Chronicle Editor
Ignatius Mabasa Shelling the Nuts
This school holiday, a friend of mine and her two teenage daughters went to visit her parents for more than a week. My friend’s parents are now old, but they still have influence and play a very strong supporting role to their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
My friend is one of the very few fortunate Zimbabweans I know who still have both parents.
Personally, my father died during the liberation war when I was only five-years-old.
My mother died some 10 years ago.
My children do not know how it feels having a grandmother and a grandfather.
I know a lot of young families that no longer have living parents and as a result, their lives are confined to their homes, maids, church, fast-foods and workmates.
Their children are chained to mobile phones, movies, radio stations, TVs and remote controls that are constantly demanding their attention.
They don’t know the blessing of having grandparents who can cook nhopi nederere or tell a tall tale.
Grandparents have lived this very life that we are trying to live and understand.
They may not have a Facebook account or a phone that is WhatsApp capable, but they have seen it all.
They are wise, have a lot of stories to tell and advice to give — hence the Shona idiom, miromo yevakuru haiwire pasi, or the proverb, imbwa hora, inoziva pekuruma.
Grandparents are not in a hurry and, unlike young parents, they invest in people and not careers, swag, gadgets and social media.
So, while my friend was visiting her parents, I sent her a text message asking for some urgent information.
When I realised that she had taken more than two hours without replying, which is not typical of her, I decided to call her.
When I got through, she quickly apologised and promised to call me back as soon as she was through with her business.
When she eventually called me, she apologised profusely and said, “Sorry shamwari, tanga tiri padare remhuri, vazukuru vachitsiurwa nekurairwa. Tanga tichizeya zviri kunetsa mumhuri dzese dzekwedu nekuronga zvemangwana.”
I felt proud that there are families that are still deliberating issues together, and young people that are still benefiting from being guided and educated about human and social values by elders.
Traditionally, a person was considered good kana akarairwa akanzwa.
Munhu asina kukura chembere dzaenda kudoro. Unfortunately, guidance is one thing that has been lost as we become schizophrenic WhatsApp citizens, and those that are supposed to guide our children and youths have become ‘zvibaba nezvimhamha’.
My friend’s words about her family meeting made me realise how much we have lost culturally as a people.
We have lost people and replaced human relationships with technology and artificial knowledge.
We now value eloquence in the English language and trash our own languages as if we do not know that language carries culture.
We are obsessed with passing exams, while we fail dismally in the school of hunhu/ubuntu.
We trust people we don’t know to solve our problems — Tete WhatsApp, Sekuru Google, Sahwira Wikipedia and others.
We believe professors, experts and talkshow hosts who offer one-size-fits -all solutions to all problems.
But people are not homogenous, and solutions and instruction that do not take context into consideration are like a foolish dog that barks at a flying bird.
My friend’s family still finds time for matare emusha — family deliberations!
Family meetings are a very special cultural investment that moulds better and responsible citizens.
It is through matare emusha that children are taught to be good listeners for comprehension. It is through that process that children are taught to present ideas and communicate clearly, to discuss and debate meaningfully.
It is in family meetings that people learn to accept criticism, manage and resolve conflicts.
They teach children and adults to respect other people and opposing views in the family.
Family deliberations are a way to help family individuals to understand each other better and to empathise.
While most young people think that traditionally as Africans we did not plan or manage risks, family meetings do that very well.
They are an effective governance system.
They review issues and draw lessons from the past.
They are forward-looking and offer psycho-social support to individuals buckling under some personal problems.
Even domestic violence cases were always emphatically dealt with in these forums.
Our biggest problem which has attributed to the breakdown of the family unit is lack of communication and shared values.
Communication and shared values were a natural extension of people’s everyday lives back in the village.
There were just too many ways of learning and teaching through songs, dance, storytelling, children’s games, mahumbwe, events like marriage ceremonies, funerals, work-parties and so forth.
Yet, it was the family meetings, matare, that were the cabinet meetings of households and villages.
It was through matare that people shared their thinking, and discussed and planned very important matters for the whole family.
The only downside was that matare did not have secretaries to record in writing the deliberations and resolutions.
Usually the deliberations and resolutions were written in the family members’ hearts and memories.
This could cause serious problems if most of the family members died and the “records” of resolutions and positions were claimed and monopolised by selfish individuals.
The Shona people believe that a household or village that conducts meetings regularly is united and strong — hence the saying musha matare.
Today, one thing that I know we have lost as a people is the art and spirit of having family meetings.
And I don’t mean those meetings that we have because there is a crisis, but planned meetings to share ideas and exchange information as well as in search for common solutions.
Another friend of mine used to complain a lot that whenever she and her sisters visited their late father at the farm, he would always sit them down for meetings and “lectures.”
Now in hindsight, she understands and appreciates what he was trying to do because the old man is gone and there is an heir who is fixated on himself and his wife.
The heir epitomises a selfie culture where other people don’t matter.
Yet, we have always shared problems and moments of joy as a people.
For example, when a baby is born, the Shona say; “Makorokoto!” and the mother answers by saying “Ndeedu tese.”
By saying “ndeedu tese,” the mother will be saying when the child grows up anybody in the village can send him or her on an errand or ask him or her to help them.
Munhu munhu nevanhu, and as Leonard Zhakata appropriately stated in one of his songs, “Nyika ndini newe, nezvakatikomberedza.”
This is what most people borrow from John Doone, one of the greatest English poets when he said:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
This philosophy is what underpins our values of hunhu or ubuntu as Africans. This is what the English language captures in the beautiful saying, “None of us is as good as all of us.”
This is contrary to our ever busy modern lives where we have become obsessed with global contemporary values of individuality and a narcissistic selfie culture.
Yet even in our selfie culture we still need others to like, re-tweet and favourite our posts.
Unfortunately the problem is that even if we need others, our selfie culture is selfish because all we are after is getting attention and how to impress.
My friend’s family is still practising something that if we all had time to do, Zimbabwe would not have many social problems.
Unfortunately, a lot of our people are dying young, divorcing or living separately as they look for opportunities and survival in countries all over the world.
We have become scattered and having family meetings is a dying practice.
There are a lot of people in my family who moulded me into the person that I am today — and my grandmother and grandfather played a very big part.
They are now dead, but I still remember their role in making me munhu chaiye.
Online Reporter