adminall secrets and taboos affecting the community or the individual.
When some bad things happened in the village, people did not talk about them. They kept quiet or they mostly whispered to each other in secret and saying, “rine manyanga hariputirwe” (evil will out”.
Jakwara was a seasonal dry season harvest event where all boundaries of decorum were broken and hurt feelings aired out in the open without fear of reprisal. It was the day to let go, to speak of grievances in one’s heart and to be heard because during that ceremony, nothing was sacred on the mouths of the elders.
This was the platform to speak out one’s mind in the open using song, poetry, dance, humour and oratory. It was a moment to speak in metaphors of a pain that had been in one’s heart or in the whole community’s hearts.
During the jakwara ceremony some secrets came out and stopped being secrets. Although children were not allowed to attend jakwara, we waited until a lot of beer had been consumed and Mbuya VaMandirowesa and all the others were too busy, engaged in speaking out unspoken village secrets to notice us.
The adults sang songs with heavy sexual connotations. They swore, danced, laughed and spoke dirty jokes to each other. They spoke openly about adultery, infertility and other taboo subjects that were disrupting village peace, including serious cases of murder, witchcraft, incest and rape.
What happened at the jakwara stayed at the jakwara.
No offence was to be carried back to the village.
Munhenga’s jakwara was the marker of village time.
He was a big farmer, hurudza chaiyo. Munhenga’s fields stretched from the boundaries of St Columbus School, down to the valley and all the way down the hills and cliffs towards the Save river valley.
His millet and sorghum filled two granaries. He was the richest man around here, wealthier than Chief Tambaoga and all his elders.
Munhenga grew maize to feed the cattle because he said maize was not meant to be the staple food to eat daily.
Maize was brought to us by the white man only yesterday to help African farm workers save cooking preparation time and get back to work.
Because we thought the white man knew everything, we were throwing away our traditional good food in favour of white sadza.
Because Munhenga had so many cattle, goats and sheep, we used to help Munhenga’s son Runesu to round them up towards sunset.
We counted them all in the schoolgrounds, in case one strayed away.
Munhenga was so rich that his two wives and many children ate meat every single day.
His family had more food than they could eat, so he gave away many bags of grain to the widows and those who were unable to harvest much from their poor soil.
In those days, no one starved, unless they were the kind of people who pretended to be ill at the beginning of each rainy season, vana murwara zhizha.
Only such people without shame or dignity allowed themselves to wait for food handouts from those with plenty.
Sometimes Munhenga hired labourers, maricho, to cut the millet and harvest the maize.
He grew varieties of millet and not once did he not have a jakwara in August. He waited until all the crops were safely stored in granaries then the women brewed beer for seven days at Munhenga’s homestead. On the seventh day, close relatives and neighbours began drinking warm beer in preparation for the main ceremony the following day. At sunrise, the millet was laid out in a huge pyramid on the flat rocks, paziruware. Men brought long threshing sticks cut away from branches of the musasa trees. The women swept all round the ruware, ready for the winnowing at the completion of threshing.
By midday, the pyramid of millet was ready for a good threshing. Men drank a lot of beer claiming it brought more energy to beat up the millet. Others like my uncle Babamunini Mavhaivhai secretly smoked mbanje, marijuana, to boost their energy preparing themselves to speak the normally unspoken taboos. They began by the lewd chorus:
Hero hero
Hero Mu . . . ( rude words)
Kufana mai, zidzoro.
There he is
There he is Mu . . . ( rude words)
He took after his mother
Big ugly head.
One day we got so close to the women winnowing and heard everything that was not meant for our ears.
The men sang in loud voices, threshing the millet going forwards and backwards in rhythm. The women ululated and swept the grain back on to the threshing floor. In the golden sunset, red millet dust, hundi, rose like a cloud and blowing away in the cool gentle wind.
Mbuya VaMandirowesa began a song about a man who was blind and how that man was made to see when his young brother gave him eyes. She was a champion in metaphors. But we knew that Mbuya was talking about my uncle Babamunini Jekiseni who was rumoured to be infertile. Mbuya sent Babamunini Jekiseni on long errands when the time of his wife’s conception was right. Then she helped sneak in the young brother a few times until the woman conceived.
When Babamunini Jekiseni got to know about it, he went around complaining but not approaching anyone in particular about his concerns. He could not accept that his young brother was helping him out by sleeping with his wife solely for the purposes of children.
At the jakwara Mbuya stood a little away from the threshing floor and shouted, “Hero o , hero o, hero, iwe, you the one who is infertile.
“It is not your fault that the ancestors gave you a weak sperm. Do not hold this against anyone who wants to help you. We are giving you a good seed to father your children.
“Why do you want to die infertile, kufa uri ngomwa? Children are your eyes. Takupa maziso!”
Others then stepped in to sing of their grievances.
When Sekuru Dickson’s turn came, he spoke of a murder involving Munhenga and his friends. Sekuru did not name Munhenga as the murderer, but he referred to his role in planning Chaibva’s murder after a beer party way back in 1945, soon after the Second World War.
The matter was never reported to the police or the native commissioner.
People whispered for years, saying one day Chaibva would rise by causing so much pain among Munhenga and his accomplices.
Munhenga sang back, claiming his innocence.
Someone said his innocence could not be proved by us mortals, only the spirits of ancestors already buried under the earth, vari pasi, and by those in heaven above, vari kumusorosoro, knew the truth.
They alone made judgment. And the people chanted again, “Hero . . . hero-o!” Runesu was there, too, and he heard the accusations against his father. The murder case was not discussed openly until the following jakwara. The murder case was opened and closed at every jakwara for many years until the liberation war for independence.
One night at the height of the war, Munhenga disappeared and we all knew he was dead because most people who disappeared during the night never came back.
Fearing for his life, Munhenga’s oldest son Runesu and some of his brothers and sisters secretly left the village and moved Bulawayo. Runesu found a job as a factory worker at Kango, the makers of saucepans and other kitchen utensils.
The death of Munhenga was the end of the biggest jakwara ever to be held between the Hwedza mountains and Dorowa, along the Save river valley. Gone was the platform to speak of the unspoken and resolve conflicts. It was also the death of his big village compound.
Before the rains came last year, Runesu surprised us by returning to the village, after 35 years working in Bulawayo. All the household goods from his house in Luveve were piled on top of the bus.
Because the Bulawayo bus stopped 10 kilometres from the village, Runesu borrowed our scotchcart to carry his wardrobe, sofas, bed and mattress and many other household effects, including an old gramophone, a Singer sewing machine and a Dover stove.
He said his father Munhenga had appeared to him several times in dreams, asking him to return home and rebuild the village.
We watched Runesu, all dressed up in nice khaki pants, brown boots, nice Kangol hat and jacket. Before unpacking anything from the scotchcart, Runesu bowed his head in humility, crouched on the spot where his father Munhenga’s granary used to stand, and spoke to the spirit of his late father Munhenga to announce his return.
I passed by Munhenga’s fields the other day and saw Runesu surveying long stretches of millet, sorghum and cow peas ready to be harvested.
With such a bountiful drought-resistant harvest, Runesu’s family will not starve.
But in other villages, those who depended on maize for sadza harvested little. The maize crop was a failure due to poor rains, lack of commercial seeds and fertiliser. Already, people are waiting for the donors to bring the food handouts.
Runesu has excess millet and he will be selling it at US$10 per bag.
“People must go back to traditional foods and learn new methods of farming to survive,” Runesu said.
In August, Runesu will be calling us all to his jakwara, the first one since his father’s death 35 years ago.
We will revive the jakwara millet-threshing celebrations and celebrate the platform to voice our angers, sorrows, love, hate and unresolved conflicts.
We shall find relief in speaking and beating the millet so hard, until all the anger is taken by the flat rocks.
Jakwara will give us the place to laugh, to eat, let go of some pains and celebrate the bygone era of plentiful harvests before donors came with food handouts to feed us every year.
l Dr Sekai Nzenza is a writer and cultural critic. She holds a PhD in International Relations and is a consultant and director of The Simukai Development Project.
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