Tracking human and social development issues.

Ruthless! Cruel! Mweya! Famba zvakanaka

By Mukundi Mutasa

It is past midnight (well it was when I wrote this). I sit on my bed. I am a stranger to sleep, and sleep avoids me.

This is not because I have had a boring day preceding this night. Neither did I fight with my girlfriend—I’m soon corrected—fiancée.

Some thought crossed my mind, and I could not avoid writing about it, regardless of it being a taboo to discuss as if it were Norwegian brunøst—I LOVE their brown cheese.

We cannot even romanticize this ruthless beast—death. The beast that has claimed the lives of our parents, siblings, relatives, friends and foes, you name it.

The whole day I have been listening to and appreciating a music album by one young talent, a man robbed from us too soon. The album is called Cheziya, which, using my layman’s Shona skills can be translated to ‘product of sweat’.

As I listened to the music, I could not but ponder what would have happened of this young man had his life not been halted just a month short of his 22^nd birthday.

The young man, Sam Mtukudzi, had talent in its abundance, and several of us saw him as a fitting heir apparent to his father, arguably the iconic godfather of Zimbabwean music, Oliver Mtukudzi, who even a Canadian friend of mine, Shannon Mallory, is so fond of she even sings along pronouncing the Shona words perfectly you could understandably confuse her for a Shona speaker.

I remember having a discussion about this possible ‘grabbing’ of the father’s legacy by the new generation led by Sam.

At that time in February 2010, talking over dinner at a friend’s cozy apartment in Uppsala, Sweden, it was clear from the Zimbabweans present, Amanda Hammar, Prosper Matondi and myself, that Sam had the ability to take his father’s genre a level higher. Unbeknown to us, his life was almost coming to an end.

If only death had spared Sam, then maybe Shannon, Amanda, Prosper and the rest of us would have had the opportunity to appreciate his music more. Only that now it is matter of ifs.

As I sat thinking of Sam and what he would have offered to the world of music, my mind drifted to the world of soccer.

Rewind to January 1998, and Watson Muhoni comes to mind.

Watson, who died in a car accident on his way from a soccer game in Chivhu, had established himself as one of the finest centerbacks in Zimbabwe playing for Dynamos Football Club, will always be remembered for what he became after his demise, a loss to the nation.

Where would he have been now had he still been alive? What legacy would he have left both at Dynamos and in the Zimbabwean national soccer team?

Several other Zimbabwean soccer players also had their careers cut short. Caps United’s Blessing Makunike, Shingirai Alron and Gary Mashoko died in a car accident a few kilometers from where Sam Mtukudzi breathed his last only two days short of the sixth anniversary of trio’s death.

When talking about ‘talent wasted’, talent that vanished too soon, talent that death robbed from us to enjoy, it is very difficult to omit the legendary poet and novelist, Dambudzo Marechera.

Marechera is best known for his 1978 novel, House of Hunger, among a number of other successful and highly controversial works.

He led a very controversial life too, clashing with friends and publishers, but nothing can be taken away from his life that oozed of tonnes of talent.

Marechera died in 1987 aged only 35 years. When he died, I was way too young to even understand his works, but the impact of his works lives on.

What would have surely happened to the literary world had Marechera lived to this day?

For what these, and others, did to impact on my life, I will forever be grateful.

Death, whatever a monster it is, can only be death of the flesh, not of the spirit. We can only pray that the spirit travels safely to heaven, as Sam Mtukudzi prayed in his song Mweya (Spirit) released posthumously.

His voice, which is still alive, prays, “Mweya, mweya wakanaka, famba zvakanaka” (Spirit, oh good spirit, travel safely).

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