Isdore Guvamombe Reflections

Being Rhodesia, the white race was semi-god and you would challenge that race at your own peril

Back in the village, in the land of milk, honey and dust or Guruve, the war had raged on and was entering its final phase. And, there was a dearth of peace.

We stayed at Negomo communal lands on the verge of Matusadonha Mountains, itself a colonial misspelling of matosi adonha, named by foregone ancestors after a dotted spatter of animal dung.

This villager’s father, a teacher, who had graduated from Kutama College about a decade-and-a-half earlier, taught at a tiny school called St Leo’s Negomo Primary, again a colonial misspelling of Nyagomo.

Nyagomo Mupunzagutu was the son of Nyatsimba Mutota and the school was a spitting distance from Mutota Ruins, where the legendary conqueror breathed his last, while on his way to the north, in search of salt, so the elders say.

Behind the school, Kadzi River flowed uncharacteristically towards Mozambique, past Campdown Farm.

The commercial farm was at the border with the rugged Negomo communal lands. The white owner was known as Arthur, a very, very cruel man known for beating his workers willy-nilly. He was a cheeky man, a foul-mouthed racist, who would beat up the old and the young alike.

Early in the morning, he routinely took his workers to the fields on the flat bed tractor trailer and made sure they started the day’s work. He hung around a bit, barking instructions, kicking and shoving his workers. That was his management style. Then, sure that the workers are scared, he would leave and go back to have his tea and probably a nap, before returning to haunt them again.

Each day he beat a few workers. He enjoyed kicking the behinds of both men and women while they worked.

The workers had nowhere to complain.

Being Rhodesia, the white race was semi-god and you would challenge that race at your own peril.

It pained the workers but, it was a kind of God’s case, no appeal. Arthur ran a shop at the farm. He gave his workers groceries on credit as long as the amount did not exceed the salary or wage. Each month end, he would do his reconciliation and not more than a quarter of his workers walked home with any cash. They worked for food. At times he allowed over-drafts to the trusted workers and almost every time they found themselves in the minus, come pay day.

His employees survived on borrowing dried fish, kapenta, sugar, salt, cooking oil, clothes and beer, among other things from the farm shop. He made sure his money circulated within his pocket.

One early morning, as he deployed his workers, he started his routine punching, kicking and shoving. He indeed enjoyed this and typical of a drum that plays sonorously as a way of bidding farewell, before breaking, he did not know what he faced.

From the neighbouring hill, he saw combatants, guns slung on their shoulders, walking in a single file towards him. He panicked and ran for dear life towards his car. He tumbled, picked himself up, tried to run and tumbled again. He rose and ran again. Tumbled! Rose, tumbled, rose, ran, ran and ran. Tumbled, crawled, crawled and rose . . . ran and ran only to find three other heavily armed combatants waiting for him by the car. He stopped. Pleaded for mercy . . . pleaded for what?

Quickly they gathered the excited workers and asked them to tell Arthur what they thought about him. It was only then that Arthur learnt that the combatants had been holding meetings in his compound every night for almost a moon. They had all the workers’ grievances and for many days they had observed from a vantage point on the hill Arthur’s work ethics. Today, they had agreed, with the commander Mandebvu, that enough was enough. Mandebvu had for a long time held back his fighters from attacking Arthur. After a lengthy talk, a judgment was passed. Arthur turned red with fear. He was decapitated. The body was left there but the head was carried to who-knows-where. A few hours later, helicopters and an assortment of war planes hovered and criss-crossed the skies but Kadzi’s riverine vegetation and the interlocking hills and valleys provided the much-needed cover for the combatants.

 

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