SOWE rekuDomboshava had been the pastor’s choice.
He had said that there was power in those mountains; power to unlock God’s favour.
His sermon on God’s favour had been inspiring.
He had said: “God’s favour will give you the job you don’t qualify to have. God’s favour will give you the spouse everyone thinks you don’t deserve. God’s favour will open doors for you. God’s favour will get you the visa to the UK and the US nyore nyore with no questions asked.”
The detachment closed in on the fire.
The yellow glow of a campfire burning on the mountain side;
The mbira players thumping crisp slow time notes into the graveyard hour;
The thud of heavy boots sounding in time to the mbira beat;
The shrill ululation of enchanted women;
The banter of daughters-in-law and sahwiras extorting service bribes from the bereaved;
The effortless singer’s voice raised in a serenade of glory to war …
It all added up to a surreal charm that lightened the burden of installing the spirits of fallen heroes into living family structures.
It turned the armed liberation struggle into a people’s story …
And, … not only a people’s story but an active permanent presence of history.
Cde Sarudzai thought that the whole act was itself also a liberation struggle;
A liberation struggle to ‘not’ define the people’s experience from prescriptives coined by parasitic populists shamelessly extracting self-aggrandisement from a collective national sacrifice;
A liberation struggle to ‘not’ define the people’s experience from prescriptives coined by ideologically bankrupt pseudo-nationalists free-loading from national sacrifice;
A liberation struggle to ‘not’ define the people’s experience from prescriptives coined by Chatham House, Oxford Union, the European Union or US Democracy Interests Bills;
A liberation struggle to ‘not’ define the people’s experience from prescriptives coined from labels of NGOs and civil society organisations;
A liberation struggle to define the people’s experience from the people’s land; define the liberation struggle from the remains of the fighters who paid the ultimate price for it;
A liberation struggle to define the people’s experience from the culture theatre that mobilised the original struggle.
Here, on this mountain side, in this graveyard hour, the extended battle formation of the detachment was also, in essence, an extension drawing in the new generations through propinquity and property of blood.
The extended line was also an extension of the battle front;
An extension of perspectives complete with new instruments of analysis to handle unprecedented points of view.
A deployment of new observation points to handle new developments coming with new language requiring home-grown (local) metaphors to handle the brand-new forms of evil.
On the edges of camp, the college girl thrust a fist into the air and chanted: “Icho!”
And from the darkness someone shouted back: “Charira!”
And the detachment entered camp in a flourish of dance and the raucous and off-hand camaraderie the old guide had often seen among guerillas during the war.
And he found it intriguing that this raucous crowd was one that would have been born over 20 years after the actions of war that they were now re-enacting … The language and gestures they were using had been out of everyday currency for almost four decades!
The mbira players upped their tempo.
An elderly woman in black looked at the arrivals and raised a withered hand.
The mbira players read the cue and lowered the tempo of their instruments.
And she said: “Titambireika vanangu.”
And she said: “Ini ndatsaura dzangu.”
And the women ululated.
And the mbira players raised the tempo of their instruments.
More boots thudded the slopes dzeDomboshava and the sound of clapping hands sounded like wooden blocks; like vanhu vairidza zvikeyi!
Then there were the rattles ….
One of the men playing the rattles had a way with them that rattled deep into Sarudzai’s memory of the war
A night barrage in a wooded battlefield would rattle into an uneasy silence in a manner akin to what the man’s rattles were doing … like the forest would be hus-s-shing-g-g down to a frightened silence.
In combat it had been eerie … as if laden by the souls of hit combatants. Here, on the slopes of Domboshava, the sound was nostalgic … evoking a home-coming of the same souls.
In combat, the frightened silence would occasionally carry the moans of wounded combatants and, the whispers and rustles of movements by fighters edging away from compromised and no longer tenable positions.
And, occasionally too, an obscenity would be hurled into the frightened silence by a crazed fighter … an obscenity carrying far and echoing longer than … necessary.
Here, on the slopes of Domboshava, the sound carried no obscenity but the entertaining banter yevaroora namasahwira communalising the sacrifice of individuals who had paid the ultimate price.
Here, on this mountain side, in this graveyard hour, in this unusual raucous and off-hand camaraderie between the new generation and the spirits of fallen heroes, the ancient instrument of mbira was a transponder … both homing and transmitting; receiving and calling out; forging a generational continuum of struggle.
To be continued…
