The Sunday Mail
“Ndiani Mau Mau, chi chinonzi Mau?” was the catchy line from then hip-hop singer Mau Mau’s most popular track back in the ‘90s.
The question — “who is Mau Mau?” — is probably one he was not asking fans alone but was also asking himself, if changes in the singer’s life and outlook are anything to go by.
Mau Mau now prefers to go by his real name, Shingirayi Sabeta; and at the age of 47 he feels he now knows himself better than he did when he was at the forefront of Zimbabwean hip-hop after the likes of Piece of Ebony and Midnight Magic had done much to popularise the genre among urban youths in the country.
The tough guy demeanour so crucial to the hip-hop image that attracts insecure young people is gone. The in-your-face lyrics have been erased by a spiritual and philosophical transformation.
Mau Mau is dead. Shingirayi Sabeta is born again. The change has been slow in coming, but there have always been signs that beneath the machismo is a deep thinker, one who feels deeply about issues.
The choice of the name Mau Mau pointed to a celebration of the storied anti-colonial resistance in Kenya, while calling one album “Aluta Continua” and naming his label Marcus Garvey Records all pointed to more than bluster and swagger.
His hip-hop songs were imbued with a historical awareness that was appallingly lacking in most of the urban grooves productions that came at the turn of the millennium as an inadequate successor to early hip-hop.
“Those days I used to be quite militant and I was very much about Black Consciousness. So I wanted a name that was provocative but that would also mean something. And because I had a Pan-African mindset I thought I could take a Zimbabwean name. But I wanted to take it from somewhere else in Africa just to show that I didn’t box myself in, being Zimbabwean.
“So I did some brainstorming and came up with Mau Mau. And to this day people call me that. I don’t want them to call me that anymore,” he added.
And he means it.
Sabeta started releasing gospel songs like “Ndamutswa” — which loosely translates to “Born Again” — about seven years ago and he has made it his mission to help other people learn from his mistakes.
“If you listen to the lyrics in my songs I talk about the lifestyle I used to have, sort of the high life just doing whatever I felt like doing — enjoying. But life happens and you start growing up.
“So “Ndamutswa” talks about my journey. I used to swear in my music and things like that. I just don’t do that anymore. From becoming born again I became a new creation,” the father to a seven-month-old said last week.
The change to all-out Christianity started in 2004, but Sabeta found himself struggling between Catholicism and African traditional practices. It was an identity crisis, and he was asking himself: “Ndiani Mau Mau?”
“I lost my grandmother whom I was really close to because of cancer. Then two years later my uncle, who I was also really close to, died. Two years later my father also died of cancer.
“So there were a lot of personal issues that made me just question myself and say ‘where am I going with my life, what does it all mean’? And I could not find the answers.
“I have always been a person who looks for answers. So some friend started sharing and we went to a church in Johannesburg and there was an altar call for those who wanted to be born again. I never understood what that meant. But I felt God was talking to me so I responded. That was the start of a journey,” he said.
Sabeta’s music would take time to catch up with the spiritual and philosophical changes. That would happen in 2010.
“I was working on some new songs and they were not feeling right. So I scrapped the whole album that I had written because it wasn’t really talking about God. It was talking about me.
“That’s why I gave the album the title ‘Born Again’ because I needed to tell the world that ‘I am not the same person I used to be.
“I am now born again, I found Christ’. So everything changed,” he said.
Prior to that he was duped in a business venture by someone he had thought to be a friend. He needed a release, and he says he found it in Christ.
Sabeta knows the power of music, which is why he now sings what he sings.
“Since I was a kid I used to watch breakdance movies and I would see these kids breakdancing. So I started getting into the whole culture. The kids would be doing graffiti. Late in high school I had a friend with whom I used to listen to a lot of hip-hop albums with and we exchanged this music on tape.”
Moving to Canada to study, Sabeta would lose himself in hip-hop. With a friend there, they started recording their own music and holding shows.
On his return to Zimbabwe in the mid-90s, he would meet the late Prince Tendai, who was experimenting with hip-hop and African sounds as the man behind Midnight Magic.
“He was doing Afro-pop and I wanted to do hardcore hip-hop. So Prince Tendai had a song and he said ‘why don’t you come and do a rap verse on the song, which was titled ‘Blackness’.
“I think it came out in 1995-6. The funniest thing is I don’t even have a copy of that song till now. I’m actually looking for it. But that’s what started off my solo career in Zimbabwe.”
Sabeta then met the late Fortune Mparutsa, another giant of urban sounds in the 1990s, who assisted him with his famous track “Mau Mau”.
But all that is in the past.
Since returning home from Johannesburg seven years ago, Sabeta has been hosting shows in churches and interacting with youths through music.
“Music is a platform that I believe God has given me to connect with the youth because they are the ones who typically follow hip hop, urban music and dancehall.
“We are looking to engage the youth through music, fashion, entertainment and television. But right now it’s a question of bringing the right team together, people in the kingdom that have the same philosophy and belief system.”
Born in a family of seven, Sabeta hails from Chiendambuya in Headlands. He has six albums to his name, two of them collaborations he did in South Africa in 2009.
