The Dust Diaries

by Owen Sheers

  ♦

  I watch the evensong from a rock behind the priest’s head. The congregation fans out beneath, a mix of the choirs, Mothers’ Union, suited older men and children in shorts and T–shirts. Once again I listen to the singing, rich, full and flowing, Christian hymns tinged with veld life, the sound of a single impala horn running beneath. Throughout the service Tendai, a ten-year-old boy from the Children’s Home, translates for me, solemnly whispering into my ear, his soft, serious voice a second delayed after the preacher’s. The evensong ends with two women and one of the priests dancing in the dust, kicking up the dry earth with their bare feet.

  A few hours later and everyone is kicking up the dust with their feet, dancing in the clearing around your church. Night has taken hold again, with its deep, absolute blackness and its shocking stars that send a plumb line to the centre of the soul. The clearing is packed with people and the drummers have whipped the crowd into a frenzy, women, men and children dancing in the African way: leant over at the waist, elbows out, knees bent, shaking their pushed-out bottoms in time to the drums, like bees performing a directional dance. The smaller kids are on older children’s shoulders, one woman yells out a line of song, and everyone answers: a lowing, liturgical swell of voices. The drums get faster, and the dancing more frantic. The lightning flash of Jodi’s camera illuminates everything for a second, then passes, plunging us back into night and torches and sound and feet, shuffling and kicking up dust.

  I think of the goat, its slaughter like a sacrifice, then the High Church vestments, candlesticks and incense, the services, the heavy black Bibles, then this singing and this dancing, the canopy over your grave, an appeasement to you as a rain spirit, the Christian memorial service and what the porter at the archives told me about Shona ancestor worship. And I realise I was wrong. Lying in your hut, listening to the sounds of the people arriving was not the closest I would get to you. Nor was it reading your letters, or tracing the work of age on your face in the photographs I found. Nor was it even in the memories of the people who knew you, who told me your stories. It is here, now, as I am carried along by the push and tide: of the crowd, as we move as one towards your grave, as the singing swells and falls like waves, like a voltage passed through the hundreds of bodies. This is when I am closest to you.

  I don’t think I have ever really known why I have been following you. Maybe to fill a hole in me with another man’s life, maybe natural curiosity, or perhaps just to feel the proximity of history, touching the same paper, stones, hands that you touched. Sitting in the Red Cave in the Eastern Highlands I thought I would never know the true stories, because true stories pass away with the moment. But here, I think I have finally got close to the true story and whatever the reason I came looking, I think I have found you.

  ♦

  The next morning, I am woken by singing once more. Many of the people have not slept for three nights and as I walk out to wash again they have a slightly crazed, disorientated look in their eyes. There is another service after breakfast, a smaller one, and then the festival begins to ebb away. Families begin packing up their belongings and pans in blankets, a pick–up arrives and takes a load of young men, sitting in facing rows in its back, down to the town. An hour later it returns and I realise it is a shuttle service, getting people down to the bus station in Chivhu. By midday the VIP toilet has been dismantled and there is a steady stream of people walking away down the track through the trees towards your road. The seven-tonne truck starts up its engine, working up to speed like a grumpy titan woken from a long sleep. The children from the Children’s Home pile into its back and disappear under blankets as Leonard and Jodi roll up their sleeping bags and get into the hire car which I have driven round to the front of your rondavel. We follow the truck up to Leonard’s homestead, where Leonard and Actor present the Home with their annual contribution of grain. I have seen how little grain he has to spare in the back room, but Leonard gives the sack to Sister Dorothy with one of his huge smiles, and then as the children sing a song of thanks he dances a shuffling, twisting dance in reply.

  Half an hour later Leonard is still smiling, one arm around Actor, the other waving high above their heads as they both diminish in the shaky frame of the hire car’s rear view mirror. We bump away from them, down Leonard’s track towards your long straight road, turning yellow in the evening sun. I indicate left, but I don’t know why. No one is watching.

  ♦

  My second visit to Zimbabwe ends strangely, but perhaps appropriately. After a flat tyre (picked up on your road—you never did like cars) and dropping off a couple of boys from the festival in one of the high-density housing estates on the edge of the city, Jodi and I are back in Harare. We are staying at the Cresta Oasis hotel on Nelson Mandela Street, and tomorrow morning we will fly out of Zimbabwe, Jodi to Johannesburg and me to London. The modern country is all around us. The long carpeted corridors lead to bedrooms with power showers and a business suite with an internet connection. Businessmen with shiny leather briefcases and Disney ties stroll through the lobby or shake each other’s hands and pat each other’s backs, a deal well done.

  Jodi and I are sitting in the hotel bar which has a long window that looks out onto the deserted pool, its umbrella shades furled until summer. The sound of the city filters through to us: car horns, newspaper vendors, people on the pavement, a commuter minibus blaring out jit dance music that rises then falls as it passes. It is hard to believe this is the same country as the one I woke up in this morning.

  The mobile phone of the man sitting next to me rings and a few tinny bars of’The Ride of the Valkyries’ cut through the murmur and chatter of the bar. He looks at the number on the screen and frowns. He is Zimbabwean, in his early fifties, wearing a smart dark green suit, and he is partly bald, so when he frowns I watch the wrinkles pass like ripples right to the top of his head. He looks up at me and smiles a massive smile. ‘You are British, aren’t you?’ he says. Yes, I say, I am. He holds out the ringing phone to me. ‘Then you answer this, tell them I am drinking with a British man, they will like that.’

  I take the phone, uneasy at his request and aware he seems to find it a little too funny. He laughs with the men around him as I press the green telephone button and answer the call. The woman on the other end of the line is from South African Broadcasting, and she wants to know if Dr Hunzvi is available for interview. I put my hand over the phone and ask him if he knows Dr Hunzvi.

  He laughs again. ‘Tell them Dr Hunzvi will call them back.’

  And that is how I discover I am drinking with Dr ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi. I have heard the name before. When the men at the festival were talking about the intimidation during the election. And I have seen it before too—in the papers, where it was always preceded by his self-invented moniker: Dr ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi, Zanu PF MP, leader of the War Veterans and organiser of the farm invasions. The leader of Mugabe’s unofficial private army and responsible, according to the whispers I have heard, for recent torture and intimidation. I remember reading a letter in The Herald asking Dr Hunzvi to declare exactly which regiment he fought with in the War of Independence. Many veterans have no memory of fighting with him, and some doubt lie fought at all.

  Dr Hunzvi takes back his phone. ‘They have been calling me a terrorist,’ he says, ‘the most dangerous man in Africa! Hah! Well, would I be drinking here with you if I was a terrorist?’

  I admit he probably wouldn’t, but somehow I don’t think he would mind if I disagreed with him on this point. He pronounces the word ‘terrorist’ with a hint of disgust but with more than a dash of pride as well. Jodi tugs at my arm and tells me to keep him talking while she goes and gets her camera, so I turn back to Hunzvi and try to flatter him into conversation.

  As we talk he reminds me of a child. He is obviously clever but seems to have a slight grasp on lots of subjects and no firm hold on any one, as if he is repeating dictums and ideas he has heard elsewhere. He is keen to let me know of his power in the country.


  ‘I can get anything done and anything changed in this country. I have the power to do what I want.’

  Judging from the nervous laughter from around the bar, I believe him. I ask him about the popular support for the Movement for Democratic Change, the main opposition party, and for its leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

  He laughs again and, taking out a piece of paper and a red pen, says, ‘Shall I tell you what MDC stands for?’ He writes the three letters down the page, then adds a word to each, turning it into a mnemonic. He hands me the paper but I do not understand the Shona, so he tells the barman to translate for me. The barman leans over from where he is cleaning glasses and reads the three words. He smiles weakly and says quietly, ‘Morgan Tsvangirai eats shit.’ Hunzvi laughs hysterically at his own joke.

  When Dr Hunzvi asks me what I am doing in Zimbabwe I tell him about you and your festival. At the mention of your name he nods slowly, and his smiling face clouds over. He says he knows you, and then, turning to his drink, he dismisses you with a wave of his hand. Another ‘colonist’, one of the whites who took the land in the first place. I tell him I think he is wrong, and that, however different his means, he actually shares some of the same aims as you. You wanted land for the Africans and, at least publicly, so does he. He turns back to me and tells me that no, I am the one who is wrong. ‘Your uncle came here and stole from us, like everyone else.’

  I feel my anger rise and I realise that your name undermines his oversimplified view. Your rare talent a hundred years ago was for seeing in colours other than just black and white, while Hunzvi’s vision is solidly monochrome.

  Trying to keep as calm as I can I ask him if he has read your book An Africa for Africans, which inspired early African leaders like Charles Mzingeli and Chief Mangwende. I know I am opening myself up by asking him this. The conclusion you reach in the book, as a desperate measure, is a plea for segregation, separate areas of the country for black and white. You clearly say this would only work on a basis of absolute racial equality, but Hunzvi could still claim this an early model of apartheid. But he does not. He has not read the book and he even tells me that the book no longer exists, that there are no copies to be found in Zimbabwe. I tell him I read one in his own government’s National Archives.

  He stares at me and I am continuing with my argument when I feel a squeeze on my thigh. Stopping mid-sentence, I notice the bar is very quiet. I think it must be Jodi, but turning around I see it is one of the men with Dr Hunzvi, a man who he introduced to me earlier as his ‘driver’. Like Hunzvi he wears a smart suit with a floral tie over a purple shirt. Keeping his hand on my leg he tells me to take it easy, and then, when Hunzvi has turned away to talk to a Zambian businesswoman on his other side, that it is best if I stop talking to Dr Hunzvi now. Looking down at me he makes it clear that if I do not, he may be asked to ‘make you quiet, my friend’.

  I go back to my drink with Jodi and we watch Hunzvi flirt with the businesswoman. She is here to sell and buy handbags, she explains to him in a soft, patient voice. She is very beautiful, delicate, her long fingers covered in gold rings and her eyelids heavily painted with bright blue eye-shadow. She responds to Hunzvi’s jokes and touches, but she is obviously uncomfortable. Maybe Hunzvi senses this, or maybe he has somewhere else to go, but after ten minutes or so, he leaves, dropping the businesswoman his card and walking out of the bar followed by his entourage of silent men in suits. The air in the room loosens. The businesswoman turns to us and smiles, then orders another drink from the barman, who also looks more relaxed, leaning against the till as if he is exhausted.

  But then, over Jodi’s shoulder I see Hunzvi’s driver re-enter the bar. He strides towards us and I feel the adrenalin run through my veins. Jodi sees him too and we exchange a glance, not sure if we should stay or get up and go. He comes up to me and holds out his hand for mine to shake. I am hesitant, but he is smiling, so I do.

  ‘I am from Chivhu,’ he says proudly as we shake hands, talking quietly and quickly as if he hasn’t much time, ‘and I know of your uncle. I know Father Cripps and I love what he has done. I am very pleased to meet you.’ Relieved, I say I am pleased to meet him too. Then I thank him for warning me earlier. He just says, still smiling, ‘It was best.’ And then he leaves, jogging back out the door to Hunzvi, who is waiting for him in the passenger seat of his black government car, its engine ticking over among the pick–ups and Mazdas in the back lot of the Cresta Oasis hotel, Harare.

  So, I thought you would like to know this. That your name still carries a powerful charge in Zimbabwe, that it still disturbs the power people who want to keep things black and white, rich and poor. But more importantly, that it still resonates in the memory of the people. That farmers still thank you for leaving your land to the Africans, that your Children’s Home is still taking in orphans, that two of its pupils have become airline pilots. That your church is still there. That your daughter married a man who loved her, that he didn’t care about her past, and that together they played the piano you gave Ada. That the people of Maronda Mashanu still remember you as someone who tried to help. As someone who loved their parents and grandparents. As someone who ‘lived as an African’. That history can be closer than you think and that a life can carry on living after the person who lived it does not. I thought you’d like to know.

  Dust in the air suspended

  Marks the place where a story ended

  —T. S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’

  ∨ The Dust Diaries ∧

  Epilogue

  FEBRUARY 2003

  Except, of course, stories don’t always end; sometimes they are just brought to one. Behind the dropped curtain Hamlet’s Denmark continues. The bodies are cleared from the stage and Fortinbras takes his place at its centre. The List page of a novel is not where the characters dissolve into the white of the paper, just where the writer and the reader let go of them, where they part company. The storyteller concludes, but the story continues.

  The stories of many of the people I have written about didn’t end where I left them: they continued, past the last date, the last page number, moving on under their own momentum, some of them to their own individual ends.

  Cullen Gouldsbury did publish a novel in which the protagonist, Father John, was based upon Arthur. He called it God’s Outpost and I read it in the Rare Books reading room of the British Library, recognising Arthur in its pages. In the book Father John is a Catholic not Anglican priest, but Arthur is definitely there in his running and walking, in his physical appearance, in his Franciscan philanthropy. God’s Outpost was published in 1907. Nine years later Cullen was killed in the war and Arthur returned the literary favour, writing an elegy for his friend which he published in his book of war poems, Lake and War.

  Cullen Gouldsbury

  Poet of The Pace of the Ox,’ and ‘The Shadow-Girl’

  [Late of Lake Staff and 1st King’s African Rifles, died, at Tanga on August 27th, 1916]

  So as a war’s forc’d loan we’ve lent thee now,

  Our land finds few interpreters, and thou

  Wast one. Methought not wisely but too well

  Thou would’st chameleon parts aforetime play –

  Wearing our hues alike of Heaven and Hell.

  Yet who, that reads between thy lines, would say

  Thy fellow-feeling for our petty views

  (More narrow than our dorp’s gum-avenues,)

  Was all benevolent complacency,

  Ah! For those earthly beasts our land may know –

  Our veld, its daylight calm, its twilight glow –

  Bests money buys not, bests that priceless be –

  How broad they love, how big thy reverence!

  Much hast thou given us ere thy going hence,

  Now take what we may give, and leave the rest, –

  Take earth of ours thy world-wide Church hath blest,

  Sleep, body, by our sea, beneath our stars!

  Go, soul, to peace in honour from our wa
rs,

  Interpret there a land than ours more kind –

  A land for all its colours—colour-blind!

  Pastor Liebenberg, the Dutch Reformed minister in Enkeldoorn, also died before Arthur, on 6 October 1933. Considering himself unworthy to travel in the carriage behind his friend’s coffin Arthur ran ahead to the cemetery instead, and was waiting at the grave when the funeral cortege arrived. During the funeral he performed the graveside service, just as he had done twice before for two of Lieben-berg’s children.

  Noel Brettell survived Arthur and went on to become a respected Rhodesian poet himself. He often wrote about the old man, in his prose memoirs and in his poetry. This is part of a poem he wrote called ‘Maronda Mashanu’, the first poem in his book Bronze Frieze: Poems mostly Rhodesian:

  Maronda Mashanu

  To Arthur Shearly Cripps, in hisblindness

  It stood alone, that grim euphorbia:

  Goat boy in dangling monkey skins,

  Whistling his surly beasts after sparse nibbling,

  Could scramble up through clefts where no path was,

  And yodel a summer’s day under its shade –

  But I could not.

  …Alone, asleep, that strange sequestered church;

  Blue starlings flirted round its broken altars,

  And climbed and hung, and climbed and hovered,

  Thin spire of smoke not teased by any wind

  Against the gentle evening dim with rose

  And apricot.

  The final two stanzas of the poem are addressed to Arthur himself:

  Rest so, never in doubt,

  Never in doubt that beauty and truth are one,

  That truth will rise, resolute, unconfined,