4: Africans liberate Zimbabwe
By Percy Zvomuya
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 Percy Zvomuya, a Zimbabwean journalist, writer, and editor living in Harare. The title of her mixtape is “Africans liberate Zimbabwe”.
Mixtape
Africans liberate Zimbabwe
Archival reference no: BAB TPA.43 3, 10, 19, 33, 142.
Conversation
Melanie Boehi:
We are recording this conversation with Percy Zvomuya in early July, 2024. Percy, thank you so much for your mix tape and for making time for this conversation.
Percy Zvomuya:
Thank you for inviting me.
Melanie Boehi:
You are a writer, a journalist, and also the editor of a magazine called When Three Sevens Clash. Could we start by talking about how you became a writer and a journalist?
Percy Zvomuya:
I've always wanted to be a writer, so when I got the chance to go to South Africa to study journalism, I took it, and then ended up at the weekly Mail & Guardian newspaper. I was covering mostly the arts, books, theatre, music.
Melanie Boehi:
And growing up in Zimbabwe, what was your inspiration? Who were your role models to get into journalism and to get into writing?
Percy Zvomuya:
I'll say a few people. Obviously there will be the sort of highbrow, if I may put it that way, the highbrow writers who I grew up idolising. People like James Baldwin, Dambudzo Marechera, yeah, mostly I would say mostly those. In journalism, I was looking up to people like Sunsleey Chamunorwa, the former editor of The Financial Gazette who I have just done a short obituary to, he died a few years ago, but I'm working on something and I was recalling some of our sessions when I used to visit him in his office at The Financial Gazette, but also people like Iden Wetherell, the historian and editor, who was at The Independent who died a few years ago. Yeah, mostly I would say those, I mean those two where the people I was looking up to.
Melanie Boehi:
And when you first went to university, you studied English and then you became a teacher. Did you already know then that you wanted to go into journalism later or
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah. Yeah, that was always the plan, but I took a roundabout route, but it was always my plan to be a writer.
Melanie Boehi:
And then you moved to South Africa to study journalism. How did this move shape the kind of journalism that you then got into?
Percy Zvomuya:
Well, obviously South Africa is a much more sophisticated country compared to Zimbabwe. So suddenly the books that I was reading about in The Guardian or wherever you could find them, which you couldn't do here in Zimbabwe, and so it opened a vastly bigger world than I had been brought up in. But also Jo’burg, as some called it, is a metropolis, and you have all these people, you have Nigerians, you have Cameroonians, I'm kind of meeting the people that I was reading about in Chinua Achebe, I'm meeting the people that I was reading about in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, in all these books that I grew up reading. So you’re meeting Kenyans, you’re meeting Tanzanians, you’re meeting Somalis, you’re meeting all these people. But in Zimbabwe, at the time that I was growing up, I didn't meet any of these people. So it kind of opens up your world and you become aware that you are part of this milieu, of this African population that has made Jo’burg its home.
Melanie Boehi:
Interesting. So that was in the early 2000s, or when did you move to?
Percy Zvomuya:
So 2004, 2005. Yeah, that's when I became part of the African diaspora in Jo’burg.
Melanie Boehi:
And then you started working for the Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg. What was working for the Mail & Guardian at this time like?
Percy Zvomuya:
It was an amazing time because obviously you look at what the publication is now and you want to cry, but at the time it was really an amazing place to be because there were all these people. Obviously I couldn't afford to buy the Mail & Guardian when I was in Zimbabwe, when I was at the university. So we will go to the departmental office where they subscribed. So there would be all these people like John Matshikiza, the writer and the son of Todd Matshikiza. There will be people like Robert Kirby. These were people we were reading, like Shaun de Waal, the movie critic. And suddenly I'm there. John Matshikiza walks into the office every Wednesday night, to check his pages and to approve the final whatever draft of his column. So it was a scary, almost like an overwhelming experience to be around these people that you kind of idolised, especially people like John Matshikiza, because he was a really good columnist. But also away from the people that I was reading in the 90s. Suddenly you are working with people like Darryl Accone who basically gave me my break in book reviewing, and people like Matthew Krouse, who was the arts editor, obviously Shaun de Waal, people like Nicole Johnstone was a training editor, Drew Forrest, who was the news editor. I also want to acknowledge my colleagues, people like Kwanele Sosibo who has now moved to the States, Monako Dibetle, Niren Tolsi who joined a few years after we had joined, but who used to work mostly from Durban. It was good to be around these people who knew what they were doing, who knew the arts, who knew, you can imagine I kind of knew a bit of South Africa, but I was not from there. So it was being around these people that I kind of got to know the South African setting, and so I want to really acknowledge these people. Also, not forgetting the photographer Oupa Nkosi. Yeah, yeah.
Melanie Boehi:
And then you got into covering mostly the arts. Did you do that from the beginning or is that something that happened slowly?
Percy Zvomuya:
No, not from the beginning. My entry into the arts was sometimes, I mean, for instance, sometimes Shaun de Waal would not be able to go to a film screening. So before film is released onto the circuit, there is a critic, they call it a preview. So sometimes Shaun would say, I'm busy, or I have to go somewhere else, do you want to go and check out this film and do a little review, like mostly 200 words or 300 words or whatever? So I'll say it was Shaun de Waal, and we were receiving a lot of books, or the office was receiving a lot of books from publishers. When Darryl saw that I liked reading because we'll go to the Rosebank Mall during lunch to the secondhand bookshop there, Bookdealers, then we'll kind of buy books. So I think Darryl will say, Hey, do you want to write about this? I also want to acknowledge Sis’ Gwen, Gwen Ansell, who was contracted by the company to be trainer, so basic reporting, we were kind of being retrained to write as journalists. So Sis’ Gwen was one of these people who trained us, but Sis’ Gwen was very good at writing about music, and I had not really written about music. I kind of knew a little bit, but not in any substantial kind of way. So part of learning a lot of things, learning to appreciate that jazz idiom from reading what she was writing, what my other colleagues like Lloyd Gedye and other people were writing about, thinking about music. So that's how I got into music, got into theatre, going into books, going into film. Yeah.
Melanie Boehi:
The next thing I want to talk about is your book about Mugabe. You have been busy with this project for a couple of years, writing a biography of Robert Mugabe. What inspired you to tackle this project?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, there is not enough life writing done in Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans. Most of the books about Zimbabwean figures or about Zimbabwean subjects have been done by people who were not born here. So I think we needed a book about a major African figure in our politics to be written by a Black Zimbabwean.
Melanie Boehi:
And it is also through this project that you first encountered the Ruth Weiss archive in Basel because in 2017 you spent a month doing research there. What was your first impression of this archive?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, well, obviously I was quite impressed by her biography, how she ended up in Zimbabwe or in Rhodesia at the time, and how unusually [for] women at the time she had built a career as a reporter, as a journalist. But maybe what was more impressive is how she had managed to gather all this material in those analogue days when it was difficult to record, to gather archives because it was pre, this was the pre-electronic age. So it was really interesting to find out, to find all these things about, find these newspaper cuttings about Zimbabwe, about South Africa, about aspects of Zimbabwean history that you'll not readily find in Zimbabwe itself.
Melanie Boehi:
And then you also looked a bit into the archive of RTS, Radio Télévision Suisse. What was your impression of this archive?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, I guess I could say the same thing about the same things, the same sentiments about that archive. It is things that have to do with us, but that are not domiciled here and that are, unless you are in Europe or you visit, you have no ready access.
Melanie Boehi:
And then in your mixtape, you centre Ruth Weiss's recording of Zimbabwe's independence celebration in April, 1980. What drew you to this recording? Are these sounds you were familiar with? Have you heard a similar recording before?
Percy Zvomuya:
Well, part of the legend here in Zimbabwe is that, I don’t know how far true that is, but given the perilous state of our archives, it might well be true. The story told is that the recording of the Zimbabwe Independence ceremony from 1980 is not there anymore because they were a recording on VHS and because of scarce resources they would dub over the tapes that they had because they didn't have money to buy new tapes. But for me, that recording of the independent ceremony is something that I've thought about for many years and I've always been intrigued about the time because I was only a couple of years old in 1980. So I was quite curious about these recordings.
Melanie Boehi:
And you mentioned Bob Marley and you focus on Bob Marley in your mixtape. Can you talk a bit about Bob Marley's place in Zimbabwe's history?
Percy Zvomuya:
As I write in the zine, bass culture in Zimbabwe goes back right to 1980, and it's because of Bob Marley that we are interested, not interested, we are obsessed with reggae music and with the rasta lifestyle, the rasta way of living. And we can trace that to Bob Marley arriving here in 1980, paying out of his own pocket to stage the concert. I collect vinyl, I see Bob Marley’s influences in the vinyl records that you find here, of Bob Marley, especially of those early years, 1970, 1980 music: Culture, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt, Rita Marley, and all those people, you can readily find those records in Zimbabwe, it's because we have been listening to this music since 1980, the moment that Bob, when Bob Marley came here.
Melanie Boehi:
And then I'm interested because obviously through Bob Marley there is a Caribbean connection, but you also quote the Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite in your mixtape. And you also included a recording from Ruth's collection of Jamaica's Prime Minister Michael Manley. Can you say a bit more about this connections between Zimbabwe and the Caribbean?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, so obviously over the last ten years, I've kind of delved deep into these connections, the sound, the words that you find here in Zimbabwe or in Mozambique that echo in places like Bolivia, in places like Ecuador, Colombia, all these places. Kamau Edward Brathwaite is very important in thinking about the trans-Atlantic journey that our cousins, and journey as in forced journey, that they took to the Caribbean and to the Americas. But one of the ways in which the connection between us is made is in the sound, in the drum, basically the drum and the bass, you know, that quote from Kamau Brathwaite, God is dumb until the drum speaks. But is the same sentiments that the writer, the poet Paul Chidyausiku is evoking when he says, the drum speaks the language of the sons and daughters of the soil. Because everything around African being is centred around the drum and the drum and the bass. So he says, when there's a war, there's a drum, when people are happy, they dance to the drum, when people am mourning, they dance to the drum. So everything is around the drum. Even a Western instrument like the piano in Africa, you listen to people like Abdullah Ibrahim or people like the African-American pianist, Cecil Taylor, they talk about the piano as a percussive instrument. So it's those connections that I've been curious about and how can we find our cousins by using the drum and the bass.
Melanie Boehi:
And then I want to ask you about the interview you included in your mixtape with Ish Mafundikwa. Could you tell us a bit more about who he's, how you met?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah. So Ish is, actually Ish was born in the same year as my father. So I've always had this respectful relationship with him because he is my father's age. But we get along very well because we are both interested in mostly the same things. We all support Arsenal, we all support. We love music, we love reggae. But also Ish has been, as I say, I don’t know, anyone who has met as many musicians as Ish, or who has been to as many concerts as Ish, he has basically seen everyone.
Melanie Boehi:
So it was kind of an obvious decision that you would go and talk to him when you were preparing this mixtape?
Percy Zvomuya:
No, no, not at all. Actually, I only got to know, I got to know that he had been at the concert a few months ago, even though I've written quite a bit around the concert. I don’t know why it never occurred to me. But anyway, one day I was talking about it and then he said, I was at that concert. And then that's how I got to interview him.
Melanie Boehi:
And then another recording that you include in your mixtape is an interview that Ruth did with Tichaona Freedom Nyamubaya. I think that is one of the most impressive recordings in Ruth Weiss's collection. I want to ask you, what was your experience of listening to this interview? How does it resonate in the present moment for you?
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah, so obviously I knew of Freedom Tichaona Nyamubaya because I think one of her books could have been in our school library, so I was aware of her. But obviously it's words that we had seen on the page. I had never listened to her speak. She died when I was about to make contact with her because I wanted to interview her about her participation in the war and other issues around that. So it was really great to listen to her talking about the decision to go to war at the time that she did. She was only 16, I think. 15 or 16, yeah. So yeah.
Melanie Boehi:
You mentioned coming across one of her books while you went to school. So I want to ask you, how widely known are these stories? Like stories like hers, of young people, of young women joining the struggle?
Percy Zvomuya:
It's a bit difficult for me to say. I mean, how widely known, because, unless I do a survey, from growing up in the 90s, in the 80s, I mean these stories of people who had gone to war, both women and men, were quite common. But I don't know if the people who were born much later than us, in the 90s or in the 2000s, know these stories as well as we did. But we grew up with the stories.
Melanie Boehi:
And then I want to ask you, you're a journalist and a writer, so you primarily work with words. What was your experience of making the mixtape? Was it something unusual? Was it something you recognised because you also dj?
Percy Zvomuya:
No. No, not at all. It was quite difficult because obviously I record people, but I'm transcribing the parts that I want to use in the story. But when you have to work with actual sound fragment it is a different experience. So I had to almost retrain how to use sound, how to be prompted by sound. And I had never done this before.
Melanie Boehi:
Even though one could probably argue that with the kind of writing that you do, maybe you can say a bit more about When Three Sevens Clash, the first volume of which was dedicated to Thomas Mapfumo, you are working at the border between sound and music and word, because there is a lot of sound in these texts and in these images that you included there.
Percy Zvomuya:
Yeah. So for maybe a brief background on what When Three Sevens Clash is. So we did this magazine last year actually, in which we were using Thomas Mapfumo’s birthday as a prompt to think about Zimbabwe, to think about Thomas Mapfumo himself, and to think about where Zimbabwe is at the moment. And oh, the title of the magazine is inspired by an album by Joseph Hill, Culture, Two Sevens Clash, that album, it's from 1977. But also we had a few people in the magazine who either have worked with musicians or wanted to be musicians, or a person like Brian Chikwava, the Zimbabwean writer, the poet Musaemura Zimunya who used to do translations for Thomas Mapfumo, Shona into English. People like Farai Mudzingwa whose debut novel Avenues by Train is inspired by music. I mean the text is held together by sound. But it was different in the sense that obviously the Two Sevens Clash, the album, is an inspiration, and Thomas Mapfumo himself is an inspiration, but it's not in the foreground in that obvious way that a mixtape is.
Melanie Boehi:
And then the last question I want to ask you is, what are your thoughts about these archives, these recordings being in Switzerland, when they clearly are of much interest for an audience in Zimbabwe, but also broader in Southern Africa?
Percy Zvomuya:
This might be a controversial take, but earlier I mentioned spending time at The Financial Gazette. So when I was at The Financial Gazette, I would be primarily working in their library. And when The Financial Gazette was sold by its owner to another person, that archive, I believe, was lost. So I don't know if Zimbabwe, where we are now, we have the resources to look after these things. So I guess it's better for it to be well preserved where it is. But now with technology, you can always access some of these things. Obviously, it would be ideal for it to be here. But we are losing the archives that we already have, The Financial Gazette, one of the best libraries in the country. But I understand it's not there anymore. And that's like an archive going back to 1967 or whatever it is. And that's mostly lost. Yeah.
Melanie Boehi:
So how important is digital remote access to these archives for people like you, for other Zimbabwean journalists and researchers?
Percy Zvomuya:
It is important. Yeah, it is important. And thanks to technology we can, it's not like in 1990 when distance meant travel. You can access these things now. It's not ideal, but you can access them.
Melanie Boehi:
Thank you so much for this conversation.
Percy Zvomuya:
Thank you very much for inviting me.
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.
