Godfrey Guzuzu (left) and his grandchild Shadreck at their homestead in Guruve. — (Picture by Munyaradzi Chamalimba)
Robert Mukondiwa
IT being Heroes and Defence Forces Month, and fresh after President Mugabe suggested that the seven fighters believed to have sparked the war of liberation in Mashonaland regions, now known as the Chinhoyi Seven, be declared national heroes; it was only befitting to make a beeline for the homestead of the most known of the seven and meet his siblings and living relatives.
David Guzuzu (initially Samy Guzuzu) from Guruve had only recently hogged the limelight after the death of his centurion mother, who had not lived to see the day her son had been declared a national hero.
With such a prospect beckoning, the feeling of the family was something important to read into. After a long journey north in a melange, potpourri, patchwork and unique bricolage of topographic tapestry that left the travelling team weary, finally we reached the homestead, itself a modest but celebrated home in the area.
As much a work of art as it is a fortress, the Guzuzu home is perched on a hilly spot, which is as unassuming as the man we run into, who is about to leave.
He is Godfrey Guzuzu, the eldest of the 10 Guzuzu siblings, who were born five boys and girls apiece. His nickname is Munhukwaye, a good courteous person.
He is aged and yet somewhat gracefully so for a person of his age; older brother of a freedom fighter living in the rural hinterland. The years have cracked the surface, but the fragile beauty still remains about him. And he welcomes us and opens his beer to talk, perhaps for the umpteenth time, about his beloved brother David.
There was something childlike and sweet and wise about Godfrey, but there was an underlying hardness too, for he’d lived a real life.
“The reason why David eventually called it quits and left was that he had to drop out of school. My father could only afford to pay fees for one child and that irked David and he went off unhappy and seeking a new life,” recounts Godfrey.
The fees then were a paltry one pound and 10 pence, but that was beyond the family. Somewhat, because David lost the fees to him as the older brother, there is a tinge of sadness about Godfrey when he talks about that.
“He was eventually mistreated by a white employer when he left to try and make a living in Banket town after leaving home.
“That put his family’s failures into perspective. He then knew that he was a second-class citizen in his country owing to the tyranny of these racist whites and they had to be pushed out of power. That was the source of his rage,” says Godfrey.
His mother had also made spirited efforts to get their son back after he joined the fighters and at one time wanted him arrested to force him back.
“Eventually, the boy who left aged 13 would correspond with the family from China, where he was receiving military training as well as hold on to a photograph he sent her.”
It was, he added, contrary to the gentle quiet being David was at home ordinarily. He was calm and composed.
But others who met and knew him after the incident at the farm where he refused to receive corporal punishment from a white farm owner say he was volatile, headstrong and tough; perhaps after coming through the furnace of colonial oppression as an occupant of the front row seat to racism.
Pathos about taking over the finances and seemingly condemning David to his eventual demise after his epic trek to Chinhoyi seems written all over Godfrey’s face, although he perhaps now knows it wasn’t his fault his brother fought and died for his nation.
In spite of his underlying hardness, Godfrey had a beatific kind of solitude, where he lives at the traditional home after the death of their mother.
Recall of the last meeting seemed to force his eyes to become rheumy, aging before our very eyes as the pain of decades ago caught up with his adult self.
A morphing of the ages that prodded and pried open a little box of memories he had perhaps made a pact with his soul never to open. Not in this life. Not in the next!
But the seal had been broken.
“Where did you last see David alive,” we ask.
“There,” he pointed, “On that very spot I saw him leaving, never to see him again,” he said. Ashen faced as if he had suddenly seen the apparition of his late brother wafting in the autumnal wind which was ruffling the trees. Nature seemed to sing a dirge alongside his soul.
“It was painful that that would be the last time I saw my brother alive. A brother andakasiira zamu,” (who suckled after me).
It is a poignant statement in Shona culture. There is a sacred attachment — pone that often breeds a healthy sweet rivalry — between siblings that come straight after the other. Perhaps a longing that makes a brother love to hate their sibling. It is a bond that only siblings can decipher; can identify and tell. Yet when word that his brother had been spotted somewhere at a homestead in the periphery of far-flung Chinhoyi, Godfrey would make the treacherous journey to Chinhoyi to see his younger brother that he longed to reunite with.
“I told my parents ‘David has been spotted and I want to go there and see him’ and they supported my cause.”
It was stark evidence of a brother’s love. It had taken us ages to get to this part of the world where one cannot be faulted for thinking they would happen upon the hem that defines the end of the earth.
The brave unrelenting Herald team and I had “barrelled” the roads to get here with a vehicle. What then did this journey mean for Godfrey by foot? And for someone to commit their feet to the long journey to the unknown from the nether land that is Guruve can only be a journey fuelled by inimitable love and dedication.
“It was a painful journey, but eventually I got there and started inquiring of the place. People were not too forthcoming and I had anticipated that,” Godfrey recounts.
After all, the “guerrillas” then, planning to topple the tyranny of colonialism and racialism had cult status. Like some secret society of bandits for a cause. They-who-should-not-be-spoken-of. A veiled and dangerous reality that could get someone in trouble with authorities if anyone was known to be “pallying around” with them. Terrorists, they were then called.
“I was detained and interrogated by the people where he was. They asked who I was. How I had known he was here and from whence I had come. I was brave in the face of their questioning. They went into the room where he was supposed to be and spent a long time in there.
“Perhaps they wanted to demoralise me so I would leave. Perhaps they were questioning him as well. All I know is when they came out they had made up their mind and had a verdict.”
And it was not one that left Godfrey with a smile on his face.
Godfrey takes another sip of his beer. As if to flush down another lump of disappointment that had gathered in his throat just from remembering the defeat.
“They told me he was no longer called by that name. That he no longer lived in ‘our’ world and he was now part of a different family with another set of ideals and that I ought to go back without seeing him. ‘Oh’ I wondered, and I made my way back home to an anxious family.”
But Godfrey could not bring himself to break the news of failure, reporting instead to his relieved parents that he had seen David and that he was in high spirits and was sending his love to them. It was a white lie he would watch his parents going to their graves believing. It would be many more years before word reached them that David had died in the first sparks of the war. Way after they had seen people return to their families after the dying embers of the raging hot war had been doused by defeat and then dialogue for the colonial regime.
“It was agonising seeing others return while we kept asking after our beloved David. It is painful to take pain in the joys of others, but that is what it felt then.
“Word then came round from official channels that David had died and that his blood had watered the virgin seed of the war; the catalyst to freedom. A brave and brutal and perhaps naive battle by a handful of men who were prodded by the scars of racism to unleash a fatal, yet defining reign of terror on their tormentors.
“Father died when the war was raging, while our mother died recently when the soldiers were constructing a cottage for the family in honour of David. It is a pity she did not get to sleep in it. We haven’t used it yet since they (the army and responsible ministry) will have to come and officially open it,” says Godfrey.
It is such moves that are being championed even by legislators in Parliament, one at the forefront being Simbaneuta Mudarikwa the legislator for Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe.
We must keep our heroes in the back of our minds at all times and hold their sacrifice in our hearts. To continually honour them and keep the memories of their sacrifice alive in our children while also making sure the survivors are happy knowing that their relative made the ultimate sacrifice but they are appreciated,” says the maverick Mudarikwa.
Back in Guruve, they agree.
“We are happy that the President has finally said there may be consideration to make them national heroes. Of course others are against exhumation but as a family, we are happy to have them taken to the hill (Heroes Acre).”
“It would be a respectful gesture from our Head of State and to know that he and the nation value them enough to elevate them to such a height is something that we certainly are proud of as a family,” he says.
A few days later, his younger brother confirms that joy via a telephone call in the still of the night.
Meanwhile, in Guruve, the birds sing a song to signal the advent of dusk and his peasant clothes flutter in the wind.
Holding my hand like childhood friend, Godfrey chats and giggles as we walk up the hill away from his homestead and nephew, who he has left at the homestead.
He shall go nearby with me to see one of his sisters, then take me to the shopping centre for another beer or a round of a game of draughts.
The age between us is broken. He is warm and smiles again. Perhaps I am David who has returned; at least that is how he seems to treat me.
With a family of such love, it is no surprise therefore that David loved his nation. Some much so that he died for it!
Today the family are still waiting for their hero David, only that it is the ultimate medal as promised that they now seem certain to receive. National hero status. They are in fact waiting for a hero.