The plague.
A legend of famine and human suffering.
By Nyadzombe Nyampenza
In 1896 Colonial settlers arrived in Zimbabwe and a swarm of locusts descended on the land. AmaNdebele called the marauding pests Intete za Makiwa, ‘the White man’s locust’. Webster Mubairenyi’s The King of the Grasshoppers recalls the legend of famine and human suffering.
The gregarious insects laid waste to non-crop, commercial crop, and subsistence crop. Each would consume its own weight in vegetation per day. They could breed near five generations in a year. To the Natives the behavior of the White settlers had similar effect to that of the locusts. Spiritual leaders declared that the European settlers had to leave for the plague to go away.
Mubairenyi’s betitled grasshopper looks menacing and powerful. He presides over a scene that is dissected in half. One side is where his mouth is. It serves his greedy and selfish needs with obscene bling and opulence. In the other half is his defecating end. A gray lifeless zone were human labor comes to nothing. That is where the masses are concentrated, in dehumanizing conditions, like a mass grave.
