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Zimbabwe: Daves Guzha's Political Satire Deplores Violence
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Financial Gazette (Harare)
7 August 2008
Posted to the web 8 August 2008
Harare
Everybody is free...free...to feel good...feel good... The last time I had heard this song was in the 1980s when Zimbabwe had just gained independence from Britain. Then, the musician, pop diva Rozalla Miller was among young musicians who celebrated Zimbabwe's independence through song.
The year is 2008 when I hear this song once again. Not from radio or television, but from a political satire, The Two Leaders I Know which showed in Harare.
Acclaimed theatre producer and actor, Daves Guzha stars in this one-man play in which he plays Ian Smith (the late last Rhodesian prime minister) and Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe's current president).
Guzha, who turned 40 this year, says he has only known these two leaders in his entire life. "In my 40 years, I have known only two presidents, two wars and two sanctions."
The play is spiced with several war time songs including some by war veteran and ruling ZANU-PF supporter Dick Chingaira, popularly known as Cde Chinx7. "It is always important to include songs and the ones we are using are carefully chosen," remarks Guzha.
Guzha says theatre must include songs as they help capture different moods. In the play, as Guzha describes a crocodile and its brutality, he bursts into a popular song by Michael Jackson: I am dangerous....dangerous...
"When the crocodile bites it does not let go," Guzha says in the play adding: "If its prey escapes it follows, even to far away distances."
As political violence flared in the country after the March elections Guzha and several other actors took to the stage to denounce it.
Independent newspapers and civic organisations published harrowing reports about victims of politically-motivated violence in rural villages, murders and the torching of homes.
For Guzha to stage the play at a time of political turmoil in Zimbabwe was very courageous. He mentions President Mugabe by name -- something rare in Zimbabwean theatre.
When opposition political leaders were battered by the police in March last year, Cont Mhlanga wrote a play The Good President. One scene takes place in a police station where the police have caught a protesters (an elected leader) and they are beating him up. The third scene is about a president celebrating and defending state violence on television.
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Mhlanga says: "This happened in March and that is what inspired me to write the play The Good President." The Bulawayo playwright and producer deplores political violence. "In my opinion, there is nothing flowery and poetic about the current situation the country is facing. There is nothing flowery and poetic about a corrupt political leadership that celebrates state violence."
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