University of Zimbabwe. 1985. Not exactly a good year to be
in 1st 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.
