Wilfred Mutemajiri

The road is this straight as a die grey ribbon vanishing into the hazy blue beyond. The dome overhead is pupil-contracting quicksilver. The sun, at its highest point, is angry as hell.
   “Look at those kids ahead, Joseph,” shouts Wilfred over the blaring radio – it’s Thomas Mapfumo’s Mbuya Nehanda. He indicates an amorphous blob rising out of the nearest mirage a half mile in front of us. “They are going to have something nice for us.”
   We are thus: Machona, the driver of the Sunday News pool car, a Peugeot 504 estate; Wilfred riding shotgun; me in the back, sandwiched between two enormously matronly ladies, one of whom is doing a good job of compressing her skinny husband into the farside rear passenger door.
   In the adjoining boot behind us are seven more adults, one with a bulging-eyed infant strapped to her back.
   Wilfred has confided in me his latest enterprise. He’s written a series of exclusives which have spiked the paper’s Sunday sales. The subject is a inyanga, a traditional healer (it’s not polite to say witch doctor). The inyanga at the heart of Wilfred’s startling revelations possesses the magical severed hand of a tikoloshe. This is a wicked little African sprite that steals into homes and enjoys secret nightly carnal encounters with the spellbound wives.
   The inyanga also has a giant python, which lives where we are now headed – in the ancient granite citadel and spiritual centre that is the Matobo Hills, 20 miles south of Bulawayo.
   When tempted with warm goat’s milk, the serpent may emerge from a deep crevice beneath the balancing boulders – and has been known to speak great words of wisdom.
   This is something people will part with good money to see, which explains the ten paying customers in the company car with us. Wilfred is turning a tidy profit and the editor is turning a blind eye for now. This goose is laying golden circulation figures.
   “But what if the snake doesn’t appear, or if it doesn’t feel like chatting? Do you give the money back?”
“Let me tell you,” Wilfred schools me patiently, “how a good story works.”
   He recounts the tale of a gecko that needs the help of a crocodile to reach an island in the middle of a river. This is where the flies and other insects are juiciest. But the gecko will also need the crocodile’s help to get back. ‘I am visiting my brother,’ says the little lizard. ‘His wife just had ten babies.’ The crocodile licks his lips and thinks, ‘This one will lead me to the others.’ So he carries the gecko to the other side. He follows behind as the gecko darts about the island eating until he is full. ‘Where is your family?’ asks the crocodile. ‘I want to say hello.’ The gecko replies: ‘They must have found a way to visit me. Take me back and you will meet them if we are not too late. By the way, did I tell you my brother has eight legs and two tails?’.
   “If your story continues to give people hope,” explains Wilfred, “they will continue to come back. Because they want to believe.”
   It’s another way of saying never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. But in the scheme of things, he’s just presenting a different kind of theatre, or church. The parable hurts no one. The people in the car with us will return feeling luckier, happier – more full of hope – simply for being in the presence of an otter’s paw and a saucer of milk. There’s nothing wrong with hope.
   Machona pulls over and a dozen dusty village children from toddler to teen converge on all four open windows. They are selling plastic cups filled with dried macimbi, caterpillars of the mopane tree. Wilfred buys their entire stock of the crunchy delicacy without haggling over price, one portion for every person in the car. He winks at me and laughs, “Popcorn for the show”.
   But he thinks I don’t notice when he quietly hands a crisp note to the astonished eldest child – it’s way more than the caterpillar cups are worth. When I ask him about it later, he explains that as a child he sold roasted mealies at a busy bus terminus in order to survive. He remembers how it felt to get unexpected help from a stranger.
   “We must share,” he says simply. And he did. Siyabonga kakulu, Wilf, rest in peace.

* Machona, I remember you also Mdala, RIP.

Walter Mapango

The big man shuffles down the narrow corridor in front of me. He’s a heavyweight, Walter, but slowed by the fast-creeping effects of diabetes. He reminds me of my hero, Muhammad Ali, only at his most hostile. I’ll bet he could pack a punch in his day but now, like the Greatest, Walter is weakened by the ravages of his condition.
   Not so weakened that I don’t have the utmost respect. The dead malevolence in his measured, deliberate glance is chilling. It has quieted me mid-sentence on more than one occasion already, and I’ve only had a desk beside Walter’s at The Sunday News about two weeks now.
   He senses me slow-marching behind him, stops and turns – gradually – until he faces me. He fixes me with that glare.
   “Are you in a hurry?”
   It’s the longest string of words he’s directed at me to date. His voice is rich as black loam.
   “Uhm… No Mr Mapango. Well, yes, actually, I have a-”
   He swivels languidly away and continues his long shuffle toward the newsroom at the end of the corridor.
   I have a notebook full of scribbles. I sit myself down behind my vintage Remington Rand typwriter. Make a mental note to change the ragged ribbon. I flick open an A4 pad and, holding my notebook open in my left hand, commence writing.
   “What are you doing?”
   I don’t answer Walter at first. Then, in my peripheral vision, I see he’s turned in his chair to face me.
   “Oh, sorry… I’m… writing my piece.”
   “Writing it.”
   “Uhm, yes.”
   “Why do you always write by hand first?”
   “So I can rewrite it before I type it.”
   “You want to write it, then rewrite it, then type it?”
   I’m unnerved by this unexpected attention. I have come to see Walter as a solid constant, an immovable mountain. I never anticipated having to converse with the mountain.
   “Why can’t you just type it?” he glowers at me. “From your notes, or from your head.”
   He gets up in slowmo, approaches at his convenience to stand behind me. I’m intimidated. I pray he’s not going to ask me what my story is about.
   “What is your story about?”
   I give him the muddled version, it tumbles out – the way I’d write my first draft before numbering blocks of longhand text in order of priority.
   “No.” He raises a hand, not his voice. “Just tell me your intro.”
   “It’s about-”
   “One line. We are at the bus stop.”
   “This guy, he’s-”
   “I’m getting on the bus,” Walter shuffles toward the editor’s office.
   “Well, when he-”
   “The bus is leaving,” he knocks on the door, opens it. “Just tell me in one line.”
   So I do. He pauses at the door, fires a question each time I falter, driving the story on.
   “Okay,” he says when I’m done, before closing the door behind him. “It’s written. Now type it.”
   Thanks for all the lessons, Sekuru. I remember you well. RIP.

Tichaona Mkuku

"Per la tua protezione," says Tich, passing me something hard and cold under the table.
   We sit in the dappled shade of a Jacaranda in the beergarden of The New Royal Hotel, Bulawayo. The jazz band that's been playing is on a break. A waiter returns with our order, ice cold Lion lagers and a packet of Madison cigarettes. I toy impatiently with the metal object sliding in its silk handkerchief wrapping until the waiter has moved on to the next table.

Tichaona Mkuku RIP

   Tich is small but perfectly formed, immaculate in tailor made suit, Jacquard necktie, gleaming patent leather shoes. One of his favourite quotes is 'the clothes maketh the man'. "People sometimes think I am arrogant. How can one be arrogant when one is so beautiful? I mean, look at me..."
   He grins now at my reaction to his gift: A semi-automatic pistol in very good nick in spite of its age - this is a pre-World War II Tokarev, the TT-30 to be precise, still in use to this day in the Soviet, Chinese and Korean armies.
   "For my protection," I murmur.
   "Bene!" he claps his hands. "You improve, fratello mio."
   Apart from his latest role as arms supplier, Tichaona is also my friend, colleague and Italian tutor. The irony of the last role is not lost on either of us; my father was Sicilian and my mother half Irish, half Italian. Tich has pure African pedigree. His linguistic arsenal comes from the fact that he's worked for Ziana, the Zimbabwe Inter Africa News Agency. He is well travelled, "an international man of mystery," he laughs. He has lived and worked in China, attached to Xinua; and in Italy, with Reuters' Rome desk.

The unforgettable Tich

   Against all odds, we are best shamwaris. It doesn't matter to Tich that I'm a minnow to his shark (professionally speaking). Or that I'm a white teenager in just-recently independent Zimbabwe, while he has longtime ties to Marxist ex-freedom fighters who consider me and my kind to be the enemy. Tich has close relatives in ministerial roles at the ruling party's Jongwe House. Hence the casual ease with which he makes a gift of a deadly weapon in a buzzing beergarden on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
   "It's loaded," he says. "Make sure the safety is on."

   Tich taught me a lot. About journalism ("Everyone is lying, to some degree," was another common refrain, and a fundamental lesson); about having fun, being confident, the power of charm - I only had to watch Tich in any situation to witness the near-magical effects of appearing completely comfortable in your own skin.
   Another good lesson, temporarily forgotten. "If bastards imagine you are weak, they will go for the jugular. Better you let them know from the start to cover their own throats. But do it with a smile - and have your finger on the trigger under the table."
   I never needed the gun. I did need the friendship, it made a difference when it was most needed.

DIED 25/12/1998

Rest in peace, Tich.

Photographs and press cutting provided by Thandeka Mkuku, one of Tichaona's three children. I'm very grateful to you, Thandeka. Although I hadn't seen your father since the year before he died - and didn't possess a photo until now - I was able at any moment to recall every detail of his face. These photos are facsimiles of the vivid memories I have of that Mkuku swagger, charisma, charm, humour and razor-sharp intellect. With or without a photograph, he remains the unforgettable Tichaona Mkuku.  

Gift Chaita

Martha Chirau-Nduku is the editor's secretary. She's like a mother hen with me:
   "Joseph, why are you smoking so much?"
   "Joseph, put on a jersey - it's too cold outside."
   Today, Martha is beside herself. Before I've even come into the newsroom she's heard the news: Joseph was found sleeping on the pavement outside the building.
She is waiting for me with arms crossed. "Mwana (small child), who did you go drinking with last night?"
   I'm not thinking. May have something to do with the dull pounding in my ravaged little 17-year-old brain.
   "Gift."
   "Right," says Martha. There's steel in her voice. "Gift."
   She picks up her phone, dials an extension, the photographic department.
   "Gift. Get up here."
   We stand before her like two schoolboys. Gift is ten years older than me, a grown man. From the moment we met, a year before, he has taken me under his wing. He calls me 'mfana', little brother. He copies valued contacts from his little black book into mine, the most generous thing one journalist can do for another.
   When we go out on the town, he usually sees to it that I get home safe, or at least to a bed somewhere. He's gotten me out of plenty of scrapes. My thanks has been to stitch him up with Martha.
   "Why did you leave the young man on the street? You were so drunk you just forgot him, is that it?"
   "Ah, he just-"
   "He got lost? At night? You let him get lost at night, after drinking too much. You know there are tsotsis in this place after dark."
   I do my feeble best to extract Gift from ground zero. "It was my own fault, Martha-"
   "You are still learning, mwana. This one is old enough to know by now."
   So I am excused - poor Gift has to skirt around Martha for a few days. But he's quicker than that to forgive me. "Don't worry about it, mfana. But next time I'm going to put a bell on you, like the one we use on a goat."
   Gift Chaita, January 9, 1959 - November 8, 2009
Lala ngokuthula, mfowethu.

Lawrence Chikuwira

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die” – Thomas Campbell.


Bulawayo, 1985 – Lawrence Chikuwira is a big man, expansive, silver-suited, immaculate. A muscular if pot-bellied, good-looking, proud African in his mid-30s when I first strut into his newsroom.
   He is super animated – given to bouncing in his executive, high-backed leather swivel chair behind the organised clutter on his desk; cuttings files, telex sheets torn with a ruler from the roll, copy baskets (diaries/in/out), page plans and of course the ever-ominous spike, a rudimentary yet terrifying steel fang mounted in a crude block of wood.
   So here I sit opposite the jiggling editor of a provincial newspaper in post-colonial Bulawayo, the industrial capital of Zimbabwe. Mr Chikuwira is not agitated because of me – I’m to learn that this is how he always is, he simply can’t sit still.

   He is, in fact, unfazed that I am a long-haired 16-year-old in a scruffy school uniform (preppy Christian Brothers’ College where I’m constantly taking hidings for that long hair and scruffy uniform). He is interested in hearing me out – it’s not every day a shabby white schoolboy waltzes in and asks for a job as a reporter on a predominantly black newspaper.
   The editor asks some probing, no-nonsense questions, then suggests I write something appropriate to my age group. He tells me to go away and think about it – he can’t commit a desk to an unknown quantity. But he’s studiously courteous, laughs good-naturedly at my impertinence, and gets up to walk me to the door, patting my shoulder paternally as he lets me out.
   I have a brainwave. I approach a classmate and friend, the equally unkempt Mfazz Zulu. Let’s write a weekly column about adolescent problems, from the perspective of both black and white teens. We’ll fearlessly tackle such taboo and proscribed subjects as drink, drugs and sex (our article promoting the use of condoms almost sees us expelled by an apoplectic head brother – until Mr Chikuwira steps in and argues our case).
   ‘Bridging The Gap’ runs for 12 weeks, when the editor calls me in to say I can have that desk. He bounces in his chair, using a red bic byro to rap out an urgent tattoo on his desk, desk calendar, coffee mug. Mr Chikuwira says I have the makings of a fine reporter and that I can earn 30 cents per published column centimeter to start. If I prove myself and get a few scoops, he’ll even consider offering me a staff job.

   That’s how it all began. For the remainder of my teenage years, Lawrence Chikuwira was my mentor and father figure (my own ran off with his secretary when I was 14). He forgave my many failings – including a disastrous investigation that led to my arrest and detention as a suspected spy, repeated episodes of intoxication on the job, the extreme insolence and arrogance of youth.
   We laughed a lot and we fought as much, often to the point where Mr Chikuwira almost bounced himself off his chair. Pen lids flew. But he never held a grudge, and always accepted graciously my (not infrequent) apologies.
   Lawrence Chikuwira was a great journalist and a good man. He gave me my start, generously imparting his expertise, defending me as a father should, never demanding the thanks he was due.
   Sorry I gave you such a hard time. Thank you for everything you did for me. Rest in peace, Baba.