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Burn, Harare, burn
Paddy Harper, Sunday Times, (SA)
April 20, 2008

http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Lifestyle/Article.aspx?id=748780

They might as well be modern-day Romans -- for Zimbabweans are tripping the light fantastic even as their world caves in, writes Paddy Harper.

My heart's in my mouth as I walk towards immigration at Harare International Airport. There's a weird silence hanging over the terminal -- seemingly a million miles, but less than two hours from OR Tambo.

I think I've got a fair enough reason to be scared. I'm here illegally, to cover what's arguably the most important election in Zimbabwe's history. I've just realized that my press card is still in my wallet. I also discover I've lost my passport. Photographer Esa Alexander -- my partner for the gig -- is up ahead of me. We're studiously avoiding each other in a bid to stay under the radar.

The night before, four border jumpers like ourselves -- we later start referring to the journos accredited with the Zimbabwean government as embedded -- were picked up. That can cost us three months of a boiled peanuts-only diet and God knows what else at Harare's notorious Chikurubi Prison.

A cleaner finds my passport before the plane leaves; the immigration guys buy my story about being an IT jock on holiday. I'm through.

We go to the Hotel Bronte. It's in the Avenues, a beautiful part of Harare, which has become the heart of its red-light district and part of its party zone. We settle and get working.

That night I'm game for a drink and it's off to the bar for me. Alexander is Muslim and doesn't drink or hang out in drinking holes. He deals with his fear in the gym.

It's Friday, and I don't know it yet, but bars and clubs are to become a key centre of my work. As a border jumper, I have to -- in the main -- get to talk to people without letting on who and what I am. It goes against the grain of my journalism, but there's no choice and it gives me an entry point into the crazed, hedonistic world that is Harare -- a place where people drink with a capital D, where thousands think nothing of partying till 5am on a weeknight, where the bulk of business is done in the dark. It's clear that the years of economic collapse, paranoia and uncertainty have taken their toll and spawned a heaving culture of self-obliteration, where people live for now and act like there is no tomorrow.

The Bronte's bar turns out to be an office for the classier hookers working the Avenues and profiteers who capitalise on the insane inflation rate, to turn forex into literally billions upon billions of Zim dollars. It's also infested with Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) operatives and Zanu-PF cadres celebrating the election "victory" (the hacks and spooks in the place outnumber even the whores).

I meet up with Mike Madidi, the son of a leading Zanu-PF politician, who is in shipping.

Madidi, like many Zimbabweans of his class who I meet over the next 10 days, couldn't give a toss about politics. He just wants to make money and party. Every time I see him he's doing a deal and has a beer in his hand, 10am or
10pm.

I'm joined by Lucretia and Isobel, two whores who want double brandies with Stoney ginger beer and offer to " suck your dick till you cry, baby" for US20 a piece. I turn them down and head for my room and a conversation with a litre of Glendiffich 12 from duty-free.

After deadline the next day we hook up with the other Sunday Times crew in Zimbabwe, Jimmy Oatway and Charles Molele. It's great to see them: they're having the same sense of paranoia we have and there's a false sense of security in numbers.

We hit Amanzi, an upmarket fusion-food restaurant on Enterprise Road, where many of the foreign diplomats live. It's wall-to-wall opulence: a bottle of Aussie Shiraz weighs in at Z1.5-billion.

Then it's Mannenberg, a way cool jazz club where blues guitarist Dave Ndoro and his band are sharing the bill with the Luck Street Blues Band. It's rocking. Dave is shit-hot and tears the place up with his screaming electric blues. The punters are drinking like crazy. We're up for it. There's a lot of fear and deadline anxiety to work off. By the end of the gig we're bent. The bill: half-a-metre of Z10-million notes. We're unfazed -- the sheer volume of the notes we have to cough up makes it Monopoly money. We're starting to think like Zimbabweans already. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Next stop is Circus at Avondale with Edith Chihuri, a stunning 27- year-old boutique owner from Kwekwe, about three hours' drive from Harare, who I meet at Mannenberg. The door at Circus costs Z1.8-billion for the two of us.

Inside is a seething mass of flesh, amazing porn-star honeys, 50 Cent wannabes holding court, all East Side/West Side banging, bling city. We fight our way upstairs and meet Chihuri's bra, Sam Takawira, white-clad from head to toe sunglasses at night. He's connected and a real heavy hitter. We get couches in the VIP area and hit the private dance floor.

Chihuri introduces me to sele sele, baby (ass ass, baby), the dance craze sweeping Harare's clubs. She faces away from me, bends at the waist and thrusts her tungsten ass against my crotch, gyrating in circles while I hold her waist to keep us joined. We go down, then up, then down again. Lock and go up. All around us couples are doing the same. It's pure sex on the dance floor, doggy-style to Dr Dre.

Elections? "I don't want to talk about politics. I want to have fun," is Chihuri's response. "We're sick of politics, we just want to live life and make a living, that's all. Whoever wins the elections, nothing is going to change for a long time. For now, we just want to live."

The next day I meet Chris Wagner, a mixed-race shop owner who's a serious ganja smoker. Wagner smokes his spliffs of hard-core Malawi manyisa rolled in Z10-million notes, "because they burn better than telephone-book pages and have less ink". There have been no Rizla papers in Harare for the past two years, says Wagner, whose blades from Joburg ran out a month ago. The Harare drug scene? Local weed -- Swazi-type gear, but with less kick -- is Z25-million a sloop (parcel); manyisa twice that. A gram of coke (Z2.5-billion) is available outside many clubs.

That night we bolt from the Bronte. We've realized it's hot. We move in with Oatway and Molele, in an upmarket lodge about 30km from the Harare CBD. A contact links me with opposition MPs, youth activists, the unions and human rights groups. It's a flashback to working in South Africa in the '80s, but harder: the terrain's unknown, any meeting could be a trap .

Every interview involves hours of preparation. It takes four days to rent a black-market SIM card -- it's virtually impossible to get one legally. The network's so overloaded that it takes five or six tries to get a text message through. Calls: don't bother.

Monday and Tuesday nights are spent at the lodge. Beer in the Jacuzzi, then we deal with my Glenfiddich, Oatway's 15-year-old Solera Reserve and Molele's Glenmorangie. By Wednesday we're cavesick and hit The Book Café next to Mannenberg. Anjiii, a massive coloured woman with a travelling audience from her district, is blasting soul and R'n'B covers.

Then it's Sports Diner in Samora Machel Avenue. It's the 10th South African province: the beer and music are from home; Champions League football on the big screen. Next stop is Tipperary, a whorehouse with a dance floor, overpriced drinks, nightfighters in search of dollars, hustlers selling three-packs of condoms outside.

It's nearly daybreak when we leave. Tipperary is still choked. Nicky Moyo, who works as a waiter where we stay, jols there. "You should see it on weekends," he says. "People party till 8am, go sleep and come back at 12pm and start drinking. That's what we do."

Bina Dube, vice-president of the Zimbabwe National Student's Union, believes the stresses of life in an oppressive society and a general sense of hopelessness fuel the drinking culture among the poor, while the rich "simply don't care about anyone else".

"It's selfishness, believe you me. We have people who are capitalizing on government policies to get rich and don't care what happens to the rest of us."

Andrew Marshall, an activist who is my contact man with the unions, attributes the hedonism to a life of uncertainty in an imploded economy -- to living in a society where the real money is made in the dark, where you break the law to live. He equates the Harare upper and middle classes with the "me generation" of Congress-run India, children of varying levels of privilege so insulated from the economic and social deprivation of others that they simply cease to care.

"We have a whole class and generation of people whose families have benefited from the political system, who are still comfortable despite the collapse of the economy, who are making astronomical profits on the black market. There are no norms and standards. We have more Hummers in the streets than any other African city, when people have to queue for days for petrol. That is what you are seeing."

Zimbabweans want to drink, dance, f*** and forget. With the conditions we're working under -- where business is conducted in a philosophical darkness, where to survive you have to deny who and what you are -- it's hard not to follow suit.

Sele sele, baby.

*Names have have been changed to protect people's identity

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