THE WEAK CAN ALSO CLIMB

By Mr Sabastian Mutyambizi

This book is a true story of the author and his siblings who were orphaned when they were very young. However, their father, Leon, on his death bed, prayed his last prayer, “Lord God, I want my children to go to School.” After that prayer, he turned and faced the wall and died. It was that fervent prayer, that directly reached Heaven and the writer strongly believe that The Mighty God of Israel swiftly dispatched an Angel to guard, guide, protect and nurture Leon’s orphans and they excelled. Leon had two wives and after his death, whilst the widows, were still moaning, they were subjected to more intense trauma exerted by some extended family members over inheritance. This led to sharp differences and culturally, the widows were left with no option except to go back to their original families leaving their children behind.


The Lord of Turnaround, the Most Merciful and the Most Gracious God of Israel threw the garment of grace on Leon’s children particularly Memory and Sabastian as they climbed up the ladder of success, academically, spiritually, and economically. They both reside happily with their families in Australia. They completely fulfilled their father, the late, Leon’s dream as they traversed through university corridors in Zimbabwe, U.K, Australia, and USA. Over a relatively long time they accrued several academic and professional qualifications. Conclusively, if the Grace of God locates you and submerge you, honestly one can do extra ordinary things that will surprise relatives, friends, and even enemies. This book is a clear testimony that shows that, WITH THE GRACE OF GOD THE WEAK CAN ALSO CLIMB.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369495841

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

I n the northeast part of Zimbabwe, in the Mashonaland Central province in the Mount Darwin district, under Chief Dotito, is nestled the village of Muchenje. On the western side of Muchenje village, there is a vibrant Dotito business centre with numerous stores, such as hardware stores, vegetable markets, and bottle stores; a beer hall; a police camp; a cattle pen; a dip tank; residential areas; small-to-medium industrial zones; district council offices; and a clinic. Dotito Primary School and Dotito Secondary School are near the business centre. The business centre is well serviced by a big dam, and there are irrigation zones gracing the landscape near it. There is a busy, wide tarred road that connects Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare to the Mukumbura border post on the way to Mozambique.

Originally, the Mutyambizi family came from Chiweshe in the Mazowe district near the town of Bindura. Grandfather Samson Mutyambizi was the oldest of four brothers. He was a businessman who thought of extending his business empire at the Dotito business centre in 1945, and he built the first store there. Samson—a farmer, a businessman, and a visionary who was also fully armed with persuasive skills—enticed his younger brothers to come and settle in the Dotito area since there was reliable rainfall, rich fertile loam soils, and great opportunities to be economically stout.

His young brothers—Zakeyo, Chitate, and Andrew—and their big families unanimously agreed, and they went to live in the Dotito area. It was Samson who exercised his diplomatic skills by summoning his courage and approaching Chief Dotito to ask for a large area to settle his huge extended family. Chief Dotito saw Mutyambizi’s extended family not as a threat but as a group of potential investors who were to uplift the economic status of the entire area under his chiefdom. He willingly and generously gave them a large tract of land east of the Dotito business centre.

Initially, the village was called Mutyambizi, though it was later renamed Muchenje. Muchenje village is situated on hilly land with undulating slopes between two rivers, Karoi and Man’ai. The area has all types of wild trees and a rich variety of grasses that grow quickly due to very hot temperatures, humus soil, and a good rainfall pattern. The area has plenty of surface and underground water, and it’s easy for families to have flourishing small gardens.

The Mutyambizi family is from the Zezuru tribe of Moyo neMatombo totem, who settled in the Korekore tribal land of the Nzou Samanyanga totem. Intermarriages are rampant among these unrelated groups of tribes, so much that you do not need to travel far to get a suitor. Both tribes have a culture of polygamy. During that time, it was as common as water that a man would marry more than ten wives to be famous and to propagate as many children as possible.

One morning, in the scorching heat of summer temperatures, at Leon’s homestead in Muchenje village, a few pole-and-dagga houses witnessed and heard the first cry of a new arrival, Sabastian Mutyambizi, born November 29, 1965. According to witnesses, it started raining heavily as a sign of salute and welcome to the new baby boy. He was the fourth and last child for Neddy Chidavaenzi and Leon Mutyambizi, and the last of eight for Leon.

During that time, pregnant women would comfortably give birth at home with the expert assistance of elderly dependable traditional midwives. Mount Darwin Hospital was just thirty kilometres away, and Sabastian could have been born there, but the Mutyambizi family had great unshakeable faith in God and absolute trust in their traditional midwives, who used bare hands to skilfully execute their delivery job with a high degree of precision and accuracy. As a token of appreciation, the midwives would gain popularity in the whole district and receive a few buckets of corn or groundnuts. This proves beyond any reasonable doubt the sheer genuine African love that existed during that era to help the community members without expecting monetary payment.

The news of the arrival of the baby boy was broadcast by word of mouth, and it generated great excitement among the extended family members, particularly the Mutyambizi family and the Chidavaenzi family from which Sabastian’s mother hailed. Within a few hours, all roads led to Muchenje village. Grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and neighbours with few gifts congregated at Leon’s homestead to display their love and appreciation of the new baby. Aunts and uncles sang and danced ‘Jiti’, a traditional Shona Zimbabwe dance, to welcome Sabastian.

At dusk, aunts and uncles took Sabastian to his father’s bedroom, where Leon was lying on his death bed, and introduced him. The loving father could not hold the baby, as he was too weak after fighting a chronic illness for a relatively long time. The father just looked at the baby and said, It’s nice to see my last born, and his name is Matitaka, meaning ‘they have destroyed us.’

Matitaka was later christened Sabastian. It is true that most Zimbabweans in general, and Shona-speaking people in particular, strongly believe that if a person is sick or dies, it’s a result of someone in the family or neighbourhood who has bewitched him or her, and it was very common during Leon’s time that he sensed it. Hence, he gave a suggestive and confronting name to his last son. The name was meant to send a clear message to the perceived or imaginary enemies that he was aware of their evil deeds, and he knew them.

Leon was a young and successful driver who owned two small trucks. Unfortunately, he had a minor accident that left a small wound on his chest, and it never healed. That is why some people thought that it was cancerous. However, a few people’s general thinking was that he was bewitched because of his small business.

On the evening of Sabastian’s birth, Leon summoned his two wives, Neddy and Milca, and his sister Raiza. Then he took a deep breath and said in a deep hoarse voice, Lord God, I want my children to go to school.

After pronouncing these last words, Leon turned his head, faced the wall, gasped his last breath, and died. It was the most unforgettable day for the whole family, who had mixed emotions celebrating the birth of a new baby in the morning and the death of his father in the evening. Without warning, orphanhood started in earnest.

However, the wish and the last fervent prayer of a dying father reached and petitioned the heavens. The prayer was not to destroy his enemies; the prayer was not to encourage his children to seek revenge or to make them excessively rich; it was for them to go to school. With such a clear-cut request, the heavenly host was left with no option but to swiftly dispatch the fourth man, he who does not sleep or slumber (Daniel 3:24–26), from heaven to protect, provide, direct, empower, shepherd, motivate, and nurture the orphaned family and to secretly achieve hidden long-term goals.

Leon had been born in the late 1920s in Chiweshe in the Mazowe district in what was then Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). He was the first son of Mr Zakeyo and Mrs Rosi Nhanga-Mutyambizi. The country was ruled by the minority white regime, who practiced apartheid. The infrastructure was highly developed in white-only suburbs, and there was little to no development in the regions where Africans lived. Leon grew up on a highly mechanized commercial farm owned by Mr Dick Haack, a seasoned farmer from the Netherlands. It was located near the town of Mount Darwin.

Leon’s father was the first Black farm manager at that farm and worked there for over thirty years. There were no schools in the area. The nearest school for Black people was thirty kilometres away, and Leon could not walk that distance to school.

Dick Haack had three sons almost the same age as Leon. The white-only school was in Bindura, which was sixty-five kilometres away. They were enrolled at that school. Their parents would take turns driving them to and from school on dirt roads. By the time they reached school, the boys would be plastered with red particles of dust, and they were mocked by other students who nicknamed them the ghost brothers. The boys hated school, and they did not like travelling all that distance. They abandoned it in the early years of their primary school. They grew up in the same league with Sabastian’s father, doing odd jobs at the farm.

They spent most of their time hunting game on the vast farm, swimming in the local farm creeks, driving tractors, and racing motorbikes. Leon was coached on how to operate hunting guns, and he became an expert in shooting. Despite discouragement from their parents that they must not associate with Blacks, the white boys formed a strong friendship with Leon, such that every hunting expedition, he was part of the group. The boys taught Leon how to drive trucks, motorbikes, and tractors, and he mastered the skill at a tender age. They also taught Leon how to fix cars.

When the three white boys turned eighteen years old, they went to Bindura to be assessed on their driving competency, and they were successful. Leon accompanied them to Bindura just to give his friends moral support or to be a spectator. One of the boys told the white instructor that their Black African worker Leon could drive trucks. The instructor was astonished. He gave Leon a chance to drive while being assessed by two white instructors, and they were highly impressed that they gave him a Class 1 truck driver’s license.

On the way back, the four young drivers were at the back of the open truck singing loudly all the way from Bindura to their farm in Mount Darwin. When the truck stopped at the farm, Leon jumped off, went back to his father’s house, running very fast like a cheetah, and proudly showed his driver’s license to his father, Zakeyo, and mother, Rossi. The parents were astounded and could not believe the news. Generally, there was bad blood between white and Black people living in what was then Rhodesia. There was simmering discontentment among the Black community, who strongly believed that white people were oppressors who could not do any single good thing to Africans.

Therefore, the parents had to go and ask farmer Dick Haack if this was a true story, and the farmer confirmed that it was true. Leon’s father, Zakeyo, could not contain his excitement, and he shed tears of joy, for he had never expected such a gesture from the white farmer. He quickly summoned all his relatives and friends to assemble for a big feast that went on for two days. The bull was slaughtered for people to eat while celebrating this unique achievement. Farmer Dick Haack donated a few crates of beer and soft drinks and a bag of rice.

Leon became the first and youngest Class 1 African driver in the whole Mashonaland Central province. The news quickly spread that Leon was certified by white examiners to drive trucks or buses. He was given a permanent job to drive trucks at the prestigious farm. The narrative spread like wildfire throughout the province, and this naturally brought an extra ounce of respect to Mutyambizi family.

Leon’s handsomeness, his newly acquired fame as the first African endorsed youngest Class 1 truck driver in the entire province, and a permanent driving job at a well-known commercial farm were sufficient ingredients to attract all the beautiful ladies in the province to aspire and jostle to be a future wife for Leon. Within a short space of time, Leon had three wives and eight children, namely Constance, Steve, Annastancia, Bodnas, Gilmas, Namatai (Memory), David, and Sabastian, who was the youngest.

Nelson Mandela once said, children are not born racist but are taught racism by adults. The three white boys innocently embraced Leon as one of their peers without looking at the colour of his skin. Their parents tried to disassociate their sons from Leon but failed. Instead, the boys were used by God to help Leon secure a truck driver’s licence. They shared a lot of things and lived happily at the farm. Remember, this happened when Leon was a teenager who later got married and had children still living at the farm.

God expects all races to live in harmony, for He created them all equal in His sight. That story was symbolic of what was going to happen when some of Leon’s children would live in a foreign land, staying with white people and living harmoniously with them. In fact, fifty years later, the late Leon had a granddaughter, Paidamoyo Neddy Mutyambizi, who was once married to a white Australian, and they bore a son called Xavier Wienholt.

CHAPTER 2

L eon was loving, charismatic, industrious, and had a naturally commanding presence to unify his family and the extended Mutyambizi family. However, after his sudden death, the wheels came off, flew in different directions, and the metaphorical wagon came to an abrupt halt. The little property he left was sold by some relatives on the pretext that they would keep the money for the welfare of the young children as they grew up, but nothing materialized.

This led to sharp differences within the family and brewing irreconcilable conflicts that further accelerated family fragmentation. Imagine Leon’s wives, who were highly traumatized by the sudden death of their husband and still grieving, being subjected to more emotional torture. There was too much negative talk within the family, and things came to a saturation point such that the widows could not handle it anymore.

It is noble in the Shona culture (kugara nhaka) for the younger brother or older brother to be appointed to marry the widow and take care of the deceased children until they reach adult stage. In Shona culture, it is strongly believed that there is no fatherless or motherless child; thus, a substitute father or mother is appointed. The downside of such an arrangement is that it’s done in a haste, whilst the widow and the children are emotionally unstable because of mourning.

As highlighted by Swedish psychologist Kübler-Ross (1969), grieving people undergo stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, not in chronological order. In a unanimous protest vote, Leon’s young and marketable widows were left with no option but to permanently flee the Mutyambizi family’s big nest, leaving their children with their respective biological families.

After the funeral, one of the senior members of the extended family, Uncle Lazarus Mutyambizi, made an excellent announcement that he was going to take Steve to Bushu in Shamva and educate him up to high school so that he would get a decent job and then be able to help his siblings. All the people who were there ululated, whistled, and clapped their hands loudly in agreement with that marvellous futuristic thinking. Uncle Lazarus and his wife were both teachers at the same school. They had eight children who were also going to school.

As agreed, Steve went with Uncle Lazarus’s family to Bushu School in Shamva. Things did not go well for Steve. He faced physical, psychological, and emotional abuse, as Lazarus’s wife clearly stated that she did not want him in her house because she was never consulted by her husband at the funeral when he quickly announced that he was going to bring Steve to stay with them and go to school. At the new school, Steve was always at the top of the class. One might think that any parent or guardian would be impressed by that performance, but Uncle Lazarus’s wife was not happy.

Therefore, at the end of the term, Lazarus’s wife gave Steve a