PAULINE LETTER
Patrick Neate (1984-89) writes from Zimbabwe Before our daughter was born in 2010, my Zimbabwean partner declared her intention to move home. She had never much liked London, loathing the weather, cult of the sandwich, and embedded sarcasm. “Brilliant” I said. I didn’t take her announcement too seriously. I considered it a manifesto promise, a half-baked idea that could later be kicked into the long grass; like, say, a referendum on UK membership of the EU. It was a surprise, therefore, when I found myself house hunting in Harare within six months. I have come and gone ever since, living the fabled jet set lifestyle of the moderately successful novelist. Initially, I was mostly coming, latterly mostly going. For the last year, I have been gone, thanks to the coronavirus. You may have heard of Zimbabwe. Greatest hits include Robert Mugabe, land reform (retitled “the land grab” in some territories), a three-decade HIV epidemic, deep-seated institutional corruption, hyperinflation, and “the coup that wasn’t a coup” (but was definitely a coup); to say nothing of two England cricket coaches, Makosi from Big Brother Six, and Waitrose mangetout (check the label). I won’t comment in detail on the thornier issues above; partly because I imagine the powers that be are avid readers of Atrium and prone to touchiness, and partly because everything you already think you know about Zimbabwe is probably both completely true and utterly wrong at the same time. It is a “both/and” kind of place – the more contradictory the better.
06
ATRIUM
SPRING / SUMMER 2021
Land reform, for example, is both an overdue attempt to rectify the structural inequities of a racist, colonial history, and a free-for-all for greedy kleptocrats. Likewise, Robert Mugabe was both an erudite, progressive, hero of African liberation, and a tin pot dictator who would sacrifice almost anything (and anyone) to retain power. Perhaps more pertinently (and contrary to the prevailing, western narrative), he was always both those things. He was both when knighted by HM the Queen in 1994 and remained so when stripped of that knighthood after refusing to accept election defeat in 2008. Mugabe didn’t change, we did. The place that Zimbabwe occupies in the western imagination has always fascinated me; likewise the place that the west occupies vice-versa. Although never quite achieving membership of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”, Zimbabwe did make it onto the second tier “outposts of tyranny” in 2005, alongside North Korea. Heady stuff. Believe it or not, American diplomats are granted extra leave for the hardship of their posting. I have laughed about this while drinking gin and tonics prepared by local staff in the lush gardens of said diplomats’ opulent mansions.
When I return to the UK and tell people I have a house in Zimbabwe, they look at me like I must be quite mad: “It sounds so awful.” Sometimes, I wonder what they’re picturing. Sometimes, unforgivably, I indulge their imaginations with stories of awfulness, which make my life
