BY PRECIOUS CHIDA

CULTURE music has long been considered flabby among youthful artistes, despite it having placed the country on the world map through artistes such as Stella Chiweshe, who is well known globally for her singing and playing of the mbira dzavadzimu, a traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe (a Bantu ethnic group native to southern Africa).

There seems to be a shift in the music industry as artistes of this era retrace their roots, with many of them making music which leaves fans in a trance.

Popular dancehall musician Winky D became immensely spiritual in his previous album Gombwe, the name that has a deep Afrocentric self-titling which shows someone who is steeped in spiritual wisdom, digging into his traditional African social and emotional repertoire to create a discography that makes him the social n’anga.

Killer T’s album Handigumbuke showed his understanding of the religious dynamics in Zimbabwe and delivered songs that connected to the masses who often view dancehall as secular music and also appealing to the mature and traditional audience with Rovai Makuva.

Ashton “Mbeu” Nyahora with his latest album The Mhodzi Diaries also shows a shift in his music with themes that relate to ancestral spirits dominating the product.

Mbeu believes his music is moving towards culture since he now appreciates the importance of tradition.

“The driving force behind my shifting or moving towards singing about our tradition or having our traditional sound dominating their signature, is because it’s been a journey of finding myself and a time comes, as you mature, that you relate to your culture and as you grow older, you begin to appreciate the richness of your indigenous language so much that even on an international collaboration you feel you want to do it with your indigenous traditions,” he said.

Arts promoter Benjamin Nyandoro said musicians had been affected by globalisation, but have become exhausted with it which has made them retrace their footsteps back to their roots.

“Musicians as they become more influential assume a role of setting the way of doing things and they sing about a way of life that speaks to what people can relate to. Globalisation risks one losing own culture and values, but once they have been there, they begin to feel the void,” he said.

He applauded artistes who have adapted to this mantra which he says is helping to preserve cultural norms.

“It is important that young Zimbabweans now lead the conversations of preserving our culture, norms and values. The role of musicians cements the growing trend. You may notice how we now like calling ourselves by totem, how we celebrate giving our kids native names. It’s a great wave and builds a strong foundation of belonging,” he said.

Veteran producer Clive “Mono” Mukundu said there is some kind of cultural awakening that is happening among the youths.

“Remember it used to be very taboo or was seen as backward to be seen holding a mbira instrument, but because of the influence of artistes like the late Oliver Mtukudzi and so much information on social media there are many young artists who are beginning to embrace their culture more,” he said.

“I notice this a lot since I work in the studio. As a result, I interact with artistes a lot and I am noticing this too. This has, therefore, proved that it has become a silent revolution against how religion was used to suppress our culture.”

Several artistes, who however, established themselves from the onset as traditional musicians include Thomas Mapfumo, Mukudzei ‘Jah Prayzah’ Mukombe, Hope Masike, Vee Mpofu and Diana Samkange, among others.

BETWEEN THE LINES:Hamilton Cain

Title: Out of Darkness, Shining Light
Author: Petina Gappah
Publisher: Scribner
EVEN in this golden age of African women writing in English, Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah stands out.

Her earlier books — two lyrical short-story collections and an elegant debut novel, The Book of Memory, garnered awards and widespread acclaim.

Now with her searing, poignant, often hilarious Out of Darkness, Shining Light, she upends the conventions of historical fiction in a tale based on the true account of 69 men, women and children, who in 1873-74 ferried the body of British explorer David Livingstone from present-day Zambia to Zanzibar in order that he might be brought by ship to his homeland for interment.

Gappah’s two narrators could not be farther apart in training and disposition.

The first half of Out of Darkness, Shining Light is told by Halima, Livingstone’s cook, who both adores and resents the famous man she calls “Bwana Daudi”.

The novel opens with the long-infirmed Livingstone’s death, an event that galvanises his copious household to do the right thing by their cherished leader.

After a spirited debate, they decide to preserve the corpse, burying his heart beneath a mpundu tree.

Halima is a kind of African Wife of Bath, regaling her peers with earthy opinions, unsolicited advice, a comic shrewdness tinged with self-contradiction.

In stream-of-consciousness fashion, she weaves from memories of her childhood in a sultan’s kitchen to her own roving eye — bossy, brassy and brilliantly realised.

Gappah’s other narrator, Jacob Wainwright, a freedman and sanctimonious missionary, does not like Halima much, calling her “a particularly troublesome woman, given to much levity and unable, apparently, to think seriously on any matter.

Her propensity for causing quarrels among the women is great.”

Gappah frames the book’s second half as a series of entries in Wainwright’s diary, while the entourage slogs for nine months across swamps and savannas, struggling with hunger and hostile peoples, to reach the coast.

If Halima is the novel’s gleeful id, Wainwright is its superego, imperious and self-regarding, with little patience for his fellow Africans who are like strangers to him: “It is a licentious business, this travelling, with far too many opportunities for sin, for the men all have wives awaiting them at home.”

Gappah’s treatment of her characters’ odyssey, by turns playful and tragic, is underpinned by a larger theme: The legacy of colonisation.

As a boy, Wainwright was abducted in the flourishing (and abolished) slave trade along Africa’s eastern coast.

Gappah’s literary language reflects these tensions, her crystalline English sentences blended with phrases and idioms from Swahili.

The result is an intricate storytelling that delves deep into the disturbing yet indelible relationship between two continents, with the enigmatic Livingstone, both an avatar of colonial aggression and a figure beloved by the people who knew him best.

Out of Darkness, Shining Light beautifully evokes the moral ambiguities that lurk within the human heart, revealing a talent that continues to grow from book to book.
— Star Tribune

BY BRENNA MATENDERE

HEAVY rains that pounded the Midlands province’s Vungu district over the weekend left a trail of destruction, submerging homes and damaging roads, with scores of motorists and pedestrians struggling to navigate the flooded streets in the vast area which covers Gweru’s peri-urban suburbs such as Woodlands.

When Southern Eye arrived in Woodlands Park yesterday morning, residents were removing valuables such as refrigerators, television sets, blankets, clothing and food from flooded homes.

Vungu Rural District Council ward 16 councillor Parirenyatwa Nyika, who was helping some residents to remove their valuables, said the disaster had happened at a time they least expected it.

“Some residents actually spent the night standing in their homes as there was water everywhere. Schoolchildren had their books and stationery destroyed by the water, while household property was affected. It is a bad situation,” he said.

Nyika called on well-wishers to chip in and alleviate the disaster.

“The people who were affected right now are distressed and traumatised. We call upon people and organisations with a heart to help us. They can come down here to witness the problem. Some affected families said a stream from Mkoba had burst its banks, directing its waters into their homes during the time it was raining,” he said.

Midlands Provincial Affairs minister Larry Mavima was said to be in a meeting when sought for comment and did not respond to questions sent to him.

Chiwundura legislator Livingstone Chimina, whose constituency covers the affected area, said he had visited the affected families and was in the process of engaging government and the corporate world for support.

“We are looking into that crisis with a view to assisting the people who were affected. I visited the area and saw that people had encountered big losses. At the moment our councillor Nyika is on the ground. We hope to find a solution,” he said.

BY VENERANDA LANGA

TOP MDC leaders Lynette Karenyi-Kore (vice-president) and Job Sikhala (vice-chairperson) this week lost their relatives to the violent machete clashes in mining areas in the country.
In an interview with NewsDay yesterday, Karenyi-Kore said she lost her 41-year-old uncle, Liberty Dadirai, who was stabbed to death on Monday in Chimanimani by two youths that were armed with knives and claimed to be diamond buyers.

“Dadirai was murdered yesterday (Monday) near the diamond-rich area of Hotsprings by two men aged around 19, who approached him claiming that they were selling diamonds,” Karenyi-Kore narrated.

“They asked him to accompany them to the place where they kept the diamonds, but he was stabbed and by the time he was rushed to hospital, it was already too late,” she said.

Karenyi-Kore said the people that murdered her uncle used knives and not machetes, which are the common weapons used by violent gangs robbing people of their minerals throughout the country.

“My uncle was not an illegal miner, but I think he was acting as a middleman for people buying diamonds when he met his demise. I think the country is under siege and we really do not know what is happening. It is the first time that someone has been killed because of minerals in this area and people are very shocked because the motive was to instil fear and to murder, as the assailants were said to have been carrying knives,” she said.

Sikhala also confirmed that his uncles, Yeweight Senzere and Elvis Matsikidze, were brutally attacked by machete gangs last week in Mvuma.

He said Senzere died on the spot, while Matsikidze is battling for life in the intensive care unit at Gweru General Hospital.

“Machetes have now become a national genocidal menace, which Zimbabwe must stop immediately. There is need of national consensus by all Zimbabweans to deal with these merchants of death,” Sikhala said.

Yesterday, the MDC released a statement on the MaShurugwi threat, claiming that the gangs were sponsored by the ruling Zanu PF party top leadership.

“MaShurugwi have wrought serious insecurity and if the menace is not stemmed, the country could plunge into chaos. What Zimbabweans desperately need is a true people’s government that can guarantee their personal security, which security is enshrined in the country’s Constitution, which Constitution the people made themselves and affirmed in a referendum,” MDC deputy national spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka said in a statement.

Government has responded to the menace by arresting over 1 500 artisanal miners following a public outcry over the machete gangs.

editorial comment

EXACTLY a year after Zimbabwe’s first biggest fuel hike since President Emmerson Mnangagwa took over the reins of power from the late Robert Mugabe, the administration was at hand to celebrate the January 14, 2019’s 150% fuel hike anniversary with a yet another fuel price increase.

While this time around the increase over the weekend was a modest 10%, it represents a major milestone in a year that the fuel adjustments have brought nothing but misery and death upon the Zimbabwean citizenry. At the weekend the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority announced new petrol and diesel prices of $18,28 and $19,55, respectively, which essentially means that in just a year the price of fuel has risen by a jaw-dropping 1 284%.

While the country’s so-called financial gurus held the entire country hostage, held the gun to every citizen’s head and banned any talk of inflation whatsoever, this simple kindergarten mathematical observation clearly shows that even the assumed unofficial inflation figure of over 500% is a gross understatement.

Finance minister Mthuli Ncube promised to start publishing the annual inflation figures next month, and many are definitely going to accept whatever the minister dishes out to the nation with a pinch of salt simply because the fuel price increase alone tells a harrowing story. Is it not high time the government stopped hoodwinking its citizens as far as inflation and the country’s general economic performance is concerned? The general outlook does not appear good at all, given the obviously poor rainfall season that spells disaster for one of the country’s major foreign currency earners: Tobacco.

It is a fact that many tobacco farmers failed to return to the field this season after proceeds from their last harvest fell way too short to afford them the chance to stock up on inputs following government’s poor handling of their pay cheques. Having promised to pay the farmers half in foreign currency and the other half in local currency, the government made a violent about turn and decided to force the farmers to buy their other 50% foreign currency component at a rate which was essentially a moving target. This significantly eroded their earnings at a time the Zimbabwe dollar was losing value to the US dollar every day. In other words, there will be very little tobacco to shore up the country’s economic performance.

Ncube has already admitted that food, power and currency stability are the three things that are giving him sleepless nights and as yet another drought looms, his hours of lack of sleep will evidently lengthen. There is little hope that Zimbabwe’s main power supply source, Lake Kariba, will have enough water to improve generation capacity given that the devastating drought is regional. With tobacco in a poor show, there is little chance that food crops will fare any better. And on the currency front the situation on the ground already points to the Zimbabwe dollar heading for a brutal bashing from other major currencies having, for the first time, been upstaged by the South African rand with which it has for some time traded at 1:1.

So many hope and fervently pray that Ncube and his colleagues will be honest and stop pulling wool over people’s eyes as far as the country’s overall economic performance is concerned.
There is no reason or justification for government to keep lying to itself and the nation that all is well at the front when it is not.

By Rex Mphisa

A BEITBRIDGE male teacher at the weekend knelt down before Vice-President Kembo Mohadi begging him to influence an upward pay review for teachers.

Poloko Malapela, a teacher at Dulivhadzimo Primary School, who was the master of ceremonies at the funeral of Admire Mbedzi, Mohadi’s nephew who was buried on Saturday, drew both sympathy and praise from the crowd when he made his passionate plea.

“I have a request Vice-President Mohadi, I am going to kneel down to drive home this important message to you,” Malapela said, as he crouched in front of Mohadi.

“We are suffering and life has become hard and can you please put word for us so we can have a salary raise.”

For a moment, the sombre mood at Mohadi’s Mtetengwe homestead was lightened as mourners cheered on Malapela, who soon after driving his point home returned to funeral business.

Earlier, Mohadi had explained that if government released more money into the market, it would have inflationary effects.

He did not respond to Malapela’s request, but merely nodded his head.

Zimbabwean teachers have reportedly gone on a nationwide go-slow to press for a pay rise, arguing that their salaries were too low and they could not afford to send their children to the very schools they are stationed.

Civil servants received cushioning allowances ranging between $400 and $800 this month.

However, they have been demanding that their employer adjusts their salaries to match what they used to earn during the dollarisation period.

guest column:David Mhlanga

MANY commentators, researchers and economists the world over are increasingly talking about the potential impact of the fourth industrial revolution. Researchers are fully admitting to the fact that the fourth industrial revolution is changing how we live and work, how the economy works and countries are governed.

The Citi and Oxford University in 2016 estimated that 57% of jobs across the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development community are at risk of automation and the Financial Times reported in 2016 that between 2000 and 2010, of all the jobs lost in the United States, over 85% were lost to new technologies, and the Bank of England estimated that two thirds of all jobs are capable of being automated within 20 years.

Regardless of the specific data, an indisputable fact is that the fourth industrial revolution has already come, and the current workforce is already feeling the heat. The question which remains is what is the fourth industrial revolution
The fourth industrial revolution describes the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing and other technologies.

In fact, it is the collective force behind many products and services that are fast becoming indispensable to modern life. For example, the GPS systems that suggest the fastest route to a destination, voice-activated virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, personalised Netflix recommendations and Facebook’s ability to recognise your face and tag you in a friend’s photo.

As a result of this perfect storm of technologies, the fourth industrial revolution is paving the way for transformative changes in the way we live and radically disrupting almost every business sector. It’s all happening at an unprecedented, whirlwind pace.

This requires economic agents, politicians and policymakers to come up with innovative mechanisms to ensure that they are found prepared. Businesses should also build customer success platforms to keep up with the changing customer expectations.

While the fourth industrial revolution, sometimes called the 4IR or industry 4.0, is set to change society like never before, it builds on foundations laid by the first three industrial revolutions.

The advent of the steam engine in the 18th century led to the first industrial revolution, allowing production to be mechanised for the first time, and driving social change as people became increasingly urbanised.

In the second industrial revolution, electricity and other scientific advancements led to mass production. A third industrial revolution, beginning in the 1950s, saw the emergence of computers and digital technology.

This led to the increasing automation of manufacturing and the disruption of industries including banking, energy, and communications. The person who labelled today’s advances as a new revolution was Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and author of a book The Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In a 2016 article, Schwab wrote that “like the revolutions that preceded it, the fourth industrial revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world”.

While the business world is already discussing and preparing for how this revolution will affect their businesses, dubbing it “Industry 4.0”, the wider societal impacts of this new revolution have not, to date, been discussed in depth nor planned for.

There are many questions which governments should be prepared to answer. Are we going to see a rise in the levels of poverty or we are likely to see a fall in the levels of poverty?
Will there be an improvement in the quality of life of the people or a decline in the quality of life? Past industrial revolutions have forced society to undergo major and often painful processes of adaptation, for example, from rural, largely agricultural societies, to urban, industrial societies, and then to post-industrial societies dealing with the loss of traditional industries and sources of employment.

The societal impacts of the fourth industrial revolution also appear likely to be far-reaching, resulting not only in the social and economic impacts of the loss of many current jobs, but also fundamental, and increasingly volatile shifts in the nature of work and future jobs, and in how public and private services will be delivered.

The loss of jobs is not a unique feature attributed to the fourth industrial revolution alone, but in all the revolutions there were massive displacements in the labour market.

With all other revolutions, there was movement of labour from one sector to another ie from the primary sector to secondary sector. However, with the fourth industrial revolution, we have other creatures that are taking the jobs previously done by humans. These creatures include computers, robots etc. As a result, this should act as a wake-up call for everyone to be prepared.

BY MTHANDAZO NYONI

ZIMBABWE’S agriculture sector players should immediately come up with strategies on how to grow the sector in the face of climate change and limited access to appropriate funding among other challenges, a government official has said.

Addressing delegates attending the ongoing integrated results-based strategic planning workshop in Bulawayo yesterday, Lands ministry permanent secretary John Bhasera said challenges such as climate change were a threat to the agriculture sector.

“Climate change, low productivity, pest and diseases, limited access to appropriate finance, to mention just a few, are hitting our sector hard. These are our current realities, but we need to face them head-on so that we grow,” Bhasera said.

“Importantly, we need to shift our thinking gears from negative-thinking to positive-thinking, from positive-thinking to possibility-thinking, from possibility-thinking to creative thinking. Let’s come up with strategies on how to grow our sector, lest we die. Anything which is not growing is dying. It is our responsibility to grow the agriculture sector….,” he said.

Bhasera said agriculture, which is the country’s economic backbone, had been experiencing several challenges, mainly caused by climate change.

The country has been experiencing extreme weather conditions such as recurrent droughts and heat waves over the past few years.

The other challenges include limited access to finance, low productivity levels, high cost of doing business as well shortage of water and electricity.

He urged industry players to start harnessing their comparative advantages, climate proofing agriculture, come up with irrigation development agenda, increase mechanisation development, improve all farms efficiencies and to build competitiveness, capacitation of extension services as well as improve linkages between research and extension services.

Bhasera said industry players should also improve water management systems, climate change adaptation and research, access to appropriate finance for farmers and agriculture value chain, private sector participation in agriculture, private public partnerships, land tenure system and 99-year lease agreement, tapping into ICTs, growth plan for national herd, finalisation of the agricultural policy framework.

“We need to grow our agriculture and our economy. Our agriculture will play a central role in that…,” he said.