Design//Life Magazine - Issue 1

DECEMBER 2023

STATE OF THE ARTS

TAKE A DEEP DIVE INTO ZIMBABWE’S VIBRANT CULTURAL SCENE

MAN vs BEAST

HOW ANIMAL CONFLICT IS GETTING IN THE WAY OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

CAPITOL GAINS

WHEN FILMMAKER JOE NJAGU MET PRESIDENT OBAMA

T HE M O ST ST YLI SH SPA I N TH E SAVA N N A H

SOUL SISTER

THE RISE AND RISE OF S U P E R S TA R S I N G E R S H I N G A I

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DESIGN / INNOVATION / CULTURE / OPINION / FASHION / TRAVEL / FOOD

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CONTENTS

32

F E AT U R E S 046 // ALL RISE

The rise and rise of superstar singer Shingai

056 // UNDEFEATED

The story of MMA champion Lewis Mataya’s fight to survive

064 // A WOMAN’S WORK A celebration of the art of Prudence Chimutuwah

072 // MAN vs BEAST

Confronting the human-wildlife conflict in Zimbabwe

126 // MY OBSESSION

Pash, aka Saxopash, and his saxophone, Inzwi

THE VIEW 032 // PIECES DE LA RESISTANCE

Exploring artist Moffat Takadiwa’s latest exhibition

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034 // POD SAVE THE BAOBAB

Why this mighty tree is Zimbabwe’s most valuable asset

036 // THE NEXT EDITION A rallying cry for the return of Harare’s Book Cafe

038 // GIVING UP THE GHOSTS

RADAR 013 // In the spotlight with filmmaker Joe Njagu

Read an extract from Farai Mudzingwa’s debut novel

019 // The new album from Bantu Spaceship

GRASSROOTS I N N O V AT I O N

027 // Verandah Gallery celebrates 25 years

042 // WHAT’S WITH ALL THE PERIOD DRAMA?

The woman changing the way we talk about menstrual health

044 // MEALS ON WHEELS

How a kitchen in a truck is helping improve children’s nutrition

020 // An anthology of music legend Thomas Mapfumo 016 // The best current artworks from around Zimbabwe 021 // Why bold fashion accessories are the bomb CONTENTS CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

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contents FA S H I O N 082 // NEW MODEL ARMY

A spotlight on Zimbabwe fashion’s revolutionaries

DESIGN 097 // LET THE LIGHTS IN

Illuminating lamps for a bright new look

100 // THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT

The colourful architecture of the Rainbow Children’s Village

104 // TRENDS

Editor Milly McPhie

What’s on the cards for interior design next year

Designer Tessa Moxon

105 // HOT DESK

In the office with architect Luka Pantic

Photographer Simon de Swardt Contributing Editors Tafadzwa Anifasi, Charlotte Ashton, Tomas Lutuli Brickhill, Sophie Edwards, Zoe Flood, Asa Jogi, Khameer Kidia, Gus LeBreton, Sara Lowe, Farai Mudzingwa, Jacqueline Nyathi, Josefina Pierucci, Laura Tofts Contributing Photographers Rodney Badza, Daniel Hargrove Social Media Obscura Media

T R AV E L 106 // AT HOME

Why Dana B is the perfect place for the reluctant camper

108 // ABROAD

How tourism can help save Botswana’s Okavango Delta

E AT / D R I N K 113 // AMAZING GRAINS

We explore the diversity of Zimbabwe’s indigenous millet

115 // CHEF DE ANKARRA COOKS… Sorghum and roasted vegetable salad

116 // RUM FUN IN THE SUN

The rosella mojito is this season’s most refreshing cocktail

117 // HOME MADE

Zimbabwe’s best food artisans and their finest ingredients

Design//Life Magazine is published by Design Publishing Africa (Pvt) Limited For advertising enquiries, email: advertising@designlifemagazine.com For editorial, event and PR enquiries, email: editorial@designlifemagazine.com For subscriptions, email: subscriptions@designlifemagazine.com

WELLNESS 118 // FIELD OF DREAMS

Why Wild Day Spa is the most stylish spa in the savannah

122 // SELF-CARE

Hair, brow and soul care at Feliciano & Co The Salon

125 // BEAUTY

A spotlight on Zimbabwe’s best new skincare brands

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LETTER FROM T H E E D I TO R

Cover Shingai, photographed

by Simon Webb, London 2023. Collage artwork by Prudence Chimutuwah.

Editor’s photo by Richard Watson

“Be bold. Be courageous. Be unapologetically you.” These words were posted by Shingai, our launch issue cover star, on her Instagram just before this magazine went to press; seven words that could easily have been written as a neat little tagline for a Design//Life press release. It struck me, as these sentences sank in, that there is no better way to describe Zimbabwe and the people who have come together to produce this magazine. From fashion designers to writers, photographers to musicians, each one has been bold, courageous and unapologetically themselves at all times, whatever their circumstances, and it’s this magic that has made this dream of mine come to life.

My meeting with the artist Prudence “Prudie” Chimutuwah in March this year, at her sell-out solo exhibition in Harare, was a lightbulb moment for me and this magazine — you can read more about it in the feature “A Woman’s Work” (page 64). It seemed fitting, then, that Prudie should play a key role in our first issue. The stunning collage that you can see on Shingai’s beautiful cover photograph perfectly encapsulates the spirit of collaboration which is at the very heart of Design//Life.

Also at the core of Design//Life is our determination to provide Zimbabwe’s extraordinarily creative community with a platform that shows the world just what it can do. As you can imagine, it was no mean feat trying to work out exactly what should go into this first issue, such is the wealth and breadth of talent. We have eye-popping fashion (page 82); stories about innovative community projects (page 42); not to mention ground-breaking music (page 19), an exploration of the human-wildlife conflict (page 72) and an in-depth interview with Lewis Mataya, Zimbabwe’s Mixed Martial Arts champion (page 56).

But this is just a taster. There is so much more to come.

Enjoy the issue.

For up-to-date news and events from around Zimbabwe, follow us on Instagram: @designlifeafrica

Milly McPhie Editor

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DECEMBER 2023

CONTRIBUTORS Charlotte Ashton is an award-winning journalist who has been making radio documentaries across southern Africa for more than a decade. She has covered everything from the Iraq War to Zac Efron, so we feel we can set her loose on anything for Design//Life. In this issue she interviews our cover star Shingai (page 46), talks menstrual health with scientist Dr Mandi Tembo, and explores Botswana’s majestic Okavango Delta (page 108).

Khameer Kidia is a writer and physician at University of Zimbabwe and Harvard Medical School, and for this issue he explores the work of Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa (“Pieces de la Resistance”, page 32). “Moffat has fascinated me for some time,” says Khameer, “so it was a treat to get to see his ‘Vestiges Of Colonialism’ exhibition in Harare earlier this year. I went to the show many times, and on each visit I saw something different in every piece.”

We are thrilled that Jacqueline Nyathi, Zimbabwe’s most prolific book reviewer, has joined the Design//Life team; her newsletter, the Harare Review of Books, is a must-read for any lover of literature.

Of Percy Zvomuya’s new book, which she reviews on page 24, Jacqui says: “When Three Sevens Clash is an eclectic collection of memories, mainly about music legend Thomas Mapfumo.

It’s a wonderful celebration of his life and work.”

Simon de Swardt is a multi-talented man: as well as being Design//Life’s chief photographer, he’s also the director of Harare-based Treasure Media, which produces TV commercials and documentaries. As if that wasn’t enough, Simon is responsible for two features this issue: “Man vs Beast” (page 72), on this country’s human-wildlife conflict, and “Undefeated” (page 56) about Zimbabwean Mixed Martial Arts champion Lewis Mataya.

Tafadzwa Anifasi, aka De Ankarra Chef, is a finance graduate turned chef who, on his journey from maths to menus, was crowned winner of the first series of Battle Of The Chefs Zimbabwe, and went on to become one of the programme’s judges. De Ankarra Chef is passionate about African cuisine, its diverse ingredients and how they can be used, and is determined to put Zimbabwe on the food map. In his feature “Amazing Grains” (page 113) he celebrates the magical powers of marvellous millet and gives us a delicious recipe with sorghum.

Without Tessa Moxon there would be no Design//Life. Born in Zimbabwe, and trained at South Africa’s Stellenbosch Academy of Design & Photography, our Designer is responsible for the beautiful look of this magazine. For the past six months, along with her beloved border terrier, Basil, and a lot of emergency takeout lunches, Tessa has kept Design// Life’s Editor on an (almost) even keel.

Tessa must be commended for the patience that she has shown and for keeping her eyebrow-raising to a bare minimum.

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RADAR: SPOTLIGHT

radar

Art / Culture / Music / Books / Film / Style

SPOTLIGHT ON...

JOE NJAGU, FILMMAKER

PHOTO: WASHIE NJAGU

A leading light in Zimbabwean cinema, his latest film, Ngoda, won three awards at the Zambia International Film Festival. His movie Cook Off! was the first Zimbabwean release on Netflix

“

With film, the beauty of our work is that every single project we work on is brand-new. It’s always a new challenge and it’s always exciting. It’s got its own hurdles, but it’s definitely got its fun side too.

I’m always in that mode of just pushing and grinding... I’m tunnel-visioned on the 10,000 hours.

The latest project we finished is called Rise, which we just shot in Victoria Falls and Bulawayo. It’s inspired by the true story of the Zimbabwean boxer Tobias Mupfuti. Written and directed by Jessica Rowlands, we had the privilege of working with Tongayi Chirisa, a big Zimbabwean Hollywood export who is working in LA and was the voice actor

for Cheetor in Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts. Rise is in post-production now and we’re hoping to release it in 2024.

This year I released a feature film called Ngoda, which I wrote and codirected with Eddie Sandifolo, who is also the lead actor. It’s a social commentary on what is happening in Zimbabwe around illegal diamond mining

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RADAR: SPOTLIGHT

and tells the story of three brothers who find a very big diamond that leads them on a course of greed, betrayal and eventually death. It’s almost like a metaphor of what’s happening here in Zimbabwe.

Ngoda did so well at the Zambia International Film Festival (ZAMIFF) in September. We won three Sotambe awards, for Best Actor, Best Cinematographer and Best Sound.

In September, another film I produced, Mirage, directed by Malaika Mushandu, won Best First Feature at the Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival.

Mirage was also nominated at ZAMIFF. It was so exciting to have two projects going up against each other.

Currently we’re in development on a limited series called Peggy, which is based on an urban legend in Zimbabwe about a ghost that was haunting and taunting small towns. We’re aiming to start work on that soon.

What drew me to filmmaking originally?

I think filmmaking drew me to it. I’ve always been a storyteller, and film became the medium for me to tell stories.

For me, I think it’s important to acknowledge the fact that I don’t think we have a film industry in Zimbabwe.

We have a film sector, and we are pushing and working and digging to try and establish a proper industry.

I believe that approach and what we’re doing should be different. We need to do

a lot of learning, to get a lot of experience to try to catch up with what the rest of the world is doing.

Film is global – if you have an industry, you should be playing on the global field. If you release a film in Zimbabwe, it should match any film that is coming out of the United States, England or anywhere in the world.

In southern Africa, our power lies in combining forces. If our country came together with Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, all countries with small populations, I feel like that we could build a thriving commercial industry.

‘ I AM GOING TO DO MY PART TO POSITIVELY CHANGE THE IMAGE THAT THE REST OF THE WORLD HAS OF AFRICA’ In 2016, I got to be part of President Barack Obama’s Mandela Washington Fellowship For Young African Leaders, an Africa-wide programme which trains and mentors young people from the continent.

I was so lucky to be the last group to meet him during his last year as President of the United States in 2016.

There’s one thing that the President said there that literally flipped and changed the way I look at things. My

vision was born in that in that room on that day. In one of his speeches to us, President Obama questioned why Africa is portrayed in the way it’s portrayed.

He said that it’s because of how Africa’s image is sold to the world. He said, “Google the word Africa, look at the images. What images are you seeing?

And you’re seeing all these images of poverty, mountains, animals... But that’s not what Africa is about. As long as the image of Africa remains as it is, the world will continue to aid Africa and not trade with Africa.”

That really touched me, so that’s one of the things that I’ve taken upon myself as a filmmaker, as a storyteller. I’m going to do my part to positively change that image of Africa for the rest of the world.

I’m always in the mode of “What’s next?” I generally never sit down and celebrate. I’m always challenging myself: “OK, there’s so much work to do.” It’s also affected by the environment I work in.

I feel like so much needs to be done in Zimbabwe until we get to a point where we can say, “Now we’ve got an industry, a thriving industry.”

As they say, you’re only as good as your last project. So I always try — each project, every project — to push myself and my career in a positive direction. Always. Always.

Joe Njagu was talking to broadcaster and filmmaker Zoe Flood, who also produced Cook Off! out now on Netflix.

”

Mirage won Best First Feature for Malaika Mushandu and Joe Njagu at this year’s Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival

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RADAR: MASTERPIECES

Show and tell

Art lover Josefina Pierucci selects her favourite paintings in Zimbabwe right now CHANA CHAKO

By Grace Nyahangare As the parent of a young child, Nyahangare uses her art as catharsis.

“Chana Chako” means “your brat” in Shona, and this work represents the conversation a mother has with herself while she is dealing with her child’s tantrum. It reflects the feeling that parents have about how society looks at them when their child is misbehaving.

SWALLOW SERIES

By Tinotenda Chivinge “I take objects considered trash and shape them into objects of beauty,” says Chivinge, “and I hope to provoke thoughtful introspection around the many perspectives that exist in our society.”

In his “Swallow Series”, the artist was inspired by the symbolic significance that birds have in Zimbabwean culture, where people believe that birds are messengers from the ancestors and possess the ability to forecast the weather.

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RADAR: MASTERPIECES

SKELETONS IN THE CUPBOARD

By Gillian Rosselli “The Cupboard” is from a series of paintings about domestic violence, a subject that was brought close to home after Rosselli’s friend died as a result of such abuse. Using fleshy tones to evoke delicate, raw skin, Rosselli explores the way the privacy of a family unit can hide domestic violence from public view. Domestic violence is a language of terror that is only spoken by those involved, and Rosselli’s turbulent, sweeping textures reflect the ebb and flow of this conversation.

UMBRELLA MAN

By Percy Manyonga “Umbrella Man” is inspired by a man from Manyonga’s birthplace who suffered from mental illness, and was known around town for always carrying an umbrella, whatever the weather. The man had a unique ability to identify issues, articulate their roots and sources, and was able to easily find solutions. In this painting, the umbrella symbolises protection and unity, demonstrating that art can go beyond mere representation of the world as it is.

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NEXT ISSUE! Out on 01 March 2024

RADAR: HEAR THIS

O N E G IAN T LEA P Bantu Spaceship’s eponymous album signals a new frontier for the New Jit Wave

S

Words by Milly McPhie

o, there’s a dazzle of zebra, a memory of elephant, a crash of rhino; but what’s the collective noun for a group of visionaries turning the Zimbabwe music scene on its head? Bantu Spaceship? I think so.

The band Bantu Spaceship is led by Joshua Madalitso Chiundiza, formerly of alt hip-hop group Monkey Nuts, and Ulenni Okandlovu, the creative mastermind behind the Skeyi & Strobo culture brand and Zimbabwe’s super-fun Fabrik parties. The duo first came onto each other’s radar in 2014 after a Monkey Nuts gig at Book Café, Harare’s famous former cultural hub (about which you can read more in “The View” section of this magazine). It was a fortuitous meeting of musical minds.

Now performing live with vocalist Thando Mlambo and guitarist the Serpant, Bantu Spaceship is pioneering its own form of Afrofuturism: taking mid-Eighties jit and chimurenga and stirring it up with disco and electronica. The result is a sizzling melting pot of Zimbabwean music old and new, celebrating the rise of the New Jit Wave.

Bantu Spaceship’s eponymous album was launched earlier this year on Nyami Nyami Records, a Paris-based label that focuses on music from southern

Africa. This release is a masterful journey through the music history of this part of the continent.

Alongside Ulenni’s mesmerising Ndebele chants and soft spoken word, Josh weaves his sound production magic through the modern-day beats of South Africa’s DJ Kid Fonque, vocals and keys from Thandi Ntuli, and rhymes of Kwani Experience’s Kwela Sekele.

Rewinding the clock, “Mhondoro” samples Robson Banda’s 1985 hit “Dzinomwa Muna Save”, a John Peel favourite; and Ngosimbi Crew’s Sam Mabukwa provides a sungura-flavoured guitar riff throughout “Don’t Break”. The Kid Fonque club remix of “Journey To Misava” is a particular favourite, its heartjolting beat introduced by the familiar tone of the Nineties modem dial-up, a gorgeous aural flashback for anyone who spent their teenage years waiting for the actual proper internet to be invented.

While giving a respectful nod to its musical forebears, Bantu Spaceship’s new jit generation sound has thrown a rock into Zimbabwe’s deep pool of magical music, its ripples already being felt through soundsystems across the country. Excitingly, this evolution has only just begun.

Bantu Spaceship (Nyami Nyami Records) is out now. Instagram: @bantuspacestation

BANTU SPACESHIP IS A SIZZLING MELTING POT OF ZIMBABWE MUSIC OLD AND NEW

Leaders of the Bantu Spaceship collective, from left: Joshua Madalitso Chiundiza and Ulenni Okandlovu

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RADAR: CULTURE

MY C U LT U R A L L I F E

TOMAS LUT ULI BRICKHILL Writer, filmmaker and the frontman of Zimbabwean mbira-punk band Chikwata.263 The first album I bought was Bad by Michael Jackson, but the first single I got was “When Will I Be Famous?” by Bros (but that doesn’t count because it was just a single, right?).

At the moment I’m listening to “Kenge” from the album Don’t Start Me Talking

by Pascal Makonese (above, left). This is a catchy mbira-jazz crossover track with a hook from an old Shona greeting that was popular when I was a kid: “Uri Kenge, here?” which roughly translates as, “Are you OK?” The track that I play when I want to wallow is “Toputika Neshungu” by Mbira DzeNharira. It’s an epic mbira instrumental with no proper lyrics, some haunting whistling and a title that translates as “We need to talk or we might explode with grief”.

The song that makes me get up and dance is “Can’t Hold Me Back” by Steam Down. A Zimbabwean friend in the UK called me one day to make me listen to it because he had just heard it on BBC’s 6 Music and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since.

Just before I go on stage I scramble about in my guitar case for an old set list because I’ve forgotten to write a new one, yet again.

My top podcast tip is BBC Radio 4’s The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox and Robin Ince. I’m an artist but I’m also a bit of a science geek on the side.

020

I’ve been most influenced by film director George Lucas because I can remember seeing Return Of The Jedi at the Mabelreign drive-in as a kid and I was totally inspired. Later I really got into Quentin Tarantino and Roberto Rodriguez because I felt like they managed to break into the film industry against the odds.

The film I watch obsessively is The Blues Brothers. I saw it by chance when I had just started singing blues in my teens and then I based my entire onstage persona on the two main characters.

The last TV series I binge-watched was GLOW on Netflix. I was sick in bed for a few days and I started watching it because I fancied a girl who looks a bit like one of the actors in it, but I was thinking it would be trash — and then I just couldn’t stop.

The books by my bedside are Portrait Of Emlanjeni, a novel by Tsitsi Nomsa Ngwenya about a village in Matabeleland South, and Time Travel, A History by James Gleick, a non-fiction book about how the concept of time travel has become part of popular culture.

If I was stuck on a desert island I’d take Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations Of Screenwriting. And hopefully I’d finally finish it.

The piece of art that has really stayed with me is “Hope And Optimism” by John Muafangejo (above, right), a Namibian linocut artist. The message has really

resonated with me especially during difficulties in my own life. I have a print of it in my house.

My favourite gallery is First Floor Gallery in Harare. I love the artists it works with and it also holds some other very cool events. I used to love Njelele Art Station on Kaguvi Street because I was fascinated by the space, but it’s been quiet for a while now.

If I could hang it on my wall, I’d have Salvador Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory”. I’m really fascinated by the idea of time travel and that piece just speaks to me.

I’d really like to meet someone with a spare US$10m who wants to invest in African cinema because I have an idea for an epic story that’s currently way out of my budget.

My current obsession is making jams from indigenous Zimbabwean fruits.

I made a bunch as novelty Christmas gifts for friends and family last year and was surprised by how easy it was and now I’m wondering why they’re not yet being produced.

I’m looking forward to the point where I’ve made a few commercially successful films and earned the right to do a nonsense passion project that’s totally self-indulgent and way too weird to be popular.

Read Tomas’ article on Harare’s Book Café in the View section of this issue.

RADAR: WEAR THIS

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RADAR: WEAR THIS

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RADAR: RADAR: BOOK READ REVIEW THIS

HEAR HIM ROAR In this dazzling anthology, When Three Sevens Clash, Percy Zvomuya honours Zimbabwe’s ‘Lion’, musician Thomas Mapfumo Words by Jacqueline Nyathi

P

ercy Zvomuya’s new book, When Three Sevens Clash, is a collection of reminiscences mainly about the rise of Zimbabwean music legend Thomas Mapfumo, but also about those wondrous decades before Zimbabwe’s independence, with a couple of personal essays thrown in. The great Mapfumo is still with us, and this anthology gives him his flowers in a lovely celebration of his life and work.

In the foreword, editor Zvomuya honours Mapfumo’s younger brother and bandmate, Lancelot, who passed away in 2022. Farai Mudzingwa (you

can read an extract from his new book Avenues By Train in the View section of this magazine) gives us the history of the almost mythical Seven Miles Hotel, where Mapfumo was a fixture for some time.

Brian Chikwava ponders the reasons for Mukanya’s exile to America. But it is Musaemura Zimunya’s instructive piece, “Thomas ‘Tafirenyika’ Mapfumo And The Zimbabwean Music Revolution” that explores Mapfumo’s musical journey, and locates it in the liberation history and formation of the nation of Zimbabwe.

Rutendo Chabikwa’s moving “Only Daughter” explores a sliver of gender

in Zimbabwe through a portrait of her somewhat gender-fluid uncle. American historian Brooks Marmon brings us the story of Daniel Madzimbamuto and Herbert Munangatire’s Cultural Syndicate’s 1958 All-African Music Festival. It was, perhaps unfortunately, the first and last event of its kind, and Marmon explains why it succeeded and failed. Attiyah Khan’s essay on the band the Beaters in Rhodesia grabbed my attention for a young Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse. “Adatshona” by Marko Phiri is deeply moving on the pre-Independence dislocation of Malawian migrants to Zim. There are photo essays: by KB Mpofu on artisanal miners, and Rafs Mayet on Amnesty International’s Human Rights “Now!” concert, held at Harare’s National Sports Stadium in October 1988. Tawanda Mudzonga’s personal essay on identity skewers Zimbabweans’ unfortunate obsession with how people sound, a classist and elitist consequence of colonialism. “Musakanene” is Geraldine Mukumbi’s tribute to her sekuru, lost to COVID. And last but certainly not least, is a regrettably short graphical entry by another Zimbabwean legend,

THE GREAT MAPFUMO IS STILL WITH US, AND ZVOMUYA’S ANTHOLOGY GIVES HIM HIS FLOWERS IN A LOVELY CELEBRATION OF HIS LIFE AND WORK Tony Namate, on his time at Zimbabwe Publishing House, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Charles Mungoshi, Chenjerai Hove, Dambudzo Marechera, Lewis Nkosi, Nadine Gordimer and Nuruddin Farah.

In all, When Three Sevens Clash is a lovely and eclectic collection of memories, evocative of the heady days of the formation of Zimbabwe, with personal memories from younger Zimbabweans also thrown in the mix. Zvomuya has collected many gifted minds and voices together in this wonderful volume.

When Three Sevens Clash by Percy Zvomuya is out now.

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RADAR: READ THIS

DRINKING FROM G R AV E YA R D WELLS

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO L E V I TAT I O N

INNARDS

C R E AT I V E WANDERLUST

By Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (University Press of Kentucky)

By José Eduardo Agualusa (Archipelago Books)

By Magogodi oaMphela Makhene (Atlantic Books)

By Kasia Avery (Quarry Books)

In this rich collection, Ndlovu draws from Zimbabwean experience: hyperinflation, power cuts, fuel shortages, the liberation war and the country’s troubled political history. Disappearing homes, a shape-shifting praying mantis, njuzu, ngozi, wife-locking and women in winnowing baskets add Afrosurrealism.

Ndlovu also explores social issues: Black Tax, widows deprived of marital property, amakorokoza, and the traumatic experiences of girls and young women. In “Home Became A Thing With Thorns”, Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa lose parts of themselves to gain official recognition. Finally, Operation Murambatsvina is the focus of the title story, “Drinking From Graveyard Wells”.

Borges wakes up in heaven, or hell — an endless banana plantation — but finds consolation in possibilities.

A man offers to teach a party guest levitation.

A pensive despot shares his musings. “Open To The Breeze” is a beautiful story about a place that’s trapped in time. Laughing lizards, offensive baobabs, a story about butterflies and Queen Nzinga and another about Jonas Savimbi round out the collection.

Agualusa’s treatment of Angolan history is always slightly farcical, very humorous, and also quite sad, which seems appropriate to post-Independence Africa. His boundless imagination and particular brand of the surreal is on full display here.

There’s a touch of the fever dream about this book by author oaMphela Makhene.

In these stories, characters are relating, remembering or rambling. Some narrators are unreliable, impacted by poverty, trauma, war and oppression — from Apartheid and more. oaMphela Makhene lays bare the ugly, steaming viscera of lives. There is little in this book that is pretty or light; this is the grim stuff that most people would rather not see.

But in that grimness is the unmistakable ring of reality.

Actual innards are sometimes considered food of the poor, but in southern Africa, they are seen as a delicacy. Just like this, the book Innards disturbs and delights in equal measure.

Mixed-media journalling can be intimidating, and it may be hard to know where to begin.

Creative Wanderlust, from Kasia Avery, the co-founder of mixed media company Everything Art, shows where and how to find inspiration for art journalling, presented here as the foundation of creative practice.

There are lots of great prompts and tips, and guidance on tools and resources — mainly, to use those you have to hand. You’ll learn about substrates and their preparation, composition and techniques for combining mediums. Creative Wanderlust is also filled with encouraging words for creatives: how to practise mindfulness and self-care, and how to let go of perfectionism.

José Eduardo Agualusa

A Practical Guide to Levitation stories

Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn arch ipel ago

bo o k s

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RADAR: GALLERIES

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS Anna Fleming’s open-house Verandah Gallery celebrates a milestone in its illustrious history Words by Milly McPhie

“B

ut will anyone actually come and buy anything?” The familiar refrain of any art curator anxiously awaiting the opening of their first exhibition. It was definitely a thought that crossed the mind of Anna Fleming, founder of Harare’s famous Verandah Gallery, and the powerhouse behind its annual art exhibitions, latterly known as ”Art In Spring”, and the show’s accompanying cards and calendars.

But Anna needn’t have worried: this year she’s celebrating the 25th anniversary of her calendar and artinspired collection of gifts. Sustaining and maintaining a credible business in Zimbabwe is tricky at the best of times, so a quarter-century of trading is no mean feat given this country’s turbulent economic history. But Anna’s success is testament to her strength and resilience, and her resolve to use her skills to help others.

It’s not just the artists she’s championed over the years who have benefited from Anna’s determination. The Verandah Gallery itself was born out of a fundraising idea to support the Emerald Children’s Home in Harare, a sanctuary for orphaned and vulnerable children, many of whom have been abandoned by their parents, and suffered neglect and abuse. Thanks in part to Anna’s support, Emerald Children’s Home continues to support over 90 children throughout their childhood and early education, right into training for life after graduation.

After moving to the area in 1986, Anna joined Emerald Hill’s Fundraising Committee, and one year it decided an art show would be a good fundraising idea.

“I went home and I sat on my verandah,” says Anna, “and I thought, ‘I’ve got this nice verandah, why don’t I have the exhibition here?’” And so, in 1992, the Verandah Gallery Charity Art Exhibition was born. In its first year, Anna welcomed 400 visitors through her garden gate; by the final exhibition in 2019, “Art In Spring” had become a staple event on Harare’s social calendar, attracting over 1,000 people coming to see, and buy, the best of Zimbabwe’s art, with 25 per cent of each sale going directly to the Emerald

2024 Th e Ve r a n d a h G a l l e r y

C e le b r a t i n g 25 Ye a rs 2000 – 2024

From top: this year’s Verandah Gallery calendar, with cover artwork by Dian Wright; ‘The Ride’ by Norman Kaunde; ‘Graceful Girls’ by Barry Lungu

Hill Children’s Home and the Emerald Hill School for the Deaf.

With her gallery and art show well underway, Anna launched her first collection of postcards in 1998, all featuring pictures from Zimbabwean artists who had exhibited in the shows.

The cards were an instant hit, and Anna decided to turn the Verandah Gallery and its products into an actual business. “One morning I woke up at 3am and thought, ‘I wonder if I can go full-time?’ I’ve never made a decision so quickly in my life!

Usually, if you’re going to dramatically change your life you call your friends for their opinion over endless cups of coffee, but I didn’t ring anyone. I just went into work the next day and gave them three months’ notice.”

Her former employer’s loss was Zimbabwe’s artists’ gain. Many of this country’s finest painters — Daryl Nero, Barry Lungu, Sheena Chadwick, David Chinyama, Charles Nkomo, Dian Wright, to name just a few — have featured on Anna’s calendars and cards; their prints and designs have travelled the world on tea towels, been the wrapping paper for many a gift, and continue to be a bestseller around Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.

Anna still sells prints directly from her famous verandah, and there is no better place to view Zimbabwe’s magnificent art than in the leafy garden, among Harare’s verdant trees, soundtracked by beautiful birdsong. The effect of Anna’s generosity — opening the doors to her home, welcoming artists and the public every year onto her verandah — will be felt for many years to come. We will feel it through the paintings we hang on our walls, the cards we send to our friends, the days we tick off on our calendars; and it will be felt by all the children who have had the course of their lives changed by Emerald Hill. That is the best review any exhibition curator could ever possibly get.

The Verandah Gallery, 16 Woodholme Road, Harare. By appointment only.

Call: +263 772 307 772.

Email: info@verandahgallery.co.zw Visit: www.verandahgallery.co.zw

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RADAR:RADAR: BOOK REVIEW SHOPS

‘ THE REASON THAT PEOPLE LIKE TO COME AND VISIT KUMBA IS BECAUSE OUR THINGS ARE SO DIFFERENT AND A BIT WHACKY’

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RADAR: SHOPS

No place like home From sculpture to silverware, paintings to pottery, Kumba is a standout store which has something for everyone Words by Milly McPhie

W

are so different and a little bit whacky,” says Esther Ilsink, who runs Kumba.

She’s right — there is something for everyone here.

Bright ceramics sit side by side with hand-crafted leather backgammon boards; traditional basketware is overlooked by lights made from cleverly repurposed fire extinguishers. Upcycling is a key part of Kumba’s business. Esther has an excellent eye for finding forgotten pieces and bringing them back to life: old armchairs are revamped with bold Zimbabwean fabrics, Fifties sideboards are lovingly restored to their former glory. There are statement coffee tables made from old Tonga doors, and unused oil drums have been re-imagined into abstract animal sculptures.

Kumba is also a wonderful place to experience the breadth of Zimbabwean art. From the striking modernity of Mukudzei Muzondo’s canvasses on the shop walls, to Crispen Matekenya’s take on the traditional totem in the yard

outside, you can get a true sense of the originality of this country’s art scene.

“Every piece tells a story,” says Esther.

“It hasn’t been made just for the sake of producing something. There is meaning to everything in this shop.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gardens of Kumba where striking Shona stone sculptures, enormous seedpod wind chimes and life-size tin-can statues provide perfect company while you take a break from emptying your bank account. Esther and Allard provide a pot of tea or coffee for free; all they ask is that you leave a donation, 100 per cent of which goes to Zimbabwe’s children’s cancer charity, KidzCan. Kumba is a very special shop, run by very special people, and you definitely won’t come out empty-handed. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Kumba, 34 Haslemere Lane, Umwinsidale, Harare. Call: +263 774 125 363.

Email: esther.ilsink@gmail.com Visit: www.kumbahomeandgifts.com

PHOTOS: SIMON DE SWARDT

hen it comes to home décor, I am firmly of the philosophy that if there’s a space, fill it. But having said that, the only trend I can’t get behind is the scatter cushion. Used to prop up a weary soul on a sofa, fine — but it has no place on a bed, especially when you have to move it on and off again morning and night for no apparent reason. What’s more, having to rearrange your soft furnishings in the heat of the moment is a total mood-killer.

Every inch of my house is adorned in one way or another. Bowls, candle holders, weird bits of wood carving and oriental urns sit three deep on my shelves (lovely to look at, an absolute nightmare to dust). It comes as no surprise, then, that Kumba is one of my favourite shops in Harare.

Nestled among Umwinsidale’s forest of msasas, Kumba is a veritable treasure trove of design and décor. “The reason people come here is because our things

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THE VIEW W H AT W E T H I N K A B O U T E V E R Y T H I N G

Khameer Kidia explores ‘Vestiges Of Colonialism’, the show by artist Moffat Takadiwa Gus LeBreton celebrates this country’s most famous tree, the mighty Baobab Tomas Lutuli Brickhill calls for the return Harare’s cultural hub, the Book Cafe Farai Mudzingwa gives us an exclusive extract from his debut novel, ‘Avenues By Train’

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THE VIEW

P I E C E S D E L A R E S I S TA N C E

In his celebrated exhibition, ‘Vestiges Of Colonialism’, Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa proffers a cure for the hangover of this country’s history Words by Khameer Kidia

I

n April 2024, for the seventh year in a row, Zimbabwe will send a talented contingent to the world’s oldest art show: the Venice Biennale. The month-long exhibit, established in 1895, is renowned for catapulting artists onto the global art stage. Six Zimbabweans — Troy Makaza Gillian Rosselli, Sekai Machache, Moffat Takadiwa, Kombo Chapfika, Victor Nyakauru and Moffat Tkadiwa — have been selected to showcase their work at Zimbabwe’s pavilion at the Biennale: a feather in each of their caps, and a vibrant plume in our country’s headdress.

Of the mix, Moffat Takadiwa, born in Karoi in 1983, has fascinated me for some time. I had seen his name when Jay-Z and Beyoncé started collecting his work — an admittedly vapid introduction that I was looking to deepen. So, when I heard that he was holding a solo exhibition, “Vestiges Of Colonialism”, at Harare’s National Gallery this year, I was giddy with excitement. I knew Takadiwa recycled

everyday waste in elaborate ways, but I wasn’t ready for the work’s visceral nature when I came face-to-face with it: right away I was struck by its expansiveness.

The National Gallery — opened by the Queen Mother in 1957 and itself a colonial remnant — is a sublime building in the capital’s business district. It couldn’t have been a better home for Takadiwa’s exhibit, which he put together with Fadzai Muchemwa, the curator of both the National Gallery and Zimbabwe’s pavilion at the Biennale. The gallery’s high ceiling is made from a semitransparent material that fills the vast space with an unrelenting light that bounced off the exhibit’s floor centerpiece, “Walk Of Shame”. The artwork — a huge 30ft square filled with old green, pink, blue and purple toothbrush handles arranged as a Star Of David — is a poignant reminder that settler colonialism is alive and well today. This exhibition was a conversation not just about history, but also about the present.

Hung on the main gallery walls were large, dark tapestries made from plastic computer keys, toothbrush heads and pen refills, all woven together with fishing line. These tapestries, perhaps the bestknown of Takadiwa’s style, have caught the attention of galleries and collectors around the world. Indeed, shortly after “Vestiges Of Colonialism” opened in Harare, Takadiwa travelled to Paris for a symposium at the Louvre and a solo exhibition at the city’s Semiose Gallery.

Takadiwa calls this series “Korekore Handwriting”, acknowledgment of the influence of Zimbabwe’s Korekore people - who use the collective labour of many craftspeople to make their famous woven products — on his work. Takadiwa builds his pieces at the Mbare Art Space, a workshop he helped to establish in the Harare suburb, where he gets help from, and mentors, other Zimbabwean artists.

Together with his team of over 30 people, Takadiwa retrieves everyday objects, such as bottle tops, toothbrushes, computer

Above: ‘Korekore Handwriting’ is a tapestry of disused everyday objects, such as old computer keys and toothbrush heads, woven together by Moffat Takadiwa and his team at Mbare Art Space in Harare

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THE VIEW keys, plastic tubes and pen refills, from rubbish dumps around Harare. The items are sorted and cleaned before being meticulously woven together to make objects imbued with renewed symbolism.

It is a tedious process, a decolonial alchemy of sorts.

Takadiwa’s work, he says: “confronts the colonial hangover using everyday consumer residue”. His thesis goes something like this: the debris of capitalism and colonialism infects our daily lives — every year, more than 29 billion toothbrushes are thrown out around the world. And while modern toothbrushes only became popular in the 20th century, dental care isn’t going away anytime soon. We are amidst a reckoning with modernity and so we must build something new: something born of the remnants that both critiques and transforms them.

Art as colonial resistance helps us imagine new worlds free from domination.

Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga describes this power in her own artform: “Weaving of words — and through this process, reweaving time, action and reaction into a new whole - makes writing back against empire a site of potential healing.” Takadiwa’s own weaving envisions what that complex but capacious world could look like. The work asserts hybridity: the (somewhat controversial) idea that there is no going back to an idyllic, pre-colonial moment where the land and people are untouched by empire.

Hybridity recognises that no such utopia exists — we will always live in a world that was ravaged by empire, where coloniser and colonised are in constant negotiation.

In the upstairs gallery at Takadiwa’s exhibition I was transported back to my childhood as I explored a large area devoted to an intricate web of old videotape. I recalled the boxes of defunct VHS tapes that would pile up in the back room of my family’s video rental shop in Avondale. After our business shut down, we tried donating the old tapes, but no one was interested in these seemingly useless plastic objects. As a kid, I was allowed to unspool a tape or two for fun. I would pull the shiny brown ribbon out from the back of the cassette, wrap it around my body and prance around pretending to be royalty before stuffing it in the rubbish bin.

But instead of relegating this magnetic videotape to the bin, Takadiwa fashioned it into an interactive space, rather like

a maze, that visitors could enter and explore. At first, I was reticent to push aside the shimmering curtains, worried about disturbing the art that I wasn’t allowed to touch. Once I was inside, I realised that this was the point: we were supposed to get stuck in the maze, to feel uncomfortable in its complexity and in our own inextricable complicity in colonialism and its modern reincarnation, capitalism.

But Takadiwa doesn’t want this entanglement to make us feel hopeless.

In one part of the gallery space he took writing desks from the colonial Rhodesian administration, burned them, filled the drawers with soil, planted them with rugare (a type of kale that’s a staple in Zimbabwean cuisine) and hung them under the gallery’s skylights. Stolen land is a primary feature of colonialism, and I could feel the sense of reclamation as I weaved my way along the corridor of hanging drawer-planters. In another part of the exhibition, a piece called “Sando Dzako” (“Big Up”), made of a dining table covered in nails, pokes at the coloniality of enforcing table etiquette in a country where we eat with our hands - not because we are uncivilised, but because food tastes better that way.

Takadiwa’s work so captured my heart that I visited the exhibition many times, taking friends and family with me each visit so I could revel in their firsttime wonderment while I explored new meanings and absorbed some of the smaller pieces of art. What I noticed each time, though, was that the rugare planted in the drawers of the old colonial desks was gradually withering away until, by the end of the exhibition’s run, it was nothing but a series of flakey stalks sticking out of the soil.

On a practical level, it seemed museum staff had been given minimal guidance on tending to the plants. I was frustrated because I wanted the message to ring clear: this was a piece about the reclamation of stolen land. But over my many visits, I realised that, whether intentional or not, the withering rugare was telling another chapter of the same story.

As we build new worlds from the remnants of colonialism, history’s lessons teach us that these hybrid worlds are fragile: they will not survive if we are not considerate custodians. We must till the soil and water the plants. We must care for our world the way it cared for us long before we began plundering it.

From top: ‘Same Old Song’ (2022/3); Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa; ‘Rugare Kwamuri’ (2023)

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THE VIEW

P O D S AV E T H E B A O B A B

The African Plant Hunter first came across this mighty tree and its precious fruit as a teenage traveller. Here he celebrates his 40-year love affair with one of Zimbabwe’s most valuable assets Words by Gus LeBreton

I

don’t recall the moment I first set eyes on a Baobab. Probably because I was too small to have any memory. As a child I never really noticed them. They were just there. The first time I remember being seriously impressed by a Baobab tree was as an 18 year old. Two friends and I took a beaten-up old Range Rover and drove it across Africa (beating it up a whole lot more in the process, but that’s another story). We were in Mali, and were lucky enough to have a few days hiking around the Bandiagara escarpment, beset with Dogon villages and Baobab trees. We came over a blind rise, perspiring freely in the baking midday sun, and there was a gargantuan Baobab tree with an enticing pool of shade spreading below it. As we took shelter under its spreading limbs, I gazed up in wonder at its wrinkled skin and, for the first time, began fully to appreciate this mastodon of the tree world. It was the start of a life-long obsession. Nearly four decades later, there are no signs of the obsession diminishing.

There are lots of obvious reasons to love Baobabs: they are among the most handsome and statuesque of any tree in the world, and their gnarled and wizened presence provides a reassuring continuity in an often fast-changing landscape.

A favourite game of mine has always been to try and imagine the different people and cultures that have assembled over the years in the shade of a particular Baobab tree. The bands of San that laid out their trophies from a day of hunting and gathering, watching contentedly as a small antelope slowly roasts over the fire, emitting ever more enticing smells as the meat cooks. The Rozwi kings and queens examining a delicate ornament of purest gold brought by a neighbouring clan seeking an alliance. A posse of early Portuguese explorers, exhausted after a long day’s march in heavy armour, taking weary refuge from the afternoon sun. An Arab slave trading caravan, a group of Victorian missionaries, the French botanist Michel Adanson, whose efforts are forever recalled in the tree’s

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A ‘forest in itself’, Baobabs have sheltered humans and wildlife for over 2,000 years

Latin binomial, Adansonia digitata. And then, today, a gaggle of tourists gazing up in awe at this extraordinary pachyderm of the plant world.

It’s not just the people who have drawn comfort from a Baobab tree over its lifespan (the oldest Baobab tree ever accurately measured was the Panke Baobab from Nkayi, in north-western Zimbabwe - it came out at a staggering 2,450 years old). Think of all the wildlife that has taken shelter or made its home in and around a Baobab tree. Bees commonly nest high up in the often hollow trunk of Baobab trees, and many Baobabs throughout Africa are scarred with lines of ancient wooden pegs, banged into the side of the tree to enable access to the hive by local honey-gatherers.

Vultures and raptors preferentially seek out the upper branches as nesting sites, while hornbills and lovebirds nest in holes in the trunk, waddling awkwardly

amongst the branches as they enter and exit their homes. The female yellow-billed hornbill becomes especially familiar with her surroundings when she walls herself into her hole for up to two months while incubating her eggs. During this time she loses all her feathers and is entirely dependent on her mate to feed her through a slit in the mud wall. I shudder to think of the fate awaiting my mate had I been called upon to show such diligence as a provider.

One photo I have never managed to capture has been the image of a leopard draped elegantly across the upper branches of a Baobab. It’s an unforgettable sight, and I’ve been lucky to see it on more than one occasion, but never with camera in hand. Perhaps it’s an image meant for my mind’s eye only.

As if the reality of seeing it on paper would spoil the romance. One especially unusual wildlife encounter I signally failed

THE VIEW to photograph was when I came across a group of chimpanzees pummelling an unfortunate python with sticks in the shade of a Baobab tree. The Gambian primatologist, to whom I was acting as a spectacularly ineffective 17-year old research assistant, was overcome with emotion at this example of chimp hunting behaviour. My sympathies lay more with the python, who was busily regurgitating a partly digested duiker meal in order to effect a getaway. Sadly the regurgitation took too long and it proved to be the python’s last meal.

Last year, while exploring Liwonde National Park in Malawi, I came across a Baobab tree that had been almost entirely enveloped by a strangler fig. This particular Baobab was rather famous, having once sheltered David Livingstone and his party as they explored the upper reaches of the Shire River. Baobabs are often host to other trees and plants.

Michel Adanson, when first describing a Baobab tree in 1749, on the island of Sor in Senegal, called it “a forest in itself ”.

Epiphytic orchids, lichens and mosses are a common sight on Baobabs, as are the parasitic mistletoes. I’ve seen prickly pears, milkwoods and even a cluster of motherin-laws tongue (Sansevieria) growing on them. Few other tree species can claim to be as complete an ecosystem as a single Baobab tree.

But beyond all of these (many and compelling) reasons for loving Baobabs, the biggest of all to me is their fascinating symbiosis with us as Homo sapiens. Last year I joined a team of researchers in north-western Zimbabwe, plotting the distribution and health of Baobab trees in the communal lands just east of Hwange.

As we walked through homesteads and arable fields, and out into the grazing lands beyond, it quickly became apparent that the greatest concentrations of Baobab trees lay around peoples’ homes.

Observers from across Africa have long remarked on the close association between people and Baobab trees, and their distribution is clearly heavily influenced by human settlement.

And it actually makes total sense. The trees are immensely valuable to people, and so people look after them. I’ve rarely seen rural people in Zimbabwe actively planting Baobab trees, but I’ve often seen people actively protecting Baobab seedlings that have naturally emerged.

Baobab seeds germinate very easily, and hundreds of tiny Baobab seedlings sprout every year around a fruiting Baobab tree.

Without protection, though, they are all almost invariably doomed to die a swift, crunchy death in the jaws of a passing herbivore. But where they’re valued, people will protect them. It doesn’t take much. A thorny branch placed over the seedling is enough to get it through its early years. And it was the “ah-ha” moment of realising that the survival of Baobab trees in Africa depends on their ability to generate cash revenue for rural people that first led me into my journey as a Baobab entrepreneur. It’s an old, but true, adage: “use it or lose it”. And it definitely stands true for Baobabs.

Today I’m a partner in one of African’s biggest Baobab producing companies, and I’m also chair of the African Baobab Alliance, a continent-wide association that supports the development of the Baobab industry. To me it’s all about conserving and protecting these magnificent trees through their sustainable

use. Often, in the daily grind of trying to keep a business afloat in challenging conditions, I’m reduced to talking about Baobabs in horribly capitalistic terms : “resource”, “raw material”, “inputs”.

I hate having to do that. But then I take a deep breath and remember that it’s for a higher cause. What kills Baobabs is when they get in the way of economic activity. What protects Baobabs is when they become the source of economic activity. And that’s what has been the driving force behind all I’ve done to help commercialise them.

One day my brief time on Earth will be done. When that happens, I’ll be grateful for the many lessons I’ve learned from these incredible trees and proud of what I’ve done to help conserve and protect them. But mostly I’ll be excited for the next stage. Because heaven, surely, is an enormous Baobab forest in the sky.

Instagram: @africanplanthunter

The relationship between man and Baobab is symbiotic: the tree owes its survival as a species to the people who rely upon its fruit for their own livelihood

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THE VIEW

THE NEXT EDITION

In its heyday, Harare’s Book Café was the beating heart of Zimbabwe’s cultural scene. Tomas Lutuli Brickhill — patron and performer, and son of its founder — thinks it’s time for a new chapter Words by Tomas Lutuli Brickhill

H

arare has always provided a few hidden gems when it comes to interesting live music and performing arts events. Some restaurants and bars rely on these nights to keep things fresh, but it’s difficult to find details about the shows, and none of the venues ever has anything happening more than once or twice a week.

Once upon a time, however, there was a magical space in Harare where there was an event happening every night of the week. It was a place frequented religiously by the city’s artists and creatives, and was a regular stop for tourists looking for a window into the local scene. That place was Book Café (and for a time its sister club, Mannenberg) and together the venues were a melting pot that cut through the social, economic and racial divisions that split the city’s communities.

Book Café still holds a special place in many people’s hearts and memories. Since 2015, when it closed its doors, people often ask me, “What happened to our Book Café? When will we have our place back?” These are difficult questions to answer because the story of Book Café is complex; but since I was there at the very beginning and at the very end, I am in a unique position to know the full story.

I am a product of Book Café: not only am I a former employee and the son of its founder, Paul, but it was there that I first performed my own original compositions, and my current band, chikwata.263, was born in those rooms. Indeed, many of my early childhood memories are of sitting in Grassroots Books — the first iteration of the Book Café ­— working my way through its extensive collection of Russian and Chinese children’s literature.

Grassroots Books was founded after Independence by a group of ex-ZIPRA war veterans, which included my father and my uncle, who donated seed money to help launch a bookshop, tasking my

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parents with sourcing books that had previously been banned by the Rhodesian government. But as the years went by and the economy unravelled, buying books became a luxury and, in an effort to adapt with the changing times, Grassroots Books evolved into a combination of a bookshop, restaurant and bar. Situated on the edge of the CBD, upstairs at Fife Avenue shopping centre, Book Café began trading in 1997.

Book Café consisted of a small bookshop managed by my mother and a cafe run by my grandmother. My father looked after the tiny stage area where there was a programme of discussions on politics, economics and social issues, as well as literary events, poetry slams and a weekly performance by the Luck St Blues band — of which both my father and I were a part.

The venue was a hit, attracting a wide range of writers, academics and artists: at its peak, Book Café was hosting up to 16 events a week and soon became known as “Harare’s cultural hub”.

There were poetry slams, film screenings and fashion shows, book launches and theatre productions. New performance concepts, such as an open mic night, were introduced, as was a weekly standup comedy event featuring the legendary Edgar Langeveldt. There were, of course, lots and lots of live bands: some of the biggest names in the history of Zimbabwean music, such as Chiwoniso, Andy Brown, Mokoomba and Oliver Mtukudzi, often took to the stage, forging a path for the careers of countless others.

The Café gave mbira music a primetime Friday night slot, helping to push it into the mainstream.

In 1999, when a space next door became available, the business expanded and the Mannenberg, Harare’s first jazz club, was opened. Over the next ten years, Book Café and Mannenberg became the centre of Harare’s art and culture

The Book Cafe evolved from Grassroots Books, a shop which brought books into Zimbabwe that had previously been banned by the Rhodesian government

THE VIEW scene. The House of Hunger poetry slam attracted renowned Zimbabwean poets such as Chirikure Chirikure, Albert Nyathi, Cde Fatso and Outspoken — the latter two would go on to start a regular hip-hop and spoken word event at Mannenberg that we now know as Shoko Festival. Through the Pamberi Trust, an arts- and culture-focused NGO started by my father, numerous development programmes were created; indeed, Zimbabwean favourite Simuka Comedy started life at Mannenberg.

Book Café’s events were frequented by ambassadors and penniless poets alike; people of all backgrounds became regulars, united by a shared love of art and culture. New friendships and understandings were born that transcended society’s divisions. The artists and creatives who performed there also used the space to socialise and network; many of them called Book Café their “home”. The concepts of free speech and inclusiveness were always championed, enabling frequent progressive discussions that clashed with increased government suppression of dissenting voices.

Meanwhile, the country’s economic conditions created a rollercoaster ride for businesses, but somehow Book Café and Mannenberg survived, sustained through the worst times by support from the Pamberi Trust, and at other times subsidising Pamberi’s activities when it too ran out of funding.

Then, in 2011, disaster struck: we were evicted from both venues to make way for an expansion of the supermarket downstairs. But just three months later, against the odds and at great cost, the merged Book Café and Mannenberg clubs reopened slightly further into town, on Samora Machel Avenue, rebranded to simply “Book Café”. The new space was larger, allowing for bigger shows.

Musicians such as Sulu Chimbetu and Oliver Mtukudzi could perform with their full bands, while emerging acts could now open for better-known names thus creating a complete ecosystem for supporting new talent.

In 2014, disaster struck in a different way. My father, Paul Roger Brickhill, legendary Book Café founder and Managing Director, was diagnosed with cancer and died just over two months later, less than a year after he first fell ill.

The Book Café was no more.

Apart from my father’s sudden death, there were other factors that lead to its closure. The Pamberi Trust, our NGO

partner started by my father, had tried to reinvent itself to deal with Zimbabwe’s worsening economic crisis, but it too had lost its visionary founder. We also suffered huge losses during the move to the new location on Samora Michel Avenue.

Within an 18-month period, Book Café, Jazz 105, Misty’s and Sports Diner all closed, marking the end of dedicated live music venues in the city.

It was this perfect storm that had killed my father’s dream, but on his death bed he had warned me not to kill myself trying to keep his dream alive. He actively pushed me to pursue my own course in life, but I was still heartbroken when I had to make the painful decision to close Book Café down in 2015.

Zimbabwe has an enormous number of talented artists and musicians and I believe that we need a Book Café now more than ever. Recently I’ve started revisiting the model of the original venue (and what it later became) to figure out what I might do differently, and which things need to be the same if the concept is to thrive once more.

In the months leading up to his cancer diagnosis my father had been working on the idea of formalising the intimate but haphazard relationship that had developed over the years between the venue and the artists into an official membership structure. This should be a key component of Book Café 2.0 — it should

be part-owned and run by a more formal collective of the artists and creatives who utilise the space.

However, a new Book Cafe needs to be commercially focused. Although grants or donations to get it up and running would be more than welcome, ultimately the model must be self-sufficient to be sustainable. I believe that investing in arts and culture can and should be profitable, but the balance between extracting profits and reinvesting in developing new talent is key — this was Book Café’s secret sauce.

I would want to revive some of the ideas and events so beloved of Book Café regulars, but we would also have to innovate, developing new concepts to nurture talent once more. Ultimately our goal must be to own the venue so that any new Book Café can be assured a secure future, whatever surprises the Zimbabwean economy may have in store.

Could the Book Café really come back into existence? I believe that it can.

Next year we will hold the Book Café Festival to remind you of what we lost when the venue closed, and to let people know that we’re looking for a new location. Book Café was “home” to the artists, creatives and patrons because it was a place of encouragement and support. It’s always been our Book Café, it felt like it belonged to us all. It’s time to bring it back to life. Who’s in?

Visit: facebook.com/bookcafeharare

Book Cafe founder Paul Brickhill, on saxophone, takes to the stage with Andy Kiposa and their band, the Luck St Blues, at Harare’s Mannenberg jazz club

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THE VIEW GIVING UP THE GHOSTS

In his debut novel, Avenues By Train, Farai Mudzingwa explores themes such as politics and trauma through the eyes of siblings Jedza and Natsai. In this extract, Jedza’s life is turned upside down Words by Farai Mudzingwa

B

ack at Harare station, the switchboard lights up and the signals are working again. The driver rouses from his dreamless sleep feeling as if a steam train is charging around in his head. When he gets up, his insides stay behind on the bench while he staggers onto his feet, and when they then come up into his belly, they swim up into his throat. He heaves painfully, then wipes his mouth with his sleeves. He has had rough mornings before but this one is laced with trepidation. He could still get this day off as sick leave but he also knows that he is walking a tightrope with all his drunken missed days. He shrugs and heads to the platform boards. He needs no prompting from the station manager, knowing he has to make up for lost time.

He pulls out of the yard and accelerates out of the city, sliding out with wellpracticed mechanical motions. He has done this routine so many times that the responses are automatic: he flips switches, turns knobs and pulls levers in a daze.

He usually blows the horn when passing Chenga Ose. It is his good-luck ritual.

A part of him wishes his neighbours knew it was him driving the engine. Indeed, he has told people often about his important position, bragged while drunk.

This morning a fog hangs over Chenga Ose. A fog unlike any he has seen at this time of the year. The white orb appears as an opaque wall across the tracks and extends into nothingness in each direction.

The engine ploughs into it. A chill passes through him and brings on another volley of coughs and sneezes. The locomotive is going at full tilt and blows through the white blanket, the wagons rattling at pace. A sense of dread washes over him as he takes measured breaths to calm himself down.

The train emerges from the fog and a pastoral landscape opens out with the city behind him. The train’s contact to the electric line above the train sings out and the contact of the wheels on the rails responds. The trucks rattle on as the train sweeps into wide curves and down through gently sloping valleys. It cuts through the

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hillside along a dyke and the red banks of earth zip by in a blur. On the other side, a cluster of shops, a crossing, fields and fields of some crops too young and lowgrowing to recognise, another cluster of shops, and beyond the fields, a weir that strains to contain a river whose pent-up waters are eager for a signal to erupt.

If the driver were to observe these hills that he has passed mindlessly on numerous trips, he would count seven.

Seven hills that the ancients may have

Above: Farai Mudzingwe, author of Avenues By Train

THE VIEW considered sacred. If he were to hear the voices echoing around the granite boulders, what would he hear? Pleas from those who came before, not to blast away the hillsides? Not to alter the configuration of this granite amphitheatre which lends an elegiac acoustic quality to the rainmaking ululations of old women who brew millet beer? Are these not the hills of Bangidza, the first hills of the first people? Would the voices of the ancients ask the driver what is a road or a railway, and what mighty gods do they serve who demand that they shift mountains and dry rivers? They would certainly insist that he look more closely at the fields and see the morning sun gleaming on the sweaty backs of farm workers whose fathers and mothers followed these same tracks to break their backs in these fields. They would ask the driver, “Who dares to own land?” The ancients would want to know if those who cleared this land knew that they were cutting down rain-making trees.

It is as if they knew that tobacco would take and take from the soil, depleting it of nutrients. As if the interlopers and forgetful youth did not care to know that the people of the soil embedded the fertile umbilical cords of generations before and generations to come, in the same earth. The ancestors would warn that to leach goodness from the earth is to starve the people of the soil. They would advise them not to take as if this land never had those who lived upon it and with it, those whom they exiled from it and who now live it in their dreams.

Those who came before would demand that these hills be protected from quarry excavators and mining shafts in which cages and pulleys are worn and strained to the limit. If only the train driver would prise open his heavy eyelids and see these bal-an-cing granite boulders used by the ancestors as granaries, burial sites and worship sites. They would show him these forgotten battlefields, sites of ambush and the desecration and betrayal of a people.

Then, he would feel the ground shake, ever so slightly, as the train thundered across rivers that had been cut off and around valleys that had been flooded. If only he would see that our people now fish and hunt under cover of darkness. If he were to listen, allowing the ancestors to bite his ear, he would feel each sideways shake of the carriages as the spirits in the hills leaned into the train.

Alas, the train attains top speed and locks in. The driver sounds his horn and conquest reverberates through the hills.

The train swerves again and thunders on, fortissimo, unstoppable.

M iner’s Drift. On our bicycles we speed along a wide footpath until we join the road heading into the township. Takunda and I pedal ourselves ragged trying to get ahead of one another to maintain front position. We get to the slight incline that leads up to the railway crossing, riding abreast and pumping furiously. Dalitso keeps up effortlessly, uninterested in our competition.

“Stop, the boom is coming down.”

Takunda focuses ahead while riding on.

“You first.”

“Look Takunda, the lights are flashing!”

“I don’t care. You must stop.”

“No, you. I said it first,” I counter.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m in front.”

“No, I am.”

“No, I am.”

“No, I am.”

The train begins the long sweeping arc over a ridge and into Miner’s Drift. Dotted along the ridge are the verticals of mining scaffolding and pulleys. The town itself is not visible yet, save for grain silos and a couple of communication towers. The train driver looks at his watch and sees that he has made up for the lost time. He takes a deep breath and swallows to ease his throat. His tongue catches on the roof of his mouth. He looks around for the bottle of water he knows is somewhere in the cab. The headache is now at full steam and he feels hot, feverish, his insides begin their revolt again. The sideways rocking and jolting of the train has had him fighting off nausea for a while. He looks ahead and sees that he has turned into the final straight entering the town. Ahead, he can see flashing lights at the crossing and the booms coming down. He sounds the horn, then turns back and resumes his search for the fallen water bottle.

The train horn blasts into my ears.

I start pumping my brakes while keeping my eyes on the train. Takunda’s foot misses a pedal; he cuts across me and jams our front wheels. We both land in the red dust. Dalitso comes crashing into us. I push him off me, but I push too hard and my shove lands him in the path of the train.

The driver sees the water bottle rolling under his seat and reaches for it, crouching low. Shakes his head and struggles back onto his feet. He unscrews the cap and takes a few painful swallows.

The hot reflux remains lodged in his tract.

A mouthful of water only nudges it down a notch.

The tracks in front of him, at the crossing point.

Something there that shouldn’t be.

White blanket. No, not déjà vu. Small this time. He sees a little kid in white garments scrambling up onto his feet, right there on the rails. Not possible. But yes, there is someone, there is this fucking kid. The ball of acid stops in his tract. He just stares as it happens. The acid burns. Paralysed to the spot. Why does he not move? The corrosive burn radiates outwards into his chest and belly, rises back up his throat.

What is he doing on the tracks? Why this, why now? His stomach lurches and caustic bile shoots back out of his mouth. No, he thinks, no, not this. Shaken, unsteady, light dimming, he lunges for the brakes.

Trains blew past him, Sekuru Jairos, at intervals as he walked. He travelled alone but knew he was part of a long human chain seeking their fortune southwards.

There was evidence of those who were travelling ahead of him. Remnants of a fire here. Tall grasses flattened out as a temporary bed. Empty cigarette packets, matchboxes, corned beef tins, rotting flesh picked at by crows and vultures, a mound of earth the length of a grown man, with stones laid over it and stuck in at the head a crude cross made from branches and tree bark. Sometimes he passed groups of men working shirtless to repair the rails, shivering with fever and sweating with exhaustion, replacing timber on the tracks, laying new lines at a mile each day for trains they would never ride.

Sekuru Jairos swore at each train as it blew past. A great beast snorting clouds of black dust and sparks of fire, with red eyes, a shrill bellow, a charging animal with insatiable hunger, gasping and heaving forward, grinding its jaws. He spat on the railway tracks and cursed them as he set off each morning. Swore he never wanted to see another train ever in his life, if he only made it to Salisbury, and if anyone ever made him look at one again, he would never let them rest.

High in the skies, a line of storks breaks formation and scatters. One spirals downwards in broken flight.

A small thud of noise, insignificant, no louder than the odd calf struck down on the tracks.

Somewhere near the boy sprawled in the dust, another boy is screaming, hands covering his eyes. What cannot be

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THE VIEW unseen. The bird impacts the ground in a soundless burst of white feathers.

Up on the ridge, the earth is trembling: shaft cables snap in quick succession, sending loose cages crashing down into the depths.

Streams in surrounding farms break through weirs and cascade downstream in cathartic waves of release.

Below Pfumojena township, at the pool in the stream, bubbles rise from the depths and sigh into the surface air. Reeds tremble in waves radiating outwards from the pool, sending weaver birds into upward surges of panicked flight.

I lie in the dust looking around me. The top of the rail is smooth and shiny. The sides are caked in dull soot blending in with the dirty quarry stones and wooden sleepers. The smell of the hot tarred road at midday, oil, steel and red clay soil fills my nostrils. I sit up and stare. At the tracks, at the pair of feet and white garment. The train blows past with a sound like a rounders bat swinging into a small bean bag. Like a bag of flour landing on the floor in a puff of white.

Then train brakes start screeching and the horn blasts long and hard. The trucks speed past and mesmerise me.

The horn trails off and a high-pitched whine rises louder and louder. I have energy rising within me, singing in my veins and making my limbs tingle. All I can see is what is directly in front of me. Inside my head blankness, that is all I know. Time slows down and then stops.

The whining recedes. It’s all too quiet now. The sky closes in on me. All around me the world darkens.

The figure in white reappears but it is now Sekuru Jairos sitting on the tracks in his armchair, staring at me. I squeeze my eyes shut. When I peek through them again, it is now Dalitso. My heart leaps into my throat and thumps at my epiglottis. I squeeze my eyes shut again.

I do not know for how long. I want to keep them shut forever.

Slowly, I reopen them. It is Sekuru Jairos, and he stands up, eyes boring into me and points at me. Silently, he mouths, “You. You. You.” His voice loops in my head, over and over. Then he fades away. The sky rifts apart and light filters back in,

widening my field of vision. A heavy molten light that leans on me. The surge of energy abates and seeps out of me. My limbs weaken under the weight of the sky.

The train has come to a standstill further down the track. A man, bent double, vomits beside the engine. Running feet come closer. Distant scream after distant scream floats in from above and across the tracks. Silence again.

The world has cracked open.

Then someone places a hand on my shoulder and shakes me, hard. I can see what they are doing even though I cannot feel it. My teeth are grinding back and forth, molar on molar, bone on bone, and I can’t hear what they are saying.

The whining sound pierces my hearing again but not as loud as before. Overhead, the noon sun blinds me like the township tower lights in the evenings, sunspots floating black and giddy.

I squeeze my eyes tight closed and scream into the dust. I feel the raw strain in my throat but I do not hear my voice.

Dalitso is gone.

Avenues By Train by Farai Mudzingwa (Cassava Republic Press) is out now.

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INNOVATION: DR TEMBO

grassroOTS innovation from the local communities of zimbabwe

What’s with all the period drama?

Dr Mandi Tembo is clever, determined and not in the least bit embarrassed, which is why she is the best person to get Zimbabwe talking about menstruation Words by Charlotte Ashton

W

hen Mandi Tembo joined a team of researchers working on reproductive health, she didn’t think it would lead to her hosting an Instagram feed full of provocative artistic interpretations of the female reproductive organs. But that’s the stunning thing about Mandi: she goes where the research takes her, and the importance of sexual pleasure to mental wellbeing is the next frontier of holistic sexual and reproductive health research.

Born in Harare, Mandi went to high school in the city before leaving to do her undergraduate studies at a liberal arts college in the United States. From there she did a Masters in Global Health and Development at University College London, followed by a PhD at the London School of Hygiene, which is where she specialised in menstrual health ­— because that’s what young women in Zimbabwe were crying out for.

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The MWEDZI exhibition, organised by Dr Mandi Tembo (opposite, left) encouraged women to produce art to best express their experience of menstruation “As far as I could tell, menstrual health wasn’t something you could study.

We wanted to develop a community reproductive health service so we started by asking young people what they wanted. The boys asked for condoms, the girls wanted menstrual health products and information about menstruation.

There was no material in Shona or Ndebele, no videos of people like me explaining how to use menstrual cups or to answer frequently asked questions.”

The work that followed put Mandi at the forefront of Zimbabwe’s period poverty movement. This campaign,

which highlights the difficulty that many women across the world face trying to access menstrual products, education and hygiene facilities, has gathered pace over recent years. Initially Mandi got short shrift from communities in Zimbabwe — mainly from conservative families who felt that even the most basic information was too much for their girls and women.

Mandi understands this stigma all too well because she’s lived it herself. “I grew up in Zimbabwe with very conservative parents. When I got my first period there wasn’t a conversation about it at home.

I was just told, ‘Here are your pads, don’t

INNOVATION: DR TEMBO

play with boys now,” and I was like, ‘But what does that mean? What’s the link?’”

Mandi’s early work focused on understanding Zimbabwean women’s experiences of periods. With her stellar academic experience, self-assured manner and open-mindedness, there wasn’t a better researcher for the job.

“Anecdotally, period poverty is all about a lack of access to products,” Mandi says.

“There was a lack of rigorous evidence to show whether this was the main need. When we gathered qualitative and quantitative data, it showed that access to products is indeed a big problem. But it also showed that there is so much taboo and stigma, and a lack of informationsharing that leads to poor behaviour.”

One of the biggest surprises to come out of her research was the number of women who talked about significant period pain. The assumption was that girls were missing school or skipping work when they had their periods because they didn’t have products to use. But many reported being in too much pain to continue everyday life; others said they couldn’t afford pain medication and analgesics weren’t enough. This was a lightbulb moment for Mandi.

“We realised that there must be so many women living with endometriosis, which is such a painful and debilitating condition, who will never get a diagnosis,” she says. “The assumption in Zimbabwe is that periods are meant to be painful — that’s what I thought when I was growing up — but that’s not true. Knowing how much pain affects women’s lives was a new discovery.

When we started talking about pain with women in this country there had to be an educational component because it’s hard to calibrate pain when you assume that pain is normal. Educating people to what is normal allows them to think more critically about their experience.”

Armed with this research, Mandi and her team set up community centres

where women could access products and information. In a country such as Zimbabwe (a “low-resource setting” is how it is described by academics) access to products is the biggest challenge.

There is also the added dimension of dealing with menstrual blood when you don’t have access to water, light — or indeed a clean, private bathroom.

Mandi is a fan of the menstrual cup as a solution as it only needs changing once a day, is easy to wash and doesn’t create a lot of waste; but her research reveals the limitations so many of us have experienced ourselves trying to get to grips with that fiddly piece of silicon.

“Many people who advocate for the cup say that if women just keep trying, they’ll get used to it. However, the findings from our work is that both menstrual cups and sanitary pads are viable options but there’s a clear preference for reusable pads rather than the cup.”

“Many young girls initially opted for the cup. They said, ‘Oh, this sounds interesting.’ Then they would come back and say, ‘Actually I need the reusable pads. My mum took my cup away because she thinks it’s inappropriate for me to use.’ It’s obvious that we need to educate the wider community too.”

Social taboos are a far bigger challenge than access to pads or cups. Questions that Mandi is asked by women and girls

are as much about sex and body image as they are about menstrual cups and period pain. However, issues such as sex are harder to address because they directly confront the barriers and expectations that women must overcome in a conservative place such as Zimbabwe.

Undeterred, Mandi has made these culturally embedded issues the focus of her post-doctoral research fellowship, funded by Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute. Mandi’s Instagram feed, @thebleedread, is also the perfect example of “participatory data collection”: the scientific term for the intersection of art and science which encourages people to share their experiences by creating art.

For issues that are difficult to discuss, art can provide a language.

This has led to Mandi’s latest project: an art competition, MWEDZI, which invited women to create a piece art or music to describe their menstrual experiences.

The results made for a no-holds-barred exhibition at Harare’s Pikicha Gallery in November. It will, Mandi hopes, raise awareness about how painful and lonely periods can be for women in Zimbabwe.

One senses this is only the beginning.

Zimbabwe is an unlikely place to be pushing the envelope on female sexual health, but if anyone can get us talking, it’s Dr Mandi Tembo.

Instagram: @TheBleedRead

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INNOVATION: MOBI

The MOBI unit, a kitchen fitted to the back of a truck, visits the Harare areas of Hatcliffe, Epworth and Goromonzi every week

MEALS ON WHEELS The mobile MOBI kitchen is a revolutionary way to get nutritious food to children in need around Harare Words by Sophie Edwards

It’s 1pm on a Saturday in a squatter camp in Hatcliffe, a short drive out of Harare, and a large crowd of children, ranging from little kids to teenagers, is milling around. Many have been there for hours, running around and playing games. But they are not just there to hang out, they are waiting for lunch - which may be the only proper meal they get all week - to be served from MOBI, Zimbabwe’s first mobile soup kitchen.

Equipped with just a portable gas stove and two enormous cooking pots fitted in the back of a Toyota truck, the MOBI Soup Kitchen feeds up to 700 kids in Hatcliffe every Saturday, up to 400 hundred in Epworth on Wednesdays and as many as 1,100 in Goromonzi on Thursdays.

Since it started in 2021, MOBI’s founder Nicole Rautenbach estimates the charity

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has served 50,000 meals to children and teenagers, typically of rice, beans and vegetables washed down with maheu maize drink. Chicken, duck and beef are also frequently on the menu and fresh vegetables always feature.

MOBI is a truly grassroots enterprise.

One hundred per cent of the food is donated by local businesses, including Pro Brands and Pomona Food Market, the truck and fuel are gifted by Green Fuel and Slab Sales provides regular funding. Meanwhile, local volunteers from the communities help with the food preparation, cooking and cleaning.

The idea was born out of the urgent need to get food out to vulnerable and isolated communities during the Covid-19 pandemic, Nicole explains. She was working for a homeless charity in

Harare at the time which tried to help by offering weekly and daily outreach programs, but access was an issue. “We were being contacted by hundreds of people in lockdown with no money or food saying they were starving and begging us to bring them food but we had no way to help them. The majority of the people lived in what is essentially defined as a ‘squatter camp’ with no electricity, no running water, no sewerage system and no formal structures and so gaining access to them with supplies and assistance was very difficult,” she says.

It was from this experience that the idea for the MOBI was born. Nicole decided that what would work best was a mobile soup kitchen which could quickly respond to crises by bringing food to areas in need. “I came up with

INNOVATION: MOBI

the idea of the truck and I just felt compelled to make it work,” Nicole says.

Nicole quit her job to launch MOBI in Hatcliffe and soon 700 hungry children were showing up with plates and makeshift lunch boxes every week. As the numbers grew, so did Nicole’s ambition for the soup kitchen which she realised needed to offer communities more than just meals on wheels. “My initial vision for the truck was that it would be zooming all over the country feeding people. But I realised pretty quickly that you can’t just go somewhere, feed people and leave; you have to get to know the communities and help them in lots of other ways,” she says.

Now, alongside offering a weekly meal, MOBI also pays the school fees and buys books, shoes and uniforms for ten children from Hatcliffe. The charity has also facilitated urgent hospital care for some infants with acute malnutrition, as well as sourcing clothing and blankets for the community. This year, the charity even delivered Christmas presents to 600 children. “We’ve grown into a support system for these communities because they have no access to alternative assistance,” Nicole says.

The Saturday soup kitchen also offers families a fun social event, according to Earl, MOBI’s manager. “It’s a happy time for them, they come and have a decent

MOBI HAS FACILITATED CARE FOR CHILDREN WITH ACUTE MALNUTRITION, AS WELL AS SOURCING CLOTHES FOR THE COMMUNITY

The MOBI organisation is hoping to raise funds so that a doctor and nurse can travel with the truck to provide communities with much-needed medical care

meal but we also all hang out and play games,” he says.

The soup kitchen is also supported by a strong network of volunteers, mostly mothers and teenagers from the communities, who help prepare the food, cook and clean. Their help is invaluable, Earl said, but they are happy to do it.

A volunteer, Beauty, who lives in Hatcliffe with her five children, says MOBI had made a positive impact. “The kids in this community used to suffer a lot, you could see just by looking at them, they were skinny. But now they are growing and they have chubby cheeks.” Beauty’s 14-year-old daughter, Tatenda, also helps out on Saturdays. “I am happy to see the little ones getting food, we are so grateful to the soup kitchen,” she says.

Another volunteer, Melody, said that her two children have benefited hugely from the MOBI meals but also the blankets and clothes the charity has provided. “I’m so grateful for what MOBI is doing.”

MOBI has also grown rapidly in the two years since it launched, expanding from Hatcliffe into two new sites in Epworth and Goromonzi. But Nicole doesn’t want to stop there. The founder hopes to get a second truck, and also wants to raise funds to sponsor additional children through school and then start looking into apprenticeship schemes for the older ones. She also hopes to ramp up MOBI’s medical assistance. Her ambition is to have a doctor or nurse come with the soup kitchen when it visits communities.

“These kids are going to grow up with so many issues because they’re sick and there is no one to help them,” says Nicole.

Luckily they have her - but she’s going to need our help too.

Instagram: @mobizw To support MOBI’s School Fee Campaign, call: +263 777 370 926. There is also a donation box at the Fridge Kitchen, 63 Ridgeway North, Harare.

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ALL RISE

Get up on your feet to celebrate the homecoming of Shingai, the girl from Lewisham bringing her sound and style back to Zimbabwe Words by Charlotte Ashton Photographs by Simon Webb

F

or a platinum-selling music sensation on a mission to launch a new chapter in a national culture, Shingai is unassuming, down-to-earth and really, really nice.

I find her in the corner of the cocktail bar she’s chosen for our interview in Shoreditch, East London, looking elegant in a neat, black jumper that makes her hair jewellery pop. She’s just arrived home from Leicester where she played the Africa Music Festival UK 2023 — the Legends Tour alongside Zimbabwe music giants Jah Prayzah and Winky D and she’s got a bag full of shopping that she’s picked up on the way here. She greets me like we’re long-lost friends, apologising for not spotting me before I spotted her, urging me to sit down and calling over the waiter.

We dive into talk of Zimbabwe, united by the fact that we’re both missing it terribly. After half an hour (and a strong cocktail: “Sundowners!” Shingai says as we tuck into our drinks) I’ve completely forgotten how much I normally dislike interviewing popstars. Because Shingai is preoccupied with a mission far bigger than her own career. And that mission is this: to launch a new brand of Bantu music, art and fashion, celebrating the sounds and crafts of southern and east Africa in a way that’s never happened before.

“When all the other countries were getting excited about their independence, everyone was just dragging us. If you were Ghanaian or Nigerian or Kenyan or South African you were allowed to be proud and optimistic. We weren’t really given that.

Growing up in London as a Zimbabwean, you had to right all the wrongs that had been told in the media. So I guess a lot of us assimilated and blended into South African culture. But now we can repaint our story in a more colourful, balanced way, and give props to the people that came before us.”

If any Zimbabwean artist has the influence and experience to launch a new brand, it is Shingai, Zimbabwe’s biggest international popstar. Almost as an aside, she mentions her time in LA, working with Will.I.Am and Janet Jackson’s songwriters

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who loved the Zimbabwean mbira music she played them, and I’m reminded how phenomenal her musical success has been.

Born and brought up in London, Shingai was at the BRIT school in Croydon when she met guitarist Dan Smith and together they formed Sonarfly — the perfect name for a band who fluttered between genres: sometimes jazz, sometimes funk, sometimes pop, always catchy. The band soon found themselves in talks with major UK labels, but there was a catch: they only wanted Shingai and asked her to ditch her band. She refused, so the friends went back to normal life.

their performances in Africa which Shingai talks about most: at Malawi’s Lake of Stars she shared the stage with the late Zimbabwean legend Oliver Mtukudzi.

Those of you who were at the HIFA music festival in Zimbabwe in 2013 may remember her climbing the lighting rig and hanging upside down while singing.

Artists she’s collaborated with during her career include Annie Lennox, Dizzee Rascal and Dennis Ferrer.

The Noisettes last played in 2019 and since then Shingai has been building a solo career, launching her own record label, Zimtron, to release her Ancient

Shingai’s mission is this: to launch a new kind of music, art and fashion, one that celebrates the sounds and crafts of south-east Africa in a way that has never been done before Five years later, the sacrifice paid off when they were spotted by a music executive from Universal who saw a photograph of Sonarfly riding on a merry-go-round, with Shingai hanging off one of the horses, guitar in hand. Immediately captivated, Universal signed the band on the spot and put them on a plane to LA. And so the Noisettes were born.

An indie-rock sensation, the band had instant success, hitting top ten music charts in the UK and here in Zimbabwe.

They played big-name international festivals such as Glastonbury, but it was

Futures EP, which references her uncle Thomas Mapfumo, and reflects the mbira music soundscape that has been her inspiration. To launch your label is a brave move, in keeping with the confidence and defiance that makes her debut full-length album, Too Bold, pack such a punch. The title song says it all: “I’m not the girl you knew before” — and the mesmerising intro track explains why: “There might be a Shingai that you don’t know/What if I told you that I’ve been told I’m too dark, too dark/Too smart, too bold/That shit was making my blood run cold.”

Shingai is returning to her roots. Not that she hasn’t always been influenced by Zimbabwe and traditions of her parents’ birth country. It’s just that now she’s letting her heritage take centre stage as the defining part of her identity. Her latest songs are infused with stirring mbira rifts and the polyrhythmic shake-shake-shake of hoshos. The chanting on “War Drums” is done by her cousins, recorded in her Gogo’s village on a trip to Malawi with the Noisettes.

“Harare To Mutare”, Shingai’s latest single, addresses the trauma of migration and “how this renaissance of our culture

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is helping us find healing and find our way home, whatever home means to us.” In “Battle Scars” she writes for the first time about what it was like losing her father at a young age. “Writing about it has been very cathartic,” she says. “The song says, ‘I’ve got battle scars but I wear them like armour/Oh for my father/Driving them Rhodesian cars’. That essentially means that my dad never recovered from the battle scars he faced, he died from things he never recovered from in the war.”

Her lyrics are a chimurenga-esque rallying cry to Zimbabweans in the diaspora — “We were the ones they said

wouldn’t make it/You’ve got to go and get your birthright” — urging them to reconnect with their roots and rise above western prejudices: “Too dark, don’t let them tell you you’re too dark/Don’t let them tеll you you’re too dark/How great thou art.”

Shingai is done with working for other people and is determined that from now on any success she has will benefit Zimbabwe, not London. She is driven — and perhaps a little burdened — by a sense of responsibility to make things better for future generations after she herself benefited from the sacrifices her

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parents made. She’s founded Ubuntu Futures, a “sustainable eco-culture centre” just outside Harare, where Shingai’s team will run permaculture projects with local farmers and build a creative centre to teach music, dance, storytelling, arts and crafts. Her vision is to host international artists on creative retreats, encouraging collaborations, and boosting the Bantu brand Shingai is envisioning.

It will be the physical home Shingai dreams of on African soil where, it seems, her heart has always been. Listening to the story of her childhood, it’s not hard to understand why. Since her earliest years, the sounds and people of her parents’ homeland have nurtured and reassured a shy, sometimes sad, little girl. Some of her earliest memories are falling asleep in the dressing room at the Africa Centre in London’s Covent Garden where her uncle Wala Danga — the original African music promoter — hosted African artists. Shingai’s mum would take her along to the gigs and then cook sadza for the artists afterwards at their home in south London.

“I grew up with all these musicians just jamming around me. They’d be like, ‘Pick this up!’ and I’d say, ‘What is it?’ ‘They are hoshos!’ they’d tell me. ‘It’s a hollowedout pumpkin. You just have to keep time.’

I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s really cool.’ I remember loving the knowledge and loving learning about the artistry of Bantu creative culture, the storytelling, the spirituality of everything.”

Then, aged nine, came the love of her Gogo in Malawi, where her mother sent Shingai and her twin sister to recover from the death of their father. “I felt like suddenly I just couldn’t really speak, I couldn’t express myself. I guess, not being able to have the language to talk about grief at that time.”

They stayed in Malawi for a full year, taking trips around the country, playing with their cousins and doting on a puppy they adopted. Shingai’s fondest memories are helping their Gogo with her tailoring business. “She literally sewed up my broken heart,” Shingai says. “My mum

‘ I grew up with lots of musicians jamming around me. They’d say, “Pick it up!

It’s a hosho, a hollowed-out pumpkin. You just have to keep time.” I just thought that was so cool’ sent her this industrial sewing machine, and Gogo essentially had a fashion house in the middle of area 25, Lilongwe. She employed a team of four or five amazing women for the whole year that I was there.

I was very quiet when I got there, and then she would give me something to do.

‘Wind the bobbin up,’ she’d tell me. ‘Undo the wool for me. Make sure you don’t get any knots in it.’ She knew how to get me to open up.”

The twin sisters enrolled at a local school, learning in English and Chichewa.

“I just remember thinking, ‘Wow! I’m getting this education under a tree, but it’s really good education.’ Nobody’s acting up. No one’s throwing erasers around, because you’ve only got one, you’re not about to lose it!” In her Gogo’s compound, Shingai the artist was born.

“I found my confidence in Malawi,” she remembers. “I was just always singing.

When I was helping my auntie or my Gogo with whatever they were doing I’d say, ‘I’ve heard of a song. Do you want me to sing it for you with the wooden spoon?’

They encouraged me. They said, ‘You’re really good at this. This is what you should do. You enjoy this, don’t you? Do more!’

Then slowly, slowly I found my voice.

That time saved me, for sure.”

By the time they arrived back in London, Shingai’s grades in the secondary

school entrance exams were so good the teachers didn’t believe it. “I remember one of our teachers said to my mum ‘I thought you said they’d been in Africa?’ My mum said to them, ‘Schools in Africa are good!

Do you want them to take the test again?

Because I’m pretty sure you’re going to get the same result.’ Thanks to Malawi we got into a grammar school, we were in the top ten in our whole year.”

When Shingai talks about Zimbabwe and Malawi there’s determination, passion and sincerity in her voice. She buzzes with the energy of a woman on a mission, but the playfulness that has characterised her performances since the Noisettes days is definitely still there. At her last gig she cartwheeled onto stage. “I’m not taking any responsibility for the cartwheels!” she laughs. “I’m going to blame my ancestors.

When I go on stage, first of all I pray and I give thanks to my ancestors. The moment you give thanks to your totem and your totem is monkey — mine is Soko — all hell is going to break loose on stage.

I just feel like I call in their agility.

I call in their confidence. I call in their gift for storytelling. I pray and give thanks to God and my ancestors — my mother is Shumba so I call on them for courage.”

Zimbabwean music and Bantu traditions have always whispered around the edges of her music, but now she’s

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putting them centre stage. The Too Bold album features traditional African instrumentation with digital, futuristic sounds — a theme that started with her solo EP Ancient Futures. What hasn’t changed is Shingai’s staggeringly beautiful voice, which Rolling Stone magazine described as “equal parts Iggy Pop and Billie Holiday”. In 2021 she collaborated with Zimbabwean producer Verseless writing “No Fear” in the Harare suburb of Glen Lorne. In its music video, Shingai and her friends take a road trip on an iconic “chicken bus” onto which Zimtron had asked Caligraph to paint a mural.

The “No Fear” video is a stunning romp and reflects the evolution of Shingai’s creative process which has moved into a different space — literally.

“One of the unique features of Zimbabwean, Malawian, Southern African rhythms and melodies is that a lot of the composition and the singing is done in the outdoors. We’re outside people.

We love nature. When I collaborate with people in Zim, we’ll just be outside with a Bluetooth speaker and some instruments. Writing outside is so beautiful because with the Noisettes or with other projects, everything was done indoors. So that’s going to change the music, right?”

(Right. I know this first hand after a failed effort to record a marimba band for a radio documentary in a studio. It sounded awful until we went outside.

Marimba has to bounce off the trees to sound right.)

Back to those evenings, asleep under the table in a dressing room at London’s Africa Centre, the sounds of mbira and hosho seeping into her musical

subconscious. The seeds of musicality were planted in Shingai’s heart, and also, perhaps, a sense of the injustices that she sings about today. Because, Shingai says, she was also aware of a darker side to this joyful music scene. An injustice that saw world-famous Zimbabwean performers getting paid a fraction of their western counterparts. A struggle to negotiate the logistics of travel that still characterises so many Zimbabwean experiences in Europe and the UK. “I remember there was a time, probably in the Nineties, when the Bhundu Boys were at Wembley, and they turned up at my house at the end of their tour in a transit van. There were loads of them.

My uncle was like, ‘Can you believe they were only given £50?’ So I guess I sensed that there was a bit of a dark side to it all — the way that they were treated and seeing all the misalignment caused to families by visas and papers.

A lot of these bands would come through and a lot of these artists, writers, these overnight star sensations would be on BBC Radio 4 or the World Service. And there I was thinking, ‘But he’s got a hole in his shoe!’”

If this risks sounding bitter, let me be clear: Shingai’s sense of injustice doesn’t manifest in resentment — rather, a kind determination to change the conversation away from politics and history to everything positive Zimbabwe has to offer.

Phrases such as “Ubuntu” or “Buntu”, she says, are a reminder that Zimbabwe is more than a political story. In turn she hopes that this will give Zimbabweans the confidence to invest in the country that is their cultural home.

“We’re still doing so much for other economies, so much for other places, so much for other record labels. I feel like the danger in that is the place that we’re from is never going to develop if we are spending our financial energy, creative energy, and intellectual, academic energy on growing other people’s businesses and allowing them to flourish. That doesn’t sit right with me and my heart. It doesn’t sit right with me because I’m like, ‘What if my dad didn’t have to go into exile?

They’re really super-amazing, smart people. If they had stayed...”

Shingai lets the thought hang for a moment. “It’s a mixture of confidence and also maybe just that little bit of time needed for other diasporans to say, ‘OK, I’m going to take a risk.’ I’ve taken so many risks in the UK. I have a multiplatinum band that has sold the most records out of any Zimbabwe in the world to the point where we’re nearly on four billion streams for “Never Forget You”.

But I don’t own the rights to my music.

Zimbabwe doesn’t benefit from that. If Zimbabwe doesn’t benefit from that, then I haven’t finished my job.”

With that we say goodbye and head off into the night. Later, Shingai sends me a voicenote thanking me for the interview, because that’s the kind of person she is.

“Let me know you’ve got home OK,” she ends her message. It’s a fitting sign-off for a woman who is going home herself.

She’s going back to the roots that she has at times been forced to deny, and going forward to, as she puts it, “a wonderful optimistic future of what is possible creatively as Zimbabweans and diasporans.”

‘ We’re still doing so much for other economies, so much for other places. The danger is that the place we’re from is never going to develop if we spend all our energy on other people’

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by S imon u n t r e w i s Ma t n e g de S y ym a a ward t a ti o f Z i m b y a t abwe me ,

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Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a combat sport that mixes techniques from the full spectrum of martial arts disciplines. The modern sport rose to prominence in the Nineties but has several precursors: Ancient Greek Pankration, Brazilian Vale Tudo, Japanese Shooto, American catch-wrestling, and the traditional street brawl. MMA techniques can be divided into two categories: striking, where standing opponents exchange blows, and grappling, where fighters try to gain advantage over their opponents through submissions, holds and chokes. Successful MMA fighters have expertise in both grappling and striking.

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n August 2022, on a high from his recent triumph as International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) African Champion, Lewis “the Porcupine” Mataya was passing through OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg when disaster struck. As the immigration officer flicked through the pages of his Zimbabwean passport to examine his work permit, Lewis knew something was wrong.

She looked up. “Where did you get this permit?” she said. His heart sank. “Boetie, you’re in big trouble...”

Born in the Chimanimani district of Zimbabwe in 1997, Lewis was the youngest of eight children. He grew up in circumstances that were tough but not unusual in the rural countryside, helping his mother farm and do chores around the homestead. Three of the children, Lewis, his brother Ian and sister Hide, shared a father who was a truck driver for a company called Maids. Walking along the road to school, Lewis would always keep an eye out for his dad’s Maid truck, number 32, but he never saw it. “I didn’t meet my father, I would only hear stories.”

Lewis’ early life was unstable: the family kept moving, and Lewis went to five different schools before he was seven years old. Every move caused huge upheaval: the family would have to sell property, dispose of livestock, pack their belongings, move, and then build their new homestead.

Lewis’ mother was a war veteran and had been injured in the fighting. Perhaps stemming from her experiences, she was a fighter. Short-tempered and prone to bouts of violent aggression, she was highly protective of her family. Lewis remembers her with awe.

“Everyone in the region knew her. They realised that you shouldn’t mess with this woman or her kids. She was so aggressive and she would really fight you with her fists. She would grapple you, pull you down and start hitting you,” says Lewis.

If you watch any of Lewis’ MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fights, you are struck by how uncannily this memory of his mother

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resembles the adult Lewis in the ring. “Pull you down and start hitting you” is the unrefined version of the MMA technique known as “ground and pound”, and it is how Lewis has won many of his fights.

In 2005, Lewis’ father died and within a year his mother was also dead. Lewis was eight years old, and now an orphan.

The children were parcelled out between different relatives; Lewis went first to an aunt, and then later to his eldest sister who was working in the Zimbabwean Air Force at Manyame Air Base in Harare.

There were tensions in this extended family, but the new-found stability benefited Lewis and he was enrolled in a better school at the base. The military approach was intense, but the structure taught Lewis punctuality and discipline.

“Even now I am rarely late to the gym,” he says. “When someone is teaching me, I listen.” It was also at Manyame that Lewis discovered martial arts.

‘ IN ZIMBABWE, EVERYBODY KNEW THAT I WAS A BEAST. THEN I WENT TO CAPE TOWN AND HAD TO START AGAIN. I WAS SHATTERED’ As a child, Lewis had been transfixed by kung fu movies and the big martial arts stars: Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude van Damme, Sylvester Stalone, Chuck Norris.

Aged eight, Lewis made his own punching bags, putting sand into sacks and hanging them up around the homestead so he could experiment with “backflips, spinning kicks, all these cool tricks”. He was often in trouble for tearing the crotch of his pants from extended kicks, and would flip the bed up against the wall to create space to train. He would take an oversized T-shirt, trying to imitate the formal martial arts gi, and wrap a black tie around his waist in place of a black belt.

At Manyame, Lewis was in the library one day when he heard strange noises coming from the hall. Drawn to it, he went to investigate. “There were these dudes wearing these white tops, throwing kicks, the coolest thing I had ever seen!”

he says. What Lewis had discovered was the Air Force Taekwondo club. From that day onwards, he attended every single session he could, training for four to five hours a day. He rapidly improved, earning the attention of senior coaches such as Honest Chabva.

Chabva, a Warrant Officer in the Air Force, became a mentor to the young Lewis, teaching him not only taekwondo, but self-confidence and self-worth. “He showed me that you’re not nothing, you’re important, something special. He was the first person to tell me that, and through taekwondo I managed to build my self-esteem.”

Within a year or two, Lewis had become the informal coach of the club. Though still a schoolboy, the Manyame soldiers respected his authority and growing skill. Both Lewis and Chabva have the porcupine as their totem, and as he started to enter competitions, Lewis, who is only 167cm tall, adopted it as his fight name.

“Even lions don’t mess with porcupines because they are tiny but mighty and dangerous,” he says.

Lewis travelled to national and regional taekwondo tournaments, winning gold medals and quickly becoming the Zimbabwean national champion. He began to coach at the University of Zimbabwe, and also won the 2017 Korean Ambassadors Trophy.

When he completed high school, Lewis decided to commit to a career in martial arts. Kicked out of his sister’s house after refusing to join the army, he accepted an invitation from his brother Ian to move to Cape Town and explore opportunities on the South African MMA circuit.

While transiting through Johannesburg, carrying no money, Lewis was robbed of his bus ticket to Cape Town. It would be the last time he ever used force outside of the ring. “I thought to myself, ‘If I get stranded here, if this guy takes my ticket, what do I do?’” Lewis fought back. “I gave that man four or five punches. I needed to do it. I was supposed to do it.”

You cannot escape the fact MMA teaches skills that are dangerous and potentially lethal. For Lewis though, uncontrolled violence is the antithesis

of MMA. “Violence is not good and it should not be associated with martial arts.

As martial artists, we avoid being violent.

We want to stop violence. Martial arts is about taming the energy to fight. Take a person like me who used to have anger issues: martial arts tamed that energy in me. It was split from my personality, and went all the way down to my shadow,” he says.

“The more I trained, the less I fought outside the ring. I’ve noticed that as people start to train, they fight less. As they learn they are capable of badly hurting other people, they ask, ‘Is this situation worth breaking every bone in his body for?’

Trust me, if I were to fight, there would be a trail of bodies, but I avoid conflicts.”

After recovering his bus ticket from the thief, Lewis arrived safely in Cape Town, where his brother Ian helped him to settle in and together they searched for a good place to train. Lewis found it hard at first, but then he came across Straight Blast Gym (SBG), an MMA gym run by coach Steve Bazzea.

Coach Bazzea’s career had begun in karate, where he had competed for the South African national team. But after considerable success in the discipline, he began to question it: “I could see that karate was limited, so I started to explore what else was out there,” says Coach Bazzea. When the MMA UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) league arrived in the Nineties, Bazzea was amazed. “Two people were stepping in and beating the crap out of each other but the small guy wearing a gi was winning. What sorcery was this?”

That sorcery was called Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), and it was a martial art that had been born in Japan and then developed in Brazil. Based on grappling, submissions and ground fighting, BJJ revolves around the concept that a smaller, weaker person can successfully defend themselves against a stronger, heavier opponent by using leverage and weight distribution, taking the fight to the ground and using a variety of holds and submissions to defeat them. Coach Bazzea pursued BJJ from then on, training with SBG’s Matt Thornton, and eventually he earned his black belt.

Lewis grins when he remembers his first meeting with Coach Bazzea. ‘I walked up to him and said, ‘Hey, I would like to fight MMA. Can you please show me how it’s done?’ And he said, ‘OK, you might be a second dan black belt in taekwondo, but you cannot fight. You need to learn how

Lewis’ MMA training programme attracts a whole range of different students, from middle-aged professionals to young school children

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to fight.’ I was shocked. Then he said, ‘I can help you by training you in jiu-jitsu.

Then we’ll see how it goes from there.’”

Lewis’ introduction to jiu-jitsu rocked him. “In Zimbabwe, everybody knew that I was a beast at taekwondo. I went to Cape Town and had to start again in jiu-jitsu as a white belt, as a beginner, knowing absolutely nothing. It took away everything, all the self-esteem, everything.

I was shattered.”

Over the next year, Coach Bazzea built Lewis back up into a more rounded, polished fighter, training him in BJJ, wrestling, Muay Thai and striking. “Lewis is an absolute sponge,” say Coach Bazzea.

“You can show him something and before you know it, he’s doing it against you.”

The two built up a close relationship, and the orphaned Lewis looked up to the older man. “Coach Bazzea looked after me, he would make sure that I was well, that I had food, that I was safe and secure.” On his side, Coach Bazzea quickly saw what Lewis wanted from him. “I recognised that immediately,” he says. “I refused to let him put me on any kind of pedestal. I told him I would be his coach and I would be his mentor. But father figure is a big ask.”

While Lewis was still only a BJJ white belt, Coach Bazzea entered him in his first MMA fight in April 2019, a lightweight bout in the Ultimate Warrior Fighting Championship in Cape Town. Lewis was terrified. “It started to hit me that I was

At just 167cm tall, Lewis has adopted his porcupine totem as his fight name: ‘Even lions don’t mess with porcupines’

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going to be in an MMA fight. Every part of my body was screaming, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it!’”

Lewis needn’t have worried. He won the fight — which had been scheduled to go for three rounds of three minutes — in one minute and 30 seconds. “That fight really made people a bit scared of me,” Lewis says, grinning. After winning his second MMA fight — again in less than two minutes — he was invited to fight for the Professional Fighting Championship (PFC) Lightweight Title against Nigerian Patrick Mbokwe.

As Coach Bazzea had to travel a few days before the fight, Lewis worried about not having him in his corner. “How can I fight without him?” Lewis thought. But just as Lewis stepped into the ring, he saw Coach Bazzea arrive at the venue. The fight began and over the first three rounds Lewis kept away from Mbokwe’s fists, softening him up with kicks before taking him down to the ground.

‘ LEWIS IS A SPONGE,’ SAYS HIS COACH. ‘YOU SHOW HIM SOMETHING AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, HE’S DOING IT AGAINST YOU’ By the fourth round both fighters were out of energy. “I was way past exhausted,” says Lewis. “I was gone. My system was fried, everything was sore. I don’t even know how I kept fighting. It was sheer willpower.” Then, just as Mbokwe gained the upper hand as they grappled on the floor, Coach Bazzea called out, “There’s an armbar!”

Normally when he’s fighting, Lewis is oblivious to everyone around him, shutting out the world beyond the fight.

But Coach Bazzea’s voice is the only one that penetrates this intense focus. “The crowd is going wild,” says Lewis. “It’s loud, but Coach Bazzea doesn’t shout. He just speaks, and I can always pick out his voice in the crowd easily.”

Lewis found the armbar and locked it in. But as he squeezed tighter, Mbokwe refused to give in. “I could feel the man’s arm, the tendons over-stretching, and then snapping,” Lewis recalls. Eventually Mbokwe tapped out in agony. The victorious Lewis was crowned PFC Lightweight Champion, winner of the biggest fighting promotion in Cape Town.

Then COVID hit South Africa. The ensuing lockdowns wrought havoc with

Lewis’ fledgeling career, limiting his opportunities for experience and exposure.

When the first lockdown was eventually eased in late 2020, Lewis was offered the chance to defend his PFC title against Congolese challenger Emmanuel Sita.

During the fight, Lewis felt like he could see through everything Sita was doing.

However, he allowed the bigger fighter, who had a record of slamming opponents on the ground and knocking them out, to think he had the upper hand. “I heard Sita’s coach yelling, ‘He’s scared, he’s running away!’” So Lewis backed off, allowing Sita to follow him in before Lewis stepped quickly forward and, with a lightning-fast jab, broke Sita’s jaw.

Sita fell flat on his back and the referee stopped the fight. When the disoriented fighter regained consciousness he tried to get up and keep fighting. When Sita eventually understood he had lost, he broke down into tears. “I felt bad,” says Lewis, “but that’s the nature of the game.

It’s me or him.” Lewis had successfully defended his PFC title.

Thereafter Lewis triumphed at a number of jiu-jitsu tournaments, winning the African Championships Gi and No Gi Divisions, and eventually reaching a ranking of first in South Africa and tenth in the global Abu Dhabi Jiu-Jitsu Pro (AGP) rankings. That April, he was invited to the IMMAF Africa Championships, fighting under the Zimbabwean flag. This was the largest MMA promotion in Africa, and the championship would feature three knock-out rounds.

Lewis’ first fight was against the favourite, South African Alistair Kunene.

“Man, I kicked him fast and I kicked him hard the whole time,” says Lewis. “I kept kicking him. I was throwing the flashy kicks, the spinning kicks, the high kicks.

Everyone was drawn to my fight because it was entertaining, it was fun to watch.”

Lewis won on points, and his next fight was against Namibian Geraldo Bok. “I have never hit anyone that hard in my life. The blows could be heard around the whole venue.” Bok stopped the fight, and Lewis advanced to the finals.

Lewis’ final opponent was a tough Zambian called Ken Nyaondo. Lewis knew it would not be easy. “Nyaondo was solid. He could kick, and he was really good at wrestling.”

Lewis began with his favoured taekwondo kicks, but Nyaondo easily dodged these and grabbed Lewis in a bodylock. “Any time Nyaondo grabs his opponents in a fight, they are done for.

‘VIOLENCE SHOULD NOT BE ASSOCIATED WITH MARTIAL ARTS. BUT TRUST ME, IF I WERE TO FIGHT OUTSIDE THE RING, THERE WOULD BE A TRAIL OF BODIES’

They don’t get up,” says Lewis. Luckily, having prepared for this situation with Coach Bazzea, Lewis had a plan: he rolled forward, catching his opponent off-guard and maneuvering himself into mount, the most dominant position for a grappler.

For the next three minutes, Lewis kept hitting Nyaondo, but the Zambian was tough and survived the assault. In the next round, Lewis launched a big kick with his left foot. Nyaondo saw it coming and blocked it with his shin, snapping the tendons in Lewis’ foot. “I could feel my foot just flopping on my leg. There was no pain, but I could feel that I had no control over my left leg.”

Sizing up his situation, Lewis decided that he had to continue with his strategy: he had to keep kicking. Using his injured, dangling foot, he continued to land kick after kick to his opponents’ ribs. As these kicks hit their target, Nyaondo gradually started to back out of attacks, and Lewis pursued him doggedly.

The final round came and the bell rang.

Lewis won by unanimous decision.

Only after the fight ended did Lewis start to feel the intense pain in his foot. It had been badly injured, and he couldn’t put any weight on it. He had to be helped onto the podium where he was crowned the IMMAF 2022 African Champion.

His rankings jumped to first in Africa and seventh in the world. Lewis “Porcupine” Mataya had arrived, and Zimbabwean MMA had been put on the map.

“Where did you get this permit, boetie?

Come with me.”

In August 2022, standing with Coach Bazzea at Johannesburg airport’s immigration counter, fresh from his success as the IMMAF champion and en route to a fight in Lusaka, Lewis immediately knew that something had gone horribly wrong.

Earlier that year he had been introduced to an agent at South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs who had promised to provide him with a work visa in return for a payment of 10,000 rand.

Lewis, who was desperate to formalise his residence status, jumped at the offer. As the agent requested formal documents, such as radiology reports and employment records, Lewis assumed the fee was only to push his application to the front of the queue. When he received the permit he was thrilled. It was only six months later at the OR Tambo immigration counter that he realised he had been duped.

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At Lewis’ SBG gym in Harare, students are introduced to both grappling and striking skills. Here Lewis’ sparring partner Tyler demonstrates a spinning taekwondo kick

Lewis felt his whole life collapsing around him. “Everything just caved in, right there.

All the ambitions, everything, just came crashing down.” Doors had been opening up for Lewis — he had been offered fights in Mauritius and across Africa, he had a training camp planned in Ireland with former UFC champion Connor McGregor’s coach — and just as quickly, these doors had shut.

“It was an absolute shock. I wasn’t disappointed,” says Coach Bazzea, “but I knew it was serious. I knew we were going to lose three to five years. I’m saddened by the fact that he was given the wrong advice, and it has got in the way of his dreams.”

“I could see Coach Bazzea was holding back tears,” says Lewis. “That was painful to watch.”

Lewis and his coach embraced and then Lewis was whisked off into the bowels of the airport, alone and at the mercy of the police. He was transferred to Kempton Park Police Station where he was held overnight before appearing before a judge the next day. He was forced to sign an admission of guilt which came with a large fine, or else he would face jail time.

While he organised the cash for the fine, Lewis was transferred to Modderbee Prison in an armed, eight-vehicle convoy, where he spent a tense week in the cells, his cellmates a range of convicted criminals. Claustrophobic, alone and afraid, Lewis managed to befriend a couple of Zimbabweans who were being tried for armed robbery. To gain respect,

Lewis showed them his Instagram account and described his martial arts career to anyone who was interested. But he realised immediately that survival would require more psychological than physical strength. “I knew I could destroy any one of them in a fight,” says Lewis. “But if there were three of them, or five?” So he adopted a conciliatory approach, showing deference to both guards and inmates, and buying favours with the little cash he had on him.

“Being in jail, the anticipation of release was actually way worse than the experience. I met some really cool guys in there. In there, you see the best and worst of humanity. You see people doing good deeds, not because they want something from you, but because they want to help the newcomers.”

With the fine paid, several days passed before Lewis was transferred back to the police station at Kempton Park.

There he was informed that he would be deported back to Harare the next day.

The police returned his cell phone and he immediately called his girlfriend, Ashleen, in Cape Town. She was understandably devastated by the news of his imminent deportation. “I reassured her, nothing will happen to us. I will try everything I can for us to always be together,” says Lewis.

“I could see she was anxious so we did a video call and I got onto my knees and I proposed! She thought I was joking at first!” Ashleen said yes, but it would be over a month before the newly engaged couple would actually see each other again in person.

Lewis was flown back to Zimbabwe, prohibited from entering South Africa again. It was a crushing blow to the fighter who, like many Zimbabweans, had been attracted to South Africa by the promise of economic opportunity. He had fought hard to make a name for himself, built up a reputation and a brand. And like many economic migrants he had struggled with paperwork and obtaining the legal right to live and work there. And just like that it was over. As Coach Bazzea points out, “If the UFC comes to Africa, they won’t come to Zimbabwe. They’ll come to SA.” Arriving back in Harare, Lewis began the task of rebuilding his life, determined to get himself back on his feet. His first step was to start Harare’s first MMA gym.

“I said to myself, ‘If the opportunity to fight again should arise, I want to be ready.”’ But Lewis needed a place where he could train daily, as well as the correct equipment and training partners. As none of these existed, he decided to build it himself. Coach Bazzea had always had a vision of setting up an SBG in Zimbabwe, so he convinced SBG’s founder Thornton to grant Lewis the rights to set up an affiliate gym here.

One of the challenges of starting a gym with no capital is the expense of importing equipment. Resourceful as always, Lewis spent time researching available materials, then designing and creating his own line of equipment, working with local upholsterers and artisans. “We have everything we need in Zimbabwe.”

‘ I WANT MY GYM TO CREATE FIGHTERS WHO ARE GOING TO WIN, WHO ARE GOING TO BE CHAMPIONS. I WANT TO BE A WORLD CHAMPION, TOO’ Within a few weeks Lewis had working prototypes of fighting shorts, shin pads and punching bags, designs which he is still refining, many months later. “All this is new to me, so it’s a bit intimidating, but I push those feelings aside. My vision is to supply the whole world!”

Bit by bit, the Harare gym is taking shape. It brings Lewis income and attracts a range of students, from middle-aged, white-collar professionals, to young kids. “Few things make me happier than making progress and getting things done.”

Now Lewis is focusing his effort on Tyler and Kuda, two of his students he is teaching to become training partners, giving him more time to focus on the next steps he needs to take to return to MMA competition.

“My vision, my ambition, transcends me. I cannot see where it ends. Looking inside, I cannot see the boundaries of my vision. I want the gym to create fighters who are going to go into the UFC. I want them to fight, to win, to become champions. And I want to be a world champion too.”

Realistically, with South Africa no longer open to him and with his body-clock ticking, Lewis urgently needs sponsorship to compete in a big international fight if his career as a fighter is to progress. As his childhood coach Honest Chabva says, “You won’t lose your money if you invest in Lewis.”

Lewis is upbeat about his prospects.

“This is a new season,” he says. “When this season changes, it’s going to be for the best, for the better.”

Whatever happens next in his life, it’s clear that Lewis remains undefeated.

Zimbabwe SBG Gym, 1 Portal Road, Highlands, Harare. Call: +263 783 048 431, email: lewismataya1@gmail.com

A woman's work Painting on canvasses twice her size, and with ambition and chutzpah to match, everything about Zimbabwean artist Prudence Chimutuwah is big, bold and bright. Welcome to the brave new world of the woman we love to call Prudie Words by Milly McPhie Photographs by Daniel Hargrove

Pombonoka (Born Free), 2022

‘ I PAINT WOMEN BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND THEIR WORLD. I DON’T WANT TO FIT INTO A MAN’S WORLD’ Tarisiro (Hope), 2022

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t’s Friday night in Harare, commuters and combis are crawling their way out of town, their tyres kicking up the dust, clouds of sand and grit illuminated only by car headlamps on the unlit streets. Just off this main road, along a narrow, bumpy track, is a garden centre — a rather incongruous location for one of the city’s most happening art exhibition spaces. Tonight, the car park is overflowing onto the street and the garden leading up to Artillery Gallery is packed: young, old, black, white, men, women, gay, straight, undecided, hip and not-sohip all gathered together — a snapshot of real, modern Zimbabwe.

This modern Zimbabwe is the only Zimbabwe I’ve ever known, recent import that I am; its people, the places I’ve visited and the experiences I’ve had here have enabled me to come up for air after too long drowning in a life I wasn’t meant to lead. Tonight represents a significant step: I’m out on my own for the first time, I know no one at the exhibition. It is a wonderful feeling of freedom.

Now, relax — I’m not going to bore on about me and my personal circumstances.

The reason I’ve been self-indulgently scene-setting is that my trip to the other end of town to see an exhibition by an artist I had never heard of was a real-life Sliding Doors moment. If, that Friday, I’d stayed at home with a sub-standard Netflix cop show and a lasagne-for-one, I would never have met the show’s star, Prudence Chimutuwah, the friend I’ve come to call Prudie. I would never have stood so close to her mesmerising mixed-media canvasses, or felt the power of her strong women towering over us from the gallery walls. I would never have conceived of collaborating with her and our cover star, Shingai. With every centimetre of the show space taken — no room for Insta selfies here — it also dawned on me that there was such a need to celebrate and support Zimbabwe’s cultural scene, to show it to the world and to give space to its rising stars. And so, in a way, this magazine was born that Friday night in March 2023.

Prudence “Prudie” Chimutuwah was born in 1989, raised and educated in the Harare suburb of Chitungwiza. She was a diligent student with a love of painting that even an art teacher with a penchant for corporal punishment couldn’t beat down: “She was so strict that everyone

Prudence Chimutuwah, photographed at her studio, Harare, 2023

always ran away from the art class,” Prudie says. “She was a great teacher, but she hit you if you got something wrong.

I was the only child who went to her class willingly.” An early indicator, as you will see, that Prudie is not one to be deterred.

Then, as is so disappointingly still the case, art was not thought of as a “proper” profession, so a career as a beauty therapist beckoned until Prudie met her husband, renowned Zimbabwean artist Calvin Chimutuwah. “I had no clue he was an artist when I met him,” she says.

“Then I went to his house and saw all his art and it made me revisit my passion for the subject, and he told me that there was actually a place where I could go study it full-time.” She applied for Zimbabwe’s National School of Visual Arts and Design and stayed there until 2011.

PRUDIE’S ARTWORK IS A REAL CELEBRATION OF WOMEN IN ENORMOUS, GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOUR Prudie had her first show with Calvin, “Purple Rhythm”, at the Tanglewood Art Zone in Borrowdale in 2019. “That show was the beginning of Prudie,” she says, “who I was, what I wanted to do and where I wanted to take my art.”

In 2020, when COVID brought the world to a standstill, Prudie managed to get herself into an online art bootcamp, run in conjunction with the Rele Gallery in Lagos. Promises of an art show in LA didn’t materialise, leaving Prudie with finished canvasses and nowhere to display them. “I was so excited about the exhibition and got everything ready to ship to LA, but then they just went

completely quiet. It was a huge shock.”

Enter Fadzai Muchemwa, celebrated curator of Harare’s National Gallery, who agreed to host Prudie’s “lost” show.

Prudie’s star was rising: exhibitions in the UAE, France and Nigeria followed. She sold an entire show to one collector.

And it’s not hard to see why. Prudie’s work is a celebration of women in enormous, glorious technicolour, but they’re not just a powerful expression of feminism. Her composition, use of colour (there’s always some fabulous neon) and technical prowess place her among the very finest, and most original, artists in the country. Why does she paint only women?

“I can relate to them,” she says. “I’ve gone through the same struggles and I understand their world. I don’t want to try to fit into a man’s world.”

Prudie’s subjects are always striking, but their sometimes gentle, feminine poses belie an underlying power. “I am intrigued by serious faces, and I rarely paint them smiling. I love the confidence they have when they’re up to some serious business.”

Although Prudie has often cajoled her sisters into sitting for her, it is the real women of Zimbabwe, those she meets on the streets of downtown Harare, who give her the most inspiration. “Most of the women I paint are selling stuff by the side of the road in the CBD. They’re hustling.

They tell me their dreams, their wishes, what they are looking forward to. They say, ‘I’m sitting on a pavement and it’s hot, but I’m hopeful I’m going to make some money and I’m going to put that money to good use.’ I’m telling their story of hope.”

Prudie works mainly with acrylics, but her skilful collages — on dresses, jewellery and head wraps – are also a prominent feature of her pieces. She’s also found

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Dancer 1, 2023

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Dancer 2, 2023

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Mambokadzi, 2022

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an excellent way to recycle the demonically denominated bank notes that circulated in Zimbabwe from 2007-2008 (the $100,000,000,000,000 note was a particular landmark). Many of Prudie’s canvasses include collages made from these now-defunct notes: “By reusing the bank notes, I’m trying to have a conversation about how much pain that time caused. I was at school when it was happening, and sometimes I just didn’t have the bus fare to get there. Collecting and using this money is how I can restore its joy and value. I want to give it new life — it’s me trying to give oxygen to something that still has the chance to make people happy in some way.”

Prudie’s studio, three rooms at the back of a church just off the Chiremba Road, is sun-filled and spotless; there’s always a canvas on the easel, sometimes with the first tantalising pencil marks full of promise that something special is about to happen. Every day she is watched over by the women on the walls. “Sometimes I find it difficult to let go of the paintings because when I’m sitting in the studio working it feels as though I’m having a conversation with them. These women touch my heart and I don’t want them to leave. They become part of me.”

Emerge, 2023, is Prudie’s first mixed media 3D artwork

now the older aunties giving the advice to the brides-to-be. We are saying to these young girls that they need to detach themselves from their husbands, that they can be a mum and a wife, and still explore their dreams and become someone who is celebrated on their own.”

It would be fair to say that feminism as a concept has some way to go in permeating Zimbabwean society, and no more so that in the art world which is still heavily dominated by men. “It starts at school,” Prudie says. “Even then the boys in my art class didn’t see us girls

‘MEN HAVEN’T COME TO TERMS WITH THE FACT THAT A WOMAN CAN DO ANYTHING A MAN CAN. WELL, MAYBE THEY DO REALISE, BUT THEY CHOOSE TO IGNORE IT’ A big part of Prudie is her husband Calvin, with whom she shares three children: Atidaishe, Anaka and Anezwi.

Calvin is often with her in the studio, working on his own creations. “Thank God for my husband,” she says. “Calvin doesn’t put me in a box. He has allowed me to explore myself and he understands that I am my own person and I have my own way of thinking. He has allowed me to grow.”

Such a progressive and supportive attitude to the life of a woman within a marriage is rare anywhere, let alone in Zimbabwe where the roles of a husband and wife are still defined along strict, traditional lines. “I was brought up at a time when at our bridal showers, just before we got married, our aunties and grandmothers would come and lecture us about how to take care of our husbands and how to put our dreams on hold,” Prudie says. “But my friends and I are

as competition. They thought only they would make it so they just competed among themselves, and this made the girls feel like they just weren’t good enough.”

Prudie believes that this early years discouragement is what is holding back many Zimbabwean women from choosing art as a career.

The battle continues, even for Zimbabwe’s established female artists.

Prudie’s solo show at Artillery Gallery in March 2023 was held in conjunction with International Women’s Day. It was a sell-out, breaking the gallery’s record for opening-night attendance. While Prudie’s strong female subjects represented the very essence of International Women’s Day, at other events it was business as usual with women pushed to the side. At one gallery’s Women’s Day exhibition, only two female artists were represented, their works displayed on a corridor off the main show space. The gallery itself was

full of works by male artists, whose brief had been to depict real women going about their daily lives. Prudie called the gallery out: “Yes, I did!

We can’t have men celebrating us like we’re dead,” she says. “It was heartbreaking. The women artists were so disappointed that no one could see their work.”

“We have to fight against the way the boy child is being raised in this country,” says Prudie. “They are being brought up as if they are born to lead and they can’t accept that women can lead too. Men haven’t come to terms with the fact that a woman can do anything a man can. Or maybe they do realise, but they choose to ignore it.”

“A guy walked up to me and actually said, ‘Women can’t draw, so how are you painting figures so well?’ He expected a woman to just be painting flowers and abstract themes.”

“How do you think I’m doing it?”

I asked him. “You are lucky that tonight is so busy and I can’t spend my precious time talking to you about your useless philosophies.”

“One day,” she continues, “when I see that guy, I am going to sit him down and properly school him.” He’d better watch out.

Prudie also has little time for many of her male counterparts in Zimbabwe’s art world. “I won’t have them in my studio,” she says. “They want to school you on their ideas. It’s just criticism after criticism. They are there to pull us down, and when you’re down they just leave you there and make sure you don’t rise again.”

While in recent years Zimbabwe has seen a rise in the opening of communal art spaces — undoubtedly a positive step in supporting emerging artists — Prudie believes that a women-only art space is what the country needs. “Making it as an artist in Zimbabwe is tough enough already without having to fight our own men who are in the same industry as us,” she says. “Women don’t want to have to fight like this, so they just give up and walk away from their art, so we remain a small group of female artists doing well.”

“But I know,” she continues, with her hallmark optimism and determination, “that if you are consistent and focused, and you know what you want, you can achieve anything.”

That, Prudence Chimutuwah, is exactly what you’re doing, and we can’t wait to see what you achieve next.

Instagram: @prudiemas

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M a n vs b e a s t Zimbabwe’s conservation sector is making steady progress, but our rural population is also growing. We investigate how human-wildlife conflict is affecting Zimbabwe, and what is being done to promote the peaceful coexistence of humans and animals Words and photographs by Simon de Swardt

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ogo Matekenya — Clevy is her first name, though no-one uses it now — is old. She doesn’t know exactly how old, but with several greatgrandchildren she looks at least 80. Ever since her husband died she has survived on her subsistence farming, growing maize and keeping chickens and goats with the help of her extended family.

Her husband, John, whom she married young, had always been a great provider.

He worked, like the majority of the residents of the Gache-Gache settlement, as a fisherman. In Gogo’s memory he was a hard worker; her face lights up when she describes how early he would rise, and talks about the size of his daily catch, and the money he earned from selling the fish to a white man called Sniff. “My husband’s fish outweighed the rest. We even won prizes from his fishing: plates, teapots... Oh, we won! Bream, tigerfish, bottlenose — he would catch them all. He wouldn’t bring home tiddlers!”

She remembers how he gave her a taste for simple luxuries. “Back then, I would drink tea with milk, eat bread with margarine, with jam, have cold drinks, oh how I used to eat! My husband knew how to take care of his family. To this day I find it hard to drink tea without milk because I was spoiled by him.”

Gogo recalls life with John as mutually supportive and caring. But one day he left early on his bike to go fishing at Tsuwa island. He never returned. Somewhere along the way he encountered an elephant

which trampled him to death before tossing his lifeless body into the bush.

Gogo was at home when her nephew brought her the devastating news; at first, she didn’t believe it. When her husband’s body was brought to her, she collapsed.

“Even now my heart is troubled. Today I still question why God didn’t take me first. The other day elephants came to my field and ate all the maize. I hid in my hut.

I didn’t know whether to come out or not as I thought that this may be the same elephant that killed my husband. The problem is too big. I will not conquer it.”

VILLAGERS WILL TELL YOU ABOUT THEIR RELATIVES KILLED BY WILD ANIMALS. SOME SHOW YOU THEIR SCARS. GACHE-GACHE IS A DANGEROUS PLACE The cemetery at Gache-Gache lies approximately 500 metres from the village.

When you visit after the rains, at first you can’t see the graves through the thick bush; it looks almost abandoned. But here, under the weeds and the grass and the undergrowth, lie Gache’s dead.

Gogo and her daughter-in-law Lenia thread their way through the undergrowth to the graves.

“Most of the people who are buried here have been killed by animals such as crocodile, elephant, buffalo and

hippopotamus,” says Lenia. “Yes, we get sick here, but most deaths are the result of animal attacks.”

The numbers may be exaggerated, but Gache-Gache has a staggering frequency of animal attacks. Most villagers will tell you about a close relative who was killed by wild animals; some show you scars.

Fishermen on the lake have nearly all been capsized by hippos at least once, some three or four times. Gache is a wild and dangerous place.

The Gache-Gache village is a small settlement on the shores of Lake Kariba, situated between the Gache-Gache river and the Sanyati Gorge. Sandwiched between the Matusadona National Park and the Charara Safari Area, GacheGache is a wildlife corridor, the only route for wild animals to pass through when moving along the southern shores of Kariba and along the Zambezi river from Victoria Falls to Kanyemba.

A two-hour drive from Charara or Magunjeover dirt roads, the village is remote and isolated. It sits in Region V of Zimbabwe, which is known as an area unsuitable for agriculture due to its low annual rainfall and infertile soils.

The village only exists because of the lake. Its residents are — theoretically at least — fishermen who make a living netting fish and selling to buyers who come to the village from all across Zimbabwe in big old lorries, or boats from across the lake. Buyers bring cooler boxes filled with ice, and camp on the lake’s shore for several nights as they buy up fish.

Gogo Matekenya (left) has lost both her husband, John, and grandson, Smash, to the human-wildlife conflict in Gache-Gache.

‘Yes, we get sick here,’ says Smash’s mother, Lenia (right), ‘but most deaths are the result of animal attacks’

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Families from the Gache-Gache village earn their living from Lake Kariba, but being a fisherman is a perilous occupation.

Their rudimentary boats, fashioned from tin roofing, are easy prey for the waters’ crocodile and hippo inhabitants

When Kariba was under construction in the Fifties, the residents of the Zambezi valley were forcibly relocated; in Zimbabwe many Tonga on the south bank were moved to the area around Binga.

But there were also Kore-Kore groups who were moved up into the hills above the escarpment in Nyaminyami. Once the massive hydroelectric project had been completed and the dam started to fill, people began to fish in the rising waters, and gradually, over the years, groups of fishermen coalesced into makeshift fishing camps along the shoreline.

One of the proposed benefits of building Kariba was the development of commercial fisheries. Expansive commercial fishing grounds were cleared using enormous chains and balls, dragged by bulldozers, so that the waters would be free from tree stumps and nets would not get tangled in branches. Today,

commercial fisheries on Kariba exist in three main forms: kapenta fishing, commercial aquaculture and artisanal gill-net fishing, which is the type practised by the Gache residents.

In the Eighties, the fishing camps along the shore were removed and their residents relocated to the Gache-Gache village. An electric fence was built, and order was created for the new settlement. The rules in the beginning were simple: 175 licensed fishermen and their two assistants were allowed to live in the village with their families. In order to ensure that there were no crops for elephant to raid, no one was initially allowed to grow maize. On the water, fishermen were subject to the laws which still govern artisanal fishing in Zimbabwe, aimed at creating sustainable commercial fisheries and protecting the environment. Twine nets, for example, are prohibited, and the minimum mesh size

for gill nets is four inches to ensure only larger fish are caught.

With time, the Gache village grew. As economic conditions deteriorated in the Noughties, economic migrants arrived from across the country in search of the ready cash obtainable through fishing.

Law and order disintegrated, and both human and wildlife populations rose.

In 1980, Zimbabwe had an elephant population of approximately 50,000 and a human population of 7.4 million. Today these have both doubled. In Gache and elsewhere, these growing populations came into ever-increasing conflict.

Significantly, people began to plant maize.

The magnificent wildlife area surrounding the Gache-Gache village falls under the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) programme. The CAMPFIRE model was considered

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In 2021, My Trees Trust took over some of the conservation responsibilities of the Gache-Gache concession and engaged the community in ways to reduce the incidents of human-wildlife conflict, in particular the problems caused by the rise in the number of elephants which was spiralling out of control. By then, the old electric fence surrounding the village was long

BEFORE A NEW FENCE WAS INSTALLED, HERDS OF UP TO 100 ELEPHANT WOULD MOVE THROUGH THE VILLAGE FIELDS AT NIGHT gone, its wire used to make snares, and herds of up to 100 elephant were moving through village fields at night, laying waste to the maize crops.

Kudzanai Makanyaire, the councillor of the Gache-Gache area describes how bad the situation had become: “Elephants started breaking down houses, breaking down chicken coops to eat the broiler

feeds. They would take maize bags, and even soya chunks at local schools. They would break into shops and take the baked beans and Zapnacks. We have so many shops that were knocked down. The elephants had just gone wild.”

With elephants like this, the villagers faced very difficult choices. “People were scared because the elephant could trample a house while people were inside, so we were really worried that people might die. In one incident the elephant knocked down a house with a six-week-old baby and its mother inside the house. Every night we would wonder where we were going to sleep. Should we go into the bush? Well, that’s where they live, their home. Should we sleep outside? Still that was risky. Should we go back inside? We did not know what to do.”

Rob Davy, Conservation Head of Department for My Trees Trust, arrived in March 2021 and immediately began to engage the community on how these elephant incursions could be reduced; the priority for most villagers was the installation of a new electric fence.

PHOTO: DANIEL HARGROVE

groundbreaking when it was established in the late Eighties, as it gave communities a stake in the management of their wildlife resources. In theory at least.

Under CAMPFIRE, a Rural District Council (RDC) can lease its natural resources to private safari operators, and the income generated from this is then invested back into the district, enabling projects such as building schools and digging boreholes, training community wildlife scouts and maintaining fences.

In the early days, cash payments were also occasionally made to the community.

For RDCs in marginal areas, CAMPFIRE can generate substantial income; for example, Mbire RDC, at the other end of the Zambezi, realises almost 70 per cent of its annual income from trophyhunting fees that are generated through CAMPFIRE. In practice, though, residents of CAMPFIRE areas often complain that the cash generated from the programme does not trickle down to them, and that they are not compensated when elephants or other animals destroy their crops.

This problem elephant was shot in the Gache-Gache village at the height of the conflict in 2021, when nightly crop raids led to massive crop losses. Today, the fence around the village has almost completely eliminated elephant incursions

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Councillor Makanyaire describes how he and Davy worked together: “We started by holding meetings between My Trees Trust and the community. Brick by brick, we kept on like that.” Davy agrees. “I took a survey from each village. I said, ‘Listen, do you guys actually want this thing?

Because we don’t want to build something you don’t want. We’re not here to trap you.

Do you want this?’ And unequivocally, 100 per cent of them said yes.”

Modelled on a unique Kenyan design, the fence uses metre-long live outriggers which look like wire tendrils protruding away from the main fence strands. With a standard electric fence, the elephants soon learn that they can knock it down by pushing over the posts. But the Kenyan model discourages elephant and other animals from even getting close to the fence, as they are shocked by the outriggers before they can touch the posts.

Almost 12km long and built at a cost of nearly US$130,000 the fence was a big investment for My Trees Trust.

Eighteen months later, the fence has been a huge success, with no elephant

incursions — until a week before we last visited. “The fence went offline at midnight,” says Davy. “Elephant are very clever, they test the fence all the time. At 3am, the fence went offline, and as soon as the elephant realised this, he pulled it down, came into the village and broke into three houses looking for food.”

Thankfully incidents such as this are rare, and My Trees Trust employs three guards from the community who repair the fence whenever it is damaged by either people or wildlife. The elephant problem, for the moment, is under control.

Gogo Matekenya’s husband John is not the only Matekenya who has been killed by wildlife. Her grandson, Smash, was a fisherman. Clearing away the grass from his grave, Smash’s mother Lenia cries as she explains how he died.

“He left early one morning to go fishing without saying goodbye. We were at church when we received a call from his older brother saying that they were looking for him. His boat had been capsized by a hippo — people searched but could not find him. The following day

his body was found in the water. Then people carried him up from the lake and brought him home to bury him here.”

Smash had been fishing with his partner when a hippo overturned their boat.

During the upheaval, he hit his head on the side of the boat and drowned. Smash left behind two young children, both aged under ten: Gogo’s great-grandchildren and Lenia’s grandchildren. Looking after orphans of wildlife attacks takes a toll on the strained social structures of the village.

“These kids’ future hangs in the balance,” says Lenia. “But that’s our way of life.”

In addition to hippo attacks, GacheGache also reports a staggering number of crocodile attacks every year. In the six weeks prior to the writing of this article, the Gache village, with a population of only 3,000 people, recorded four fatal crocodile attacks. For Lenia, the solution is simple. “These animals should be culled so that their number is reduced because there are too many in the lake. Our children need to have a safe place to fish because that is the only available work for them.”

Certainly many villagers believe, like

Since My Trees Trust took over conservation in the area, it has selected and trained wildlife scouts from the village youth.

These scouts make regular anti-poaching patrols, and also respond to any human-wildlife conflict incidents

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Lenia does, that culling is the answer.

But this practice is no longer allowed in Zimbabwe and is considered cruel and unethical in many Western countries.

Culling may also have unforeseen ecological results: studies made elsewhere in Africa show that the large-scale culling of crocodiles from lakes can lead to a surge in catfish populations, the main prey of the Nile crocodile. Catfish outcompete tilapia, so increased catfish populations lead in turn to reduced tilapia populations, and therefore less bountiful catches for fishermen. The studies concluded that culling may also have a negative impact on the fishing industry that it is meant to be assisting.

Davy makes the point that many of the fishing regulations are designed in part to protect fishermen from crocodile and hippo attacks. The large number of illegal boats on the water — estimated by the Gache Fishermen’s Association to be approximately 350 — is almost triple the amount of the permits available. Made from tin roofing sheets, and sitting low on the water, these unregistered boats are unstable; their lack of buoyancy tanks makes them particularly prone to capsizing when attacked by hippos. But for the villagers, they are the cheapest way to get out onto the water.

The regulations also outlaw fishing in shallow water and in river mouths, but these areas are easier to access and thus favoured by illegal fishermen. These waters host, of course, much larger numbers of hippo and crocodile, making incidents much more likely. The use of illegal fish-driving sticks, which are slapped into the water to chase fish into nets, also attracts crocodiles. Davy believes that enforcing existing laws would reduce human-wildlife interactions, and thus the number of incidents.

Councillor Makanyaire was himself once a fisherman. But after twice being capsized and nearly drowned by hippo on the water, he vowed that he would never fish again. In his view, unemployment in the village is the key driver of illegal fishing. When his eldest son left school, Councillor Makanyaire warned him, “If you catch fish for a living, I will not eat them. I would rather accept the fact that I have nothing to eat, than for my son to go out fishing.” Makanyaire shrugs.

“Either he will catch fish, or he will be caught himself.”

Conflict between man and wildlife is not unique to Gache-Gache on Lake Kariba.

Across the Sanyati gorge from Gache sits

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The increase in illegal fishing boats on Lake Kariba is directly correlated to the rise in hippo and crocodile attacks on the waters. It is estimated that there can be 350 boats fishing without a permit at any one time

Matusadona, one of Zimbabwe’s most beautiful national parks with its 1,400 km2 of rugged bush that begins in the Zambezi escarpment and rolls down to the open grasslands of the Kariba shoreline. In 2019, African Parks signed a 20-year agreement with Zimparks to run Matusadona under a delegated management model. Michael Pelham, the Park Manager, views conservation as critically important. “It’s part of our heritage, and it would be pretty sad to one day see that there was no wildlife or natural habitat left intact anywhere in the country. So it’s important to conserve these areas of natural beauty and biodiversity for us as a nation, to show our children and our grandchildren.”

Matusadona, like all of Zimbabwe’s parks, is largely unspoilt and no one lives inside it apart from the African Parks and Zimparks staff, so conflict within the park is minimal, except for minor issues such as baboons raiding tourists camps.

But beyond the park borders, in the five kilometre buffer zone that surrounds the park, African Parks has to respond to an “enormous amount of conflict”.

“Our predominant issue is that of elephant raiding the fields which are planted with sorghum and maize during the agricultural season from December through to May,” says Pelham. “Then we get livestock predation, by hyena predominantly, but also lion and leopard.

In the dry season we see elephant bulls breaking into granaries and people’s houses looking for stored grain and salt.”

Matusadona also hosts two fishing camps

inside its borders. Through policing illegal fishing on the water, fish stocks are rising again to sustainable levels. Legal fishermen welcome the presence of law enforcement as it results in fewer nets in the water, as well as larger fish, better catches and greater income. In 2022, the two fishing camps inside Matusadona averaged 40 tonnes of harvest each month, generating approximately US$64,000 — three to four times higher than the unregulated fishing camps.

For fishing to be sustainable, Pelham

THE PRACTICE OF LARGESCALE CULLING OF WILD ANIMALS, AS WELL AS BEING FROWNED UPON, CAN HAVE UNFORESEEN ECOLOGICAL RESULTS believes firmly in the importance of data: “We have to make sure that we are listening to science and we’re monitoring very closely what are practical and sustainable levels of off-take. When scientists give us advice on things such as how many permits should be issued, what the size of the nets should be, it’s up to us to listen and to enforce those rules.”

This kind of data drives management decisions at African Parks. “When we arrived, there wasn’t a lot of data on human-wildlife conflict so we put in mechanisms to improve accurate data collection,” says Pelham. Using an app called EarthRanger, African Parks records

geo-referenced data, and can then use this app to analyse and visualise trends across seasons at a species level. “We are trying to make sure that we become informationdriven, rather than just reactionary,” says Pelham.

One of the core issues is land use.

African Parks is working alongside Nyaminyami RDC to engage its surrounding communities to develop a grassroots land-use plan which will map out appropriate zones for settlement, agriculture and grazing, as well as community wildlife areas and wildlife corridors. Pelham emphasises that the land-use plan is not a top-down imposition, but developed and designed by the communities themselves. “We create the enabling environment; we provide the funding and the platform but [the communities] have to be the ones to come up with the plan themselves.” The completed land-use plan will then allow greater separation of humans and wildlife, and reduce conflict between the two.

“Without a land-use plan, and with the very random way that people are settling in these communities, and expanding their agricultural areas, the conflict is getting more and more intense,” says Pelham.

“That needs to be thought through more.

You can try to reduce the number of incidents, but there will always be some.

It’s inevitable.”

African Parks also has a team which lives in the communities outside the park; the team has vehicles and communications equipment so that it can respond to any human-wildlife incidents within 72 hours,

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BIODIVERSITY CREDITS ARE AN EXCITING FUNDING MODEL THAT COULD INCENTIVISE COMMUNITIES TO PROTECT THEIR WILD SPACES and severe incidents, involving loss of life or major injury or property damage, within six hours. It engages and educates communities on simple mitigation strategies that can be adopted, such as burning chilli bricks, using chilli fences and strengthening traditional bomas to protect livestock from predation. Rangers also “haze” predators that encroach into populated areas, chasing them and making them uncomfortable around people.

African Parks also works with other partners such as Wildlife Conservation Action (WCA), an NGO founded by Dr Moreangels Mbizah in 2019. WCA champions the use of canvas bomas in Zimbabwe; these simple, inexpensive structures provide a barrier through which predators cannot see, thus almost completely eliminating livestock predation at night. These canvas bomas also have the added benefit of being mobile so that they can be used to allow cattle to graze further from home.

WCA also recently introduced “lion lights”. This system consists of a solar panel and battery and a string of flashing lights which are set up around the kraal.

The lights annoy and discourage the lions, who then keep their distance. WCA plans to collar four lions from different prides in the nearby park. Warnings will be relayed to villagers in real time whenever a collared animal approaches a populated area, giving people a chance to herd their

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livestock into safety. Other ideas, such as beehive fences, which deter elephants and provide income to community members, are also being trialled. (In Gache-Gache, My Trees Trust also intends to reinforce its electric fence with beehives.)

Technologies such as these all add up and go some way to easing the problem, but there is no silver bullet. Dr Mbizah believes that there is also a psychological element to these interventions: simply by having someone listen to their troubles, investigate incidents and intercede for them, communities feel that they are being heard. “Our surveys found that most of the communities develop negative attitudes towards wildlife because they feel that no one cares about the people, that everyone only cares about wildlife,” says Dr Mbizah. “If there’s a poaching incident, authorities respond within minutes. But when there’s a humanwildlife incident, sometimes they don’t even respond at all.” She believes that just listening and responding to their issues has changed the attitudes and perceptions of the communities.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to a fairly simple formula: do the costs of wildlife outweigh the benefits? As Dr Mbizah said in a 2019 TED talk, “Unless the local communities protect and coexist with wildlife, all conservation efforts might be in vain. These are the communities that live with the wild animals in the same

ecosystem, and bear the cost of doing so. If they don’t have a direct connection or benefit from the animals, they have no reason to want to protect them. And if local communities don’t protect their wildlife, no amount of outside intervention will work. At every level, conservation must include the economies of the people who share the land with the wild animals.”

Pelham agrees: “We need to make sure that communities benefit from having wildlife in their areas. It’s their land and they’re the ones who should be deriving the benefit from it. It’s pretty hard when they don’t see the benefits, but they’re the ones suffering the problems.”

Significantly, in January 2023, the Government of Zimbabwe proposed a new fund to compensate the mounting number of victims of wildlife attacks. The scheme would cover three categories of incident: death, maiming and injuries.

The fund would be financed by a number of mechanisms, including levies on income for safari operators, CAMPFIRE fees paid to RDCs, donations and NGO funding. Since this announcement, however, there has been little progress in implementation and the fund is not yet functional.

While the fund is welcome, it is not a comprehensive compensation scheme: it does not cover financial losses caused by wildlife. For example, those villagers whose sorghum is eaten by elephants or

The Gache-Gache plain, with the village visible in the tree line on the lake shore to the left of this photograph

who have cattle killed by lions, would not be eligible for compensation by the fund. Dr Mbizah believes that this kind of economic support is critical to mitigate the financial damages caused by wildlife, and to minimise resentment in rural communities. This question needs to be asked: as this compensation is only addressing the negative impacts of wildlife, how can communities benefit in a positive manner?

One benefit offered by the wildlife sector is employment, as well as the broader economic benefits of tourism in terms of foreign currency brought into the country.

African Parks, for example, employs nearly 200 people, three quarters of whom are from the rural areas surrounding the park, and their salaries are all ploughed back into the local economy. But for the people who have lost loved ones or property, such benefits remain largely abstract. Despite the best efforts of organisations such as WCA, African Parks and My Trees Trust, currently there are few economic benefits for marginal communities who live alongside wildlife. Tourism dollars spent on Lake Kariba, for example, hardly reach the Gache-Gache residents.

In Davy’s view, though, the benefits that the community receives through conservation are very real but not always immediate and tangible. “Without wildlife there would be no conservation entities,” he says, “and this would result in reduced

support to community social services such as healthcare and education. In the harsh environment of Gache-Gache that would mean further poverty and reduced food security, as well as an almost irreplaceable loss of the very biodiversity that underpins community resilience and survival.”

There is, however, an exciting new funding model that could offer an alternative income stream to incentivise communities to protect their wild spaces: biodiversity credits. These credits are financial instruments which represent an asset created through investments in the restoration, conservation and development of biodiversity in a specific landscape. Organisations such as My Trees Trust or the Nyaminyami RDC, for example, could protect and conserve biodiversity to generate credits, and then sell these on to international and local corporations as a way of fulfilling their environmental, social and corporate governance obligations. The money generated could then be invested back into the local community as well as into further conservation activities, thus benefiting both parties.

While the conceptual framework of these credits is solid and backed by research, current schemes suffer from a number of issues. For example, how do you measure and value biodiversity?

And the nitty-gritty of how communities benefit would need to be worked out

carefully to ensure the scheme actively encourages their participation. For now, generating revenue from biodiversity credits is still only a distant possibility, but as the climate changes and global perceptions with it, models such as these will surely gain traction. For now, though, the conflict in Gache-Gache continues.

As a point of interest, it is worth noting that the term “human-wildlife conflict” is itself contested. Many people in the conservation sector prefer to use the more hopeful term “coexistence” to describe the nature of the relationship between humans and wildlife. “Coexistence” suggests a solution-oriented model and implies if not an end to the conflict, at least a truce. While re-framing the issue in this way may seem disingenuous, it is a helpful reminder of the end goal.

As of October 2023, the electric fence around the Gache-Gache village means Gogo Matekenya is safe. She no longer has to fear buffalo raiding her crops, elephant breaking into her hut at night, or lions eating her goats. Of course, nothing will bring back her husband, John, or her grandson, Smash, or take away the unspeakable pain of losing them both. But for the first time in a long while, Gogo’s life is safe and her livelihood is secure.

Beyond the fence, huge flocks of egrets follow the buffalo herds, and elephant graze freely on the flood plains.

And what’s that, if not coexistence?

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SCOTTSTREE_TWEAR

new model army THERE’S A REVOLUTION GOING ON IN ZIMBABWE FASHION AND 2023’S SKEYI&STROBO FABRIK PART Y WAS A FEARLESS RALLYING CRY. HOLD ON TIGHT, THIS IS GOING TO BE QUITE A RIDE...

Photographs by Rodney Badza

SAINT DANGER FOR EER

RAY ENDERS FOR EER 085

SAINT ACADEMY

BY SAINT DANGER

Caption:

THE SKEYI&STROBO FABRIK PARTY REVOLUTIONARIES LEFT: ULENNI OKANDLOVU, FOUNDER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR RIGHT: MARCUS ZVINAVASHE, CO-CURATOR

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SCOTTSTREE_TWEAR

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THE ROZEBOWL COLLECTION

FUNGAI MUZOROZA

THE ROZEBOWL COLLECTION

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AVUR BY RUVARASHE MUTSINZE

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SEX SOUNDS BY NOBUNAGA

SAINT ACADEMY BY SAINT DANGER

RAY ENDERS FOR EER

Coming soon to Highland Park

Fresh & healthy menu

Supporting local suppliers

Absolutely delicious

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DESIGN: LIGHTS

DESIGN Interiors / Architecture

LET THE LIGHTS IN Brightening your home needn’t be boring.

Add interest to your rooms with these illuminating Zimbabwean designs

By Milly McPhie

White opal ‘Wave’ lamp by House By The Sea. Call: +263 777 224 987, visit: www.housebythesea.dk

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DESIGN: LIGHTS

Halo lights, made from aluminium soda cans and stainless steel wire, by Luminess Design.

Call: +263 772 261 680, email: mac@mango.zw

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DESIGN: LIGHTS

Repurposed gas canister by Ralph Gallagher.

Available at Kumba. Call: +263 774 125 363, visit: www.kumbahomeandgifts.com

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The design of Rainbow Children’s Village was inspired by a picture drawn by a young cancer patient

DESIGN: STRUCTURES

the future is bright

With its imaginative design and inspiring colour scheme, Harare’s Rainbow Children’s Village is giving hope to children with cancer Words by Sophie Edwards

DESIGN: STRUCTURES

C

By providing a residential halfway house between hospital and home, Rainbow Children’s Village enables the children to continue their treatment at Harare’s Parirenyatwa Hospital, thus increasing their chances of survival.

“When the children come here, it must be a bright and colourful place that takes them away from their disease and brings out the child in them. That is why everything here is about colours and play,” says David Mckenzie, Executive Director of KidzCan Zimbabwe, the children’s cancer charity which runs Rainbow Children’s Village. “The name ‘Rainbow Children’s Village’ was actually inspired by a child with cancer who drew a picture of a hospital with a rainbow over it,” he says.

‘ RAINBOW CHILDREN’S VILLAGE IS A BRIGHT AND COLOURFUL PLACE THAT TAKES THE KIDS AWAY FROM THEIR CANCER AND BRINGS OUT THE CHILD IN THEM’ The job of Pantic Architects, responsible for the design, was to bring the idea of the rainbow to the structure. “We constructed the buildings in semi-circles to mimic the shape of a rainbow,” says Luka Pantic. “By doing this, it creates a sense of joy and fun while also making the children feel sheltered and secure.”

Rainbow Children’s Village currently has eight twin rooms, each beautifully

furnished and brightly decorated. There is a spacious communal area equipped with toys and a TV, a classroom, laundry facilities and a kitchen which provides its guests with three nutritious meals a day. The Village also provides transport to and from Parirenyatwa Hospital so there is no reason for the children to miss their treatment.

Since opening last year, the Village has cared for more than 50 children with cancer. Professor Inam Chitsike, a consultant on the children’s cancer ward at Parirenyatwa Hospital, said the Rainbow Children’s Village is already making a positive difference.

“There is no question that having this children’s halfway house is pivotal to the survival of children with cancer in this country; it has significantly improved the outlook,” he says. “Doctors here feel so much more optimistic, and of course the parents are happier because if the children can adhere to the chemotherapy cycles then there is a very high chance of them surviving.”

The future is looking good for the Village: this year, ground was broken for phase two of the centre’s expansion on a neighbouring plot of land. Over the next two years, another 22 rooms will be added, giving many more children the chance to lead a life free from cancer.

We look forward to following the journey of Rainbow Children’s Village.

To make a donation to Phase 2 of Rainbow Children’s Village, call: +263 778 852 641.

Email: info@rainbowchildrensvillage.com Visit: www.rainbowchildrensvillage.com

PHOTOS: LUKA PANTIC

olour is the first thing that hits you as you walk into the Rainbow Children’s Village – the walls are punchy blocks of orange, red, green, purple and blue, surrounding visitors with a kaleidoscope of brightness. The next thing you notice is the shape. Standing in the courtyard, the walls wrap around you in gentle semicircles, almost undulating, as the windows and roofs pitch at different heights. The effect is peaceful and calm.

Everything about the architecture, interior design and outdoor colour scheme of Harare’s Rainbow Children’s Village, which opened in 2022, is intended to conjure a real sense of fun and optimism. This could not be more fitting since this centre provides temporary housing for children undergoing cancer treatment, giving them, their families and caregivers a comfortable and secure place to rest and recuperate in between the gruelling treatment.

Rainbow Children’s Village and its army of fundraisers and donors are trying to reduce the rate of chldren’s cancer mortality in Zimbabwe. According to the World Health Organisation, the survival rate for children with cancer in Africa is approximately 20 per cent, compared with an 80 per cent survival rate for children from high-income countries.

This alarming discrepancy is due in part to the fact that many children living far from medical facilities drop out of their treatment programmes, unable to make the numerous long and often painful journeys to and from their villages.

Rooms at the Rainbow Children’s Village are designed and decorated to bring colour and light to its young guests’ lives

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Number Eighteen is an elegant guest house tucked away in the suburbs of Harare. Catering to both business and leisure travellers, this is the perfect environment to escape the hustle and bustle of city life.

We are committed to outstanding and personalised service, and will welcome you like family, providing you with the perfect home away from home during your travels

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DESIGN: TRENDS

ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL At this year’s Decorex show in South Africa, the focus was on being courageous with colour and texture. Colour, Materials, Finishes Consultant Laura Tofts picks her top trends of the year

TREND Sprayed sheet metal One of the highlights at Decorex was the beer brand Sol’s collaboration with a group of furniture and lighting designers. In the “Sunny Side” collection, bare wood, woven string and bubblegum colours were all strong, but I loved these re-purposed metal buckets the best.

TREND Playful colours

TREND Natural-fibre light fittings

Sera Holland’s artwork “Palette Cleanser” is exactly that: a refreshing placement of delicate pastels alongside vibrant high-chroma colours. Don’t be afraid to put light against dark, even if the colours are so starkly different. This year, you need to be brave.

These hand-crafted pendants from design company Modern Gesture are a wonderful statement of sustainability. I loved this Decorex display, especially how the lights are beautifully framed by the burnt orange wood-panelled backdrop.

TREND Hand-crafted tiles The Showroom Msasa, Bay 2, St James Building, 3 Borgward Road, Harare.

Call: +263 782 919 191.

Borrowdale Racecourse Showroom, call: +263 780 765 064.

Email: msasa@theshowroom.co.zw Visit: www.theshowroom.co.zw Instagram: @theshowroommsasa

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These Akashic vintage tiles, made by hand in Knysna, Western Cape, are intricate and detailed, their craftsmanship setting them apart from the mass-manufactured tiles we’re so used to. The striking colour combination again reflects the popping, playful colour scheme that’s going to be big this year.

DESIGN: DETAILS

HOT DESK Luka Pantic, architect

An architect whose work can be seen all around Harare - as well as in Zambia, Botswana, Serbia, Montenegro and Italy - Pantic was this year chosen

by UNESCO, along with Dutch planners Cityforster, to redesign the museum and visitor centre at the Great Zimbabwe heritage site

I use my VR headset to explore my projects, walking through them to see if there are any spaces that need to be improved or changed. Using VR is also a great way to see how sunlight affects a room and how the spaces feel.

No project is successful without a decent amount of coffee. Zimbabwe’s La Lucia is one of my favourite brands.

I have at least five cups before lunch, and a couple after just to help keep me awake for the afternoon.

My Mavic Air drone helps me to create topographical surveys that we use to see land boundaries and features. I also use it to take photos of sites and buildings to create stunning videos and images for presentations for clients. Drone racing is quite a lot of fun, too...

I’m working on an interior design project for the new Museum Of African Liberation in Harare, and I’ve been using these books for cultural and design research. The Museum is currently being built and is due for completion in 2025.

PHOTO: SIMON DE SWARDT

I like using fancy pens and pencils – especially ones from Lamy, Pilot and Zebra.

My father, also an architect, gave me a triangular Rotring.

You can no longer buy them, so it’s very precious.

You need the right shoes for basketball, but finding a size 12 is not always easy. I’m very tall so this is the perfect sport for me. I know I’m no longer 20, but I do still manage to bounce the ball and occasionally shoot it in the right direction.

I’m always up for a game of volleyball so I play wherever there’s a court. There are one or two rubber-surfaced courts in Harare which are better to play on than asphalt. The Zim volleyball crowd is great fun and there’s always a match between rival clubs.

Rammed earth bricks give great sound insulation and warm up and cool down slowly so they give just the right temperature day and night. I love how they look, and the fact that you don’t have to use cement so it really helps to reduce your carbon footprint.

You can never have enough biltong. I make my own. Start to finish, the process takes less than two weeks, and it means that I have a never-ending supply. I’m really pleased with this special biltong slicer that I found here in Harare. I always love a bit of kit.

Neufert is the bible of architect standards. It illustrates how various industries and buildings typically work and how the layouts should be arranged in order to work best for the occupants.

I often use it when I’m starting a new design project.

I studied and worked in Florence, Italy, then went to Ecuador and Serbia, and finally ended up in Zimbabwe.

I have a lot of education and experience, but sometimes my job is just a bit of colouring in.

A comfortable desk chair is absolutely essential, but it’s great if it looks good too. This one, fashioned from beautiful jacaranda wood, was made by a company called Panchipamwe here in Zimbabwe.

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AT HOME: DANA B

T R AV E L We select the best places to visit at home and abroad

INTENSE PLEASURE The new ready-pitched space at Dana B is a joy for even the most reluctant camper Words by Milly McPhie

F

or many of you dear readers, what I’m about to say borders on sacrilege, a violation of something close to your heart, an insult to a lifestyle choice that fills you with joy, has shaped you into the healthy, resilient human you are today and which you shall proudly pass on to the next generation of heroes.

This is it: I really don’t like camping. You might have grown up used to sleeping in sweaty tents and digging holes in which to toilet, but I find the concept of a night under canvas frankly untenable.

This may be because I’m a foreigner, and from England, where camping is usually a one-off experience, organised by over-enthusiastic parents eager to get their children off their screens and into

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the “great outdoors”. Three hours in, they realise that sitting in a muddy field just off a motorway is no way to spend a long weekend, and that toddlers have no concept of bedtime when they’re lying next to their parents and the door is a zip.

I am also a child of the traditional British boarding school system, so I was often sent on character-building exercises to England’s never-knowingly-sunny Lake District, armed with nothing but a couple of energy bars and a stiff upper lip. The drizzle. The cold. The misery. The thought of willingly going camping as an adult never crossed my mind.

Skip forward a few years and I find myself in Zimbabwe, surrounded by folk for whom camping is a way of life.

They have all the kit: folding tables and

chairs, rugs, rooftop tents, and trucks with carefully designed compartments for kitchen utensils. There are tablecloths, and useful gadgets, and no one ever forgets the matches. It’s all a bit much.

Praise be, then, for Tana Walsh and Olja Pantic, the dynamic duo behind Dana B Savanna Camp. These ingenious women were responsible for my gentle re-introduction to camping. If it wasn’t for them, I’d have never bought myself a skottle, or worked out what all the tools are for on my Swiss Army knife.

Just 40 minutes from Harare (which is convenient if you do actually forget the matches), Dana B is an oasis of outdoor heaven, perfectly suited to even the most reluctant camper. It’s the very epitome of glamping. There are secluded campsites

AT HOME: DANA B

on which to pitch your tent, close enough to the beautifully designed bathrooms, but far enough away from your neighbour to avoid hearing their arguments and/or heavy petting.

Reclining in your ergonomically designed camping chair, the view from your campsite is of stunning savannah.

Occasionally some sort of antelope might stroll by, but there is no animal here for whom the passing tourist is considered lunch. Riffraff the giraffe is the biggest beast you’ll come across, and there is no better way to spend the afternoon than cruising around the game park with your children trying to spot his long neck poking out above the msasa trees. This place is calm, comfortable and completely kid-friendly.

For those of you who need more than flushing loos and hot running water to tempt you for a night under the stars (don’t look at me, I actually love a bucket shower), Dana B has just opened its first Tented Camp. No marital disputes over correct tent pitching here — the structures are already up. And there are beds! And duvets! And you don’t have to stress about forgetting something: the outside kitchen is fully equipped, and bathrooms

stocked with soap and loo paper. All you need to bring is alcohol and a deep desire to unwind.

OCCASIONALLY SOME SORT OF ANTELOPE MIGHT STROLL BY, BUT THERE IS NO ANIMAL HERE FOR WHOM THE PASSING TOURIST IS CONSIDERED LUNCH This is the perfect place to spend time with friends and watch your children go feral, but if you do grow restless there is plenty on this site to keep everyone entertained: Wild Day Spa (which you can read about in the Wellness section of this magazine) is a five-minute drive away, and the park is filled with sculptures from Zimbabwe’s renowned Chapungu Sculpture Park, dotted around the savannah like a treasure hunt.

“We wanted to challenge the concept of an African safari,” says Tana. “And make it a little bit avant garde,” adds Olja. Indeed, art, design and music are key concepts

of the Dana B collective. The park often plays host to music festivals, outdoor dining experiences and kids’ camps.

Dana B’s permanent geometric dome, complete with teak floor, allows for events all year round: yoga retreats and private parties are a frequent fixture.

As well as providing a haven away from Harare, Tana and Olja set up Dana B as a means to protect the animals and the wilderness, both from property development and poaching. “We use our profits to fund a fully trained antipoaching squad, and it’s a constant battle to keep the animals safe,” Tana says. “Only 23% of the planet’s land surface is still wilderness,” she continues, “and we need invest in our wild spaces. Dana B is a perfect way to express our Zimbabwean heritage, through our music and Shona stone sculpture, and to conserve our beautiful country.”

Now that’s a version of outdoor sleeping even a traumatised camper like me can get excited about.

Dana B Savanna Camp, Melfort.

Call: +263 779 878 773.

Email: info@savanna-camp.com Visit: www.savanna-camp.com Instagram: @danabsavannacamp

Set in acres of wilderness and just 40 minutes from Harare, Dana B Savanna Camp is the ideal place to leave city life behind

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Delta blues Botswana’s Okavango Delta is under threat from mineral exploration and population growth. Can tourism help to save this delicate, precious ecosystem?

Words by Charlotte Ashton

T

he Okavango Delta is Mother Nature’s party trick. An audacious splash of green, brimming with curious, colourful life, pulled out of the harshest, driest place of all: ­the mighty Kalahari desert.

Like all good party tricks, the Delta has presented us with one stunning surprise after the next. On an assignment for the BBC, my colleague John Murphy and I have driven from Maun, at the bottom of the Delta, along its western shores to the pan handle at the top. There we watched, awestruck, as hundreds of elephants appeared silently from the bush and crossed the road for their evening drink.

We’ve seen a priest baptise three young men with a full-body dunking in the sacred waters of the Cubango River, and heard the enthusiastic congregation singing and banging drums on the shore, praising God to scare off the crocodiles.

From a dug-out canoe (known as a “mokoro”) we’ve photographed horses,

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cows, donkeys, countless birds and a carpet of water-lilies. At one point I suspect that even John, a seasoned hack who’s spent 30 years travelling to some of the world’s most remote, beautiful corners, got a lump in his throat. “We are so lucky to see this,” he said.

Mother Nature keeps the source of her magic well-hidden in the remote Planalto highlands of Angola, more than 1,000km away, where the water that will eventually nourish the Delta emerges silently from peat lands that few humans have ever visited. A lace-work pattern of streams gather to form the Cuito River, which flows south to Namibia where it joins the Cubango. The river will never reach the sea, instead spilling into a tectonic trough to form the Okavango Delta.

There is nowhere better to contemplate the Okavango than from the top of the Tsodilo Hills, an area of rock formations which rises out of the vast, flat, semiarid landscape of the Kalahari desert. In the hazy light of sunrise, the Delta is just

a green smudge on the horizon, about 40km to the east. Its shimmering water channels feel like a world away.

I’m here producing a documentary for BBC Radio, hence all the driving; radio budgets don’t stretch to private jets, ruling out the majority of the Delta’s best-known lodges, but affording us the opportunity to explore parts of the area fly-in-fly-out visitors don’t get to see. John and I have been sent to look at how communities are dealing with the rising number of elephants in the Okavango. Climate change and human development are forcing herds into smaller areas, driving what’s called human-wildlife conflict.

But we’ve discovered a far greater threat to the animals and humans of this delicate ecosystem: development.

Oil, gas, mining, agriculture, population growth, urban sprawl are all emerging upstream, in Namibia and Angola, and they threaten to pollute or remove the water that makes this jewel in the desert possible. We’re in the Tsodilo Hills to talk

ABROAD: OKAVANGO

THE OKAVANGO DELTA IS AN AUDACIOUS SPLASH OF GREEN PULLED OUT OF THE HARSHEST, DRIEST PLACE OF ALL: THE MIGHTY KALAHARI DESERT

about oil and gas, but find ourselves in the middle of an enthralling pre-breakfast history lesson from our guide, Lopang Majanga, who stops to point out grooves in the rock where hunter-gatherers sharpened their blades millennia ago. The hills have been a place of refuge since the Stone Age, with human communities leaving tantalising clues of how they lived in the tools, art and human remains that are buried here.

The local San and Hambukushu communities revere Tsdodilo as a place of worship and home of their ancestors’ spirits. Lopang proudly shows us the Python Watering Hole — a cave hidden high up in the rocks, filled with small birds and a pool of stagnant water. It’s smelly and dark but full of tradition and wonder for Lopang who says he has seen a python here on five separate occasions, which he believes embodies the spirits of his ancestors.

The Tsodilo range is a series of small hills called the female, male, child and

grandchild. We are on the Rhino Trail, a smart path with neat wooden staircases at the steepest parts, built with funding from UNESCO who designated this a World Heritage Site in 2001. Rhino Trail takes us up the female hill, which is the highest point in the whole of Botswana, but still an easy 45 minute climb. At every turn we find 3,000-year-old cave paintings of lion, elephant, giraffe, wildebeest, and even whales and penguins, which it’s thought were drawn by tribes who had seen the sea.

This extraordinary gallery is one of the highest concentrations of rock art in the world and led one of the first travel writers to come here to christen it “the Louvre of the desert”. Lopang tells us how locals warned the writer that he must pay tribute to the ancestors before photographing one of the grandest of the paintings ­— a large lion, high up. He ignored their warnings and set about framing his picture. But his camera jammed, Lopang tells us, and only worked again when he’d

made a sacrifice. I sneak a peek at the camera on my phone, which appears to be fine. Perhaps the spirits are used to photos by now.

A juvenile puff adder hurries across the path, vervet monkeys fight in the trees above, as Lopang shares his memories of the dry hillside. “This is where we used to collect water, but now it’s dried up because we didn’t get a lot of rain. When we were young there were no taps, no water pumps, so we would ride into the hills on donkeys with bottles to fetch the water.”

This childhood memory should belong to an old man, but Lopang is only in his late twenties. Modern life is arriving slowly in this quiet, hot corner of the world, so it’s little surprise that many local people welcome the very development that could destroy this delicate ecosystem. At the top of the hill Lopang points out the boundary of the license area that has been granted to a Canadian company, Reconnaissance Energy Africa

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ABOARD: OKAVANGO

(ReconAfrica) to explore for oil and gas in Namibia and north-west Botswana, upstream of the delta.

The company is yet to announce that it has found anything and earlier this year it pulled out of Namibia. But in June a spokesperson told National Geographic that they plan to drill again later this year and “remain committed to the search for oil at the invitation of the governments of Namibia and Botswana”.

National Geographic’s coverage of local communities’ ongoing battle against ReconAfrica is well worth a read. It documents how experts believe the company has “failed to line oil waste pits with plastic to prevent groundwater contamination and has repeatedly drilled before securing all legally required water and land use permits”.

Lopang is worried that the elders in his community don’t understand the environmental risk posed by oil and gas exploration, let alone production. “They just accept it,” he says. “They say, ‘It’s good. Maybe our kids will be working.’ But when you look at the job opportunities, you find that [the companies] will be looking for engineers which we don’t have in our community — none of the youth has done engineering. The only thing we will be qualified for are security jobs which don’t pay much money.”

We visit a local elder to check out this claim. Xontae Xau is chief of the nearest San village. He’s a thin, wirey man with leathery skin, small, piercing eyes and a huge smile. He has ten children, the smallest of whom play in the sand while

the older girls wash laundry, braid each other’s hair and thread dried seeds into jewellery to sell at the Tsodilo Hills visitor centre. His wife sits on the floor smoking.

A dog sleeps in the hot sand.

We find shade under a tree and sit down to do our interview. Chief Xau isn’t sure how old he is. His identity card puts him at 62 but he suspects he’s older. His life has changed significantly since he was a young man. Life, he says, is better now that he doesn’t have to spend his days in the bush hunting and gathering.

He works as a tourist guide, alongside a little subsistence agriculture, while his wife makes jewellery.

“This life is better,” he says. “Hunting wasn’t easy. You could go the whole day

‘ THE DELTA USED TO BE A CLEAR STREAM — YOU COULD EVEN SEE HIPPO TRACKS AT THE BOTTOM. IF NOTHING IS DONE TO HELP IT, THE DELTA WILL BECOME JUST A TRICKLE’ without seeing anything, track an animal for 35 kilometres without seeing it.”

When we ask him how the harvest is looking this year his smile fades, the deep lines around his eyes turning downwards.

The rain has been poor he explains and he’s worried about how they’ll survive.

“In all the years I’ve been here I’ve never seen the rain behave like this.” He points to the Tsodilo Hills. “You see those

mountains over there? They are very sacred. Lots of people are coming to pray there, to wash away their sins. And we don’t know what they are doing. Maybe they’ve made the ancestors unhappy which has made the rains not come.

That’s my suspicion.”

We move on to oil and gas. I can’t help wondering what Chief Xau thinks the ancestors would make of giant rigs and booming drills shaking the ground around Tsodilo, but we stick to his own view of that prospect.

“It is confusing us,” he says. “My opinion is that this oil money is a good thing, but others say it is not. Then we look at the mines in South Africa. Why do people say it’s not a good thing on our side, when on that side it is happening? They are enjoying seeing us living with poverty.

They don’t want us to develop! After the mining they will leave all their tools and caravans and machines, which is good for us. But I’ve also heard that their machines will damage our boreholes and then I get angry because I don’t want to lose my borehole, I don’t want to lose my cows.”

The thing Chief Xau does want is more tourism. Lopang, the young Hambukushu, agrees with his San elder. “Half of our young people have studied tourism, but they’re sitting with certificates doing nothing,” he says. “People want to come and see the rock paintings, the views, the wildlife and that’s what we need to encourage — employment of our people as guides, chefs, housekeepers, waiters.

That’s the potential we want, to protect our environment and this sacred place.”

Above left: John Murphy and Charlotte Ashton reporting for the BBC in the Tsodilo Hills. Above right: tented accommodation, complete with outdoor bathrooms and spacious verandahs, at Askiesbos, Samochima Bush Camp, Botswana

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ABROAD: OKAVANGO

The San people of the Tsodilo Hills believe that more visitors will help the area to survive: ‘We need to encourage the tourism industry to protect this sacred place’ There doesn’t seem to be any reason why the Tsodilo Hills shouldn’t become a tourist centre. It’s the perfect spot from which to explore the Kalahari, the Delta and the Hills themselves. But any development must be carefully managed, and for the government 1,200km away in Gaborone, a few new lodges certainly aren’t going to be lucrative as fast as a fossil fuel windfall.

Back at our lodge, an hour’s drive from Tsodilo, through the pristine, semi-arid peace of the Kalahari, we mull everything over with Willemien le Roux, a Motswana who left for South Africa in her early twenties, returning a few years later, in the Nineties, when her husband, a church minister, decided he wanted to serve the San people. Pregnant with their third child, Willemien and her husband spent six months living in a San village, sleeping in a small round hut, eating only what the San taught them to hunt and gather, save for a few rusks Willemien used to slip to their bewildered small children.

After 35 years of working with the San, Willemien founded the Pabalelo Trust, operating from her small farm on the banks of the Okavango Delta, helping local subsistence farmers adapt to challenges like climate change and human-wildlfe conflict. Willemien, now in her seventies, retired from it only last year. She’s tall and fit, with blue eyes that sparkle, especially when she talks about her late husband. Her daughter, Hettie, and son-in-law Dammann, have built the

pretty Askiesbos tented camp on the farm where we are staying. The beautifully decorated tented rooms have outdoor bathrooms and verandahs overlooking the water. This evening we’re spending the night aboard one of their houseboats moored nearby, the Delta Belle.

Willemien is gloomy about the future of the Delta. She says that she has seen water levels and quality fall dramatically over the past 20 years. “It used to be a clear stream,” she says. “You could even see the hippo tracks on the bottom. If nothing is done to help, it won’t last. The Delta will probably become just a trickle.

I guess the river will survive but the floodplains will shrink and just become a main stream” Apart from climate change, Willemien blames the recent construction of a new multimillion-dollar bridge just up the road at Shakawe, as well as developments in Angola and Namibia. Mining, she fears, is inevitable, but there isn’t a culture of activism here to fight it. “We have to just sit and wait and see what happens with the Okavango Delta,” she says. “There’s beauty in the fact that Botswana is a very peaceful country and our cultures value consensus, visionary leadership, not confrontational leadership.

People are listening to each other. They want to wait and see, that’s the culture.

You cannot blame people for not standing up against something because they have to keep all their options open. It’s a survivalist mentality. It’s a survivalist

technique to take things day-by-day and not try to think beyond that. So little is in our control here, we have to take what we see.”

On that note we set off on the Delta Belle houseboat. If the Tsodilo Hills is the perfect place to contemplate the mystery of the delta, this is the perfect way to enjoy its beauty. As we glide through the water, as still and shiny as glass, papyrus plants sway gently in the evening breeze.

A fish eagle circles, a malachite kingfisher bobs on the end of a reed ­— splendid, proud ornaments, Mother Nature at her most glorious. This place is truly magical.

You must visit it — while it’s still there.

Askiesbos, Samochima Bush Camp, Shakawe, Botswana.

Visit: www.samochimabushcamp.com Listen to Charlotte and John’s documentary, ‘Botswana: Living with Elephants’, BBC Radio 4 Crossing Continents, wherever you get podcasts.

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make health your choice AVAILABLE IN ALL MAJOR SUPERMARKETS IN ZIMBABWE

@petalilli_herbal

EAT/DRINK: MILLET

eat/drink

Indigenous ingredients / Recipes / Cocktails / Food artisans

PHOTOS: DANIEL HARGROVE

AMAZING GRAINS Our Food Correspondent, and a winner and judge of Zimbabwe’s Battle Of The Chefs, explores the myriad benefits of magical millets Words by De Ankarra Chef

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EAT/DRINK: MILLET

I

’m a chef who’s passionate about Zimbabwe’s traditional foods and ingredients, and I have a special place in my heart for millets: small-grain, dry-land cereals such as pearl, proso, foxtail, brown top, finger, guinea millet, black and white fonio, sorghum, teff and jobs tears. I love the diversity of these small grains, their diversity in taste, texture and usage. They can be ingredients in anything from bread to beer, and in African culture millets are

the only grain that can be used to perform rain-calling, or mukwerera, to appease the ancestors.

This year has been the UN’s International Year of the Millets, raising awareness of their nutritional and health benefits, and highlighting their sustainability for cultivation under adverse and changing climatic conditions. There has been a recent push for Zimbabwean farmers to once again grow indigenous small grains such as finger millet, pearl

millet, svoboda and sorghum. As we witness the effects of climate change and rising food insecurity, encouraging the growth of small grains is a no-brainer: millets are drought- flood- and pestresistant and need no fertilisers to flourish.

On my last trip to Manicaland province I learnt more about the special small grains which form a significant part of our culture, diet and cuisine. These are some of my favourites.

Finger Millet

Pearl millet

Svoboda

Sorghum

As the name suggests, the plant head looks like a pair of fingers on a hand. When cooked as sadza (a thick porridge eaten with a variety of stews and vegetables) it has a smooth and soft texture; sometimes the brown grains are referred to as “chocolate sadza” due to their dark colour, but it tastes nothing like the confectionery.

However, you can cook finger millet in a syrup made from hacha, an indigenous fruit, to make sweet, truffle-like balls called zvambwa. Finger millet is thought to cure ailments such as high blood pressure, and a bowl of finger millet porridge is perfect if you’re feeling under the weather.

Shaped like pearls, these millet grains can be pale yellow, white, brown, grey, slate blue or purple. The smell that comes from these millets when they are roasted is divine, and they are definitely my favourite. Pearl millet can be used to make sadza, honjoriro (a milk-based drink with baobab powder) and chiwinga (pearl millet flour cooked in organic honey).

This is a small white grain with a mild nutty flavor and slightly chewy texture that comes from Masvingo province; indeed, the Bikita district is the only area in Zimbabwe where svoboda is prevalent.

It holds a special place in my heart because without the foresight of a clever lady, Mai Mukondo, we would have lost it completely. Mai Mukondo had preserved seeds left to her by her grandmother, and their discovery led to the revival of the grain. Like finger millet it is used for sadza and alcoholic beverages, as well as playing a role in ceremonies and rituals.

Sorghum originated from the Eastern Sudanese savannah and can be white, red or yellow. It’s a great substitute for rice and couscous, can be popped like popcorn and used in both savoury and sweet dishes. I love how many ways you can use it in the kitchen which is why I’ve chosen it for this special recipe that I’ve made for Design//Life (opposite).

(zviyo/uphoko)

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(mhunga/inyouti)

(part of the barnyard millet family)

(mapfunde/mabele)

EAT/DRINK: MILLET

Sorghum and roasted vegetable salad with hacha nuts and a baobab dressing

Ingredients

Method

1 cup cooked sorghum 200g carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds 200g baby marrow, cubed 1 small butternut, de-seeded and cubed 200g cherry tomatoes 2 small red onions, quartered 1 cup fresh coriander ½ cup toasted hacha nuts or nuts of your choice (optional)

1.

1 tbsp vegetable spice

2.

3.

Clean the sorghum until the water runs clear then boil for 25-30 minutes or until just cooked. Leave to cool.

Place the vegetables in an oven tray, coat with olive oil and season with salt, pepper and vegetable spice and roast for 15-20 minutes at 180C. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature.

4.

For the dressing, put all the ingredients into a sealable jar and shake to combine, or alternatively blitz in a blender till combined.

5.

Assemble the salad by adding the vegetables to the cooked sorghum.

Add the coriander and drizzle over the dressing.

6.

Top with the nuts, and serve.

FOR THE DRESSING 11/2 tsp honey 1 tbsp baobab powder 1 garlic clove, grated ¼ cup white vinegar 1/3 cup warm water ¼ cup vegetable oil 2 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper to taste

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EAT/DRINK: COCKTAILS

RUM FUN IN THE SUN Long, lazy lunches call for a cocktail that is refreshing and uncomplicated. The rosella mojito hits just the right spot Words by Asa Jogi

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n my work at ProBar Zimbabwe I have spent over a decade helping people celebrate their most important moments through the creation of beautiful drinks. There are a few special cocktails that I enjoy myself, and sometimes I make them for others (if they’re lucky.) Hot, sunny afternoons and lazy December lunches bring out the cocktail spirit in me and the rosella mojito pushes all the right buttons.

In Zimbabwe, rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa) is grown mainly in Binga

where it plays an important role in supporting community development through income generation. Rosella is high in vitamin C, antioxidants, calcium and iron, and the calyces are a beautiful red colour. Rosella is known for its antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, and research suggests that consumption of rosella drinks helps to reduce carbohydrate absorption and lower blood pressure.

The mojito is a traditional Cuban drink which usually involves, in some quantity:

white rum, sugar, lime juice, soda water and mint. It is delightfully sweet, and citrus-y and minty all at the same time, and makes for a welcome respite from the blazing summer heat. If you don’t like rum, you can change it up for vodka or gin depending on your mood and what’s in the cupboard — they all work pleasingly well. For those of you who prefer to remain level-headed, just leave out the alcohol entirely and top up with soda water. This is truly a drink for everyone.

ROSELLA MOJITO Ingredients 1 shot rosella syrup (see below) 1.5 shots white rum 1 shot fresh lime juice (one lime, squeezed) 3 lime wedges 6 mint leaves Soda Water

Method TO MAKE ROSELLA SYRUP Place one cup water and one cup sugar and a handful of dried rosella calyces in a pot and slowly boil it down until you have a thick syrup. The more you reduce it, the sweeter it becomes. Strain and reserve the calyces for garnish. You can double or triple the amounts and save the syrup in the fridge for up to a week (not that you’ll have any left once you taste it).

TO MAKE THE MOJITO Add rosella syrup, lime wedges and three mint leaves to a whisky tumbler. Muddle these together to release the lime juice and mint fragrance. (Muddling is just what it sounds like: squish and squash it altogether using a “muddler” — the back of a wooden spoon or the pestle from your mortar and pestle will do.) Add rum and lime juice, and stir. Fill the tumbler with ice and top up with soda water.

Garnish with the mint leaves and a few of the rosella calyces.

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EAT/DRINK: ARTISANS

HOME MADE Design//Life’s favourite food artisans from around Zimbabwe Words by Chef de Ankarra

Amzi Dairy Farm

When Mr Nhembo bought his dairy farm in Beatrice in 1979, little did he know it would go on to become a frontrunner in the manufacture of beautiful cheese. Mr Nhembo’s son, Tendai, and his wife, Felistas, first began making butter for home use, then taught themselves how to make a variety of products, with the goal of making proudly Zimbabwean products, creating sustainable jobs for their area, and supplying goods nationwide. Now Amzi Farm produces yoghurt, cream, fresh milk, butter, ghee and six different types of cheese: feta (left), mozzarella, cheddar, gouda, cream cheese and cottage cheese.

Available at Maasdorp Market every Wednesday and Saturday.

11 Maasdorp Avenue, Harare.

Fratelli Bakery

Fratelli Bakery was founded by the two Nyamukapa brothers in Zambia as part of a health kick for their father who was tired of eating store-bought bread.

Their mother, Mrs Sarah Nyamukapa, now runs the Zimbabwean branch, providing bread products for farmers’ markets and individual households.

Using her precious nine-year-old starter, Sarah bakes a variety of sourdough breads (right) and is working on a new sourdough for the emerging gluten-free market in Zimbabwe. We can’t wait for her to open her own bakery and café in this country.

Call: +263 772 706 745.

Dolcetti

“Dolcetti” means little sweets or treats in Italian, and this artisanal ice cream is definitely a treat. Dolcetti was founded in 2022 by Kennedy Nyangoni, an investment banker in the UK who fell in love with ice cream and decided there was a gap in the Zimbabwean market.

Using the finest natural ingredients, such as local milk, macadamia nuts from Chipinge and strawberries from Mvurwi, Dolcetti has become a favourite in Harare and Nyangoni is working on expanding his business around Zimbabwe.

Dolcetti, The Hub, 14 Hindhead Avenue, Chisipite, Harare.

Instagram: @dolcetti.gelato

Tangwena Distillery

Kachasu, a traditional African distilled drink, is not everyone’s favourite, but Rob Mathews, a Zimbabwean with 20 years’ experience in the food and beverage industry, is set to change our minds with his version. Mathews is determined to create a gold-standard drink that can be sold internationally.

Mathews uses fruits indigenous to Zimbabwe, such as nyii (bird plum) and masawu (Indian jujube) to create his kachasu; no other flavours are added from fruit to distillation to bottling. Buy a bottle via the Distillery’s Instagram page.

Instagram: @tangwenadistillery

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WELLNESS: WILD DAY SPA

WELLNESS Everything you need for a healthy mind, body and soul

FIELD OF DREAMS Wild Day Spa is not only the most stylish spa in the savannah, it’s also providing a lifeline for women from the local community Words by Sophie Edwards Photographs by Lesanne Dunlop

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WELLNESS: WILD DAY SPA

A

n easy 45-minute drive from Harare in Melfort, Wild Day Spa offers a unique mix of luxury and nature. Tucked away on a private nature reserve, complete with impala and zebra grazing peacefully nearby, it’s unlike any spa you’ve ever visited.

Opened in May 2022, the spa is the brainchild of friends Namenge Ndebele and Jos Janisch. The idea was to combine the healing power of massage with the tranquility of the Zimbabwean savannah, but without compromising on luxury.

“The bush is just so beautiful. I’ve always thought it would be so nice to have a massage while sitting under a tree, listening to the birds and hearing the grasses moving,” says Jos. So instead of getting a treatment indoors accompanied by the sound of tinkly bells and chanting on repeat, guests at this spa have their massages under trees or in beautifully designed, secluded tented “stations”, accompanied only by the sounds of nature. Everything — from the plush chairs and fluffy towels, to the locally sourced oils and stylish wooden

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bowls holding warm water — radiates luxury and good taste.

Guests can choose from a full day at the spa, which includes five treatments, breakfast and lunch, or a half day which includes three treatments and either breakfast or lunch.

On arrival, guests receive a beautifully handwritten “massage map” detailing the order in which their treatments will be given. On offer are hand and foot therapies, Indian head and shoulders massage, face massage, full-body massage and full-body exfoliation.

The food is fresh, simple and exquisitely presented. Breakfast is yoghurt, berries, granola, warm croissants and the obligatory green juice and weaponsgrade ginger shot. For lunch, expect a choice of wholesome soups, cheese platters and fresh bread. A selection of wine, along with tea and coffee, is also available throughout the day.

While Wild Day Spa certainly succeeds when it comes to pampering guests with blissful treatments and amazing food, it has another important core mission: to empower women living in the local

Wild Day Spa guests can enjoy blissful treatments in the surrounds of the savannah, punctuated by delicious food and sparkling wine throughout

WELLNESS: WILD DAY SPA

community by hiring and training them as massage therapists.

“We put out a call locally and we were inundated, so we hired people based on our gut feeling,” says Namenge. “They didn’t need to have any experience, we wanted people who gave off a good vibe, who seemed caring by nature.”

The spa currently employs 14 women, all of whom have been through six months of rigorous massage training as well as classes in hospitality, budget management and communication.

This new profession has proved a lifeline for the women, many of whom were struggling to earn a living in the wake of COVID. This is something which Florence, the hand and foot therapist, knows only too well. She and her husband used to make money selling curios to tourists until the pandemic struck and sales dried up. But by chance she heard rumours that a new spa was looking for employees and she decided to apply. The decision saved her, she says. “This job is a dream come true.

I love being a masseuse, meeting different types of people, I love chatting to them.”

This job has also transformed the life of Noria, the masseuse in charge of the full body treatments: it has enabled her to provide for her two young children after she lost her husband in 2020. “When my husband died, I thought, ‘What am I going to do with these children?’ Life was hard for me but I can now pay school fees and do everything.” She loves her job: “It is my calling,” she says.

For guests, the Spa Day ends at 3.30pm. It may be a short drive back to the city, but after six hours at the spa, it feels like entering a different world. Wild Day Spa is indeed a special place and one not quickly forgotten.

Wild Day Spa is open from Thursday to Sunday inclusive. Other days can be booked by appointment for a minimum of four people.

Call: +263 787 071 360.

Instagram: @wilddayspa

Wild Day Spa employs 14 women from the local community, all of whom are now professionally trained masseuses

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WELLNESS: SELF-CARE

THE KEY TO your locks Feliciano & Co The Salon, Harare’s boutique-style hair house and brow bar, is the place to go for self-care heaven for body and soul Words by Milly McPhie

T

his year has been a big one for me: life-changing decisions, a new magazine — and the first time I’ve ever let anyone blowdry my hair. But Craig Feliciano isn’t just “anyone”, he’s Harare’s haircare jedi who, along with his partner Anna, run the glorious Feliciano & Co The Salon in Chisi Walk.

You can tell immediately that haircare is not my forte: a scrunchy topknot is my go-to look, a lonely hairbrush sits under my bathroom basin gathering dust and lint at an alarming rate. But for some reason, whenever I sit in Craig’s chair, something changes. Multi-stage detoxifying treatment? For sure! Half head

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of highlights? Go for it! Blow dry? Knock yourself out! I’ve come a long way since my days of wash, cut and run.

My reluctance to sit at the hairdresser for more than half an hour is probably because I’ve always found the experience a sensory overload. Someone screeching in my ear about my holiday over the din of a hairdryer, while the boy on unpaid work experience sulkily sweeps someone else’s hair from underneath my feet, is not my idea of a good time. Luckily, there’s absolutely none of that at Feliciano & Co. The salon, which has just undergone a transformative facelift, sits at the quiet end of Chisi Walk. Set over two airy rooms, with double doors facing out onto

the beautiful garden, it’s a bit like going round to your friend’s house for a cup of tea and a catch-up — if your friend happens to live in a stunningly decorated space and is really good with scissors.

The colour scheme is confident but calm, each treatment area carefully thought through and slightly different to the next. Stylish bare-bulb pendant lights have been cleverly placed so that you don’t start doubting your skincare regime as soon as you catch sight of yourself in the gorgeous statement wood-framed mirrors. And if you’re not entranced by Craig and Anna’s soothing, and always helpful and enlightening, chat, there is wonderful Zimbabwean

WELLNESS: SELF-CARE

art to look at: Mukudzei Muzondo’s “Passenger’s Diary” sits pride of place above the reception desk.

“Craig and I wanted to create a space and an experience where people could come together for more than just beauty treatments,” says Anna. “We want to nurture wellness, wholeness and soulfulness, as well as giving people great hair and brows.”

THE SALON’S COLOUR SCHEME IS CALM BUT CONFIDENT, EACH SPACE CAREFULLY THOUGHT THROUGH AND SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT TO THE NEXT

PHOTOS: SIMON DE SWARDT

But wait, it’s not just hair and brows here.

Taf, aka “Mr Nails”, has his own spot in the salon, on hand to give you a meticulous manicure using the revolutionary Biosculpture nail system.

While Craig uses his expertise and hot-off-the-press products (L’Oreal Metal Detox and MK Professional are favourites) to nourish and transform your on-top locks, Anna is the woman to go to for all your brow and threading needs. Having learnt her craft in Asia, she works her magic in an instant, fingers and string gliding effortlessly over your face to return you to a slightly less scary version of yourself. Everybody needs this woman in their life.

“It’s a life, not a job,” says Craig. “You never know who’s going to land up in your chair, but I love working with so many different people and it’s a privilege to get to know them.”

On behalf of my hair and eyebrows, I’d like to say that it’s a privilege (and a relief ) to get to know you both too.

Feliciano & Co The Salon, Chisi Walk, 15 Shortheath Road, Harare.

Call: +263 781 162 627.

Instagram: felicianoandco.thesalon

Feliciano & Co The Salon is run by partners Anna Halfpenny, in charge of the brow bar, and Craig Feliciano, who does hair.

There’s also a manicure station where Taf, aka Mr Nails, can get to work on your hands using the new Biosculpture system

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Bubbles & Brews is an Italian three-wheeled Piaggio Ape that has been lovingly converted into an elegant mobile bar that serves chilled prosecco and craft beer on tap.

Our Prosecco Cart is a wonderful addition to any celebration or corporate event.

BubblesandBrewsZim

@bubblesandbrewszim

+263 789 564 749

bubblesandbrewzim@gmail.com

MIND & BODY: BEAUTY

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2 3

4 5

N AT U R A L S E L E C T I O N

Handmade with indigenous ingredients, skincare in Zimbabwe has never felt so good

PHOTOS: DANIEL HARGROVE

1 // Facial Cleansing Duo by Back To Earth (b2e) This set has a nourishing Cleansing Balm made from papaya, rosehip and evening primrose oils, and an Exfoliating Facial Cleanser packed with poppy seeds and jojoba beads. A locally made handspun cotton face cloth is included to complete your beauty routine. Call: +263 772 264 470. Instagram: @cindzb2e 2 // Mango Body Butter by Wangu Organics An intense moisturiser made from natural ingredients, this can be used all over the body. The fragrance gives off relaxing tropical vibes. Call: +263 782 241 598. Instagram: @wanguorganics 3 // Super Aloe Gel by Aloe Ferox Derived from the aloe ferox leaf indigenous to southern Africa, this gel contains more than 130 medicinal agents and can be used as part of a beauty regime or as an anti-inflammatory, analgesic or antiseptic for sore skin and sunburn. Call: +263 772 570 667. Visit: www.aloeferoxzimbabwe.com 4 // Revival Serum by African Apothecary Cold-pressed baobab, marula and grapeseed oils, infused with frankincense, chamomile and neroli provide deep hyrdation for all skin types. Call: +263 774 767 046. Instagram: @african_apothecary 5 // Litsea Cubeba Soap With Activated Charcoal by Bare This gorgeously scented cold-pressed soap is made from 100 per cent natural ingredients, and is manufactured in small batches in Harare. Instagram: @bare.zw Sophie Edwards

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N O I S S E S B O Y M ophone Inzwi

“

“

My school had lots of old, unused instruments, and we were encouraged to choose something to play. I went to have a look. My teacher said, ‘You’re a small guy. You’re going to need to play something that attracts the girls.’ He was so right. Everyone loves the sax.

Inzwi is my third saxophone.

Inzwi means ‘the voice’ in Shona, and she really is my voice. She enables me to say things that I’d never imagine saying out loud. She gives me a way to communicate.

Dancehall, reggae, blues or rock’n’roll, it doesn’t matter what I’m playing, you can really tell my emotional state by the way I’m playing. Inzwi has been with me through the most monumental moments of my life. She is my life.

Instagram: @saxopash YouTube: SaxoPash.zw

PHOTO: DIMITRI AZEVEDO FOR ZIMBABALOOBA

, and his sax Pash, aka Saxopash