The Zimbabwean-born, London-based artist problematises his memories of childhood, speaking through his self-published book, They Still Owe Him a Boat
Early evenings on Lake Kariba hold a special place in Jono Terry’s childhood memories: the 40-degree Zimbabwean heat would finally break, and after a day trying to catch fish, “all of these colours would fade into one another on this beautiful expansive lake as day starts turning into night,” he says. “There’s this feeling of peace and tranquility.” For many white Rhodesians, like Terry, summer holidays would be full of adventures, laughter and first kisses on the lake’s banks. But for the indigenous population, who were displaced when the Zambezi river was flooded to create the world’s largest artificial lake and reservoir in 1960, Lake Kariba represents something completely different. Lake Kariba
“Every time I go back to Zimbabwe there’s so many manifestations of these big colonial hangovers that still exist in contemporary African society,” says Terry. In many ways, he sees Lake Kariba as a symbol of that “colonial legacy, of broken promises, of displacements, belonging, human rights, environmental destruction, the list goes on and on.” The British South Africa Company colonised Zimbabwe in 1891, calling the area Rhodesia after the company’s founder, Cecil Rhodes. Backed by the British army, they dispossessed millions of Africans and created a system of white minority rule that endured for 90 years with the 1930 Land Apportionment Act even restricting black land ownership in areas of the country.
Terry has spent the past six and a half years returning to his favourite place in the world as a documentary photographer rather than a tourist, processing how all the things that he had enjoyed about the lake growing up, “conversely meant that other people hadn’t or had lost livelihoods and ways of life.” His new book, They Still Owe Him a Boat, captures the beauty of the man-made lake, the white people that visit it, as well as the families of the 57,000 Tonga people, who had once prospered from the fertile farmlands on the banks of the river before they were evicted. He speaks to the tribe’s elders, including a 90-year-old man, who remembers an idyllic life along the Zambezi River, and told him about the myths and folklore of the valley: “the social and cultural history, which tends to get whitewashed in the colonial advancement modernisation narrative of things.”