They Still Owe Him A Boat

This work explores the colonial legacy of Kariba, the largest man-made lake in the world, and questions the narratives that continue to exist as a result. It is about a mythical place that exists for some but not for others.

The Zambezi Valley has long been a place of myth and folklore, home to magical creatures and a way of life that acknowledged and celebrated them. Chief of which was NyamiNyami, the Zambezi River god, depicted with the head of a tiger fish and the body of a snake. ‘Kariva’, was an expression given to a rock beneath the rapids, where it was believed he resided.

The creation of the Kariba dam wall in 1960 and subsequent flooding of the valley displaced approximately 57,000 people and separated NyamiNyami from his wife downstream below the wall. The resettled Tonga people sing of their wailing ancestors heard across the Zambezi Valley, wandering in a place unrecognizable to them, lost in a search for their living relatives.

Lake Kariba is a rite of passage for most white Zimbabweans, a place where only the happiest memories exist in a place seemingly made exclusively for our enjoyment. There are two sides to the lake: Zimbabwe and Zambia, an imaginary line demarcates the lake in two, roughly following the course of the Zambezi River and there are two histories and two very different experiences of the lake - those of the white and those of the black population. It aims to interweave my own privileged experience with the original history and stories of the land that have largely been erased in the current narrative of Lake Kariba.

The title of the work, They Still Owe Him a Boat, is derived from the deception of Cecil John Rhodes who duped King Lobengula into signing the Rudd Concession - essentially handing over mining rights to the British South African Company – which eventually paved the way for the colonisation of present-day Zimbabwe. Of the many things promised to King Lobengula in exchange for signing the concession was a boat, which he never received.