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In the 1970s, WITCH was one of Africa’s biggest bands before fading into obscurity. Now touring Australia’s east coast, they are enjoying the global acclaim they deserve. By Santilla Chingaipe.

Zamrock band WITCH on their late-in-life success

Jagari Chanda (left) and Patrick Mwondela, of the Zamrock band WITCH.

Credit: Izzie Austin

Until about a decade or so ago, most people outside of Zambia had never heard of WITCH. I was born in the landlocked southern African country and my dad introduced me to their music. It was a soundtrack of my childhood.

Formed in the 1970s in a mining town in northern Zambia, WITCH went on to become one of the pioneers of a uniquely Zambian sound, Zamrock, a blend of psychedelic funk, blues, garage rock and Indigenous sounds. They quickly became one of the biggest bands in Zambia, selling out shows and touring southern and eastern Africa. After rising to nationwide fame in the ’70s, the group faded into relative obscurity by the late ’80s.

In a twist seemingly from a fairytale, in 2011 their music found a new audience. This led to the band’s revival, with founding member Emmanuel “Jagari” Chanda and keyboardist Patrick Mwondela enjoying late-in-life success.

Both men are now in their 70s. They’re touring the Australian east coast this month to spread the Zamrock sound and they say audiences here are responding enthusiastically. “Australia is fantastic. You know, when we first came here and we saw people putting shoes in the air and it was a strange experience,” says Chanda.

“We were warned,” Mwondela adds, laughing. “In fact, there was one guy [on crutches] who had [lifted] a crutch in the air.”

Chanda says the band’s origins were organic. “It was a group of youngsters who had an interest in music. We didn’t think of it for fame and money,” he says.

Access to records was rare when he was a child. “We depended on the radio,” says Chanda. “All those three countries had only one radio station in today’s Harare – it was Salisbury at that time. This is where everyone tuned in and this is where we heard music from Germany, Top 50 and things like that. And so everyone paid attention. Those that loved music waited for the time for that radio station to play that music.”

Chanda says the introduction of Western music took over local sounds. “The colonial masters imposed their culture on us. They brought jukeboxes, their clubs.”

As with most cultural disruptions, the political context shaped the creation of the Zamrock sound. The territory that today makes up Zambia was seized and settled as a colony by Cecil Rhodes in 1889, which he renamed Northern Rhodesia. Rhodes’ British South Africa Company governed the territory along with present-day Zimbabwe and Malawi, extracting gold and copper, until the 1920s when it became a British protectorate.

By the 1960s, decolonisation was sweeping across Africa. In newly independent Zambia, it brought an economic boom due to the rise in demand for copper. This led to Zambians having a disposable income to spend on live music, records and musical instruments, as well as wider exposure to television and cinema from Europe and the United States. Zambia’s first president also decreed that more than 90 per cent of music played on the radio should be local. The confluence of these factors gave rise to Zamrock, which merged popular Western influences with African sounds.

WITCH (the acronym stands for We Intend To Cause Havoc) was born. It consisted of four self-taught musicians: Gideon “Giddy King” Mulenga on bass, Boidi “Star MacBoyd” Sinkala on drums, John “Music” Muma on guitar, Paul “Jones” Mumba on keys and Chanda, who was frontman and adopted the nickname “Jagari”, a pidginisation of Jagger, after the Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger. “We wanted to imitate the Black Americans – James Brown, Otis Redding, those people were famous at that time,” he says. “We could not play the way they were playing because we are Africans. It’s the tinge of rock added to African rhythms, African lyrics added to the Western influence of guitar, fuzz, wah-wah and things like that.”

Chanda says the strength of Zamrock can be heard in the African rhythmic patterns. “We have rhythms that crisscross and then we have very simple scales, like pentatonic scales, five-note scales, which are common. We have those simple scales but complicated rhythmic patterns, which we have infused in the Western rock, funk, blues, jazz.”

In the early years, all five band members lived in a one-bedroom house about eight kilometres from where rehearsals took place. “Our manager had a grocery shop, and on top of that shop there was a storeroom which we used as a rehearsal room,” says Chanda. The rehearsals were split into two from Monday to Thursday. “In the morning, while our minds were fresh, we tackled covers by Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Rolling Stones and things like that. We played by ear.” Afternoons were spent experimenting with their own ideas.

Their first album, Introduction, was self-released. It was recorded and printed in Nairobi, Kenya, since Zambia didn’t have the infrastructure at the time. In an interview with the Red Bull Music Academy, Chanda said the money they made from the early sales was an incentive to keep making music. “I was bringing the records in my bag, like hand luggage or something, to take to Zambia. My bandsmen, including myself, were very excited to have 300 kwacha in each one’s pocket after we sold the first batch. I could buy my bed, my fridge and a suit from that. So it encouraged not only us as bandsmen but also other musicians around. Everyone wanted now to compose and have something they would call their own.”

The group went on to record six more albums, with Lazy Bones!! arguably the stand-out. Listening to the early WITCH albums, it’s hard to fathom that this was a group of young men with no music training who managed through imitation to create a sound that was completely original, entertaining and timeless. Most of the songs are danceable and feature repetitive lyrics that add to their catchiness. It’s virtually impossible to listen to “Like a Chicken” without at the very least tapping a foot along to the sound of the beat.

Mwondela had his own band at the time but joined WITCH in 1979. “The band sort of headhunted me because they lost their keyboard player. They asked me to join them,” he says with a smile.

He says the group’s success at that time could be attributed to the fact they were very competitive. “I think we set the bar very high for ourselves. There was a lot of ambition and just wanting to be the best,” says Mwondela. “I think we pushed ourselves so hard, not realising actually our standards were pretty, pretty high. Because in hindsight, I can now see, even in the UK when I listen to Top of the Pops, there were a lot of bands that were just having a go, just having fun. They didn’t have that standard we were working to.”

The sound quickly found an audience. WITCH became one of the biggest Zamrock bands as they played venues across Zambia and in neighbouring countries. One review of their performance in the Times of Zambia described a scene where the police were called in to calm the crowd: “The hall where the boys played had its roof ripped off as exuberant fans tried to find their way through the windows.”

The sound was accompanied by a look that came to define ’70s style: bell-bottom denim pants, platform boots, fluorescent vests and over-the-top headwear. Many young people in Zambia looked to the band for fashion inspiration.

With the late ’70s came a shift in economic conditions: the price of copper was declining and a new sound was taking over dance floors – disco. While many Zamrock bands folded, WITCH continued to make music, although frontman Chanda left to pursue a career as a teacher. “It killed all the Zamrock bands, you know, because fans didn’t want to go to bands, to gigs anymore,” Mwondela says. “They went to disco houses.”

Mwondela says that despite the challenges, the group was able to successfully pivot to disco. “I think the band was very progressive in their thinking, and a lot of us youngsters were also quite ambitious and progressive,” he says. “And just the ethic of working; WITCH were always just taking music very seriously. The rehearsal regimes, the discipline they had. I think that was quite exemplary at the time.”

But it wasn’t enough. The money started to dip and despite attempts to adapt to disco, non-Zambian music was becoming increasingly popular, forcing the band to think about other career prospects.

In the mid ’80s, the group disbanded. Mwondela immigrated to Britain and took up a different career path, working for the NHS (National Health Service). “I think a combination of all sorts of things, the economy, and yeah, we were all sort of really looking for alternatives on what to do with our lives. So that’s when I then left,” says Mwondela.

The tragedy did not end there. The AIDS epidemic of the 1980s impacted the African continent disproportionately and it devastated the band, claiming the lives of all original members except Chanda and Mwondela.

Zamrock and the pioneering artists behind the sound such as WITCH were almost forgotten until music lovers in the West discovered the records. In 2014, Mwondela called Chanda and suggested they stage a tribute show to honour their bandmates who’d died. About that same time, an Italian filmmaker, Gio Arlotta, was curious about the band and travelled to Zambia where he shot footage that led to a documentary, WITCH: We Intend To Cause Havoc. With its release in 2019 came renewed interest from audiences across the world. Tyler, the Creator sampled Zamrock on his most recent album, as has Travis Scott and others.

Late-career success for most artists is rare and it came as a surprise to both men. “I’d almost given up. I taught at some point, I went into gemstone mining,” says Chanda.

“With the music I only talked about it at dinner parties,” says Mwondela. “That was my past and I didn’t ever, ever imagine that I would be onstage again.”

How does it feel, then – to borrow internet parlance – to be given their flowers? “People are calling us legends, but there’s an aspect that’s still missing – the money,” Chanda says. “Once the two marry, then we’ll be real legends. Then we can establish certain things where we can retire and impart knowledge to the younger generation.”

Despite nearly 50 years away from the spotlight, they are now touring the world and making new music with new members. This came with its own challenges. “We had to put something together, incorporating the musicians, the younger musicians with their ideas as well, and try and come up with something,” says Mwondela. “I was quite nervous, to be honest, because I didn’t know where things were going to end up.”

I sense Chanda and Mwondela are enjoying being late-in-life rock stars and sharing their love of music with the world. While it’s easy to romanticise stories like WITCH’s renaissance, theirs is a reminder that when art is made for art’s sake, it finds its audience in its own time.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 15, 2025 as "WITCH’s brew".

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