The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
THE gates at the place now known as Ikhwezi Training Centre are always locked.
During the day, a caretaker is the lone resident of a building that seems lifeless. For company, the caretaker can rely on squadrons of flies that buzz about relentlessly all day and lizards that crawl in and out of the grass that now covers most of the centre.
Little happens during the day when the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) policeman roll into Khwezi in their sky-blue uniforms in the evening, giving the caretaker his first taste of human companionship for the day, the situation does not change.
It is only on weekends that Ikhwezi springs to life. On Saturday and Sunday, members of the Glory Church of God troop in through the gates, seeking closer ties with their maker. They sing, they pray and they dance, seeking prosperity and forgiveness for their sins.
Unknown to congregants on any given Sunday, a lot of singing and dancing used to happen within the walls, the same walls decades before they also set foot there.
This was a different kind of singing. It was the joyous drone of voices that went on until the wee hours of the morning, as the patrons of Ikhwezi, with prayer far from their minds, drank the nights away.
It was the drinking, the singing and the dancing that gave Ikhwezi its name and fame.
“It wasn’t a place that anyone could just enter,” Bekezela Mahlangu told Sunday Life about the joint that was initially known as Ikhwezi Club. At 63 years old, she remembers its hey days, when gentleman’s club it was a place for the elite. Men and women, young and old, used to make their way to Ikhwezi, wearing top of the range suits cut from choice fabrics.
“There were no jeans allowed. You had to be smart. You had businessmen going there so standards had to be maintained. Bands like Wells Fargo and Eye of Liberty would entertain people and the tennis courts back in those days were still functional,” she said.
For those that saw it flourish before it turned into a cocktail bar, Ikhwezi was a serious club. During the colonial era, the division between the eastern and western halves of the city was strictly enforced, and so a large majority of the city’s young black businesspeople, socialites, politicians and would-be freedom fighters had to embrace local places of entertainment. Ikhwezi basked in this division, drawing a lot of black elites looking for a good time. The names counted among the regulars at Khwezi sound like a roll call of legendary figures that have lived in the City of Kings. The country’s late Vice-President Joseph Msika and late nationalist James Chikerema are some of the names that are said to have graced Ikhwezi.
“At first it was just a strictly jacket and tie bar,” said long time Pelandaba resident Albert Nyoni. “There was a consortium of black businesspeople that came to Khwezi to come and relax after close of daily business and it was sort of like their answer to what places like BAC were like to white people. People like Joseph Msika, James Chikerema, W T Ngwenya and others spent time there. At one time the Queen Mother also came and people lined up for her waving their Union Jack flags.”
While some loved Ikhwezi for its ice-cold beers, for others it was a representation of the style and fashion of the time. For others it was the music that draw them to the joint. When jazz was still the music genre of choice, Wells Fargo founder, Ebba Chitambo remembers when he used to make the trek to Ikhwezi as a youngster and watch through the windows as bands like Idols used to mesmerise revellers day after day, night after night.
“It was a very nice place. That’s one memory that I’ll always have of it. That was the place that made me want to become a musician. We used to go to watch from the windows with friends and watch bands like Idols play from the first song to the last. I know Idols were the resident band there for a long time. We weren’t allowed in the bar so we would go from watching from the windows to the Boys Clubs where we would imitate what bands would have been doing because at the clubs there were instruments that we could use.
“This was in the late 60s. It was our place. Most people from Number 6 would come there and when they saw me on stage, they were so surprised because they didn’t think this boy was any good at this thing. It was a surprise for people in my neighbourhood in Number 6 and I cherished,” said Chitambo.
Earning a slot to play for the illustrious patrons, rubbing shoulders with bands that were the neighbourhood superstars was a special privilege for any budding musician.
“My greatest memory of the place was when I was asked to play and rub shoulders with those bands that I had grown up idolising. It gave me even greater joy to see friends that I had been watching through the window with now watch me as I did my thing,” Chitambo said.
Independence came when Ikhwezi was at the height of its popularity and the trickle of people that used to move from the townships to the western areas of the city soon became a deluge. Born a year before independence, Thabani “Matopini” Mahlangu remembers his adolescent days when Ikhwezi was still a hive of activity.
“There used to be a strict dress code. You just didn’t just walk in there dressed shabbily. The dress code enforcement at the beginning was like what you’d see at clubs in town nowadays. Then in the early 2000s came the renovation of the old Khwezi to the new Khwezi and afternoon that it was divided into sections.
“You had the VIP session where you mostly had the older men from the community who were well off. We were young but they let us in there because we lived nearby. In this section you couldn’t drink opaque beer. It was strictly clear beer in that section. Then you had the other section which was for those that drank hot stuff and opaque beer. We also had a gazebo where people from both sections could come together and drink,” he said.
The 90s were a time of great change and upheaval in Zimbabwe. The Aids pandemic swept through communities and there was a spike in violent crime. Khwezi was not spared from the ravages of both and to some community members it became a place that was despised. Instead of representing class and black excellence it was now the nerve centre of crime and prostitution.
“Ikhwezi was the epicentre of many neighbourhoods and there were a lot of deaths and violence. We had muggings and Aids which both took a lot of lives there. Ikhwezi was in Number 6 but behind it is Old Lobengula, there’s Extension nearby and then there’s Number 1 and next to it is Njube so it was the centre of these places. I remember the deaths and even today I know the names of the killers that took lives of many patrons,” Matopini said.
After the BCC’s decision to privatise some of the city’s old taverns, Ikhwezi was turned into a community training centre.
“This place has been closed for a long time,” a BCC policeman on shift told Sunday Life. “It has been over 10 years maybe since it was a bar. During the day it has a caretaker that takes care of it then we guard it overnight. The training centre lasted for maybe a few days. I never met the people that were part of the training because their training never coincided with our shifts,” he said.
The grass inside and outside Khwezi now looks like it needs a trim and walls, in need of a coat of paint, look like they might have also forgotten the wild nights that used to host. Life returns to Ikhwezi, courtesy of dedicated Pentecostal worshippers, on the weekends.
“The churches take over during the weekend. So, for two days the place belongs to them. I know one of them is Glory Church of God and the other one I don’t remember the name. I would have to check my book for the name of the other one,” the policeman told Sunday Life.
