Emmanuel Sigauke introduces Chenjerai Hove’s and other new books by Zimbabweans

This is a good time to be a reader of Zimbabwean literature. Of course, any time is good, but none as good as now. My line-up of Zimbabwean books that I should read is growing, rapidly. I called it my line-up, but really it is my debt: some of these books (most of them rather) came directly from the authors or their publishers, usually hot off the press, sometimes before they are launched. Gratefully, I have received them, I have browsed them, but have always waited for the best time to read them, and as they continue to pile up, I can't even get the words to describe my excitement, my sense of anticipation as the semester comes to the end, and the summer break beckons. I will be reading a lot of Zimbabwean books this summer, concluding the whole experience with a visit to Zimbabwe. I want to try to make the ZIBF Indaba this year.

What you see below is a partial (but growing) list of received or acquired books by Zimbabwe authors:

Chivi Sunsets by Monica Cheru. I was introduced to her works by Memory Chirere. He was happy to have "discovered" this writer, and when Chirere says he is happy about an author, you pay attention. I have so far read the first story in the collection, and I liked it. "The Road to Damascus", it is called, and it chonicles the life of a principled teacher who takes his job too seriously, until the villagers (there in Chivi) show him one or two things about teaching and learning. I am not ready to review the book, but I like it for several reasons.

You publish a book set in Chivi and you know I am going to read it, come what may... I believe Chivi is a region of Zimbabwe that makes for a very interesting setting. It's a place I know, a place that carries some fond memories for me, a real, solid place that exists on this planet, a place, however, not often found on the world literary map, let alone the Zimbabwean one. Now as I enter the book, I am looking for the recreation, let's call it the representation, of the concrete reality of this place, Chivi. Perhaps this representation may spill into Mazvihwa, the place often antithetical to Chivi (these places, separated by Runde River, are both interesting in their unique ways; there is legend associated with these even, several versions of how the places came to be called Chivi and Mazvihwa, and the best version I have heard so far has been from Chenjerai Hove, who knows both places very well).

Chivi Sunsets, nice title. The Chivi sun sets on the horizon of Mazvihwa; this makes you think of a possible collocation: Chivi Sunsets, Mazvihwa Sunrises...

I will let you know how much I am going to like or hate this book, both of which are nice things for a writer.

Homeless Sweet Home by Chenjerai Hove: This a memoir of Miami, where Chenjerai spent part of 2010 and nearly all of 2011. So they asked him to write a memoir and he, hesitant at first because he wasn't planning to write a memoir yet, agreed to write one. I am already reading it, enjoying the skill with which he crafts the prose, and the experiences in there, the bitter-ness and sweetness of exile; that is to say, the homeliness of exile. It's a collage of poetry, short fiction, essays, and plays. Over the years I have had the priviledge of discussing literary and life topics with Chenjerai Hove, a former teacher of mine at UZ, and as I read the memoir I am seeing glimpes of the familiar; it always feels like a reward, turning the reader into an immediate expert on some aspects of the book, aware, of course, that some events, once they enter the realm of literature, gain a life of their own, and should be judged in light of their new identity as with their old.

Muna Hacha Maive Nei by Masimba Musodza:

This is the first Shona novel to be published in the Kindle platform, and when it did well there, the writer moved on to publish the print companion. That's the one I am reading. Imiwe, all I can say so far is mabasa chaiwo. I love the concept of "kindling" a Shona product, and then complementing it with a traditional format (usually the reverse is the norm). Then the book's theme and premise, it can't get an sexier, and necessary, even timely, yet timeless: the dangers of biohazards and the diminishing of life in the face of transnational profiteering. But then the story gets local too, very local, going straight to your typical village river, for a centuries a symbol of the village's livelihood, of existence even. It is there that we see signs of changing times, change so rapid, so mysterious it destabilizes life as it's been known here. But then the reader knows; the reader emphathizes, the reader begins to read like an activist, aware of the injustice of it all.

I am still reading it, so more thoughts will come later.
Shadows by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma: All I can say for now is get ready, Zimbabwe. Get ready, world. This one is coming soon.

++By Emmanuel Sigauke (From: http://vasigauke.blogspot.com/#!/2012/04/feast-of-zimbabwean-books-partial-list.html)

Invite to another Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) meeting

(picture: writers at one of the ZWA meetings)

The Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) is inviting you to its third HARARE members meeting to be held at the Music Centre at the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe, (in Mt Pleasant along Upper East Road - same place as the Zimsec) -on Saturday April 28, 2012 from 2:00pm to 4:30pm. NB: You can get onto the kombis to Mt Pleasant and disembark at Zimsec.

This time the discussion topic is ‘How I Create’ and veteran writers Aaron Chiundura Moyo and Barbra Nkala will be talking about their experiences as creators in our indigenous languages . Alongside this will be some readings and discussion on what ZWA has encountered so far and our plans to fully go national. A substantive agenda will be sent to you very soon. We are taking advantage of the ZIBF Writers Workshop to be held at the same venue in the morning of the same day of which some of you may have been invited to attend.

Those who were not at the previous meetings are reminded to bring $10 as membership fees. Remember: the major objective of ZWA is to bring together all willing individual writers of Zimbabwe in order to encourage creative writing, reading and publishing in all forms possible, conduct workshops, and provide for literary discussions.

Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) is the newest nationally inclusive writers organization whose formation started in July 2010 leading to the AGM of June 4, 2011It was fully registered with the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe in January 2011.

++Inserted by Tinashe Muchuri, ZWA Secretary
ZWA’s By-line: A WHOLE WORLD IN A WORD
Contacts: 0733 843 455/zimbabwewriters@gmail.com

Poets and Revolutionaries

Poet and Revolutionary. That phrase sounds very romantic and has a tinge of the make-believe. However, those familiar with the history of the armed struggle in Mozambique and Angola are used to “Poets and revolutionaries.” For example, Mozambique’s current president, Armando Guebuza is a poet of remarkable talent.

While the most outstanding art form during the 70's struggle for Zimbabwe’s independence was song, for Mozambique and Angola, there was both poem and song. Reading and studying some of the existing Armando Guebuza’s poetry takes one deeper into the meaning of struggle for Mozambican independence. Guebuza’s poetry is the quintessence of a genre that has grown to be known in African literature as “war poetry.” This is the kind of poetry written and read by nationalists and fighters in Portuguese speaking African territories, especially Mozambique and Angola.

Coming from countries with traditions of slavery, colonial and company forced labour and assimilation and its dismal lies, Angolan and Mozambican revolutionary poets reflect on the plight of a people who were forced to find a rallying point in order to struggle for self-rule.

The poems of Armando Guebuza seek an African identity defined by common suffering. His most well known poem is called “If You Ask Me Who I Am”:

“If you ask me
Who I am
I will tell you nothing.
I will tell you nothing.
I’ll show you the scars of centuries
Which furrow my black back
I’ll look at you with eyes of hatred
Shot red with blood
Shed through the years…
I’ll tell you nothing
But you will know why I fight.”

“Fight” is a key word in such poems from Mozambique and Angola. Some of these poets grew up in the revolution. Guebuza himself joined the struggle at the tender age of twenty in 1963. He hails form Mozambique’s northern province of Nampula, specifically from Murrupula. He got military training in Tanzania under FRELIMO(Mozambique Liberation Front) He got involved in active guerilla fighting, became a commander and rose to the rank of General. Before becoming President in 2005, he had served the ruling FRELIMO government in various capacities.

The kind of consciousness that springs from collective suffering under the heavy boot of Portuguese imperialism is also evident in the poems of the father of the Angolan war of liberation, Agostinho Neto. Aware that no one else would fight on behalf of the oppressed Angolan black race but themselves, Neto joined the war. He scribbled somewhere; a sad but hopeful farewell poem/song:

“My mother (all black mothers)
Whose sons have gone
You taught me to wait and hope…
But life
Killed in me the mystic hope
I do not wait now
I am he who is awaited.”

The poem further bites into raw flesh and gets down to capture the black white divide in colonial Angola:

“Today
We are naked children in bush villages
School less children – playing with a ball of rags
In the sands at noon.
We ourselves
Contract workers burning live
In coffee plantations
Ignorant black men
Who must respect the white man
And fear the rich…
Your children
Hungry
Thirsty
Ashamed to call you mother.”

The story of Agostinho Neto is almost synonymous with the story of the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) which championed the struggle for Angolan independence and is the ruling party since 1976. Neto, a qualified medical doctor himself was in and out of prison in the 1960s for his political views and activities. His poems which were “smuggled out of prisons and are the best known of all Angolan poetry.” They are also said to “form the basis of many popular songs” sang during the struggle for Angolan independence. They have been translated into many languages including English, Chinese, French, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Spanish and Vietnamese!

Like Armando Guebuza’s poems, Neto’s tend to be very simple, passionate, leftist and full of sweet pain. This way, they do not fail to touch the hearts and souls of all colonized and oppressed people. Neto’s poems have a practical appeal. Sometimes they enact the rhythm of soldiers on the march and yet they carry an internal protest:

“Breaking stones
Carrying stones
Breaking stones
Carrying stones
In the sun
In the rain
Breaking stones
Carrying stones
Old age comes fast.”

In addition, “war poetry” of Angola and Mozambique can yearn for seemingly simple items, wishes and desires. In such wishes are genuine desires to return to the ‘African source’ symbolized by drums, bracelets, dances, rivers, sex… images that make the world before colonialism enviable and sorely missed. Jose Craveirinha of FRELIMO, for instance, has one such poem called “I want To Be A Drum.” The persona here wishes he were just, of all the things, an African drum!

“Let me be a drum
body and soul just a drum
just a drum in the hot night
worn with its cry in the full moon
of my land…
I want to be a drum
and not a river
a flower…
nor even poetry
Let me be a drum
just a drum!”

Craveirinha gave all he had to the struggle. He began as a journalist but got heavily tortured for supporting the struggle in 1966. His poems make suffering a game and crying just another form of music. Yet in this poem he gives voice to the suffering black people everywhere and everytime. Guebuza must have taken a leaf from Craveirinha, especially the ability to laugh at pain or laugh when one should be crying. In a poem called “Those Strange Times,” Guebuza writes:

“Those strange times
When the whip hissed
and tore
a man’s living flesh
rising a cry of rage…
It is a time of revolt
against the whip
This is the time of armed struggle.”

Indeed the struggle became the school for Guebuza and the radical in him was bathed, towelled and dried. And yet for these Marxist Leftist poets of Angola and Mozambique, death did not kill. Death only “sowed the seed” of revolution. Josina Machel, the first wife of Samora Machel, a distinguished guerilla and “an exemplary educationist and a high quality cadre…” was to write in “This Is The Time”:

“The blood shed by our heroes
make us sad but resolute.
It is the price of our freedom
We keep them close in our hearts…
revolutionary generations
are already being born.”

Josina died of natural causes in 1971 at the age of twenty-five. On her death, Samora Machel, who was a private kind of poet, wrote a poem entitled “Josina, You Are Not Dead.” Selected lines from Samora’s poem read:

“Josina, you are not dead
because we have assumed
your responsibilities…
Out of your memory
I will fashion a hoe to turn the sad
enriched by your sacrifice
and new fruits will grow.”

Husband and wife refused to accept death. Samora Machel the poet was the first President of Mozambique. He was born in 1933 at Chilembene in Mozambique’s Gaza province in the South. A peasant by birth and a nurse by profession, Samora Machel joined FRELIMO in 1963, got military training in Algeria, became FRELIMO commander-in-chief in 1968 and was subsequently elected to succeed Mondlane who was assassinated on February 3 1969 in Dar es Salaam. To some people Samora was “a solitary man of action and of very few words” who scribbled a few poems in the middle of the night for Mozambique Revolution, FRELIMO’S official organ/journal.
And this journal was edited by non other than Jorge Rebelo.

As secretary for information, Rebelo will be remembered for his poem called “Poem.” A work of genius, “Poem” is important for arguing why and how revolutionary poetry should be simple and useful. Jorge Rebelo said he would “forge simple words” that “even children can understand and:

“Words which will enter every house
like the wind
and fall like red-hot embers
on our people’s souls.
For in our land
bullets are beginning to flower.”

Rebelo was responding to why his and others poetry seemed simple and rather pointed. It is the war itself that gave birth to such a literary tradition. Written on the move or at the spur of the moment and between battles, there was here the pressure to record a thought, a philosophy… about the struggle. Yet the seeming simplicity and innocence of Rebelo’s poems were the diamond-hardness of this poet’s vision.

The war poem was related to other art forms like song, dance and the slogan. The sense of community in these poems is such that they generally address the immediate people; a friend, mother, father, a lover and you and me. The poems tend to be about a familiar voice talking to familiar people about familiar issues.

The leadership of Neto (MPLA) and Mondlane (FRELIMO), rich intellectuals, promoted a culture of poetry. And for us today, this raises the issue of the role of intellectualism in both the struggle for independence and development of Africa. Due to his training, the intellectual, if he or she is conscious and decides to be useful, can help in the definition of ideals. He or she should unbundled the grand dreams and make them accessible to the ordinary cadres.

The songs and poems of liberation have a terrible beauty in that they dash the barriers between high and popular culture. Listening to such pieces, one imagines whole communities moving together and the difficult questions of principle answered and problematised.

It is sad that these poems are not readily accessible to other Africans in the non Portuguese speaking territories. Besides, much meaning and rhythm has been lost during the process of translation. Even more frightening is the suggestion that many more war poems got destroyed or abandoned at the war-front or are dying in the yellow diaries of fallen heroes.

One also hopes that Guebuza’s rule is going to be marked by the useful simplicity of his poems and the clarity of his artistic vision. Mozambique has been blessed with a reflective and highly imaginative leader.
+By Memory Chirere

Real Poetry: a Thomas Bvuma poem on Zimbabwe independence day

The real poetry
Was carved across centuries
Of chains and whips
It was written in the red streams
Resisting the violence of
'Effective occupation'
It was engraved in killings in Katanga
In the betrayals of Mau-Mau
In countless anti-people coups
Its beat was bones in Bissau
Its metaphors massacres in Mozambique
Its alliteration agony in Angola
Its form and zenith
Fighting in Zimbabwe
The real poetry
Is sweat scouring down
The backed valley of the peasant's back
Down to the starved gorge of his buttocks
It bubbles and boils
In the blisters of the farm labourer
It glides in the greased hands
Of the factory worker
Not a private paradise
Nor an individual inferno
But the pain and pleasure
Of people in struggle.

(Thomas Bvuma 'The real poetry')

mabasa aIgnatius Mabasa (Vintage Mabasa!)

Ndafa Here? By Ignatius T. Mabasa, 2008, Harare, College Press, pp154, isbn: 978-07974-3522-3 (a book review)

Popular writer, Ignatius Mabasa’s second literary offering, Ndafa Here? is a mature novel. This is a shocking novel in which people lose their values and turn the tables upside down.

In 1999 Mabasa published a novel, Mapenzi that was quickly accepted as one of the most innovative novels in Shona to date. It went on to win a Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association award of the year in the Shona novel category. Finally it was voted amongst the twenty-five best books of Shona literature since 1950 at the Zimbabwe International Book fair of 2004.

But Ndafa Here? is a deliberately calmer novel than Mapenzi. The author chooses to employ intrigue ahead of experimentation with form.

Betty is the unwanted wife. Her mother-in-law thinks Betty is too ugly, and senseless to marry her son. Why does Betty have to elope to her son already full with child, she queries. I want to find my son a real woman, she rants.

Betty’s sister-in-law is more awkward. She has had two children with two different men out of wedlock but she still thinks she is more decent than Betty! She is daring in a negative way, ganging up with her mother to assault her father each time he protests about her ways. She orders Betty to nurse her children as she goes about her business around the location.

Betty’s brother-in-law asks the most cruel question in the book when Betty gives birth to a child with albinisms: Maiguru, mwana makamuita sei uyu? (How did you come by such a baby?) That heinous question arguably makes the climax of this novel because nobody in this world ever makes an effort to bring forth a child with disability.

Betty’s husband, Wati is a henpecked man who is always in his mother’s clutches. Wati wakes up one day and suddenly realizes that the woman he marries is not the correct one. He flees to London. When he is generous enough to phone back, his wife is not allowed to talk to him. His mother grabs the phone and talks on and on, asking for a house in Borrowdale, clothes, money and other things.

The irony is that Wati’s father has very different ideas. He thinks that his desolate daughter-in-law is the most beautiful woman he has ever met. He hounds Betty. He peeps through the gap in the curtain or the key hole to watch and drool at Betty’s naked body. As he playfully lifts Betty’s albino baby, he deliberately and frequently fondles Betty’s breasts.

Meanwhile Wati sends his mother and sister air tickets to London and never bothers about Betty and the baby.

Wati’s father strikes. Now that everyone has abandoned Betty, he verbally proposes to his daughter-in-law! At least he is the only person in this story who sets out to appreciate Betty.

This story challenges the ordinary feminist critic. Here is a woman who is heavily abused by fellow women because of their sharp appetites for petty things. Betty takes very long to realize that she has to assert herself and move on. She represents all women out there who are abused until they become invisible.

However the publisher needs to consider doing a more imaginative cover design in the next edition. One also notes, with deep regret, that even the date of publication is missing!

Ignatius Mabasa is also a musician. He has released a music album called Yadhakwa. It is a gospoetry offering that lampoons hypocrisy amongst Christians. At a recent Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) meeting Mabasa revealed that he is working on two new novels simultaneously! That is why he is considered a leading writer of his generation.
++ Reviewed by Memory Chirere

'Chivi Sunsets' now available in Harare

Monica Cheru’s ‘Chivi Sunsets: Not For Scientists’ is now available for $15.00 at Blackstone Bookshop, Bond Street, Mt Pleasant Shops, Harare,Zimbabwe Tel: 263 4 303772
(the author: Monica Cheru)

In my view, these stories are in the league of Wonder Guchu’s very fascinating,My Children, My Home published in 2007. Where other contemporary short story collections from Zimbabwe are largely concerned, in various ways, about the socio-political breakdown, Chivi Sunsets and My Children, My Home are about matters located beyond and above this decade of crisis. In Guchu and Cheru’s short stories, the individual fights perceived enemies and rivals using extra realist actions like sending familiars and curses that harm physically.

In ‘On the Road to Damuscus,’ from Chivi Sunsets: Not for Scientists, a new teacher, a Mr. Muti is very keen on corporal punishment, hitting his pupils for every little mistake they make. The rural community is very annoyed but the proud Mr. Muti continues to brutalise his pupils. One day, as he cycles to his school from the nearby shops where he is apparently in love with one of the shopkeepers, a whole baboon appears from the bush and jumps onto his carrier. Mr. Muti cycles on, heavily terrified. The baboon asks him: “Mr. Muti, why do you beat the children so?” and Mr. Muti does not reply because he is shell shocked. The baboon continues: “To make them pass? Should they fail, what concern is it of yours, as the children do not belong to you? Anyway, since you started your floggings, how many of them have passed? Ponder on it my wise fellow.” Having delivered its message, the baboon nimbly jumps off the bike and saunters into the tall grass on the roadside!

Eventually Mr. Muti flees the school and in his next school, he never raises his hand to beat up any school child.

He has been changed indeed by this ‘Road to Damascus’ event. Just like in Wonder Guchu’s ‘Garikayi’, this story uses a familiar in the form of a baboon. Equally, where there is a conflict and circumstances do not allow it for people to meet and converse, such things happen. The community considers Mr. Muti way above admonishing because he is far more educated and ‘sophisticated’. In fact, before the baboon incident, other familiars like the bat and the owl had been sent to him but he does not heed.

The narrative is on the side of the community and the baboon because when Mr. Muti leaves: ‘a new teacher comes along and is told the tale of Mr. Muti so many times that he keeps his hands to himself. Eventually the community realizes the value of education and the children begin to pass their exams. Rods reappear but any over-zealous teacher is reminded of the baboon. No one ever claims to have sent the baboon to Mr. Muti. The baboon is never seen by any other person.’

Even in his new station, Mr. Muti never assaults any pupil. He has learnt through the shock that he has received. In addition, he may not be able to narrate this story and be believed. He has been isolated in his new knowledge and that is enough punishment.

This kind of writing (from Cheru and Guchu) as Flores Angel says, helps the writer ‘to reach beyond the confines of realism and draw upon the energies of fable, folk tale, and myth while maintaining a strong contemporary social relevance’ and that ‘the fantastic attributes given to characters in such stories—levitation, flight, telepathy, telekinesis—are among the means that magic realism adopts in order to encompass the often phantasmagorical socio-political realities of the contemporary world.’

Monica Cheru’s title for her short story anthology, Chivi Sunsets: Not For Scientists is a mouthful. The word ‘Sunsets’ assumes that these stories happen during the night or that they are associated with darkness and maybe more specifically, these stories explore the machinations of evil. The second part of the title, ‘Not For Scientists’ suggests that these stories break all the rules of our real world. These stories ‘defy physical laws, including the laws of gravity’ as George Kahari says about the romances of prominent Shona writer, Patrick Chakaipa.

The 'Adventures' of Shimmer Chinodya

Title: Chioniso and Other Stories, Author: Shimmer Chinodya
Publisher: Weaver Press
Publication date: 2012, 182 pages,
Isbn: 978-1-77922-170-4

Shimmer Chinodya’s latest offering, Chioniso and Other Stories is a work of a mature craftsman. These stories are just unpredictable and at every turn, you learn more about your dark and secret whims than the stories themselves. And that makes good reading.

For instance, in ‘Why Not?’ you expect Godfrey to go on a reckless sex spree during what first appears like a one night stand in Swaziland. He comes out of it even purer than a new born baby.

Godfrey wakes up in the bed of his newly found girl, unscathed and innocent. The author leads you all the way by the nose until you discover, rather too late, that Godfrey is not looking for anything beyond clean good woman’s company! There is also lots of blood in the end but it is neither Godfrey’s nor from his newly found good Samaritan friend. The young woman is looking for what Godfrey is looking for, without having to go on the roof tops to shout about it! This story will floor you and this is one rare moment that you feel darker and dirtier than a character in a book!

This book will teach all the over killing budding writers out there to tuck in the corners of their stories and allow the characters to play out naturally. It is not always the sound of gunfire or overheated romance that make a story endearing. Even the unsuspecting reader will take out his pen, underline a sentence, tick out a detail and flip-flop to cross check some detail. This is going to be work, play, pay, work, play, pay...

'The Car' could be the most intriguing story in this collection. A son-in-law in South Africa sends a second hand car to a middle aged teaching couple as part of their daughter’s lobola.

Such a gift shakes the old marriage to its foundation.

The man is not quite impressed because it means, as his wife suggests, that regardless of his advanced age, he must go for a provisional licence in order to be able to learn to drive the car. He is also deeply ashamed that his first car is actually bought for him by another man. At the slightest provocation, he says to his wife: ‘A proper son-in-law pays proper lobola and doesn’t try to evade with his with flimsy second hand gifts.’

The wife answers: ‘This car is a flimsy present then, is it? How come in all your thirty solid years of teaching you haven’t been able to buy yourself even a flimsy bicycle?’

Meanwhile the woman loves the gift from abroad. It raises her profile amongst the school staff. She wishes there was a garage or a precast wall to protect the car during the night. She thinks they must hire a night-guard or get an alarm and an immobiliser fixed onto the car. Then she unashamedly suggests that her husband fetch a blanket and sleep in the car so that he makes noises if car thieves come by!

And the husband retorts: ‘Me? Never. I have a bedroom and a proper house at that…’ She goes to sleep in the car herself leaving the man to roll on their old bed all by himself. And eventually the wife drives to work alone and the husband follows to the same destination on foot. And ‘one morning they find the car stripped, all the wheels, lower arms, brakes and cv joints had gone and the Golf sat on four stacks of bricks…’

This collection can as well be subtitled: 'The Adventures of Godfrey' because he appears more often. While his family goes through turmoil, his artistic spirit is indefatigable. He writes on, he travels abroad for writing seminars and retreats and gets to notice that the world is fast spreading out to embrace him when his wife falls into rabid Pentecostalism. Although he thinks that he is losing his roguish daughter, Chioniso, he does not notice that she is a chip off the block.

These ten short stories take Chinodya further than his Can We Talk and Other Stories of 2001 in that they betray a more intricate use of the twist in the tale. One fondly remembers Rob Hopcott views on this matter: 'It is not a question of the reader being wrong, it is rather that a natural belief based on the reader’s prejudices and reader’s conventional wisdom have led to one point of view which then needs to be revised substantially to an altered viewpoint at the end of the story.'
++ Reviewed by Memory Chirere