Samuel Kadungure Senior Reporter
ALTHOUGH the indispensable human needs for a blissful and healthy life are food, water, health and shelter – there is an extra vital building block required for a well-rounded society – belonging. Humans need to belong to one another,
friends, families, community, culture, country and the world. Belonging is primal and fundamental to one’s sense of happiness and well-being – with the exception of Kimpton Mutambara’s family – which two years after their father’s death still claws to his creepy belief of ostracising itself from the community.
Their homestead remains a no-go-zone for outsiders.
The family isolates itself and is always on the margin and regards everyone else outsiders.
An aborted visit to the family last week showed that by inculcating such a belief, the late Mutambara actually harmed his family’s subjective sense of well-being, intellectual achievement, immune function and health.
They know, even in the dead of the night, that they neither belong to the greater community nor share its common interests and aspirations.
Our newscrew arrived in the Guhune area around 12 noon, and from a distance one could see the children busy with land preparation.
They were neither using mechanised equipment nor ox-drawn plough – but ancient method of chibhakera (digging using hoes).
We left our car by the road side due to the bad state of the off-shoot road leading to the homestead, which depicts a military base, where security is of paramount importance. The field is fenced by barbed wire and has one gate that is always closed. The homestead is walled by strong dry sugar cane and the brothers loiter around armed with bows and arrows. As we drew closer to the homestead two siblings – a towering boy and his intolerant sister Munozodaani spotted us from a distant and rushed to intercept us some 150m away.
Without shaking hands, exchanging greetings and introductions, Munozodaani bombarded us with a flurry question.
“What is your mission here? Who invited you here? How did you get to know of our existence?” she asked.
Before we could respond the unidentified brother took over the interrogations.
“Do you know them” he asked his sister, who responded by shaking her head disapprovingly.
“So who are you and where are you coming from? Who sent you to Kimpton Mutambara’s homestead? Who do you want to see? What do you want?” he asked.
He refused to entertain us after telling him we were journalists who wanted to understand how the family was faring since the death of their father on October 23, 2014, at the age of 83.
“We do not entertain journalists or outsiders here. We do not grant interviews anymore. It used to be done here and there in the past, but the disclosure of classified information about the family gave our enemies some insight and hindsight which they used to kill our father. Our father died before his time as a result of hatred from these people. We are surrounded by bad people, they hate us and we do not mix with them. They killed him and may also do the same to us. They are not normal people, they are full of hatred,” he said adding that his father was bewitched to prevent him from taking over the Mutambara chieftaincy.
Munozodaani chipped in.
“You are the same journalists who once came here and took our pictures on the pretext that you will assist us to get national identity cards, are you not the ones? You are not good people, we wasted our time going there (to get IDs) but nothing came out of it. There is no way we can allow you in or discuss anything to you,” she said.
Our pleas for further audience fell on deaf ears.
The brother’s final warning send shivers down our spines. It was clear that like the late Kimpton, both his beliefs and way of life were bizarre and deviant.
“Go! You don’t want to go? We have nothing to share, you are disturbing us, we need to go back and join others in the fields. Don’t ever come back”.
Kimpton was an ordinary man whose celebrity status emanated from a strange decision he took three decades ago – to completely ostracise himself and his family from the generality of society.
He chose a life for himself, his wife Tamary, two sons and three daughters by cutting ties with the outside world to guard against cultural erosion and pollution. He never entertained visitors and the only people he was at peace with were his children, who like disciples, religiously adhered to his life style. He modelled his family as a secretive and closed unit.
It was his cardinal principle never to leave his yard – meaning he never visited the shops to buy anything; never attended funerals, family and traditional ceremonies as demanded by dynasty ethos during social, religious and private functions.
His self-imposed exile earned him the nickname ‘Mr Lonely’ while on the other hand his addiction and prowess with bow and arrows prompted others to nickname him ‘‘Lord of the Arrows’’.
He could not walk at the time of his death after his legs started swelling in April.
His body was interred amid controversy. It was clandestinely buried in his yard by his nucleus family only after two days.
Ironically, when his father and then Chief Mutambara died a decade ago, Kimpton did the same – he secretly buried the corpse in his yard against the traditional custom of burying the dynasty’s chiefs in a nearby sacred mountain.
Before his death, Kimpton spoke, briefly, on why he shut himself from the outside world and barred his children from attending school.
“I have come to realise that in life I am surrounded by traitors. I decided not associate with this bunch of village idiots. I am not polluted by these people staying around me. This is why I don’t associate with them. My children are unpolluted, too. The best teacher of a child is his parents, in schools they are taught to be traitors. I decided to live closed away from the rest of the cruel world,” said Mutambara, who highlighted his frustration by naming one of his daughters ‘Munozodaani’.
The family has a rich orchard moulded around the biblical Garden of Eden, which has sugar cane, indigenous and exotic fruit trees that include mango, lemon, orange, bananas, matohwe and paw-paw, among others.
They keep their livestock in such a way they do not mix with those from without.
They have an inexhaustible water supply drawn from a water canal built in 1911 that passes through his homestead.