A message from the Chair
Officially the centenary of The Round Table journal (started in the Edwardian era) did not start until 2010. But the preparations, started ahead of time.
And I thought it would be good to provide a monthly update for readers and supporters of our journal, starting in July 2009 after my re-election for a final year as Chair of the editorial advisory board, (known since the early twentieth century as the Moot).
Richard Bourne
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February 2010
It was when a cab driver, taking me to the University of Zimbabwe just outside Harare, told me that he was an old man, that the full extent of his country's catastrophe hit me. He was only 55. Yet such has been the crash in life expectancy in just over a decade that he has become, actuarially, an old man.
I am writing this message in Maputo, after spending time in Harare and Johannesburg, researching a contemporary history of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has been an ex-Commonwealth country for nearly seven years, Mozambique a member for nearly 15. The Commonwealth Foundation is now supporting a small fellowship programme to assist Zimbabwean professionals and civil society persons, in hopes that that the problematic inclusive government will move forward, and lead to the state's return to the Commonwealth. Back in 1986-7 I ran a London office to link Commonwealth NGOs with Mozambican partners, and Mozambique is today a pro-Commonwealth state.
Mrs Sekai Holland, the MDC (Tsvangirai) Minister in the coalition's organ for national healing, told me that she believes one million Zimbabweans are suffering from post-traumatic stress, from both the Smith and Mugabe eras. She herself was beaten up by Zanu thugs, and still gets treatment three days a week. The top priority for her, and her ministerial colleagues (Gibson Sibanda from the Mutambara MDC faction, and John Nkomo from Zanu) is to wean Zimbabwe off its history of violence. This is slow work, and a team from New South Wales is helping them.
Meanwhile life remains tough for Zimbabweans, in or out of the country. I witnessed some of more than a thousand refugees who had been evicted from a downtown squat in Johannesburg by Red Ant security men. Broken mattresses and pitiful people were congregated within metres of the Ellis Park rugby ground, with Paul Verryn of the Methodist church and Mêdecins sans Frontières doing what they could. Although there are said to be three million Zimbabweans in South Africa, a few are still being deported back, and some meet xenophobia.
What does this have to do with the Round Table centenary? It is just that the journal's origin stems from the imperial experience in southern Africa -- the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910 -- and editorials celebrated the full independence of Zimbabwe, with Commonwealth support, in 1980. Today's Commonwealth is poorer for the absence of Zimbabwe and today's Zimbabwe is poorer, much poorer, than any pessimist could have imagined in 1980.
Richard Bourne