3: Hapana anoramba
By Belinda Zhawi
Intro
Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles is a podcast that explores sounds, interviews, music, and even noises recorded during the Southern African independence era in Swiss journalism archives. Over five episodes, journalists, artists, and researchers present mixtapes that reconsider archival recordings and reflect on their meanings in the present moment.
The invited collaborator for this episode is Belinda Zhawi, a Zimbabwean poet, sound artist and educator living in London. The title of her mixtape is “Hapana anoramba”.
Mixtape
Hapana anoramba
Archival reference no: BAB TPA.43 19, 35, 46, 102, 116.
Conversation
Melanie Boehi:
We are recording this conversation with Belinda Zhawi about her mixtape in June 2024. Also joining us is Percy Zvomuya.
Belinda, thank you so much for your mixtape. To start, please tell us a bit about your work as a poet, sound artist and educator. How did you discover your gift for the word?
Belinda Zhawi:
Thank you for having me. And yeah, thanks for the invite as well to be a part of this project. It was really, really beautiful to be a part of. So yeah, Belinda Zhawi, I, as you mentioned, I write poems, I say them as well, perform them, I also work with sound and young people doing education work. So yeah, I would say writing came into my life from a pretty young age, specifically through reading, I would say. My mother is a primary school teacher and I felt like I was one of her favourite projects. From a very young age, there was a lot of reading, and for me that was a joy in itself. But I think when I started to get older, I mean there was also a little bit of writing in general, little stories for my friends, for myself, but nothing really serious. But I would say teenage years, that's when I really started to think of myself as somebody who could maybe tell stories for audiences. And initially it was just stories, but then poetry just came in a very interesting way and it felt more exciting for me at the time, but I didn't really think it would be something I'd be doing for a long time. But yeah, since then it's just stuck really.
Melanie Boehi:
So you started writing around a time when you moved from Zimbabwe to London?
Belinda Zhawi:
I think before that was, I was more for in love with reading and I did write here and there, but it wasn't nothing serious. I think it was just things I was told to do as opposed to actually doing it by myself. But also when I moved to London also, suddenly I had access to a computer as well, and there wasn't, wasn't the Wi-Fi era, so there wasn't much you could do with the computer except for type things or play solitaire or whatever. So yeah, it was great. I was just recreating some of the stories I was reading. I think I really loved Enid Blyton then, and I would say there, but when I started to read more Black writers, I would say probably around 14, 15, a couple years into that time, that desire to write just crept in quite slowly. So yeah, I would say that the time I moved from Zim to the UK is when the writing started to feature in my life, I guess at the time is a tool for escape. Yeah, I'm just going to deal with my surroundings and really make sense of what was going on.
Melanie Boehi:
When you started writing, who were your role models?
Belinda Zhawi:
Like I said, I really loved Enid Blyton. I was writing a lot of random mystery stuff. In hindsight, I'm just shocked how obsessed I was. Then I think I was writing more for my friends, so it was things I would circulate amongst my friends and be like, oh, look at this thing. And they'd be like, oh, we what the next part? But I'll say when I was really thinking of writing in a more public way, I would say I started to discover the work of the Black Americans at the time, African-American writers like Alice Walker, Tony Morrison, James Baldwin. I don't think I fully always understood as well what I was reading, but it felt so rich and exciting. And I really loved what they were doing with language and I just felt like it was something maybe I could do. But I think that also there was still that deep inspiration from a lot of the Shona stuff I was reading when I was a younger reader. And then also Zim writers like Chenjerai Hove, Shimmer Chinodya, were also a huge part of my general canon, personal canon, because they were also writers as I could still access as well. And I think that there was a way that they invoked a nostalgia in me and a way also of keeping memory intact, reading them away, but also reading them when I read them at home. And then when I was reading them away, it felt like continuation of something.
Melanie Boehi:
So reading Zimbabwean authors after you had moved to London, was that also a way to stay in touch, stay connected with Zim?
Belinda Zhawi:
For sure. I can't explain that gap, that jump from that place to the other place that you had to plug that space with something. And I would say that, yeah, those writers who I could get my hands on, because at the time, I don't think it was easy to read as widely on that level as I could when I was a child. So I had to really search for things and you'd always happen upon something, like Nervous Conditions for example, was such a hit globally. And I felt like the way these writers could expand on my initial life experience was really useful in thinking about where I came from and keeping those memories intact. And I felt a lot of comfort through that. Maybe not my personal memories, but I mean the memories of the land and the landscape and the lifestyle and things like that.
Melanie Boehi:
Very interesting. And how does sound come into that? When did you start performing and when did you start getting into sound art?
Belinda Zhawi:
I would say sound was actually always a part of my life longer than reading. I come from a very religious Christian family who were also singers. So sound was so hugely a part of my life since I was born. Singing together, singing at church, it was an access to sound that was actually also deeply spiritual. It wasn't necessarily always about the fun of it, but I would say outside my home where I lived in Zim, Dzivarasekwa, is a very easy place full of sound from everywhere and music everywhere. So I would say music was just my first access to sound and it was always a huge part of my life. As a teenager, well, I mean when I was younger I was part of choirs, but I think when I came to the UK, my mom made sure that we kept busy and choir was a huge part of my life. So I would say I joined my church choir at the time. And I think something about choral music has always been a huge part of my life. Voice in general, and not just voice in a musical sense or in that sort of sonic way, but like even my mother's voice felt really special. There's something about the tone of a voice that was comforting for me and familiar. So yeah, voice has always been something that I'm really curious about.
So when I started a sound practise, I think voice was something that I really wanted to tap into. But I would say as a practise, it came in actually much, much later. It came I would say in my mid-twenties, and that was just through working with musicians who would just invite me onto their projects and they'll be like, oh yeah, I'm looking for a poet, or do you want to do something with a band? And I really found that so liberating. I feel like the writing was quite rigid was I was in a lot of heavy literary spaces where it was all about publishing what things look like on the page. It was quite rigid in that way, and I don't think my practise actually was ever meant to be that rigid. So it was really nice to start to hang out with musicians a bit more and people who worked with sound in different ways. And then that just sparked an interest for me to start thinking about my voice as an instrument and also exploring the emotional landscape of what I was writing in a more sonic sense really as opposed to just words on the page. I was curious about what kind of worlds I could build with sound and also sampling. I really love hip hop and I really love the idea that you can take something and really expand it into something small and expand it in something larger.
Percy Zvomuya:
And you were talking about your reading influences apart from Tsitsi Dangarembga’s iconic Nervous Conditions, was there any other woman writer that you were written when you moved over from your Enid Blyton phase, I mean from Southern Africa?
Belinda Zhawi:
Yeah, so I would say obviously Yvonne Vera, Bessie Head as well, who I'm still obsessed with. Even someone like Nadine Gordimer as well.
Percy Zvomuya:
And Nadine Gordimer was good friends with that Ruth Weiss.
Belinda Zhawi:
Oh really? That makes sense though. I can see that now. I think I'm like, yeah, of course. Similar area, similar geography. And also I would say interestingly, Doris Lessing as well, who I really thinking could really capture something about a Zimbabwe I was curious about maybe I was too young for, but something about that land.
Percy Zvomuya:
I love Doris Lessing.
Belinda Zhawi:
Yeah, I love her.
Percy Zvomuya:
I love Doris Lessing. I think she is the best chronicler of those years, like 1930s, 1940s. Yeah, I don't think anyone has done it as well as she did.
Melanie Boehi:
You were talking about the authors you were reading, also authors from South Africa, Bessie Head who lived in Botswana.
Belinda Zhawi:
Of course, yeah.
Melanie Boehi:
How aware were you growing up of the Southern African region, like the neighbouring countries, and when did Southern Africa appear on your map?
Belinda Zhawi:
You know, I always say, fuck Mugabe, but that education was something else! So I think from a pretty young age, I knew from the classroom, the map, at least looking at it where everything is and in what direction everything is. But I think on a deeper level, there's still obviously a lot, I don't know. And also as a child, we'd kind of travelled by road a few times to Botswana or to Zambia. So there was a general understanding of what direction I'm going in if we're going to a specific place.
Percy Zvomuya:
And before me, I have a memoir by Stuart Hall, the Jamaican theorist, it’s called Familiar Stranger: A Life between Two Islands. So basically it's about his birth and youth in Jamaica and then his move to England to attend university. Also, he has spoken about how, when he arrived in England, there was an immediate recognition. Because landscapes is the one that he had read when Thomas Hardy, Dickens, Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, so there's this immediate recognition of, but I've seen this before, I've read this before, I've been exposed to this before. This is a segue into asking, when you moved to England, was there an immediate recognition like, oh, but I've been here before?
Belinda Zhawi:
So interestingly, it was a bit more complex. As a child, I wasn't reading that much English stuff like the England related things, but there was this kind of expansion of my understanding of colonisation when I started to like, so I moved to an area that's close to Belvedere. Or just seeing, like you said, these familiar names, like ah yeah, I've seen that on a TV show or whatever. But the part of London I moved to was, actually felt like a deeper culture shock or it wasn't a familiar London, they write about anywhere except for some, I would say some Caribbean writers, some African writers, let say maybe we're thinking about, but Buchi Emecheta or even Stuart Hall or George Lamming. Only the black writers are writers in about these versions of London, which are very immigrant heavy spaces, very Black spaces, very African. So I moved to southeast London, an area called Woolwich, and actually was quite a huge Zimbabwean community there at the time. It felt like really what people meant by Harare North. It also like a huge Nigerian population. And I was familiar with Nigerians from the films we're watching on tv, but had never met a Nigerian in my life, never met Jamaicans, never met other Africans who weren't really from those kind of immediate neighbouring countries and not even on a huge scale had I met those other Africans either. I think that my world was very Shona, Harare, Dzivarasekwa heavy. So for me it was actually a lack of familiarity because I had a picture in my head of what it was going to be like. And it was in a way kind of the complete opposite.
Melanie Boehi:
Very interesting. When we first spoke about the Ruth Weiss sound archives, you told me that you've come across her books and initially I was quite surprised, this happens quite often, that when I say I'm doing research about Ruth Weiss, people mostly in South Africa say like, oh yes, I know her, the journalist, but they think of Ruth First, not Ruth Weiss. How did you come across her? How did you come across her books?
Belinda Zhawi:
I would say I was familiar with her as a writer, mainly through Women of Zimbabwe. And obviously I went to Dadaya High School before I left Zim. So there's this Garfield Todd and the Making of Zimbabwe book. Yeah, so I was familiar with her through a very random part of my life. Garfield Todd was the founder of Dadaya High School. But yeah, he is like a former prime minister at some point in the fifties of Rhodesia. And then there was this mission school that was basically his school and his family's farm or whatever. So I went to that school for one, and I feel like that place actually shaped, even though I was there for just a year, it really shaped a lot of who I was.
Melanie Boehi:
So your mom had a copy of the Women of Zimbabwe book?
Belinda Zhawi:
My mom had a copy of everything! So that was just, I think a book in our house. And obviously there's a young reader who loved reading. I was just voraciously reading through whatever's in the house, whether I understood it or not.
Percy Zvomuya:
I was going to say, I can't say I'm surprised that you knew Ruth Weiss because Dadaya is an iconic school. For those one not from Zimbabwe, Dadaya is the school that was established in the, I think in the thirties by this missionary couple, Garfield and Grace Todd. Yeah, so a lot of prominent Zimbabweans were educated at Dadaya. Mugabe matriculated at Dadaya, Ndabaningi Sithole was also there, Ndabaningi Sithole who in Ruth Weiss’s memoir, the picture on the cover of her memoir is Ruth Weis chatting to Ndabaningi Sithole.
Belinda Zhawi:
Interesting.
Percy Zvomuya:
He was also at Dadaya. So basically without Dadaya, Zimbabwe would definitely be a different country and their role is not often acknowledged, but the couple was a very important couple in the education of generations of Zimbabwean leaders beginning with Mugabe and Ndabaningi Sithole right up to people like you. You're fighting a different struggle, a sound struggle, but it is relayed by those guys.
Belinda Zhawi:
Yeah, that's so interesting. I always felt at Dadaya, when you go to a school, you just think that they're overtalking the importance in the world. But you could feel it though in this space. You could feel the tradition, you could feel it.
Melanie Boehi:
All these names that you mentioned now, Garfield Todd, Grace Todd, Judith Todd, but also Robert Mugabe, obviously then the women Ruth interviewed for the Women in Zimbabwe book, I mean all these voices are in the Ruth Weiss sound archives. So I want to ask you, when you first heard about this archive, when you started to listen to some of the recordings, what was your first impression?
Belinda Zhawi:
First and foremost, I was just impressed at just how much she managed to record. But when I got the proposal, I just knew immediately that it's something that I had to explore and be a part of because it was combining so many different aspects of the things that I'm interested in that also inform my practice. So of course other people's voices, voices from the ether. But yeah, it was interesting listening back and I was a little bit jealous and envious in a way. I just was like, how lucky she was to have had access to that range of voices and to sit down with these people and to be able to say and pinpoint that this, I remember this happened here and this happened there. But in terms of the sounds themselves, obviously a deep sense of nostalgia and longing of something I actually don't know, and I don't think I've experienced really, I mean aside obviously from the accents and the language and the music, but in terms of a particular time in Zimbabwe that I just wouldn't have experienced because I wasn't born. And I found that really interesting because I'm just curious about what we call Zimbabwean people now, how they move through the world, how they present themselves.
Melanie Boehi:
And then as you were preparing your mixtape, what was your process like?
Belinda Zhawi:
I kind of always do the same thing when it comes to sound, because like I mentioned before, I love sampling, I love other people's voices and I love story. So initially it always starts with listening. So there was many hours of listening to be fair, listening and re-listening as well. And then starting to thread some kind of narrative through some of the things I was listening to see what fit where and what would make sense where. And I think what kept on coming up for me was wanting to talk about women. And I think at first I wanted to get, do something quite metaphysical, just kind of the metaphysical aspects of that. And I think Aeneas Chigwedere was very much a guiding light and thinking about that based on what she recorded of him, speaking about spirituality, traditional practises, I learned so much actually that I just didn't know about.
And some things that I was familiar with, I got better explanations just through him talking. So yeah, I think from there then obvious there's the voice of the woman talking about being part of the liberation struggle, which has also been a deep interesting for me as well since I was young, because obviously some of my family members had their own stories about their experiences with that. So I think it was part of my general life narrative, the stories around that. So I was curious about what I could do with both. But in the end, poetry, you've got to work with economy. You can't use everything and you've got to just sometimes distil it down to a particular set of things and see what you can do with that, really.
Melanie Boehi:
This is so interesting for me, and I think throughout this process as we were preparing the mixtapes for this project, inviting people like you poets, sound artists, musicians, because as a historian I've been very much trained to just listen for content. That's why people love reading transcripts instead of listening to it. But with your approach, you actually focus on the sounds and what are interesting sounds, and then from there it goes into, but it just seems a more open approach.
Belinda Zhawi:
Yeah, I think, I guess the way I engage with sound is very energy based as well. Yeah, I'm always kind of thinking about what do I want people to feel? I mean, initially it's all about how do I want to feel from the piece. Then obviously then you're making things on that level. It's about audience as well. And for me, I think I'm, why I love mbira so much as well, and specific ways of Zimbabwean and Shona traditional singing, it's trance inducing. But by saying that I'm not necessarily obsessed with sending people to trance, but it's more about escape, creating a sonic space where people can sort disappear into the sound for, I don't know, the five minutes or ten minutes, however long it is, and then when they come out with it, I want it to be a serious feeling of you entered the sort of portal and then you came out on the other side. I mean I want it to be a story still, but I'm not really obsessed with narrative in that way, in that I think that I've got the page to do that with. That's another space I can also go and be like, okay, what's the actual concrete feel of the story, what's the story. I'm actually less like that on the page. I'm very self-conscious of not being like that on the page because I feel like energy might not translate the same, but I think with sound, there just is room for that. I think that that's where I'm allowed to just be like, okay, what can they feel and what can I feel?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, yeah. Actually, talking of the mbira and your love for mbira music, I was pleasantly intrigued by the mbira song that you used. The mbira music that we know in Zimbabwe is mostly mbira dzavadzimu, basically the mbira music of the Zezuru people who are around Harare, Mhondoro, Zvimba, but the song that she chose is not a typical Zezuru mbira sound, i's from the north. So it's a very interesting sound that was made popular by Thomas Mapfumo. Because Thomas Mapfumo reimagined it, and it came out I think in the nineties as Chirombo, but that's the original song. Most people first knew of the Thomas Mapfumo song. That's the original song, and I find it a very fascinating song. Maybe if we could play it.
Belinda Zhawi:
Again, it's like the feeling thing. And it's interesting what you're saying about geographies and like, the different sounds of the different regions and how they play with that. But I would say the singing aspects of some of that music was like, okay, some of the Shona, I didn't really understand. It wasn't the Shona that I would know. And the singing style as well, I would say, was very interesting to me because it didn't feel familiar either.
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, actually, so the song is called, Kuyadya Hove Muna Mazowe
Belinda Zhawi:
Yeah, yeah.
Melanie Boehi:
So what I'm getting from what you're saying is that here is I quite unusual recording of mbira and singing that both of you, you didn't know before you listened to the Ruth Weiss archive.
Percy Zvomuya:
No.
Belinda Zhawi:
No. For me, I didn't know, I actually didn't even know that it was that until just now in this conversation as well. And I think that's my favourite thing as well about working the sound and thinking about feeling more than, I guess if you're working with texts sometimes about facts and you want to double check things and you have to know. But when you're working with just feeling, it's interesting because there's always surprises, over time that the document just starts to unravel itself and keeps bringing more surprises. So that's for me, whenever I'm going to go back and listen to it, that's going to be a huge part of my thinking about the narrative in that way and be like, okay, that's interesting, what does that contribute to this narrative? Really this idea that this particular way of playing is actually very different to what I initially thought was going on.
Melanie Boehi:
That's why I, I'm so grateful that you listened to the archive that you spent so much time with it because if it's just sitting there in Basel and people like you don't listen to it, we would never know because I doubt anybody here in Switzerland would have picked that up.
Belinda Zhawi:
You know what, you thanking me, but I'm really thanking you for the invite. Honestly, I feel like it was such a great, I don't know, six to eight weeks or whatever of sitting with that work. And I think I'm really fascinated by Ruth herself as well, because I think it takes also a special kind of somebody to have a recording device and be allowed into certain spaces or have people willing to talk to you freely. And you can sense it sometimes her voice comes through in the recordings, how much space she gives the speakers or the sounds that she's recording. She knows how to ask the right questions as well. But yeah, I'm curious about her as well and what it was that allowed her to be kind to privy to some of that information and really be in those spaces and also just preserve it as well.
Melanie Boehi:
Yeah, I think it's what makes this archive such a unique source. And with a lot of these recordings, I mean they're interesting in terms of the content, what is on them, their voice is really recorded, but really also as a document about herself, because we learn so much about how she interacted with people and what you mentioned, even if it's not recorded or stated, but there must have been a personal relationship, a relationship of respect that made the recordings possible in the first place. And I think the one recording you used is an interesting example of it. It's a recording of the joint press statement by the patriotic front of sign and SAP who made on the 27th of November, 1976 during the Geneva Conference.
Belinda Zhawi:
No, I just thought it was also very Zim. There's something about that whole clip that's very Zim. I don't know, from the singing this sort of war song vibe to, for me, I think it's very Zim humour thing. It's like when he is like, I'm not the press, but you want an African voice, right? And then that switching into this sort of formal voice, now we are doing the press statement, just kind ending it on this note of what does an African voice sound like. What is an African voice even? It is such a loaded statement. And I really just enjoyed this aspect of, because a lot of the time as well, some of the voices I'm working with are Shona language voices. If you don't understand, you don't understand. Again, you're going to feel it. You're going to feel the rhythm of the language, you're going to feel the tones of people's voices. But if you understand, then obviously it's as a different layer of meaning. I'm always kind of interested in art that can do that, that it's not for everyone to understand. There's going to get some aspects of it are going to get it, and some people are not going to know what's being said. And I really liked the part where he's like, when she's like, what does it mean? And then there's not really an answer, and then he proceeds into something else. It’s quite a metaphorical as well.
Melanie Boehi:
Yeah, I mean it's also metaphorical because of the context, because the press statement is exactly about the negotiations about who is allowed to speak at this conference.
Belinda Zhawi:
Yeah. And also there's that as well. And then it ties in so much with the woman being interviewed and it extends this idea of who could speak, who had power, who was listened to in terms of thinking about gender now, men and women in a particular space. And also what she's saying because what they're singing, which is like, well, no one can say no if you are women, men and children must all be part of this cause.
Melanie Boehi:
I do want to ask for those who don't understand, Shona, can you explain what the song is about?
Belinda Zhawi:
Well, that's essentially, it's just saying everyone has to be part of the cause and no one can say no. And that's basically what the woman is saying in the clip. And she's like, well, when you're in the camp, you have to do what you're told. It's like no one is allowed to not be part of the cause. I'm thinking about the friction around like what is one's own personal convictions, and they kind of are colliding with the political, and also when the political is actually affecting your personal as well. Okay, I'm going to have to be part of the struggle because I don't have personal freedoms to be my full self in this land if I'm oppressed by this oppressive power. But at the same time as well, the luxury of personal self-autonomy. Because I’m more interested in the grey areas of that as opposed to the beauty that's propagandised across the world of, yeah, resistance. But it's really, I'm interested in the details of what it looks like inside the resistance. How are the children faring? How are the women faring? How is people's mental health? Things like that. But these are kind of almost fringe questions when you're presented with this bigger struggle on top that everybody has to kind rally against together. And I kind of liked that in the absence of a press secretary, this person knew there's one voice, right? We know what we're saying because that's part of the message, part of the propaganda, part of the whatever. And if the person's not there, then I'll speak and I'll tell you exactly what we're asking for and what we're demanding. But it felt quite cyclical in a way.
Melanie Boehi:
And then you mixed this recording with the interview with a female freedom fighter when a lot of these issues, how do you describe this, fringe issues, actually come to the full or you bring them to the full by how you selected the recording and how you mixed it up. What drew you to this recording?
Belinda Zhawi:
I liked her voice a lot. She's really strong, but super quiet. And Ruth had pull out it out a bit by bit, and I liked how Ruth was conducting that as well, because she'd be like, and then? You can tell she didn't really want to, she wanted to talk about it, but I felt like she was kind of re-traumatized. What drew me to it was the tone of her voice, and then of course what she was talking about. It was just shocking because even though it was fringe, but these are the realities, that this is what the liberation struggle looks like. It's still those particular systems in place where patriarchy is rules and yeah, okay, we all want freedom, but what does freedom look like to each person? No one's talking about intersectionality in this case. it is like, listen, the men at the top, because we still have these essentialist ideas of they're stronger, they're more logical, nahnahah, but then essentially it's just patriarchal and it's just misogyny, but also the war still has to be fought. And it's like how is one’s voice amplified in a space like that?
But again, it's just like, oh yeah, this struggle of liberation, when we're thinking about it from a Black woman's perspective, it's always been the same fight in different contexts, in different parts of the world. And when we talk about liberation struggles as well, there's always gallantry, sort of paradise, the men, like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, out there, strong men outside. No one really talks about the women in that way or bring them to the forefront except for specific projects that are also seen as fringe projects compared to the bigger narrative of the men in the bush. But it's like there were men and women fighting the struggle, and I'm thinking about oppression on that level. Okay, there's the oppressive white regime, but what was the oppression looking like? What is those interpersonal relations look like on the ground and how that affect how the war was fought and also what happens after the war, how the country's run and who gets what and is placed where. But again, it was come back down to power and hierarchy and women's voices are just not ever listened to or prioritised or centred. So yeah, it was really important to me that I did something with her voice. For me, it had to be the focal point and that had to become the narrative.
Melanie Boehi:
I find these interviews that she did with the women in the early eighties, I find them highly fascinating. Also, most of these women are very young. I mean, the woman in the interview you use, she's 23 and the interview is only 30 minutes long. But there's so much packed into it from talking about women joining the struggle and the kind of gendered discrimination they experienced, that they weren't given the same training, they were given the same opportunities to go overseas.
Belinda Zhawi:
And also at the end of the war not being told that they could go home. Yeah, it was shocking to me. It was scandalous, if I'm being honest. I was scandalised. I was like, some things you already know from studying and stuff, but then there's just about hearing, it's hearing someone's voice speak it and just being like, that's scandalous.
Melanie Boehi:
And then the interview was recorded in 1984 and she also speaks very clearly about things that aren’t working since independence. The tribalism, the corruption, and the elitism that is creeping in and taking hold of the new government.
Belinda Zhawi:
That's very much my favourite part of the interview because I'm always fascinated by things never changing us still harping on about the same things for decades or centuries because essentially that's the fallout from how it was when they were fighting back when they were in the bush. That elitism didn't just pop out of nowhere, that corruption, that treachery, that was already existing in that other space. And it just festers afterwards, and I think that she speaks quite eloquently about that.
Melanie Boehi:
You were talking about how you found this the most interesting section of the interview because it just did resonate so strongly with today's situation.
Belinda Zhawi:
Again, it was just for me, I'm scandalised like, oh my God, we never had a chance! It's about also debunking this myth of like, oh, when things were good, I mean things felt good, doesn't mean they were good. It's like, okay, these were issues from then and I think I'm very much moved by her courage as well to speak about those issues then when it felt probably felt a bit more dangerous to be that candid about those concerns, then at that time that's when you really have to be part of the ongoing propaganda and be like, things are great, we've got our freedom, bread basket of Africa, and this Zim dollars, all this stuff that doesn't really matter because essentially what's happening now is really much always been an issue. That's never not been the issue basically. And I think that's what I found fascinating about it was that. Yeah, but it's little bit harrowing too.
Melanie Boehi:
What is your take about these archives being so far away from Zimbabwe and Southern Africa, this being in Switzerland?
Belinda Zhawi:
Well, that's a whole other conversation. That's a whole other dialogue about heritage and colonisation and privilege and access. But yeah, of course I didn't feel great about it. I'm very much of the belief that everything should be where it should be, but the reality is it's not. And then I guess what can we do with what we have at the moment. And hopefully projects like this are the beginning of something then for me, accessing that archive really meant telling my version of what I think is a Zimbabwean story, which for me doesn't actually mean one thing, right? There's not one Zimbabwean story. I think that my story is a very Zimbabwean story because the story of migration to other places, a story about the loss of language in a way, a loss of traditions and culture or rejigging things and remaking them. Which is also, I think my sound practise is very linked to that, which is getting raw materials and then making something else out of it.
But in terms of my politics, of course, I'm just not enthralled by the idea that these stories are in this place in a sort of safe, if we think about it's physical tapes, it's locked away in a space somewhere. But at the same time as well, you have to consider different things like who made them and also people's access to preservation. You could preserve it. It takes money. I don't want to be unrealistic about those things because they're really tied into longer histories of extraction or whatever. But if I'm going to be hopeful, it's really just been about what do people have access to those archives do with them. Going forth is about retelling stories. It's about elongating the stories, it's about remixing them. It's about sharing them as widely as possible and then eventually maybe having it stored somewhere where it's closer to home, who cares about it and who wants to engage with it. It's complex, but it's also not what's complex is the history attached to it and why? There's a reason why it's in Basel, and that's to do with a longer history of other things. And then also who is doing that? Who's making the archive and how they use their privilege, or if they do have privilege, what their role is really in that archive building. So it's complex in that way, but on a non-complex level, I'm like, yeah, put it back on the land.
Outro
The Echoes of Southern African liberation struggles podcast was developed by Melanie Boehi, in collaboration with Andrei van Wyk, Lynsey Chutel, Talya Lubinsky, Niren Tolsi, Belinda Zhawi and Percy Zvomuya. Sound design, editing and production is by Andrei van Wyk. Original archival recordings used in the mixtapes are subject to the regulations of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien Archives. The project “Echoes of the Southern African independence era in Swiss journalism archives” was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation with a Spark grant. Thanks go to Ruth Weiss, Maggie Caroline Katsande, the Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Radio Télévision Suisse, the University of Lausanne, the Swiss National Science Foundation and all contributors. For more information on the project, please check out our website: independence-echoes.org.
