his camp. A gentle, soft-spoken man, his decision means a life on the run, leaving the woman he loved and the end of a teaching career which made his family so proud that his father cried at his graduation from teacher training college. <\/p>\n
Trembling with fear, he met me secretly last week and gave the first account of life inside what he termed the \u201cterror camps\u201d. It seemed a world apart from the scene at the Harare Sports Club yesterday where gardeners were putting the final touches to the manicured emerald cricket pitch awaiting the England team. <\/p>\n
Just two blocks away in court A of the old colonial High Court building, Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, is on trial for his life on what he says are \u201ctrumped-up charges\u201d of plotting to assassinate Mugabe. <\/p>\n
Less than a mile up the road, behind Harare station, Aids orphans are trying to catch sparrows to cook. According to the World Food Programme, 7m of Zimbabwe\u2019s 11m population are threatened with starvation and 2,500 are dying each week of Aids and hunger. <\/p>\n
Travelling undercover, I met torture victims and teachers who emphasised that Muusha\u2019s account of repression is the reality of life for millions of rural Zimbabweans. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe ruling party wants a situation where everything is militarised and Zanu-ised,\u201d said Takavafiria Zhou, president of the Progressive Teachers Union for Manicaland province, from where many of the teachers have been taken. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey want us to sleep Zanu, breathe Zanu, live on Zanu food and tell our children that there is nothing on earth apart from Zanu. It\u2019s pure propaganda.\u201d <\/p>\n
For Muusha, the nightmare began when he returned from his holidays on January 14 to his job as science teacher at Vumbunu secondary school in Mutasa to be told that he had been selected, along with 10 others, for an \u201cin-service programme\u201d to teach some new syllabus material. <\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it was something bad,\u201d he said. \u201cMugabe is suspicious of teachers because many of us support the MDC and we carry a lot of weight in the community. For the past three years his thugs have come into our school and beaten us, making us chant slogans in front of the pupils. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were scared to punish any students in case they reported us to the local Zanu-PF.\u201d <\/p>\n
Muusha and his colleagues were piled on to an army truck and driven to Nyadzi with about 30 teachers from other schools. It was made clear that this was not an optional course. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew what these people are capable of,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was an American called Richard Gillman who had started helping our school, bringing in textbooks and raising money so we could have electricity, but the Zanu people kept telling us to keep away from the white man.\u201d <\/p>\n
Gillman was shot dead by police at a roadblock last November, supposedly because he did not have his papers. <\/p>\n
When the teachers arrived at the camp they were ordered to remove their clothes and were given camouflage gear and army boots. They were told that these had belonged to the fallen heroes of Zimbabwe\u2019s liberation. \u201cThey lined us up and told us, \u2018You are misinforming the pupils,\u2019 \u201d said Muusha. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018You are not teaching but cheating and now you must learn to be responsible citizens who place the flag and our fallen heroes at the forefront of our history.\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n
Then they asked the teachers how many meals they wanted to eat a day. \u201cWe said three,\u201d recounted Muusha. \u201cThey asked why people are eating only one, so we replied, \u2018Because there\u2019s no foreign currency, so no food.\u2019 They said, \u2018No, it\u2019s because of Blair and Tsvangirai, these are the people who are vandalising the economy and must be stopped.\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n
They were woken at 4am for 25-mile road runs with soldiers who beat them if they lagged behind. Lessons started at 8am when they were taught that Comrade Mugabe, Comrade Castro and Comrade Gadaffi were the true leaders and that Blair was spearheading a movement to destroy Zimbabwe. <\/p>\n
\u201cBetween each class we were made to shout \u2018Forward with Mugabe\u2019 and \u2018Down with MDC\u2019 and \u2018Down with Blair\u2019. They kept asking us what the colours of the Zimbabwean flag represent and the names of the war heroes. If you don\u2019t know they call you a traitor.\u201d <\/p>\n
One of the textbooks was a Book of Fallen Heroes which included Chenjerai \u201cHitler\u201d Hunzvi, the man behind the violent invasions of white farms that began in 2000, and Border Gezi, a top Mugabe lieutenant who set up training camps for the youth militia, known as the Green Bombers, responsible for some of the worst atrocities. <\/p>\n
They were also shown videos of white South African police setting dogs on blacks. \u201cIt was all incredibly racist, anti-white,\u201d said Muusha. \u201cThey said we should not talk about football or music but about the struggle and how the British have dispossessed us. They told us about Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden and said they are doing the right thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
For Muusha, the last straw came when \u201cthey showed us how to kill by striking someone on the back of the neck just behind the ear with a heavy object and to strangle them with shoelaces so you wouldn\u2019t be detected.\u201d He fled. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow my job is gone and if they capture me I\u2019m dead,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were told if you run away that\u2019s equivalent to treason.\u201d Although petrified, he insisted that his name be published. \u201cI had been proud to be a teacher,\u201d he added, sadly. \u201cI wanted to educate children to be a source of enlightenment, but now it\u2019s all spoilt. The whole education system is destroyed.\u201d <\/p>\n
Similar experiences were described by Memory, a primary school teacher I met late one night in the village home of a traditional healer; and by Barnabas, another teacher who had fled the camp and who talked to me in a safe house in Mutare. <\/p>\n
They were picked up last month by police and members of Mugabe\u2019s feared Central Intelligence Organisation, with lists of names. \u201cThere was no choice,\u201d said Memory. \u201cIf you said no that means you don\u2019t support the government.\u201d <\/p>\n
He was taken to Mushagashi Training Centre in Masvingo. \u201cThey called it nationalism but it was Zanu-isation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was complete indoctrination. They said many teachers have been inclined to the opposition so it was time we learnt the \u2018truth\u2019 about politics.\u201d <\/p>\n
The teachers were made to go on 3am runs, followed by history lectures presenting Mugabe as a great leader thwarted by the evil British. <\/p>\n
\u201cOn the first day they showed us a shocking video of dead bodies during the liberation war and said, \u2018This was the work of the British, they killed your brothers and sisters and now they are trying to do the same thing.\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n
The course defended Mugabe\u2019s land reform programme which has seen 3,800 of 4,300 white commercial farmers thrown off their property. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey said it was to empower the blacks but the British came in to derail the process and used the MDC as their stooges,\u201d recounted Memory. \u201cWe were told the British want to recolonise and it is the duty of every Zimbabwean to defend the sovereignty of the nation.\u201d <\/p>\n
At the end they received a Certificate of National Service and a copy of Mugabe\u2019s Little Book extolling the president\u2019s policies and achievements. They were instructed to go back to their community and spy on other teachers and pupils and to give a weekly report to the local Zanu-PF chairman. <\/p>\n
\u201cTeachers in rural areas are very influential because the population are uneducated and poor and so go to the teachers for advice,\u201d explained Roy Bennett, an opposition MP from Chimanimani, one of the areas from which teachers have been forced to go on the courses. <\/p>\n
\u201cTeachers being independent spoil Mugabe\u2019s communist thing of controlling everybody. But if they think they can take people for three weeks and steal their minds they must be real idiots.\u201d <\/p>\n
The courses are part of an attack on education that has seen European history scrapped from the syllabus to be replaced by \u201ccurrent history\u201d, and war veterans sitting on interview boards to select teachers. Newspaper advertisements for teachers now state: \u201cPreference will be given to National Service graduates.\u201d <\/p>\n
It is all part of life in Mugabe\u2019s Zimbabwe, a topsy-turvy world where people buy black market petrol from rose sellers in restaurants rather than queue for nine hours at filling stations; where the shelves of supermarkets are full of lavatory paper and empty of foodstuffs, but where taxi drivers sell bread and meat; and where personal banking officers in state banks will change money at 20 times the official rate. <\/p>\n
The surrealism was illustrated last Thursday by a demonstration of people waving palm leaves and placards saying \u201cNo Cricket\u201d. <\/p>\n
Surprised to see demonstrators \u2014 they are banned \u2014 I asked who they were and why they were protesting. After a while one of them admitted they were plainclothes policemen holding a pretend demonstration to attract real protesters so they could lock them up. The true threat to Mugabe may come from within his own party. Rumours persist of Emerson Mnangagwa, his Zanu-PF prot\u00e9g\u00e9, and Lieutenant-General Vitalis Zvinavashe, the army chief, trying to broker a deal with the opposition that would see Mugabe exiled to Malaysia. <\/p>\n
Another indication that all is not well in Mugabe\u2019s world comes from the increasing number of people prepared to risk their lives to speak out. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo many of our educated people have gone,\u201d said Barnabas. \u201cSome of us must stay and fight. Every story has a beginning and an end and the end must be Morgan Tsvangirai becoming president and me being a teacher again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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