Zimbabwe Absurdity

It doesn’t get much lower than a photo in a newspaper of a suicide victim, saliva still drooling out of her mouth after she just hanged herself. I saw the title on the H-Metro (Harare Metro) paper “Suicide Shock” as I drove around to the industrial sites this morning after my French lesson. It seems that the publishers are plumbing the depths of sensationalism and finding it to be without a limit. H-Metro is a relatively new paper, this year I think, and I guess the publishers have discovered that trash sells. I did notice that some of the newspaper vendors were hiding the H-Metro behind other papers. Maybe they were embarassed?

I was around at Caro’s place yesterday afternoon for an extended and rather alcoholic lunch. The conversation drifted to the recent gig by American hip-hop star Akon. I’d never heard of him but a lot of other people had and were willing to fork out around $100 a ticket to see him perform. On the night of the performance some youngsters Caro knew had gone along. It was chaotic. The act only started at 1:00 a.m. by which time a lot of people were drunk. The stadim was then invaded by bands of prostitutes and thieves and they were not shy about plying their trade –
that’s the prostitutes AND the thieves! One prostitute allowed a client to use her in full public view at which stage the youngsters thought it wise to leave.