Some time last year, I was warned by an exacting reader of this column, Michael Kaliika, to cease and desist from further writings on Dangamvura experiences. I promised this tough critic that I was done. However, for just this once, I humbly request that he allow me to pay homage to a good friend of mine, Kaay Musimwa, who passed away in February. I was with Kaay at Mutare Boys High School nearly four decades ago.
The changes
1987 was a momentous year for a certain cohort of learners at Mutare Boys High School. It was our final year in high school. Perhaps to prepare us for what lay ahead, fate brought us a new principal, Mr. Kuwengwa, and a new deputy headmaster, Mr. Guwu. The reputation of the new principal as a disciplinarian preceded him. He had dealt effectively with the learners at Dangamvura High School, and it seemed it was now our turn. The regional education office might have brought him in with a mandate to tame us.
Whereas our departing headmaster, Mr Moyana, had an urbane and intellectual demeanour, Mr Kuwengwa’s sternness instilled fear. It was clear the Reign of Terror, akin to that meted by Maximillion Robespierre during the 1789 French Revolution, was about to befall us.
Immediately after the entry of this leadership duo, our hostel menu was changed. Out went the rice and chicken. Out went the pudding for dessert. In came samp, cabbage and beef. I suppose black students did not deserve foods that would make them soft. That was stuff for white folk of an earlier period. The black child deserved to suffer.
Without any other powers to retaliate, we exacted some revenge by giving the new school heads nicknames. Mr Kuwengwa became known as However (his favourite word). Some history nerds like Kevin “The Kitten” Masamvu referred to him as Metternich after a conservative 19th-century Austrian diplomat and statesman who sought to suppress liberal views across Europe. The deputy headmaster, Mr Guwu, was unflatteringly nicknamed Evolution.
Years after we had left Mutare Boys High School, Mr Kuwengwa would go on to play a very influential role in higher education in Zimbabwe. Great for him. Great for the country. Not so great was my experience of his leadership.
Parmenas’ Revenge
A few months into Mr Kuwengwa’s regime, we had upgraded our methods of sneaking out at night from Tongogara House (for a long time we resisted the change of name from Crawford House). What ultimately sobered us up and turned us into compliant individuals in the final half of our last year in Upper Six was the revenge of a Form Four pupil called Parmenas. Apparently, this young man felt he had been unfairly treated by one of the house prefects and the form of punishment meted out on him.
One Friday night, some of the prefects and senior students sneaked out of the school dormitories to catch a movie at the Rainbow Theatre in town. For some, dates had been arranged with the companions at Mutare Girls High School which was just down the road.
Unbeknown to all of us, Parmenas went to the Upper Six dormitory and also peeped into the prefects’ rooms. Satisfied that many of us were away, he alerted the deputy headmaster-cum-housemaster, Mr Guwu. Very much like that Nyadzonia sellout, Morrison Nyathi, Parmenas revealed our secrets – under the sheets were dummies and not real people.
The consequences for those caught in the dragnet were serious. Prefects lost their positions. Cricketers were stripped of their colours…The incident and the consequences reverberated across the city.
Enter hard labour sentencing
Where punishment was normally detention for boarders – meaning you could not sign out for the weekend, it had now been replaced by hard labour. One time, Phibion Rukambe and I were “sentenced” to uprooting some huge tree stump. Luckily, Phibion conspired to get some desperate men loitering outside Moto Moto Bar to do the work for us for a fee. We stood guard as they worked on that tree – looking out for “spies” and prefects.
Kaay Musimwa the Joker amid the storm
In all this time of tribulation, we had one character who took the situation in his stride. Some people are born with the sun in their personality. Kaay Musimwa was one such person. He always wore a naughty smile and mischief danced in his eyes. I had known Kaay from Grade One at Zimunya Primary School when he was selected to be the prince in our class play, The Sleeping Beauty. Mrs Rondozayi saw it fit to make me the prince’s horse in the play…
Kaay had such a self-deprecating manner that he would pour his heart out on any personal matter, like the one time that DK from Girls High School dumped him and our Upper Six dormitory had a collective heartbreak. We analysed and reanalysed the breakup letter. We swore at DK. How could she do this to our dear brother in the very last term of Form 6 when we were about to write final examinations? What wickedness was this?
In that same year, Kaay lost his mother and his relationship with his own father became quite complex. But Kaay narrated the goings-on in his household with an amazing sense of irony. He had every reason to be bitter, but you felt he could have been an outstanding standup comedian – making other people laugh at his expense.
As we got closer to writing our A-level examinations, it was Kaay who kept our spirits up. He would walk into the study in the evening, stand by the door, survey the room and chuckle at us huddled over our books trying hard to memorise passages from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
“Who amongst you will be joining me kuVarsity?”
We would burst into uneasy laughter. Ah, Kaay.
Rest in perfect peace, mate.
