Online Reporter
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
GROWING up in the gritty streets of Makokoba, Raisedon Baya found salvation not on the playground or the soccer pitch like many of his peers, but in the pages of books.
The iconic playwright, cultural activist and director recalls a childhood coloured by hardship.
Grinding poverty, crime and even violence were simply the reality of life in those days. In books, however, Baya discovered that the world was far bigger than his family’s modest abode or the neighbourhood that surrounded it.
In the written word, he found a world of fantasy and when he picked up a book, he became an island of calm surrounded by a sea of chaos.
In this fantasy world, he did not have to sell cigarettes or eggs to intoxicated imbibers at the nearby beer garden. Instead, he could travel the world, sweeping over oceans, dancing on the streets of Charles Dickens’ London.
All he needed to escape Makokoba and all its trappings was a valid library card.
“Books for me were an escape,” Baya told Sunday Life in an interview.
“I grew up in Makokoba and as young people, we all did something to be someone. Everyone wanted to be a soccer player, but at the same time, we had to face reality. During your spare time, you would sell eggs, maize or cigarettes at the Big Bhawa.
“Almost every child in Makokoba went through this because we were trying to make sure our families survived.
“Away from that, my happiest places were school or the library because there was no pressure to do stuff that your parents demanded of you. At the library, you could be anything and escape to other countries.”
In those early years, Baya took after his elder brother, a precocious child who showed him the promise of escape that literature held, even for a child growing up within the squashed four walls of a home in Makokoba.
“My brother was a bookworm and he was a few grades ahead of me. So, since I was in the junior library, I would take his books because I was not allowed in the senior sections of the library.
“In the end, we would fight over his books because he wanted to take them back when I was not done with them yet. Due to those reading habits, I started to write. I would write something, read it to myself and throw it away,” he recalled.
When he heard his brother, a lad who exercised such great influence over him, narrate a play during a prize-giving ceremony at Lozikeyi Primary School, he did not know that his romance with theatre had truly begun.
On that particular day, while some were captivated by the performances on stage, as prepubescent boys and girls mesmerised their peers and parents in equal measure, Baya’s attention was turned towards his brother.
While others watched the story unfold, Baya instead heard it spill from his brother’s lips, which painted a better picture than the one unfolding on stage.
In that instant, he had fallen in love with the art of storytelling and while he might not have known it back then, it would be a romance that would define most of his life.
“My brother was part of a play in primary school and he was the narrator in that production,” he told Sunday Life.
“In those days, English was something that was highly regarded and so I and everyone else who attended that day were impressed by him.
“I remember that some parents gave him gifts and other parents would come to tell my mother about how gifted they thought he was. That inspired me to try and do the same thing.”
Once the storytelling bug had bitten Baya, he found it impossible to shake off its effects.
A love affair, brewed at Lozikeyi and Lobengula Primary schools and refined on the harsh streets of Makokoba, would only blossom into full bloom at Sobukhazi Secondary School.
Spurred by a lively literature teacher who channelled the class’s unruly energy into a drama club, Baya soon joined forces with William Nyandoro — now a National Arts Council of Zimbabwe officer.
Nyandoro was part of a young arts group that would eventually evolve into the iconic Siyaya.
“I was not able to do anything about my desires until I was in Form Three at Sobukhazi. There I was, part of a very vibrant and naughty class and on one occasion, our literature teacher thought we could use the same energy that we had in the drama club.
“A number of us joined the drama club and once again proved ourselves during the prize-giving day and we just continued from there.
“I had been in the same class with William since we were in Form One and he was part of the NASA group that practiced at Stanley Square. So, because we were in the same class as he was, we followed him to NASA.
“That same group would go on to become SIYAYA. We broke off from NASA and formed our group called Township Artists and that is where my writing started to blossom,” he narrated.
The craft of creation
While he started as an actor, Baya acknowledged that he had always loved being backstage, where, like a puppet master, he could pull the strings and watch a world that he imagined in his mind take shape.
“I used to act because you cannot write or direct if you have never gone through that step. So, when we started, I also used to be a part of the cast, but whatever we did, I always insisted on a properly scripted piece.
“I also chose writing because it is individual work. You can walk around with your writing, and you can take it home. However, with acting, because it is a group activity, everyone has to be there for you to practice your craft.
“I was also lucky because when I started, the guys that I had around me in the drama group saw my talent early and immediately conceded that there was a writer among them. So, everywhere I would go, from college to workshops, I would focus on writing and language,” he said.
Like many artistes in Bulawayo, Baya also found himself under the mentorship of Cont Mhlanga at Amakhosi, where he helped pen some of the most iconic productions to come from Zimbabwe.
“At Advanced Level, I started to take my writing seriously and that was after I wrote something that appeared in The Sunday News. When you write something and it appears in a big publication without much editing, it is very encouraging.
“The feeling that I got when people in the township started saying, ‘we saw your name in the paper’ was encouragement enough to want to write on a serious level.
“The idea of telling stories through film came when I started attending the Happy Valley Film Workshop. Through that platform, I got absorbed into Amakhosi and from then on, I started writing for Amakhosi, and my career grew from there,” he said.
Call for authentic Zimbabwean stories
Now a seasoned veteran, the artiste is worried about the direction that Zimbabwean theatre and literature are heading.
According to him, the country’s young writers do not seem hungry to tell the country’s stories convincingly and memorably.
“Most of the stories that we seem to want to tell these days are bubble-gum stories. These are stories that go on stage today, and tomorrow, everyone has forgotten about them. The next week, we create another one.
“We are creating stories that do not go anywhere because we are rushing the process and the people we task with giving us stories do not think beyond the lines they write,” he lamented.
In their prime, the likes of Baya and Cont Mhlanga told stories that laid bare the lives of ordinary people in the country.
These were stories that stuck in the mind and tugged at the heart, lifting the veil from the often-ignored underbelly of society.
While competition from content producers in neighbouring countries and the world is increasing, Baya said that he did not believe all the blame for falling standards could be placed on technology.
“They say adapt or die. We need not be afraid of technology, but we need to embrace it. At a personal level, I do not think technology is our problem. I think our current problem is that we have a generation that just hates being Zimbabwean.
“We have a generation that has nothing good to say about Zimbabweans. I think it is the responsibility of storytellers to convince these young people that certain things are nice about being Zimbabwean. We need to do this so that if they do leave, they must have something positive about their country that they can hold on to and not lose,” he said.
