24 hours in Harare, then a state escort back home

A Kenyan visiting Zimbabwe for up to 90 days does not require a visa. I confirmed this from the country’s Nairobi embassy website. However, just to be double sure ahead of my trip, I made additional inquiries from several people in the know, including Zimbabweans.

With no visa to worry about, I proceeded to make my arrangements for a seven-day trip that would see me write a whole lot of stories on a whole lot of subjects, including the presidential election that was scheduled for July 31.

In addition to story ideas, I armed myself with information on, among other things, accommodation, meals, security, and travel between Harare and Bulawayo, then headed to Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for the journey down south.

Flight KQ700 was on schedule, fully booked and, curiously, half-full of Chinese travellers.

I never really got to know what mission the orientals were on, but they reminded me of the globally trending story about African governments looking East, as opposed to the meddlesome West, for trade and development partnerships.

At the surprisingly huge and modern Harare International Airport, the Chinese formed a long queue in front of a clerk attending to those required to purchase visas on arrival.

Behind other counters — one for Comesa and SADC member state citizens, and another for returning Zimbabweans — the queues were considerably shorter. I was excited at the prospect of clearing customs speedily and getting off to my hotel room by midday.

File my first story

My calculation was that by 4pm, I would have sampled a couple of Zimbabwe publications and broadcast stations, walked around the city, and talked to a few people to be in a position to file my first story. I was wrong.

The immigration officer handling my case scrutinised my declaration form and passport with the thoroughness of, well, an immigration officer.

He then paused for a few minutes before turning to his colleague at the next counter for consultation. Something was not right, I told myself.

I had done all the background checks before getting here, but the look on the gentlemen’s faces across the counter told another story.

“So you are a journalist?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied without even thinking about it.

“Do you have a letter of authorisation from our (Zimbabwe) Ministry of Information?

“No, Sir.”

He took the cue to embark on a patriotic preachment binge about how it was a sensitive time in Zimbabwe, how any foreign journalist could only be allowed into the country on the production of the letter from the Information ministry “irrespective of the mission”, how things were tough in his beloved nation, blah blah blah.

Now, since this was a new requirement that Harare had introduced, and since their office in Nairobi had not told me anything about it, and because I was already on their soil, I asked the officer to please allow me through, with strict instructions that I report to the Ministry of Information immediately. He refused and, like many of his other colleagues that I later consulted with in the course of my short stay, insisted he was working on strict instructions from “above”.

My mind flashed back to Kenya at the height of then President Moi’s stranglehold on the nation, when politically correct individuals could do anything under the sun, including violating others’ rights, under the guise of “instructions from above”.

So what was Harare up to? Why this punitive requirement for foreign journalists flying in? I had, in the not-so-distant-past, been privileged to cover elections in Africa’s two largest economies — Nigeria and South Africa — and in both instances had got my accreditation while standing on the soil of the host nations.

I had also covered the 2011 South Sudan referendum and Juba, despite its many shortcomings then, had not made such demands.

The officials ordered me to take a seat in the lounge and retained my passport, then embarked on a flurry of consultations. I would later learn that the information pertaining to my “irregular” visit had gone all the way to the Office of the President and the consensus all the way up was not to budge.

The average Zimbabwe civil servant, I quickly learnt, is fiercely loyal to President Robert Mugabe, either genuinely, sycophantically, or out of fear. If you are on the payroll of the state, you would not dare do anything the long-serving leader would be uncomfortable with.

I was eventually referred to the shift supervisor, who dropped the bombshell: “We have the option of putting you on the same KQ plane that brought you here or allowing you a little more time to contact your employer in Nairobi to use whatever means to get you the letter from our Ministry of Information,” he advised.

I requested the latter and, to my relief, the immigration officer consented. Then came the next hurdle: How to communicate with Nairobi... or anyone else for that matter.

I was technically not yet in Zimbabwe and could therefore purchase neither a mobile phone line nor airtime. Both my Safaricom and Airtel lines were useless as I was not using their roaming service.

The immigration officer asked me for $10 (Sh870) for purchase of airtime to be loaded onto his phone if I was desperate enough for contact with Nairobi. I gave him the money and he returned a few minutes later, handed me the phone, and stood nearby as I chatted away.

My bosses back in Nairobi had made contacts with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (Misa), Zimbabwe, and the latter were doing all they could to save the situation.

At nightfall, I was ushered into a small room furnished, thankfully, with leather seats and a TV set. But since this also served as a staff lounge, I could not control what to watch. So I sat there, my travel book, Learn to Speak Lingala, at hand and the emotional wails of a soap opera blaring from the set.

All the while, as I watched officials retire for the night and others take their place, I kept hoping that this small matter would be handled quickly, that I would soon be allowed out into the bustling streets of Harare.

I got in touch with Nairobi at around 7.30pm (8.30pm Kenya time) when the Nation Media Group’s editorial director Joseph Odindo called to ask whether I had managed to speak to lawyers sent to the airport by Misa.

I told him I had not and that I doubted that any lawyer could handle this because I was technically in no-man’s land and the authorities would not allow any meddlesome lawyer to rock the boat further.

A few minutes to midnight, two male officers walked into the room.

“Charles,” one of them beamed, “we can go now.” I reached for my suitcase and laptop, tacked in my book and off we went. Destination: A police unit in the domestic flights wing of the airport, about 200 metres away.

At the reporting desk, we found two officers, a man and a woman, but they seemed not to have the authority to handle my case as a third, maybe more senior, officer had to be called in.

They all conversed in Shona, keeping me in the dark about the subject matter. Still, I could hear them mention the dreaded word “deport” from time to time.

After a fairly lengthy chat between the police and the immigration officers as well as a bit of paperwork, the latter left. The senior policeman soon followed suit, leaving me in the hands of the pair that we had found at the reporting desk.

Stripped of everything

The two explained to me that before being locked up, I would be stripped of everything, except my clothes, for recording and safekeeping. So first went the computer bag with all its contents. Next the suitcase. And, finally, anything in my pockets.

Then they asked for my spectacles, belt, Ventolin inhaler (for my asthma), shoes, and money. Not one to take chances, I insisted that the serial numbers of all the dollar bills I had handed over be recorded in the Occurrence Book.

I could imagine a mischievous police officer replacing them with fake ones. As for the Kenya shillings I had, I did not give a hoot as I trusted they were of no value in Zimbabwe.

Then the moment I dreaded the most — the entry into the cell — came. I was escorted into a small room the size of an average Kenyan bathroom furnished with an Asian-type toilet that could only be flushed from the outside, a single light bulb, also lit from the outside, and what passed for beddings: Two thin strips of kikoy.

On the walls a small opening fitted with metal grills let in chilly Zimbabwe air and all around the usual graffiti by past guests jostled for my eye.

For fear of suffering a severe asthmatic attack, I chose to cover myself with the kikoys and sleep on the floor. Somehow, I fell asleep despite the mental exhaustion and hunger pangs.

I woke up minutes to seven in the morning and hoped that soon I would be let out of the cell. But it was not until an hour later when the new duty officer came to the window to inquire whether I was “still there and fine”. Immigration officers came to the police unit at around 9.30am, when I was freed from the cell to go to the reporting desk.

We went through the OB and my belongings were handed over to me. I was relieved to once again have a clearer vision with my spectacles on. And shoes have never felt that nice.

I was kept under the watchful eye of an immigration officer, who took me through the paces. Harare had decided it did not want me. They were going to deport me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

They escorted me to the Kenya Airways offices within the airport to change the return flight date, on to the check-in and waiting lobby and, finally, all the way up the plane back home and into my seat.

And that is how Zimbabwe spit me out. In the just over 24 hours they hosted me, I never ate anything, never bathed or brushed my teeth, and never had the chance to change my socks.

* Charles Omondi is a journalist with Kenya’ Daily Nation newspaper where this article was first published.

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