Africans liberate Zimbabwe
Percy Zvomuya
“For di time is nigh
When passion gather high
When di beat just lash
When di wall mus smash
An di beat will shif
As di culture alltah
When oppression scatah.”
Bass Culture, Linton K. Johnson.
Time: Minutes after 12pm.
Year: April 1980.
Setting: Rufaro Stadium.
Bass culture is as old as Zimbabwe itself. The reggae mystic Robert Nesta Marley laid down the soundtrack to what we thought was the dawn of freedom in 1980. “We don’t need no more trouble,” he chanted, whiffs of pungent teargas still hanging above the air at Rufaro Stadium.
His arrival had been lowkey. “Top Jamaican reggae artists Bob Marley and the Wailers and an entourage of more than 20 arrived in Salisbury from London yesterday,” the daily newspaper The Herald reported. “The band was warmly greeted by a small but enthusiastic crowd of supporters and representatives from the local recording industry.”
When Marley caused a riot in Rufaro Stadium, I was only three.
Time: Minutes after 12pm.
Year: Circa 1982.
Setting: A ghetto street in a southern city.
It’s 1982 and I am five. Time, which moves hesitantly but always forwards, like a chameleon, has since swallowed up the body of Marley. Yet the shaman’s spirit still hovers in the land of chimurenga where his music has become a staple. It’s minutes after noon. I am walking home from crèche, and Buffalo Soldier is blaring from a speaker placed outside a house. “Buffalo soldier, dreadlocked rasta.”
Reggae at noon.
That afternoon, walking home as Buffalo Soldier played in the distance, was my introduction to bass culture.
The Zimbabwe masses loved the music, but not the country’s ruler. “The men want to sing and don't go to colleges,” Robert Mugabe later said of Jamaicans, “some are dreadlocked.” The men are dirty and smell, the strong man might have added, and reggae is the music of ruffians. But I didn’t give a damn what he thought. Bass culture was my culture. Even if the singers and the DJs smelled and smoked herb and grew long filthy dreadlocks that reached down their ankles, they were my heroes. I wouldn’t give them up for anything.
*
14 years later. For time comes and goes. Always forwards, like a chameleon, and never sinuously or backwards like a python.
*
Time: 4am.
Year: 1996.
Setting: Community hall of a nondescript farming town.
All about the cocks are still asleep. The covens of witches and wizards have probably just broken up to sidle into bed. It wouldn’t do for the cocks to start making a ruckus before they are back home.
I am not in bed. A blaring wardrobe speaker is my backrest and my pillow. My tired legs stretched in front of me, I survey the dancehall in the crepuscular light. I have been up all night. The dancehall owls are still at it. I see their silhouettes, throwing hands in the air to All Fruits Ripe by the singer Junior Reid; when Limb by Limb by the gravelly-voiced Cutty Ranks is introduced, they jump for joy. When the drum and bass blasts from the bass bin speakers, the contrapuntal riddims are so loud and declamatory they resound in my chest. My pants shake and shiver.
The Black Giant Sound System is in town. The biggest sound system in the country is in town.
Everyone who knows their sound is here: those who can tell Buju Banton from Mega Banton; those who can’t tell Cocoa Tea from Freddie McGregor are probably at home asleep.
I told mother I am housesitting at my aunt’s. She will be surprised to see me arriving home after 6am with the morning walkers, the neighbourhood cocks still announcing the day.
Surely you could have slept in, she will say. What was the rush? I cannot tell her I was at the dance.
It was in those dances – overturned bottles strewn about, the slightly sweet smoke of marijuana swirling in the air, burping a mixture of the traditional brew and Castle – where I tasted freedom.
For the privilege to listen to these dreadlocked ruffians Mugabe hated, I was ready to give up sleep.
Archival reference no: BAB TPA.43 3, 10, 19, 33, 142.
