Your City, My Land
Rejoice Ngwenya wrote an “independence special” for Kubatana which I share with you here:
Your City, My Land
Conte Mhlanga and Daves Guzha are two of the best playwrights in Zimbabwe. One resides in Bulawayo, the provincial capital of Matabeleland that took the biggest brunt of Zimbabwe’s post-independence ‘genocidal’ human rights violations in the 1980s. The other is based in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, the seat of one of the most brutal and senseless government in modern history. Both men are my friends, having met them last year at a regional arts workshop.
I am so impressed by their history of protest activism. Once in a while, their ‘play houses’ are visited by the proverbial men in dark glasses who want to glean anything off their plots that vaguely pokes fun at our very own ageing dictator Robert Gabriel Mugabe. My view is that there is no play or work of art worth its salt if it makes no reference to the liberation of Zimbabweans from ZANU-PF fascism. This may sound really negative; indeed, oppression of citizens is a negative force. Those like Mhlanga, Guzha and I who have the courage and rare opportunity to say our opinions, we might as well have fun doing it – messages full of laughter, tell me about it!
And so during that workshop – in a spontaneous feat of bravado – I foolishly committed myself to contesting for the ‘best playwright of the year’ and promised to deliver a gem to Conte and Dave. Mind you, the nearest I ever encountered playwriting was only reciting lines that were shoved at me by Bev Parker, my ‘old’ lecturer at United College of Teacher Education. Some things are easier said than done! The title of my play was simply going to be Assegai Technology with a curiously named main character Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life – a sophisticated, enlightened but unorthodox, crude and jovial middle-aged cell-phone addicted dictatorial president of an African country called Haraland. He is obsessed with this compulsive and paranoid idea that someday, King Bengula who died one hundred years ago in Bengula Province south of his country would lead an insurrection to challenge his authority. Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life is afflicted by this recurrent dream that King Bengula will incarnate through Team Impi – four rebels based in Bengula Province to spearhead this rebellion. He claims that a fellow dictator Yoom Shin Sha of an Asian country called East Kora, has promised him portable guns with rubber bullets laced with radio-active material to suppress the rebellion. Problem one: Haraland has no money to pay for the guns, but his wife owns a diamond mine which he can persuade her to give away to Yoom Shin Sha in exchange for the guns. Problem two: The mine is located in a national game reserve, so the East Koraian also wants to have a licence to hunt the endangered rhino! Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life tells Yoom Shin Sha to wait until after the elections. Yoom Shin Sha promises or claims to have delivered the contraband even before the elections, but of course he is lying. Problem three: Team Impi are all geniuses of different professions who are designing an advanced model of a Bengula assegai that bounces off bullets to the sender, much like an Australian boomerang! In the play, all this ‘conspiracy’ is only seen and heard from conversations that Your Excellent Sir, the Good Leader-for-Life has on his cell phone with both Yoom Shin Sha and ironically, Team Impi.
Just as I am about to finish this play, I read a report of a massive land scandal at Harare Municipality – Daves Guzha’s local town and am immediately inspired to write another play I will aptly title Your City, My Land. I want its plot to be less painful than Assegai Technology. The main character will be named Leapfrog – a young black policeman who retired from active service in 1980 to work as a security guard for a rich white banana wholesaler based in a town called Haracity. The banana man had never married, and has no children so when he passes on; he bequeaths one of his many double-storey houses to his loyal askari – Leapfrog. The house is too expensive to maintain, so Leapfrog approaches Comrade Zvamahara – a Member of Parliament from his rural village to rent the house. For almost twenty years Leapfrog continues to work as a guard-cum-messenger in a real estate company, until he is enlightened to sell his house to start an own estate agency! But there is problem. Comrade Zvamahara had deliberately forged the lease into an agreement of sale, so all along, Leapfrog thought Comrade Zvamahara was paying rentals, yet he was receiving monthly instalments!
Luckily, Leapfrog had befriended a man named Makoini, an experienced housing officer in Haracity who helps him win his case against Comrade Zvamahara. It is through this friendship that Leapfrog and Makoini ensure scores of Leapfrog’s relatives are clandestinely registered on the housing waiting list. He retires from formal employment to concentrate on developing and selling the housing and industrial stands issued to his relatives. On realising that Leapfrog is getting wealthy, Comrade Zvamahara sends an emissary to convince Leapfrog to enter politics so he can ‘one day take over as member of parliament’ of the village. The two men make more money and get more property through Makoini, but when the latter retires from Haracity, the only ‘gift’ he gets from Leapfrog and Comrade Zvamahara is a motorcycle! Makoini is so distraught and heartbroken. In a feat of diabolic rage and vengeance, he sells his story to a local weekly newspaper called The Insider and reveals the transgressions of both Leapfrog and Comrade Zvamahara. Just before the two are arrested, they escape to Zambezia, a neighbouring country.
I only hope that either of my playwright friends Conte Mhlanga or Daves Guzha will accept Your City, My Land and perhaps, just perhaps I might join this elite team who indeed are worthy members of Zimbabwe’s protest theatre hall of fame!
Rejoice Ngwenya, 16 April 2010, Harare