I was arrested by Mugabe's police the other day. They caught me dealing
in foreign currency, and threw me into the Harare Remand Prison. After
six hours I bribed my way back out onto the streets, but during that
time I met a man who's plight made me forget mine.
His name is Takawira Mwanza; he is 35, a tall, dark and softly spoken man. I laughed when Takawira told me his story. As is so common in today's Zimbabwe, I laughed to keep from crying.
Takawira is in jail because he committed the ultimate Zimbawean crime. He stole from our President. Mugabe hasn't forgiven him, and probably never will.
This is his story. He was a soldier. More than that, he was a member of the Presidential Guard, an army elite dedicated to protecting Robert Mugabe. He was stationed at one of Mugabe's rural retreats, Highfields Farm in Norton, 40km south of Harare. The year was 2001.
The President, celebrating a close-run election victory against the newly-formed Movement for Democratic Change, decided to buy himself a present. He had a prize bull flown in from China on Air Zimbabwe, to join his fecund herd at Highfields Farm.
The bull was huge and white and the President named it Karigamombe, which translates as He Who Fells A Bull. No, I don't get it either.
Takawira fell in love with the bull. "He was so beautiful," he told me. "Also I had my own herd at my village in Sanyati, and I decided my cows deserved a bull like Karigamombe."
He was due some leave, so he took it. The first night he borrowed a truck, made some excuse about a visit to a vet, loaded up Karigamombe, and trundled him the 80km to his village. His arrival was a big event for the village - and I imagine for Takawira's cows.
"I know it was wrong to steal," he told me plaintively. "But a man has to look after his family anyway he can."
Takawira is not the most cunning of criminals, and this wasn't the most baffling of cases, even for Zimbabwe's military intelligence officers. They turned up the next day, took Karigamombe home, arrested Takawira for cattle rustling, and subsequently saw him sentenced to four years hard labour.
A stern but reasonable sentence, you might think. Takawira did his time, looking forward to his release in 2005. He didn't get it. What he didn't know was, Mugabe had taken it personally.
"The President doesn't think you have been punished enough," he was told. So although he had completed his sentence he was not to be released. That's why I found him in the remand prison. It's where the government puts anyone they don't know what to do with.
"Perhaps one day the President will be in a good mood, and let me out," he says, with unjustified optimism. Fellow prisoners say he cries out in his sleep for Mugabe to release him, and let him return to his family.
Meanwhile Karigamombe continues to enjoy life with his family on Mugabe's farm. He is said to be a very contented bull. And so, doubtless, are all his cows.
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