My association with Professor George Kahari was on more than one level. He was the quintessential academic (fundi), eccentric, lovable, exuberant and in these days of fake political professors, a scourge of the charlatan academics.
BY KENNETH MUFUKA
I had the privilege to hold the portfolio of Black Studies at Lander University, and in that capacity invited him to give a guest lecture on Zimbabwe’s crisis and the death of democracy.
It was winter. Dressed in a tasteful blue-black blazer, an oversized scarf, a red tie (sans overcoat), he belonged to that genre of scholars called Oxonian. The theatre, which held more than 200 souls was packed to the extent that I, the organiser, sat on the floor.
He spoke for one hour, without notes; the young scholars were mesmerised and there were some looking into the theatre through the windows.
The great betrayal
The topic at hand was that we, Zimbabweans, had no hatred of the white man. We were impressed by his idiosyncrasies, the white fathers wearing women’s dresses, the communion spoken in chanting voices, oh; this was a world which we all wanted to participate in.
I missed the great betrayal conference of 1987 where Zapu was swallowed by the Philistines. Both Kahari and I were Zipras and he was my contact person. The second betrayal was the election theft by Zanu PF in 2008.
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Kahari was an electoral commissioner. He told former president Robert Mugabe in no uncertain terms. “Iwe Robert, wadyiwa.”
On that accession, Zanu PF was not entirely to blame. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the winning party, the MDC, like King Pyrrhus, fled from the battle which he had won to hide in Botswana.
Then there was a banker by the name of Gideon Gono who had never read about the Weimer Republic inflation of 1922 when people carried money in wheelbarrows.
This Dr Gono (he is one of those who have some degrees after their names) printed money in Z$10 million denominations.
Kahari, who left his pension fund with Old Mutual and had accumulated a portfolio of US$2,5 million over a period of 40 years, found his pension worse than useless. He showed me a cheque of $100 per month as his pension pay-out.
To put it in perspective, I too had saved US$4 million in CABS and Founders Building Society permanent shares. I lost everything.
Kahari’s bitterness was, therefore, shared by all the saints.
A scholarly giant
When I read his vita at Lander, in 2010, he had written 22 books and numerous learned articles. As a pioneer Bantu studies scholar at the University of Zimbabwe, he had attracted the attention and support of a group of pioneering scholars, at first the laughing stock of the Eurocentrics.
These were Aaron Hodzi, Aeneas Chigwedere, Solomon Mutswairo and John Chimhundu. These mighty scholars entered a field called lexicography, the study of the meaning of words and the writing of a dictionary. Of these, Kahari and Chimhundu stand out as chief apostles, but Chigwedere’s studies, an off-shoot of these Bantu studies, took a unique turn.
Chigwedere’s discovery that Cecil Rhodes and his band of compradors had acquired their wealth through cattle stealing committees shook the moral foundations of the colonial regime.
The loot was estimated at 600 000 cattle. One of the beneficiaries was Thomas Meikles.
