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Tinashe Muchuri Correspondent
At the writers’ workshop at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare in 2014, there was a heated debate resulting from Ignatius Mabasa’s presentation on taking Tsuro naGudo stories to town.
Mabasa was arguing that the Tsuro and Gudo stories should be adaptive and be able to excite new audiences. This assertion was resisted by a group of conservationists, who were denying Mabasa the right to mutilate their identity and their culture. Despite the verbal trashing by the conservationist, Ignatius Mabasa, who at the time had taken Tsuro into the city and allowed him to buy a radio in the story “Redhiyo Ya- Tsuro”, continued with his adaptive thinking, adding new stories to his name.
Looking at the story of Tsuro naGudo, one would realise that it never was static. It moves with the developments in the society of its tellers. The story never left its audiences and creators for the people were the story and the story was the people. As people developed in ideas, the story was also improved in terms of setting and language form.
In his paper “The Folktale in the Modern Era”, Mabasa narrated how his grandpa told him stories, and how he grew out of them and decided to capture the story that talks to the new generation in the language and medium they understand. This hunger to revisit the story and retell the story in a way acceptable to today’s storytellers, helped Tsuro naGudo to bask in the glory of city life and lights.
Before Mabasa took the story to the city, there were some before him who had taken the story of Tsuro naGudo to the farms. The story started in the bush when human beings used to live. When the bush suffered a drought that caused all the rivers from which the animals and people drew water, dried up, the story followed people when they also dug up wells to survive the drought.
After surviving the drought, Tsuro naGudo cooked each other as man discovered fire. They went on to propose love to women as people began to propose love to their women. Tsuro naGudo became farmers as they followed the movement of people from the bush into settlements out of the cave.
When the farms were established and colonialism was instituted, Tsuro naGudo became rebellious as they plotted to steal milk from the farmers who had invaded their bushes. They first went to the cattle pens to milk cows, and at one time they would climb into a van and push down bags of maize after pretending to be dead.
Tsuro naGudo never left the farming community. They remained stuck there until Mabasa decided to rescue them from the farming areas by inviting them to the city lights, thereby giving them a new lease of life.
Mabasa said that when the storyteller called Sarungano in Shona communities, finishes the storytelling session by signalling the end of the story, she means that the story is left open for others to come and pick it up from where she has left. This means that the story remained static from colonisation as people became slaves to their masters.
Sarunganos no longer had time to tell the story, as they became mortar used to mould bricks. They were not allowed to think, but to follow certain templates. Everything indigenous became evil and many began to associate it with evil.
No new inventions, innovations were instituted among the people. The story of Tsuro naGudo also waited in the farms like a dormant volcano. Chinua Achebe wrote about the need for people to look back and remember where rains started beating them. Mabasa, thus, discovered that by failing to bring Tsuro naGudo into the city to taste the city lights and enjoy education in universities, artistes caused a lot of suffering to them. He decided, therefore, to work towards bringing Tsuro naGudo to the city.
Presenting at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair 2018, Roseline Torai Kumvekera urged writers to adopt indigenous knowledge systems in their writings so as to make the next generations gain through merging contemporary and indigenous knowledge.
Mabasa argues that by reinventing the folktale, and bringing Tsuro naGudo to the city, the storyteller still remains with the power to direct our story. Mabasa further urges storytellers to embrace multimedia as a way of enriching the story, and also to cater for future audiences, who spend most of their time with electronic gadgets.
Mabasa has developed a ngano application, but is not happy that only those from abroad, where Internet connectivity is faster and cheaper as compared to our situation here, are able to access it.
It is my hope that now that Tsuro naGudo have found their way to the city, the new dawn is coming where we go back to start celebrating our achievements and question our weaknesses in such a way that helps us to develop and re-invent new ideas that will definitely develop our society.
Our ancestors invented ink, which they used for rock painting, and hundreds of years later, the ink is still resisting wear and tear, both natural and man-made. As we listen to Mabasa’s stories of Tsuro naGudo in the city, we should also ask ourselves why the city is not about us, but other cultures and inventions.
Can we be adaptive like Tsuro naGudo, who for a long time we have sidelined in our lives; an indication that we have lost our story? Our ancestors lived with their story and they invented many technologies. We lost the story, and we are basking and struggling in other cultures’ inventions.
Online Reporter