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.