WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Write a pacifist response to Orwell. Construct an argument for pacifism's morality, even in the face of unwarranted aggression.
Examine how Orwell's arguments about pacifism during World War II would apply to other military conflicts. Discuss whether Orwell's arguments are specific to the kind of ultimate evil represented by Hitler or whether they can be generalized to other armed conflicts.
Situate Orwell's argument in the just war tradition. Discuss what Orwell added to that tradition that is not found in the other readings in this chapter.
Evaluate the morality of pacifism in "the war on terror," "the war on drugs," or some other contemporary "conflict." Do Orwell's arguments apply?
marevasei kachere
War Memoir
[1998]
IN THE 1 970s , the African nation of Rhodesia was torn apart by a civil war. For nearly a century, this area of Southeastern Africa had been ruled by European colonizers, first as an outpost of the British Empire and later as a self-governing colony ruled by the white minority descended from the original British settlers. In 1965, as Great Britain was preparing to transfer power to a majority government that would have allowed the native population of Rhodesia to govern itself, the white minority government declared independence from Britain in an effort to maintain power. This Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) sparked a low-level war with Britain and an international response that, through economic sanctions, weakened the existing government considerably and provided the opening for a rebellion by the black majority.
Throughout the 1970s, black Rhodesians slipped across the border to be trained as guerilla fighters in Mozambique and Zambia, whose governments supported the rebellion. After a decade of brutal fighting, the Rhodesian government relented and held popular elections in 1980, which resulted in the end of the minority white government's rule over the native black population. As a result of that election, the colony formerly known as Rhodesia was renamed the Republic of Zimbabwe.
Marevasei Kachere (b. 1961) was born into an agricultural family in a village in the northeastern part of what is now Zimbabwe. In order to prevent people from feeding and sheltering guerilla fighters, the government forced the entire village into a "keep," or a fortified area that could be guarded and locked down. Like many of the young people forced into keeps, Kachere and her friends escaped and joined the resistance forces, which welcomed both male and female fighters into their ranks. In 1976 fifteen-year-old Kachere became a soldier in the liberation army.
"War Memoir" comes from a series of oral interviews conducted with Kachere in 1998. These interviews give a rare glimpse into the mind of a young girl who made the decision to become a soldier, not out of patriotism or a desire for political justice, but simply because the war had made her life as a civilian so dangerous and costly that it seemed safer to join the fighters than to live under government rule in a fortified village.
After the War of Independence, the new government of Zimbabwe offered payouts and monthly pensions to those citizens who fought in the war. The money was in Zimbabwean dollars, which went through several periods of hyperinflation, drastically reducing its value. Two thousand Zimbabwean dollars a month would be worth about $5.50 in U.S. dollars. Kachere's story is an example of how oppressive governments often create the very results that they attempt to suppress.
Marevasei Kachere's "War Memoir" is a rare thing in the history of war writing. It is an account of a war by a combatant who was a teenage girl from a peasant family with very little money or education. Her assessment of the war and of the government that resulted from it is honest, forthright, and uncolored by the propaganda that came from both sides of Zimbabwe's long struggle for independence. It is a story of how war affects the most vulnerable members of a society.
My name is Marevasei Kachere and I was born at Uzumba in Murewa District in 1961, the last in a family of eight children. I went to school at Chidodo when I was eight years old and stayed there up to grade seven. All the children in our family went to school but none of us progressed beyond grade seven, the top class of the primary school. My parents were unusual, as, unlike most parents in our village, they chose to send their daughters to school. This may have been due to the fact that my father had been an only child and so had not experienced discrimination against girls in his family. My education was brought to an end by the Liberation War. I didn't even see the results of my grade seven examinations since we had to leave our home before the results were available. When I eventually came back after the war, I was told that all the school records had been burnt.
Each day, after school, I had to look after the cattle and work in the fields, sometimes helping my father and one of my brothers to plough. I would lead the plough oxen so that they kept on the right course. As with schooling, there was no discrimination in our family between boys and girls as far as work was concerned. Any of us could do anything that had to be done. For instance, my brothers often used to fetch water from the well, something that is considered to be a girl's job. We lived very simply. It was only on special occasions that I was able to eat the food that I loved best—bread and eggs—and that, of course, disappeared along with our hens when we were forced by the Rhodesian soldiers to move into the keep or protected village.
In the early 1970s I used to hear the old people talking about a war and about terrorists, but at first I didn't understand what this meant. Then, round about 1972, when the war was getting hot in the Mount Darwin area, we heard stories that told of terrorists who were invisible. If the Rhodesian soldiers came anywhere near them, they would see only their hats but not the actual people.
We just heard these stories without, as I say, understanding them. Understanding what war was came to us when the soldiers arrived in our district. When they first came they questioned people about the presence of terrorists, and I think that at that period only a few people had been in contact with them, bringing them food and other necessities. But then we were told that on such and such a date we were going to be moved into a keep, although we had no idea what a keep was. So on the appointed day in 1975 the soldiers came and, going from house to house in our village, forced the people at gunpoint to leave with everything they could carry. Anyone who refused to move was shot. And then the soldiers burnt all our houses.
There were no houses in the keep and, at first, people made simple grass shelters 5 to stay in—with no roofs—until they managed to build huts. A whole family was crowded into each of these shelters, but in my case, I was lucky since my brothers and sister had married and I was the only one staying with my parents.
The keep was a large area surrounded by a very high barbed-wire fence. It was so high that one couldn't possibly climb over it and the wires were placed so close together that no one was able to squeeze through it. There were no two ways about it—when the soldiers said that we had to stay inside we had no choice. They were afraid that if we were allowed to go freely in and out we would carry food to the "terrorists" as they called them. Of course people had to be allowed to go out at set times to fetch water and to tend the vegetable gardens, and on these occasions everyone who went out was searched to see if the container he or she carried held food. And on coming back, if you were carrying a bucket of water the guards would stir it with a stick to see if there were any explosives in it. You had to make quite sure that you had brought in enough food and water for the family for if the gate was kept closed, as it sometimes was, then there was nothing you could do but go hungry. And if you came back late, after being outside, you would be shot.
Our school was also inside the fence, and every morning we had to go to school. The soldiers used to come to check the register to make sure that every child was present. If anyone was absent the rest of us were beaten with a length of hosepipe— every one of us—by the soldiers who were trying to get us to say where such and such a child had gone. We never did say for we believed that if they found out where the child had gone that child would be killed.