The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior Features Reporter
FUNERALS have always been associated with a somber mood. The unwritten dictates of African tradition are that people should respect not only the sanctity of life but the dead for they would have departed to the great beyond.
Death always reminds people of their inevitable end and mourners are expected to respect the family of the deceased and are very compassionate during this difficult period of bereavement.
In the olden day funerals were no go areas for children, they even feared to walk past a house or home where people will be mourning their dead. The belief was that people were generally pained by the loss of their loved one and all they need is peace before they lay the deceased to rest. However, trends have changed in some sections of the society and there is a significant difference overtime as some funerals take a more dramatic kind of approach.
Last week this reporter attended a funeral in Harare’s oldest township, Mbare. It was a little bit of everything. And most of the elderly people were stunned, bewildered, amused and touched by the manner in which the “ghetto youths” behaved.
According to them the funeral was a chance to showcase what the deceased was made of, they said they wanted to show the mourners what he did while he was alive. They needed a fair share of time to celebrate the life of one of theirs. Although the tradition where a section of the relatives and friends imitate what the deceased used to do in his day is not new in the Shona culture, where it is called nzveura, the youths’ behaviour became unbecoming.
During the funeral wake they sang and danced in the chilly cold weather while drinking alcohol as if it were a party. The challenge is that they were drinking an illicit brew called musombodhiya and causing a lot of commotion in the process. The concoction is laced with ethanol and methanol. It is alleged to contain 95 percent alcohol which is quite dangerous and sometimes fatal.
Those who consume the dangerous brew are easily identifiable as they move around with it in bottles of mineral water and one can be fooled to think they are drinking water. Many have impaired speech due to the long term consumption of the alcohol.
Musombodhiya is consumed in very small quantities as it gives the consumer hours of drunkenness and often a time they “stick” where the consumer will not be able to move their body parts and resemble a zombie as the alcohol stiffens their body for hours on end.
During the funeral wake one of the female drug lords of Mbare was openly selling the brew in full view of mourners. She looked carefree, much to the chagrin of elderly mourners. One of the mourners was quick to express her dismay at the seemingly undeserving platform which the drug lord was using to cash in on her business.
“This woman is not ashamed of the fact that she has literally killed a number of young people in this area with the alcohol she sells. She has no sympathy for these young souls she is ruining,” she said.
Asked on why the drug lord was not being arrested if people knew where she stays, she said very little help has been found from law enforcers.
“She gets picked up many times but she hardly spends a day and she will be out. So we as parents have no options at all. We do not need people like her in our society at all,” she said.
The youthful mourners at this funeral performed unusual dances as they danced to Nyau culture music performed by izitandari/zvigure.
Nyau culture is a secret society of the Chewa, a tribe of the Bantu people from central and southern Africa who observe a series of secret rituals which are associated with their society — a secret brotherhood.
Young girls danced in similar movements together with the young men who resembled zombie like faces as they danced to traditional drums. Chaos was the order of the day as the youths said the deceased was also in the habit of causing chaos when he attended funeral wakes too.
This they said was a way of remembering what he did while he was still alive. However, at the insistence of the family of the deceased they could not carry out some of their “rituals”.
Normally they said they would have taken the coffin of the deceased to the street corners where they spent time with him while he was alive and camp there over night with the coffin, they would also take a tour of the drinking spots they frequented.
However, they said if the deceased had been a commercial sex worker the mourners would have been in for a treat.
“We were going to come with our condoms and dress in skimpy clothing, drink alcohol and smoke too. We would have done just what she used to do when she was a live, this is how we celebrate the lives of our ghetto heroes and we will not stop at all,” said one member of the community.
At the cemetery they poured alcohol inside the grave and also buried a few bottles of it saying the deceased would have a drink too when he felt thirsty. Visibly intoxicated they all took part in the burying of the deceased assisting in shovelling and laying of flowers.
The late notorious Mbare robber Boris Mushonga also had a drama filled send off as his gang mates stole his coffin and paraded it in the streets. The coffin eventually fell off the moving vehicle. His body fell out of the coffin and had to be placed back as police closed in on the dramatic but fierce parade his gang members had started.
Such is the way of life for many youths from Mbare and other suburbs who are victims of drug and alcohol abuse.
However, president of the Chiefs Council Fortune Charumbira said the new trend of parading a dead person in the streets was an abuse of culture.
“We have never heard of such. It is an abuse of our Zimbabwean culture that you parade a dead person before you bury them.
Our culture says when a person dies he should have one last sleep in the house that he was staying in before his death. You can also have him sleep in the house that was his say in the rural home only and not anywhere else. Taking the corpse to a bar, streets or night spots that the deceased frequented is absurd and shows no respect for the dead,” he said.
He said if this is done and a chief gets wind of it one can get fined for it.
“If this happens in a chief’s area we will defiantly arrest you and you pay a fine, we reprimand seriously people who do not respect the dead. It is unfortunate that most of these things are happening in the urban areas but as chiefs we will get to the bottom of it,” he added.
He however, confirmed the practice of imitating what the deceased used to do in their life in certain Shona cultures but said this was not done for the whole funeral process but for a short period of time and was usually done decently.
Historian and cultural expert Mr Pathisa Nyathi said it was evident in the Shona culture that relatives of the deceased do role plays of what the deceased was or used to do before death. They depicted his character to the mourners and it is acceptable.
However, he said in the Ndebele culture it is unheard of.
“We have never had this practice in the Ndebele culture during a funeral. The Ndebele have quiet funerals, they do not do it like the Shona, they do perform other rituals but they do not depict what the deceased was like,” he said.
He said the Ndebele were more active when it comes to umbuyiso.
He said in the past the house of the deceased would be destroyed to symbolise his demise but that has since been abandoned as they only remove grass or trees as a gesture.
