THE Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) has come and gone; it had beautiful sounds, fluent and devastatingly beautiful actresses, beautiful visuals; all in all a dazzling ambience.
But is this arts bonanza as good as it seems?
It definitely is not — it is a Trojan horse!
For those not in the know, when the Trojan War dragged on with the Trojans firmly resisting the Greeks, one of the Greek kings, Odysseus of Ithaca, had an idea.
It was to build a big wooden horse on wheels, big enough for a number of Greek soldiers to hide inside.
Then the Greeks pretended to sail away, acting like they had given up.
A Greek soldier left behind explained that the horse was a gift to the Trojan god Athena.
And not wanting to upset Athena the Trojans wheeled in the horse into their fortified city, had a big party to celebrate the end of the war and during the night, as they slept, out came the Greek soldiers who opened up the city to their compatriots who went on to destroy the Trojans.
All the Trojan men were killed while all the women and children were taken back to Greece as slaves.
HIFA is not pretty, it just looks that way.
It is a poisoned chalice which appears good and sweet but will cause great harm.
Like the beautiful Trojan Horse, HIFA has been embraced.
But its intentions are not noble.
The West, having failed to breach the walls of Zimbabwe whose bricks are cemented by an unshakable ideology steeped in the country’s liberation struggle, has come up with diversions like HIFA with masked agendas.
The festival has all along, subtly, sought to undermine, erode, belittle, stir anger and feelings of resentment among the masses against their Government.
Clearly the 2017 edition of HIFA was a pleasant ‘present’ for Zimbabweans who ‘missed’ the festival last year.
After the dismal failure by Western regime change proponents to remove the Robert Mugabe-led Government from power, many went back to the drawing board to reassess their strategies.
And HIFA, which has in the past been heavily sponsored by these regime change proponents, found itself without sponsorship and could not host the festival last year.
But failure to hold it last year could just be another ploy, the ‘Greeks’ appearing to sail away and giving up.
And when it returned this year with a colourful opening accompanied by splendid performances by the country and Africa’s finest in the form of Mahube, Zimbabwean legend Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi and Hope Masike, the ‘masses’ readily wheeled in HIFA.
Exceptional and energetic young African dancers, Tuku and mbira songstress Masike collaborating in the popular song ‘Hondo’, singing “Zimbabwe yakauya nehondo vakomana nehondo….” became a perfect smoke-screen for the agenda behind HIFA.
With that the festival could not be faulted.
But interesting are the sentiments of HIFA’s artistic director and founder Manuel Bagorro at the last press conference to kick-off the festival.
“…We decided we are coming this time no matter what, because this is the time when this type of event is more crucial than any other.”
The country is preparing for its harmonised elections slated for 2018.
“Arts are always important when times are tough,” said Bagorro.
“If this is what we can do, this is how we can think creatively to make something large and magnificent happen, if possible in the arts sector where we can have influence.
“What else is possible, where else can this type of creative thinking, ambition of scale and transformation; where else can that have an impact?” he asked.
The ‘something large and magnificent (that must) happen’, which has been sought after since the kick-off of the Land Reform Programme has been the removal of a Government system that promotes and supports the aspirations of indigenes over white interests.
The 2017 HIFA theme ‘Staging an intervention’ emphasised the need to intervene in people lives.
And throughout the festival, the intervention was evident in the attack of all things held sacred in the country, such as the liberation struggle.
HIFA is in no way different from the early missionaries who paved the way, softening the minds of the indigenes, preparing them to denounce everything that defined them and accept white rule.
In plays, war heroes and heroines, who remain committed to the nation, were presented as ‘fed-up’ with the current state-of-affairs.
War heroes and heroines ‘fed-up’ with the Land Reform Programme, Command Agriculture?
HIFA and the West, knowing that this is an important constituency, the protectors of the struggle and nation, wants to present them to Zimbabweans, especially the youths, as a people also in tandem with Western regime change agenda.
This festival is no different from everything else brought by whites
When Africa was colonised, things such as education and Christianity proved to be ‘good’ for Africans but they destroyed not only the history of Africa but unhu /ubuntu, everything that defines us as a people.
Today Africans recite the history of the West while they do not know their own story.
Just like their kith and kin who colonised Africans, organisers and the brains behind HIFA still maintain the same position through hosting a huge number of international artistes and only a handful of local artistes.
Besides the outcry from Zimbabweans, HIFA continues to place emphasis on artistes from Europe.
“The aim is to promote networking and also scouting of artistes, particularly Zimbabwean artistes by visiting programmers and opinion formers,” read part of the HIFA 2017 programme.
It must be noted that music is one form of art that powerfully evokes feelings of a people and celebration of their culture.
And in Zimbabwe, one cannot talk of music without mentioning the sungura genre.
The just ended edition of HIFA 2017 snubbed the popular genre.
Locals were not given the chance to enjoy local genres while visitors could not learn about Zimbabwe through music.
The dancehall genre was represented by Wallace Chirumuko, also known as Winky D, who left revellers begging for more.
As a festival in Africa, one would expect more African performances.
Instead of HIFA showcasing different traditions practised in Africa, more of Western traditions were celebrated.
However, the African artistes who performed acquitted themselves well.
Ghanaian reggae superstar Rocky Dawuni proved to be the best of the African performers.
Revellers got into a frenzy when Dawuni did a rendition of Bob Marley’s ‘Zimbabwe’ which helped make the 1980 independence celebrations a memorable event.
Kereyce Fotso of Cameroon did not disappoint with her delivery of Afro jazz.
International artistes who performed at HIFA include Banda Magda, a Greek singer; Canadian Angie Nussey; Luis Llaneza from Spain; Street corner symphony, a cappella group based out of Nashville, Tennesse; American violinist Rebecca Fischer; Ignition from Ireland; German keyboard genius and songwriter Thomas Motter as well as Japanese Iyco and Kaka Furaha, among others.
Lest we forget, at the behest of the West, the Libyans sang and tweeted themselves into poverty and now unending civil strife.