The Sunday Mail
Mabasa Sasa Editor
The written history of the world is largely the story of “big men”, which is why feminist historiography derisively speaks of it as “his-story”.
Condescending male chauvinist acknowledgement of women says, “Behind every successful/great man is a woman.” That’s the world that has sired us all, we are its progeny – warts and all. So we still talk of “big men”.
But “small men” – unassuming fellows whose daily acts of quiet heroism change the world one life at a time – also shape history.
Think of Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza.
Many will not have heard of him, and some of those who encountered the name somewhere may have forgotten him until his mention here. After all, the guy was just a humble teacher and later a media worker.
He died on May 3, 2010, leaving the world with as little fuss as he caused when he was in it. Yes, around the mid-nineties he did make some noise with his piercing articles on the race problem in Zimbabwe, igniting a debate which appeared to die down quickly but was to roar back the fore of the national question around 2000 via hondo yeminda.
Mupfudza was to be my Literature in English teacher and subsequently my first editor, mentoring me and many others with the kind of hand that can both rock the cradle and rule the world.
He chose not to rule the world. He chose to rule himself, spending his life in a journey of self-discovery that was to have an immense impact on scores of written-off Oriel High School boys and young journalists trying to find their voices.
He didn’t so much as carry walk softly and carry a big stick (though delinquents at Oriel knew he sure could wield a cane when need be!) as he walked softly and carried a big pen.
It’s seven years now since Mupfudza died, seven years in which I daily feel the world is poorer without him and his pen. Exactly seven years and seven days after Mupfudza’s death, another “small person” left the world. Her name was Idaishe Olivia Charamba.
Having been brought up on the Genesis-Daniel-Revelation mysticism and eschatology of Seventh-day Adventism, the number seven holds much fascination for me – but perhaps that is a whole different matter.
Back to Ambuya Ida.
She was not my ambuya, and she was not an ambuya in the sense of either having been old (she passed on at 45) and she had no maternal grandkids.
Rather, some years back, somebody with an Internet connection and too much time on their hands decided that I was George Charamba’s nephew.
The story was that Charamba was imposing my appointments at Zimpapers, that “Sekuru George” was favouring me for promotion.
I and my fellow Moyo Chirandus laugh about it, so does Charamba. And I in jest now refer to him as sekuru. Which is how his dear departed wife became Ambuya Ida.
Mupfudza is the one who had me first talk to Charamba. That was back in late October 2005 when I was doing a piece on reality TV.
Mupfudza gave me the phone number and I called Charamba, who succinctly remarked that “reality TV is an oxymoron. . .its reality is found in its unreality”.
We have talked fairly often since then, to the point where Ambuya Ida invited me to her home and gave me advice that I can honestly look back upon as words of wisdom that changed my outlook on life and work.
That first time, having lunch on her lawn, revealed a woman whose wisdom belied her age, a woman whose radiant smile concealed a steely resolve and a determination that inspired.
She was the kind of woman whose demise would draw hundreds of people to a small mining town like Mutorashanga for them to weep and say their farewells.
From ministers to sweepers, from generals to vagrants, from industrialists to subsistence farmers; one and all came to shed a tear for a quiet, determined woman who defied his-story and wrote her own story, changing the world one life at a time.
Would I be a condescending male chauvinist steeped in patriarchal historiography to say she was the great woman behind the Secretary for Media, Information and Broadcasting Services, the assured hand steadying that of the Presidential Press Secretary?
I don’t know.
But it was there in Mutorashanga on May 16, 2017 that I got to musing about the similarities between Mupfudza and Charamba, despite the different paths walked.
They are both Mhofu, from that proud clan that is wont to boast of its prowess as if they are the only men in the world.
Both voraciously ate big book. But unlike the mimic men (as Mupfudza described such in a memorable interview with Ambrose Musiyiwa back in 2007) mocked by Okot p’Bitek in “Song of Lawino/Song of Ocol”, the large books did not smash their testicles.
There is the harsh post-modernism of Dambudzo Marechera and – to borrow from Memory Chirere – the “charmed realism” of Allende and Marquez that I find in both Mupfudza and Charamba.
Of course, Charamba’s “charmed realism” is tempered by the hardy realpolitik that comes with working at the centre of power for a large part of Zimbabwe’s existence as an Independent African State in a world that still does not know what an Independent African State should look like.
Like I said, these are just musings and so I am unsure if this is a tribute to Ambuya Ida or an attempt to mourn with Sekuru George. I don’t know.
What I do know is that the world is indeed poorer without Ambuya Ida. MHDSRIP.
