AT the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare, visual artist Jono Terry’s recently concluded exhibition, They Still Owe Him a Boat, invites audiences to look beyond the familiar beauty of Lake Kariba and confront the histories submerged beneath its waters.
Spanning eight years of research and image-making, the exhibition offers deeply personal yet politically-charged meditation on belonging, colonial inheritance, environmental trauma and the enduring cost of progress.
Terry, whose photographic practice often interrogates identity and place, describes Lake Kariba as his favourite place in the world and a site of formative memories and spiritual resonance.
Yet, as the project evolves, his attachment to the lake became increasingly complicated.
What began as an intimate exploration of home expanded into a reckoning with under-acknowledged narratives: those of the indigenous Tonga communities who were forcibly displaced during dam construction and whose lives were irreversibly altered in the name of development.
“I couldn’t tell the story of Lake Kariba without understanding its impact on the local communities of the Zambezi Valley,” Terry reflects.
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The work confronts the dual histories of Kariba, both a celebrated engineering feat likened to the Pyramids of Giza and a site of profound loss, where sacred land, burial grounds and livelihoods were submerged.
Central to the exhibition is the myth of Nyami-Nyami, the river god believed by the Basilwizi, the people of the great river, to be the spiritual custodian of Zambezi.
Terry revisits this mythology not as folklore frozen in the past, but as a living cosmology disrupted by the dam’s construction.
Images such as Goat Before Slaughter reference rituals performed to appease Nyami-Nyami after catastrophic floods were interpreted as an expression of his wrath, reminders that myth and reality along the Zambezi have always been intertwined.
Terry’s photographs also expose the racialised experiences of Kariba.
In Charara Point, three young Black men stand beneath a tree overlooking the lake, embodying a history in which Black Zimbabweans were largely excluded from Kariba’s resources while white tourism and industry flourished.
The image speaks quietly but powerfully to separation, access and inherited privilege.
The exhibition’s title draws from a historical injustice that continues to echo.
In 1888, King Lobengula was promised a boat as part of the Rudd Concession, a promise never fulfilled.
For Terry, the abandoned boat recurring in his work symbolises not only Zimbabwe’s economic decline, but an unbroken legacy of broken promises.
Similarly, communities displaced by Lake Kariba were assured compensation, electricity, water and continuity of life — assurances that remain unmet decades later.
Despite its beauty, They Still Owe Him a Boat resists romanticising Kariba.
Instead, Terry juxtaposes lush landscapes with a sense of absence, asking viewers to hold both wonder and grief at once.
“The eight-year journey has profoundly transformed me.
“It has shaped my understanding of belonging and my relationship to Zimbabwe
for the better.
“By knowing a deeper, more complete story of the land I feel more connected to Kariba than ever before.
“My perspective hasn’t necessarily changed, it is still my favourite place in the world, but this new knowledge now comes with added weight and a responsibility to share this story, our Zimbabwean story,” he acknowledged and accepted that Kariba’s creation came at a significant cost.
Ultimately, the exhibition calls for a more honest national conversation, one that centres on indigenous voices, respects ecological knowledge systems and questions whose progress it truly serves.
As Terry looks ahead to future projects, including plans to help displaced communities preserve and control their own histories, his work stands as a powerful reminder that the past is not settled and that some debts remain unpaid.