Detail

• Artist: Francois Smit
• Published in: The Sunday Independent
• Author of article: from Peter Godwin’s When a Crocodile Eats
• Date: 14/10/2006

• Paper: 280gsm 100% cotton acid free paper
• Ink: Epson ultrachrome archival pigment ink
• Image Size (printarea): 594mm x 420mm
• Frame: Optional
• Edition: Limited edition of 12

A short extract from the article

The plane descends over Zimbabwe to a wintry dawn. Plumes of mist trail with the prevailing breeze from rivers and dams below, ghostly ribbons garlanding a bleak khaki landscape. The fields of Mashonaland stand reproachfully uncultivated. Large-scale farming here is all but at an end.
 
The new airport is still paint-fumed and contractor-fresh. It has royal-blue fitted carpets and large expanses of plate glass. It feels expensive. It is. The airport is one of the biggest examples of the corruption now rampant here. A country that has not been particularly dishonest in the past is now a den of deceit. Leo Mugabe, the President's nephew, brokered this particular contract. His tender for the new airport was awarded over five competing bids (as stipulated by law), even though it was the most expensive one, it came in after the bid deadline and it didn't meet the tender requirements. None of these are obstacles to Leo, the First Nephew.
 You can bet Rustic Realist has something to say on the matter. The selling point of the new airport plan, my father explains, was its patriotic control tower, which was to have been a stylized replica of the acropolis at Great Zimbabwe. It was only after the bid was awarded that anyone bothered to run it past the international civil-aviation regulators, to discover that such an edifice ran foul of safety rules and, if built, no mainstream airlines would land here. So it was hurriedly modified and now resembles a vast white artichoke. It stands in the sunshine, glittering in all its pompous redundancy, completed just in time for the total collapse of tourism.
 Most airlines have now cancelled their flights to Harare, and Air Zimbabwe, the national airline, is increasingly unreliable. Behind the new terminal stands one of its Boeing 737s, mysteriously damaged - one of only five planes in its fleet. The airline is struggling to retain technicians and find spare parts to keep the fleet airborne. The fact that the President commandeers a plane whenever he needs it to attend an international function or to take his new wife Grace on a shopping trip also makes Air Zimbabwe's schedule extremely tentative. Three journalists who have pointed this out in print have been arrested and charged under the law which makes it a crime, punishable by two years in jail, to bring the President into 'ridicule or disrepute'.

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