The ZIMBABWE Situation | Our
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Meet the new boss, same as the old
boss
(Filed: 24/06/2003)
Once pro-Mugabe, now passionately anti, singer Thomas Mapfumo
talks to Douglas Rogers
In the 1970s, Thomas Mapfumo was jailed by Ian Smith's Rhodesian regime for his militant songs in support of the struggle against white rule. A quarter of a century later, he is still singing about injustice, brutality and oppression, but now he has turned his anger on the man he once fought for - President Robert Mugabe.
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"You have caused hunger, you have chased away capable farmers," Zimbabwe's musical superstar sings on Marima Nzara, a track from his 2001 album Chimurenga Rebel. "Do the farming yourself, you have a big mouth!"
It is a stinging rebuke of Mugabe and his disastrous land reform programmes that have left the country's economy in tatters, but it is just one in a chorus of fearless vocal assaults that Mapfumo - "The Lion of Zimbabwe" - has made on Mugabe since the late 1980s. "Back in the '70s we were fighting colonial rule," Mapfumo says. "And now we are fighting oppression from one of our own."
He is speaking from Eugene, Oregon, where has lived in exile with his family and members of his 17-strong Blacks Unlimited band since August 2000. There are rumours he was forced to flee Zimbabwe because of threats on his life, but he says he left for the sake of his children.
"I'm not afraid. I can go back any time, and I tour there every year, but I have kids to look after. Where is the education and health care that Mugabe promised us?"
It is the kind of question Mapfumo, a feline, bone-thin 58-year-old with dreadlocks down to his waist and a rasping-deep voice, is asking UK audiences as he tours his latest album Toi Toi. A beautiful, at times desperately sad album that asks what has gone wrong in his homeland, it is his 35th in a career that started in the 1960s as a township rock and roller doing Elvis Presley covers.
In the mid-1970s, though, as Rhodesia spiralled into racial civil war, Mapfumo changed tack. He started singing in his native Shona language, adding Zimbabwe's traditional mbira thumb piano and electric guitars to potent lyrics about rural poverty, police brutality and support for the freedom fighters in the bush.
He called it chimurenga ("struggle") music, and it became so popular among ordinary Zimbabweans that by 1979 the Smith regime had banned his songs and briefly jailed him. By April 1980, Mapfumo was sharing a stage with Bob Marley at Zimbabwe's independence celebrations.
All of which seems a long time ago. While Mapfumo rallied support for Mugabe, he was also the first to sing out against him.
When most world leaders still thought Mugabe was an African hero, Mapfumo says he was never taken in. "I supported him in the beginning, but I was always keeping an eye on him. When they started talking about a one-party state, I started to realise they were selfish. We went from the frying pan into the fire with this man."
In an eerie echo of the Smith regime, Corruption was banned from the airwaves, and, by the late 1990s, Mapfumo was in open confrontation with the government.
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On the 2000 album Manhungetunge ("Stomach Ache") he even re-recorded an old chimurenga hit about starvation and lying politicians that was originally aimed at Ian Smith. "It's sad, but the same situation exists today."
Of course, the government took notice. Four of his cars were confiscated by police, forcing the band to take buses to their concerts across the country. And, when Chimurenga Rebel was released in 2001 at the height of the violent farm invasions, eight songs were banned. It didn't stop 30,000 copies of the album being sold in two days.
Mapfumo has been recording in the US since the late '90s, and in recent years he has added big-band horn sections and more guitars and mbiras to the line-up, giving a jazzy chimurenga fusion to dark albums such as Rebel.
If Toi Toi is more reflective, it still contains some scathing political comment. On Vechidiki, he sings to the youth militia who roam the country terrorising the political opposition: "They send you to do dirty work and you just comply. Be warned you will die for other people's evil deeds."
And, on the confrontational Mukoma J ("Big Brother J"), he sings about a wicked and destructive man whose name starts with a J. In Zimbabwe, fans see it as a warning to the hated Information Minister Jonathan Moyo.
But perhaps the most open political statement is the album title itself. A Toi Toi is a protest dance millions of black South Africans performed during the struggle against apartheid. Mapfumo says Zimbabweans should protest in the same way.
The Lion of Zimbabwe is roaring again.
Thomas Mapfumo's UK tour continues on Thursday at Hebden Bridge Trades Club, and then takes in London, Luton, Tunbridge Wells, Leeds and Bristol. 'Toi Toi' is released on Anonymous Records.