Chronicle Editor
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
VERY often, when one speaks of the music of Lovemore Majaivana, rarely, if ever, is the word revolutionary used.
In the minds of most music lovers, Majaivana is a lot of things but a revolutionary, by their calculation, is not one of them.
Sure, Majaivana has always been the voice of the unheard, particularly in Bulawayo and Matabeleland where over time he has become a titanic figure that overshadows almost every musician that has come before or after him.
Despite his unrivalled qualities as a song-maker and a social commentator, Majaivana is not often viewed as an artiste that was in the frontlines, beating the drums of war as Africans confronted the evils of colonialism around the continent.
That title is usually reserved for the likes of Thomas Mapfumo, whose self-created brand of music, Chimurenga, is based on the very idea of defiance and liberation.
However, a closer look at Majaivana’s career and music catalogue will reveal how in Zimbabwe and beyond the country’s borders, he was often willing to lend his famous voice to causes linked directly to the liberation of the oppressed black people.
A case in point would be Majaivana’s romance with the ANC and specifically Nelson Mandela when the would-be South African statesman was marooned on Robben Island, his country still under the unyielding yoke of apartheid.
One of the songs that Majaivana composed during the 80s, when he was approaching his prime as an artiste, was Free Nelson Mandela, which was followed by Umkhonto weSizwe. Afterwards, he would make Vanochema-Bayakhala and the song Ngugama, another anti-apartheid track which was titled after the isiNdebele word for weapon.
Majaivana was in particular disturbed by the continued imprisonment of Mandela.
“Mandela is not in jail because of what the white people term atrocities he had committed, but he is in jail because he wanted to see his people free,” Majaivana told Themba Nkabinde, a MA student and Graduate Assistant in the Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban, during the early 1990s.
So passionate was Majaivana about Mandela’s cause that some felt he should have been there to reap the benefits when apartheid finally fell and Mandela took his position as the leader of the country.
“I would like to say, before anyone did anything about Mandela being incarcerated at Robben Island, I was one of the first people to sing a song about Mandela. I didn’t sing because I wanted to get anything out of it maybe after he came out of jail.
Otherwise if I did that I would be in South Africa trying to exploit what I did for them during the years of colonisation in South Africa. When we were told about Nelson Mandela, I just felt for him and it was painful to know that he had been jailed in a jail that was surrounded by water,” Majaivana told the BBC’s Joan Brickhill in an interview in March 1999.
While Majaivana, whose career fully blossomed in the 1980s, might not have been musically mature enough to sing about his own country’s battle for self-determination, he felt that his voice could make a difference on his neighbour’s fate.
As he juggled the twin roles of activist and musician, Majaivana used traditional songs that had once been used as a rallying call when his kinsmen took up arms against white settlers as a vehicle to confront an age-old enemy.
“The first song that I composed was a song titled Free Nelson Mandela. There were songs that were sung at war here, during the Matabeleland war or the uprising when the tribes fought the white man in the then Rhodesia. So there are songs that were sort of revamped as we put the ANC name in the songs . . . I don’t remember some of the words now. It’s such a long time back I wouldn’t remember every little word in there now,” he told Brickhill.
Majaivana’s links to the ANC date back all the way to 1987, when he took part in the music campaign against apartheid by the ANC and the Swedish.
Majaivana joined Caiphus Semenya on Buwa, the jazz maestro’s musical, which boasted some of the most talented artistes in a show this country has ever seen in an anti-apartheid campaign. Besides Majaivana, some of the artistes involved in the project included Hugh Masekela, Letta Mbulu, Sipho Gumede, Makhaya Mahlangu, Condry Ziqubu and Barney Rachabane. This stellar cast of musicians would practice at the University of Zimbabwe as they prepared to shock the world into awareness, through music, about the brutality of apartheid.
When the ensemble went to Scandinavia, it was Majaivana and his Zulu Band that stood out, as they brought the cause of oppressed black South Africans to new ears.
“When we were invited to Sweden to sing in a concert in aid of the ANC, organiser Tommy Rander requested us to record at least one song in English for the benefit of the Swedish audience but we dug our heels in and issued a big ‘No’. But when we started singing the Swedes went crazy and danced for two hours. And what is amazing is that they never danced to Swedish music,” Majaivana said.
In the UK, Majaivana once again stood out with his passionate performance at the Womad Festival.
“Is there no end to the amount of talent coming out of Zimbabwe?” remarked one fan after watching Lovemore Majaivana.
Virtually unknown in Britain, Lovemore is regarded as the King of mbaqanga music and I could not agree more. The Little Richard look-alike backed by his magnificent eight-piece Zulu band from Bulawayo, dished a pulsating set in the Zulu language and I cannot see a reason why he should not make big, if not bigger than his compatriots in Britain and Europe.
His performance in my estimation was one of the high points of the weekend,” wrote one reviewer.
It was during this run that Majaivana even impressed the then leader of Swapo, Sam Nujoma who personally invited Majaivana to perform in Namibia when the country achieved independence. When that dream was realised three years later, however, it was Mapfumo and the Tevera Ngwena Jazz Band that were invited to represent Zimbabwe.
“The singer-champion of the liberation war against SA missed the chance to celebrate,” wrote Nkabinde.
However, when all was said and done, as liberation finally swept across Mzansi, Majaivana’s empathy for his fellow Africans that marks his as a rare shining light against the darkness of colonialism and apartheid. It is indeed an under-appreciated aspect of his legacy as an artiste.
“I always feel sorry for them,” Majaivana said of the South African artistes he worked with. “When they are here with us we talk freely, we eat and drink, there is no thinking of the pass laws or what time you are going home because there will be someone with a gun waiting for you out there.”
Bongani Ndlovu