The Sunday News
Tapfuma Machakaire , Obituary
When it was time to play, he would match the young boys, time for business, he would execute with tact and precision and when it was time to pray, the spiritual being in him would emerge.
That, in brief, was the man Innocent Kurwa. The man who achieved a rare and awkward combination of professions as a journalist, economist, mathematician and farmer at heart.
I first met Innocent the first week of January 1983 two days after my arrival in Bulawayo from Harare to start work as a reporter with the Sunday News. The Sunday News then had a small team of four that comprised of the editor Bill Saidi now late, reporters Walter Mapango and Pascal Mukondiwa both also late, photographer Stephen Sibanda and secretary Martha Chirau.
Innocent who then was on the Sports Desk at the Chronicle would join the Sunday News team on Saturdays to produce the sports pages. On my arrival in Bulawayo I initially failed to locate my uncle Jonah Chitsike whom I was to stay with before securing my own accommodation. I spent the first night in Ziana offices courtesy of the late Shepherd Samasuwo, a former college mate at the Zimbabwe Institute of Mass Communications.
The following day at work I told the editor about my predicament. Innocent promptly invited me to his flat in town for the night as I continued with efforts to locate my uncle. Apparently on that same day, Innocent had prepared a small gig for his fiancée who was celebrating her birthday.
To my surprise when we got to the flat, the rooms were decorated with newspaper billboards with birthday messages for the girl. This meant Innocent had convinced staff in the newspaper production department to print the billboards for his function which obviously would be viewed as an act of abuse of office, but he would argue that it was a privilege though I doubt if he had followed any procedure.
Pascal was among the few who were invited to the function. With me having just arrived in the City of Kings and on a new job, the two spoke and laughed at length over issues that I had little knowledge of. What caught my attention from the onset was Innocent’s funny Zambian like English accent.
After few months on the job, the editor and Innocent decided that I be allocated an additional task of writing sports stories on Saturdays since the paper did not have a sports reporter. Yes, I had been an outstanding sportsman at school but as a journalist, I did not have the appetite for sports reporting. I tried to explain that to Innocent who responded in his funny accent — “young man, you will have to learn to be versatile”.
As I began my sports coverage, I learnt that as sports reporter Innocent was unpopular with supporters of Highlanders Football Club who accused him of being biased towards their arch rivals, Zimbabwe Saints “Chauya Chikwata”.
I had been covering a match between the two teams when I was pelted with missiles by the Highlanders supporters who were shouting at me and accusing me after mistakenly identifying me for the “biased” Kurwa. When I told Innocent about the incident he just laughed it off saying those were some of the hazards of the profession.
I eventually got used to working with Innocent and even at times joined him in his ritual of munching several cobs of roast maize every Saturday evening as we put final touches to the Sunday paper. I resigned from the Sunday News in 1985 but my friendship with Innocent continued with our last social gathering being about five hours before he passed on.
In 1987 Innocent clashed with fellow journalist David Masunda over control of a luxurious vehicle that the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) had hired for an international conference in Harare. The two were both members of the ZUJ national executive of the union.
The executive had assigned David some errands which required him access to the vehicle, while the rest of the executive would use the mini-buses hired for delegates. Two days into the conference Innocent started accusing David of abusing the car and demanded that he be allowed to use the same vehicle. The man did not hesitate to speak his mind.
At workshops and conferences, Innocent was one of those whose contributions were respected as coming from a person in a position of authority. He had his facts on his fingertips and he would not vacillate or prevaricate in presenting his position. He would call a spade by its name.
The turning point in his life was the double tragedy in which he lost his wife Getrude and his mother-in-law in a road accident in Gweru four years ago. Innocent stunned mourners at his wife’s funeral service when he stood up to speak. It is unusual for a man to speak in such a situation. Innocent, who was holding a bunch of rose flowers, began by jokingly narrating how he met Getrude.
A surprising gesture was when he picked on some of the wife’s relatives and described how close they had been with his family before asking them one by one to receive a rose flower as the formal way of telling them that Getrude was no more.
And in between his presentation he would even smile and laugh. After the burial, Innocent who had become an elder in the Catholic Church would every weekday go to church alone kneel and pray before the alter. He even stopped drinking for over a year as he remembered his wife.
I drove Innocent to Harare on several occasions for meetings and each time we passed the scene of the wife’s accident in Gweru he would remind me of the incident and he would do his short prayer ritual. Whenever he was doing business, be it having private lessons with his students or attending a workshop he would always have some bottled water.
And he was particular with the quality of water that he drank and preferred a certain brand. Sometime last year as he drove home from a bar where we had been meeting in town he got involved in an accident less than 200 metres from the spot he was later to have a second accident that claimed his life.
On that night he phoned me and I went with Jerry Mhora to assist him.
The night he got involved in the fatal accident, we had a social gathering in town and we parted just before 8pm.
That was the last time we were ever to meet with Madyira (his totem) the man referred to by his wife as farmer Brown.
Rest in peace Gumbo.
