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Thomas Deve . . . Always talking. Always gesticulating. Always skanking

Everjoice Win Correspondent

Thank you for the love. For the reggae. For always, always reminding me to be more political. I will continue to admire your steadfast beliefs.

UNIVERSITY of Zimbabwe 1985. Not exactly a good year to be in first year.
Female. And of indeterminate ethnicity. It was supposed to be the best times for those of us who had grown up in the gwazhas (villages), and smaller towns.

Coming to the capital city. To the big one and only “Vhaa”. Away from parents, strict boarding school rules, and nosy neighbours. We got student grants, with some extra cash to spend (thanks to President Mugabe’s education policies).

Many of us lost our heads. Some lost their panties. Some bought pants to wear publicly for the first time. And we walked funny in them. The lecturers gave us hour-long sermons, and walked out on the dot.

We didn’t know what to make of this method of teaching. So we went to the Students’ Union, drank our payout. And lost our heads once more. Well, if you were a man that is. Or a clever girl, who spoke with a twang (acquired from one year of schooling at a former whites’ only school).

For the rest of us of the female species, you kept your head down, walking funny in those new jeans. But knowing the boundaries; don’t go to the Students’ Union at night or you will be raped. Stay away from boys in groups because they will harass you. Don’t drink, don’t smoke. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

I was strange anyway. Not quite Shona, not quite Ndebele. From bang in the middle of the country. So I could hang with the other group on Monday and with the other on Fridays. I could talk about the massacres going on in Matabeleland with the one group. But not with the others who vociferously denied that it was happening. Being non-aligned was dangerous. You had to choose sides.

Only if you didn’t know Thomas Deve. A wiry little man. With a bit of a stoop. He sported “unkempt hair” (as my father would have spat), smoking his life away. Smiling at one and all. Jumping from one activity to the next. Always talking. Always gesticulating.

I soon met his friend George (Charamba), also doing his Masters, but in English. They made a weird pair. Tom, the skanking, smoking, drinking, fun loving one. George, the bookish, ever serious, teetotaller! The one loved loud reggae, the other loved Orchestra Dendera Kings and Zairean rhumba.

They had furious political debates. Half the time I had no idea what they were fussing and fighting about. I just listened. Then when they were done, we would all have a good drink, a laugh. And still remained friends.

I soon discovered we shared a love of reggae. He brought me lots of cassettes (those little spooled things that you stuck into a little portable radio bought with that payout), and played loudly. Annoying your room mate or the girls next door. Till the spool broke, or got entangled.

He introduced me to IJahman,  Eeka-Mouse,  Dillinger,  John Holt. All kinds of singers my brother had never introduced me to. “Fluffy reggae”, he said, dismissing my beloved Bob Marley and Third World.

“There is no consciousness here my friend. That is just doof-doof-doof. All about love, love, love. Why do we want to just sing about love! Listen to the lyrics (oh that is what words to songs were called? We just called them words. Lyrics he called them).

I got hooked. He invited me to the Students’ Union to go skanking. Skanking? I had never skanked before.
I was too shy to skank. In public too? Tom held my hand. Took me to my first reggae party, and my first night out at the dreaded SU!

There I was, throwing one leg this way, and the other that way, among them dangerous looking-ganja puffing-beer fuelled boys of the UZ. There were dozens of them. All of them with similar hair to Tom’s!

We skanked all night. Any time someone tried to place their hand on me, Tom was there in a flash. “Idrin, we don’t do that to our sistren here.” They listened to him. Respected him. The Elder had spoken. I was left in peace.

A few weeks later. I ventured back to the SU on my own. There was to be more skanking. I did not know where Tom was (this was in the days before cellphones in case you are wondering). Besides, I needed to grow up. Be my own girl. Yeah right.

A new idrin I had never met, made a beeline for me. I kept ducking, he kept pulling me. I wanted to leave. But I wanted to stay and skank.  I got wedged into a corner. Blouse torn. Poked by smelly fingers. Then Tom materialised in the darkness.

Beat the living daylights out of my attacker. After that, the SU was mine. Reggae nights were the highlight of my life at UZ. Tom continued to be by my side. I wondered what time he studied for his MPhil. He just seemed preoccupied with all kinds of projects.

Soon, he had launched the Society for African Studies (SAS) with other friends. Tom organised speakers. Lectures. Africa Day events. Solidarity events for South Africa. For Namibia. For Palestine. For the Saharawi Republic (where was that?). I learnt about events, struggles, people, leaders, I had never heard about. They didn’t teach us that stuff in the formal African history lectures.

“They are reactionary these people! Very reactionary! We must teach young people a different history of Africa,” said Tom. I did not know what reactionary meant. He had to give me a whole lesson on that word. My lecturers didn’t speak such language.

We joined the team producing the students’ magazine, FOCUS. Together with Tawana Kupe (the late), Dr Lawrence Tshuma, Tendai Biti (when he was still just Tendai Biti) and the delightful cartoonist Lennox Mhlanga we put out a magazine for the students. I learnt how to write. Tom read my pieces.

I teased him saying he was studying Economic History, I was the one doing English, so he had no right to correct my grammar. “You must be more political Everjoice. This is too fluffy! It is fluffy! Fluffiness was clearly his pet hate. This was said with grace. With humour. And yet with seriousness. I have kept the fluff Tom, and added a bit more seriousness.

Then Tom fell in love. With the absolutely beautiful Bernadette. Berna, as he called her. Oh she was beautiful. Still is. Tom had found the love of his life. For many months he disappeared from the skanking gigs, and wrote less for FOCUS. Then he reappeared. Like he had been gone only for an hour. Just picked up where he’d left off. But this time with a new spring in his step. Suddenly he would hum along to my fluffy songs. The power of love.

1990s
We had grown up. Joined the world of work. Tom had dropped out of his MPhil. George had completed his Masters. Then life happened. Tom married Berna. Started a family. George got married too. The country was moving in all kinds of directions. So were we.

We all dabbled in writing, journalism of sorts. But on different ends of the spectrum. We would keep in touch, in between producing kids, publications and movements. He would continue to find me good reggae.

He had eventually given up trying to get me to stop eating meat and study Rastafarianism.
I am too fluffy for any such commitment. Besides, my father owns cattle, I have to support the beef industry – I kept telling Tom. And he would laugh.

When I need a good goss’, serious gossip, I would find Tom. He always seemed to know who was doing what, where and with whom. If I needed the intelligence on some guy, Tom would supply it. He seemed to know everything and everyone.

That was another thing we shared, our love of a good goss’. In the 2000s, when our world connected again in so-called “global civil society”, it was Tom who supplied the goss’ on what the boys’ club was up to. Yes, there is a boys’ club. With a membership.

Tom was not exactly “card carrying”, but he certainly got invited into it when strategic. Then he’d come back and tell his excluded sistren!
In the same two-nought-noughts, I relied on Tom to help me figure out the new Zimbabwe. There he was again. Bobbing up and down in the various movements and spaces. Always debating furiously with someone. Gesticulating.

Was that slight stoop getting worse? The dreadlocks were certainly greyer, the beard totally silver. I looked at Tom and knew that I too was getting older. And hopefully wiser. I could rely on Tom because I knew he was not selling me a partisan political story, or project.

Somehow, he managed to stay above it all. Non-aligned. In a country in which it seemed one had to declare their allegiance to one party or the other/s. Yet the Tom I knew maintained his friendships across the divides. He was still friends with George Charamba. I do not know what they talked about. Or what they now disagreed about.

Tom was labelled a State spy. He found it hard. Debilitating. I have kept my friendship with both of them (does that also make me a State spy?). It was hard. The Tom I knew kept going though. Passionately believing in social justice.

In socialism (at least he did last I checked).  He stayed in love with the beautiful Berna. Passionately talked about his children. Each time I visited Zimbabwe, I would find Tom, so we could catch up. Mostly on the phone. Life had become too complicated to find two minutes to sit. He always had a story to tell.

I will miss you Tommy D. My Idrin. My comrade. Thank you for respecting me as your sistren. In the last 24 hours since you passed, I have kept tweeting, posting on social media, that you were the one man in civil society movements who never treated me, my friends, as a piece of meat. Which we often get in these mixed spaces.

From the days of the Students’ Union, till you passed on I knew you as my brother, a fellow traveller. I always felt safe in your presence. Again something many women don’t feel in mixed sex spaces.

Thank you for NEVER talking down at me or those who are less educated. Thank you for never condescending to us, for never ever mansplaining! Not once do I remember you reframing anything a woman said in your presence – “what my sister was trying to say is . . . Let me give the BIGGER picture”. You knew and respected that all of us had a part of the picture, big or small. And all the pieces matter.

Thank you for respecting me, us, as your social and political equals. Thank you for the love. For the reggae. For always, always reminding me to be more political. I will continue to admire your steadfast beliefs.

Your values – in a world, a civil society, a country where these now come and go like the morning dew. I am sure Tajudeen, Barnabas and all our other sistren and idrin up in there are now agog, listening to you. You are telling them the good earthly goss’.

I will always think of you when I listen to Bunny Wailer’s song “Fighting Against Conviction”. An example of not-so-fluffy reggae. You told me he was the least “reactionary” of the Wailers . . .

Battering down sentence
Fighting against convictions
I find myself growing in an environment
Where finding food, is hard as paying the rent
In trodding these roads of trials and tribulations
I’ve seen where some have died in desperation
To keep battering down sentence, fighting against convictions
In a family of ten, and raised in the ghetto
Hustling is the only education I know
Can’t grow no crops, in this concrete jungle
A situation like this is getting too hard to handle
To keep battering down sentence
Fighting against convictions

Keep on skanking Tommy D.

Source: http://everjoicew.blogspot.com