Chartwell Dutiro: Mahororo

The opening of Chartwell Dutiro's obituary on Afropop Worldwide:

Chartwell Dutiro has joined the ancestors. More than a brilliant Zimbabwean mbira player and a pillar of Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited during their rise to international fame in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Chartwell was a musical visionary with a deep and abiding fidelity to the Shona tradition in which he was raised, and a wry, witty cosmopolitanism that made him a singularly effective ambassador to the world.

Shorayi Dutiro’s journey began in a Kaganda village in the Bindura region of then-Southern Rhodesia. According to his passport, he was born on Dec. 26, 1957, but he was never certain of the accuracy, given the cavalier attitude of colonial Rhodesian authorities toward the residents of rural communities. 

He often told the story of how a white doctor, not his parents, decided to call him Chartwell, after Winston Churchill’s summer home. Only years later when he actually visited the place did Chartwell learn that this was the derivation of his name. Nevertheless, the name Chartwell has always appeared on his official documents.

And Wikipedia takes up the story:

As a teenager Chartwell moved to the capital, Harare, and became saxophonist with the Salvation Army band. A little later, in 1986, he joined the world-famous band Thomas Mapfumo & the Blacks Unlimited. Touring the world for eight years with that band, he was their arranger, mbira player and saxophonist. From 1994 until his death in 2019, Chartwell based himself in Britain where he continued to teach and play mbira.

Chartwell had academic qualifications in music, including a degree in Ethnomusicology from SOAS in London where he also taught for many years.

Ode to Joy as a Nazi anthem

I heard an extraordinary programme on Radio 3 yesterday. Looking at the history of Beethoven's ninth symphony, it opened with an extract from the performance that Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted for Hitler's birthday in March 1942.

Though some have claimed to detect a subtle protest in it, with those added drums it sounds a full-blown Nazi anthem to me.

I have added it above as I don't know how long the radio programme will stay on the BBC site,

The piece it reminds me of is Laibach's reworking of Queen's One Vision to reveal the totalitarian impulse that can be present in unthinking rock.

Elsewhere in the programme you will hear from Nigel Farage and learn that the tune of Ode to Joy was used for the Rhodesian national anthem.

Oh, and Auschwitz had a children's choir used to dupe visitors about the nature of the place, which revealed a new circle of human depravity to me.

Blessing Muzarabani wins Name of the Day

Embed from Getty Images

Congratulations to Northamptonshire's new recruit.

The seamer Blessing Muzarabani, who has one test cap for Zimbabwe, wins our Name of the Day Award.

Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar and Wilf Mbanga

I have been enjoying Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar on Radio 4.

One of the best stories he has told this time is about he and his wife's cat Wilf Mbanga.

When it went missing Sayle used his celebrity status to get at article in the local paper.

This led to the revelation that the original Wilf Mbanga, a Zimbabwean opposition politician, was living in exile nearby.

A tweet by Zorro P Freely led me to a Camden New Journal article that proves the story was true.

Written after Wilf Mbanga had been returned to the Sayles, the article says:

The real Wilf Mbanga, a journalist critical of the Mugabe regime who lives in London, told the New Journal three weeks ago he was “tickled pink” after hearing Mr Sayle had named his cat after him. 

But he said he would not join the hunt because he was allergic to cats and suffered from severe hay fever. 

This week, Wilf Mbanga said: “I am delighted Wilf Mbanga has been found. Even in times of distress, we need to laugh at ourselves.”

It gets better:

With world debate focused on the outcome of the Zimbabwean elections and the reinstatement of Robert Mugabe as leader, Mr Mbanga appeared on the BBC World Service on Saturday. But in a surreal few minutes, a newsreader also discussed the missing cat named in his honour.

And, in a final touch which I don't think Alexei Sayle mentioned, they first adopted Wilf Mbanga after he had turned up as a stray in John Humphrys's garden.

That's the cat, not the exiled Zimbabwean politician.

Headline of the Day

Won by BBC News for:

Zimbabwe's MPs to be circumcised in bid to fight HIV

Jeremy Thorpe calls for the assassination of Robert Mugabe

Or at least he does according to the The First Post:

Jeremy Thorpe, the former leader of the Liberal Party, has called for the assassination of Robert Mugabe. Speaking to the Journal of Liberal History, he was asked his views on the Zimbabwean leader. Thorpe, now 79, began tamely enough, saying: "I think he is a ghastly, wicked man", but when asked how he should be dealt with, he hardened his line: "He should be assassinated."

I have been having similar thoughts recently, though there are doubts about how far Mugabe is really in charge any more. And I think people tend to overestimate the importance of individual leaders. Remember how the Israelis used to demonise Yasser Arafat? His death hardly led to a breakthrough in the Middle East, did it?

Thorpe's remarks raises a couple of questions.

First, does this amount to incitement to terrorism? It is now an offence to conspire against foreign governments here in Britain. Looking back at a posting of mine from three years ago, it certainly looks like it.

Second, why are we so squeamish about assassination when most of us are quite happy to entertain the idea of invading a country to overthrow a tyrannical government? That will inevitable involve the death of many people, most of whom will have little personal involvement with the regime.

The First Post goes on to recall that Thorpe was once on trial for conspiracy to murder. I prefer to remember that. as Liberal leader, he called for Rhodesia to be bombed when Ian Smith declared UDI.

Now that's what I call liberal interventionism.

Joke of the Day

Courtesy of The Mole on First Post:

There is a grim joke circulating among Labour MPs: "What is the difference between Robert Mugabe and Gordon Brown?"

Answer: "Mugabe was elected."

Zimbabwe's slow suicide

There is a good article by Susie Linfield in Dissent. She traces the collapse of Mugabe's Zimbabwe through a study of five widely available books:

• When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa by Peter Godwin
• Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa by Peter Godwin
• Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller
• African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe by Doris Lessing
• The Stone Virgins by Yvonne Vera

See the This is Zimbabwe blog too.