HomeOld_PostsHow about a statue for Andy Brown?

How about a statue for Andy Brown?

Published on

By Mashingaidze Gomo

APART from Chinx Chingaira, Andy Brown, Sister Flame, Brian Muteki, Simon ‘Chopper’ Chimbetu, Tendai Gahamadze and Last Chiyangwa aka ‘Tambaoga’ were among those artistes demonised for celebrating the black man’s liberation struggle against neo-colonial domination.
It meant that they could not tour the Western world to contest the demonisation of black people by those who have chosen not to recognise the equality of all human beings as the most basic of human rights.
Andy Brown’s case is particularly sad; as sad as Bob Marley’s case, and the cases of many other silent victims of white supremacist crimes against black humanity.
Andy Brown.
We all watched a legend being taken apart by a savage history that we continue to procrastinate in addressing.
They say you can better understand a problem by looking into another seemingly different problem, and in Andy Brown’s case, Michael Jackson’s life lends itself as a perfect contrastive background to highlight the Zimbabwean legend’s case.
Both Michael Jackson’s parents are very black.
And Michael Jackson was born a handsome and talented very black man.
But when he happened on money, it looks he made it his life’s desire to be white.
We, in far away Africa, saw a handsome black man ‘plastic-sharpening’ his nose, ‘plastic-chiseling’ his cheek-bones, and ‘plastic-thinning’ his full African lips into Caucasian.
And, overnight, it appeared to us, in far away Africa, that his fine black skin bleached itself into whiter than white skin.
And we saw his kinky African hair fall not into the kinky Rasta-dreadlocks of a black consciousness civil rights fighter, but the wavy Caucasian hair of an apologist.
And unlike Bob Marley, when Michael Jackson sang, he did not urge black people to emancipate themselves from mental slavery.
He did not remind black people of ‘ol’ pirate ships’ and merchant ships that robbed and brought his black African forebears into America to slave for exclusive white interests.
He did not do the liberation war dance, but the inconsequential ‘moonwalk’.  
He did not do the song contesting the Ku Klux Klan’s rights to kill black people, but did the ‘Thriller’ in which libertines screamed at imaginary horrors.
And when he achieved his dream, he was all very white, and married to a white woman.
And when biological science failed to give him white children, he adopted them, so that when people saw him and his wife and children, they saw a rich white family.
The only snag is that, unlike other black people who have quietly bleached themselves into anonymous white people under new identities, Michael Jackson’s transformation was theatrical and performed under global media glare and a paparazzi that kept round the clock watch outside the surgical rooms from which he emerged unrecognisable from his former self.    
He wanted the whole world to know that he was disgusted with being black and was not ashamed in his aspirations to be white.
But, real white people did not like the masquerade and haunted him right to the threshold of prison.
They hated Michael for being a false white man from head to toe.
Michael’s dream was a far cry from the Martin Luther King dream of equality of all human beings.
His dream appears to have been the bleaching of black people into white people and disappearing without trace.
It was a strange ‘if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them’ way of handling race relations. 
But, what happened to both Martin Luther King and Michael Jackson is irrefutable evidence of what happens when black people advocate peaceful equality with white people.
They both died disappointed men.
Martin Luther King was murdered in cold blood and suicide could not be ruled out of Michael Jackson’s death.
On the other hand, Andy Brown was cut from the same piece of cloth as Bob Marley.
Our independence in 1980 was graced by Bob Marley who sang kuti: “Africans are liberating Zimbabwe,” and years later, Andy brown proceeded to do just that in rhythm and rhyme.
He sang “Chigaro chamambo chinoera” in resistance to the Western-sponsored regime change agenda.
And, in alliance with Chinx among others in Hondo Yeminda, he kept the spirit of equitable re-distribution of land alive.
I have already said that we all watched a legend being taken apart by a savage history that we continue to procrastinate in addressing.
Andy Brown never tried to be a white person.
The story of his conception was told in the media after his passing, and it is a common post-colonial narrative among black people.
Vatete works for a white man, is raped or consents to sex, gets pregnant, is rejected, returns home and raises the child alone. 
The responsible white man wants nothing to do with the child.
He does not want the child to carry his name or enjoy the racially exclusive rights he claims for himself.  
He sets up an exclusive suburb for such children.
In Salisbury, Rhodesia, Arcadia is one such place, and it is located close to town not for any noble convenience, but the colonial criminal’s exclusive interests.
The white man’s impunity is enshrined in the racist constitution, but the racial reverse of a black man raping or having consensual intercourse with a white woman predominantly carries a death sentence if discovered.
Whereas (conversely), black Zimbabweans are known for their tolerance in matters of custody of rejected children.
No man who rejects a child is forced to take the child.
The child is raised by the mother’s people as their own and this is what happened to Andy Brown, who came to be affectionately known as ‘Muzukuru’.
And, unlike Michael Jackson, who wanted to be white and did the ‘moonwalk’ instead of the war-dance, Andy Brown sang Chimurenga songs of liberation for himself and for his mother’s people.
And today, as white people sponsor regime-change non-governmental organisations (NGOs) with programmes purportedly designed to stop an exaggerated level of violence by African men against African women, Andy Brown’s rise against racist odds to become the legend that he truly is must be flaunted in their eyes.
The NGOs must objectively search and record (in the interests of human rights) the frequency with which Andy Brown’s story is retold by many an old woman in Arcadia.
And in this light, perhaps it is in the interests of all black Zimbabweans to really start questioning why white men who wrought so much violence against black women must be the ones to talk about domestic violence as a weakness of black men.
Is it not an attempt to splinter the African family into an incoherent unit without the capacity to remember Muzukuru’s story as a generational trauma that has been allowed to go unresolved and unpunished?
Is it not an attempt to destroy unit of purpose between African men and women that prevents from identifying the white man as the common enemy still holding onto a heritage stolen from both African men and women?
The point in this story is that the ZANU PF Government’s two-thirds majority in the legislative assembly is a God-given mandate to restore the black man’s dignity without the racist interference of the local agents of racist imperialism. 
It is time to honour artistes who stood in defence of African sovereignty at a time when fire-arms would have provided the excuse for armed interference by NATO dogs of war.
Among these, Andy Brown is a legend whose statue or a school or street named after him must one day tell the story of a black man’s triumph over insurmountable racist odds.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Latest articles

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

The contentious issue of race

 By Nthungo YaAfrika AS much as Africans would want to have closure to many of...

More like this

Kariba Municipality commits to President’s service delivery blueprint

By Kundai Marunya IT is rare to find opposition-controlled urban councils throwing their weight on...

The resurgence of Theileriosis in 2024 

THE issues of global changes, climate change and tick-borne diseases cannot be ignored, given...

Britain haunted by its hostile policy on Zimbabwe

TWO critical lessons drawn from the recent debate on Zimbabwe in the British House...

Discover more from Celebrating Being Zimbabwean

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading