The Sunday News
Raymond Jaravaza, Sunday Life Correspondent
“THIS was the place where even a married man could bring his ‘small house’ to enjoy the weekend, he would drive back home in Bulawayo and life would go on with the mother of his children as if nothing happened,” Gogo Linda Siziba tells Sunday Life.
It’s a Friday afternoon, barely 25 kilometres from Bulawayo along the Matopo-Kezi Road, and we are at Mthwakazi – the yesteryear premium leisure joint that shaped the local entertainment scene in the 1990s. The phrase ‘Tshisa Nyama’ was not yet known at that time and koMthwakazi was the place to be. Wives despised the place and their husbands adored it, says Gogo Siziba.
“I used to cook sadza (isitshwala) in that kitchen way back in the day and we made a lot of money. Everyone with money would come here with their wives or girlfriends, I don’t know, just to eat meat and have fun. I’m old now but I can see that things are no longer the same now, what is happening? Gogo Siziba asks Sunday Life.
Way back in the 1990s, koMthwakazi was the premium joint that shaped Bulawayo’s leisure and entertainment circles, the City of Kings reverberated around the joint. Gogo Siziba remembers when long distance buses used to take a sojourn at koMthwakazi, passengers disembarking from the bus to buy ‘soft drinks’ and take a recess. The local fuel station and shops cashed in on the passengers and made money. Business was good.
“We made money from the passengers who passed through here from Bulawayo. They would buy isitshwala and meat from us (the women who ran makeshift restaurants) while the buses refuelled at that garage,” she says while pointing at a fuel station that sits a few metres from a supermarket and bottle with the words ‘Mthwakazi” inscribed at the top.
Today the fuel station looks like a white elephant. The fuel station pumps don’t look like they have filled a vehicle’s petrol or diesel tank in years. In fact, the phrase white elephant – an idiom that means an expensive and useless possession that is much more trouble than it is worth – is an understatement.
In the three hours that Sunday Leisure spent at koMthwakazi, not a single vehicle drove through the fuel station for the precious liquid. To sum it up, Gogo Siziba blames the emergence of ‘Tshisa Nyama’ joints in Bulawayo and surrounding areas for the downfall of koMthwakazi over the years.
“Way back in the day, men would come here and spend a lot of money with their partners but now a lot of places have opened in Bulawayo, they don’t come here anymore and it’s killing our business,” she says.
Today, the City of Kings is home to countless Tshisa nyamas. Every available street corner has been turned into a place where meat lovers can converge, drink and enjoy good roasted meat. KoMthwakazi is the victim of Bulawayo’s expanding social Tshisa Nyama ventures.
Surprisingly, the younger generation who drink and eat at koMthwakazi have no idea how popular the place used to be back in the day. The majority are small artisanal miners with no tangible history with the joint.
They are just fortune hunters who came to the area in search of gold and have no idea that the joint where they drink to unwind after a long day in the belly of the earth in search of the precious yellow metal used to be the joint to-be years ago.
Amakorokoza drinking opaque alcohol tells the Sunday Leisure that he has no idea that koMthwakazi used to be a premium entertainment centre in the 1990s.
A woman who runs a supermarket and bottle store at koMthwakazi reckons she is receiving low business volumes because of enterprising women and men who offer Amakorokoza alcohol on credit. “They give our clients alcohol and tell them to pay when they make money from the mine so it’s killing our business. We have no choice but to wait for those small-scale miners who come here to drink beer to make money,” said the businesswoman who only identified herself as MaMkwanazi.
She, together with her sister, runs a small grocery and alcohol enterprise. Next to their shop is a braai area that used to be filled with kilogrammes of meat any given weekend. Today, barely a kilogramme of meat is braaied on the hot coals at koMthwakazi.
The old days are gone. — @RaymondJaravaza.
