The glory days of family business

Sekai Nzenza On Wednesday
If my father’s store had survived, it would have been me and my sisters managing it, and not my brothers. I told this to my brother Sydney when we stopped at the new village bar which stands opposite the ruins of what used to be Muzorori & Sons Stores. My cousin Piri pointed to the fading sign and said, “Muzorori should have written, Muzorori & Daughters Stores.”

“‘Why?” asked Sydney, looking really puzzled, like Piri was saying something totally impossible. Since when are daughters mentioned in family businesses?

The sons remain to keep the name and the wealth going while daughters get married elsewhere and make their homes among their husband’s families. That was the belief we had back then, when we lived here.

In those days, just before independence, I wanted to marry Temba, the first born son of Muzorori, the businessman. Temba of Muzorori & Son Store. Since he was the oldest son, he would inherit the store and all the sweets, bread, cooking oil, shoes, sugar, soap, ploughs, matches, pink women’s underwear, petticoats, gumboots, men’s heavy brown jackets, paraffin and everything in that store.

We all knew that if Muzorori was to die, his younger wives were going to cause trouble, wanting to inherit the store.

But I could see Temba coming back from high school and fighting everyone. He would remind all the people wanting to take Muzorori’s wealth that the big sign on the store said, “Muzorori & Sons”.

It did not say, “Muzorori & Sons, daughters, wives, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins and nephews”.

I dreamt that I was going to be Temba’s wife and my son was going to be the next Muzorori and he would inherit the store.

As years went by, I would be the old lady with grey hair sitting behind the counter advising my son and daughter-in-law how to manage the family business and keep it going, the way the Indians in Enkeldoorn (Chivhu) did. If Indians could do this for generations, we could do the same too.

My desire to marry Temba was just a fantasy because Temba never actually even looked at me except to give me comics and novels to deliver to my brother Charles and my sister Charity.

Sometimes I stole the novels and comics from home and passed them on to Temba so I could see him.

As Temba flipped through DH Lawrence’s banned Lady Chartley’s Lover and some Agatha Christie novels, I gazed at his Afro hair, his tight bell bottom trousers and platform shoes.

I tried hard to get his attention even though I knew that Temba liked fat light skinned girls who were daughters of businessmen. I did not qualify to get Temba on all levels because I was dark and skinny.

Besides, my father was not a businessman, but a schoolteacher.

But I still I tried hard to fulfil my teenage fantasy of marrying into money. I was secretly devastated when I learnt that Temba was madly in love with a businessman’s daughter called Tandiwe.

She lived in a place called Marimba Park, where most wealthy black businessmen lived before independence. Their houses were just as big as European people’s houses. My sister Charity, who had been to one European house in Hatfield for prayers as a student, said some houses in Marimba were even better than those owned by white people.

I had seen Marimba Park, from the outskirts of Mufakose, where my uncle Cephas had found a home. He was the first one in our whole extended family to have owned a real home with three bedrooms in Salisbury. Because we were all family, whenever we came to Harare, we no longer stayed in the two bedroomed flat in Glen Norah all the time. We spent some nights in Mufakose.

Because it was during the war and there were so many of us relatives from the village, five of us girls shared the kitchen floor. We could neither stretch our legs nor could we turn without asking the others to turn along with us. Kurara wakagonya.

In the late afternoon, we walked on the outskirts of Marimba Park, admiring the houses of the black businessmen. Each house was known by the name of its owner. We did not walk in the rich streets because we feared being arrested or being told to go back to the other side of the tracks where poor black people lived.

We saw the children of businessmen coming back from school in nice uniforms and being driven in cars.

They attended expensive private schools where they shared the same desk with white children. These girls, like their brothers, spoke English with an accent. They looked clean. They were not as fat as Primrose Muzorori of Muzorori & Sons, Temba’s sister.

“Whatever happened to Temba?” Piri asked Sydney. He shook his head and said the last time he heard about Temba was that he was in America. I told them that I had actually met him in 2008 at a Zimbabwe function in Ontario, California. I recall that we were all Diaspora Zimbabweans sitting around a dinner table. It no longer mattered that some of us came from a village and we were educated with money generated from selling clay pots and ground nuts while others had grown up with houseboys and nannies. Diaspora equalised us all. Ndimaenzanise.

Temba recognised me immediately, which surprised me because back in the village, that guy never took more than one glance at me. Since my fantasy to marry him had since disappeared with age, I felt this urgent need to tease him a bit.

“If you had the good wisdom to have married me, we would have kept Muzorori & Sons going,” I said.

“Our marriage might have lasted because you are not doing too badly yourself now. But as for the family business, forget it,” Temba said, with an American accent gained over his last 25 years in America. “How many black African businesses have survived more than two or three generations?”

Another Zimbabwe with an even deeper American accent then said, “The past is past, we were not able to have management skills that would carry us forward to run family businesses. We should have learnt more from the Jews, Indians and Italians. Their family businesses go for generations.”

“The problem is that we spend the profit. Once there is money in the cash register, the wives compete to squander it all,” said Temba.

“But I have not given up hope of returning back home and reviving my father’s legacy. You might even want to marry me now.” And everyone laughed. I looked at him closely. For his age, Temba did not look too bad.

So when we were sitting opposite the ruins of Muzorori & Sons Store with Sydney and Piri, I took a picture of the ruins of Muzorori & Sons and sent it to Temba. It was early morning in California while it was late afternoon our time. Temba sent a text back immediately. It read like this: “KkkkkkJ the old days. I say that’s my store!”

I showed the message to Piri and Sydney.

“So, Temba thinks the ruins of his father’s store are funny?” Piri said, showing the text to Runzonza, our local counsellor who was sitting on the verandah store with us.

“What can he do?” said the Runzonza. “When a business is dead, it is dead. Usually it dies because businessmen used medicines and human body parts to make money. Muzorori was not like that. But some of the old Zimbabwe businessmen believed that to make money, they had to follow the advice of some traditional healers who said if you kill a person, you will get rich.”

I shivered at the thought, though such stories were not new. We grew up with these horror stories. My grandmother, Mbuya VaMandirowesa, always told us never to walk home alone from school, especially when the bushes were thick with new leaves, pfumvudza. She said in those thick bushes, a businessman desperate to get rich quickly could kidnap a child and then use his or her body parts for good luck medicine.

Although, when I look back I realise that such stories did not make scientific sense. And yet, deaths from such practices by aspiring businessmen did happen.

The businessmen were rich for some years then the spirit of the dead rose and started demanding compensation, like what happened in Buhera many years ago.

They said a businessman killed a young strong man believing that the strength of the youth would drive the grinding mill and people would flock there. They did. The businessman’s mill was so popular for years and he had cattle that filled a whole soccer ground. But one day, the grinding mill just went quiet and a young man’s voice was heard saying, “Ndaneta. Regai ndizorore,” meaning, I am very tired. Allow me some rest.

“Once the voice of the dead speaks, that is the beginning of the downfall of the business,” counsellor Runzonza said, shaking his head.

“No family inheritance could happen then. Only bad luck would follow the children. It still happens, this business of kuchekeresa. When people are desperate to get rich, they do adopt strange behaviour,” said the Sydney.

“That too. But greed is the biggest killer of family business in this country,” said Piri.

Dr Sekai Nzenza is an independent writer and social critic.