The Big Read: The land that laughter forgot

It was 23 years ago that I last visited Zimbabwe while doing fieldwork for my doctoral dissertation.

Despite more than a decade of freedom, the place was gripped by paranoia, and for good reason. The apartheid regime had agents all over the place, sabotaging military installations of the new black government and blowing up South African freedom fighters in the middle of Harare. The sense of fear was everywhere.

As a stranger carrying a South African passport, I had to justify my request for government curricula over and over again. One of my letters of request was inadvertently handed back to me, and on that paper appeared a long list of commentaries by various officials alternately welcoming and warning of my request for innocuous school documents. That was then.

I was excited to return last month, this time on a mission to recruit potential university students from Zimbabwe's legendary school system.

"What would happen," I asked my Zimbabwe students from our university, "if I went to speak to those people on the streets?"

They would be reluctant to talk to me, I was told, because of fear. They do not know me, and would be suspicious of why I was approaching them.

Several students warned: "No political jokes, professor. It could land you in trouble."

Images of Chikurubi prison flashed through my mind. Of course I ignored them. I realised you could tell the degree of freedom in a country by the number of standup comedians in business. A country that cannot laugh at itself takes on a sad, morose, depressing complexion.

Despite the familiarly warm hospitality of Zimbabwean friends and colleagues, I could not help but notice the underlying sadness, the lack of spontaneity, the carefully camouflaged guardedness. What had not changed in the political culture of the country is the fear of the state as an instrument of control and coercion. The stranger is not a friend to embrace but a possible source of surveillance.

They have seen what happens to even prominent figures in state prisons if they dared to challenge presidential authority. Since there is no effective sanction of the state from outside the country, you make a risk calculation and decide to withdraw into silence.

By that standard South Africa is in good shape. Whether it is the outrageous cartoon sketches of Zapiro or the cutting humour of Trevor Noah, the penetrating journalism of Justice Malala or the artwork of Ayanda Mabula, our political culture is defiant and in-your-face when it comes to political authority. South Africans are raucous, loud, critical, challenging and sometimes downright offensive in the face of any threat of oppression. I prefer democratic noise to cowering silence.

Standing in front of hundreds of Zimbabwean youth, I made it clear that like their South African counterparts, they have the responsibility to advance and protect democracy on both sides of Beit Bridge. There is no place for timidity in either place or we risk a black government doing exactly what a white government did - holding us hostage to fear.

The privilege of education carries the solemn duty of transformation in any democracy.

South Africa is by no means out of the woods as far as these freedoms are concerned, as we know all too well from the Spear episode and the ill-named Protection of State Information Bill. Those state-inspired actions have the same goal, namely to press-gang citizens into old cultures of fear and retribution for holding a contrary opinion.

The signs of urban decay and rural stagnation are everywhere. The buildings are drab and the roads uneven. Long faces ignore hustlers trying to coax people into taxis with smooth tyres.

Yet above the rubble of despair there are the well-watered pot plants of some of the continent's best schools. It is an odd arrangement: a failing public infrastructure everywhere, and in the middle of this decay a school with bright-green manicured lawns, solid buildings, rugby fields, uniformed pupils and outstanding teachers.

There is something odder still. While the president routinely lambasts the former colonial power, everywhere you find the trappings of Empire from schools named Prince Edward to army barracks named King George and, of course, Victoria Falls.

The hymn books in the chapel at one of Harare's best schools contain the song God bless our gracious queen.

Zimbabwe is an odd country locked in despair. Its only hope is its schools and the next generation of leaders it will deliver.