ZG:When did you migrate to Zimbabwe?
GGK:1959. I started off for Zimbabwe on the 18th September 1959.
ZG:What was your plan when you went to Zimbabwe? Were you travelling alone and were you looking for work?
GGK:I went to Zimbabwe to look for a job. [He was 26 when he left]
I went by bus and there was a group of us, a good number of people.
ZG:Did you go with a recruitment agency?
GGK:No, I just thought of going alone.
ZG:Did you travel to Salisbury? And what do you remember about arriving in Salisbury?
GGK:I remember that it was the time of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
ZG:What were your first impressions of Salisbury?
GGK:The place was really good. It was very clean. The people used to dress very well as compared to Malawi.
ZG:Why did you chose to go to Southern Rhodesia, why Salisbury?
GGK:I decided to go to Rhodesia to look for employment and money, when I left Malawi, I had no employment or money.
ZG:Did you have any friends who had already gone to Salisbury? Did you know anyone when you arrived?
GGK:Yes, there were a lot of people I knew that were already there.
ZG:Was it easy to find work when you arrived?
GGK:It wasn’t very difficult to find a job, jobs were easily found. You could even choose what you wanted to do.
ZG:What was your job in Salisbury?
GGK:General worker. At the College of Agriculture, on the outskirts of the city.
ZG:How long did you spend in Salisbury?
ZG:Did you travel back to Malawi at all during this time?
GGK:Since I went in 1959, I only came back in 1987 to see my relatives. I was on holiday at that time, still working but on leave. I went back to Zimbabwe in 1988 and then didn’t come back to Malawi again until after I had retired in 1993.
ZG:Were you single when you went to Zimbabwe?
GGK:Before I went to Zimbabwe I was married, but then that is I went when we were separated. We had one child, but that child died.
ZG:And then you met your wife in Salisbury?
GGK:Yes, she was the woman I married when I went there.
GGK:Agnes’ father used to work in the mines in Salisbury, where I was working at Gwibi, Agnes’ elder sister worked there. So, when she came to see her sister, I would see her.
ZG:How did you feel to leave Malawi?
GGK:I was happy to go to Zimbabwe because I couldn’t find any employment here.
ZG:Where did you live when you first arrived in Zimbabwe, how did you find accommodation?
GGK:There were many Malawians that were living there so we used to trace the ones that you were related to and you would stay there.
ZG:And what type of accommodation did you then find?
GGK:We used to stay where we found work. It was a house not a hostel. There were three people staying in one house at first and later everyone found their own accommodation. Our accommodation was good, we were not married at that time but it was good enough for one person.
ZG:Were most of your colleagues Malawian?
GGK:No they were different nationalities; Tanzanians, Mozambicans, Zambians, and some Swahili from Kenya.
ZG:What language did you communicate in when you were there?
GGK:Chichewa, Shona and English But when Malawians met they used to like speaking Chichewa among themselves.
ZG:So, you had a lot of friends in Salisbury?
GGK:The way we were living it felt as if we were in Malawi, because of the community. And since I stayed there for so many years I actually became like a Shona. It reached a point where we used to communicate a lot more in Shona than in Chichewa.
ZG:When you were not working what types of things did you do in your spare time?
GGK:I used to like playing football in my spare time. I also used to go to church.
ZG:Who were the teams he used to play with?
GGK:It wasn’t a team of only Malawians, where we used to work, we came up with a football team. And during the weekends we used to invite teams from other places to play with us.
ZG:Which church did you belong to?
ZG:Who else used to attend this church?
GGK:At that time, most Shona didn’t go to that church. If you saw a Shona woman going to that church, her husband would have paid lobola for her and she had no choice but to go to her husband’s church. But otherwise, it was mainly Malawians, [mentions Tsankho]
ZG:So, were relations between Malawians and Shona friendly?
GGK:We were living together in one place because of where we were working but in day-to-day life, there was a sense of separateness. The Shona people were “onyada”, we got used to their character and we didn’t really care.
ZG:So, did you have Shona friends?
ZG:Do you remember much about the rise of Nationalist politics in Zimbabwe? How did people feel about the federation?
GGK:We were quite unified during that time, but I don’t think that most people really understood what it was about on the ground.
ZG:Were you involved in any politics yourself?
GGK:Before 1980 I was not actively involved because most of the freedom fighters were not in Zimbabwe, they were more in Zambia and Mozambique. Before 1980 we just used to hear what was going on but we didn’t play any role. I joined ZANU PF in 1980. We were actually forced to join ZANU PF we didn’t want to join but they were a cruel party and we didn’t feel like we had a choice. We were forced to go to their meetings and we were afraid so that is why we used to go.
ZG:So, before independence you were not actively involved in politics, but how did it affect life in Salisbury?
GGK:We were told, before independence, that if we didn’t join a party, we would be sent home and that we wouldn’t be able to take anything with us that we had acquired during our time there.
ZG:When you returned to Malawi how did you feel about leaving Zimbabwe?
GGK:I was happy to return to Malawi. I was happy to return to my homeland because the way they lived there was different.
ZG:What were the reactions of people in your village to your return?
GGK:When we came home, we were welcomed, especially by my brother. Even before we built this house where we stay now, we used to stay with my brother at his house.
ZG:How did you adjust to returning to a small village after spending so long in Harare?
GGK:I thought it a good idea to come back to the village because I stayed in Harare for a very long time. With the way we were living it was better to come back to Malawi. Town life is not really suitable for grown men like me. If you are to compare life in Zimbabwe to Malawi now, then life in Malawi is better!
ZG:Why did you return to Malawi?
ZG:Is there anything else you would like to add about your experiences in Salisbury?
GGK:Things I remember about Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe is like home (“kumudzi”) my second home, there was good food. That time when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, they used to eat well. In terms of working conditions, sometimes the whites would treat us as if we were slaves (Akapolo). Sometimes the people that we used to work for, our wages were not so good. Sometimes, we used to just bear with the situation because home was so far away, we didn’t have any choice. It was difficult to make the decision to come back home, because compared to the money that I would have earned back here I was better in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe used to look like heaven in that way, “kunali ngati kumwamba”.
LP:According to the lifestyle that we live in Malawi, did you find things that were similar in Salisbury or was it different?
GGK:There were dances similar to those found in Ntcheu. The most common dance was “Ingoma”, we used to enjoy doing that dance in Zimbabwe.
ZG:Was it just the men who would do that dance?
GGK:Most of the dances and the dance groups were in the mines. There were a lot of Ngoni people in the mines.
ZG:And what about the other tribal groups from Malawi?
GGK:Other tribes from Malawi also had their own dances. When there was a function, those dances used to take place. People from Tanzania had their own dances and those from Malawi had their own dances. The dances from the other countries also had their own “Ingoma” but it was somehow different from the way they dance it here.
