Welcome home Mukanya.
After 14 long years in the U.S. state of Oregon, singer, composer and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo has come home to Zimbabwe. His recent performance, for approximately 20,000 ticket holders at the open-air Glamis Arena, only slowed down as the sun began to rise.
“I thought maybe I wasn’t going to be able to come back here while I was still alive,” Mapfumo confessed. “But by the grace of God, I’m here.”
After running afoul of former president Robert Mugabe, Mapfumo, known by his totem name Mukanya, took the painful decision to leave the country for the U.S., playing his last show in 2004.
“I didn’t fear for my life, all I wanted was for my children to be safe and my family,” said the 72-year-old interpreter of Chimurenga, a word in the Shona language roughly meaning “revolutionary struggle.” The word entered the lexicon during the Rhodesian Bush War and was extended to describe a struggle for human rights, political dignity and social justice.
Professor Mhoze Chikowero of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, commented on the musical icon, stating, “[Mapfumo] rose to prominence as a guerrilla artist during Africa’s liberation struggles. Composing military songs that utilized the mbira sound demonized by Christian missionaries and proscribed by the settler state, Mapfumo helped propound the style called Chimurenga that attacked the colonial system and mobilized for the popular armed struggle that birthed Zimbabwe.
“His crusade against injustice saw him not only harassed by the colonial regime, but also the post-colonial state that inherited the same modes of governance as its predecessor.”
The 1988 song “Corruption” officially opened Mapfumo’s rift with the Mugabe regime. “Thomas bravely came forward and sang this song about corruption,” said Banning Eyre, author of the biography “Lion Songs.” Politicians were using their power to access government subsidized industries, purchasing vehicles to resell them for personal profits, added Chikowero.
In 2015 Mapfumo recorded “Danger Zone,” which was immediately pirated in Zimbabwe upon its release. Mapfumo responded by urging Zimbabweans to steal the pirated copies. “Once all those pirated copies flooded the market, the theft had been accomplished. So people might as well steal from, rather than reward, the thieves,” he said with a shrug.
“Mapfumo, the Lion of Zimbabwe, stands beside Fela Kuti, Youssou N’Dour and Franco as one of Africa’s greatest and most consequential composer/bandleaders,” wrote Ron Kadish of the online rockpaperscissors.biz.
“Songs from the ’90s stress Mapfumo’s insistence that his fellow citizens not abandon their ancestral culture, but rather find ways to integrate it into their contemporary lives.”
AT AFRICAN CONFAB, A CALL FOR JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN
(IDN/GIN)—Children are very much on the political and public agenda in Africa today. The African Union has adopted a charter to protect them and a mechanism to hold governments accountable for the fulfillment of their rights. Even so, the reality on the ground is somber and sobering.
The number of child prisoners in Africa is in the thousands, and might even be as high as 28,000.
Against this background, children’s rights defenders, campaigners, lawyers, academics, journalists, ministers, policy-makers and law-makers are gathering this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the Continental Conference on Access to Justice for Children in Africa.
A new report, “Spotlighting the invisible: Access to Justice for Children in Africa,” reveals how children across the continent are denied access to justice and paints a distressing picture of discrimination, inadequate funding, poor training, unaccountable traditional justice systems and slow progress on children’s rights.
Especially at risk are children with disabilities, children accused of witchcraft, street children, child victims of sexual abuse, children with albinism, children in rural areas, refugees, migrant and asylum-seeking children, trafficked children and orphans.
Unacceptable practices such as corporal punishment and trial by ordeal are still widespread, even in those countries where they are illegal.
The issue of justice for children is by no means only an African problem. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Agency, estimates that worldwide, more than a million children are deprived of their liberty at any one time.
Since the last conference on this subject in Kampala in 2011, most African countries have adopted laws and standards to protect children in the justice system, and some have child-friendly structures such as dedicated courts and law enforcement units. There has also been some progress around alternatives to formal criminal proceedings and new ways of training law enforcement officers.
However, much more needs to be done, observes Assefa Bequele of the African Child Policy Forum. “We cannot wait for tomorrow. We must ensure that the needs of vulnerable groups of children accessing to justice are addressed, and that traditional and religious systems deliver justice that protects all children with no exception. We have to act now!”
—Assefa Bequele and Alex Kamarotos are the executive directors of the African Child Policy Forum and Defense for Children International. The article above is distributed by InDepthNews and made available to subscribers of GIN.