By CHARLES MATORERAIt was in January of the year 1994. I had just completed the Ordinary Level the previous term. My parents were too poor to send me to the A Level so I had to stay at home and wait for something to come up. A job maybe or a recruitment into the government’s many institutions, police academy, military, teaching, agriculture etc. The government was the biggest employer.
I always thought that because most of the people were employed by the state this was why we had so much poor service delivery. Think of it, because most of them were not employed on their dream jobs what they all cared for was the salary. Remember, when we were in primary school a teacher used to ask “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answers comprised, “A nurse to look after the sick people”, “A policeman to arrest law breakers”, "A pilot to fly an aeroplane”. Essentially, the answers were innumerable.
But this was the real life, where those who dreamt of becoming doctors ended up working for the municipality cleaning the streets. A job was just a job. Like a wild dog you have to take whatever comes your way, you did not have the luxury of choosing. Sometimes a bully at school who dreamt to be a soldier, who always fought others, kicking the young ones ended up being a nurse; maybe because that was where his mother’s friend’s uncle had a connection. Just imagine what kind of service one might get from such a nurse!
Anyway that is Africa for starters. I was waiting for anything to come, surely something would come up, I was in Wedza my mother’s rural home, waiting for my results and helping grandmother via farming.
A guy who was renting Muchagwa Store, the biggest shop at Chigondo Township ended up being a friend of mine. His name was Nyati. At this juncture maybe I should somewhat describe him. He was tall and in his early thirties, with a wife and two little daughters, he talked a lot about gold and faraway places like Rafingora, Mvurwi and Mutorashanga. These places are north of Harare whilst we were here 150 kilometers southeast of the capital. I regarded myself a born adventurer and I loved the atlas. I dreamt of travelling far to all those strangely named places to find out why they were given such fancy names.
Nyati, which meant buffalo, is a very big clan name in Zimbabwe. We live in a clan-oriented society so you end up being related to anyone. In this case I ended up calling him ‘uncle’ because my grandmother was from the Buffalo clan.
As our friendship grew, Nyati showed me some papers which were some sort of certificates. These certificates were given to him by the government. He told me that it was a licence to mine gold anywhere in Zimbabwe. According to him he was only an impressionable 16 years old when he dreamt of his late grandfather showing him a place not far away from his rural home near Mazoe where the old man took out some yellow glowing stones from the pristine earth and gave them to him. After a year and the dream repeating itself for the sixth time he told his father who took him to a great traditional healer. They were told that the ancestors had given them a great gift of wealth; they had to slaughter a cow and brew some millet beer at the place for there were precious stones to be dug out. His father was very strict - he hired an expert who confirmed that indeed the place was having a lot of alluvial gold. That is the type of gold you don’t have to dig deep to get. Sure enough they slaughtered a bull and had a traditional party to thank the ancestors.
Nyati was helped to register the place by his father; they acquired the government’s prospector’s license in his name. Nyati mined this place and got a lot of money, he bought lots of cattle, built a big house, drilled a deep borehole where even during the severest drought like two years ago, all the people from his area came and fetched water. So after ten years of a lot of gold panning and prosperity he felt suddenly very sick, at this time his father has passed on.
Nyati went to the hospital and after many tests the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him, yet he was slowly dying! Then he went to a traditional healer who told him that some powerful witches from his village were jealous of his success and they wanted him to die so that they could take over the gold mine. The solution was to go far away and seek some help. He moved to Harare where he stayed with his brother who took him to an apostolic sect which used some powerful healing prayers, they revived him and told him not to go back home for a period of three years. That was why he was here in Hwedza with his wife and kids running a shop to survive. The shop building was owned by a member of their apostolic church who was living and running bigger businesses in Harare. They rented him, well cognizant of his situation.
According to him, the business was not going well, but he had no choice. He was waiting for the three years to pass so that they could go back to Raffingora and start again gold panning, the simplest way of making money. To me running a shop was the only way to easily get rich but Nyati made me to believe that gold panning was easier.
Our friendship grew steadily, one day he told me that he trusted me and I must get someone who had some gold panning experience that I should if everything was agreed upon go with to Raffingora and start working at his mine.
This was an opportunity! Something better than getting into a staid, boring government institute! I had to take this golden opportunity and probably get rich and end up owning my own mine and some grocery shops like Nyati’s!
I didn’t have to look far; in my mother’s extended family of the Mukanya clan I got an uncle who had came back from Mutoko’s Makaha mines the previous year. He was attacked by the deadly cerebral malaria which was rampant on those areas. His name was Peter, my mother’s cousin, I explained everything to him and he was very excited. I took him to Nyati and we had a meeting in a small storage room behind the shop. I watched with excitement as each sized the other up thorough question and answer, anyway both men were satisfied that each knew what they were talking about. Later Nyati showed Peter the certificates and my mother’s cousin Sekuru Peter was perplexed.
From that day it was agreed upon that some money had to be raised for the journey to Raffingora. Also a group of five strong guys would be enough to be part of the journey to work as the labourers. Uncle Peter was obviously the manager, I was appointed the secretary - someone who will write down all that will be happening.
After two weeks, my mother did send me some money to come to Harare as our school results were about to come out. I stalled because the Raffingora journey way gaining momentum. We had already found six guys from Gangare who were anxious to go.
I was putting everything on paper, their names, ID numbers, calculations of the money that was needed for the journey etc. indeed a lot of money was needed to get the eight of us to Raffingora. We were to be nine, with Nyati’s wife who was to show us the way. Then we needed enough food to keep us strong and working for at least about a month if the weather or other outside factors were to keep us before we were able to be productive.
A solution came unexpectedly, Nyati on his many trips to Harare had heard of a place not as far as Raffingora where there was a lot of gold. Somewhere to the South East of Wedza, Marange district in a valley between Mutanda Mountains. This was the same district where ten years later will be a beehive of activity because of some alluvial diamond discovery.
The Mutanda Mountain was closer, which meant we could go there and work for some few weeks to raise money for the Raffingora journey. We could operate both places if Marange proved to be worth it, but Nyati was convinced that there was no place that would be as productive as Raffingora.
We met and agreed that the two of us must go first and survey the place, identify a mine and peg a claim, Nyati's prospectors license was national it was valid with assiduity anywhere in Zimbabwe.
In three days’ time we were ready to go. I used the money that mother wanted me to come to Harare with. I was given a bucket of maize meal, about 40KGs by my grandmother, she was a good friend of Peter’s mother and they were all supportive.
In our luggage we had picks, shovels, hammers, long sharp iron roads, blue buckets, only yellow ones were not necessary, as yellow was the colour of gold. Practically, you will through away a lot if the bucket looked the same. We also had blankets and old jeans for scrawling in the tiny holes under earth.
We took a bus to Dorowa phosphate mine, we then took another one to Sabi Drift. The journey wasn’t eventful except for one incident when one guy wanted to go down with another woman’s bag. We nearly killed him with fright as we took out picks and hammers helping, bus personnel to scare him.
I remember passing by some white earth places which looked severely barren. Buhera was my birth place but it was hard to be proud of it mostly in Hwedza because most of the domestic workers were from these parts.
Then I remembered around sunset we stopped for a long time at a shopping centre called Bhidhiri. Relatively, it was very big with three grocery shops and a bottle store working. Some poor, impoverished kids without shoes or decent clothes selling baobabs and roasted marula nuts were conspicuous here. It touched me but I couldn’t help them; I had nothing on me, even money to spend on pleasures like fruits. I told myself that one day I will come back rich with gold and change the lives of these poor kids.
Later we left, and after many bumps and dangerous curves we come to Sabi Drift, the bus's final destination. We initially intended to sleep on the verandahs of any shop but on arrival we decided against it. It wasn’t as deserted as we wanted it to be, it was a big place with about three or more bottle stores still open at this ungodly hour of nine o’clock.
We discussed about it and decided that it would be better to sleep in the bushes somewhere along our way that here. Someone in the bus once uttered about “Mabhinya” people who kill for muthi, usually hired by local businessmen or witchdoctors. This scared us a lot.
We boarded down the bus and carried our heavy loads. I studied thoroughly the map which we had drawn before we left Hwedza. It was very simple because we just had to proceed with the direction of the bus to the big bridge; then on with that same road until we got to a certain cross with a sign post written Gondo, then follow it!
We went to the bridge, it was very long and scary. I heard some splashing in the water towards the other end, I thought it was a Njuzu “water maid” but later we were told that there were some hippopotamus in the river there. We walked, and walked it was pitch black, the heavy loads were cutting through our shoulders, but because of the splashing sound we had heard in the river I refused to camp for the night. So Sekuru Peter said: “I thought you were tired, if you think we can go, let’s go. I am not new to these sort of things." We walked seeing nothing for some time, then sometimes we could see some isolated fires far on our right hand side but we kept going.
Then the heavy drops of rains started falling. We had prepared for this, maybe only for our food. The maize meal inside our bags was wrapped in plastics which we intended to use to construct temporary shelters when we reached our destination. It was Uncle Peter's idea and it was proven to be brilliant by our present situation.
For nearly two hours the sky continued leaking, heavy drops of cold rain were hitting us. We decided against finding a place to lay down and proceeded. The only place you could choose to sleep was under a huge tree, but these torrential thunderstorms of Africa do not allow you to go near tall trees! The lightning will put a full stop to your life.
Then we came to a river with a broken bridge, actually the bridge was washed over by heavy rains. Now the rains had dropped to some steady showers, these gave us longer sight due to the fluorescence of lighting… you could see a dozen meters away through sheets of grey showers.
Now the luggage on our backs was cutting through our shoulders.
We did cut out some long sticks from the trees nearby, sunk them into the river. The current wasn't weak but with the weight of our baggage we realised that we could cross. We walked on, the rains were becoming less and less, but we could not stop, the whole ground other than the road was muddy.
We proceeded along the road. After another hour and a half we came to the crossroads, Gondo the road sign pointed to the right, so we turned and marched on. The sign gave us some courage. We were revived and temporarily exhilarated. We increased our pace with gusto. For nearly an hour we walked without seeing the shops, or a school according to the map. We decided to rest under a big tree, at least the lightning was no longer cracking and rippling the skies. We dropped our bags and fell asleep.
When I woke up, before I opened my eyes I heard people chattering, women’s voices speaking in a strange accent, first I thought witches ware having a meeting then I heard a cluttering bell used on some elusive oxen and I knew it was daylight. I woke up and found Uncle Peter sitting near the fire turning a maize cob. That’s when I realised how hungry I was.
“Tarasika Muzukuru but luckily we slept at a bus stop.” We are lost nephew, he said explaining that the actual place we were supposed to have stopped was at the broken bridge that was our destination.
“But at the map we were supposed to have come to Gondo shopping centre?” I asked “Mabviro rasike”, said the talkative woman with a baby on her back, “At the cross roads the shops and the school are at your left; it’s a mere fifty meters from the junction” Uncle Peter, knowing my next question said: “Maybe a naughty school kid turned the sign so we came the wrong way”.
The sky was now clearly blue; no sign at all that it rained the whole night except the screeching crickets and the muddy ground. When the maize cobs were properly roasted, Uncle Peter thanked the people whose number was growing every minute to ride the bus. We carried our heavy loads with the help of the men who were there, I felt numb in certain strategic anatomical areas, but I wasn’t going to make a nuisance of myself here, in front of all these people.
We were given proper shortcut directions and our geographical landmark were two big mountains in a distance - that was Mutanda 1, and the smaller one was Mutanda 2. It took us seven full hours to get back to the broken bridge, I could feel the weight of my luggage, maybe because the sun was very hot and I was perspiring. I knew Uncle Peter was feeling the same but the burden of him being the elder propelled him to push on.
Finally we crossed the river with the broken bridge and I was more than exhausted. I was pulling my legs like an injured spider. We took a cart road that went alongside the river up to the east between the two mountains. In the valley, there was a spectacular view of glittering stones. I dropped my luggage down and ran up the hill to a shinning stone with silvery and gold-like colors. Uncle Peter looked at me in awe “What are you doing?” he asked.
I was ecstatic in my temporary euphoria: “Surely these are gold Sekuru, gold! Gold! Gold!” I shouted back.
“I thought you were as tired as I am. Where did you get the energy to climb up there?” When I couldn’t detect some enthusiasm in his voice I realized that it could not be gold I was holding. I also realised that I was a dozen meters above him. “So you mean these are not gold?” I was demoralized, I climbed down slowly. Uncle Peter did put down his luggage down and sat on a rock.
“Look Sinyoro” he addressed me with my clan name which he rarely did. “These shiny stones prove that there is a lot of gold around here; do you remember an English saying “all that glitters is not gold?"
I said yes, and he proceeded: “I remember getting the directions from that old man at the bus stop, he said he used to work in a mine around here mining something called Turnlite; maybe it is the one that glitters in the stones… but most places where there is gold, you get these shiny stones, in Bindura, Mtoko everywhere. Now let’s get ourselves a camp and cook some food. We are tired”
I carried my glittering stone, even though we saw a lot more stones and transparent quartz I did not leave it. We did put up our camp near the river. While Uncle was putting up a plastic tent I started the fire and cooked. I discovered that besides mosquitoes there were tsetse flies in the long grass which bit hard. I was afraid, at school we had been taught that it causes sleeping sickness. Soon after eating, we slept like logs only to wake up the following day.
We took the pick and shovel and dug out some top soil. Under it we took some sand. We put the sand in a blue bucket, then went down to the river. Uncle Peter did the serving, taking a lot of water and snack it with the sand then throwing the muddied water out. After thirty minutes we could see little glittering powders in the bottom of the bucket - our first gold! I was excited but not Uncle Peter. I asked him about his lukewarm attitude, and he said it wasn’t enough to start an operation.
But we went ahead and pegged according to the government regulations. We had to put signs on every corner of our claim, this gave us the right to be where we were because some people might think we were stock thieves or some rogue bandits. We arranged to later go around and find the local authorities.
That afternoon we went up the river, and a few kilometers ahead we came to the homesteads. It was a temporary settlement which had been here for nearly ten years. I say temporary, because no one had a house, they lived in huts. Zimbabwe is no longer that poor to the extent of finding sixty families all living together, failing to build a brick house. The people who received us seemed to be used to welcoming people like us.
We approached the first hut. They told us that this was called Nyadzonya Village 13, and the chairman was a Mr. Shunguwasha. We were given an eleven year old boy to escort us to the chairman’s place. It wasn’t far, I didn’t like the way they settled, the homesteaders were clustered not far from each other, unlike the rural homes where I come from. Here it was easy for a neighbour to kill your chicken for supper without you noticing.
Mr. Shunguwasha was a tall, thin man in his mid fifties. We showed him our prospectors’ license and identity cards. When he saw that mine was issued in Buhera he asked my birth place and clan, we ended up being related by clan as my maternal grandmother was from the Shunguwasha clan.
He informed us that we were not the first people to come with prospector’s license here, but most of them ended up buying from local villagers as they were the people who knew the productive areas.
We later found out that MR. Shunguwasha was a pastor of an apostolic Church and he was very honest and God fearing; if it wasn’t for that, he could have been very rich. Many people in his position in other places demand a share from buyers to give them permission to do business in his area.
By the end of the week, we had found out that panning gold legally in these areas was impossible because the gold belt was too deep to reach with picks and shovel. The only thing we could do was to buy from the local villagers who panned illegally in the river. We wrote a letter to our benefactor and posted it by bus. Unfortunately we were too late, though our boss did send those five other guys to us; but they arrived the following day. Fortunately for them, they did not travel at night in the rain. Nyati had met someone who knew the place better. They had taken a direct bus from Chigondo to Nzvimbe School which was not very far from Mutanda Mountain. Actually that was where the kids of Village 13 went to school.
It took two weeks for Nyati to come; surely he had managed to raise some money - about ten thousand dollars, which was quite a lot in 1994 in Zimbabwe. When he arrived we had a meeting and it was agreed that the five guys would board a bus the following day, and the boss will come to Wedza to pay them. I and Uncle Peter were going to remain behind as we needed to buy some gold from the villagers. I gave my report as the secretary; we owed some villagers three buckets of sorghum, in these barren areas they do not harvest a good crop of maize so their staple was sorghum.
On Friday the five guys left; and the three of us went to the village. It was my duty to introduce Mr Nyati to the local people. The people brought their gold. I was writing down all the facts. Uncle Peter was testing with some chemicals and scaling. Nyati was paying out the cash. Gold is paid per point; it is rare for a single person to reach grams. It was a long time since a buyer came by the village, because of the heavy rains so people had a lot of gold with them.
We bought gold for nine thousand dollars. Some of the money was used as bus fees by the five guys, and the remainder was going to be used by Nyati for transport back to Harare. The boss asked me to talk to the villagers who still had gold that they could give it to us and say whatever they needed from Harare. Because I was very amiable and empathetic, the villagers now saw me as one of them; they believed me and brought their gold.
Uncle Peter received the gold, tested it and scaled it, I wrote down the amount and the items that the owner wanted. Others wanted blankets, women wanted pots and sets of plates from Cango Company, men wanted trousers, shoes, gumboots, another one wanted a bicycle…
Someone wanted to know how he would be able to carry all these things even by bus from Harare, I was the one to cut him short by saying “Mr Nyati has a shop in Hwedza, he brings all his groceries by bus. The worker in the Zonwe bus knows him like a brother so there is no problem as long as each of you is willing to fetch his/her own stuff at Nzvimbe." I talked like I was possessed, I saw Mhofu looking at me with a thankful eye and I went ahead writing.
Myself and Uncle Peter were to be the insurance. We managed to get some gold worth five thousand in credit. People in the village were jubilant, they asked us not to go and sleep in the tents that day. We slept in the hut, and the following day we took Nyati to the bus, some youths from the village went along with us, some wanted to change the sizes of the shoes they had written the previous day and other things like that. But I think others wanted to make sure that we were not also going.
It was agreed that on Wednesday we were to go and wait for Mhofu at the bus. He was to get to Harare the same day Sunday, on Monday he will sell the gold; Tuesday he will be shopping for the people’s orders; then Wednesday he was to be on his way back.
Uncle Peter and I were to get our salaries on Wednesday, I was excited, this was to be my first pay, and according to my culture as a Shona, I was to buy my mother a blanket. When we arrived in the village, we borrowed a chicken and another bucket of sorghum. We acted like we were celebrating, now what was left was for the money to come!
The following day we went up the river for fishing, we came across a place where some guys of my age were panning. I was infuriated. These guys where breaking the banks of the river and serving inside the river, surely they were killing the river; it left poignant pain on my heart. I discussed it with Uncle Peter who said “You can’t protest, you are waiting to get rich with these panners, so you can’t stop them, you are an accessory”.
I kept quiet. The days were dragging very slowly. On Wednesday we went with some villagers to Nzvimbe to wait for the bus. The bus came but Nyati wasn’t in it, the conductor and driver knew him very well but they didn’t see him at the Mbare Terminus in Harare.
One of the women said “Maybe he did not finish shopping, so he may come tomorrow" We all agreed and walked back the twelve kilometres back to the village.
The following day the same thing happened, and on Friday. What a surfeit of frustration and anxiety! On Saturday, there was no bus from Harare but on Sunday the driver told the same story, on Monday we avoided the village, went through the bushes but Nyati did not come. Tuesday, then Wednesday, again hoping that maybe we talked about the wrong week but the boss did not come. Our soghurm meal was running out, we got home and slept.
In the middle of the night Uncle Peter woke me up “What? What is it Sekuru?” I asked. "I had a nightmare, no, not a nightmare my dreams do not lie. My brother Jacob woke me up here telling us to run because the villagers are ganging up to kill us. It happened twice so we must leave this place now!" I tried to protest but Uncle Peter was already up and tightening his shoes. I woke up, put on my shoes and jacket. He said “No we are not going down to the river, let’s go up” as if speaking to an unseen person in the sky “Up where”? I asked confusedly. “Your voice is too loud, follow me,” he said. I tried to pick up the blankets but he jerked my hand and pulled me.
Mutanda was a big mountain, but not very hard to climb. There were no rocks and dangerous cliffs. After some time we heard some noise at our base, people shouting, “Vaenda, vaenda!” meaning 'They are gone, they are gone' Uncle Peter, looked at me, I couldn’t see his eye but I felt them.
Someone was shouting “Mbudzi yangu ndoda Mbudzi yangu chete!” My goat, I want only my goat. Then we saw a bright fire blazing up the sky. Someone had set alight our plastic tent. Now I was cooperating with Uncle Peter, I took the lead, we were actually going the opposite direction of Wedza, but we had no choice. To say we were broke is an understatement; we were penniless.
We went down the other side of the mountain, we could not just go east or west, the mountain on those sides was too steep. We then moved East around the mountain. It was daylight by the time we reached Singwizi River, more to the East than we had ever travelled. We avoided the villages and went directly north.
We left Nzvimve to our west when we crossed the road. and on we went.
We had no luggage so we moved like bush bucks. In Zimbabwe during this time of late March the crops are ripe in the fields. The vegetation was good for people on the run like us. When we were hungry we entered into the people’s fields, cutting fresh maize cobs and we ate them raw with creamy milk like juice spouting out. Water melons and some field sugar canes called ipwa we ate, as we moved. Then we came to the wires, they divided the villages with old scarcely populated African farms which were given to black soldiers who fought in the Second World War; they are called Zviyambe Farms. This told us that we were now entering Hwedza district.
Uncle Peter kneeled down, picked up some soft soil from the ground and threw it into his mouth and uttered, “Hwedza, the land of the Mbire clan, the land of my fathers, I am back. I am your son; thank you for saving my life from the mouth of a hyena, I am back, the son of a Baboon!" I was kneeling behind him, clapping along with him, I also took a pinch of soil and swallowed it.
Around midday, we came to Mutiweshiri Mission School which is along the Dorowa Mine and Nyazura Road. Some metres down the road, we came to the Hwedza Road and took it.
We walked and walked until we passed Mukamba Shopping Centre. At Negombwe turn-off, we took the Chigondo Road. I can tell you that you will never get tired until you get to your destination. The sun set when we were passing Ruswa Secondary School. From here, we knew the short-cuts, but as we were tired, it took us over two hours to get home.
My grandmother's home is the first when you enter Jena village from the east. I knocked at the door and no one answered. "Grandma, grandma it’s me Zenzo, I am back!" Then the door squeaked, my little sister Eunicah came out running: "Mukoma, mukoma! We didn’t know it was you. We are alone, grandmother went to Uncle Peter's place; there is a funeral. His brother Jacob died early in the morning."
Talk of portents! Uncle Peter started crying and moving on, I told Eunica to lock the door, and I followed him weeping.
Epilogue: Fifteen Months later…I was sitting with my grandfather and he said: “You see, my grandson, there is no shortcut to wealth,” I must confess that I was a bit exasperated and angry when I heard this – but later on, I pondered over what he said. Could this be true? Was I to blame for our harrowing ordeal? But I still believe that Nyati should not go unpunished. I would be on the look-out for any trace of him….
Charles Matorera is a Zimbabwean writer, and activist
