Ouster is new news in rural Zimbabwe

LUPANE, Zimbabwe — It’s been weeks since Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was ousted after 37 years in power, but the news still hasn’t reached some of the nation’s far-flung residents.

“Don’t be silly; no one has that kind of power to remove Mugabe. He will die in office, that one,” said Sokuluhle Dube, who was selling cooked goat meat at a cattle auction far from the capital, Harare. “I don’t think you are a journalist; maybe you are a spy,” the 76-year-old told a reporter as her friends nodded in agreement.

As new leader Emmerson Mnangagwa tries to revive a struggling economy, the changes his government hopes to hurry along are bumping up against a rural lifestyle where news travels by word of mouth.

In districts disconnected from phone lines, many people aren’t fully aware of the events leading to Mugabe’s resignation, including the military’s takeover, the hundreds of thousands marching in the capital and the impeachment proceedings that led the 93-year-old president to step down.

Instead, the buzz was about the cattle auction in Lupane district’s Gomoza village, where hundreds of people gathered to buy and sell. Others bargained over items such as bicycles and sorghum beer.

Many have known no other president.

“It’s true. I heard someone talk about it the other day,” one younger villager said, facing the skeptics. But he showed little concern.

“How does it help us? They always do their things in Harare. Look around us. Does it seem like they ever cared about us?”

The work of recovering from years of mismanagement, a severe cash shortage and high unemployment is an even bigger challenge in Zimbabwe’s agricultural regions, where infrastructure is often shaky or absent.

Fixed telephone lines are down, and signals for television and radio are nonexistent. The dusty road to the village is dominated by donkeys drawing carts, the main mode of transport.

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