Tuku takes his subtle, discreet protest to UK audiences

Tuku takes his subtle, discreet protest to UK audiences

OLIVER MTUKUDZI: Leading the protests

• Zimbabwe keeps protest music muffled

• Tuku brings Somerville crowd to its feet

By Ray Matikinye

ZIMBABWE'S most popular musician Oliver Mtukudzi is in the United Kingdom to remind the thousands who have fled the economic rot that has beset their mother country through song and dance.

For the duration of the show, Zimbabweans will yearn for home, imbued with nostalgic memories of how things were and should have been since the days Mtukudzi sang: "Nyika yedu ye Zimbabwe" at independence from Britain in 1980, celebrating a new era for Zimbabwe and anticipating better times.

How times have changed.

Tuku's musical thrust has changed too as has the psyche of the urban poor who went on rampage in Harare's working-class suburb of Mabvuku when the price of bread was increased to Zim $50. Now breads costs 70 times as much at $3 500 a loaf but state brutality at the behest of an intolerant ruling elite has sapped the energy of the people to protest.

FOR MORE ON OLIVER MTUKUDZI'S UK TOUR WITH SOUTH AFRICA'S ISHMAEL VISIT: ZIMTOWNSHIP or LISTEN TO TICH MATAZ AT: MP3 FILE

They grudgingly accept daily price increases without even mute protest, fearful of a crackdown by state agents. Tuku denies the lyrics of his music disparages the inept, corrupt, political elite who have run the country's economy into the ground over time through graft and mismanagement. Life has become more miserable for the ordinary citizen in the past decade than at any other time in post independent Zimbabwe.

"People interpret my music they way they want." Tuku insists.

But listening to some of the songs on his Vhunze Moto album, one is left in no doubt that Tuku is one of the most subtle, discreet protest musicians around. He seems to embroider his critical lyrics effortlessly, ably putting his message across to the discerning ear.

Unlike his contemporary Thomas Mapfumo the chimurenga music guru who is rather brazen, brusque and truculent in his criticism, Tuku seems to have a mission to give most of the Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom a chance to listen to his pedigree lambaste of the country's political elite and its cheerleaders in Yave Mbodza - a song highly critical of the inherent political chicanery and hypocrisy Mugabe and his cronies have become legendary for.

Rather routinely, Mugabe has been adamant all he, his lieutenants and his party do is champion the cause of the poor peasant; all he does is for the benefit and in the interests of the people.

Tuku poignantly illustrates and exposes the insincerity of such pronouncements: "Vanotsengera mwana Asi ivo vomedza". From the abuse of the War Victims Compensation Fund, the VIP Housing Scheme and recently the Land Reform Programme the repertoire of Mugabe's band' has not changed a bit.

What Mugabe has done is allow his self-serving cronies to abuse the trust of both the independence war fighters and the hapless peasants for whose benefit the programmes were purportedly initiated.

In one of his instructive commentaries, South African deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs, Moeletsi Mbeki had this to say: "The one African politician who claims to act in the interests of peasants, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, has reduced the once-proud and almost self-sufficient Zimbabwean peasants to paupers who now have to be fed by the United Nations' World Food Programme."

Herein lies Tuku's apt message: "Vanotsengera Mwana Asi ivo vomedza". At the moment, there is hue and cry over ministers and other senior government officials refusing to give up the multiple farms they corruptly grabbed ahead of land-short peasants. The current situation regarding land redistribution begs the question "Do all the shady programmes Mugabe puts in place "on behalf of the peasants" benefit them?

In a recent address to the London Business School Mbeki says Africa's
peasants are prey to the forces that have the ability to form political
organization and therefore control the state. "Through marketing boards, taxation systems and the like, the political elite diverts the savings (accumulated by the peasants) to finance its own consumption and the strengthening of the repressive instruments of the state.

Listen to Gondo and you are left in doubt Mbeki and Tuku are singing from the same Book of Common Verse albeit for different audiences through different media.
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
shapiro@newzimbabwe.com