Austin Kaluba
The so called Dambudzo
Marechera’s letter to Samantha, which has gone viral on many websites, was
not written by Marechera! It is actually a work of art by Zambian
writer, Austin Kaluba. Kaluba wrote it as part of a
2011 project in Marechera’s memory. That is the fact! Often you see it written
in many places that (the letter) was written by Marechera “to his white ex-girlfriend, Samantha, after Marechera had
been expelled from Oxford University.” Many ordinary readers and scholars have
taken the bait.
Austin Kaluba was
born in northern Zambia in 1966 and studied journalism at the prestigious
Africa Literature Centre in Kitwe-Zambia. He then joined the national newspaper
The Times of Zambia as a features writer. He studied creative writing at
different institutions in the UK. Kaluba’s poetry has appeared in the black UK
newspaper The Voice and his short stories have been published in magazines in
Europe.
KwaChirere recently interviewed Austin Kaluba about the sensational letter.
We also replay the letter here just after the interview.
KwaChirere: Austin, is it true that you wrote the so called
Marechera’s letter to Samantha, Yes or No.
Kaluba: Yes,
KwaChirere: When
did you write this letter exactly?
Kaluba: It was
in 2011 when I was living in Oxford in England. I did write the piece which is in
epistolary form. At that time I was living in Oxford where I was studying
Creative Writing at a Diploma level at Oxford University (Department for
continuing education). I was frequenting several pubs where Dambudzo used to
hang out when he lived in the university city. The
pub is City Arms along Crowley Road. It is a real place. One old guy who knew Dambudzo likened my
character with that of the Zimbabwean writer. I used to hit the bottle quite
hard, was argumentative, anti-social and writing as my spirit dictated.
KwaChirere: Why
and under what circumstances did you write the letter?
Kaluba: Ivor Hartmann, a Zimbabwen writer,
came up with an idea of cerebrating Dambudzo's posthumous 59th birthday in 2011
and thought of putting together an ebook anthology entitled "Remembering Marechera,"
consisting of essays, reviews, short stories and poems to be published by
StoryTime Publishing. He invited submissions until the 6th of April 2011. If my
memory serves me well I think American-based Zimbabwean writer, Emmanuel
Sigauke, was to write some poetry while
another Zimbabwean writer, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, who had studied Marechera at
Phd level, was to do an essay. The Nigerian literary critic, Ikhide Ikheloa, offered
to do some reviews on the late writer while Ivor Hartmann was to do some short
Stories. The project was aborted and I thought of posting my piece online.
KwaChirere: Do
you by any chance know how and why the letter went viral?
Kaluba: Not at
all. I was just surprised to read about the avalanche of positive response the
story generated in Zimbabwe and among Zimbabweans in the diaspora. Many
believed it was written by Dambudzo. The response even crossed to academicians
who thought the letter was written by Dambudzo himself. I had read works by the
late Zimbabwean writer and tried through extensive reading on his life to
understand his troubled upbringing in colonial Zimbabwe, his years in England
and his bohemian life-style that could have qualified him to be some kind of
black Oscar Wilde.
KwaChirere: This
is very close imitation of what has been known as Marecherean language. Do you
write your own works using this kind of language?
Kaluba: Sure, I
identified with his anger and indignation at the corrupt world. I would say the
Dambudzo in the letter has some characteristics that are purely mine. I agree
with him at so many levels though I didn’t experience what he went through in life.
KwaChirere: When
one looks at your letter, it comes close to real details in Marechera’s life,
his expulsion from Oxford, his having had relations with white girls, his constant
fear of being deportation back to Rhodesia etc. What is your comment?
Kaluba: Yeah, I
had to get it right by not leaving any detail that summed up the life of the
shamanic writer he was. His vulgar language and mistrust of any other person
who did not share his views about the crooked world had to be crammed into the
story. Dambudzo thrived on shocking people using sexual symbolism and other
unconventional ways of driving his point home. I had to get all this right. I
also ensured the story worked at two levels; Dambudzo representing Africa, explaining
himself to his white girlfriend who is representing Europe. In short the story
is about the damage Europe has done to its former colonies.
KwaChirere: What
do you think you have achieved through this?
Kaluba: I though
writing about Dambudzo was daunting. I had to go out of my way by getting into
his character. I had to act like a method actor who sheds his self to enter
into the character he is depicting. The success of the story to me lies in the
reaction from people who knew Dambudzo personally and the other group that read
his works. If the two groups can see him in the letter, then that is an
achievement for me.
KwaChirere: May
you please speak briefly about your own individual life and life as a writer.
Kaluba: I am an
introvert who is highly opinionated and bohemian. I write poetry, short stories
and do translations. One of my translations Frown
of the Great in English was previously published as Pano Calo in ci-Bemba (the
commonest language in Zambia) It has been re-published in Zimbawe by Mwanaka
Media and Publishers as a bilingual collection. Tendai Mwanaka, the publisher
has published a number of my poems in his anthologies promoting African
languages. I am also working on a collection of short stories Mensah’s London Blues and Other Stories,
to be published in England. The collection has two stories with Zimbabwean
characters A Dream Deferred and Maria’s Vision. The latter has been made
into a movie by Tendai
Mudhliwa, a UK-based Zimbabwean film maker. The movie stars Memory Savanhu and
a cast of UK-based Zimbabwean actors like Goodwin Ngulube, Lydia Nakwakilo, Ashley
Majaya, Belinda Majego and Kudzai Manyeku. So you see Memory, my love of
Zimbabwe has not ended with writing about Dambudzo but contributing a movie to
Zollywood.
I have also
translated John Bunyan’s Pilgrims
Progress into ci-Bemba.
The letter itself below:
Dear Samantha
I think by now you
have heard what happened when those hypocrites in administration chased me from
their white university giving me an option between being sectioned or expelled.
I chose the latter, a decision which shocked them out of their warped wits. I
have forgiven them because together with you they thought as an African student
from some remote Southern African country I was privileged for receiving
tertiary education at Oxford, a learning institution they have overrated as a
citadel of knowledge just like Cambridge or Harvard. It is
such academic mad houses that keep on churning out
arrogant, snobbish, hypocritical and pea-minded bastards who enter the world
with the superior airs of holier-than-thou, we and them attitude calling
themselves Doctors, Professors or any stupid titles to distance themselves from
other ordinary folks whom they look down on as dunces.
These idiots have
done little in changing the world for a better place. If anything, they have
contributed in making it worse by joining their counterparts in the right-wing
maggoty camp influencing policies that worsen this Babylon called earth. They
wear gowns and mortar boards receiving degrees from pink-faced old blokes who
shake their hands and congratulate them for entering the world of knowledge.
I am glad I never
graduated to attend the graduation ceremony which I find nauseating. If I had,
I vow I would have dressed in my blue jeans with a T-shirt or overall, just to
show how stupid the all fucking thing is.
I had the same
experience at the University of Rhodesia which was normally attended by middle
class white boys when those white buffoons in administration kept telling us
black students how lucky we were to receive education at the institution of
higher learning.
You always accused
me of being strange, eccentric, bohemian or even mad. I can assure you that I
am as sane as any bloke right-thinking people consider as being normal whatever
that means.
Do you remember the
night you took me out on Valentine’s Day or some other stupid celebration at
City Arms along Cowley road in Oxford and you kept on hanging on me and kissing
me like we were movie stars. You were hysterical that I was not returning your
love as you expected. I am always annoyed when a white person starts showering
too much love on me. I am less angry when you people are hostile against my
race or even blatantly racist to the extent of calling me Nigger, Kaffir or
even monkey. I wouldn’t fight back or take much offence as some blacks would
do. A white person fawning over me never fails to arouse sleeping demons in me
that are hypersensitive to hypocrisy which I have been encountering since my
childhood in Rusape shortly after my father died.
I have had so much
of this sympathising from my school days at the mission school and university
back home when those hypocrites felt they were doing us a favour by civilising
our cursed lot. I am almost paranoid when it comes to racism masquerading as
colour blindness.
Remember how mad you
became when I even rubbished the idea of marriage as another form of societal
hypocrisy. I see no difference between marriage and fornication, whether one is
sanctioned by some holy man claiming to represent God, here on earth or two,
horny fools deciding to copulate in the back of a car, on top of an office
table or in some dark alley. Whenever I tried to explain to you things that
have shaped my life, my childhood problem of stuttering nearly came back
scaring the shit out of me.
I have elected to
write you this letter long after we have parted just to explain some of my
views on life. I know I am anti-social, but I feel most people who readily
classify me to be equally anti-freedom of an individual or even mad. I live
outside their narrow and provincial world just as I consider them outsiders in
my world that is hinged on freedom of an individual.
My physical and
mental insecurity that have dogged me since my father died have made me a
stranger in a world where hypocrisy, lying and dishonesty reign supreme making
anybody calling the perpetrators of these vices broods of vipers, an odd one
out or a dissident.
Since coming over
here, I have gone through several stages of identity crisis, self-hatred, self
re-examination, excessive Afro-optimism, excessive Afro-pessimism, reversal
racism, escapism and alienation. Maybe it is a manifestation of these
conflicting mental feelings which made the authorities think of sectioning me.
After living rough
in Oxford where I pitched a tent near the Uni shortly after being expelled, I
am hanging a lot with my good Rasta friends in London. I am somehow in tune
with these rootless, ganja-smoking pseudo-ideologists. We agree on many issues
like the world being Babylon-the western influenced materialistic, oppressive,
manipulative, and capitalistic. There is too much ganja and reggae music which
I find soothing. I don’t however agree with some far-fetched ideologies of my
Rasta brothers of revering Haile Sellasie, that dictatorial midget in Ethiopia
as God. I also don’t agree with their excessive promotion of blackness which I
find hypocritical and escapist.
Samantha, they say
writers are show businessmen trying to interpret the world on paper unlike
their counterparts in music who use music. There are two musicians I find
interesting. It is Bob Marley and Jim Morrison. I connect with both of them in
my lifestyle and telepathically. Both were shamans who died young and only received
recognition when they were six feet under.
I have a premonition
that I will die violently or young. I don’t care because I don’t feel I belong
to this world. I am like an Abiku child in Yoruba mythology, a spirit child who
is fated to a cycle of early death and rebirth to the same mother. Sometimes I
dream of living in another age where I was a griot who was burnt at a stake for
lambasting some tyrannical chief. At other times, I dream that I lived in
another era as a poet who was drowned by the chief’s henchmen for refusing to
apologise for an insulting poem he had read in a village arena against
injustice.
Do you remember how
Mrs Brown reacted when I wrote a short story on how I worked in a chief’s
palace as a pussy shaver shaving the pubic hair of the women in a harem? I
still remember the opening of the story. It read: ‘My job in chief Molokolo’s
palace, who, all along thought I had been castrated, was to shave the pubic
hair of his wives at the palace. The story ended with me bedding some of his
wives and paying the ultimate price of death. You remember how white Mrs Brown
turned when I read the story? She screamed that I was mad. Well, the morality
of the story is that many leaders in power think their subjects are blind to
their excesses in urinating on people’s rights. They think we are castrated
until we rise up and unmask their hypocrisy or demand for justice.
I might go back to
Zimbabwe because I can’t continue living like a tramp. I have already seen the
inside of British Police cells twice or thrice. I have to finish the book I am
writing first. It is called House of Hunger. I have destroyed several
manuscripts of other books that I have attempted to write because I don’t feel
they capture the message I am trying to communicate.
However, as a
citizen of the world, a polyglot, I feel going back home won’t calm the demons
in me that cry for a just society where the freedom of the individual is
paramount. What I am reading in the Papers on Zimbabwe seems to be miles away
from that ideal world which, both the repressive white regime of Smith or the
popular nationalist black government of Mugabe, are miles away in realising a
society I dream of.
Many African
societies which benefited from the wind of change in the sixties have already
failed to cut the umbilical cords of colonialism that connects them to their
former masters both economically and socially. Nationalism might even be a
guise of deep envy of the lives colonialists live. Many African leaders just
introduce follow-fashion-monkey societies that emulate the system they replace.
You see Samantha,
this thing called colonial mentality eats at the core of your heart or soul
like a cancer. Many nationalists, and even academics, are both irredeemable
victims of colonialism whether consciously or unconsciously. They don’t realise
how entrenched the problem is in their makeup like DNA. They achieve what they
call independence ( from what?) and change flags and national anthems but fail
to establish new home-grown societies based on their cultures, values and
norms.
Many erroneously
think it is getting independence that is the most difficult stage in the
freedom attaining process. I feel to the contrary that what is difficult is
establishing a nation that is compatible with modernity. It is like having a
baby. Every fool who has a healthy dick can impregnant a woman with no
intention of having a baby. It is raising a baby that is the trickier part
since you have to nurture the baby to young adulthood.
I know a number of
my African intellectual friends who reject everything European in favour of
everything African or black. These idiots need psychoanalysing by God himself
since this is an extreme manifestation of self-hatred highly masked as race
pride. Though I abhor most western things, I am equally nauseated by most
things African. The Nigger who sang Say It Loud, I am Black and Proud was in
actual sense saying Say It Fucking Loud, I am Black and Ashamed. Oh, yes isn’t
it Louis Armstrong, hailing from the same shabby background who honestly
complained in song that the colour of his skin was a sin?
Apart from my name
Dambudzo, I don’t think Samantha you remember me revering Africanness or
blackness. Most whites are racists, including you and several so called
liberals, who shower us poor souls with love when they are consciously or
unconsciously pitying us for being black. As I said earlier Samantha, a white
person expressing excessive love for a black person is simply saying you are
also a human being which is worse than any racist insult.
I remember my
English teachers both at St Augustine’s Mission School and the University of
Rhodesia praising me for getting good results by saying ‘well done Charles. You
are such a brilliant black boy’. A brilliant black boy? Fuck! I could have
killed those sons of bitches for not praising me because I was a brilliant
pupil, and not a brilliant black boy. I know you would argue, Samantha, that I
was being oversensitive, but what do you expect from someone whose race has
received numerous insults since blacks and whites came into contact?
That’s why even now
as I strive to establish myself as a writer, I don’t want the title to go with
the adjective ‘black writer’. Fuck even other demeaning terms like black,
Negro, coloured or African. A writer is just that, a fucking writer! Period.
Knowing how
condescending you are, just like many of your kind, you will quickly find a
word in your language to define me. Strange, bizarre, eccentric, bohemian,
unconventional, odd or even mad. It is your language. I wish I could describe
whites in Shona - that is deep Shona with idioms and proverbs that would elude
even the most educated white linguist in my language. However, I associate the
language with backwardness, provincialism and even the squalor.
I might link up with
you when I come back to Oxford. Meanwhile, I am still squatting with several
friends.
Yours
Charles William
Tambudzai Dambudzo Marechera.
