Keeper of Faith
The Autobiography of Tatenda Taibu
Keeper of Faith
The Autobiography of Tatenda Taibu
IN COLLABORATION WITH
Jack Gordon Brown
First published by deCoubertin Books Ltd in 2019.
First Edition
deCoubertin Books, 46B Jamaica Street, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool, L1 OAF
www.decoubertin.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-909245-86-0
Copyright © Tatenda Taibu, 2019
The right of Tatenda Taibu to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be left liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design by Matthew Shipley.
Printed and bound by Jellyfish.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by the way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for photographs used in this book. If we have overlooked you in any way, please get in touch so that we can rectify this in future editions.
To my wife, Loveness, and my two boys, Tatenda Junior and Gershom Paul, who have all been by my side in happiness, success, disappointment, danger and uncertainty in life. To have loved ones who love me regardless of emotions and circumstances has made me one of the happiest and blessed human beings alive.
Contents
IN THE 1990S CRICKET IN ZIMBABWE WAS CHANGING, AND NO ONE knew that better than my father, Bill. The generation of young black cricketers emerging from the Zimbabwe Cricket Union’s development programme in the high-density areas of the major cities were the future, and along with other coaches such as Peter Sharples, Bill gave everything of himself to help these boys achieve their dreams in the game. Highfield, a township in the capital of Harare, soon proved to be a particular hotbed of talent, and in time would produce a number of the nation’s leading cricketers. None of them would prove more influential than Tatenda Taibu.
I first came to know Tatenda later in that decade when I made the move to Takashinga – the first predominantly black team in Zimbabwean club cricket – who at the time were called Old Winstonians. I had been playing across town for Old Georgians, but as white cricketers I thought we needed to show, through our actions rather than words, that we were serious about developing black involvement in our sport. The young cricketers I encountered there were highly talented, technically excellent and all dreamt of a future for themselves in the game. I hoped I could enhance some of that with some of my own expertise and guidance.
Soon enough Tatenda was following in my footsteps, turning his attentions to wicketkeeping in order to supplement his batting. He was a complete natural: quick over the ground, quick hands, good balance, excellent hand-eye coordination. He had all the components to be world class with the gloves. By March 2000, he had joined the national squad as my wicketkeeping understudy in the West Indies. He was sixteen years old.
Tatenda’s arrival into the national squad came at a difficult time. For years we had been paid a pittance as international cricketers, and it was only through threatening strike action during the tour of England in 2000 that we managed to start earning some reasonable money. This dispute coincided with an even more controversial issue centred around racial quotas in the national side. The recommended quota system from the ZCU was introduced for good reason: promoting black participation and providing opportunities that had previously been denied young black talent.
We were already a small cricketing nation constantly fighting to justify our international status, and as established players we believed this quota system would serve to weaken us further. We had only just started to receive a fair amount of money from our board, and places in the team were highly sought after. In truth, a number of the players really resented some of the young black cricketers being promoted.
Looking back, I wish I had been wiser in the way I responded. I think that Graeme Smith and the people around him handled a similar situation in South Africa with more wisdom and with a better understanding of the bigger picture. It must have been difficult for youngsters such as Tatenda and his friends Hamilton Masakadza, Stuart Matsinkenyeri and Vusi Sibanda, but I think they handled themselves extremely well. Tatenda was always a role model, on and off the field. This was evident even at his junior school where he seemed to naturally evolve into leadership positions. He was a gutsy individual; always confident, always smart. When he first arrived in the dressing room, and because I recognised his potential, I often tried to challenge him to think both about his game and the team dynamics. His opinion was valued from a young age.
Hopefully this stood him in good stead when he became captain in the most difficult of circumstances at the age of twenty. He was still trying to organise his game as an international cricketer, and the problems that had engulfed Zimbabwe had not disappeared. It’s possible to captain successfully from a young age, take Graeme Smith at 21 as an example – but he would have had good people around to guide him. With Peter Chingoka and Ozias Bvute at the helm in Zimbabwean cricket, the same could not be said for Tatenda. That showed when he made his own stand against the board a little over a year later.
There is no doubt they would have employed their classic divide and rule tactics with him, offering a sweetened personal deal at the expense of others, and expecting silence or support as a result. Tatenda was better than that and stuck to his values and principles. As with Henry Olonga and myself at the 2003 World Cup, his own personal fight was never going to bring about regime change, and it would have been naïve to think otherwise, but he made a point of standing up for his values. Speaking out in Zimbabwe was not necessarily the route to future safety or financial prosperity, yet Tatenda wavered not in the face of severe pressure from above.
The mismanagement at the top of both cricket and government is heartbreaking to witness. It seems so entirely unnecessary. Zimbabwe is a resource-rich country with a strong foundation in good education. The parallel between the country’s story and that of its cricket is obvious, and tragic. Countless outstanding people have invested heartache, blood, sweat and tears into the game in our country, only to see its assets stripped and wasted. Is it retrievable? I suppose in time, anything’s achievable.
I have nothing but admiration for Tatenda. His dedication and commitment to ‘doing it right’ is a lesson to us all. It may not be in Zimbabwe any time soon, but his influence in the game will be felt again.
Andy Flower
March 2019
*
IT WAS THE TYPE OF THING I HAD SEEN IN THE MOVIES, BUT NOT IN real life.
It was October 2005 and I had been summoned to a last-minute meeting with Bright Matonga, the Deputy Minister of Information in Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. It was just before his trip to China, and I was pleased. After suddenly announcing my retirement from international cricket, I had already met with senior Zimbabwean politicians to explain my decision. Zimbabwean cricket needed fixing, and some of Zimbabwe’s most influential figures seemed as if they were willing to listen to me. I had no reason to believe that this meeting would be any different.
I soon found out just how naïve I had been.
I had arrived so full of hope, and now I found myself staring down at a brown envelope. I didn’t even know if I wanted to look at what was inside.
Mr Matonga had pulled it out of his drawer and thrown it across his desk to me. I had refused his offer of a free farm, and this was his next move. I half-expected it would have been an envelope full of money, a bribe to try and keep me quiet. I could have thanked him and declined the offer. But it was worse than that, much worse.
Instead what I found was an envelope full of photographs: images of dead people, murdered citizens of Zimbabwe.
I was in a panic, unable to work out the intention of his message: was he trying to remind me about how many of our people had perished at the hands of the white minority during the War of Liberation? Or could this be my own fate if I did not comply? I didn’t want to stay and find out, and I could not bring myself to make my way through his whole gory album. Instead I got up and left. The reform of Zimbabwe’s existing cricket structures was clearly not on the agenda. Intimidation was the order of the day.
I was acutely aware of the problems in Zimbabwean society, and indeed in Zimbabwean cricket. It was only two years since Andy Flower and Henry Olonga had been forced to flee the country after their ‘death of democracy’ protest at the 2003 World Cup. Neither had returned since. I had also been made captain off the back of Heath Streak and 14 other players walking out on the national team in 2004. I had seen how Robert Mugabe and his government had gone about land reform in the previous five years, brutally seizing farms in a sustained campaign of violence. I knew how Zimbabwe under this government was now viewed around the world: an undemocratic state where people were kept in check by the threat of violence and violence itself.
And yet I still believed I could change Zimbabwean cricket. After all, it was only a game: surely the government wanted the best for our sport, to help us to compete to the best of our ability? It would only enhance their reputation around the world. It seemed not. I had to make plans to get out.
When Henry and Andy had made their stand in 2003, they had each other. Whatever mud the Zimbabwean cricket officials flung at them, however much they were threatened, they could at least count on each other’s support. They also had the world’s media watching the government’s every move. England did not travel to Zimbabwe at all for their fixture against us, citing safety concerns, and our government were well aware that everyone was watching them. Ironically, England’s refusal to play us meant we reached the next stage of the competition, allowing Andy and Henry to reach South Africa and never return. Later on, with the international press long gone, would those in power be lenient with me?
It was not a risk I could afford to take. Loveness, my wife, had just given birth to our first child, Tatenda Junior. It was a beautiful moment for us, but the joy had been tempered by the fact that we were effectively on the run from our own government. What a way to bring a child into the world.
Bright Matonga wasn’t the only one making threats. In fact, Temba Mliswa, a known ZANU-PF activist who had just been made executive of the newly-created cricket province Mashonaland West, had been far less subtle in his attempts to scare us into submission, threatening over the phone to beat me up and describing me as a ‘black boy being used’. Loveness, meanwhile, had been taking anonymous phone calls at our home and had been followed in the street. The guards from the Central Organisation that Dr Gideon Gono had made sure were stationed outside our house had abandoned their post. Whether these threats would ever be acted upon was immaterial as they had achieved their goal. We were petrified.
I was a pioneer in Zimbabwean cricket, the first player to make it through the development programme set up by the administration in the townships. The whole programme had been created to get people like me into the game, people who did not have the benefit of privilege. I was their poster boy in many respects: in the team at the age of 18, vice-captain at 19, captain at 20. Now I was on the run, scared of what the future might hold for me and my family
*
DURING THE 1960s, EVERYDAY LIFE BECAME VERY HARD FOR THE people of Malawi, so much so that many decided to flee the country for greener pastures. It was around this time – an era in which Malawi became independent from the United Kingdom – that Manyando, my grandmother, started off on a journey with her two sons, Joseph and John. Manyando’s aim was to reach the country known as the breadbasket of Africa. That country was known then as Rhodesia.
The two countries have shared a history – Malawi, formerly known as Nyasaland, had been part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland under British rule, a federation created in 1953 and dissolved in 1963. A year later, when the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, it officially became Malawi. To this day, Malawi has a large Zimbabwean diaspora. Manyando’s hope was to find fortune in Zimbabwe, but reaching it would be no easy task, especially on foot. Malawi and Zimbabwe are split by hundreds of miles and another country, Mozambique, and it was in Mozambique that Manyando decided to make a stop with her two boys. Very soon, reaching Zimbabwe became almost impossible, and so Manyando decided to seek citizenship for the three of them.
It wasn’t long after settling in Mozambique that Manyando passed away, leaving her sons in a foreign land. In her absence, Joseph and John determined to accomplish their mother’s dream of finding fortune in Zimbabwe, so they eventually carried on with their original journey. Upon arrival in Zimbabwe, Joseph, my father, got straight to work, not wishing to miss an opportunity to earn a decent living. He set up shop, offering his services as a barber under the temporary accommodation of a large Mopane tree – one of the most distinctive trees in Southern Africa – in the township of Highfield, based in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. He surprised himself with his instant success; word spread quickly and soon men were queuing to sample Joseph’s clipper skills.
Because of the increase in men visiting his makeshift barbers under that tree, it wasn’t long before Joseph was opening his own shop in Highfield’s Machipisa Shopping Centre. Every Saturday afternoon this shop would be packed with men getting their haircuts and discussing the latest juicy political and life issues. Joseph’s business was expanding faster than he ever anticipated it would.
One early morning at the shop, as he was going about his daily chores, Joseph met the beautiful Margaret, my mother. Margaret was light-skinned, and for that she was considered beautiful in the township, a common view to this day. Joseph did not think twice about approaching Margaret, and she was taken in by his own handsome looks. They got to know each other straight away, and before long they were married. By this point Joseph was an established barber and had bought two houses in Highfield, and though Margaret was a qualified nurse working at one of biggest hospitals in the country, he managed to convince her to be the ‘homemaker’.
Joseph was doing considerably well for an immigrant who had started out with nothing. Though Margaret was usually blind to the gossip of the neighbourhood, it wasn’t long before word reached her about her husband’s past in Highfield. Had she really quit her job to commit to a man who could not be honest about his own past? Questions kept flooding her head until she decided to confront him. Joseph came clean, admitting he had been married not once, but twice. With the first wife he had fathered two girls, while his second wife had given birth to two boys during their relationship.
Margaret forgave Joseph, and even looked after these children with the income made at the barbershop. In 1972, they welcomed their own child to the world, Joseph Junior. Joseph was soon joined by three sisters – Jean, Jaqueline and Julie. Things were tough for Margaret not only financially, but emotionally as well. Joseph drank heavily and was not the sentimental type, practically leaving her to raise the children alone. To add to this, Joseph Jr soon inherited his dad’s habit of consuming large amounts of alcohol. My elder sisters Julie, Jean and Jackie fared better from a young age, and all later enrolled in college after mandatory education, but the financial pressures of raising a young family burdenened Mum.
I was born on 14 May 1983. My parents had been blessed with a second son, a son who they hoped would turn out to be more responsible than their first. In their joy they named me Tatenda, which means ‘thank you’. My father in particular had very high expectations of me.
Dad never talked about his early life. I have thought about it plenty, and there are certain things that just don’t add up. If the records are correct, he started his barbershop between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, which seems a little young to me. When you consider that he was married twice before he met my mum, that only confuses things further. It leads me to believe that at some stage he may have changed his birth certificate; I am told that used to happen regularly when people from either Malawi or Tanzania moved to Zimbabwe.
Whatever may have happened previously, as children we all got the impression that it was too painful for him to discuss. He had walked from Malawi to Zimbabwe, which is no easy journey – 735 kilometres sit between Malawi’s capital Lilongwe (established as such in 1975) and Harare – and it seemed to us that he wanted the past buried, not wishing to burden the next generation of Taibus.
As a child, I was simply not allowed to make mistakes. Dad was very tough on me. If I ever stepped out of line, I was beaten. My siblings would always tell me he treated me this way because he loved more than everyone else, and in turn he expected more of me. Whenever he wanted a glass of water, it was me who had to get it for him. Even if I was playing outside, he would get one of my siblings to come and get me just so I could carry out the task. I specifically remember him telling me at the age of ten that I was going to make a lot of money. It was, he said, a secret between me and him. I wasn’t even to tell Mum. I realised from a young age that the tough stance he took with me was not because he didn’t like me, in fact it was the very opposite. He wanted me to succeed in life, and he didn’t want me to take the same route as my brother.
In the townships it was quite normal for the man of the house to work hard during the day and then stay out drinking afterwards. That’s what Dad used to do, and it meant we didn’t see a lot of him, which I was fine with. I also didn’t have much of a relationship with my older brother. Joseph was a talented athlete, and he used to go down to the Gwanzura Stadium to impersonate his hero Mike Tyson in the boxing ring, but by the age of fourteen he was already a heavy drinker. I wasn’t comfortable that he was already like my Dad in that regard given how young he was.
Of my other siblings I was closest to Jackie. Jean was very quiet, someone who wouldn’t engage in confrontation or take sides. I was always fighting with Julie. A year after I was born, Mum gave birth to Kudzai. Given there was only a small age gap between the two of us, people often thought we were twins.
Kudzai was bigger than me in stature, and was also a very gifted athlete, but like my older brother he struggled to control his behaviour. Kudzai was such a naturally talented cricketer, and if he were to pick up a bat or ball now, you would not think he had been away from the sport for a very long time. He used to be so confident in his own ability that he would often tell me how he was going to achieve more in the game than I would without working as hard, while he’d also tell the opposition of the day that he was going to score a hundred before the match had started. When I told him he was only creating pressure for himself, he wouldn’t listen. He would later go on to earn a cricket scholarship at our local high school, Churchill, only to be expelled. Such were his talents that the neighbouring institution, then Prince Edward High School, offered him a rugby scholarship. These days, Kudzai runs an illegal lodge – effectively a brothel – back in Zimbabwe. It’s not nice to say, but it’s the truth.
My youngest sibling is Tapiwa, who was born in 1990, seven years after me. Later in life it would be me who looked after my little brother.
Mum was the glue who held us together at home while Dad went to work. It wasn’t always easy but compared to other families in the township we didn’t have it too badly. The business was doing well, allowing Dad to extend the house and buy three cars. He even had money left to buy a house for his brother. We each had a couple of pairs of shoes and a change of clothes; many in Highfield did not have such privileges.
By this stage the days of white minority rule under Ian Smith were over in our country. Rhodesia had become Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, the leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), was now the Prime Minister of the country. Still, it was very rare to see a white person in the township during my childhood. It is more of a regular occurrence now, but back then you would usually have to travel to the centre of Harare to see a white person. When people such as Bill Flower – father to Zimbabwean internationals Andy and Grant – came to Highfield for cricketing purposes, it was seen as something special. It was such a rare event that sometimes the little children would sing songs when they saw a white person.
Due to recent history, Zimbabwe is often characterised as a volatile, unstable country, but throughout my childhood it seemed very peaceful. To put things into perspective, I remember being taught about potholes one day when I was in high school, when I was in the sixth or seventh grade. There were so few potholes in Zimbabwe at the time that our teacher had to use pictures from Zambia to demonstrate what they were talking about. It’s obviously a trivial matter, but it paints a picture. It was called the breadbasket of Africa for a reason; it was and is rich in resources. Things such as mining, tobacco, and mineral exports were big business. There was never a thought of wanting to move to neighbouring countries such as South Africa and Namibia. Years later, during the crisis of the noughties, refugees from Zimbabwe flowed into South Africa with increasingly regularity as inflation and food shortages worsened.
I was young, but Mugabe was definitely considered a popular leader during the 1990s. A lot of what I learnt was from what you’d call street talk – that’s how word used to travel in the townships. I still talk to my wife Loveness about it now: how did we know so much about everything as kids? The answer is street talk. There will have been plenty of chatter in the streets when Mugabe was given a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994. That sort of thing affected our view of our President as well. As far as we knew, you could not be knighted without doing anything spectacular.
I grew up in a poor area, but as a family we would not struggle for food or drink. Generally, having access to three meals a day is not something you would associate with living in a high-density township like Highfield. Growing up, I don’t remember seeing many people struggle for the basics. There was a real community feel to Highfield; people would chip in to help others who were struggling, and most would share together. If we ran out of sugar at our house, we would go next door and ask to borrow some.
There were certainly townships in Harare where you would find more people without accommodation than in Highfield – Mbare and Epworth are two examples – but where I grew up you would hardly find any homeless people. At the time most of the really poor people in the country would live out in the rural areas. They would come to the big city to find work and if they found that work it was likely that they found accommodation as well – even if it was just a one-room place. If they didn’t find a job and therefore a place to stay, they would tend to head back to where they had come from rather than stay in the city. Back in the rural areas they may have had their own little plot of land, just enough to do some subsistence farming, but that was it.
Dad’s business was extremely successful in Highfield, and because of that we were better off than the average family in our suburb. He was also a very generous man. In time he extended our four-room house into an eight-bedroom house, so he could accommodate all the extended family who always visited, and he even bought a house for his brother. He was able to purchase three cars; two he could use for his business and one he could use as a family car. These weren’t luxury vehicles, but they were a sign that he was doing well.
Along with food and shelter, health is the most important thing, and that was always provided for as well. I remember getting sick and my parents not having to pay when we went to the clinic. Such a privilege is a distant memory in Zimbabwe now.
They are the things you look back on now, as a mature person, and think, ‘Do you know what, things were much better then’. I still go back to where I grew up, back to my old primary school. I have relatives and friends who still live in those areas, and it’s a complete contrast from how it used to be. When walking back from school I used to see houses all across the neighbourhood being extended. That is not the case now.
Another indicator of how much more comfortable people were was how full the sports grounds used to be. For someone to pay money to go and watch a football game or a cricket match live, they have to have a little bit going spare. Dad once took me to watch a soccer game, to see a team called Caps United. They played at the Gwanzura Stadium in Harare – the ground I used to run around in the mornings as part of my training – and on the day I went for the first time, it was completely packed out. I have rarely seen it full on my visits back to Zimbabwe over the years, and it is currently undergoing work after it fell into a state of disrepair. That was the sort of thing that used to keep people content. If a father is able to provide for his family, he’s more peaceful, isn’t he? There certainly isn’t any need for him to go and steal from the shop.
I was a child intent on learning both sides of every story, and so although I took in everything I was taught at school, I always remember listening to Mum the most intently. Though politics was never a big topic of debate in our household, Mum always used to remind us that we were born free. She had seen what life was like during white minority rule, whereas we hadn’t. It was an important reminder to us all: she lived through a time where black people were not allowed onto certain streets, and she didn’t want us to forget. Years later, just before she passed away, Mum’s mood about the state of Zimbabwe was so despondent that she openly wondered whether life during the Ian Smith era was better. Though the black population were denied many basic human rights and privileges, at least most people had access to food and other basic commodities. The war saw many horrors, but in some ways, people suffered more as Mugabe’s rule continued with impunity in the later years. That my mum was questioning that very point after everything she had witnessed pre-Mugabe showed the place we had reached as a country at the turn of the 21st century.
*
TO THE ONE WHO KNEW ME BEFORE I WAS EVEN IN MY MOTHER’S womb, who in His wisdom created me and continued to perfect me, I am forever humbled by your love and grateful for the gift of life.
Margaret Taibu, my mother, my first love, thank you for all the hard work and sacrifices that you made to keep the family together. Joseph Zuze Taibu, my father and my first life coach, the whippings didn’t go in vain. I am what I am today because of your tough love. I hope I continue to make you proud. Mum and Dad, Rest in Peace.
My cricket coaches, because of you, a dream became a reality. My fans, your support and love kept me motivated and gave me the drive to score more, catch more and even bowl.
My friends, the family I had a privilege of choosing for myself, I thank you for being there for me always. You encouraged me to chase my dreams, and for that I remain eternally grateful.
Jack Gordon Brown, you are tall and I am short, you are a bowler and I’m a wicketkeeper, you are white and I am black, so how you managed to articulate this story the way you did is nothing short of inspirational. Thank you for catching all the emotions that were hiding for years.
Tatenda Junior Taibu, thank you for being so cheerful and being a part of making our home so irresistibly happy. Gershom Paul Taibu, thank you for being a happy, witty son who makes parenting such a joy.
Loveness, you have been all that I could ever ask for.
Last but not least, thank you to my good friend Nick Gordon, who helped me find a publisher, and to deCoubertin for allowing me to open my journey to the world.
Tatenda Taibu
March 2019
I WAS SIX YEARS OLD IN 1989 AND IT WAS TIME TO START SCHOOL. No more afternoon naps. The world suddenly seemed a better place. For me, big school was Chipembere Primary, which was located within the local police camp. This meant that most of the children who enrolled there were from families where one of the parents was a police officer.
The main difference between schools in the UK – which my children have been taught at – and schools in Zimbabwe is the number of children in each class. There used to be around 50 other kids in my classrooms. That’s a lot, and it was difficult for our teachers to deal with that.
The method of teaching was also very different. We were basically taught to cram as much knowledge into our heads as we could. We weren’t taught how to learn or figure things out, just to cram. Take being in grade two or three, for example: we’d walk in the room to be told that we were doing multiples of five. We wouldn’t be able to sit down until we had each answered a question relating to the subject of the day correctly.
It was quite a rigid way of doing things. When it came to exam time, we would do this thing called ‘spot the paper’. That meant collecting all the exam papers that had been used on your grade in the years before and going through them methodically. We knew that pretty much all of the questions we were going to get would be in those papers. That’s why we called it ‘spot the paper’. There was no real practicality to it, we just had to fill our brains with information.
Broadly speaking, the students at Chipembere came from very humble backgrounds. In my grade, I was one of the few who were privileged to have the full required school uniform, thanks to my Dad’s thriving business. The fact that I was sent off every day smartly turned out, with my shirt tucked in and my socks pulled up, meant some teasing, but I knew I had to do well at school and behave in a disciplined manner. Failure to do so would result in consequences at home. Mrs Washaya was my first-year teacher. She was a motherly influence and no stranger to the family – she had taught my sisters before me. She was very patient with me, so I took a liking to her and tried hard to impress. My education was off to a fine start, but like most other children of my age, I longed for break time, where with a new group of friends I would play all sorts of games, my little legs covering a lot of distance. What a joy it was to be in this place.
At home, things were still difficult, especially for my mother. Tapiwa had come into the world, while at the same time Joseph Jr’s drinking sprees continued to cause heartache. Dad would still spend his days watching over the barbershop and his evenings drinking with his friends, meaning the burden of looking after us all still fell on Mum. She was under immense pressure. One day at school, I was caught talking out of line by my teacher Mr Tekere, and he promised I would suffer the consequences of my ill behaviour. In other words, I would be getting the ‘rod’ the following day. Back at home my mum was already struggling to keep us disciplined, and I was meant to be the sensible one. This did not sit well with me, so I had to devise a plan: I simply wouldn’t go to school the next day. Of course, my parents could not find out about this plan, so the next day I allowed my unsuspecting mother to send me off as usual, though I made sure I left without my siblings. Once out of sight, I took a detour from my usual route and hid until classes commenced.
Once I believed the coast was clear, I allowed myself a walk around the neighbourhood to kill some time, only to then spot my cousin. Though I tried to run away, my little legs were no match for his, and he eventually caught up with me. I was taken home, and so had to draw an excuse from my burgeoning bank of wisdom. I tried to claim that the teacher had not been present, and therefore there had been no point in staying. It didn’t wash, and so I was taken straight back to school. Thankfully, when I did eventually show up the rod stayed in Mr Tekere’s draw. I had gotten away with it. It was only when I got home later that evening that I suffered the consequences. As I was playing in the backyard, I was felled by a massive slap across my face. I felt dizzy and numb. I was in a state of disbelief and then pain. I had never seen such a display of anger from my Dad. What was he even doing home at this time? Is this how disappointed he was? I would have taken a beating at school anytime over this.
From then onwards, he was intolerant to any sort of mischief. A little later, in grade five, I remember becoming annoyed with a girl at school, who kept claiming I had a girlfriend. It was not a cool thing to do at that age, and so I confronted her. It did not end well. In an effort to stop it all, I hit her. My Dad found out, and he spoke words to me that I was to remember for a long time: ‘Don’t you know that you never hit a girl, no matter what she has done?’ He accompanied this lecture with a heavy slap.
During most of our assemblies, the headmaster would call out the name of a student and ask them to come to the front of the hall. He’d then go on to praise them for their academic progress in front of everyone else, with the intention of motivating us all to keep working hard. On one of these mornings, I found myself listening intently to the words of our headmaster: ‘This boy is excelling in all his subjects and this has a lot to do with the choice he has made to participate in a sport that teaches him important lessons: respect, obedience, discipline and so much more,’ he said. That was where I needed to get to. I could save myself from the slaps, while having fun playing sport at the same time. I was hugely encouraged, and I was going to make sure to get close to the boy in question: Stuart Matsikenyeri.
When you grow up in a township you have to make do with what you’ve got. You create your own fun; you make your ball out of nothing. To make our cricket stumps, we’d find bricks with holes in them and put sticks in the holes. For our gymnastics, we used to collect the leftover grass on the fields after the council had cut it. With this we’d form a grassy mound, which would act as our cushion. We’d then collect old car tyres and pile them on top of each other, which would form a trampoline for us. We’d take a run at this loose structure, bounce off it, do a somersault mid-air and then land on this mound of grass. It’s only by God’s grace that nobody broke their neck.
Gymnastics was not our only use for these disused tyres. Like most other countries in the world, football is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe among children. All you need to do is make a ball and then you are away. In Zimbabwe the milk used to come in plastic bags, and we’d collect these bags once people were done using them. We’d blow up two of these plastic bags, tie them together and put them in a paper bag, which we would twist and cover. In the meantime, we’d also have collected a number of tubes that used to come in car tyres. We would tie all these together, forming a sort of continuous tube. This tube would then be tied all the way round the paper bag. We now had a ball that bounced.
This sort of innovation meant that when it came to organised sport, we often did not have to be taught the basics; we were already well-versed. The same applied for cricket. When we started proper training at school, we were already very comfortable throwing the ball. How? We often spent much of our spare time trying to hit birds with small stones. Our accuracy was honed. You would hardly find a youngster who couldn’t throw the ball properly. We’d also create our own traps from disused wire to catch rats – I could still make one to this day. We’d leave our staple food, maize (which is corn) on this carefully-made trap, and wait for the rats to come. Hand-eye coordination wasn’t a problem for us kids who had grown up in Highfield, so when it came to cricket the first thing we were taught was how to hold the bat in the correct manner.
In 1992, with the sport still dominated by the white minority, the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU), as Zimbabwe Cricket was then called, had formed a programme to develop cricket nationwide – especially in high-density schools like ours. Three centres were opened at the Mbizi, Chengu and Chipembere primary schools. Coaches were stationed at these centres to scout for talent in young boys. Cricket was practised as part of Physical Education in the morning and there would be afternoon sessions for those that wanted to take the sport more seriously.
Stephen Mangongo, Bruce Makova and Walter Chawaguta were the coaches assigned to these three centres. During one of these sessions, Mr Mangongo asked me to attend a practice at the neighbouring Mbizi Primary school in the afternoons; they had a concrete pitch and we did not. I had learnt that Stuart – the boy who had been singled out in assembly and was becoming a close friend of mine – was playing cricket, so it was not a tough decision for me to say yes, even if football was my first love. I quickly learnt that practice was compulsory every afternoon, and that ill-discipline would simply not be tolerated.
Mr Mangongo was at the centre of this strict regime. Mangongo, or Steve as we used to address him, was an interesting character. He had an ability to instil a love for the game in you. When he knew he had you hooked, he changed, becoming a stern disciplinarian. We feared him once he took this turn, but he was a very effective coach all the same. Punctuality was non-negotiable; alertness crucial. Failure to meet these criteria would result in hefty punishments, which included a lot of running and beatings. Coach Bruce Makova was an even harder man. He was always serious, invariably spoke in English – not our first language as children – and demanded very high levels of behaviour. Boys generally preferred the other two coaches, as this man was an intimidating figure. He was a big fan of Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, so his coaching was generally modelled around them. Coach Walter Chawaguta was the most likable. He was a very gentle, understanding man. Spotting talent was not his strength but once he had something to work with he was brilliant, a real favourite of the boys.
Steve used to beat us and today it would be understandably unacceptable. For me, though – at this specific time – it probably straightened me out. I’m actually happy I got them. Maybe I look it at that way because I came from a home where my dad would use the same method of punishment. The way I interpreted it was that they both wanted me to do well – they would beat me because I had made a mistake. If they didn’t want me to make that mistake again, they hit me. I saw it as good for me. When I talk to my kids about Steve, I tell them that he was a person who really cared about my cricket, and when I talk about my dad, I say that it wasn’t for those beatings I wouldn’t be where I am today. In some ways, it makes even more sense to me now than it did then, though I would never act in the way they did as a coach or as a parent.
Stuart and I soon developed a close friendship. We spent most of our time together at school, cricket training and at home, often with bat and ball in hand. His dad was a police officer with the Zimbabwe Republic Police, and so they had accommodation within the camp. His mum was barely around – she spent a lot of time in their rural home in Chimanimani, which is in the east of Zimbabwe. For us, cricket became something close to an obsession. ‘Eat, sleep, drink cricket’ was coach Steve’s mantra, and so we did.
Sadly, Stuart’s dad passed away in 1994. It was an extremely difficult time for him and his family, especially as they could no longer stay in the police camp. Thankfully Stuart and his brother were taken in by a kind relative, Janet Matikiti, which at least enabled them to go through primary education without having to move schools. It wasn’t far away from where I lived, so we still saw each other regularly.
I was constantly playing cricket, but soccer was still my first love. Though I knew it wouldn’t please my cricket coaches – who did not believe in sharing cricket with anything else other than education – I wanted to explore my talents, and so in 1993, aged ten, I joined a local team named Zimbabwe Crackers. I soon caught the eye of the club manager, Zozo, who like Steve told me that I was a natural and wanted to see me at more practices. It was nice to hear that from a coach who was well respected in the community. The only thing I didn’t like about soccer was the general attitude of the players: my soccer friends were rowdy and disrespectful, while my cricket friends were quieter and calmer. As long as I was staying out of trouble, Mum didn’t mind which sport I was trying my hand at, or which one I was more devoted to. Anything to keep me occupied and away from the ‘bridge boys’ – a ghetto term used for boys who had nothing else to do but to sit by the road and cause mischief – was a good thing in her eyes. My parents had learnt plenty from their experiences with Joe. He had almost achieved a scholarship at a young age for his talents over 100 metres, but apart from that he had not achieved anything else and didn’t benefit from that positive influence sport can provide. In the end he had to start helping at the barbershop.
Though Stuart liked soccer, and was good at it, he was not a fan of me playing it – to him cricket was the number one, and nothing else could compare to it. It had to be cricket and cricket alone. For a while it compromised our friendship, until eventually he devised a plan to save me from the mistake I was making. He knew that coach Steve had a serious hold over me, as he did over him. He told me that Steve had demanded that I come back to cricket without fail. It was a lie, but it scared me so much that without a second thought I gave soccer up. From that moment on it was almost exclusively cricket.
Soon enough, I was making headline news. The ZCU, pleased at how their programme was taking shape, produced an article about the progress taking place in the various centres. The article appeared in the country’s biggest newspaper, The Herald . Alongside the article was an image of me in my batting stance. Such a magnificent picture, I thought. Because cricket was such a white-dominated sport at the time, the article was very important in breaking down the elitist image that surrounded it. Though the article did not speak about me as an individual, my mum was extremely proud of it. She would carry the newspaper cutting in her handbag, showing all of her friends, including the ones I had started becoming acquainted with at church. My dad, on the other hand, was unmoved.
The programme started by the ZCU was proving extremely fruitful. There were a number of talented players, many of us who went on to play representative cricket at some stage, either at school or professionally. Lovemore Mbwembwe, Alester Maregwede, Norbert Manyande, Vusi Sibanda, Hamilton Masakadza, Blessing Mahwire, Stuart and I all progressed through the system at different stages, a system which created a lot of interest in the neighbourhood.
As a school we generally played games against other schools from the high-density suburbs, such as Mbizi and Chengu. Later we would travel to face other teams from neighbouring suburbs, teams who we would usually dominate, before we were eventually invited to play against private schools. Our first game was against a Harare private school called Hellenic Primary. On arrival, I was amazed by what I saw. Given where we were coming from, this school was out of this world. The fields seemed bright green, without the vast areas of dust which we were used to seeing at our school, and everything looked so neat and immaculate. The Hellenic team met us in the car park to welcome us, all of them dressed in sparkling cricket whites and blue blazers. Most of our white clothing was more cream than white. It had done a few years’ service, and it showed. They walked us over to the ground, where more new experiences awaited us. This was the first time we had come across a grass pitch, proper wooden stumps and bails. Added to that, the boys that were showing us around this field were wearing spiked shoes.
When we got to the ground we felt very inferior. We’d be singing together on the bus, but when we arrived at the car park there was complete silence. There were beautiful cars everywhere, and then we took one look at the field – you couldn’t falter a thing. It was quite intimidating. Some of our players wouldn’t even have socks or white shoes because they simply couldn’t afford them. We even had a boundary marked out for us: back at Chipembere we’d use any old measurements to signal a boundary: posts, trees, concrete walls, you name it. We had one kitbag between the team, while each of their team had their full complement of brand-new gear. How would we compete?
But then I started to observe the respective warm-ups. We were very organised. We organised our bags straightaway and waited for our coach to call us over. When he did, we were straight into our warm-up drills. We knew what we were meant to be doing: fielding practice, then stretching. We knew our roles off by heart, but it was clear our opposition didn’t. I could hear them asking questions like, ‘Coach, where am I batting?’ That’s when I knew we would be fine.
By the first over, we knew we were going to smash them. We scored a couple of fours, which at that age were not so easy to come by. We thought we’d done well to post a score of 116. That was until Steve showed up in the dressing room. Our target had been 125, and we’d failed to reach it. Our punishment was no tea. One of the opposition parents came in and told us it was time to eat – they had made cakes for us – but all we could do was look at her. We had to obey our coach. We missed tea and then went and bowled them out for eight runs. My contribution alone with the bat had been sixteen runs, and I hadn’t had a bowl. Our opening bowlers, Lovemore Mbwembwe and Vusi Sibanda, the latter of whom would play international cricket with me, accounted for their whole side. We had never played with a leather ball before this game. I laugh when I think about it now.