Zimpapers Logo

shifts here.
When Reuben opens the door, Mrs O’Donnell is fac­ing the opposite direction listening to the radio. “Good morning, Mrs O’Donnell. My name is Reuben. I have come to give you a bath,” he announces, in a loud voice assuming that at 92, Mrs O’Donnell must be going deaf. Mrs O’Donnell turns her head, looks at Reuben for a sec­ond, and then she clutches the bed linen and screams: “What do you want? Get out! I say get out!  N . . . ! Sister, sister please help! There is a black man in my room!”
Reuben retreats and tells himself that this is nothing new. As a casual nurse aid worker, he comes across all types of nursing home residents. Sometimes they are abusive and at times they simply refuse to talk to him. But in most cases, they are polite and friendly and they do not refer to his blackness at all other than ask the usual ques­tion — where do you come from?
Reuben pulls back the wheelchair, closes Mrs O’Don­nell’s door and tells himself that today, this old lady is just my bad luck, kamuchembere aka munyama wanguwo kuseniseni kuno. The sister-in-charge tells Mrs O’Don­nell to calm down. She tries to explain that Reuben is here to help because the regular nurse aid from the Philippines is away for the weekend. But Mrs O’Donnell is not listen­ing. “I have never, ever been that close to a black man before. Never even spoken to one! I will not let that n . . . man near me. No. Never!”
The sister-in-charge gives up the persuasion and tells Reuben to go on to the next patient. Later on she tells Reuben not to take what Mrs O’Donnell said personally. “She really is very nice. Believe me, she is not a racist or anything like that. It’s just that people of her generation have not had a chance to meet Africans. She is a product of her generation,” the sister-in-charge says, gently pat­ting Reuben on the knee.
Reuben told us this story in September this year when he was back from Australia to attend the unveil­ing of the stone of his father’s grave back in the village, kwedu ku-  H­wedza. We sat around the fire, drinking mahewu and beer while roasting meat. There was my brother Sidney, several relatives and our friend Chetse who had been to London for a year, coming back disil­lusioned with every­thing, akadzoka musoro umire.
When Reuben repeated the story again he put empha­sis on the “Get out n . . . !” We all laughed again pictur­ing Mrs O’Donnell’s frightened face when con­fronted by this huge black man wanting to undress and bath her. Maybe it was the effect of the village brew, because we laughed some more pointing at Reuben and joked, call­ing him racist inappropriate names we had collected over years of experience at home and in the Diaspora.
We pretended to mimic Mrs O’Donnell say­ing: “Get out Sambo; I do not want you to wash me! Get out k . . . , get out Gollywog. Get out Noddy. You savage! You canni­bal, you monkey, you black wog, you nincompoop, you coon!” Reuben also joined the laughter to laugh at him­self. It was like a real-life tragic comedy of the absurd. We sometimes laugh to ease the pain of bad memories.
“You are laughing? It is true what I tell you. I worked as a nurse aid when we migrated to Australia 10 years ago. Imagine that. Me, a teacher with a degree, doing work meant for women. I was like a domestic worker. I can laugh about it now as if it was easy to change old ladies diapers. Ah, iya-a-a-a, kuseka nhamo serugare,” Reuben said, pouring himself another calabash of the village brew. But we said in the history of our country, it was not unusual for men to work as domestic work­ers or nurse aids in what was often considered female roles.
Many years ago, when the British South Africa Police came to settle in Southern Rhodesia, they employed African men as domestic workers in colonial houses all over the country on farms and cities. In the white man’s house, our old men, vana sekuru vedu, learnt to cook, wash clothes, make beds, bake cakes, toss up salad and make mushroom sauce under the watchful scrutiny of  the white madam.
It was a close relation­ship because when the master was out on the farm, the mines or the office, the wife was alone with a black man in the house. This close domestic situation caused a lot of grief to the white man. How could the white madam remain safe in the same house with an African man?
The white men feared the worst could happen. What if the black man and the white woman became too close and the unimaginable happens? Miscegenation. Such a thought brought them fear. That fear was called “the black peril.” To curb the possibility of any relation­ships between black men and white women, voluntary sexual encounters between them was prohib­ited by law from 1903 onwards.
But there was no law to prohibit white men from hav­ing sexual relations with black women. Such racism against Africans was not new. It was deeply rooted in the nature of British colo­nial racial prejudices in Africa as well as in India.
In India, the British maintained what they called “social distance” between white madams and Indians. In the course of the village fire conversation, our friend Chetse then joked some more and told Reuben to be grateful that so much has changed between black and white people. 
“There was a time when African men were arrested for looking at a white woman ‘the wrong way,”’ Chetse laughed. Reuben said he had not paid much attention to all these problems of white people and black people until he migrated to Australia, following his wife who had been recruited by a company looking for Zimbabwean nurses. The ignorance on black people and racial dif­ference over there was astounding.
Then my brother Sidney said we should not dwell too much on our racial experiences of the past. “Why bring up such memo­ries? Why talk about racism now?  What’s over is over. Zvakapfuura zvakapfuura.” A heated argu­ment between us started. Others said, no, we do not for­get and often, when you think the issues of race are dead and buried, something just comes up and it sticks out like a horn in your head.
Everyday, past memories of unpleasant racial experi­ences are triggered by small things. We were treated badly by white people who knew little about Africans. And we Africans knew little about them.
Back in Europe, America and other countries under the British Empire, images of Africa and the Africans  as seen in the cinemas, books and movies were negative. Indeed, autobiographical narratives written by  explor­ers, inventors and scientists painted a bad picture. If H. Rider Haggard, when he wrote King Solomon’s Mines, described the Africans at Great Zimbabwe Monument as “blood-thirsty savages”, then that is what they were in the European mind.
Over more than 200 years, black people have been cast in negative light in books, films, novels and stories. Indeed, old white ladies like Mrs O’Donnell probably car­ried the image of the black man as a savage all their lives. In real life, Mrs O’Donnell had never spoken to a black man. Not only that, women her age did not dress in front of men, even if those men were their husbands. 
Why then subject her to being bathed by an African man in her old age? It is not right. Even if it was work and Mrs O’Donnell has to be changed and bathed by some­one, it is not right that Reuben, a stranger, should see her nakedness. What about her dignity as a woman, as an elder? It is not right. Globally, Western society has failed to care for their elderly and they import black people to clean their grandparents while they wait to inherit what’s left of the money after the nursing home bill is paid. In the name of civilisation, technology and civilisation, some Europeans have been quick to place their elders in nursing homes, to be cared for by paid others.
Check out the nursing homes in America, Canada, UK and Australia and count the number of African and other non-European qualified nurses and nurse aids working there, both men and women, young and old. We are serv­ing their elders and giving them tender loving care before they depart this world.
Back here in Zimbabwe, it is the same story, the sep­aration between black and white ends when the white elders are in nursing homes. Although the law of segre­gation ended more than 32 years ago at independence, we still do not mix socially. Given our difficult racial his­tory of resistance, the First Chimurenga, colonisa­tion, chibharo (forced labour), tax laws, imprisonment,  exploitation, the liberation war and now issues to do with land and indigenisation, we never got to know each other as equals.
Black and white people in Zimbabwe live next door to each other, go to the same bars, hospitals, restaurants and schools. But even then, after so long, we simply do not walk into a bar and join each other’s table for a drink and a good yarn. Our yarns of the past and the present have not been told to one another. Unless you happen to be at the International School full of expatri­ate children from other countries, you have to look carefully to spot black and white children at private  schools playing and laugh­ing together.
They might even visit each other’s houses and play. But they are few who do that. A silent social distance exists between black and white people here. It has been there for many years. We have not spoken about what hap­pened. You might see a mixed black and white group at church, NGO meet­ings and women’s gatherings. Over there we talk about development, gender, Jesus and everything else that is “safe”. But we avoid talking about history and racial dif­ference in the past or the present.
Both black and white, we are not immune to passive racism because of the preconceived ideas planted in our minds through experi­ence, books and films. Today, due to lack of exposure and knowledge, there are many among Africans who truly believe white people are supe­rior. On the other hand, white people have not made enough attempts (if any at all) to learn indigenous lan­guages.  Inside language, they can learn to debunk and demystify some of the negative images.
But, where do we start, unless we stop pretending that we are not racist and begin talk, to look back and talk about what racial baggage we carry. Mikwende yatakatakura. Among the black and white Zimbabweans, there is a big elephant in the room. We can all see it, but nobody dares talk about it. 
We fear triggering memories of the past. We have not spoken socially or culturally about our difficult history. When you walk into a bar, you will see the white people on their own and the black people on their own. Some­one must be courageous enough to ignore the looks from colleagues, walk across the floor and begin a conversation even if it’s about the Big Brother television show, the rains or cricket. We have a lot more in common than we want to accept.
It may be too late to educate old ladies like Mrs O’Don­nell in Australia or globally. Too late for Reuben to edu­cate, undress and bath her. But it is not too late for us to break the silence across the racial line and bridge the social distance created by history. There is no escape. Black and white, we must talk because we are perpetuat­ing the same racial bigotry in our children.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and works as a development consultant.