running back to the death of Samora Machel

Running in a group is easier than running alone. I know that - I can get out of bed much easier for that than if it is just for me. Running while talking allows you to run without getting puffed. I know that too, was just reminded of it this morning (but it makes no sense). Running on a march allows you to achieve great distances of sustained jog, especially when chanting - I found that out in Zimbabwe many years ago, when, by no means a runner, I joined a march after Samora Machel's strange death. 

This requires a little backhistory for some of you perhaps. Samora Machel was the first president of Mozambique, and much much much loved by Zimbabweans for his support of them in the long guerrilla fight for independence at a time when Rhodesia's conservative white government restricted access for black Rhodesians to land, education and even the right to walk on the main street (First Street) of the capital city, then Salisbury, now Harare. It was a very harsh time and surely left huge psychological marks. 

The extremes can be indicated as follows. When the country became independent, and many conservative white Rhodies left the country, a great number went to what we knew then as the Racist Republic of South Africa. Fable has it that they were too racist for the South Africans, and a number of these then went on to Perth. (This was apocryphal and may not have really been true but we all believed it - it chimed with our several experiences: black, white, Zimbabwean, expat). Certainly, of those that remained, tempers could run high. I remember shaking with rage at a high-class tea party shortly after I arrived in the country, in part because of the extreme racism being articulated in polite conversation, in part because it was being articulated at full blast within the hearing of the black servant, and in part because of the fact of a servant and of the treatment of that white uniformed man - quite elderly, whom the host referred to as a 'boy'. I also remember, a year or two later, being chased from a braai (a Rhodie-style barbecue) by the host waving a (steak?)knife after our discussion of the rights of black Zimbabweans got too heated. This time there was no rage for me - I was laughing, though scared, and yes for once running fast! I was used to such disagreements and had accepted them as par for the course if I was going to attend a Rhodie braai and say what I think. You just get accustomed to stuff.

In 1986 Samora Machel died in an aircraft crash on the border between Mozambique and South Africa. The world outside believed it was an accident. No one I knew in Zimbabwe did. But then we were used to reading between the newspaper lines - a skill people in Britain lacked as I discovered on my return home a few years later. How could this accident have happened over the only small patch of South African soil on the aircraft's route, or, as some said, off the plane's route? Too much of a coincidence for us. People were distraught. It was like your father dying. I went to a gig at Queens - one of the best venues for Zimbabwe music -  Tobias Areketa was singing a new song about Machel. People were dancing with tears running down their faces, including a wheelchair-bound war veteran at the front of the dance-floor, reminding us all of why Machel was so much loved.  You can listen to that song on youtube, wonderful youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpqObGE4WtA and note the apparently cheerful guitar melody counterpointed with the mournful notes of the singer. The word 'baba' means 'father' in Shona. 'Mai we' (am I spelling this right?) is a lament. I am sure you can pick them out. Imagine that dance floor. Take yourself there. 

But tempers ran high then too. When I and my (white) friend went downtown to join the march to mark our sadness at Machel's death I was grabbed by the wrist by an irate marcher who wanted to force me to join in, until she realized, with delight, that I was intending to anyway. What I hadn't understood however was that the march was a run, and a run to song and chant to the stadium (5 k away). I was not a runner then, nor any kind of athlete. I had bunked off games when I could at school, choosing Hungarian instead (it was a very academic school) and had never taken sport up since apart from the occasional walk, except perhaps after heated Braai discussions..... However on the march I made it all the way. My feet stung at the end but I was happy, euphoric, incredulous. It was the rhythm - of the chant, the music, the marching feet, and the rush of emotion that drew us into one strong running body, even me.

Wow I didn't know that spiel was going to take me where it did!! Lovely lovely Zimbabwe.