Daves Guzha returns with AIKAKA!

 

Yesterday, Wednesday, 9 August 2023, in the evening, I went to the Theatre in The Park in the Harare Gardens to watch veteran dramatist’s, Daves Guzha’s one man play called Aikaka! The play is showing every evening between 7 and 8, until the 12^th of August.

In that one man play, the major thread is based on the former President of Zimbabwe, RG Mugabe, rising from the dead and starting to wander about Harare, musing at what life has become in his short absence. 

I must admit that Guzha brings the RG deportment and mannerism, without doubt. That characteristic line of hair just under the nose and RG’s typical sudden shifts between emphatic anger and joy, the up and downs of his shoulders….his emphasized pronunciation of certain letters in a word as in s-o-v-e-r-e-i-g-n-ty and Z-i-mbabwe!

It is a satire on all of us and, interestingly, on RG himself. None of us are spared as RG lingers the longest at the Mbuya Nehanda statue erected at the intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Julias Nyerere Way in the Harare's central business district. “I am sorry, ambuya, but I could have done a better thing for you…” RG says in his long speech, stepping all over the place as he looks at the 3-meter high statue. He turns to the Reserve Bank and says very critical issues about the major characters in that building. He serves his best when he turns to the imposing Zanu PF Head Quarters.

Sometimes RG chides his successors, and he clearly and notably overrates himself and the audience is ironically allowed to see through some of his weaknesses as a man and leader. There is the clever use of a delicate, believable but unreliable narrator! It is criticism that allows you to critique the critic!

Guzha expertly turns to change his wardrobe and appears as several other personae. The climax, I think, is when the svikiro turns to the three major characters in the coming 2023 presidential elections of Zimbabwe who are hanging on a puppeteer’s rack, turning and twisting. Guzha  taunts the presidential candidates with fundamental questions. It is like some kind of under-worldly inquisition. The puppets were done and controlled by Booker Sipiyiye. I could only marvel at the timing of the play! If it had come a month earlier or a month later, the effect could surely have been less.

Although this is a solo act, there is exciting contributions from renowned poet Tinashe Muchuri and playwrights, Stanley Makuwe and Patience Phiri. Aikaka is a typical Shona interjection and it expresses the speaker’s utter surprise at the sudden turn of events or the sighting of the least expected things in life. Aikaka points at incongruence for example, when you see a man flying or when you see the hare chasing a dog!

If you are in Harare this week, this is a play worth watching! Veteran actor and director, Daves Guzha, has been off stage for over fifteen years. His most well known one man play was called The Two Leaders I know. Subsequently it was turned into a movie.

+This review by Memory Chirere