Letter to Chenjerai Hove

July 23rd, 2015

Musaigwa,

I am not sure why I am writing you this letter. In English. We never communicated in English. And you are dead. You did promise me that you would be a ghost, a very ‘kandangaras’ one, were your exact words. So I know you are reading this, sitting up there in the sky, wondering why I am communicating in a language that to all intents and purposes we lived and breathed, yet we chose not to use when we spoke online. I barely knew you, your life, your family – I never got to ask your children’s names. Some would say I should not be writing this, whatever it is. A letter? An obituary? A penance piece? But writing is the one thing that brought us together, united us, and it is the closest thing to an anti-depressant I am allowed to take. Writing this is my way of trying to come to terms with the fact that you are gone. Truly gone. I never had the chance to say goodbye. I am not able to travel up for your funeral. I am deeply, deeply sad. More importantly, today is Thursday, we were supposed to be on Skype.

“Hesi zimhandara! Uripi ko?” You burst onto my skype like that, (hello big girl! Where are you?).  I still cannot figure out how you got my contacts, why you chose to find me on skype of all places. I also do not know why you chose me. But thank you for reaching out, for being my friend in this special way. You started writing me long messages, as if we had been speaking just the other day. No by the by, no introductory notes. Just picking up where we had left off in 1998. Or was it ’99? Why am I lying? We had not exactly been bosom buddies. I knew you as an older brother. The writer. The editor at Zimbabwe Publishing House, across the street from my Women’s Action Group offices. You worked with my friend Laura Czerniewicz. You were nice. Too nice. Always joking with me. Always calling me ‘zimhandara’, not in a condescending-put her down sort of way. Just a matter of fact. I am a big girl, in all senses of the word. Later, I would meet you often with Ray Mawerera, my Parade Editor-friend. We would hang out together, an odd bunch.

 I heard you had left Zimbabwe, sometime after I did. Then there you were, on my skype, one fine Thursday morning. I know it was a Thursday, because that is when I work from home. Or pretend to. That day I did not work. We tried an actual call, but my connection was too weak. So we chatted back and forth, in very long convoluted Shona sentences, (on my part). You were having such fun! From that day on, the pattern was set. We would always communicate in ChiKaranga. Real deep, ChiKaranga. The way our grandparents spoke it. Not even used in any text book or novel. I barely dream, think, or work in Shona most times. But you made me use it, consistently. It felt good. This was the closest we could get to our home, I realize now.  Speaking ChiKaranga, made us feel as if we were back kwaNhema, or KwaMazvihwa, chatting away on the way to the river, the cattle dip-tank, the fields, or looking for firewood. We became each other’s family for those few minutes. Reliving the lives that we had left behind. Filling our souls with the joy of being Zimbabweans, conversing in our own language, hearing each other, no explanations needed, no strange looks given, we were just ourselves.

Mamuka sei vaChiheee! Kwakadii ko kuWenera zvokwadi? You would cheerily write to me, whether I was online or not. You called me VaChihee, short for Chihera. I called you Musaigwa, or Dziva Guru. Over the years, I looked forward to your messages when I came online. I knew there would always be one from you. I soon figured out that you were techno-challenged, so you had no idea what skype icon showed you I was online or offline. You just wrote away. Long thoughts, ideas, questions, whole essays. Then you would eventually realize, three or five ‘kombozishens’ later that I was not responding. Then you would rudely sign off – ‘haa dhemeti! Muripi ko vaChihee zvokwadi? Regai ndibudevo pamukova’. You have no idea what pleasure these conversations gave me. Or the depth of sadness that sometimes they drove me to. We spoke about our country. Tried to decipher the political currents. The social currents. Eventually we would get tired of that, and come back to talking about books, writing, what we were each up to. As usual I would talk too much about my kids, my family, my latest dramas. You enjoyed my dramas. Like the big brother you were, you offered advice about men. Let’s just say, you didn’t seem to understand much about your own species, except those of the Musaigwa clan. On those you were dead accurate. Sorry, I mean very accurate.

They say you were in something called ‘self-imposed-exile’. I have no idea what that means. Maybe that is what they say about all of us who left? Such a bizarre concept though. How does one impose exile on themselves? Can one choose ‘exile’, when you have a happy, fabulous home? Your own familiar people and things? Is it really a choice to be in some far away cold, nay frozen place? The type of cold that freezes your blood, your hair, your nose, and brain? That is what you told me the cold weather did to you in Norway. You said ‘vuruzvi bgangu bgagwamba kuti gwa? Kuda izvozvi habguchimo vuruzvi bgacho?’(I am not going to keep translating all that. I realize I may have lost our Zezuru speaking friends, but you and I understood each other).

They have been writing a lot about your so called self-imposed-exile. I didn’t ask why you were in Norway. It was not my business to ask. Actually, I did not want to know. You were just there.  You could not go back home you said. You wished every day to go home. Who was I to judge or question your choices? Or anyone else’s for that matter? We all have our demons, real and imagined. We all make choices, good and bad. Some choices are made for us by others. We accept, or we fight. But nobody, nobody, can ever know, understand, or judge another's reality, or that which they have never lived. I accepted it for what it was. Your life. Your truth. Much as I, or any of your other friends may have wanted you to be somewhere else, to do something else, this was your life, Musaigwa. Yours. As my friend Hope Chigudu always reminds me- you can only love another human being EJ, but you can’t live their lives for them.

We spoke about our home, Zimbabwe. A lot. Too much. Interestingly, we spoke a lot about our rural homes. The places we were born and grew up in, as if regressing in time would make us happier. or was it that those were the places where we had been truly happy in our Zimbabwe? We were united in our grief over the loss of our mothers. In the last six months, that is what we mostly spoke about. You, regretting that you had not been there for your mum, in her last days, her burial. That was eating you up. You worried that you may not end up buried next to her. I didn’t know what to say, because I could not relate. I buried my mum. I know where she is. If I had a choice, I would be sitting on her bed every day for the rest of my life. In Gweru. But there is what I wish for, then there is real life. I chose to be where I am now. An exile of sorts. But this is not about me. This is about you, Musaigwa.

When I moved back to Zimbabwe in 2011, you were so excited on my behalf. You wrote me long instructions about what I should do when I got there; Find Ray, say this or that to him. Find Chirikure, talk to him about x and q. Go to the UZ Senior Common room, (I still can’t fathom what charm that place held for you?), see who is still there, say this and that to Dr. XX and ask Professor XX why he is saying whatever. Go along Masvingo road, there is a great place for roasting meat. Seriously Musaigwa? Every Thursday, again working from home, I made time to specifically chat to you on skype. I gave you blow by blow accounts of what I had done, who I had seen. You started living vicariously through me, 'Hekanhi! Ndokudini paya imwi vaChihee?' You egged me on.  Sometimes your enthusiasm and excitement broke my heart. Hearing about your home, your favourite places, things that mattered to you, interpreted and experienced by another could not have been fun. I could hear you cheering me on. Cheering our Zimbabwe on.  You even followed Zimbabwe cricket and rugby, but as you said, ‘haa tongomirira kuvona unosumudza mukombe, kana kubvisa nhembe, kuti tizive kuti hwahwinha ndiyani! Kungovukera vozvangu kuvidza zuva. Rakibhi ndakaidzidzepivo Hove yangu?’  The joys of exile.

You were devastated when I moved back to Johannesburg last year. You tried to understand. You cross examined me about the choice I had made. Till the day you died, I don’t think you ever quite understood how a whole grown Chihee could run away from Jesus’ earthly deputies and the now seemingly ubiquitous goblins! My explanations seemed too frivolous, or too bizarre. This was not the Zimbabwe you knew, or expected to hear about. So you were crushed, and am sure, you didn’t forgive me.

In our last conversation, we spoke about me writing a book. You asked me to come to Norway so we could write my long over-due novel. You said you would ghost write it for me. I will take you up on that. I will just not be coming to Norway, because you are not there anymore. I will come see you where they have laid your body, in our home, Zimbabwe. We will continue our conversations neChiKaranga. You, my now favourite ghost, can write that novel for me. See you soon Musaigwa.  Dziva Guru.

I miss you a lot already.

Yours,

VaChihee.

 

 

Nobody tells you

Nobody tells you how it really feels to lose your mother. Books have been written. Movies made. Songs written. But nobody can ever describe accurately how it will feel. How your life will change. 
You can read the books. You can hum the songs. Or even create your own poems. Yet you too can not tell anybody how you feel.

The clever psychiatrists tell you about those seven, or is it six, maybe five steps of dealing with grief? What they don't tell you is that life is not a series of neat little steps. They can not predict that you will  miss steps two and three, then you twist an ankle when you get to five, and you have to recalculate, make your way back to the beginning. They can write as many manuals. Give you as many prescriptions to staunch the pain, but nobody will tell you how it will all end. Nobody can describe how your insides will feel like they are being ripped out of you, slowly, roughly, ripped, ripped, ripped, till you feel you can not go on. You can't get out of bed. You just want to lie down.

 The philosophical will tell you that time heals all wounds. What they wont tell you is that the dry skin you see at the top hides a wound so deep nobody has ever dared looked too closely at it. That is because it is so deep, eating away at your heart, your soul, head sometimes, night and day. They can not tell how to cure that deep one, because that would be admitting the truth - nobody knows how much time is needed to truly heal. Is it is a year? It certainly can not be three years. I have clocked three today. Maybe five? Or will that be 24? They will even tell you to 'move on'. As if putting one foot in front of the other is as easy as all that - after your mother dies. They will not tell you that it is ok to not want to move, on, up, sideways. Anywhere.
All I know is that this day, this third anniversary feels exactly as painful as it did on January 23rd, 2012. Exactly the same. I am reliving the early morning call, she has been taken to hospital. She is not opening her eyes. She is gone. I clutch my stomach. Drop the phone. Scream. Howl. Nobody will hear me today. I am on my own. I will do this alone. That will be the only difference.

The cluelessly- insensitive  tell you; Ah she had lived a full life. She was 76? Ah she had eaten many Christmases! They will tell you to celebrate her life. But what does that all mean? Because she was 76 she was now excess people? Were you supposed to stop needing her at some age? What age would that have been? 67? 59? There is no script for the celebration you are meant to have. Her favourite hymns don't help. Wearing her dress every Sunday wont make the pain go away. Repeating her most important words does not make you smile. What nobody tells you is that it does not matter at what age your mother dies. She will always be your mother. You will always need her. It does not matter if she was on life support. Or she was a dancer. You just want her because. And no, you do not want to celebrate her long life, because you still needed her. You want her here. Today. To hold you like you are 3 days old, breast-feed you, and tell you that she will always be here. Nobody tells you that for many years afterwards there will be days when for no reason, you will curl up in a foetal position, weep, throw up, and weep some more, like your mother's baby that you are.

The movie makers make it all look glamorous. Admirable even. The choreographed 'dealing with grief' sequences. The triumphant heroine surviving against all odds. Winter turning into spring and then summer! Nobody makes a movie about the permanent winter that stays in your soul. No movie prepares you for the times you are going to go crazy. Mad. Nobody tells you that you will wake up in the middle of the night and dial her number, because you forgot to remind her to take her medication. The days when you go shopping for her size 46DD bra, and buy a whole half a dozen of them, completely oblivious to the fact that she is not here to wear them. Then as you remember, hours later, how you will howl like some animal you can not name. Get up. Find scissors. Chop them all up and chuck them in Piki't'up bins.  Or the time you travel back to London, a whole three years later. Get on a train in that sleet and hail. Find that lovely shop with dresses she liked and buy two of them. Then you get back to your hotel room, pleased with yourself. Then you reach for your phone to tell her.....
Nobody tells you about the way other passengers will request to be moved away from you on that plane because again you bought her favourite perfume in duty free. Then as you fastened your seat belt, you remembered, and howled like that nameless animal. And Mrs-what's- her -name asks to be moved away from your craziness because she does not know how long it will last on this 11 hour flight. Or when you go back to home town, you swear you saw her on the street, and you will walk behind her, run and overtake her, smile widely at the stranger in front of you. And she clutches her bag in fright running away from crazy you. You may even go sit on her grave for hours. Hoping she will come out and start walking. Isn't that what her faith was about - the belief in miracles. You want some of that. Nobody tells you the sun will set. She will not come out. The grave diggers will talk about you and your craziness, laughing as they tell you to hurry up and get out of the cemetery. The next day you will come back again. And the following week. You will not tell your father or your children that you were there to visit your mother because you are too scared they will take you to the 'healer'.

The religious will tell you to look to the one in the sky. That she knows what is best. You will believe this, and because your mother was a believer too, you will go to her chosen place of organized religion. Faithfully. You will raise your voice. You will weep more. You will even acquire all the tools of religion, the hymnals, the reference book/s, the uniforms, participate in the rituals. Yet, you will slowly realize you are going in there to look for your mum. That all you keep searching for is her face amongst those women in red blouses. You want to see her on the program, leading, preaching. Alive! But because she is not here, you realize that you blame the one in the sky, you seriously question their wisdom, their project. You want to choke him, kick her all over the place, until she tells you why she took your mother, what the grand plan is, and when she will bring her back? Each time friends and family send you verses, chapters, songs, which they think are helpful, you can not tell them that you really do not want those, because your mother was the one good at reading, interpreting, and making sense of them for you. You grin and bear the preachy types because you have no words to describe for them how this grief feels, how none of what they say is helping, because they are not you, and she was not their mother. You want to tell them, 'go bury your mum first, and then come open that book with authority!" But you don't. You smile. You mutter encouraging assent to their messages and supplications. Then you realize that keeping that thing called faith is harder than what anybody told you. And at this moment you do not want any evidence of things not seen. You just want your mother, who you can touch, and feel.

You can lose as many relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues, or even lovers, dozens of them,  before you lose your mother. You think you have become a veteran of funerals, of grief, that you have mastered those eight steps in the manual. You even develop new routines. A clutch of coping mechanisms. You see others lose their mothers, you empathize. You even think you have learnt a  lot, just by looking. Nobody ever, ever prepares you for the real deal. Nobody tells you that the death of your mother will slice through your inner core much more than when you lost that brother, that sister, or that wonderful love of your life.  Nobody can tell you, because she was not all those others. What can prepare you for the day you want to cook rice with peanut butter and you do not know how much water to use, how much peanut butter to make it in that special Mberengwa-Ndebele-MaSibanda way only SHE knew how? Her younger sister, even if she had only the one like mine, will suggest too much salt. Nobody can organize Christmas lunch the way your mother did. When you try it, the chicken comes out all wrong. The bread falls apart when you cut it. The jollity looks forced and contrived. Nobody tells you that after you bury your mum, you will go back to bed at noon on Christmas day because you do not know how to recreate the joy and infuse her spirit into it.

To my friend Tawanda Mutasah; You asked me these questions on that lovely summer evening in downtown Manhattan last year, "How do you cope? How long will this pain last? How do you hold all of this trauma inside each day, and continue to walk around, work as if your mother is still here?"  This Tawanda is my long-winded way of saying - Sorry honey. I do not know. I do not know because I do not know. I am not you. Your mother was not my mother. You are my friend. I love you deeply. I can tell you many things about anything else that we share. But today, three years later, I can say with confidence - nobody can ever tell you, because they do not know. Nobody tell you accurately what losing your mother feels like and how you deal with it because the pain, the pain, is just too deep, too wide and too overwhelming to even begin to describe. They will never tell you because they do not understand. Only you do.



 

The Tommy D I knew

University of Zimbabwe. 1985. Not exactly a good year to be in 1^st year. Female. And of indeterminate ethnicity. It was supposed to be the best times for those of us who had grown up in the gwazhas (villages), and smaller towns. Coming to the capital city. To the big one and only “Vhaa”. Away from parents, strict boarding school rules, and nosy neighbours. We got student grants, with some extra cash to spend, (thanks to Robert Mugabe’s education policies). Many of us lost our heads. Some lost their panties. Some bought pants to wear publicly for the first time. And we walked funny in them. The lecturers gave us hour long sermons, and walked out on the dot. We didn’t know what to make of this method of teaching. So we went to the Students’ Union, drank our pay-out. And lost our heads once more. Well if you were a man that is. Or a clever girl, who spoke with a twang (acquired from one year of schooling at a former whites’ only school). For the rest of us of the female species, you kept your head down, walking funny in those new jeans. But knowing the boundaries; don’t go to the Students’ Union at night or you will be raped. Stay away from boys in groups because they will harass you. Don’t drink, don’t smoke. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

I was strange anyway. Not quite Shona, not quite Ndebele. From bang in the middle of the country. So I could hang with the other group on Monday and with the other on Fridays. I could talk about the massacres going on in Matebeleland with the one group. But not with the others who vociferously denied that it was happening. Being non-aligned was dangerous. You had to choose sides.

Only if you didn’t know Thomas Deve. A wiry little man. With a bit of a stoop. He sported ‘unkempt hair’, (as my father would have spat), smoking his life away. Smiling at one and all. Jumping from one activity to the next. Always talking. Always gesticulating. I soon met his friend George (Charamba), also doing his Masters, but in English. They made a weird pair. Tom, the skanking, smoking, drinking, fun loving one. George, the bookish, ever serious, teetotaler! The one loved loud reggae, the other loved Orchestra Dendera Kings and Zairean rhumba. They had furious political debates. Half the time I had no idea what they were fussing and fighting about. I just listened. Then when they were done, we would all have a good drink, a laugh. And still remained friends.  

I soon discovered we shared a love of reggae. He brought me lots of cassettes, (those little spooled things that you stuck into a little portable radio (bought with that payout), and played loudly. Annoying your room mate or the girls next door. Till the spool broke, or got entangled. He introduced me to IJahman. Eeka-Mouse. Dillinger. John Holt. All kinds of singers my brother had never introduced me to. “Fluffy reggae”, he said, dismissing my beloved Bob Marley and Third World. “There is no consciousness here my friend. That is just doof-doof-doof. All about love, love, love. Why do we want to just sing about love! Listen to the lyrics (oh that is what words to songs were called? We just called them words. Lyrics he called them). I got hooked. He invited me to the Students Union to go skanking. Skanking? I had never skanked before. I was too shy to skank. In public too? Tom held my hand. Took me to my first reggae party, and my first night out at the dreaded SU! There I was, throwing one leg this way, and the other that way, among them dangerous looking-ganja puffing-beer fuelled boys of the UZ. There were dozens of them. All of them with similar hair to Tom’s! We skanked all night. Any time someone tried to place their hand on me, Tom was there in a flash. ‘Idrin, we don’t do that to our sistren here’. They listened to him. Respected him. The Elder had spoken. I was left in peace.

A few weeks later. I ventured back to the SU on my own. There was to be more skanking. I did not know where Tom was, (this was in the days before cellphones in case you are wondering). Besides I needed to grow up. Be my own girl. Yeah right. A new idrin I had never met, made a beeline for me. I kept ducking, he kept pulling me. I wanted to leave. But I wanted to stay and skank.  I got wedged into a corner. Blouse torn. Poked by smelly fingers. Then Tom materialized in the darkness. Beat the living daylights out of my attacker. After that, the SU was mine. Reggae nights were the highlight of my life at UZ. Tom continued to be by my side. I wondered what time he studied for his MPhil. He just seemed preoccupied with all kinds of projects.

Soon, he had launched, the Society for African Studies (SAS), with other friends. Tom organized speakers. Lectures. Africa day events. Solidarity events for South Africa. For Namibia. For Palestine. For the Saharawi Republic, (where was that?).  I learnt about events, struggles, people, leaders, I had never heard about. They didn’t teach us that stuff in the formal African history lectures. “They are reactionary these people! Very reactionary! We must teach young people a different history of Africa”, said Tom. I did not know what reactionary meant. He had to give me a whole lesson on that word. My lecturers didn’t speak such language.

We joined the team producing the students’ magazine, FOCUS. Together with Tawana Kupe, (the late), Dr. Lawrence Tshuma, Tendai Biti, (when he was still just Tendai Biti), and the delightful cartoonist Lennox Mhlanga we put out a magazine for the students. I learnt how to write. Tom read my pieces. I teased him saying he was studying Economic history, I was the one doing English, so he had no right to correct my grammar. “You must be more political Everjoice. This is too fluffy! It is fluffy! Fluffiness was clearly his pet hate. This was said with grace. With humor. And yet with seriousness. I have kept the fluff Tom, and added a bit more seriousness.

Then Tom fell in love. With the absolutely beautiful Bernadette. Berna, as he called her. Oh she was beautiful. Still is. Tom had found the love of his life. For many months he disappeared from the skanking gigs, and wrote less for FOCUS. Then he reappeared. Like he had been gone only for an hour. Just picked up where he’d left off. But this time with a new spring in his step. Suddenly he would hum along to my fluffy songs. The power of love.

1990s. We had grown up. Joined the world of work. Tom had dropped out of his MPhil. George had completed his Masters. Then life happened. Tom married Berna. Started a family. George got married too. The country was moving in all kinds of directions. So were we. We all dabbled in writing, journalism of sorts. But on different ends of the spectrum. We would keep in touch, in between producing kids, publications, and movements. He would continue to find me good reggae. He had eventually given up trying to get me to stop eating meat and study Rastafarianism. I am too fluffy for any such commitment. Besides, my father owns cattle, I have to support the beef industry – I kept telling Tom. And he would laugh.

When I need a good goss’, serious gossip, I would find Tom. He always seemed to know who was doing what, where and with whom. If I needed the intelligence on some guy, Tom would supply it. He seemed to know everything and everyone. That was another thing we shared, our love of a good goss’. In the 2000s, when our world connected again in so called ‘global civil society’, it was Tom who supplied the goss’ on what the boys’ club was up to. Yes, there is a boys’ club. With a membership.  Tom was not exactly ‘card carrying’, but he certainly got invited into it when strategic. Then he’d come back and tell his excluded sistren!

In the same two-nought-noughts, I relied on Tom to help me figure out the new Zimbabwe.  There he was again. Bobbing up and down in the various movements and spaces. Always debating furiously with someone. Gesticulating. Was that slight stoop getting worse? The dreadlocks were certainly greyer, the beard totally silver. I looked at Tom and knew that I too was getting older. And hopefully wiser. I could rely on Tom because I knew he was not selling me a partisan political story, or project. Somehow, he managed to stay above it all. Non-aligned. In a country in which it seemed one had to declare their allegiance to one party or the other/s. Yet the Tom I knew maintained his friendships across the divides. He was still friends with George Charamba. I do not know what they talked about. Or what they now disagreed about. Tom was labelled a State spy. He found it hard. Debilitating. I have kept my friendship with both of them, (does that also make me a State spy?). It was hard. The Tom I knew kept going though. Passionately believing in social justice. In socialism, (at least he did last I checked).  He stayed in love with the beautiful Berna. Passionately talked about his children. Each time I visited Zimbabwe, I would find Tom, so we could catch up. Mostly on the phone. Life had become too complicated to find two minutes to sit. He always had a story to tell.

I will miss you Tommy D. My Idrin. My comrade. Thank you for respecting me as your sistren. In the last 24 hours since you passed, I have kept tweeting, posting on social media, that you were the one man in civil society movements who never treated me, my friends, as a piece of meat. Which we often get in these mixed spaces. From the days of the Students’ Union, till you passed on I knew you as my brother, a fellow traveler. I always felt safe in your presence. Again something many women don’t feel in mixed sex spaces. Thank you for NEVER talking down at me or those who are less educated. Thank you for never condescending to us, for never ever mansplaining! Not once do I remember you reframing anything a woman said in your presence – ‘what my sister was trying to say is…Let me give the BIGGER picture.”. You knew and respected that all of us had a part of the picture, big or small. And all the pieces matter. Thank you for respecting me, us, as your social and political equals. Thank you for the love. For the reggae. For always, always reminding me to be more political. I will continue to admire your steadfast beliefs. Your values – in a world, a civil society, a country where these now come and go like the morning dew.  I am sure Tajudeen, Barnabas and all our other sistren and idrin up in there are now agog, listening to you. You are telling them the good earthly goss’.

I will always think of you when I listen to Bunny Wailer’s song – Fighting Against Conviction. An example of not-so-fluffy reggae. You told me he was the least ‘reactionary’ of the Wailers…..

Battering down sentence

Fighting against convictions

I find myself growing in an environment

Where finding food, is hard as paying the rent

In trodding these roads of trials and tribulations

I’ve seen where some have died in desperation

To keep battering down sentence, fighting against convictions

In a family of ten, and raised in the ghetto

Hustling is the only education I know

Can’t grow no crops, in this concrete jungle

A situation like this is getting too hard to handle

To keep battering down sentence

Fighting against convictions

Keep on skanking Tommy D.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy 20th my home Number 2

Here’s two glorious decades -my chosen home

I have the privilege of choosing where to live and call HOME. I have two homes in fact. Home number 1 is where I was born, where my mother is buried and my huge extended family lives. Zimbabwe. Home number 2 is South Africa, where my mummy's people came from, and I came back on their behalf! This the home I chose for myself. I love both my homes equally. Each one has its charms, and its dark sides. My two homes share common social, economic and political histories; the glory days of indigenous empires – from Shaka, to Munhumutapa to Mzilikazi and Mapungubwe, to colonization by the British and the Dutch, to the bloody and painful liberation struggles. Then finally freedom. Independence. Zimbabwe’s independence days is April 18^th, and a few days later, we celebrate SA’s on April 27^th. This year independent Zimbabwe turned 34. SA turns 20. The Mail & Guardian asked me to write a piece for Zimbabwe’s birthday. I came up with all sorts of excuses. The truth is I don’t remember my own or anyone else’s 34^th birthday. I do not recall my 34^th kiss. 34^th drink? Such a hugely insignificant number. It is that terribly confusing age at which one knows they are an adult, a head of household/family even and quite often a decision maker of some sort. But you kind of fluff your way through it and say, ‘ah well, I am not yet 35, and 40 is six years away so….”. And you sink back into your original malaise and confusion.

Twenty, is two decades. Now there is something to talk about. Although 21 is the big birthday that most people celebrate, 20 is actually what we should pay more attention to.  I look at you now my dear home number 2, through the same prism that I look at my son this year.  Andile turns 20 on May 4^th. Smart, confident, and very independent my young man is. At 20, he thinks he knows EVERYTHING! He behaves like he has been EVERYWHERE. Because he is the youngest of my children, he has tended to get the best, and the most attention. You could call him ‘the baby’ of the family, but he would probably kill you for that. He sees himself as a man. No, the man.  He and his cohort all walk around like they have six balls. They have a get -out of my way- I can do anything – and I am the world’s best- attitude. Sounds familiar South Africa?  

Yet ever so often, too often for his liking, the little boy will show through. The horribly unwanted acne will be scrubbed (not quite off), with the most expensive exfoliator on the market. The body is still growing, but he obsesses about his body image. Spends as much time in a gym as a new convert does in a religious institution. Gotta have the biggest, the most visible muscles. He watches documentaries and hugely meaningful movies, not cartoons. Well, when nobody is watching, he will switch to Sponge Bob or Digimon. In public, he will not hold hands, or hug me.  But when it is cold outside, or he has a headache, he will sidle up, cuddle up, sniffle like a baby and look suitably miserable.  Mummy gets ignored when times are good. No reply to emails. No smileys in response to my (lame) jokes. Just don’t let the school administrator send an important email! It gets forwarded to mumsy in two seconds flat.  Need cash now, now? Frantic long distance call at midnight. And as soon as the crisis is over, he reverts to his adult-confident self. Mummy is only instrumental to the boy’s needs. Sounds like anyone you know South Africa?  

Happy 20th birthday my grown up – yet still so young home. In human-black-African terms, you belong to that category of family members we call ‘children’. Yes, you are still a child. At weddings and funerals we don’t expect you to do much really, except show up, hang out with the big men slaughtering the cow.  Take instructions from the older women organizing the wedding. Pass the sugar, the salt, hold the other end of the steak as they ones with the skills cut it. Occasionally you might be invited to sit in decision making processes, and the adults might tolerate your word or two thrown in. But remember you are still growing. You still have a lot to learn.

Like my son, you are the baby of this continent. You and South Sudan. Your extended family, all 53 of us like you. Most, (not all, we have to honestly say), supported your journey to freedom. Some with blood, and tears. Don’t you ever forget that.  No, they don’t want to be paid, as some South Africans have often ungraciously commented. They just want public acknowledgement. Your African family admires you, and at times are jealous of your Joseph’s Technicolor coat.  Just don’t flaunt it. Be nice. In Shona we say, share your good fortune with your family. A complete stranger is very forgetful. Sometimes some of your African family wonder whether you really are part of them though? Do you really know who your family are? Because at some moments you sound and act confused. They don’t get why you like comparing your economic growth, your statistics, your - everything in fact, to that of strangers. Many of whom don’t actually belong to the same family lineage as you. Trust me, it does not matter much that you might sound like them or aspire to be like them, when the chips are down they say of you, behind your back, through clenched teeth, “Jeez! These people!” A phrase with which you are so familiar I have no doubt.

The beauty of being young is that your mistakes, missteps, and misspeaks, are easily forgiven. Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Where you don’t know just admit it. If need be, ask for help from your brothers and sisters. Nobody expects you to be the wise-all knowing- big brother that you are often forced to act as. No really. You haven’t yet attained six balls to walk like Nigeria, nor do you have the mouth born of experience to speak like Kenya. The majority of your black people have a long way to go before they can walk, talk and behave like they OWN this country, like they have a right to step confidently on Sandton soil, the gumption to look straight in the eye of that shop assistant and say, yes this is my card, I know the pin number, no I did not steal it, and yes I live in this hood, I have a right to make decisions on this apartment complex’ body corporate.

Like all teen-adults, you have terrible acne. Lots of it. And that is ok, it is a necessary part of growing up. You just need to remember that acne comes from the inside of you, not from the outside. It is deeply seated you might say? In the blood stream. In your case, you were born at a time when fast food, GMOs, fizzy drinks, and all bad things were the order of the day. Naturally the acne was going to come. So no amount of exfoliating or face creams on the outside will do the trick. Keep working at changing that deeply rooted cause of the acne. It is a lot of work. It is not comfortable. It is hard. You will many things wrong. There will be and has been resistance.  Like all things not visible to the naked eye, the causes of your acne will keep shifting and changing shape and form. Making it harder to eliminate, or even see results. The trick is not to get defeated, or expect quick results. Sadly you are growing up in the age of instant gratification. Instant change. Press a button and what you want will pop out. You are firmly a part of the ATM- Whatsapp-SMS generation. Sorry. Real life isn’t like that, as you will discover to your chagrin as you plod through your 20s and especially your 30s. In plain English; Keep working at eliminating the structural causes of injustice and inequality in your own country and globally. Apartheid is still alive and fighting back. You are doing well to fight it, to uproot it. Racism and sexism are deeply ingrained. Keep talking about them, and working to eliminate them.

One of my favorite artists, Gregory Isaacs sings about how one never knows (the use of) a good thing until they have lost it. South Africa, you have a lot going for you. Sometimes when I listen to you though, everything sounds all gloomy and doomy.  Maybe that is teenage attitude where everything has to be seen and expressed hyperbolically; It is so bad! Oh my God! The government is corrupt! The roads are in disrepair! So much poverty! All these human rights violations! It is terrible!!! Terrible!!!

Hee hee dee! Huuriii! Let me laugh as we would at the communal water-well back in my home village in Shurugwi. And we would round that off by saying, kudada kwevari mugomo, kukumbira vari pasi matohwe, (the insensitivity of those up in the mountains, disdainfully asking those on the ground for fruit). Of course I realize you are 20, very much an urban child, and will have no appreciation of mountains and wild fruits. So in a language that you will understand; don’t be ungrateful and ungracious about what you have. Be happy. Appreciate it. Celebrate it. There are those of us who would give a breast and an ovary to have what you take for granted. Freedoms of association and assembly. Sexual rights. A fantastic constitution. Running water. Electricity at the flick of a switch. Freedom of expression, (where even racists and misogynists of the worst variety get more than a word in and hog the airwaves instead of hiding under the biggest rocks, but of these, another day). Economic opportunities that have drawn so many of us in your extended family to your overflowing table, (that is what family is for, don’t grumble, haven’t you heard of the black tax?).  Your thriving arts and creative industries. your functional democratic institutions and systems. And all the wonderful support, goodwill, and love so many of us have for you and how we will keep cheering you on, and on, and on. Need I continue? 

Happy birthday my beautifully thriving, comfortable, full of hope and opportunity Home Number 2. I love you more each day. As we would say in KZN, in Bulawayo and all over this continent, khula uze ukhokhobe! Or as your generation would have it, khula uze uphile lama steroids, (grow as old as you wish or till you depend on steroids to prop you up. *Note no political inferences may be drawn from this heart-felt wish).    

One year to go - what I know for sure

As I inch closer to completing half a century on earth, this is what I know for sure. I am at that wonderful age when I am expected to be wise, clever, and say big things that my children and their children will quote after I die. I have earned the license to say whatever I want and get away with it, in so many spaces. This is a privilege I did not enjoy when I had more teeth, firmer breasts, a perkier butt, (did I ever have that?), and had less consciousness about who I am and what my place is in the world.

So here goes. Take out your pen and journal, (that thing with ink, and a real paper journal honey, this is not phablet stuff), you might learn a thing or two.

Note; these ARE in order of importance.

1.        Clarins facial products really work. On black women. Sorry white friends. I have given up suggesting anything to most of you. Some things are beyond even me.

2.       Having children is not for every woman. Eating croissants baked by Mohamed of Rutland Court on 4^th Street in Harare and drinking mojitos at Doppio Zero (Rosebank branch only), have the same effect – you are fulfilled. Life is beautiful.  

3.       Love your mother. Always. Give her whatever she asks for. Listen to whatever she says. You will want to quote her ad infinitum. Very effective when talking to men, directors of institutions, mentees, the media, and anyone you want to respect you.

4.        Body shaping spandex is amazingly wonderful. Just make sure you take low blood pressure medication in advance, otherwise the blood supply to your head gets cut off and you WILL faint, mid-powerful presentation, quoting said mother above.

5.       Never ever have sex with someone who has never bought, and owned five vinyl long playing records. LPs. This applies to every generation. Golden standard evidence of having lived. A life.

6.       There is no point in arguing finer points of politics, world affairs, human rights and what is wrong with heteronormative-extractivist-capitalism, with someone who does not know the words to one Randy Crawford song, or horror of all horrors, has never heard of Peter Tosh.

7.       To women of my cohort, if you are walking along the street and a man walks towards you with a smile on his face, don’t assume it is for you. It is for the little nymphet behind you. Should the smile really be for you, never ever let on that you have a platinum bank card, and your banker comes to you. Quietly enjoy the fruits of someone else’s labour. It is called willing giver, willing eater. Give them what they want. It is their patriarchal RIGHT to be the provider.  Do not deprive them of their God given right, (see Goddess below).   

8.        If they don’t give you that job/contract/column inches, it is not because you are not smart, witty, skilled or experienced. They are just too scared you will show up their deficits.  

9.       Nice women who speak in a sweet, squeaky whingy voice only get eulogized at their graveside. Speak up. Speak loud. Tweet. Write. Shout. Better to be more powerful and well respected in this life, than as a tokoloshe. Practice saying NYET. Very often.

10.   There is a Goddess up in the sky. She is always on your side. You don’t need to go inside a building to chat to her. You do not need someone else to interpret your conversations with her for you. Especially if you have to give them and or their wife any money. You do not need to consistently tell everyone about your lovely relationship with her. She knows. You know. For sure. Just enjoy it. Be grateful.

 

I will vote in 2018, not this year

I did not go home to vote today. I already knew my ‘candidate’ was not on the ballot paper. All of the ballot papers, Presidential, parliamentary, local government. She was not there. No, this had nothing to do with rigging, lack of identity documents, lack of adequate time to prepare or any of the logistical issues – before you consign my candidates’ absence to all the alleged stereotypical issues that everyone has been rattling on about. No.

My candidate gracefully chose to step aside. Walked away from this election – literally and metaphorically, because she knew that this was not that sort of election. My candidate figured out  five years ago that the 2013 elections were never going to be about the issues or things she, myself and probably millions of other Zimbabwean women care about. She knew already, that this was merely an election to choose one man over the other. Yes. A man. Women like my candidate have been quite clear for some time now that it didn’t matter how clever, analytical, or clear they were about what the problems are in our country and what the solutions could be, they did not stand a chance. Their voices would get drowned out in this all male contest. And if we were ever in any doubt as to what this election was about, a young man representing MDC-T told us categorically on South Africa’s E-TV last weekend – “this election is not about VALUES”, he thundered, “all we want is to remove Robert Gabriel Mugabe”. I have never understood why or when it became necessary to pronounce his name in full like that? Interestingly the other contestants are now referred to in that way…’Morgan Richard Tsvangirai’ Hee hee. Is that supposed to give them more gravitas? (Or more curiously, referring to them by their totems/clan names. Each time this happens I have visions of their wives kneeling on the floor wiping their penises after sex). Let me not digress. We were told the truth. Or more accurately we were reminded. The message was broadcast across the region. Whatever little denial I had left was banished from my head. I cancelled my ticket.

Values. A concept that has largely deserted our politics and our people. Honesty. Integrity. Humility. Care for another one. Heck – just being a good person! We forgot what that means many years ago. It is now person eat dog and its owner. It is not just the political leadership who lack values. It is most leaders, from so called Civil Society, to religious bodies to even the family. Everyone just wants what is good themselves. The fanciest car. The biggest house. The largest amount of cash. The longest weave. The latest Apple product. The biggest Bible. Let us not forget this last one. The biggest fashion accessory of my people. This is what matters. How you get it is not that important. You just have to have it. In NGOs– that part of the population with which I am most intimately connected, we made sure we generated these material things from our vantage point. It started with us being the ones getting forex, trips outside Zimbabwe, (to discuss the crisis in Zimbabwe), and the fuel coupons. This was back during the hyper-inflation period. Soon we got hooked onto these lovely things. We generated trips to Joburg and London. As Directors and Senior program staffers we made sure we did not miss the next per diem. If there was no per diem we threw such tantrums that the money just had to be found. Our donors did not disappoint. After all we were the leaders furthering the democracy and good governance agenda. Development? Rural development? Urban poverty? That agenda is coming later, for now we just needed Mugabe to go.  

When the ‘crisis’ eased after dollarization, we struggled to keep up our lifestyles. We almost fell into the bottom 5%! We had to do something. So we generated more trips. The smallest altercation with a police officer became global news. Even if it was for an infringement of the road rules. We organized workshops, preferably after hours, or out of Harare, just so we could award ourselves the $30 per diem. Why we had to get a per-diem to participate in our own workshops I still don’t get. Actually I do. There is a name for it. Greed.

Greedy. Selfish. Now there are two words that define who we have become. At the top of the greed ladder are the ones who want to control all the diamond mines. In the middle the ones who fleece anyone fleece-able; the plumber charging an exorbitant amount to fix a mere broken pipe, the mechanic stealing car parts instead of fixing your car, the school teacher charging for extra lessons when she should have been teaching properly during normal school hours, and the home affairs officer wanting a ‘Coke’ to give your baby the birth-certificate to which she is entitled. On the same spectrum, the church leader/founder screaming around town in a 10 fancy- car- convoy while his congregants have not had a decent meal in many months.     

Most of us have, over the last decade forgotten what this clamour for change was about to begin with. For some of us it was as that political party person said – not about values. It was only about getting rid of Mugabe. He could never do anything right. Nothing that he said could ever be true, or good, or useful. And if the uninformed among us were to be believed, the man and his government had never EVER done a single good thing for Zimbabwe since his mother Bona delivered him. Mugabe and anyone associated with him were just bad because….they are intrinsically bad. Gone was the critical perspective. Even those of us who went through doors of UZ thanks to his social development policies did not ever want to be heard acknowledging it.

Across the street, our newspaper editor friends and journalists in the non-state media joined the ‘party’. Besides the entertainment good news, everything and anything that Mugabe and his party said or did was just to be trashed. Ditto, across the borders, and across the seas. Ours became the single narrative – MDC good, ZANU PF bad. Simple. No room here for nuance, or complexity. And we all know, to quote Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi ‘the danger of the single story’.  

My candidate is not on the ballot paper because she would simply be hounded off the political stage by the sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and violent political culture that pervades Zimbabwe. From a whole elder statesman who swears at a diplomat from another country and calls her a ‘street woman’, to the average Tendai and Senzeni, who take to Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms to abuse others using the most degrading Shona and Ndebele words ever seen in print! ZANU planted and cultivated this political culture, it got nurtured by other political parties, sections of civil society and ordinary citizens. In between the swearing at ‘your mother’s vagina’, it is hard to pick out what is at political stake and how the one whose mother’s vagina is better/cleaner/smaller,(or whatever it is one’s vagina is supposed to look like on public platforms), will do anything different.  Political violence and intolerance is certainly not the preserve of ZANU PF.

‘Zimbabweans should stop being driven by ideology and be more driven by economic pragmatism’, advised one economist on twitter.  For many days I have wondered what this meant. I guess it is in the same vein as saying this election must be devoid of VALUES. The economist should have said in simpler English, don’t think, just focus on making money. Be good capitalists and your problems will be solved. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from, who gets hurt in the process or who you shove out of the way.

My candidate is not on that ballot paper because she thinks too much about ideology. She worries a lot about what some of the choice phrases mean; attracting foreign investment (of what sort? To invest in what?); Reengaging the North/West (Because? How will we make sure we don’t lose power and control over our resources?); Attracting donors (so that they can support whose development?);  Unlocking Zimbabwe’s wealth (so that it goes into whose pocket?);  Media freedom, (to promote whose rights and will black women in Mkoba township get to speak for themselves? On their rights?). See what I mean? My candidate asks too many questions. She wants to have conversations that are about ideology, values and principles. In the current atmosphere,  she will not be heard. She might as well be speaking to herself and her few friends like me who make her helpful cups of coffee but aren’t enough to win her an election. She will not have an inch of space in the media. She will have very few NGO friends, religious ones, or media ones because that is not our language at this moment. 

I will vote in 2018. My candidate will run in that election. The dust will have settled. I am optimistic that come the next elections Zimbabweans will put values back on the agenda. We will debate and be clear about our leaders’ political ideologies.  I see NGOs in another five years discussing and implementing human rights based DEVELOPMENT for all Zimbabweans– not just the heterosexual.  In the next five years, I want to have honest conversations about the unfinished business of RACE and RACISM. Honest conversations, inside Zimbabwe and outside Zimbabwe, rather than the current dishonesty that says it is one of the present male leaders’ sole agenda. It is still my agenda. By the time we vote in 2018, we will have a definition of democracy and participatory governance which is not just about personalities but about my favorite topic- street lights. Yes really. Street lights. to increase safety and security for my granddaughters when they walk late at night in the township.

By 2018 we will have developed a new political culture, one which at the very least allows each Zimbabwean to speak, act, chose, and be who they want to be.  I will vote when my country and its women’s broken souls have healed. When we relearn how to just be what my mother used to call ‘good people’. Simply that.  I so wish that by the next election – Zimbabwe will have reverted to being a secular space.   Jesus will be removed from the ballot papers and we will keep him off  forever. As a black Zimbabwean woman, it is my deepest wish that this is the last election in which the only choices in front of us are  ‘BULLS’, (their party’s words not mine!), and a bunch of great-grandfathers who have never heard the phrase ‘sexual autonomy and choice’.  

Why I voted yes in the referendum

I voted yes. I stood in the short queue and within less than 10 minutes, I had cast my vote. My son Andile who turns 19 soon, was thrilled to cast his first ever vote. He kept wondering if it was really over? Whether there was anything else required of him? We took several photos of our pinkies in the parking lot. The police looked on disinterestedly.  

I voted yes because indeed I like this draft constitution. I have read all of it for myself.  I didn’t understand some parts, so I asked my dozens of lawyer friends to explain it to me. This was after I gave up on civil society organizations getting round to explaining it to those of who are legally illiterate. I could not rely on the parliamentary committee because they were too busy serving their parties. In mid 2012 when the first draft leaked out, it was immediately seized upon by several “experts” who trashed, twisted and interpreted it for us in what have become the hallmarks of Zimbabwean public discourse – hate speech, hyperbole, and plain old partisanship. Because it did not say things in exactly the way they wanted them said, my fellow NGO workers were having none of it. For several weeks, I kept asking some of the organizations my international NGO funds, “What exactly is the content of the draft constitution and what should we as citizens know and think?”  The conversation would start off nicely, but within a few minutes it would degenerate into a fully fledged attack on the former ruling party, and their (evil), leader Robert Mugabe. We never got to the good parts, if there were any in their minds. I was left none the wiser.  So were millions of Zimbabweans.

I did not trust any of the media to translate the draft either.  They are all hung up on either Mugabe, or Tsvangirai, so their ‘analysis’ focused on these two men.  We all got earfuls on what the draft provides for ‘Mugabe’, as if he will forever be the President of Zimbabwe.  Even as we went to vote, the so called international media obsessively reported on Mugabe going to vote, what the draft means for him, what will happen to HIM, and what he is likely to do. When they got tired of that they turned to what the draft means for Tsvangirai, in particular that the post of Prime Minister is not provided for in the draft.  As if to say we want Morgan for Prime Minister now or for posterity!

If it wasn’t about these two men it was about gay rights. Following the ruse cleverly created by ZANUPF,  several sections of Zimbabwean civil society fell over each other denouncing gay rights, telling us how Christian/God fearing or good Shona-Ndebele peoples they were, and they would   never tolerate gay rights.  It was open season for hate speech. Yet on closer inspection, gay rights were and are still not in the draft! Grave omission if you ask me but that is the subject for another day.

Only in the last few weeks, after the referendum date was announced, did both the media and the NGOs start complaining that they had not had enough time to study the draft and tell citizens what’s in it. The average Chipo and Themba have been short changed not only by the state in its current form, but even by those who should have known better.  I am privileged to have had access to the various drafts, to some of its writers and to the few spaces where serious analysis of the draft happened.   I refused to cede my personal choice and right to be informed to someone else. I went out and looked for the information, because the single narrative of my country was beginning to feel too simplified and too narrow. The average citizen was left stranded by politicians, the media and civil society, way back in July 2012. Yet these are all people who all claim to be on their side or working on their behalf. We should have known better.

I voted yes because I am tired of this unending constitutional conversation – if one can politely call it that.  I was there in 1997 when we started a movement for a new Zimbabwean Constitution, the National Constitutional Assembly. Myself and a few other activists were invited by two young men, Tawanda Mutasah and Deprose Muchena to work with them in creating what became the NCA. Back then I was a bright eyed, easily persuadable feminist activist in the making, leading a network of women’s organizations – the Zimbabwe Chapter of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF). Our membership was 38 women’s organizations and movements. Deprose and Tawanda, working under the auspices of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches spearheaded the formation of a movement that was to catalyse constitutional transformation and would forever change the face of Zimbabwean politics and civil society activism.  Our message was simple, constitutional transformation was about crafting new content, through processes that involved all Zimbabweans. It has been ‘16 years of hard struggle’, as ZANU PF would say! Sixteen years in which the people have been engaged, mobilized and they have spoken, through various means.  It has not been a perfect process. It has not been totally participatory. The journey has involved tears, and in some cases blood. But in my book, I felt involved, engaged, asked what I want, and felt I had my say.  When I didn’t want to engage I made my choice and didn’t participate. I also know that the women’s movements valiantly talked to and educated women. Inevitably they too would get caught up in the partisan politics and get lost in the melee. It has not been easy to go against the grain, whatever the grain was at that moment.

There are a few things that I don’t like in terms of content. There a few things missing or which I would have wanted to see writ large. But on a scale of one to 10, I give this draft constitution a 7.5. As I have grown older, less cross-eyed and not easily persuadable, I know that one never gets their wish 100%.  The Zimbabwe we lived in 1997 is not the Zimbabwe we are in today. If there is only one indicator of this fact, it is that this society has careened to the fundamentalist right, culturally, socially and religiously. So the bar some of us had set 16 years ago on women’s rights has had to come a tad lower. And I know that the women’s rights that I would have wanted to see fully in a new constitution are going to have to be vigorously fought for whether a Mugabe or Tsvangirai is in power tomorrow morning. I still hold up high my feminist values and principles which I took into the NCA. I define those and stick to them, but I adopt my strategies, alive to the context around me at any moment.

 I voted yes, because I like this new constitution. It promotes and protects women and girls’ human rights in so many ways and far much more than we have ever been protected in our national history.  I see a lot of opportunities for women’s movements to use it to gain more rights in the near and distant future.  I claim my voice as a founder of the NCA to say, I voted yes, because part of my dream and vision is now within reach. I don’t want this moment to pass. I want my son who voted for the first time today to set a new agenda for the Zimbabwe he wants. I want Andile to go to elections in a few months to choose leaders who will speak to that agenda. I don’t want him burdened by an unending conversation on one document, as if there is nothing else to talk about. More importantly, I want him to be spared the agony of seeing and hearing the same people spewing hatred, intolerance and violating his rights. As I told him before he voted, this constitution is about you and your rights, not about those men.