Singing The Walls Down

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Last week, Mugabe was in Paris at the Franco-African summit, hobnobbing with other leaders and enjoying, thanks to his hosts, the temporary suspension of his E.U. travel ban. Most Zimbabweans didn't notice he was gone. Nor did they when he jetted off to Southeast Asia on vacation or to Zambia for a meeting or to Libya to visit his friend Muammar Gaddafi. People are busy with other worries, like what to feed the family. You might only notice when Mugabe's convoy — jeeploads of soldiers and that shiny black Mercedes — speeds by on its way to the airport. (It's illegal now to make rude gestures as it goes by; apparently too many people were doing so and it got on the presidential nerves.)

Mostly, though, he's cloistered behind the high walls of his Harare compound. From there, Mugabe — once a hero, a man of the people — fights. The media may make it seem as if the battle today were racial, as if the President were lashing out primarily at the rich, land-owning whites left over from the bad old days. It's not. While the atmosphere in Zimbabwe is akin to what you might have found in apartheid-era South Africa — another place where music, from impoverished townships like Soweto and Alexandra, spurred the people on to action — the real fight here "is really black vs. black," says a Zimbabwean M.P. "It's black people against a black leader." "The old man makes his own people panic," says Job, a taxi driver. (Names have been changed in order to protect the speakers.) "The day will come when we say 'Enough is enough.'"

We thought we were liberated, but we were not," Mapfumo says, two days after the Mutare show, over a stew-and-rice dinner in the living room of his spacious Harare home. (Even stars can't always get maize for sadza, the staple porridge.) Mapfumo, 57, whose waist-length dreadlocks seem designed to defy his receding hairline, realized in the late 1980s that he might have to go back to battle. "Corruption was rampant," he says. "Mugabe has taken the wrong direction." His reply: Varombo Kuvarombo (1988), released abroad in 1989 as Corruption. He hasn't let up, writing songs like Zvatakabva Kuhondo (As we finish the battle, 1994) and Ndiyani Waparadza Musha (Who has destroyed our home?, 1998).

State-run ZBC radio — the main source of news and entertainment — often bans Mapfumo's songs. During the chimurenga, ZANU-PF ran a Mozambique-based short-wave station that beamed into the country, a tactic that exiled Zimbabweans are using again. Now the regime is fighting back, recruiting popular singers to make propaganda albums. But the artists who sign on "are hated [for] glorifying a corrupt, brutal system," says a Harare music critic. Thompson Tsodzo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture, admits the strategies are futile. "The government can't control music," he says. Artists like Mapfumo will be heard — on tapes copied until they're frayed, on short-wave radio, in bars and beerhalls. "Ministers had better listen," says Tsodzo. "Musicians are voicing what the people are saying."

Mapfumo's latest album, Toi Toi, was released three weeks ago in Zimbabwe. The sounds are familiar — melodic mbira, twangy guitars, Big Band brass. The name comes from a type of protest music, but Mapfumo's manager, Cuthbert Chiromo, says Toi Toi is "more reflective, less political." Not apolitical — this is Mapfumo, after all. The biggest buzz among the fans is about the track Timothy. The song censures a fool who endangers children. The President is often called T.I.M. — "That Idiot Mugabe." Coincidence? Ask the music man himself, and he beams mischievously, saying only, "Great song!"

Detractors say it's easy for Mapfumo to criticize since he and his family spend most of their time in the U.S. They moved in 2000 "for the children," he says, echoing virtually every Zimbabwean parent who has emigrated. He comes back every year to face the music and make more, and he says: "I would die fighting for my freedom and my country." Some of his critics ask if he's also willing to live — and suffer — with his countrymen.

You can quibble about where Mapfumo should live, but the fight in Zimbabwe is about one people, not one man. "The people can change the situation," he says. "They must choose their destiny." It's not just a matter of taking up arms against Mugabe. Today, "the nation is destroyed," says Mapfumo. Even after the President is gone, it's going to take time — and a lot of hard work — to build it up again. That's why the men and their music are important, says opposition M.P. Tafadzwa Musekiwa: Mapfumo "sings about what we need to do now so we can achieve all that Tuku says."

Maybe what Mapfumo suggests would happen sooner if Zimbabweans took what Tuku says to heart. "Solving Zimbabwe's problems begins with us," says Mtukudzi, 50. "We have to help ourselves first." For him, step one is to look inward. What are Zimbabweans living and dying for? What really matters? Tuku's reputation has been built on asking and answering such questions, through parable and metaphor. Outsiders who don't have the social or political context — or fluency in Shona or Ndebele — might not understand the references in his songs. The words may even seem preachy. To Zimbabweans, though, it's the truth.

Mtukudzi refuses to decrypt his lyrics. "I'm happy for people to get meaning from my songs," he says. It helps that there's usually consensus about what he's singing. Take the hugely popular Wasakara, from his 2000 album Bvuma (Tolerance). To the beat of conga drums and the gentle rattle of hosho shakers, Tuku presses an aged man to admit there are things he can no longer do: "You are spent/ It is time to accept you are old." Most Zimbabweans heard an allusion to the President, then 76. A crew member at a show thought so too. He cast the spotlight on Mugabe's portrait during Wasakara and earned a trip to jail.