Zim High Is An Ambitious Yet Flawed Film That Brings Back So Many Memories of High School That

In 2017, Tatenda Mbudzi released the movie Zim High which is a mockumentary filmed by an Aborigional exchange student who’s following a Zimbabwean student called Tatenda Mbudzi (played by the filmmaker herself, more on that in a moment) at Zim High and his quest to become a prefect so he can get a grant to draw anime in Japan. It was an interesting concept at the time but the movie wasn’t out at the time except for cinema festivals. To keep me company I’d watch his YouTube channel. Lot’s has happened since then but I decided to look it up again and I was suprised to find a full upload of the movie on YouTube released a week ago!.

Watching this film brings up a lot of memories from my high school days at a private trust school, which are the fancy, expensive, nominally faith-based, high-quality and disproportionatley white private schools. The school in the movie, Zim High, was filmed at the all-boys school St. John College judging by the fields and the green uniforms. Zim High has girls, which St. Johns used to have in the final two years for Form 5s and 6s (Lower and Upper 6) while they still offered the IB program. In the movie, they got girls from Chisipite, another trust school. Also, the symbol of Zim High is a goat, same as St. Johns. Even though I went to Gateway High, a lower-status, proportionatly white yet still high quality school¹, I identify with a lot of things in this movie.

The biggest thing I recognize is the slang. The reverse words; clab for black, twy for white, cuff for fuck and so on. Also the many words for person like exe, china, brah and owne/oans. The note on Coloured people is about right. That’s what we call those descended from the interracial mixing² from the era of colonization³ in Southern Africa. Haven’t heard goffal but we say that a lot in Zim apparently? Also, a lot of them do live in Aradia and Braeside too. How did I gte here? Read The Racist’s Guide to the People of South Africa to learn more about how race works in South Africa. Satire of course.

Also how Tatenda was being mocked for his surname, Mbudzi which means goat in Shona. That’s derived from his totem (actually mutupo or lineage) implying that he had a portion of a lineage which cuffed a goat. And I thought my totem of ishwa or beta was embarrasing. Speaking of the totem, I don’t get why the documentarian has to be an aborigonal Australian. Rather weird setting.

Other things include the hazing, bullying, crass swearing with mhata and compulsory support (mandatory sports fixture attendence) with the extended (hehe) penis metaphors for war cries. Probably the funniest part of the film, where Tatenda tries to start a war cry but gets brused off and people start singing Mfana uyu, imhata meaning “that guy’s a fucking asshole”. He composes himself with a drum and starts singing chakuti chakuti which boils down to a bunch of penis riddles. And yes, these war are that crass, here’s one basically saying “dick and balls, I wanna see your mother”. Only thing that made having to sacrifice your weekend to support your sports team worth it.

The big part of the film is his quest to be a prefect. That is indeed a big deal except at Gateway where they gave every upper 6 the right to be a prefect that reduced it’s value, except for the headboy who is not the one who gives blowjobs. While we’re at it, the headmaster isn’t the best at giving blowjobs either, not that I’d know. Prefects do wield a lot of power to enforce discipline and control and can make you do things like become a skivvy.

As you can tell, my nostalgia for high school, a time when I had no responsibilities, has taken over the actual quality for the movie and if we’re to be objective, it has a lot of technical problems. Bad sound mixing, poor lighting and inconsistent colorgrading are very hard to ignore, so much so I couldn’t understand crucial plot lines, particularly given the climactic scene where everything is just muddled up and confused. Still, it was pretty enjoyable to watch since it brought up so many memories of my time in high school. Also, it’s very impressive that he was able to put together an entire feature length film.

The one thing I’d like to do is interview Tatenda to understand how this movie came about, whether it’s somewhat autobiographical, how he got the money and why it was necessary to go all the way to Japan for a two minute scene. The biggest thing I’d want to ask that I alluded to is that Tatenda is a transwoman, something I wasn’t aware of when the film was made. I wonder how she views the film now since there’s a big thread of dealing with masculinity in the film.