Having spent much of my adult life thinking about my language and culture, I felt both comfort and dismay in reading Thembi Sachikonye’s article for Newsday Losing our way:

Sure, we need to ask ourselves whether there is anything wrong with being swallowed up in a cultural tidal wave, participating willingly in the elimination of difference and diversity, and taking up another people’s way of life, another people’s language, and another people’s values in the name of progress, education or sophistication. And I am hoping that when we have asked ourselves these questions we will end up with an answer we can all live with.

We cannot redeem our cultural failures without a concerted and consistent effort. We cannot right our wrongs without first acknowledging that there is a problem, and then working hard to fix it.

This translates to a daily consciousness of how we communicate and conduct ourselves around those we want to influence. It means carefully filtering the influences we subject our children to.

I think is time for a cultural renaissance. We must begin to have a different and more meaningful understanding of our culture and languages and with that a more concerted effort towards preserving these. We cannot continue to wax lyrical on the opportunities allowed by globalisation, the emergence of technologies and media that are more inclusive. Yet when faced with the challenge of putting these tools to utilitarian use, we balk.

As a people we cannot continue to brag about how educated we are, but when we truly examine where all that education is going, what good it does us as a nation, suddenly there is silence. Where is the wiki on Zimbabwean history language and culture written for and by Zimbabweans themselves? Why aren’t more Shona and Ndebele books available in audio and as mp3 downloads? I want to read more histories by and about Zimbabweans that are without a political agenda, and watch well-written films that are entirely in vernacular and subtitled in English. We as Zimbabweans have to prioritise our cultures and languages. We cannot afford to wait for someone to create a grant that will specifically allow us to do so.

There is a restaurant in my neighbourhood, a cosmopolitan sort of place, which I visit more often than my budget allows. I love the food, and the seemingly bottomless glasses of wine have been the beginning of many happy evenings. While the food and the drink are good, the service is often slow and sometimes nonexistent. Having been largely ignored by the black waiters one too many times, my drinking buddies have chosen to avoid it. The waiters are racist they say.

On a visit to the post office to pick up a long awaited parcel, I had to wait my turn in a short queue for the one man behind the counter. A few moments after I arrived, a woman walked in with her daughter, fresh from the afternoon school run. Rather than going to the back of the queue, the woman went to the window next to the one occupied by the single postal worker and demanded that he serve her because she was in a hurry. This he did, to my surprise, without complaint. Everyone in the queue looked at each other and murmured ‘mtch! varungu vanonetsa..‘ under their breath and waited restlessly.

I remember a form three class discussion regarding race. The black girls said the white girls smelt funny, and the white girls said we smelt funny to them too. We asked what the fascination with Marmite sandwiches was, and they asked if deep down, really deep down, we wanted to be white because we put extensions in our hair. There was no anger in that conversation, just a group of girls trying to understand each other.

I wonder sometimes, if at independence in Zimbabwe, we had confronted our issues regarding race, would we still be trying to sidestep the obvious white elephant three decades later? We’re all careful around each other, tiptoeing, trying not to tell that joke, or saying that thing. But in private, in a safe space where we are certain people share the same sentiments and feelings as we do, the gloves come off.  Race is not a polite thing to talk about in mixed company, but I think it’s time we started.

She loves not

If I were a baby,
In the comfort of your womb
In the warmth of your flesh,
Wondering if there is life after birth,
Singing when you sing
Crying when you cry
Laughing when you do
With you always
I would wish I could stay inside you
Forever,
For Africa loves not her children,
She sends them to war against their mothers.

- Dzikamai Bere

Listen to Dzikamai Bere’s interview on being young and Zimbabwean here

Last week SW Radio Africa published the first in a six-part list of alleged CIO operatives. The original list contained names and addresses, while an amended list, published over the weekend only has names.

Responding to the public reaction to the list, SW Radio Africa Station Manager, Gerry Jackson wrote a statement saying: Experts say the CIO is the most powerful arm of ZANU PF’s security apparatus, the ‘brains behind the regime.’

According to the Council on Foreign Relations: ‘There is no public record of the CIO’s size, but it is thought to have thousands of operatives. Many Zimbabweans think the organization has a network of informers that extends into the Zimbabwean diaspora.

Jackson omits the part of the 2008 report, which states: Some analysts think the CIO’s ability to generate fear among Zimbabweans might exceed its true power.

Assuming the list is authentic, then what? How is releasing classified government information going to benefit the people of Zimbabwe?

In the article, SW Radio Africa discusses several people on the list and uses circumstantial and inconclusive evidence to link them to acts of violence and torture. Commenting on the article in NewZimbabwe Professor Tendi points out that the journalist concerned is hardly reliable: [he] once made an outlandish claim that UK-based public intellectual George Shire is Air Marshal Perrance Shiri’s brother. George suffered serious consequences, one of which was the desecration of his father’s grave, because of [his] fable.

I have several problems with SW Radio Africa publishing this list. First, it takes the CIO out of context. Gerry Jackson is right to assert that there is no legislative framework for the organization, but going by her statement one would be forgiven for thinking that the CIO was formed during the last decade to maintain ZANU PFs grip on power, but this is an institution that was inherited from the colonial government, and in fact Ian Smiths Chief of Intelligence, Ken Flower was retained by Our Dear Leader after Independence.  The CIOs lack of accountability, methodology and terror-tactics are characteristics of the Rhodesian era. In doing research for this blog I came across this quotation about the operations of the CIO:

“In the mid 1970′s, in the most closely guarded secret operation of the entire Rhodesian war, the CIO embarked on a programme of chemical and biological warfare. Doctors and chemists from the University of Rhodesia were recruited by the CIO and asked to identify and test a range of chemical and biological agents, which could be used in the war against the nationalist guerrillas. By 1975 clinical trials were performed on human guinea pigs at a remote Selous Scout camp at Mount Darwin in northeastern Rhodesia. The CIO provided victims from their detention centres, choosing little-known detainees who had been arrested on various security charges. In the secrecy of the camp, the doctors administered various chemical and biological agents to the prisoners, experimenting with delivery systems and dose levels. The local CIO Special Branch disposed of the bodies in local mine shafts.”

The bodies discovered earlier this year might very well be some of the victims of this brutal and inhumane programme.

My second problem is that publishing a questionable list of CIO operatives does nothing to address the deficiencies of the institution, and may contribute in exacerbating the situation for Zimbabweans who are being terrorized by CIO operatives. The fact of where the list is placed, online and outside Zimbabwe does nothing to help those people.

Finally, the list was published as a reactionary measure, rather than as a revolutionary one. It is conceivable that anyone in possession of that list in Zimbabwe, having taken the trouble to download and print it for local distribution, would be charged with treason. If Munyaradzi Gwisai and the 45 can be beaten, tortured and held for weeks without trial based on conjecture and rumour, then surely there are worse evils in store for anyone who actually has State Secrets on their person. It was done without thought as to objectives and consequences, as though placing information in the public domain is the end, rather than the means to it.

Sinners is the story of three sex workers, who when business becomes slow, decide to exercise their entrepreneurial skills by harvesting sperm from unsuspecting men. Speaking to Zimbojam, Patrick Chasaya says he wrote the play after meeting a man who was traumatised after being abducted and raped by a gang of four women. The Herald’s review of the play titled ‘Explicit Sinners opens at Theatre in the Park’ implied that the actresses stopped just short of actually having sex on stage. I went with my wangu to get the male perspective on things. Although he had a good laugh during the play he was a little disappointed – it wasn’t as titillating as we had both been led to believe.

The play opens with each of the three protagonists describing how she became a sex worker. Chipo is the housewife whose husband left her without a penny, Samantha was raped at an early age by an unnamed relative, and Keresensia was orphaned and has to care for her younger brothers and sisters. The three women work on the same corner, watching and waiting for their male customers to show up. The actresses do an admirable job of drawing the audience into the play by treating them as customers, or in my case, hated competition. At one point, the police raid them. The youngest, Samantha services an officer in exchange for her freedom, while Chipo, who may be past her prime, is unable to negotiate and is forced to pay a fine.

Tired of scraping a living together especially as business is not going well, the three women hatch a plan to put their skills to better use.

The subject matter would have made excellent material for a tragicomedy, but ‘Sinners’ misses the mark. The skill of the actresses in bringing the characters to life cannot make up for their lack of depth and complexity. The script’s superficial treatment of the protagonists’ tragic back stories and circumstances detract from its comedic elements. It only glosses over the characters’ motivations for doing what they do in an attempt to lighten the subject matter.

The play picks up many interesting themes such as the long-term effects of child abuse, and the exploitation of sex workers by the police, but these are abandoned without warning or resolution. There are a lot of ironies too, like Keresensia being inspired by the Holy Spirit to harvest and sell sperm, or the trio praying before they embark on their enterprise, that are too under-developed to be fully appreciated. The play also ends abruptly, with the trio falling out in loud and emphatic disagreement about how the money they earned should be divided. At the end, we had a feeling that there should have been a message, but were unclear about what that message was.

It was refreshing to watch a play that wasn’t driven by a political or women’s rights agenda. It is not often that a story is told simply to be told in Zimbabwe. The playwright and director should be commended for trying to tackle such a difficult subject matter. It cannot be easy to walk the fine line between objectifying sex workers and turning them into victims. This play at least tries to depict them as real women with real problems.  Charity Dlodlo, Eunice Tava and Gertrude Munhamo portray Samantha, Chipo and Keresensia not as women who are at the mercy of men, but rather as women who show strength, resilience and even ingenuity in facing their difficulties. I believe that is something to be admired.

A few days ago I was stopped at a police roadblock on my way home. While the officer was writing my ticket, he commented,

‘Ah sisi munogona kunosa.’ (not a nice way of saying you speak Shona with an accent)

Then he proceeded to try and get my phone number.

I have never been black enough. When I was very young my family conducted a roora ceremony for my aunt and we all moved kumusha for a week. Not having any other girls my age to play with, and having been shooed away from the cooking fire whenever the older women wanted to talk about men too many times to keep trying, I spent much of my time indoors reading. One day my older cousin recited Roses are red, violets are blue, you brother and me are black, but what are you?’

It was over twenty years ago, and I was half way through primary school at the time, but it was cruel.

I’ve never really liked that cousin since then.

When I first returned from the Diaspora, relatives would ask my mother if I still spoke Shona and observed our traditions. The implication being that I was no longer one of them.

‘Handiye apfugama achimuoberayi zakanaka?’ (Isn’t she the one who knelt and greeted you properly?) My mother would reply.

Later, I dated a man whose mother objected to our relationship because I was too privileged to be a ‘good African woman’. Her assumption was that because I had grown up kuma ‘dale-dale’, had attended private school, and lived outside Zimbabwe briefly, I was too ‘sala’ to qualify as such. Once in a heated conversation she asked him

‘Kamusalad kako kanombogona kubika sadza here?’ (Does your salad girlfriend even know how to cook sadza?)

I am not alone, there a few born-frees out there who grew up much the same way I did. Criticisms of the born-free generation are not all equal. For those who grew up in the middle class, and are perceived to have been granted access to privilege and lost their culture and language in the process, it holds a particular disdain. There are times when we are faced with the difficult choice of either embracing our otherness, or apologizing for the way we were raised.

I don’t believe in apologizing for the way my parents raised me. Especially to anyone who’s view of tradition, culture and history is narrowly defined in terms of where in Harare I grew up, how I speak Shona, and whether I cook or eat sadza. There is more to us than that, and it’s a shame that those who are loudest in defining our cultural identity believe that those things constitute the totality of who we are.  I think that is a very simple minded reduction of a complex culture, and a language that is steeped in a rich history. What I, and others like me, are judged for is not our acculturation, but rather that person’s lack of access to privilege.