Into Africa

The Jacaranda tree. Harare turns purple when they flower.

 

THE immigration officer at the Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe pored through the pages of my red Malaysian passport, gave me a menacing glance and said, "You are only to remain in Zimbabwe for 24 hours. If you want an extension, you must go to our Interior Ministry to apply."
 I was dumbfounded because the Zimbabwean High Commission in Kuala Lumpur had allowed me a 14-day stay. The officer however refused to budge and I remembered the golden rule one must observe in a foreign land -- never argue with immigration officials for they can do anything they like to you.
 I was about to agree to his suggestion of paying the ministry a visit the next day when the officer signalled me to one side of the long counter. He whispered that US$20 would get me the 14-day stay I wanted, without going to the Interior Ministry of course.
 I promptly handed him the greenback and presto! there was that beautiful 14-day stamp on my passport. I bolted out of the airport as soon as I got hold of my luggage, hailed a taxi and went to the rundown Jameson Hotel in downtown Harare.
 I didn't like the room reserved for me as it was facing the back alley. Sensing that the hotel was not fully booked, I asked the manager who accompanied me to my room whether I could change to one that was facing the main street in front.
 No way. Apparently in Harare one must make a written application to the Zimbawean Tourism Ministry should one require to change one's hotel room. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry upon hearing the manager's explanations.
 I was exhausted by then after taking the flight out from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore and then a change to a South African Airways jet for a 10-hour flight to Johannesburg. I endured a 4-hour transit in the South African airport before boarding an almost empty Air Zimbabwe flight to Harare.
 Zimbabwe was known during the dark days of apartheid as Rhodesia. A landlocked nation with a mild climate quite the same as that of western Australia, it was then ruled with an iron fist by the very white Ian Smith regime.
 Its capital Harare was once called Salisbury. If one were to take out the native Africans from Harare, the city would look just like any other in the British midlands.
 When I first got there, Zimbabwe was led by the Zanu-PF party headed by former freedom fighter, President Robert Mugabe. He remain as head of government to this day.
 Except for the Victoria Falls and the serene resort destination of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe boasts of little else. It is generally a flat country, starved of rain for the most part of any year and whose people are largely involved in small-scale farming and mining.
 About the only thing that fixated my attention during my first visit there was the purple Jacaranda flowers that were of abundance in Harare. The flowers were from the Jacaranda trees planted all over the city. They added colour to the otherwise drab and dry Harare.
 When I was there, 1 US dollar was equivalent to 10 Zimbabwe dollars. In later years however, largely due to mismanagement on its government's part, plus Mugabe's drastic actions in seizing land from the whites, an action that incurred wrath of Western businesses, Zimbabwe's economy went into the doldrums. At one stage recently, the Zimbabwe dollar were just worthless pieces of papers and inflation was so high that the price of bread changes even within a day.
 I was there to cover the Group of 15 Nations summit. The G-15 as it is known, is a grouping of 15 developing nations. Malaysia was represented at the summit that year by the then Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
 During duration of the summit, Harare was a hive of avtivity, if not for anything else but for the constant wailing of sirens from motorcades that were ferrying the G-15 leaders around town. Security was tight since apart from Mugabe himself, there were other leaders who were considered potential targets present.
 Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak was there and when he travelled, there were no less than 15 identical and behemoth American SUVs in his motorcade. Mubarak at the time, just survived at attempt on his life in Tunisia. As we know, he was recently toppled by popular uprising in his own country.
 Also attending the summit was leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, the late Yasser Arafat. Little needs to be said of Arafat's security. The PLO head was an assasination target for as long as I could remember.
 Back to the hotel and learning from my earlier experience at the Harare airport, I asked the manager whether I could have my room changed for US$20. I haven't finished my sentence when he excitedly exclaimed, "I change your room now sir!" with one hand already holding my suitcase.
 As for me, while I said quietly to myself that it would be fine if I were not to come to the place again, fate has it that I was sent to Harare again, barely a month from that first visit. But by then, I was a wee bit smarter. In fact, I was to travel to other parts of the continent later.

ENDS