Author: Chenjerai Hove

Free at last: The day Zimbabwe became independent

Methodist church reverend Canaan Banana (left) and his wife Janet share a moment with then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe (centre) and his wife Sally five days before independence celebrations. (Pic: STF)
Methodist church reverend Canaan Banana (left) and his wife Janet share a moment with then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe (centre) and his wife Sally five days before independence celebrations. (Pic: STF)

I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.

Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.

When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.

My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.

In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.

Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.

A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.

With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.

It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.

Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.

She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.

But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.

The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.

A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.

My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of ­dismissal are rescinded.

We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.

The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.

Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.

He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.

April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.

It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.

Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.

The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.

I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.

Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.

When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.

My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.

In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.

Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.

A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.

With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.

It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.

Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.

She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.

But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.

The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.

A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.

My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of ­dismissal are rescinded.

We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.

The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.

Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.

He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.

April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.

It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.

Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.

The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.

Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer living in exile in Europe. This piece was first published in the Mail & Guardian’s Zimbabwe edition.

Laugh at your own risk in Zimbabwe

Laughter is the best medicine, wisdom says. But not necessarily in all places at all times. In Zimbabwe, laughter might actually be the worst poison, depending on who or what you are laughing at.

A Zimbabwean man living in the east of the country near the belly of the rich diamond fields drinks a few quaffs of his frothy beer, the ­semi-traditional Chibuku. It is President Robert Mugabe’s birthday. And the 2012 presidential birthday party is in the eastern province’s capital, Mutare.

The man, who is stubborn in the wholesome traditional personality of that region, does not go to the stadium where the party is being held. He has probably attended many in the past and has come to the conclusion that standing in the queue for hours for a small cup of his favourite drink was not to his liking.

So, the man goes to his favourite bar, which is screening the festivities. As if to torture him further, the national broadcaster is airing the lavish birthday party live. The birthday cake is a crocodile-like monster of a sugary thing weighing 88kg — a kilogram for each year. A massive affair with 88 lit candles fluttering in the wind like tiny butterflies blown around by a soothing breeze.

The half-drunk man chats with a stranger sitting next to him: “At the age of 88, where does this old man have the breath to blow out 88 candles? Did he ask for some assistance?” He is referring to Mugabe.

The stranger walks out of the bar with a stern look on his face and shortly returns with two aggressive-looking men at his heels. “Secret police!” the boozer whispers to himself, recognising them by their dark glasses and familiar, wrinkled suits.

The court trial about a pub joke lasts for weeks and weeks, and people all over the country sympathise with the offender. They feel inspired to make more jokes about the president, despite the risks.

(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)

In Zimbabwe, joking about the president is a serious crime, and many citizens have lost their freedom for having the courage to laugh at the president. If the South African artist who painted President Jacob Zuma’s privates had been a Zimbabwean, he would probably now be languishing in Chikurubi Prison.

The crime: insulting the president. The punishment: months behind bars in a dingy prison cell, or, if the magistrate feels pity for you, a sentence of hundreds of hours of humiliating community service in a public place in the scorching sun.

But one man seems to have gone too far in the southwestern part of the country. He supports Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party partly because it gives him free T-shirts every now and then. Unfortunately, he did not like the president’s portrait on the front of the T-shirt, so one day he laboriously erased the portrait with white paint. When the secret police saw him wearing the stained shirt, they asked him what he had done to the presidential portrait.

As honest as the people from that part of the country are known to be, he declared: “I removed the face of Mugabe. I like the ruling party, but I don’t like the leader of the party.” He says this with a straight face, not knowing what he’s getting ­himself into — which turns out to be the mouth of a lion of a magistrate, who sentences him to many hours of community service.

The commandment: thou shalt not deface the picture of the president on a party T-shirt.

In the extreme south of the country, near the border with South Africa, an agitated man speaks to himself in a bar. “I am well educated, but have been unemployed for a long time. It is this Mugabe madness. The man has ruined our country.”

He promptly finds himself in a police cell for the common crime that is now called “insult” by the police. Later when they arrest a journalist, they say he is in a police cell for “the crime of the pen”.

The crime: thou shall not introspect maliciously about the president. The thought police are everywhere, you know, the law seems to say. It is already past George Orwell’s 1984! Life gets worse.

Zimbabweans fight in many different ways for their freedom, including the fight for the right to giggle or laugh. But the law instructs other­wise in the area of what or who not to laugh at. It seems the secret police have a secret manual on guidelines to Zimbabwean laughter.

In another incident, a man was walking home during the day. He came across a herd boy who was taking care of the animals in the open valley near the village. The boy was wearing an over-sized T-shirt with Mugabe’s portrait emblazoned on it. The man was annoyed and called the child to come to him. The boy obeyed, as decent African children are always expected to do.

“Why are you wearing a T-shirt with the face of this old man with a wrinkled face? Take it off!” The man then broke a small branch of a tree, whipped the boy and then let him go.

The following day, the man was in front of a vicious magistrate. The practical joker was sentenced to a year in jail with labour. The offender was not charged for whipping an innocent boy. He was charged for protesting about Mugabe’s portrait.

But then, the area is renowned for its traditional voodoo power; mysterious things originate in the area, including the ability to create lightning. Lawyers arrived to defend the culprit for free so they could make a good legal reputation for themselves. While the case was still in the court, the magistrate collapsed and died in his courtroom.

The new magistrate, probably in utter fear, decided to fine the culprit a few dollars, perhaps just in case his magical powers could be summoned with more potent and fatal force.

And one thing to learn from Zimbabwean public transport is never to mention the name of the president in an argument. Two brothers learnt this the hard way. In their argument about domestic issues during a bus ride in Harare, the elder brother, rather fed up with the younger one’s stubbornness, shouted: “Don’t be as hard-headed as Mugabe, young man.”

Silence during the bus trip
All of a sudden, the bus changed its route and stopped outside a police station. One passenger pointed at the joker and said: “That one, he insulted the president.” Soon, the whole country knew the president was “hard-headed”, and they laughed in subdued ways in isolated places.

The law: be silent on your bus trip if you don’t want to arrive at a prison cell instead of at your house. Although technology is the new miracle in human relations, it can cause much heartache. Case in point: a Zimbabwean woman sent a friend an SMS containing a Photoshopped picture of Mugabe in the nude. Imagine, an 88-year-old man in the nude!

She soon realised the gravity of her offensive joke when her friend appeared with a troop of police officers in tow to arrest her. Poor woman, she is still in the courts, waiting to know when the doors to a dirty prison cell will swallow her. The law: thou shall never imagine the president naked under any circumstances.

In Zimbabwe, insulting the president can simply mean complaining about the way the man has ruined the country politically, economically, culturally and academically, or in any sorts of other ways.

I had a share of it myself when a secret agent asked me what I thought about the president’s academic achievements. “Seven academic degrees,” he said. When I said I was neither impressed nor amused, the agent was burning with fury. “Why?” he shouted, spraying my face with his spit.

“They are all undergraduate degrees. Didn’t someone tell him to advance to a master’s degree?” I retorted as I wiped the new washing liquid from my face.

The man then threatened me with the possibility of disappearance: “We will not arrest you. That will make you more famous. We have other ways, disappearance, accidents, many more,” he warned.

Cruel, beloved homeland, deprived of the permanence of laughter, but allowed only to cry with wrinkled faces of sadness, or dance with commandeered joy.

Even our balancing rocks of the Matopos Hills have given up the hope of teaching us to balance life in all its aspects.

Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer living in exile in Europe. This post was first published in the Mail & Guardian. 

How an ancestor is born in Zimbabwe

The year is 1989, 12 months after my father’s death. We all gather at his farm – uncles, aunties, cousins, nephews, brothers and sisters from his seven wives, neighbours, too. This is a ceremony that no one should ever miss: it has taken all week for the stream of arriving relatives from our huge family to flood the homestead.

Late Friday, on an evening filled with subdued excitement, a bull is driven to the centre of the danga (the cattle pen), and ceremonially presented to us all. The following morning, it will be sprinkled with traditional beer brewed by a woman who is past menstruation, in readiness for slaughter.

Next morning we wake, the little ones included, at first cock’s crow. An elder, uncle to us all, accompanied by my father’s first wife, the VaHosi (Queen), carries a calabash of frothing traditional beer. We follow him to my father’s grave in total silence. The air is warm and dense with dignity.

At the graveside, Uncle kneels, places the gourd of beer besides the grave and inspects it to make sure there has been no tampering with the soil and leaves on the grave. He nods with satisfaction. Women ululate. Men cup hands. Uncle breathes with the relief of a heavy responsibility dispatched. A tense silence descends as if inaudible voices are falling, cloudlike, over our heads and into our expectant hearts.

Uncle speaks: “My brother, it is me, and as you can see, I am accompanied by all, all of them, your blood. We have come to take your spirit back into the homestead so that from today, your spirit will not roam in the forest. You have had time enough to miss your family, and those who went before you. From now on, your spirit is back with us. You are no longer dead, you are more useful for us as you join those gone before you.

“Now, when we pray, you are part of the stream through which we can reach the Great Creator, the sea of life, through those who went before you.”

Praying, Uncle pours some of the brew onto the grave before sharing the rest with us, following the hierarchy – men and women, boys and girls – all sip the brew from the same gourd.

It is then that the music and dancing begin, all day, all night, celebrating the return of the living-dead to the living as well as to the dead-living. They had not died. They have only been transformed into another phase of life, less vulnerable than the living flesh, eternal in the poetry of family and memory of the music-makers of the village.

The slaughtered bull is more than enough meat for all. Huge pots are ranged over fires as the women busy themselves with cooking. Food and drink, song and dance, the day fades into a night of revelry.

"I want to join my friends in the world of the ancestors. Death has a short memory." (Graphic: John McCann, M&G)
“I want to join my friends in the world of the ancestors. Death has a short memory.” (Graphic: John McCann, M&G)

As my brothers and I drive back to the city after two days of endless festivities, we feel refreshed, blessed by those who are privileged to be the living-dead who interact with the dead as well as the living, those under whose shadow we feel safe. We seem to float through the north-westerly winds, and the 300 kilometre-journey back to Harare.

The fear of death and what the after-life holds are the basis of many earthly religions. Humans desire to be safe, even after death, to remove the terror that lurks in the unknown. So, religious ceremonies and rituals are created to map out the comforts that one deserves in old age, and even in death.

Not so with many African religions, especially in southern Africa, and at one’s old age. The desire to die can become as compulsive as an overdue pregnancy. It is the desire to become an ancestor that also washes away the fear of death and ageing.

“Death has forgotten me,” says my 98-year old uncle, MM, as we call him. After my 8-year absence from Zimbabwe, I dared call him to find out about his state of health. He longs for death, as if for a lover. “I want to join my friends in the world of the ancestors. Death,” laughs the old man, “has a short memory.”

When MM was in his late 70s, I teased him about going to an old people’s home, the European way. He smiled and exclaimed: “Do I look like an old rag to be discarded?”

Then we talked about the meaning of life: birth, youth, adulthood, ageing, death and life after death.

He would tell me how every aspect of life is celebrated with blood, not as a sign of death, but a sign of rebirth, regeneration, another life in dialogue with the earth which is the source of all life.

At birth, the baby bursts into the world with a yell, but then there is blood from the mother to welcome the young life to this turbulent world. The umbilical cord is ceremoniously buried into the soil of a nearby anthill by the midwife, reminding the new born that he/she is part of this earth and one day will join the ancestors, in the earth, in the whispering winds, in the silent voices of those yearning for company, who have already been transformed to another life.

Death is a change, not an end. The cycle of life traverses the landscapes of birth, youth, old age, death, and the holy ancestors who are the living-dead, the ancestors who give more life to the living.

‘Tread carefully/ my brother,/Tread carefully,/ my sister,

This piece of earth/Is the nest/Where your ancestors lie’

I would create these poetic lines 30 years later, in memory of the journey to my father’s grave, the heavy, 50-metre walk we made to invite his roaming spirit back into the realms of The Creator, of the Ancestors, and the family.

Every living being knows their ultimate destination, the only mystery is the manner of the journey to the life-after. An elder’s profound wish is to die a dignified death, to be given a dignified burial, and a grand ceremony to welcome them back to protect the living and those still to be born.

As a person gets older, they are revered as counselor/advisor to the living, until death brings them to the world of the ancestors, closer to God.

The most haunting fear of a Shona person is not death, but infertility, the incapacity to leave offspring who will write the history of the dead in human blood and body. Life’s continuity, the unending stream of personal and collective history, must never be broken.

Singing and dancing through the night of my father’s umbuyiso ceremony all those years ago, we could already see him returning to us, rising with the morning sun, to celebrate the eternal journey. We had laid him to rest, his head to the east, and his feet to the west, and he was living again. New babies can now be named after him, and the rituals and crises of family will from now on all start with pleas for his intervention.

On the long journey home we were nourished by these thoughts: a new ancestor guards us as my father joins the stream of his own fathers and mothers to make our lives flow gently, without turbulence. And should misfortunes torment the family without apparent cause, we now have the language with which to demand that he performs his duties in the manner of a wise ancestor, one who can interact with both the living and the dead.

As the rains and good harvests come, and healthy children are born, more rituals will be performed to acknowledge the power and influence of the living-dead.

Poet, novelist and essay writer, Chenjerai Hove is one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated literary figures.

This post was first published in the Mail & Guardian’s annual God edition.