I recently learned that Maureen Stewart, the former manager of the British Council in Bulawayo, passed away on 23 December 2024.
She was 81 years old.
This story is not new and is an introduction for some who did not know her. I first met her in June 2006 when I went knocking on her door, as an 18-year-old chairperson of the erstwhile Radio Dialogue Youth Club, inquiring about what type of opportunities were available in her building. I always tell young people to be curious about what goes on “in the stairs.” She had nothing for me. Damn.
The day after, I read the previous weeks’ newspapers as sent to us at my late grandmother Elizabeth’s house by my late Chronicle journo uncle Joseph “JZ” Magagula. Nobody cared about the old newspapers other than their bathroom sanitation function except for me who had a simple rule: they had to pass through my eyes first. There it was – a British Council advertisement in the newspaper from the day before, the day I had gone there!
It was what was called the InterAction UK-Africa Leadership Programme. For some reason I thought it was a youth programme and saved a news cutting. On the very last day of June, some two minutes just before the 5PM deadline, I sent in my application via the internet café of the Bulawayo Public Library which desperately needs our help at this very moment. Mobile internet was an annoying four years away.
I waited on 31 July, which was the day on which the advert told unsuccessful applicants to give up hope if not given a landline phone call. Who had a cell phone back then? Heck, even having a landline phone at home was a miracle. I kept looking at the clock. 3PM, 4PM, 4:10…, 15… 20… 35… 45… 50… 51… 55… 56… A friend, the late Clifford said, “Don’t worry, they will call.” I had hope. 57… 58… 59…!
At exactly 5PM, my cousin Lynette sent for me. Was I expecting a call? From the British Council Harare? Clifford said, “What did I tell you?” I ran home to call back who became a dear sister-friend, the late Anne-Marilyn “MaNkomo” Nkomo. I, had, been, selected.
British Council Bulawayo (BC Bulawayo) was opened by Elizabeth II, then-Queen of England herself, and her husband Prince Phillip, who had come to see King Lobengula’s famous City of Kings on 12 October 1991. I have seen the resting place of both, at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and lit two candles for our forebears, Babuyane Masuku (Mbiko) and Mtshede Ndiweni (Khondwane), who on behalf of our King went to Windsor Castle on an arduous three-month sea journey in late November 1888. The two diplomats arrived in February 1889 to meet the one and only Victoria, then-Queen of England, regarding the world infamous treachery of the Rudd Concession.
I travelled the country with British Council. I saw abject suffering in Matabeleland North that never left my mind. I travelled Africa. I travelled the world.
Maureen would support the then-BC Bulawayo intern, Chronicle newspaper columnist, and my former senior at Mpopoma The High School, Butholezwe Nyathi, son of the late longest serving columnist in Zimbabwe, Phathisa Nyathi, to run the Echoes of Young Voices (EYV) programme which published two books with Jane Morris’ AmaBooks.
I used to call us the Bulawayo equivalent of the Mickey Mouse Club where Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera et al were discovered. “Gogo” as most called Maureen despite her insisting on a first-name basis, helped incubate people such as Hon. Descent Bajila, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, Gilmore Tee, Babusi Nyoni, Mbonisi “Mbo Mahocs”, Njabulo Moyo, Ntandoyenkosi “Umahlekisa” Moyo, Chris “Nqoe” Dube, Nozipho “Zypo” Moyo, Bhekumusa Moyo, Khayelihle Moyo, and so many more.
We were with Maureen when her husband Jim passed away in 2010. We were with her when her daughter Julie visited Bulawayo. We dined many times, held many workshops, and accessed the BC Bulawayo library internet to connect with the outside world. One of my favourite times was when a visiting Briton was shocked when I told him that BC was officially a propaganda organisation that George Orwell had despised.
The hapless student, who had been stunned to see Nando’s in Bulawayo, was also shocked when I told him that the grilled chicken shop is a South African company based on an ancient Nguni-Mozambican recipe. Influenced by 2000s African migrants exasperated with bland English food, Brits now “eat Nando’s” like it is daily bread, and in this delicious 2010 long read, the Guardian said it “changed the face of British fast food.” Even Dutch press was recently shocked by how Brits skof fast chicken (origins of the legendary skof tin/skaf-tin ema-shiftini/lunch box during shifts) at an annual rate of a whopping £4.62 billion (€5.42 billion), and how fish ‘n’ chips had long exited the British zeitgeist.
Per her biography that I asked for years ago (aren’t you glad we do this work like this), she once lived in Hillbrow, South Africa, in its “Group Areas” apartheid stage where some black migrants were already crammed on building top floors known as Johannesburg’s “locations in the sky.”
She was a librarian at the Bulawayo Public Library for 13 years and then ran BC Bulawayo for 23 years from that period of the royals visit until 2014 when she retired back to her English homeland after living in Africa for so long. She told me that she could not get used to her native British cold weather and dearly missed warm Bulawayo, singing in church, and the legendary bloom of the Jacaranda trees.
Maureen saved BC Bulawayo from being shut down. The mandarins wanted it gone, and she subsequently was awarded Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2010. She connected us to Judith Todd, who had heard about us and Global Changemakers, to send me an autographed copy of the devastating Through the Darkness, a raw account by the former Rhodesian prime minister’s ZAPU-supporting daughter on everything that went wrong in 1980.
Sadly, I understand Maureen fell in her home last year and was unable to recuperate in hospital after developing respiratory distress. I found it crazy that the passing of someone who contributed nearly 40 years to Bulawayo’s literature and arts sector went unacknowledged. May she shine from the Ages labanye ogogo.
Sonny Jermain (Bulawayo, 1986) is author of new book, Thole LikaMthwakazi, and is based in the Netherlands.