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Dr Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday
At the corner of Herbert Chitepo Avenue and Seventh Street, I see masses of people, cars hooting and people singing. Two armed soldiers are directing the traffic lights. I am driving and am not able to turn back. I have to keep on and get to my dressmaker. I drive slowly and carefully through the crowd. The dressmaker did not warn me about the crowd. She said when I come to pick up the dress, I should drive right inside the driveway and park at the back. Before I get to Fifth Street, I turn into one empty driveway, not too far from the dressmaker. A young woman carrying a baby on her back greets me and happily says, “Pakai zvenyu. Nhasi hakuna business. Tiri paprotest yekuti Sekuru Mugabe makaita basa hombe. Makasungura nyika. Asi zororai.” (Do park here. We have no business today. We are protesting and saying Sekuru Mugabe, you gave us independence. You are now tired please do take a rest).

Then I see Chamu my hairdresser, Maria who does nails, Samson the barber and others among the crowd. Here is the largest crowd of people I have ever seen in Zimbabwe. Among them are white Zimbabweans too waving flags and holding banners. People are laughing, talking, shouting and holding placards. They are saying that the President should step down and retire. Even the unruly drunk youths are well behaved and apologetic.

Two days ago, my cousin Piri had mentioned that she was going to this big protest and march with everyone. My cousin Reuben said such a massive protest was bound to result in a stampede with people getting hurt or even dying. But Piri said no, Zimbabweans were not like other people that you see protesting in Africa or other countries. “We do not like violence. How many times have you been to a gathering and there was violence?” Piri asked me. I said I feared getting involved in a crowd or gundamusaira, meaning joining large groups of people.

My grandmother, Mbuya VaMandirowesa, always said, usaite zvegundamusaira, meaning do not just join a crowd. She said this when we were growing up back in the village. In those days, crowds of people were rare. You would see a big gathering at a wedding or a bira, the ceremony to honour ancestors. But these were not big gatherings. A crowd was possibly 100 or perhaps 200 people. Sometimes there were big gatherings at agricultural shows, school sports competitions or church baptisms.

Mbuya VaMandirowesa never went to the show or to any church gathering. She did not believe in confirmation or baptism. She probably never saw a crowd. But she had seen a crowd of cattle at the dip-tank. She would tell us not to take the young calves or weak cows to the dip-tank because a weak calf was mostly likely to fall and get hurt during a stampede by other stronger cattle from different villages.

I therefore feared to be caught up in a big crowd of people. This fear was also caused by memories of a New Year’s Eve celebration in London many years ago, when I was young and adventurous. My friend Tandiwe and I went to watch the midnight chiming of the Big Ben clock tower at Trafalgar Square.

Tandiwe said we would watch the big clock and wait for it to strike midnight then shout, happy New Year! Anyone can kiss you and you can kiss anyone too, men or women. We waited and danced to loud band music. In those days, I did not drink any alcohol, not even wine. I was sober and happy to be among so many people of many nationalities. On that day in London, when the clock struck midnight, there was euphoria and excitement. We hugged and kissed with strangers. There were people totally intoxicated from too much alcohol.

Suddenly, there was a stampede. It was difficult to stand without someone pushing and shoving you. As we tried to push our way out of the crowd, people screamed and some had bad cuts from broken bottles and there was blood on some people’s faces. Tandiwe held my hand and said let’s try and get out of the crowd. We pushed and pulled until we managed to get out and breathe properly.

The following morning the paper reported that there had been a stampede following New Year’s Eve celebrations at Trafalgar Square. Two women were killed and more than 500 people were injured during a gathering of more than 50 000 people. Another person, a man, died of a heart attack.

We then learnt that there had been a temporary barrier around the Big Ben clock that had been broken just after midnight as the huge crowd of people moved from the square. More than 50 people were arrested for public disorder. The police blamed the bad behaviour of people in a crowd for causing the death of the three people and the injuries of so many.

Since the Trafalgar Square stampede, I was scared of crowds.

Piri reminded me that I had attended Rufaro Stadium for the Mapositori rally a couple of weeks ago. Why was I not afraid of crowds when someone from the Mapositori church gave me a VIP card? Was my going there not being part of the gundamusaira? I quickly became very defensive, saying this was a church gathering and I wanted to see if it was possible for Mapositori from different sects to pray together in one stadium.

In the village, we had gathered people from different faiths in September for my father´s memorial service. People came and the celebration was a big success. But in a big city like Harare, I said crowd behaviour in a protest could be unpredictable. I knew of a number of stampedes that had caused fatalities in some countries. Piri then said she would go to the march with or without me.

Having said I was scared of crowds, here I am on a Saturday afternoon, standing in a crowd at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Herbert Chitepo street watching thousands of people walking back from State House. “Hanzi tochienda kupi?” asks one elderly woman, smiling at me. Where should we go now? We do not shake hands or even introduce ourselves. But we talk like old friends. She tells me that she has come all the way from Chinhoyi to be part of the demonstration to ask His Excellency President Robert Mugabe to retire or step down. The lady has already been to the State House where soldiers stopped her and hundreds of others from entering. She says the soldiers were full of respect. Someone at the State House had addressed the crowds and told them that their wishes had been heard and they should go home.

As we stand in the crowd, we do not see any policemen anywhere. There is an atmosphere of calm and no sign of anger, trouble or fear. People behave like we are at a big party.

We are standing so close to each other. I remember reading Paul Wertheimer of Crowd Management Strategies, who once said that you should have an exit strategy as soon as you arrive in a crowd. He also said when there is a stampede, do not scream, yell or push. Use gestures to communicate.

In The New York Times, one writer once wrote an article on how to survive a crowd stampede. He said, “At very high densities of seven or more people per square meter, crowds can resemble fluids, developing, for example, powerful waves that exceed 1 000 pounds of force. Many stampede fatalities result not from trampling but from compressional asphyxia, in which people are squeezed to death upright or in a pile-up.”

But standing here I do not see any signs of a possible stampede. I am just unnecessarily paranoid. I call Reuben to come and join me. He says he is already in the crowd at State House. I call Piri. She says she is walking from Highfields to State House. She is in a big group walking past the old Europeans only cemetery in Mbare.

Later on, I meet Reuben in a Café on Five Avenue. The place is packed with people, both black and white. I hear one guy with an Irish accent saying someone must do a study on Zimbabwean behaviour in a crowd. He says we are the most organised, good humoured and spontaneous people in the whole world. We can stage a protest in a leaderless fashion like fish swimming in water. There is a lot of laughter.

A woman with a Zimbabwean flag draped around her shoulders stands on a chair and shouts that Zimbabweans take collective pride in being peaceful and practising hunhu. People clap hands and another person shouts that tiri vanhu vane hunhu.

Despite the current difficult situation, we are people who practise hunhu, a moral and ethical African philosophy of life.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic.