By Tendai Makaripe
They were still children, really.
In 1996, Chris Chidzanja, Ndaba Ngwenya and the late Nothando Ngwenya began Reunion Music with strict parents, young voices and more belief than they could yet explain.
During school holidays, they carried food to the Harare Botanical Gardens and practised for hours, sometimes long enough to make strangers stop and listen, long before wives, children and loss entered the song.
Thirty years later, Reunion Music, a mixed acappella ensemble from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, has grown into one of Zimbabwe’s enduring gospel acappella ministries, with a journey shaped by discipline, rejection, growth, humour, grief and the hard work of staying together.
The milestone will be marked on April 25, 2026, with a 30th anniversary concert at 7 Arts Theatre in Avondale, Harare, a night the group is eagerly awaiting and one that carries far more than celebration.
That journey still feels close to home.
Outside the durawalled Chidzanja family home in Warren Park D, where the group now rehearses, the music rises from a setting as ordinary as the story is not.
There is laughter.
There are corrections.
A line is repeated.
A note is sharpened.
Then the harmonies settle again.
Nothing about the scene suggests glamour.
It suggests something else: habit, discipline and the kind of patience that keeps a group alive long after the excitement of its beginning has faded.
At the start, even finding time to sing was a challenge.
Chidzanja was 14 when the group was formed. Ndaba was 16.
Nothando was 13.
Their parents insisted that school came first, so music had to fit around weekends and holidays.
When the school term ended, the Botanical Gardens became their refuge. “We would buy food, head there on our own and rehearse for hours, making the most of the time we did not always have,” said Chidzanja.
The group began by rearranging songs.
One of the earliest was Believe in the Lord.
But around 2000, Reunion moved into original songwriting, and that shift gave the ministry a deeper sense of identity.
Chidzanja wrote the first original song, Ishe Mune Simba, in 2000.
It has not yet appeared on an album, though he hopes it will become a title track on one of the group’s future projects.
He says the writing has never come from a search for novelty.
It has come from life, from faith and from the desire to share both.
“What inspires my writings are the life experiences I go through and the zeal to share the word of God, so my songs are testimonies and Bible scripture that uplift me,” he said.
Over time, the group built a substantial body of work.
Chidzanja says Reunion now has 423 songs, a mix of original and rearranged material, with about 75% of the original songs written by him and the rest contributed by other members.
The first album, Thank You, released in 2004, opened the recording journey. More albums followed: Thy Word, Send Me, Am Glad, Testimonies, Reunion Morning, Manithandane, Lord I Come, Hallelujah, I Need Thee, Anondida and Mwana WaMambo.
The catalogue matters, but only as part of a bigger story.
Reunion did not simply keep releasing music. It kept renewing itself.
The trio grew into a larger group.
New members joined, among them siblings Janet and Wycliff Matsika and Vimbai Guhu.
With them came new voices, new energy and new personalities. Some of those personalities helped carry the group in ways audiences never hear in a recording.
Wycliff Matsika, nicknamed Wanya after one of the Boyz II Men members, Wanya Morris, brought his own humour.
In long-running groups, light-heartedness is part of how people survive each other and survive the work.
That balance between seriousness and warmth comes through strongly in the way former members remember Reunion.
“When I think about Reunion Music, I don’t just remember songs; I remember moments, seasons, and a family that shaped me in ways words can hardly explain,” said former member Olsen Ndebele.
He said what made the group different was not just technical ability, but the spirit behind the music.
“What made us special wasn’t only getting the notes right. It was the heart behind everything. We weren’t trying to just perform but we were trying to touch souls.”
Ndebele’s memory goes to the centre of the group’s identity.
Reunion, he said, felt like more than a performance outfit.
“We laughed together, prayed together, and lived life together. That bond created a sound that was not just heard … it was felt. Every harmony carried emotion, and every performance carried purpose.”
Former member Janet Ngwenya remembers the same foundation in slightly different words.
She said what made the group special was “the sense of unity, brotherhood and shared purpose we had.”
“Members not only pursued technical excellence, she said.
“They connected deeply with the music and with each other, and that gave their performances emotional depth.”
Just as important, she said, was the group’s ability to change without losing itself.
“The group has consistently embraced new ideas, voices and musical styles without losing the values and the sound that define it,” she said.
“The balance between the old and the new is what kept Reunion Music both enduring and meaningful over the years.”
That ability to adapt mattered because the journey was not smooth.
In its early years, Chidzanja said, Reunion’s music was not accepted in some churches.
The group had to find space in congregations that were more open to its sound before wider acceptance came.
It is one of the quieter twists in the ministry’s history, but an important one. A group now invited to perform across the country at churches, youth camps and camp meetings once had to work to be heard within its own religious world.
That resistance did not end the ministry. It sharpened it.
From the beginning, Chidzanja said, the goal was to become an international ministry.
He says the group has not yet reached that goal in full, but it has become known in Southern Africa and has toured different countries in the region. For a group that began with three school-age children and holiday rehearsals, that is a meaningful stretch of road.
Others in the acappella world have watched that road closely.
Mandikudza Sithole of Shower Power said Reunion’s longevity reflects more than talent.
“It’s easy to start, but it’s not easy to endure,” he said.
What has kept Reunion going, he said, is humility, patience and the willingness to grow slowly.
“They are humble, they take their time, they are willing to grow things organically,” he said, adding that Reunion understands “that this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
His view matters because it places Reunion in a wider story about Southern African vocal groups.
Harmony-based ensembles often rise on enthusiasm but struggle to survive the pressures that come with time: changing members, family responsibilities, grief, ego, money and the strain of keeping a shared sound intact.
Sithole said Reunion’s contribution to Zimbabwe’s gospel acappella scene has been “massive” because it helped define the small mixed-group format at a time when that lane was still largely open.
“They came in with mixed because it was missing in the market,” he said. “They came in with that punch where originality was part of them.”
One measure of that originality lies in what the music did to listeners.
Letwin Katsumbe, an avid follower of the ministry, said she cannot clearly remember when she first started listening to Reunion, but one memory has never left her.
She was still a little girl, seated near the front at Warren Park D Main Church one Sabbath, when the group performed dressed in grey and white. She no longer remembers every song from that service, but she remembers the effect.
“I loved it from that moment,” she said.
The music stayed with her long after that day.
She said their song, God Can Do Anything has repeatedly reminded her that God is present in her life and that nothing is impossible for Him, especially in uncertain times.
But it is Nhare Yangu (“Jesus, you are my refuge”) that she describes as deeply personal.
“When my brother was in the hospital, I sang it every day before praying. 2 years later, after four days of prolonged labour, it was the same song that gave me the strength to hold on,” she said.
“For me, Reunion Music is comfort, faith, and a reminder that God is always with me.”
That kind of testimony helps explain why Reunion lasted.
Its songs moved from platform to pew, from pew to prayer, and from prayer into some of the hardest moments in people’s lives.
Still, no honest account of Reunion Music at 30 can avoid the losses.
The group has lost Jackie, Nyasha, JB Magwagwa and Nothando Ngwenya, one of the three children who stood at the beginning.
Chidzanja does not speak of her death lightly.
“Losing Nothando was a huge blow to us. She was a vital cog of the ministry, and the circumstances with which we lost her were tragic,” he said.
She was not a distant figure added later to the group’s history.
She was there at the start.
She is remembered as a free spirit: independent, very confident and highly talented.
Her voice was powerful.
In songs such as There Is Power in the Blood, people could hear the force she carried.
Grief changes the weight of music.
It changes what an anniversary means too.
Thirty years does not only bring pride. It brings memory. It reminds a group of people who should have been there but are not.
In Reunion’s case, the milestone arrives with that absence still inside it.
The ministry survived anyway.
Chidzanja says leadership has been central to that survival.
He values servant leadership and tries to combine firmness with approachability, discipline with humanity.
It is an explanation that fits the picture others have painted: a group held together not by accident, but by a steady centre and a shared sense of purpose.
Its motto says as much in a single line: “Music is a prayer and an answer to a prayer.”
After three decades, the words read less like a slogan than a description of what the group has tried to become.
On April 25, when Reunion steps onto the stage at 7 Arts Theatre in Avondale for its 30th anniversary concert, it will do so carrying more than a set list.
It will carry the memory of three children in the Botanical Gardens, of songs rearranged before originals came, of early rejection, of new members, of jokes that eased the strain, of listeners who found comfort in the music, and of loved ones whose absence still shapes the journey.
The members are looking forward to the night.
They cannot wait.
That anticipation makes sense. Anniversary concerts often celebrate longevity.
This one will also honour what longevity costs.
That may be the clearest way to understand Reunion Music at 30.
It began with children.
It endured like adults.
And somewhere along the way, it became part of other people’s lives.
