Being Zimbabwean Revisited on a Road Trip

By Takura Zhangazha*

So I recently went on a road trip to Bulawayo. I had not been to the second city in years.  And road trips that long, are amazing insights into how much the country is changing.   They are almost reminiscent of both youth and the transcendence of time over individual “main actorism”.  Or alternatively how time does not in the proverbial sense “wait for no man”. 

Because this was a journey that I have traversed over many years, it was more about reflection than it would be about basic arrival.  Getting out of Harare on the highway would not, over five years ago given sights of an expanded Kuwadzana or Dzivaresekwa.  Let alone a sprawling Norton and shockingly expansive housing construction in Chegutu, Kadoma, Kwekwe, Gweru, Shangani and on the outskirts of Bulawayo. 

Like I said, it had been a while since I had done a long road trip  out of the capital  city which is not not in the direction of my rural home in Bikita, Masvingo.  The issue was not the evidence of the rapid evidence of an increasing urbanization of Zimbabwe ironically based on what was the still controversial fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) of 2002.  Which ostensibly was about the reclamation of land for agricultural and mining purposes by black Zimbabweans but now turns out to be more about a rapid urbanization programme while at the same time promising to “feed the nation” through new methods of industrialized farming that the Dutch are now fighting about. 

The trip was essentially a reminiscent reminder about “belonging”.   In a very nationalist sense.  You explain to a fellow traveler that you are crossing the Manyame, Munyati, Sebakwe, Vungu and Shangani rivers almost based on your backhand previous knowledge of travel or high school geography.  With a silent knowledge that you belong to this land, rivers, mountains, vleis and all. 

You even go further and explain that the rivers you have pointed out flow toward the Zambezi and that Harare is situated on a watershed which is a source of water for both the Save and the Zambezi. Both of which flow into Mozambique. 

With the added rider that the other major river, the Limpopo, flows from the west of Zimbabwe and ends again on the Mozambique coast. 

In typical travel fashion you crosscheck whether you have mobile network data connection and put your mobile phone battery on “power saving” because you need to ensure you can catch  up with family and friends.   But at the same time you look out the window and see the open farmlands trying to remember who owned what during the FTLRP?

And you mentally crosscheck the past with the present when you last traversed the Harare-Bulawayo highway.  Comparing what you used to see and what now obtains.  Sometimes its barren, sometimes its lush with newly planted crops and you try and understand the complexities of the historical contradictions. The blacks took back the land you think to yourself. The whites had mined and farmed on the land since the onset of colonialism.  And you ask yourself the driven question, so what does it mean now?

By the time you are getting to Shangani, you are remembering the possibility of elephants crossing the highway. Like they did one of the last times.  But you are also looking at the railway line (Stimela) and recalling Ngugi’s narrative of the “Iron Train” in his “Grain of Wheat” novel.  And you try and explain to your contemporary passenger the history of the steam train and how it runs all the way, eventually, to Cape Town.  Or how Cecil John Rhodes always wanted conquest of the Ndebele Kingdom. So much so to be buried in the combined sacred hills of the Matopo. 

There is always however a sense of a very real foreboding.  Almost a fear of fact.  That being as you look across the undulating terrain, you realize that you belong here.  That this is your country of birth.  Not necessarily in a patriotic sense, but just that.  A sense of belonging. 

Not in a Wilson Katiyo “Son of the Soil” sense  (amazing novel) where departure is a big theme, but in a manner in which the landscape speaks to you. The people you watch as you travel with their scotch carts or stalls selling fruits and vegetables make you think deeply about.  Or even the restaurant and toilet people when you make that recess break.  Or the other cdes that you can tell are spending big money from illegal mining in the middle of the country (Kadoma, Kwekwe , Gweru) And that their new business investments are evidenced by the newest fuel service stations, bus companies and accommodation lodges.

In observing all of this you shrug your shoulders and realise that we are living in many different but one Zimbabwe.  You do not, cannot lose your sense of belonging.  You just ask yourself about the sum-total of our national consciousness.  And then you post a picture of yourself on Facebook. You are Zimbabwean. Wherever and however you are.

*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)