From Ephraim Joe to Alick Macheso: The royal bloodline of Sungura

Picture this: Sakubva township, Mutare, sometime in the late 1980s. The sun is dipping behind the Christmas Pass hills, the air thick with the smell of sadza cooking on open fires and the sharp tang of maputi roasting on a brazier.

I am nine or ten years old, barefoot as usual, clutching a 20-cent coin my mother gave me for tomatoes. I weave through the narrow dusty paths between the houses, past women winnowing maize seeds and men arguing about Dynamos versus Highlanders.

And everywhere, everywhere, there is music.

It leaks from every open window, thumps from battered radios balanced on window sills, spills out of the shebeens where men in overalls nurse scud and shake.

The guitars are galloping, the bass is running ahead like it is late for a bus, and someone is always shouting “Chema!” or “Bass!” as if the instruments themselves are alive. That was my childhood soundtrack. Sungura was not background noise. It was the heartbeat of the ghetto.

I remember the first time I saw a real band live. It was at Sakubva Stadium. John Chibadura was on stage with the Tembo Brothers.

The crowd was a sea of pressed shirts and headscarves, bodies moving in that unmistakable sungura shuffle, feet sliding, hips rolling, no-one ever lifting their heels too high off the ground.

Chibadura’s voice floated over everything, telling stories of love gone wrong and landlords who would not fix leaking roofs.

I stood on a crate someone had pushed against the wall just so small boys like me could see. I did not understand every word, but I felt every note in my chest.

Years later, when I started asking questions about where this music came from, people always jumped straight to Alick Macheso. Baba Sharo. The king.

And yes, he deserves every crown anyone has ever placed on his head. But every kingdom has a founding father, a quiet architect who laid the first stones. In sungura, that man is Ephraim Joe.

Let us go back to the beginning, to the years just before and after independence in 1980. The country was raw, electric with possibility.

The war had only just ended, and people were hungry for a sound that felt like home, something faster than the slow Congolese rumba they had grown up with, something that captured the feeling of running free after years in chains.

Into that space stepped Ephraim Joe and his Sungura Boys.

They did not invent the ingredients. They took the lightning-fast kanindo beat that liberation war fighters had brought back from training camps in Zambia and Tanzania, mixed it with the shimmering layered guitars of Congolese soukous, added a dash of mbira cyclical melody, and turned the temperature up.

The rabbit, which is the literal meaning of sungura, became the perfect symbol: quick, clever, always one hop ahead. Ephraim never proclaimed himself king. He did not need to. He simply built the palace and invited the future princes to train inside it.

The Sungura Boys were more than a band. They were a university. If you could play, if you could hold a note, if you had fire in your fingers, you passed through those ranks.

John Chibadura, Simon and Naison Chimbetu, System Tazvida, Nicholas Zakaria, Mitchell Jambo, Moses Marasha, Never Moyo… the list reads like a sungura hall of fame.

They rehearsed in Dzivarasekwa high-density suburb, in small houses where the neighbours complained about the noise but still came to listen through the windows.

Ephraim Joe taught them discipline, feel, how to make the guitar cry and laugh in the same bar. Tragically, he died in the mid-1980s, still a young man. But by then the seed was planted, and it was growing wild.

John Chibadura picked up the torch first and ran with it. When he formed the Tembo Brothers, sungura finally had its first superstar. His voice was rough velvet, the kind that made women sigh and men nod in recognition.

Songs like Zuva Rekufa Kwangu and 5000 Dollars were more than hits. They were conversations. He sang about everyday pain in a way that made you feel seen.

I heard a story once, probably polished by many tellings, that Chibadura performed at a government function attended by Apostle Ezekiel Guti.

Baba Guti was apparently so moved by the energy that when he returned to his Deeper Life Conference at AMFCC, he asked why the church did not have musicians who could move people like that.

That moment, they say, gave ZAOGA musicians permission to borrow those galloping rhythms. One performance changed the sound of church music forever.

While Chibadura ruled the emotions, Nicholas Zakaria ruled the lecture room. People called him Senior Lecturer for a reason. With the Khiama Boys he brought precision to a genre that could sometimes feel chaotic.

Every harmony had to be perfect, every lyric meaningful. He dressed the band in matching suits, made sure the guitars were tuned to the cent, and turned live shows into masterclasses.

It was under Zakaria that a shy young bassist from Chitungwiza, still finding his voice, learned how to make the bass guitar speak in full sentences. That young man was Alick Macheso.

Simon Chimbetu, ah, where do I even start? In Sakubva we treated every new Chimbetu cassette like a newspaper. We would gather outside someone’s house, the tape deck balanced on a stool, and dissect every line.

With Orchestra Dendera Kings he proved sungura could carry weighty ideas. He sang about politics without preaching, about love without clichés, about the struggles of ordinary people with poetry that made you stop and think even while your feet refused to stand still.

Tracks like Samatenga and Ngoma Yekwedu took the music beyond beer halls into international stages. London, Botswana, South Africa, wherever Zimbabweans had scattered, Simon followed with that voice like dark honey.

Then in the 1990s came System Tazvida and the Chazezesa Challengers. If Chibadura was the heart, Zakaria the brain, and Chimbetu the conscience, Tazvida was the philosopher with a wicked sense of humour.

He looked like a schoolteacher, thin and serious, but his lyrics cut straight to the bone. He sang about unemployment, about men who drank their wages, about love that arrived too late, and somehow made you laugh through the tears.

Anhu Acho Tisu and Mutunhu Wekwa Maruva are still played at every funeral and every wedding because they speak truth so gently. We lost him far too young in 1999, and the genre has never quite replaced that particular shade of wisdom.

And then, finally, the king arrived.

Alick Macheso did not just join the story. He rewrote the ending. After years paying dues with the Khiama Boys, he stepped out with Orchestra Mberikwazvo and did something revolutionary: he made the bass guitar the star.

No-one had ever heard a bass line dance like that, borrowing from traditional ngororombe and muchongoyo rhythms, turning the instrument into a lead vocalist.

The year 2000 brought Simbaradzo, and songs like Mundikumbuke, Amai VaRubhi, and Petunia became the new national anthems.

His live shows? They were events. Six, seven, eight hours sometimes, with costume changes, borrowed dance moves, and that trademark Macheso shuffle that every child in Zimbabwe tried to copy the next day at school.

Macheso took everything his teachers gave him, Chibadura’s connection to ordinary people, Zakaria’s discipline, Chimbetu’s storytelling, Tazvida’s depth, added showmanship no-one had seen before, and built an empire. Even today, when he walks onto a stage, the air changes.

The crowd roars like it is 2003 all over again.

The bloodline continues. Sulumani Chimbetu carries his father’s political fire and adds modern polish. Peter Moyo inherited his father Tongai Moyo’s charisma and sweetness of voice.

Mark Ngwazi brings back that classic Khiama Boys crispness. Romeo Gasa, Killer T, Jah Prayzah when he dips into sungura, they all drink from the same well Ephraim Joe dug all those years ago.

Sungura is more than music. It is Zimbabwe’s diary set to six strings and a thumping drum. It has mourned with us through hard times, celebrated with us in better ones, and somehow always managed to make us dance while telling us the truth about ourselves.

From the dusty streets of Sakubva where I first heard those galloping guitars, to the packed stadiums of today, the rabbit is still running.

Ephraim Joe never lived to see his creation crown kings. But every time a bass line thunders and a crowd sings along word for word, he is right there, smiling quietly in the front row, knowing the palace he built is still standing strong.

Gabriel Manyati is a hard-hitting journalist and analyst delivering incisive commentary on politics, human interest stories, and current affairs.