The Sunday Mail
Joseph Nyadzayo
This year, as the Zimbabwe Music Awards, 36 years after Bob Marley’s historic trip to Zimbabwe where he performed at the first independence gala, we decided to honour the late reggae icon, and posthumously bestow upon him the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Typically, the announcement brought debate and talk across the country amongst observers as many gave their two cents with regards the choice of Bob Marley for the award this year ahead of, admittedly, dozens more names that, without doubt, would also deserve the coveted gong.
In the spirit of tapping into people’s minds, I have watched the debate unfold with the aim of getting different views before letting the world know why the choice of Bob Marley was arrived at. Ordinarily the choice of who gets the honorary award is not subject to any open debate and remains the unilateral decision arrived at by the Zima guild at the said guild’s discretion.
However, the decision to inform the nation on why Bob Marley was a fitting recipient; one whose awarding was, in fact, long overdue, was arrived at for two reasons. To address some heartbreaking ignorance observed from comments by sections of the public, including sadly, parts of the media, as well as to teach those who do not know or understand the importance of Bob Marley’s contribution for the struggle for Zimbabwe.
There is no greater icon, no greater freedom fighter, no greater martyr than one who wades into somebody else’s battle and fights it with tenacity, with anger, with a hotly charged passion as if it were their own using whatever weapon they have at their disposal to fight that war.
Fighting the liberation struggle with their voices and their words in song were icons like last year’s recipient of the same award, Cde Chinx Chingaira.
These were black Zimbabwean nationals then ensnared by the tag Rhodesians, whose identities were marked by the name of the very despot that found them to be unworthy second, if not third-class citizens of the world and placed them under the yoke of oppression.
Chinx was directly affected by the evil of Rhodesian colonisation and made the brave and dreaded trip across the border with a dream of leaving Rhodesia and walking back, God willing, into a free and fresh Zimbabwe. He had the scars of colonisation on his body and soul. Scars on his conscience. He had a front row seat to the oppression and prejudice and thus was inspired to fight through song.
This is the first breed of freedom fighter through song.
Those who were directly affected.
But there is that rare breed like Bob Marley who did the same and waded into the same war but had no reason to worry about the Black Rhodesian’s war or their suffering but he put his career and, indeed, his life on the line to take up vocal arms and start firing against the racist Western bloc battling to hold onto the yoke as Africans started fighting it off whilst the Winds Of Change were blowing across the continent.
Bob Marley rose to commercial success in London, England, in the heart of the very nation that was directly colonising Zimbabwe. He had fought from the poverty of Trenchtown in Kingston Jamaica to become a breakthrough artiste in England and had now started to make money from his amazing musical talent and was thus financially a Colossus compared to fellow reggae artistes
It had taken a lot of time and effort to please the British public to accept a music genre from black Kingston and start appreciating a Jamaican artiste so much that he had become a part of the British cultural fabric.
He was wealthy and comfortable and had all he had ever wished for.
But to let his conscience speak loud above his wallet and decide to speak against his host adopted country Britain and side with its colony and the people trying to wrest power from the British kith and kin openly and without flinching is a mark of both courage and perhaps sheer madness!
To sing a song in support of the cause of Zanla and Zipra as they fought and killed the flesh and blood of the people who were hosting him and buying his music; making him wealthy, was a gamble many people would rather not take. Some perhaps called him foolish. A strange vagabond who was sacrificing his career over a political cause. A cause that did not even belong to him.
Bob Marley, in singing in support of the Chimurenga, the Bush War according to the settlers, was not fighting for the cause of the liberation movement in the eyes of the white Western world. He was not supporting revolutionary freedom fighters in Zanu and PF-Zapu. He was not supporting agents of freedom in Zanla and Zipra.
They were not freedom movements according to the West. They were terrorist organisations according to the white Rhodesians as well as her kith and kin in muddy island in far-away Britain.
Mugabe was a terrorist – the black Hitler according to a screaming headline in the now defunct News Of The World. Joshua Nkomo was a rabble-rouser. A black nuisance. Josiah Tongogara was a devil incarnate killing precious white blood.
And it is in this context that Bob Marley was singing songs of praise and solidarity with these terrs! This scum of the earth! What nerve! And at the same time the money he was using to record and proliferate his message of solidarity with the “terrorists” was money that was coming from white capital!
Such bravery is unfathomable in the modern world and it is for this foolish bravery; this blind allegiance to the cause of justice over self and the pursuit of the self determination of a people over personal gain that Zima is saying, “Thank you, Bob Marley!”
How shocked and dismayed he would be to know that the people he sacrificed his career for and for whose cause he perhaps lost his life are battling to say his contribution does not deserve a gong. A Zima gong.
In fact, perhaps the best and most justified criticism would be that the Zima statuette is probably not worthy of being given to the Bob Marley Foundation; that it is, in fact, not enough of a thank you for his efforts. That it came late.
That Zima should have said thank you eons ago. There, we would be guilty as charged.
You see, this was the time when the world was torn in two by the Iron Curtain into East and West.
Bob Marley lived in the West and by extension, supporting Zanla and Zipra, he was identifying with Communist China and Socialist Russia; the big brothers and underwriters of the struggle for Zimbabwe.
How many people can risk not only their careers but also life and limb to support the cause of a people they have no legal obligation to support.
While artistes like Rhodesian racist Wrex Tarr were singing demeaning songs about black Zimbabweans, Bob Marley was countering it with sacred lyrics championing the idea of Zimbabwean freedom. A philosophy in line with his One Love, One Heart motto which he championed.
Some suggested that if Bob Marley were getting the recognition because of mentioning Zimbabwe in a song “only” then maybe all the non-Zimbabwean who mentioned Zimbabwe should stand a chance to get the same award. That assertion is a beautiful show of shallowness. The statements of a reasoning failure that has hit rock bottom and even started to dig!
The circumstances mentioned above show that it was clearly a great risk in the Cold War era that Bob Marley operated in to support a socialist movement both to his career and his life.
Some have suggested that his early demise was because he was using his music and money to channel attention and champion the cause of liberation movements in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), Mozambique, South Africa, Angola – in songs such as War, for example, which he composed from a speech by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia he delivered before the League of Nations at the height of the Abyssinian crisis, that his early death was as a result of those activities.
This is debatable but definitely not an absurd thought. To have the cancer of conscientisation of the world through Bob Marley’s popular movement was an extension of the cancer that was the fight for self determination and certainly it had to be nipped in the bud. Cold War earth definitely went far to silence the voice of the “other side”.
In the political and military arena we have seen non-Zimbabweans getting awards for their role in the Zimbabwean struggle for logistical support and hand-holding the Zimbabwean struggle for independence. Are those denying Bob Marley a Zima gong also going to confront his Excellency President Robert Gabriel Mugabe and demand that he withdraw the national award given to say the late Mzee Hashim Mbita of Tanzania simply because he was not Zimbabwean by birth and that there may be other locals who equalled his contribution and are yet to be recognised? Of course they would not? And so it should be with Bob Marley.
This thank you is going to the icon and he will have it until the Last Post is played by the angels of the heaven for all of mankind when the after-life beckons for us all.
In the meantime those still entertaining ideas of Zima not honouring Bob Marley in this way even after my impassioned sermon have lost their cause and are merely dreaming.
Like that village goat that one day entertains the hopes of one day becoming a grand race horse!
To the spirit of Bob Marley, take a bow son of the soil and ally of the struggle – 36 years after you played for us and died aged 36, we as a nation aged 36 are finally honouring you and bringing your musical soul to the heart of our celebration.
◆ Joseph Nyadzayo is the founder and organiser of the annual Zimbabwe Music Awards.
