Zimbabwe Sends In The Bulldozers

Dear Family and Friends,

On a blistering blue sky October day, Zimbabwe is at its best and its worst all at once. In an avenue of arched Jacaranda trees, their purple flowers carpeting the ground, a man sits under a tree with a cardboard sign saying HUNEY and a line of plastic bottles filled with golden liquid on a plank on the roadside. Further along a group of women sit with 2 litre bottles of milk for sale and around the corner on both sides of the railway line people are selling water melons, peaches, naartjies and apples. This is survival 101. It is the face of Zimbabwe, doing what it takes to survive one day at a time.

Meanwhile high in a palm tree the Weaver birds are in a building frenzy. A few leaves bound together with thin strips of tough palm, they make a hook to hang their nest from. Then a circle is made and reinforced and they start building the frame of the nest. Tirelessly they work, weaving and stitching, pulling and snipping, filling in the gaps. Soon the ground below is littered with fallen palm strips and then, after days of work, the girls come along to inspect. Oh dear what a kerfuffle follows. All the male weavers hang upside down from the entrance hole to their nests. Flapping and flicking their wings, shivering and quivering, showing off their prize to attract a mate. A sight once seen never forgotten.

And while the birds are building and creating this October, authorities in Zimbabwe are busy breaking down and destroying. For the past fortnight social media has been inundated with shocking videos of people watching as their homes and shops have been knocked down by Municipal bulldozers. It looks like a war zone. Helpless people standing in the rubble and dust of what was their home or shop. Broken bricks in mounds everywhere; window frames and door frames ripped out, broken glass in the sand; roof timbers littered like matchsticks in the mountains of debris; zinc roof sheets bent and destroyed.

Statements by authorities are confusing, very confusing. First they say their bulldozers are destroying “illegal structures.” Then they say that they are bulldozing “regularized informal settlements.”

You have to read those three words again and again. A ‘regularized informal settlement’ is defined by authorities as “an unplanned or originally illegal residential community that government and local authorities have officially approved, surveyed, and integrated into formal urban planning frameworks.”

So, it was illegal, then its regularized and it’s not illegal anymore, but now they are bulldozing it because it hasn’t met all the ‘regularized structure conditions?’ Oh dear, complicated isn’t the word for it. If people haven’t met the “regularized conditions” their house or shop gets bulldozed, reduced to rubble.

The burning questions we are all asking is why do it like this? Why send in the bulldozers? Why destroy all those building materials? Years of saving gone in minutes. What happens to all these people now, we ask, families, children? How do they start again? Where do they go?

I see the pictures and watch the film clips and my heart is so sore. How often in Zimbabwe I meet one friend or another and always they are busy, saving and building. I ask: “how is your house coming along?” and they proudly respond: “the slab is laid, I am saving for bricks and cement.” Next time you ask they say “the walls are up, now I am saving for the frames – door and window frames.” Many months later you ask again and now they are at roof height, saving money for the roof timbers and roof sheets. Finally, after two years, the walls are plastered, the floors are laid, the piping is installed and the smiles are huge when I meet that friend again. Along the way I have helped whenever I can, maybe a bag or two of cement, a window frame or a few roofing sheets and the end result comes in this one moment. “Now it is home, my own home. I am safe now, my children are safe,” my friend says, eyes shining, a beaming smile as he shows me the photos on his phone. We shake hands mightily, “Makorokoto” (congratulations) I say. This is the story of ordinary Zimbabweans: such hard work, such saving, such pride.

Please keep Zimbabwe in your hearts and minds in these days of bulldozers and destruction. This is the real Zimbabwe in this Letter today, not the internet video REELS showing billionaire Zimbabweans and their triple story mansions with helipads in the garden and fleets of luxury vehicles in their garages.

My new book, “A Hammock Under the Zimbabwean Sky. Stories from a time of innocence,” is now available from my website. Click here to order your copy: https://cathybuckle.co.zw/books/

There is no charge for this Letter From Zimbabwe but if you would like to donate please visit my website.

Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 26th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting.

Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)

Love Cathy 30th October 2026. Copyright © Cathy Buckle https://cathybuckle.co.zw/

My new book “A Hammock Under The Zimbabwean Sky,” my 2026 “Zimbabwe’s Timeless Beauty” Photobook and my “Beautiful Zimbabwe 2027” Calendar are all available from https://cathybuckle.co.zw/ or https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cathybuckle2018

Source: Zimbabwe Sends In The Bulldozers – Cathy Buckle

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