Zimbabwe Army's deserters underscore country's troubles
President Mugabe has traditionally drawn strong support from the military. But lack of pay and distasteful assignments may be weakening that loyalty.
from the April 25, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Talking with those who have fled
Sgt. Dennis Chingoma (a pseudonym, given because of his concern of getting arrested by South African police), recently took this reporter into one of these squatter camps in a posh neighborhood. Men wash themselves in a rancid gully and sleep among the boulders and elephant grass. When it rains, they rush to garbage cans to grab newspapers to serve as umbrellas. For food, they dive into dumpsters behind grocery stores, occasionally fighting with refugees of other ethnic groups over postdated loaves of bread.
As dusk falls on this evening, a group of 20 dusty, Shona-speaking Zimbabweans clusters around a reporter to tell their stories. None will admit to being soldiers, but a half dozen of them quarrel among themselves in Shona over whether to tell this outsider about their military careers.
"Are you crazy?" says one former Zimbabwean soldier, in Shona. "Whatever you say here will be read in Harare." A schoolteacher, who seems to be the camp leader, suggests that "next time, you should take them aside privately, and they will feel more comfortable talking with you." The schoolteacher then asks if he can wash this reporter's car.
"They are afraid to talk, but they are desperate," says Sergeant Chingoma, later, who works as a porter at a local bus station and sends home money to his wife through the bus driver. He fled first to Mozambique, then crossed into South Africa in January through the Kruger National Park. It is a treacherous journey. Many Mozambicans have been devoured by the park's lions.
"We are desperate," says Chingoma, who says that most soldiers are leaving because of the economic crisis, not politics. "In Zimbabwe, we are not getting paid. We are just getting promises."
"I was born to be a soldier; I don't want to do anything else," Chingoma says with a sigh. "But ... I have a family to feed. So I do what I have to do: leave my country, take any job I can find on the street, and send money home to my family."
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