BOOKS-ZIMBABWE: The Black Man’s Burden – Remembering the Colonial Police.

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

HARARE, Dec 8 1998 (IPS) - A book by the late Zimbabwean writer Gahadzikwa A. Chaza has shed light on an era long forgotten here – when a black colonial police force gave comfort to the white settlers of then Southern Rhodesia.

Chaza himself served in the force which he joined after a chance meeting with a former classmate in the capital Salisbury, now called Harare, in 1936.

“I just met him by chance in the big city whilst he was on beat-patrol dressed in the uniform of a Native Town Policeman,” said Chaza, in a 126-page autobiography published last month in Harare, one year after his death.

The book, titled ‘Bhurakuwacha: Black Policeman in Rhodesia’ paints a dark picture of life in the ‘Bhurakuwacha’, a corruption of the English word ‘Blackwatch’ – alsdo the name of the Scottish regiment that served as a pioneer occupation force for the Britain of Queen Victoria.

The police force, was formed in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, in May 1895. “Whilst giving comfort and security to the White settlers, the native police were a symbol of oppressive authority and of tyranny to the indigenous people,” says the book. “The indigenous people saw their possessions, especially cattle, confiscated and their freedom curtailed by these ‘running dogs’ of white settlers.”

According to the book, the native police units did their colonial masters’ bidding with great thoroughness. Many of the policemen did not know how to use their newly acquired power and so they indulged in abusing it to the extent of creating an everlasting odium between the police and the people.

The name ‘Bhurakuwacha’ eventually assumed derogatory connotations which the White settlers never made any effort to conceal but instead, took much pleasure in emphasising that the ‘Blackwatch’ was an inferior being with no feelings at all, says the book.

Chaza claimed that the task of administering the British colony, which gained independence in 1980, was thrust upon the delicate shoulders of men picked up from a group of “White illiterates” who comprised the pioneer column of the settlers. Instead of cultivating good public relations with the indigenous people among whom they were going to live, the settlers showed streaks of the most ‘ruthless primitiveness’ when dealing with the indigenous people and quickly strained their relationship with the people of the country.

“The Black policemen were employed to do all the dirty work of their colonial masters. Attrocious acts of tyranny were openly committed and the intention was to put fear into the minds of the ‘Kaffirs’. The burning of villages, wanton murders and rape were so rampant that the perpetrators even regarded it as sport,” says the book.

“It is in this type of environment that most of us found ourselves working with the White settlers,” recalls Chaza.

He was born on Nov 22, 1916 into a family of an evangelist/teacher. His mother Eugenia Mandinika was born of a White father and Black mother. “Being one of earliest people of mixed blood in that area, she grew up under difficult conditions as the community took her to an outcast,” Chaza says. “However, she weathered on, grew up in the Shona culture and eventually met my father who she married in 1915.”

“Before I was born, my parents went through a period of ridiculous jokes. The community always taunted my father saying: ‘Do you think this coloured wife of yours will ever bear children’.

“When I was eventually born my parents could not help but give me the names Tavarwisa Chandigadza. Tavarwisa means ‘we have triumphed’, while Chandigadza means ‘my prop/my base’. At Baptism, I was Christined Albert.”

Chaza, however, went on to call himself simply “G.A. Chaza” he wrote. “Because of my mother’s background, I also have physical features which caused some consternations throughout my police career.”

Chaza tumbled from one problem to another, prompting his transfer across the country. One incident involved a trooper nicknamed “John Blunderbuss” whose presence meant terror to both the native constables and the Black civilians.”

“I had a classical clash with Blunderbuss one day. We were riding a motor cycle when we got to a point where the dirty ox wagon road crossed the river. Blunder-buss was wearing leather leggings and boots (a preserve of White policemen) and I had none. He asked me to push the motor cycle through the other side of the river. The motor cycle was too big and heavy a machine for one person to push through a rough passage with invisible boulders underwater. However I battled it out and crossed after what I think was a very taxing effort,” he recalled.

Blunderbuss then asked him to come back and carry him on his back across the river. “When I got to trooper John Blunderbuss he told me to get back to the other side of the river to put on a woolen pullover because he could not get a grip on my bare, Black body. I did so unwillingly, although feigning cheerfulness, and within no time trooper John Blunder-buss was on my back like a big child. I think he weighed about 90kg.

“When we were half-way across, I feigned a stumble over a boulder and fell backwards on top of him and pinned him down in the water. His cap, which had fallen off, started to float down the river. I jumped up to retrive the cap and left him to make his own way out of the water.

“Imagine what stock of swear words he poured out on me, but of course I was laughing up my sleeve. One thing he could not dare do was to strike me and he could not also report me, so he contended himself by pouring the venom of his spleen ‘bloody boy”, he recalled.

Chaza retired from the police force after 22 years of service, after an outspoken Black nationalist, George Nyandoro, poured scorned upon Black policemen at a political rally in the bustling Salisbury suburb of Mbare for upholding the ‘racist White regime. Chaza died last year at the age of 71, while “on the pulpit, preaching,” according to his son, Tororiro.

Zimbabwe’s minister of Education, Sports and Culture, Gabriel Machinga, has described the book, whose cover bear the picture of an African man carrying a Whiteman on his back across the river, as a valuable ‘primary source” of information.

“A book like Bhurakuwacha, in which we hear it from the horse’s mouth, comes in quite handy in complementing government’s efforts in propagating the source-based approach in the learning and teaching of history” in Zimbabwe, he says.

“Through this we will certainly be ensuring that the greater part of the history of Zimbabwe as a nation will never be lost or misrepresented,” says Machinga, at the book’s launch.