In 1888 King Lobengula was duped by Cecil John Rhodes into signing the Rudd Concession, an agreement that awarded the British South African Company mining rights in present day Zimbabwe and paved the way for the country's colonisation. The concession promised Lobengula a gun-boat for him to patrol the Zambezi river and keep the Ndebele territory safe. The boat never came.
This is the inspiration behind the title of Jono Terry's exhibition, a brush stroke of storytelling that brings up both themes of colonialism and to an extent tribalism. For the longest time there has been the narrative that Lobengula sold the country for a bag of sugar. A work of propaganda that has persisted, even in the age of the internet. Although inspired by very different reasons, it is parallel to the propaganda that placed Kariba's feat of engineering above the human cost to the indigenous people.
The construction of the Kariba Dam along the Zambezi River, displaced nearly 60,000 people on both the Zimbabwean and Zambian sides of the border. It not only broke apart communities but as the Tonga people tell it, it separated the Zambezi River god, NyamiNyami, from his wife. These and other nuanced tales are what Jono Terry attempts to capture.
Currently residing at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, They Still Owe Him a Boat is a photography exhibition that dives into the past while relating it to the present. It showcases not only the dam itself and its surrounding geography, but the community around it. It places human stories in front of a backdrop that is a massive feat of engineering. In showcasing the dam's relationship with the people around it, Jono also showcases his own relationship with it and that of the white community in the broader context.
While the indigenous population historically has a relationship of anguish and at present has one dominated by commerce, for white people it is a place of leisure. This presents a state of inequality that has persisted in Zimbabwe, right from the time when Lobengula was promised that boat. Terry's exhibition carries a constant air of somberness, yet the shots that make the showcase have an undeniable beauty that exists even outside the context.
In imagery that draws intrigue, Terry asks us "How much can be sacrificed for the sake of progress?" and while we ponder on this he showcases the fruits of that progress. Ultimately it feels like call to remember what Zimbabwe has gone through in the last 100 or so years, a matter of many pivotal moments that resolves into wondering: "Was it all worth it?"