Dictators are like Dublin buses, there'll be another along sooner or later.

“Welcome to Zimbabwe” said the man to me on Victoria Bridge less than 5 months ago. “Why, thank you”, I replied, “But I’ve been here before”, I said. “When” asked the gentleman getting more interested in me as I reached for my passport.

 “Five minutes ago” I said pointing out the group of students in my care to the gentleman that I was trying to drag away from hawkers who were swapping souvenirs for teashirts. I was rounding them up so that we could all return to Livingstone. 

The peace and quiet of the main road into the country was broken now and then by a lorry passing through the no mans land through which I had earlier strolled towards a border post where little seemed to be going on. President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe seemed to have had down time that day.

“You see”, I said to my friend on the border. “I’m a little like your president, I'm hard to  get rid ” says I with a dead pan face to the man who I reckoned might well be a policeman.  Talk about a conversation killer. An embarrassed silence followed as I went about my way. Minutes later, the bartering done we were back inside Zambia and heading to the bright lights of Livingstone.

The trip to Zimbabwe came at the tail end of the CBS Immersion trip to Zambia. A bit of sight seeing before heading home after doing voluntary work. The day had started well with a casual stroll around the city centre.  Hanging around outside my hostel were a few lads trying to make a shilling by selling Zimbabwe currency as souvenirs.  Trillion dollar notes for about 50 cent.  The Zim wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Hyper inflation on a scale not seen since the collapse of the mark 100 years ago has undermined the economy and destroyed agriculture, the mainstay of the rural economy. 

As our bus turned right to break for the border, 4 lorries packed with Zimbabwean migrant workers drove past us heading right up the hill taking them to pick fruit on a farm on the outskirts of the town.A chance meeting on a road when you've a bit of time on his hands makes you wonder what type of lives these people lead.

But I wasn’t finished with Zimbabwe. On the way home our flight stopped over in Harare.  Coming in to land gave me my first glimpse of an eerily quite city on an African afternoon. Nothing stirred. The airport apron was empty except for my aircraft. I got up to walk around the jet as we refuelled. There was hardly a soul to be seen. A man got on to clean and remove waste.  And within 20 minutes we were gone.  Africa is full of busy bustling places as people mill around mostly by foot.  I saw nobody in my time as a guest of Robert Mugabe.

It was the second time I’d been in a fundamentally dysfunctional state.  In my 20’s I’d visited the DDR.  Zimbabwe has all the tell tale signs of the old DDR. A currency that is worthless in the wider economy. A leader who is old and hanging on to power and his yesterdays.  Citizens voting with their feet when their voices aren’t listened to. And the daddy of them all is the corruption.

At least in Zimbabwe the military stepped in to put an end to the shambles. The military picked their moment to strike. But who will come next?  That is the real question. Will there be a free and fair elections under a new constitution that guarantees Zimbabweans their rights?

My concern is that the next leader will be a ZANU-PF nominee who will want to carry on as before with the Mugabe’s as history rather than accountable.  That  would make today’s events a missed opportunity.