Hope’s songs of redemption
The Making of a Unique Band
“By the rivers of Babylon I sat and wept,” thus sang the long- suffering Hebrews in their time of Babylonian captivity. They found themselves singing God’s song in a strange land. But though the song speaks of tears, it is actually a song of hope and redemption. The very act of singing it meant that the singers had in actual fact symbolically freed themselves. And, in these turbulent times we live in, we need songs and singers with enormous emotional power that can heal our grief, assuage our anxieties and allow us to hope for a better future. Hope Masike neKakuwe have it in them to do just this and more.
Hope, second from left, and members of Kakuwe
The dream and vision to form Kakuwe was born long before Hope decided to enrol at the Zimbabwe College of Music. Born with music in her blood, an independent feisty spirit, Hope was always someone who marched to a different drum, and so it was not surprising that when she decided to take her music seriously, she wanted to form a unique band with a different sound. Read more
It’s not how well you say it
When the cock crowed, euphoria filled the land. Five year plans were brandied about with enthusiasm, gusto and the future seemed bright. We looked beyond our borders and thought, just like the South Africans do now, “Thank God we are not like those countries up north.”
When Mozambiquean refugees sought haven from the RENAMO stoked civil strife in their homeland, we were prone to treat them with contempt, calling them mamoskeni” while we gloated in our own sense of wealth, success, stability and invincibility.
We laughed at our Zambian brothers and their “worthless” Kwacha (back then) and how they needed wheelbarrows to carry enough money to buy a loaf of bread… Little did we know that bearer cheques lurked in the shadows or that a new currency would have the suffer a fate similar to that of the bearer cheques in a short, short period. Read more
Triumph against all odds is possible
“When I look at Mary McLeod Bethune, a Black Woman, who built a college at a time when even white men weren’t building colleges, I am inspired and reinforced. She actually came to buy a piece of land for the college with $1. 50 in her pocket and nothing but a dream, and an indomitable spirit and said upon that land she would raise an image and structure for Black people and contribute to the forward flow of human history.
“ When we see models like that, people who are outnumbered, surrounded, who have no idea of when this will end, but nevertheless taking a stand and standing for the future; when we see those things in history then we understand and are compelled to dare emulate and honour them” Read more
