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
A donation to eternity, A contribution to the future
“You must appreciate that you make history also. For history is a very human thing. We bring it into being by what we do and do not do. Thus, we must understand that everything we do is important and a contribution to that history. Every night we don’t read; every day we refuse to learn our own history contributes to a negative history. There is a quote by King Kheti found in The Husia, the sacred text of ancient Egypt which says, ‘Every day is a donation to eternity, and even one hour is a contribution to the future, ’” wrote one Dr John Henrik Clarke in “Pan Africanism and the Future of the African Family.”
I strive every day, in every way to be the change I want to see in the world, as Gandhi advised. The hwindi is oblivious to this. He is struck in his own rut, which he has been in for a long time now. I don’t know when exactly roles reversed, and we became the meek, servile sheep at his mercy. It wasn’t always like this. Yes there was that time, of crippling transport blues and debilitating winding queues (of course that seems like a description of the present) when they became kings because for a certain fee they could “allow” you- if you were unprincipled enough- to jump the queue. Read more
Lessons that men of concrete taught us
The tone of those who used to strut around as if they were latter day demigods, appearing on State media like peacocks, and speaking down to the rest of us mere mortals as if we were worthless, has distinctly changed of late.
Yes, now and again there is the occasional outburst of vitriolic but generally the body language is subdued and the tone even reconcialiatory. Some of the utterances are even reasonable. The winds of change have come, but they will not shake off the dry and withered leaves from the trees in one day. Read more
