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There are men whose best pastime it is to use their wives as punching bags

David Mungoshi Shelling the Nuts

Do I hear gasps of surprise? Who was it who said all Zimbabwean males were male chauvinists? Our boy Benny abuses us of our misconception; his coming to the aid of a woman in distress does that admirably.

Claims are made with regular abandon and frequency that nobody in Zimbabwe cares about anyone else anymore. Zimbabweans have begun to look after number one, the American way, so our traducers say.

Well, how far true is this? Have we all really become that callous and selfish? Not by a long shot, if the stories I pick up from merrymakers are anything to go by.

Whatever the case might be, there are still a lot of colourful characters around, such as those who walk around craving for a fight and gladly going into it whenever it comes by. These people go from place-to-place hoping that someone will be foolish enough to challenge them to a fistfight, and like Anne Kansiime in one of her cameos, they feel that something is not quite right if they go for too long without a duel against someone. My story today is about one such individual, but one who does a crossover and becomes a folk hero of a kind. The womenfolk just love him!

Think about this sleepy laid-back little town in the backwoods of nowhere, somewhere in this country, as Memory Chirere would say. Think also about this stupid drunken man whose best pastime it is to use his wife as a punching bag. He is unusually attentive when he is broke, and that’s when she gets most of her bruises.

When the money is gone he never ventures away from the house and his money goes rather quickly. He is reminiscent of the proverb of the fool and his money who are soon parted. And it is never his fault that they run out of almost everything before the next pay cheque so to speak.

This is despite the fact his wife has to live from hand to mouth, using every trick in the book to mellow him enough to give her some courage to ask him for a few dollars for a few things. Strangely, the man wants to eat and eat well even when he has put no food on the table.

Early one Saturday morning, the neighbours woke up to the usual raucous from the discordant couple.

He was at his most ebullient and she was at her worst — cringing and whimpering as he kicked her savagely and told her this would be the day that he killed her.

It was a long one-way slaughter and humiliation.

Not happy with his handiwork thus far, the man began to look around for a weapon to finish the job. Sensing that the end was nigh, the poor woman fled outside in her shredded undergarments.

In a menacing voice the man told his wife to come back inside or face the music. Seeing that she made no move to obey him he charged at her like a wounded buffalo and felled her with an uppercut to the jaw.

She fell like a log, hit her head against a stone and lay still as the blood shot out of the gaping cut. Undeterred by this turn of events the man dragged her along the stony ground. By this time the bewildered children were standing at the door crying, and the neighbours had, as usual, come to watch the free spectacle. Just then a man in his early thirties passed by. What he saw was a man punching and kicking a woman and this raised his hackles.

This was it, he said to himself, a fight, but this time an honourable one. In one acrobatic leap he landed before the man and slapped him viciously across the face.

“How about a real fight then, my friend, a fight with someone who wants to fight and thrives on it?”

The stranger took off his jacket, folded it neatly and placed it on the patch of turf close to the gate. Then, slowly and deliberately, he rolled up his sleeves and clenched his fists, ready for the fight that was coming.

“Who are you? Is this your wife? How is what I do to her any concern of yours? You have overstepped your limits my friend. Today I’m going to teach you a lesson to never interfere in a domestic dispute between a man and his wife.”

Turning his back on the stranger, the man walked briskly towards the open door of the house, obviously to look for a weapon.

The stranger rushed ahead of him and stopped him in his tracks with a vice grip around the neck.

With one hand and holding him by the neck, the stranger lifted the man off the ground like a piece of trash and threw him against the wall.

Stunned and somewhat bemused, the man rose to his feet slowly and shook his head in disbelief. Then he growled like an angry dog. The fight was on! Like a mad man freed of his chains the man rushed head down to butt the stranger. The stranger stepped aside and he fell headlong to the ground. When he got up his lower lip was bleeding where he had hurt himself with his teeth. The stranger punched him hard in the face and snapped his head back. Then he kicked him in the stomach and followed that up with a head butt to the face. The man fell down and lay limp. The stranger dived into him and punched him until he was unconscious. With graceful ease the stranger went into the house and brought back a chair. He sat down on the chair and began his vigil. Each time the man came to, the stranger knocked him out with a sledge hammer blow, then sat and waited.

This went on for an hour or more till the hushed silence was broken by the neighbours whispering together. Someone said he knew this man and that he was a fierce street fighter from the Wafawafa boxing tournaments.

He who never let go till the victim begged for mercy. Afraid that the stranger might kill the now prostrate man, someone walked in a certain direction to call the one person that the stranger always obeyed without question. His elder brother.

Just as the fallen man was regaining consciousness once again and the stranger was once again raising his big fist to send him back to dreamland, there was pandemonium as the crowd cleared the way for a middle-aged man in shorts and safety shoes. Sweat glistened on his forehead as he danced around and shook his spear and knobkerrie threateningly.

“Mfana ndokuuraya wanzvinzwa? Simuka apo!”(Young man, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me? Stand up!)

The stranger’s punch froze mid-air on hearing his brother’s voice.

Traditionally, it was always the thing to do, to listen to an elder brother in all cases and to be guided by him. So, slowly and reluctantly, he put his raised arm down and unclenched his fist. Shaking his head like someone in a trance he bawled and wailed in anguish.

The idea of unfinished business was not appealing to him. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks in near-torrents. He really had wanted to teach this upstart a thing or two about being an ogre.

“Zvakanaka mukoma, handei. Nhasi ndaiiuraya mbudzi iyi. Zimbwende remunhu! Harizivi kuti wese wechidzimai ndimai?” (I hear you, senior. Let’s go. Today I was going to kill this he-goat. Slovenly coward! Does he not know that every woman is technically one’s mother?), he said loudly for all to hear.

“Forward . . . march! Come on Benny, let’s go, now!”

And off they went, jogging like soldiers on a manoeuvre.

Do I hear gasps of surprise? Who was it who said all Zimbabwean males were male chauvinists? Our boy Benny abuses us of our misconception; his coming to the aid of a woman in distress does that admirably. The story is that he went back the next day and warned the bully that if he should ever again so much as lay a finger on his wife, that would be the day people buried him.

My informant swears that the episode we have just described is a true story.

 *David Mungoshi is the author of ‘The Fading Sun’, the 2010 NAMA winner for Outstanding Fiction. The book is now an ‘A’ Level set book.