When I visited Zimbabwe two years ago, Robert Mugabe was still at his apogee. The nonagenarian seemed capable of immortality, and the world had given up waiting for him to die. Now, to great surprise, he is gone, overthrown by his own inner circle, in a move not obviously guided by idealism. The succession was a bone of contention, but you also detect rapacity and impatience to get at the country’s untapped wealth. Rumors abound of valuable concessions sold to foreign investors. For better or worse, I suspect Zimbabwe will now change quickly. And so my thoughts turn back to when I saw the country preserved in aspic.
On the drive from Bulawayo to Harare, I formed the bizarre impression that this was a land of decaying fences. Barbed wire, chain-link, post, picket, and mesh extended everywhere to the horizon. But the land they demarcated was empty. It seemed fertile as weeds flourished, but nothing was being cultivated. Now and then I passed a tractor or combine harvester rusting in fields turned to scrub. At the time, Zimbabweans were bracing themselves for imminent famine.
For better or worse, Zimbabwe will now change quickly.
Small industrial towns littered the route, but the factories were silent, the smokestacks lifeless. Formidable pylons and wide-gauge railway lines had fallen into disuse. On sidings lay abandoned locomotives still marked “Rhodesia Railways.” I even saw a gold mine, and there, in the shadow of a derelict headframe, a couple
