kwaChirere

Fire in the classroom

2012-02-01T08:34:00.001-08:00

…one day Nakai accidentally dropped her ruler and it fell onto the floor with a clattering sound. Everyone stopped reading and writing and turned their heads.

“Sorry, madam,” Nakai said.

“Come here,” Ms Chirara said to Nakai. When she was angry, her dimples disappeared. “Come here, girl.” She said to Nakai. She was very cross with Nakai.

Nakai went to the teacher’s table. “I am sorry,” Nakai repeated

“You know me, Nakai” the teacher said. “Bend down and touch the table.”

Nakai was sorry. She was just a girl of nine who had just made a mistake. Nakai bent down and touched the table. Whack! Whack! The rubber rod sang on Nakai’s back. It was not a good thing.

Nakai cried out in pain. The whole class cheered. Nakai looked at the teacher without blinking. She was in so much pain. She continued to stare at the teacher without blinking. Teachers do not know how angry their pupils become when they hit them. It is bad to be hit by your teacher when you like her so much.

“My God, fire!” the teacher suddenly cried out. The teacher staggered back from Nakai. She dropped the rubber rod and held her chest, “Fire! Nakai, you are killing me!”

Nakai did not see any fire. She was only angry with Ms Chirara. All the other students saw no fire as well. They only saw Ms Chirara holding her chest and crying like a baby.

Nakai was still angry. She looked straight at the teacher and the teacher cried out again, “Fire! Nakai, stop it! Do not burn me.” Then she pleaded, clapping her hands, “Nakai. Nakai, my dear!” The teacher staggered and went out of the room. “I am burning up, Nakai!”

In silence Nakai walked back to her place. There were tears in her eyes. She had dropped the ruler on the floor by mistake. She was just a grade 4 girl who stayed at Number 1890 Mutamba Circle. She sat on her desk and cried. It was not nice to see Nakai crying. Her friends Nyasha, Tsitsi and Marita started crying too.

A big boy called Hardline asked loudly, “What is the fire about, people? Ms Chirara talked about fire. Nakai, what was it all about?”

“I do not know anything,” Nakai said, crying. She did not know anything. Nyasha, Tsitsi and Marita knew Nakai very well but they all did not know anything about the fire.”

Just as they were all settling and getting quiet, Ms Chirara came back into the room with the headmaster. He was called Mr. Pasi. The boys called him Danger because he was short tampered and you did not want to make him angry.

Ms Chirara kept holding her chest. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. Nobody wanted to see Ms Chirara crying. She was a pretty woman with nice dimples. Now she looked sad and it was not good.

Ms. Chirara and the headmaster came very gradually to Nakai’s desk.

“How are you, girl?” the headmaster said.

“Fine and how are you, sir?” Nakai said.

“What was it about?” the headmaster asked and touched Nakai calmly on the shoulder.

“It was a mistake, sir. I dropped a ruler and she hit me. I said I was sorry but she hit me. I love her but she hit me.” Nakai began to cry.

“What about the fire that burnt Ms Chirara?” the headmaster asked

“What fire sir?” Nakai replied. She was surprised. The whole class was surprised.

“You caused the fire that burnt Ms Chirara, didn’t you?”

Nakai was surprised. She did not know about any fire. She was only allowed to make a fire at home when they was a power-cut. She was not allowed to make fires. Children were not allowed to make fires. She got frightened and began to cry. She liked Ms Chirara and the headmaster but why were they thinking that she made fires without permission? She burst out very loudly, crying.

Then the headmaster who was still holding Nakai’s shoulder suddenly screamed and shot up, “I’m burnt! Oh my God!” He ran towards the door rubbing his hands and looking at them. He looked round and said, “Nakai, come out. Come to my office right now!” He looked at his hands and at Nakai.

There was silence in the classroom and then Ms Chirara said to the headmaster, “I told you, sir. It is real fire.”

The three walked out. Ms Chirara followed by Nakai and the headmaster.They got into the headmaster’s office. They sat down. They were all very puzzled. Mr. Pasi was a serious big man and nobody wanted to trouble him. Ms Chirara was a pretty woman. Nakai was a simple grade four girl and now they were talking about a fire that she did not understand…. (extract from Toriro and His Goats)

Fire in the classroom

2012-02-01T08:34:00.000-08:00

…one day Nakai accidentally dropped her ruler and it fell onto the floor with a clattering sound. Everyone stopped reading and writing and turned their heads.

“Sorry, madam,” Nakai said.

“Come here,” Ms Chirara said to Nakai. When she was angry, her dimples disappeared. “Come here, girl.” She said to Nakai. She was very cross with Nakai.

Nakai went to the teacher’s table. “I am sorry,” Nakai repeated

“You know me, Nakai” the teacher said. “Bend down and touch the table.”

Nakai was sorry. She was just a girl of nine who had just made a mistake. Nakai bent down and touched the table. Whack! Whack! The rubber rod sang on Nakai’s back. It was not a good thing.

Nakai cried out in pain. The whole class cheered. Nakai looked at the teacher without blinking. She was in so much pain. She continued to stare at the teacher without blinking. Teachers do not know how angry their pupils become when they hit them. It is bad to be hit by your teacher when you like her so much.

“My God, fire!” the teacher suddenly cried out. The teacher staggered back from Nakai. She dropped the rubber rod and held her chest, “Fire! Nakai, you are killing me!”

Nakai did not see any fire. She was only angry with Ms Chirara. All the other students saw no fire as well. They only saw Ms Chirara holding her chest and crying like a baby.

Nakai was still angry. She looked straight at the teacher and the teacher cried out again, “Fire! Nakai, stop it! Do not burn me.” Then she pleaded, clapping her hands, “Nakai. Nakai, my dear!” The teacher staggered and went out of the room. “I am burning up, Nakai!”

In silence Nakai walked back to her place. There were tears in her eyes. She had dropped the ruler on the floor by mistake. She was just a grade 4 girl who stayed at Number 1890 Mutamba Circle. She sat on her desk and cried. It was not nice to see Nakai crying. Her friends Nyasha, Tsitsi and Marita started crying too.

A big boy called Hardline asked loudly, “What is the fire about, people? Ms Chirara talked about fire. Nakai, what was it all about?”

“I do not know anything,” Nakai said, crying. She did not know anything. Nyasha, Tsitsi and Marita knew Nakai very well but they all did not know anything about the fire.”

Just as they were all settling and getting quiet, Ms Chirara came back into the room with the headmaster. He was called Mr. Pasi. The boys called him Danger because he was short tampered and you did not want to make him angry.

Ms Chirara kept holding her chest. There were tears in the corners of her eyes. Nobody wanted to see Ms Chirara crying. She was a pretty woman with nice dimples. Now she looked sad and it was not good.

Ms. Chirara and the headmaster came very gradually to Nakai’s desk.

“How are you, girl?” the headmaster said.

“Fine and how are you, sir?” Nakai said.

“What was it about?” the headmaster asked and touched Nakai calmly on the shoulder.

“It was a mistake, sir. I dropped a ruler and she hit me. I said I was sorry but she hit me. I love her but she hit me.” Nakai began to cry.

“What about the fire that burnt Ms Chirara?” the headmaster asked

“What fire sir?” Nakai replied. She was surprised. The whole class was surprised.

“You caused the fire that burnt Ms Chirara, didn’t you?”

Nakai was surprised. She did not know about any fire. She was only allowed to make a fire at home when they was a power-cut. She was not allowed to make fires. Children were not allowed to make fires. She got frightened and began to cry. She liked Ms Chirara and the headmaster but why were they thinking that she made fires without permission? She burst out very loudly, crying.

Then the headmaster who was still holding Nakai’s shoulder suddenly screamed and shot up, “I’m burnt! Oh my God!” He ran towards the door rubbing his hands and looking at them. He looked round and said, “Nakai, come out. Come to my office right now!” He looked at his hands and at Nakai.

There was silence in the classroom and then Ms Chirara said to the headmaster, “I told you, sir. It is real fire.”

The three walked out. Ms Chirara followed by Nakai and the headmaster.
They got into the headmaster’s office. They sat down. They were all very puzzled. Mr. Pasi was a serious big man and nobody wanted to trouble him. Ms Chirara was a pretty woman. Nakai was a simple grade four girl and now they were talking about a fire that she did not understand…. (extract from Toriro and His Goats)

Charles Mungoshi: How I came to write Waiting For The Rain

2012-01-27T05:24:00.000-08:00

One of the worst things that can happen and often happens - to a writer is to fall into the doldrums, that scary place where nothing happens at all, yet you are screaming at the top of your voice, “I want to get out!” I have since heard it called a writer’s block, mental block or a creative block. The same thing, really. I didn’t know its name when I first came to it. (Now we are familiars!) I was so scared I sweated. I thought I would never write again.

Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva had just been published. And then I found myself completely dry. Each time I wrote something down, I quickly destroyed it in disgust. Anything I wrote looked like the worst thing I had done in my life. I became depressed. I was scared of my writing desk.

I would welcome any excuse to be away from that desk: trips away from home, a wedding party or an interesting movie, trips to the beer garden, anything that would get me away from that damned desk, I accepted with both hands. And to compound it all, there were people who said they liked my work. It seemed they were in cahoots to torture me. “What’s in the frying pan these days?” they would ask. Some people think that to a fiction writer lying is child’s play. I have found that it isn’t so, I answer, best as I can, “Myself!” They laugh, thinking: It’s one of his jokes again. It is not a joke but it is a relief to say this because it elicits some benevolent responses like, “It can’t be that bad!” or “Come on, we are waiting” from the audience.

The sympathetic remark may be quite welcome and will probably raise your morale/spirits but it won’t drag you to your office/house and force you to sit at that desk to face what you have to face alone.

What I am driving at is, leaving your desk starts at some point. The thing is not to leave your desk indefinitely. If you can only leave it physically and not psychologically or spiritually. One of the saddest experiences I have had (outside of myself) was to run into a fellow scribbler, who had not been at his desk since his first (and only?) book was published way back. “What’s cooking?” I asked him. He went on to describe this wonderful story which he was about to finish. When he finished, he said, he will be back with wings on. I ran into him again, two years later.“What’s cooking?” I asked. He went on to describe this wonderful story he was about to finish. When he finished, he said, he will be back with wings on. There is probably no medicine for this walking-away-from-your-desk disease, but we have to try our best. And the best we can do, I suppose, is to try and guard against walking away from our desk forever. Walking away from our desk because the story won’t move, or won’t come, because you have hit a black spot, you forced yourself into a cul-de-sac dead-end and you can’t go forward.

I suppose, like in all things, this becomes a very personal issue where the outsider, counsellors, ministers of religion, etc, can only shout from the bank, without throwing any ropes, while you drown. But, finally, the formula is still the same, as in all things: don’t walk away, don’t turn your back. You can take a walk, yes. Go see your grandmother or whoever is good at cheering you up in the family (or any of your friends), go and play a game of whatever you feel good at playing. (I strongly advise against drinking on your own, if you feel a strong despair about your failure to go forward in your writing). Above all, leave your mind alone! (I know only too well how easy that advice is to follow!)

As soon as you are refreshed, come back to your desk and look at your story again. Change a few things. If your story is 200 pages long do not worry. There is more where that came from. (More than you think, in fact!) You do not have to destroy it. (Although some do, including yours sincerely!) You can leave the story as it is for future reference or as a monument. Re-focus and start afresh. (If you can completely abandon a story and start on another one, the better. Unfortunately, some writers get so involved with the one story they are writing, they become so obsessed with it that they cannot do anything else. Please try to be patient and gentle with yourselves. Listen.)

If you feel you want to continue with your story but you just do not know how, then try to see how you have been presenting it all along. Try and see it as a whole. Unfortunately, if it is already 200 pages long, you cannot just graft a new approach into it; it has to grow ‘organically’ as it were. So you really have to begin at the beginning, you may find that you need to change its point of view.

Point of view is, simply, the way your story “interprets the world”. Who is talking? By changing who is talking in your a story, you are, lets hope, forced to see the same story through other eyes, as it were. It may be that the way you were proceeding with your story is getting beclouded, that you need to detach yourself a little, stand back at a distance and take a look at it, that you have got yourself so entangled in it you cannot tell whether one of the characters is not you! Or it is also possible that your enthusiasm in the story has plummeted to rock bottom. Any or all of these things are possible, and, usually, in such situations one of the most desirable things, one of the easiest things to do, is to cop out. Some walk away from their desks – forever. Some become too sensitive and defensive it’s hard to get any help-lines to them. And so on. And so on.

Well, here are some personal experiences.

I think there are now more than a comfortable number of people who have heard (from the horse’s own mouth, no less!) that there is a Shona novel in the pipeline. This must have come out some 15 or so years ago! I have got a manuscript whose ink is fossilling into the colour of a cave painting on page 116. That unfinished story sits there like a lesson to me. It was once a shame, an embarrassment, but it also taught me some things I would not have learned otherwise. Now, it has been absorbed into me, it has become part of me like all the aborted journeys I have ever embarked on, the bad trips I have ever taken, the things that I broke before delivery, I wince when I read part of it today. But I won’t destroy it. It sits there. It exists as a reminder of the attitude I had when I started writing it: With this book, I want to break every record. I want to surprise people, to really show them…Good old vanity!

Be warned writer!

Most of that creative block comes from wanting to be better than you really are. Flying too high, reaching too far, and riding too fast! Just write!Now the embarrassment is out of the way.

Some positive experiences. In Coming of the Dry Season, the opening story “Shadows on the wall” is one story that cured me of something I didn’t even have a name for up to today. I had this image of this couple who gave each other hell everyday. I wrote the story from the omniscient author’s point of view. I gave the story my own interpretation. I found myself sort of screaming at reader: sentimental, melodramatic, and gushy. I tried to let the husband tell the story; I sort of could not get inside his skull. (Maybe this was partly due to the fact that I had never been a husband when I wrote the story!) I just did not have enough – as they say- dope on him. I tried the wife’s angle and I found that no reader would even feel any sympathy for her because she felt sorry for herself so much; the story would be awash in tears before she even told it. I could make no headway. Yet the story kept on tugging at my creative strings. It would not let me go. It wouldn’t let me leave it to write another one. Then one day it happened.

I was sitting in our kitchen – you know the one: round, fireplace in the centre, etc. It was raining outside and the chickens started in out of the rain, feathers wet and gathered round the fireplace, sending the most pitiful squawks into the already depressing atmosphere. And there, perfect image for the story! Not the couples fighting, no. Just the lonely child, alone with the chickens on a desolate wet day:Where is mama and papa? To answer that question, I found the son telling the story. So here, I had found the correct point of view from which to tell the story. And when I wrote it, I did not have to revise it. The pain it held was too vast to be told – yet it had to be told – and those chickens and shadows on the wall told it. That was my very first experience of how a story can be written in another way (or several ways) through a change in point of view.

Waiting for the Rain was another eye opener. This time the point of view was not in characters but the temporal, the tense. I had started off a short story on one of the characters, Betty and her unwanted pregnancy and her understanding brother, Garabha. It was all in a once upon a time tense. There was a girl called Betty, etc, etc. When I brought in the other characters, the story kept on expanding and before I knew I had over 100 pages of script on A4 on my hands. Yet something kept nagging at the back of my head: something is missing here. Yet I kept on writing, putting down everything that happened in the story. And the more I went on writing the more this uneasiness kept growing: Are you sure you are doing the right thing for these people (the characters)?

I had begun to notice a kind of distance, a coldness growing between them and myself. And I seemed to be losing interest in them, little by little, day by day. Then I completely felt disgusted by the whole exercise and I really walked away from my desk. I left the manuscript sitting there for days, meaning to destroy it when I came back to the desk, meaning to start on something else. Then a strange thing happened. I brought a friend home – a fellow writer (although he hadn’t been published yet) may God rest his soul – and we were drinking and I showed him the thing I meant to throw into the fire. (I almost didn’t show it to him. I was that embarrassed and also, I felt, he was a much finer stylist than I was and that added onto the reluctance). He took the manuscript home and the following day – the following day! He came back gushing: “What do you mean you want to throw this away? If you do not like it I will finish it off for you, write your name on the title page and send it people I know.”

I listened to him. Took back the manuscript, but, look at it as I might, I couldn’t see why he was so excited about it. The whole thing just left me cold.

Then one day I went to my local beer hall (masese) and there I watched that Jerusalem drum expert (now the national news signal!) and the people – his group and the sense, the feeling of being family, and all of them each with his or her problems and the drummer trying to assuage these with his unifying drum, and how the drum has been inherited from the past and how these long - gone – ones are present now with us in the drum and it was like a prayer joining people past and present and it can only be in a present continuous tense –urgent, very urgent, no time to dither, seemed to be the message of that drum.

I had meant the chapter in which Garabha plays the drum to open Waiting for the Rain but I felt that would be like pre-empting the story. Anyway, I had found out that this story was as urgent as the message of the drum and the only urgent thing is the present moment.

Another thing, another discovery I made, was that in the present tense, the characters became closer to me. They were like real living people. The landscape, the physical life of the book became much more alive, much more there because I was living it as I was writing it and I have never felt as blessed as I felt writing (or re-writing) Waiting for the Rain (I do not think I revised –not much, any way – this second version.) So, a story that had been destined for the fire was rescued by the writer’s change of point of view: This story didn’t happen in the past. It is a drum. It’s happening, it is playing, now.

And my late friend, the one who had forced me to look again at my story, even liked the final version better.

What I am saying is: you need not get stuck in a story. I do quite understand (and appreciate) the pain one feels in abandoning or re-adjusting, the story. Some writers even refer to their stories, “children” – there is danger, to the writer – in that. Well, if you feel they are your children, then be a surgeon and carry out this brain tumour operation on them!

For exercise, try to see in how many ways you can write a particular story. Dance around with this “point of view” thing. It is quite creative and it actually relieves your mind from a lot of unnecessary strain. Sorry about having to abandon a story on page 300, but this comes with the territory and, anyway, put it down to growing up, the necessary experience to be able to survive, to continue.
Hope this helps a bit.But write, write, write.
+ From the Writers Scroll, the newsletter of the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe, No.2, pp29-32, 2002.

O, save me from this story here!

2012-01-23T21:56:00.000-08:00

You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!

“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”
Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.
“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Zambia.”
“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.”
“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”
“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected King Cobra as your president.”
My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.
“I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”
“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.
“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”
He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”
Quett Masire’s name popped up.
“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”
At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.
“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.
From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”
I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”
He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”
The smile vanished from my face.
“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”
“There’s no difference.”
“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they
were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”
I gladly nodded.
“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”
For a moment I was wordless.
“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”
I was thinking.
He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”
I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.
“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.
He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”
I held my breath.
“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”
He looked me in the eye.
“And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”
I was deflated.
“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”
He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”
He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”
At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.
“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”
He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”
Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.
Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.
But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.
“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)
Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.
A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.

+Field Ruwe is a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate with a B.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and an M.A. in History.

A long and entertaining review of Peter Godwin's latest offering

2012-01-14T07:25:00.000-08:00

Title: The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe
Author: Peter Godwin
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Year: 2010
Reviewer: Emmanuel Sigauke, (adopted with full permission from his blog: http://vasigauke.blogspot.com)
N.B. This is probably the best review that i have read in the past decade. You will understand.

I first bought a Peter Godwin book, 'Mukiwa', on June 21, 1997, in Sacramento, California. I was an employee at Borders, and I remember bragging to co-workers about how I had just discovered yet another African writer in the store's stock. Those were the days when you had to scour shelves for months, looking for African books that never seemed to show up, so you were then tempted to buy a second copy of 'Things Fall Apart' (we got an employee discount). Long story short, I was happy to discover 'Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa'. From the start, I have read Peter Godwin as a fellow African, for the power of his prose and his panoramic coverage of the Zimbabwean landscape. His narrative persona loves to describe Zimbabwe, the Eastern highlands, particularly Chimanimani. I liked this because the year before, 1996, I had discovered Chimanimani and had thought it paradise. I sipped every detail about the landscape that Godwin rendered. He gets panoramic, he gets epiphanic, recalling Rudolfo Anaya's essay "Landscape and the Writer's Epiphany". So, two traits in Godwin's writing, prose and landscape, but I have never quite broken into his political commentary; I have not been so drawn by his journalistic maneuvers...until now, while reading 'The Fear'.

Before I review 'The Fear', let me repeat that I enjoyed 'Mukiwa'. My 1997 copy is heavily annotated and I even began to write notes of my own Chimanimani memoir. I lived in Chimanimani for four months, four busy months of teaching English to Ndau kids. I was also busy learning to belong because everyone there argued that I should be from there, given my last name. Even the Mutare education officer who had deployed me to Chimanimani told me, "Welcome home". And my protests regarding how I was actually from Zvishavane were all in vein. He couldn't even listen to my request to teach in the city, perhaps Mutare Girls High, or even somewhere in Dangamvura. Finally, I ended up in Chimanimani, and fell in love with it, but my attachment to that landscape was not as deep as that Peter Godwin shows in his books. It is the kind of love that rubs off on you, because now you want to write about your own homeland too. Homeland and boyhood. By the end of 'Mukiwa', Peter Godwin had already attained his signature fearless critique of black leadership in Zimbabwe. It is this critical voice that has sustained his journalism, and earned him the label of courageous journalist, one who goes where no other journalist can. Certainly, 'The Fear' takes the reader to the inside machinations of a failing Zimbabwe.

Just as I was preparing to get a copy of 'The Fear', a colleague bought me 'When the Crocodile Eats the Sun' for my birthday; I could have read it first, but a journal peer review request compelled me to read 'The Fear' first. Now, we can get into my thoughts about it.

As I write this, 'The Fear' sits on at least one American Best 100 Books of 2011 list. I can see why. Characteristic of Godwin's works, this one is highly readable. And disturbing. Unbelievable. Some things I don't want to believe, like how I don't feel willing to believe all that CNN, or BBC has to say. The atrocities covered, the torture, the deaths...these are dizzying accounts of human suffering. We get a close-up of what was happening in Zimbabwe, especially during and after the last elections that led to the unity government with the MDC. The book is very informative to the point of failing as a book. Let's put this another way: The memoir element suffers, but the human catalogue element succeeds, making this a deeply felt, a heart-rending mix of observed, heard, and rumoured suffering. The book works effectively at an emotional level; the book fights through its words, it takes sides (which is what it intends to do) and becomes unashamedly subjective and biased, which again is one of the author's goals. I am one of the readers who, without first hand information about much of the experiences the author depicts, have to decide to believe it all; and being aware that the author wants it all believed, I suspend disbelief, so I believe.

This kind of writing reminds me of the days I worked as a temporary teacher in Glen View, teaching English and Science. Once in a while an essay would come which would start with a first sentence you had to connect to emotionally: "When I was in Grade 3, my mother died." It's the kind of emotional hook that you would find unreasonable to fend off; it's what they experienced, and there is nothing you can do about it; in short, you are bound to read the whole story with a certain emotional guarantee: empathy. 'The Fear' has that quality of hitting at the core: it pulls your heartstrings; but this is not a cheap emotional gimmick; you trek with the author as he witnesses endless acts of brutality, and he puts a face to many of the accounts; you were not there, but he was; and he heard it, and you didn't, and he is the reporter and you are not. You read on; you don't want to believe but you do. You notice what seem like unfair emotional maneuvers but you don't have the time to make a fuss; you are the reader and you are reading, you want to finish the book, you want to hope that there is actually hope at the end of the book. And there is; the book ends with victims of torture planting trees to forget and, perhaps, forgive. Planting trees, that's good; Wangari Maathai did it in Kenya; my Rwanda commemorative poem, which I read every April, is about a tree growing in Rwanda, one tree, then many trees. That's hope; and in 'The Fear', that's a good place to end a book.

It's hard to call this a memoir, especially of Zimbabwe. I might have to revisit the definition of the genre. But it is many other things, definitely. For one, the book is an attack on Mugabe and ZANU PF; the kind of attack a writer can make from a distance (in the sense that the book was written from a distance and published in America, to be read first from a distance, but not immediately reaching the people whose lives it chronicles; that's the nature of African publishing, of course, that the audience is not primarily African although the lives, or lack thereof, are African). The book is also a chronicle of the suffering of the victims the author came in contact with as he was traveling across Zimbabwe interviewing people and observing acts of atrocity. The very act of getting into places he was forbidden shows the author as heroic; perhaps that's the true memoir aspect of the book. Again, given its extreme subjectivity, you don't know what to believe, and it almost seems unreasonable to think about deciding what to believe; the author observed it, he talked to people, he witnessed suffering, he took notes, he catalogued the information, he wrote about the experiences; so you leave it at that: the writing is representational, utilizing the voice of witness, and reaching deep into our emotions, showing the injustice of it all.

The memoir genre in Zimbabwe could easily flourish. The people have experienced the kinds of hardships that would be of great interest to readers everywhere. The country has gone through rapid changes. But the true therapy of writing is in the victim being able to write his or her own memoir. We can't all be writers, but we can tell our stories in one form or another. Books like 'The Fear', though mouthpieces of their authors, and not necessarily of the victims, point to a need for real memoirs by the people who experienced the hardships. Subjectivity rings true and engaging if it's the subjectivity of the victim, not when it's streamed through the subjectivity of another being. Look at the disasterous third-party memoirs written in America on behalf of Sudanese child soldiers, or Rwandese genocide victims. The stories lose something in the filtering. Fiction is another matter; any writer with a shred of empathy and the impulse to engage injustice can learn and write about anyone's experience; but to write someone's memoir creates challenges and dangers of distortion. Yet in the absence of opportunities for victims to tell their stories, a third party account is better than nothing.

When the Zimbabwe memoir phase flourishes, we would be interested in reading both victim memoirs and confessional ones. We see them everyday in America, Europe and so on, those inside stories that always come at the end of a regime. In Zimbabwe, such accounts should have started in 1980, at the end of the Smith regime. I remember there was a flowering of one-sided Chimurenga stories published in Zimbabwe, the ones we had to read in school, and there was a total absence of stories from the white side; then when the white stories started pouring in, they had skipped, or ignored, whole generations of stories, or when some came out they were family accounts published as memoirs, marketed to an outside audience. The rich literary landscape of Zimbabwe needs a balance of stories coming from all sides, showing the complexity of life, getting to the core of what it means to be Zimbabwean. That story is certainly not just a ZANU-PF story proclaiming the victimshood of Zimbabwe in the face of European imperial interests, nor is it only of suffering opposition members; neither only that of landless black Zimbabweans tilling the dry soil of Mazvihwa and Chivi, nor only that of white farmers victimized on their farms; this story seeks a balance; this story seeks to plant a new tree that bursts with life.

As usual, I enjoyed the landscape descriptions in 'The Fear'. The Eastern highlands feature prominently. Look at this: "Once we gain height the view opens out into a primordial topography of jagged mountains, furrowed with ridges like mastiff brows, thickly vegetated with gurugushi bird bush and mupangara thorn trees, and, in the Nyadokwe Rivere valley, wide-girthed baobabs silvered in the sky. From across the coulee, baboons barked" (263). Here Godwin was in the Bvumba mountain area near Zimunya, a place I know. Elsewhere in the book, he takes us back to Chimanimani and describes the rivers, the valleys and the mountains ranges that undulate into Mozambique. But he does not stop here; he will also take you from Mutare to Bulawayo, then to Kezi. While chronicling the terror, he will still manage to throw in a few epiphanies about the landscape, shocking us even with one of female friends confessing that she had sex on Rhodes's grave in the Matopos. But when he gets to Bhalagwe, the prose has slowed down to an elegy, as he connects current experiences to Gukurahundi. The book covers all the provinces of Zimbabwe, following all the journeys Godwin made as he researched and witnessed the troubles in the country, often endangering his life, but also finding time to reminisce about the old good days. He has connections in Harare and is invited to tea and braai a lot.

I enjoyed the prose too. Godwin manages to make his sentences sing even as they portray horror. It is this craft element that enables readers to keep reading long after they can't stand the emotional weight. The book is repetitive, but you keep reading for that next sentence. However, Godwin has no excuse to continue misusing the few Shona phrases he includes in his writings. He repeatedly mispells words, offers unreliable translations, and has the foreigner's understanding of the language he grew up hearing or speaking.

A few other Zimbabwean writers have this problem too when writing in English; one, they italicize the Shona or Ndebele (that is, they apologize for using it) in the name of...communication; two, they mispell the words or phrases they co-opt; then, three, they offend with their use of parenthetical translations. This was the main off-putting element of 'The Fear', but again, the book is a work of journalism, reporting to an outside audience, so it may be excused, but the Shona words could have been double-checked for correctness.

For instance, I would just remind Godwin that they are called n'angas, not ngangas; and italicizing the word is not linquistically appealing. There is this one too: "Manjeni, kuona ingwe ichitamba nembudzi", which Godwin aptly translates as: "It's astonshing to see a leopard playing with a goat." My two concerns are: he italicized the Shona proverb, and wrote manjeni instead of manenji. Again, an occasional error here and there would not be a cause for concern, but turning such infelicities into fashions of error from memoir to memoir is inexcusable.

The Good and the Bad of Zimbabwean literature in 2011

2012-01-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

(NoViolet Bulawayo)

Year-2011, which opened with the death of veteran author Julius Chingono, had both the good and the bad for Zimbabwean literature.

The new and established writers around me continued to moan about the lack of publishers and the song is getting louder and louder. No wonder for the past two or three installments of NAMA, nearly all the literary categories have been won by Zimbabwean books published abroad. In some categories, there were no nominees from locally published books! This means that Zimbabwe is fast depending on either its writers abroad or publishers who know little or nothing about Zimbabwe.

In one heated literary discussion, a local author took the panel of local publishers to task. She asked: ‘What exactly do you mean by a good book?’ And the answer came from one of the publishers: ‘A good book must be able to be prescribed by Zimsec.’ It was the most heartrending remark that I heard in 2011. You either write for the syllabus or perish. We have narrowed down viciously in all respects. Are we still the nation that produced the likes of Marechera, Vera, Sigogo, Mutsvairo and Chakaipa?

The local publishers say they do not have the funds and a suitable economic environment in which to publish. There are indications that even the UNESCO book per child fund has impoverished publishers because the books were bought at a paltry 95 cents a copy! And since a normal school book takes three to four years to disintegrate and be replaced, local publishers may just send home some of their workers. The books are also not being printed locally, pushing local printers out of business!

Zimcopy (a Harare based copyright watchdog) reported in 2011 that truckloads of photocopied books were impounded on our highways. In my case, an anonymous but happy caller phoned from a sister university telling me that since my book was now on their syllabus, could I kindly send him my very own copy so that he could photocopy for the cash strapped students? He was certain that just being read was enough for me. Did he know that I have a family to look after? He hung up.

The Book Fair, however continues to recover tremendously, bringing us great expectations. The 2011 Book fair theme was ‘Books For Africa’s Development.’ The deliberations were based on how books could save Africa and how Africa herself could realise more from her books and lots of information that could be kept in the written form.

The book stands were wonderful. The Indaba was well attended by writers, publishers, school children, readers, scholars and even government ministers! In a country where reading events and literary discussions are still painfully few and far apart, it was encouraging to listen to the various presentations at the Indaba and the subsequent Young People’s Indaba.

One hopes that the national book awards, which have been known to be the climax to the fair, return to their former glory. People do not write for prizes but good book competitions bring attention to books and the writers. At the 2011 Book Fair, we witnessed a pseudo competition that sent us hiding under the tables. All the awards were shared by writers from only two publishers! It is as if they were tossing a coin to decide who wins in which category. This is very damaging to the book fair, publishers, writers and the adjudicators themselves.

Except for NAMA, which has only three literary categories because they also have to look after music, dance, sculpture, drama and others, we still do not have a credible national annual literary competition.

However, some very good things have happened to our literature this year. Alpha Media Holdings, which publishes a local daily and weeklies, have continued with their Cover to Cover Schools annual short story competition.

Stephen Chifunyise has won the granddad of Zimbabwean Theatre tag in 2011 through his plays that continue to feature at the Theatre in The Park in Harare. He has quietly noticed that to publish is not always to do a book.

Zimbabwean author, Elizabeth Tshele, more commonly known as NoViolet Bulawayo, did us proud. She won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, beating over 120 writers with her short story ‘Hitting Budapest’ previously published in The Boston Review Vol. 35, no. 6- Nov/Dec 2010. She received the £10,000 prize at a celebratory dinner held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford on July 11.The Caine Prize, widely known as the African Booker is regarded as Africa’s leading literary award. ‘Hitting Budapest’ is a story about children from a ghetto who set out to steal guavas from a very affluent suburb.

Wellingtone Kusema made history in 2011 by publishing the longest novel in the Shona language to date at 108 264 words! Dzimbabwedande, published by Heritage Press is a gigantic 348 paged old world novel about Dumbetumbe’s heroic exploits. This is a very important novel about the evil machinations of the Portuguese during the Mutapa Empire, stretching from the Highvelds down to the Indian and the Atlantic oceans. Here you read about the slave trade, power struggles, love and betrayal. This is a massive show of confidence in the Shona language and for me, Dzimbabwedande could easily pass as the greatest novel by a Zimbabwean in 2011.

Another very amazing new book which has set tongues wagging this year is Watch Ruparanganda’s Genitals Are Assets. It explores the sexual and economic relations amongst the street youths of Harare. The author spent over fifteen months on the streets of Harare and the adjacent areas, slowly and carefully stalking, watching and listening to the street youths in order to understand their life styles and sexual behaviour and also to get to their individual life stories. This book can be read either as an academic or fictional work and that is a great strength.

A new company, Diaspora Publishers in the UK has also come up with new and interesting titles like Monica Cheru’s Chivi Sunsets. This is a collection of short stories exploring the African underworld. In one of the stories a man sees his own two boots walking across the room on their own accord! Diaspora Publishers have also brought together the poems performed by local poet, Mbizo Chirasha into one well bound and designed volume entitled Good Morning President.

Prominent Zimbabwean writer Shimmer Chinodya continued to shine in 2011. He launched the German translation of his 2007 Noma Award winning novel, Strife. The German version is called Zwietracht and was translated from English by Dr Manfred Loimeier. Chinodya has also published yet another scintillating novel for young people, entitled Tindo’s Quest. In this story, a twelve year old boy slowly realises that perhaps the woman whom he calls mother is not his real mother!

Some of the books launched this year were by high profile people. They include Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s memoirs entitled Tsvangirai at the Deep End, Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara’s uncle’s book called Nziramasanga and Wilfred Mhanda’s liberation war memoirs called Memories of a Freedom Fighter.

The Zimbabwean writers’ long standing resolve to form a national umbrella organisation representing their rights and welfare was eventually realised with the election of the first seven member committee of the Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) on June 4. It is chaired by Veteran Poet, Musaemura Zimunya who is deputised by Eresina Hwede. Performing poet, Tinashe Muchuri is the Secretary General. The job ahead is monstrous as they should, among other things, set out to unite the various writer associations in one voice where their welfare is concerned.
By Memory Chirere
(*a version of this article appeared in The Herald of 4 January 2012, page E4.)

The longest Shona novel!

2011-12-31T07:39:00.001-08:00

Wellingtone Kusema has made history by publishing probably the longest novel in the Shona language to date at 108 264 words! Dzimbabwedande, published by Heritage Press is a gigantic 348 paged old world novel about Dumbetumbe’s heroic exploits. This is a very important novel about the evil machinations of the Portuguese during the Mutapa Empire, stretching from the Highvelds down to the Indian and the Atlantic oceans. Here you read about the slave trade, power struggles, love and betrayal. This is a massive show of confidence in the Shona language. For me, Dzimbabwedande could easily pass as the greatest novel by a Zimbabwean in 2011.

My crowning moments in 2011

2011-12-26T05:21:00.000-08:00

Above, my wife and daughter, Shasha received the NAMA Award on my behalf for my latest book 'Toriro and His Goats' from prominent novelist Charles Makari in February 2011. I am told that it was a colourful event. I was abroad on a work-leave. On 8 and 9 October, I read from Tudikidiki (in translation) to a capacity crowd at the Blantyre Arts Festival, Malawi. It was my first time in Malawi and my first to be in a foreign country whose major language I speak fluently! On 29 November, i presented a paper on 'manhood in the novels of Chenjerai Hove' at 'Traditions II: Everyday Lives of African Men' conference held in Addis Ababa. It was held in the historic Africa Hall. To crown it all, my short story book, 'Somewhere In This Country' has finally found its way onto the Advanced level Literature in English syllabus in my own Zimbabwe!

the ZWA logo and some information

2011-12-18T03:27:00.001-08:00

Following the election of a substantive board of the Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) on June 4, 2011 June 4 2011, dear members , take note of the issues below and regularise your membership by getting in touch with the secretary and treasurer:

a.Ordinary Membership US$10,00. Ordinary membership shall be reserved for individuals who qualify on account of being bona fide authors of Zimbabwe, new or established. Individuals shall willingly join even if writer organisations to which they are already members may wish to or have joined ZWA on Affiliate status. Each ordinary member shall have one vote at any general meeting of ZWA.

b.Affiliate Membership US$20,00 Affiliate membership shall be reserved for willing and recognized Zimbabwean writer organizations and/or associations whose objectives serve the interests and welfare of writers of Zimbabwe whose application for membership is approved by the Board. This shall apply to organizations which seek to participate in the work of ZWA on behalf of their members. Each affiliated member shall have one vote at any general meeting of ZWA.

c.Honorary Membership pay in form of donations. Honorarary membership shall be reserved for members of the cultural community who have a proven interest in the promotion of Zimabwean Literature and the arts in general as well as being supportive of the Organization’s goals and who may add value to it through their links with the funding or business community. Normally they are invited to join by the Board. Honorary members shall not be entitled to vote.

d.Associate Membership US$20, 00. Associate membership shall be reserved for willing Zimbabwean and non Zimbabwean writer or arts organizations, non Zimbabwean citizens or non resident writers who have an interest in literature and the arts and who wish to participate in the work of ZWA at the level of mutual partnership. Associate members shall not be entitled to vote.

For now, ZWA uses Department of English, University of Zimbabwe, Box MP 167 Mt Pleasant Harare Zimbabwe, as its postal address and physical address.

1. ZWA email address: zimbabwewiters@gmail.com
2. ZWA is now in possession of a National Arts Council of Zimbabwe Registration Certificate
3. ZWA now has a Logo (indicated above)
4. ZWA objectives are explained in the Constitution previously circulated to you
5. ZWA’s By-line: A WHOLE WORLD IN A WORD’
6. Treasurer’s email: beatricesithole@yahoo.com, 0712 401 787
7. Secretary’s email and cell number: tmuchuri@gmail.com 0733 843 455

A picture from the last ZWA meeting.

2011-12-16T08:10:00.000-08:00

Chivi Sunsets: a preview by Memory Chirere

2011-12-07T01:18:00.001-08:00

I can announce that Monica Cheru’s collection of short stories; Chivi Sunsets: Not for Scientists (above)has finally been published by Diaspora Publishers in the UK.

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.

Invitation to a Writers’ meeting, 3 December 2011, Harare.

2011-11-23T07:08:00.000-08:00

Below, some Zimbabwean writers at the last meeting in August

and another

The Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) cordially invites you to the first of its monthly meetings on Saturday 3 December 2011 at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, 20 Julius Nyerere Way, Harare from 2:00pm to 4:30pm in the library extension (upstairs) for the purposes of discussion and readings. You are also reminded to bring your $10 membership fees. A substantive agenda will be sent to you very soon. Remember: the major objective of ZWA is to bring together all willing individual writers and writer organisations of Zimbabwe in order to encourage creative writing, reading and publishing in all forms possible, conduct workshops, and provide for literary discussions.
-inserted by ZWA committee-

Tudikidiki By Memory Chirere

2011-11-12T07:08:00.000-08:00

Below are some 3 recent articles/reviews on Tudikidiki:

1.It would be very easy to read many meanings (probably all of them my own!) into Memory Chirere’s short - short stories (some of which are really vignettes) and I suppose the writer could be laughing down his throat at the mental gymnastics of even the most well meaning readers as they try to ‘interpret’ these ‘little things’.

As I read them I am at times persuaded not to try to find any meaning in some of them but to simply read, read, and enjoy – or be frustrated.

Both enjoyment and frustration arise out of the realization that Chirere’s characters (and maybe the reader as well?) are involved in a very serious mind life games. A mixture of a kind of madness, a passion for unreason and a stumbling in the darkness of sheer ignorance but with always a hope (groundless?) of a light at the end of the grotto. A kind of natural intelligence which is also mixed with unadulterated innocence?

Take the story ‘Mwana’ – what is the writer trying to say? Is it about how we wish for something dearly, then our wishes become obstacles and at the end we have to run, with nothing, into worse situations?

The story ‘Amai nababa’ shows the innocent wishes of a child who is dying to see her parents together, in love, (and herself included in this love?) and she achieves this in her own way but behind it all you are worried about the presence of other forces that have nothing to do with the three characters.

‘Roja rababa vaBiggie’ – could this be vintage Chirere? This ‘roja’ looks the acme of decency and diligence in the local community. He seems to be an assert to his landlord, (or his owner?) baba vaBiggie. People envy baba vaBiggie for having such a quiet and hardworking lodger.

How wrong can we be! The man, this ‘roja’ is cooking up something. Baba vaBiggie owes the ‘roja’ and now the roja wants his money back. To get his money back, he climbs up to the top of the tower light and tells the world that it is his money or he is going to throw himself down to his death. The man performs monkey dances on the tower light. He shouts and he has got everyone’s attention. He is in charge today. He is in full control and the people are looking up there, in awe, enthralled, in fear, as if he were – God? And he seems to love it. He is reveling in it. (I have a feeling that he has never felt such strength, such power, in him before and he wishes it could go on forever, this moment of total control).

When he finally agrees to come down, after baba vaBiggie has paid, to a trusted third part, one feels the tragic moment, the fall of a God.

‘Chichena chirefu chinonhuwira’, ‘Pikicha’ and ‘Pamuroro wemwana’ again have ‘something’ which is haunting. People create situations over things they don’t understand, and the end result? Panic. Chaos. Very small things which could have been resolved quietly or peacefully become big issues that lead to the cracking up of personalities and the breaking up of communities and institutions. People become victims of their own actions.

We have the painful heartbreak in ‘Ariko’. A broken, unconsummated relationship, the unsaid deep pain of parting, the imagery cuts to the quick.

‘Mumwewo munhu wausingazive’ has a very strange nostalgic effect on the reader, especially this one. How can you not suffer if you live, daily, with the uneasy, unresolved thought that somewhere out there among the denizens of the world there is someone who has a heartful load of love for you, someone ready to die for you? (It is rather a mischievous short story, designed to play havoc with the reader’s emotions!)

‘Ndikakuregedza handizokuoni’ verges on the – magical? Too good to be true. Our own emotions, intentions, dreams – our individual lives – align with God’s designs and we feel responsible for the salvation or destruction of whole nations. This story, as in many others, seems to reveal some dark mystic? – definitely spiritual-religious compartments in this writer’s psyche!

All in all, Memory Chirere’s Tudikidiki is an enjoyable collection. I sense a new direction in the Shona short story, releasing it from the usual hidebound traditional oral rungano, to throw it in line with its written counterpart in the other, international languages, but the flavour is strictly here, now, homegrown and home brewed. Even though a few of these stories left me feeling that they verge on the obscure, I still have a nagging feeling that maybe it is my own lack of access to the writer’s artistic lexicon. Whatever the case is, these stories don’t fail to tickle your rib, if not riddle your mind. These are serious adult stories (despite appearances to the contrary) written with a poet’s sensibilities.
(By Charles Mungoshi, The Sunday mail, December, 2007)

2.Memory Chirere’s second book called Tudikidiki is a good Christmas and New Year’s present for all the connoisseurs of Zimbabwean literature. Reason: save for the multiauthored collections by Zimbabwean Women Writers, the short story in the Shona language is almost non-existent.

The space is heavily dominated by the poem and novel and yet the short story in English is on a massive rise in Zimbabwe.

Tudikidiki is heavily influenced by Chirere’s first book, a collection of short stories in English called Somewhere In This Country. Here as in the first book, these stories are flittingly short. Reading, you remember Flannery O’Connor: ‘A short story should be long in depth and should give us an experience of meaning’.
Coupled with very high entertainment value, the whole booklet can be read on a bus trip from Mbare to Murambinda! Each story stands out clearly and the experience is akin to toying with one crisp biscuit after another, after another, in one’s watery mouth!

Some of these stories are teeming with both serious and petty fraudsters. The lesson is: Do not be too engrossed only in the big struggles of survival. Turn your head over your shoulder to check what the next man or woman is doing. You are being invited to pay close attention to the little matters of life -Tudikidiki - and to laugh at yourself, if you can.

Mandiziva, a character in the story by the same title, is a township old man who walks up to any home and plays at being a no nonsense long lost old relative from the rural areas. As a result he is entertained like a king. When the neighborhood wakes up to the truth, Mandiziva is long gone, well fed and comfortable.

‘Mamboonawo Mhuri Yangu here?’ is an Aesopean tale about looking for someone who could be looking for you! And when you get to where he was, he is where you were, and because you put so much faith in speed and accuracy, you might never meet with the person you so much want to meet!

In ‘Roja Rababa vaBiggie’ a township lodger teaches the whole community a lesson that they will never forget. More stinging blows come in Pempani Pempani, Pikicha, Pasi Pengoma and many more. The laughter generated by these stories is corrective. The journey of life is portrayed as both awkward and funny and the man or woman who listens carefully to her soul, wins. Chirere’s wit is honey coupled up with grit and the conversations are dreamlike and childlike.

As Ignatius Mabasa warns in the introduction to this book, these stories are not for children, but are about children. So they can even be read by both adults and young adults. Yet you come away feeling that the word ‘children’ is more complex than meets the eye. The struggles in life bring out the most basic instincts, making us all children.

Memory Chirere is at his best with stories with subterranean meanings and you might be caught reading and rereading these stories for their various levels of meaning and wit. I have come across this in the few stories of Langston Hughes.
(Reviewed by Jairos kangira, The Herald, 10 January 2008)

3.Chenjerai Hove recently read Memory Chirere's short story collection "Tudikidiki". He made the following observation, shared in an email to both Chirere and me. Hove has stated repeatedly that the current state of writing by new writers in Zimbabwe makes him proud, especially considering that he has been a mentor to most of these contemporary writers. Chirere, for instance, was in the class Hove taught during his days as the writer-in-residence at the University of Zimbabwe.Other writers like Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Ignatius Mabasa, Cleopas Gwakwara, Nhamo Mhiripiri and wife, Thabisani Ndlovu, Eresina Wede, Zvisdinei Sandi and others were part of this group. I too had the priviledge of learning from the master in those days, and every now and then we spend time on the phone discussing literature and our common homeland, Mazvihwa, a place rich in history and memories. Hove is currently based in Miami, Florida.

Below are some of his comments on Memory Chirere's "Tudikidiki", reproduced here with his permission:

Chirere's talent is his capacity to capture character and landscape in most apt way, with a phrase or a simple comparison. He is one of the most observant writers ever to emerge in our cruel, beloved homeland. When he compares something like 'semugoti wepanhamo', the images are vivid and he is able to interconnect them into building a strong character in such a short space of language and time. Poetic juxtapositions like, 'chawaitanga kuona pana pembani idzoro rake rainge nhanga, wozoona marengenya' are just breath-taking in creating a compendium of physical looks and the poverty that went with the character of Pempani. If you also look at Pempani's bio brief, it is wonderfully done as the way in which rumours often paint a complex character is used to show the Pempani's complexity as a person and as a piece of social upheaavals. Then the narrator says in his own assessment of Pempani, 'Ini ndaingoti zvese zvaiita,' without validating or refuting any of the pieces of speculative portrayals.

Chirere has this subtle sense of detail, a poetic quality which makes his writing uniquely his. For example, if you look at how he portrays the manner in which music inflitrates the human consciousness, in 'Kamwe karwizi', you will be amazed that I think it is the best Shona description I have come across of how the body and soul of humans absorb and are consumed by music. It is not the same as simply saying 'I enjoyed the music.' Chirere is able to trace the whole flow of music into the human body, and trance-like, shape how individuals are given visions by a single piece of music.

With the contemporary Zimbabwean writers "at it like this", Hove believes that "we will soon see another literary boom more exciting than the 1980s and early 90s."

Memory Chirere has told me that he is working on a translation of Tudikidiki, but has admitted that it is not an easy task as translating some of the Shona nuances is challenging. Having enjoyed the Shona version, as well as the Chirere's English collection, "Somewhere in this Country", I look forward to the translation.
(Article from Emmanuel Sigauke's http://vasigauke.blogspot.com/2010/09/chenjerai-hove-on-memory-chireres.html)

Tudikidiki,Winner of Zimbabwe's National Arts Merit Award: Literature section 2009,
published by Priority Projects Publishing,Harare.
Orders can be made through Sam Mutetwa:
(sammtetwa@gmail.com)or +2634775968

The real role of war veterans in Zimbabwe’s land occupations

2011-11-05T06:21:00.000-07:00

Title: ‘War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Land Occupations: Complexities of a Liberation Movement In an African Post Colonial Settler Society’
Author: Wilbert Zvakanyorwa Sadomba
Publisher:Wageningen Universiteit, Vita, 2008.
Isbn: 9789085049173
218 pages
Reviewer: Memory Chirere

At the core of this well researched and footnoted narrative is the argument that the veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970’s war of independence were and are still the major drivers of the land movement in Zimbabwe and that History cut them a role from which they could not renege.

And the conclusion is: All the major forces in the Zimbabwean milieu in the past decade; the nationalists, President Mugabe and his functionaries, the white farmers and drivers of opposition politics have to contend with the war veterans and the land hungry of Zimbabwe or risk being swept aside. Therefore, this is a book about the history of the role of liberation war combatants in Zimbabwe much as it is about their driving role in the land reform principally between 1997 and 2000.

The question that drives this very detailed book is: Were the land occupations in Zimbabwe driven and sustained by land hunger dating back from colonialism or by the spoiling operations linked to the political survival tactics of ZANU PF, state functionaries of President Robert Mugabe?

This question, as seen from the works of various writers on land in Zimbabwe; Sam Moyo, T.O. Ranger, A. Davidson, Raftopolous, Feltore, Moore and others, creates a decisive watershed.

Working with real dates and statistical evidence, Sadomba shows that the phenomena of land occupations in Zimbabwe is as old as colonialism, admitting that the land issue changed form and intensity during the colonial period but it remained the central focus for the nationalist movement and later fuelled the guerrilla war itself.

Contrary to notions that land occupations and land reform have always been blest by and directed by ZANU PF, Sadomba argues that the issue of land had been put aside at independence because in 1980, there developed a silent alliance between black nationalists, the rising bourgeoisie and white settler farmers. This resulted in a rift within the liberation movement itself and the sidelined war veterans catapulted radical land reclamation from below, targeting the elite, settler farmers and the state itself.

He goes on to show evidence that when the veterans encouraged early land occupations in places like Goromonzi and Svosve around 1997/98 the ZANU PF government was not amused. Minister Msika and vice President Muzenda, respectively to tell the land hungry to vacate the white farms that they had occupied. In the end government had to unleash the security forces. In 1996 the war veterans even forced the government to designate 1 471 farms for compulsory acquisition by November 1997. This was heavily resisted by the white farmers through the courts. In 1997 the war veterans openly confronted President Mugabe himself, loudly demanding welfare benefits and a return to the liberation agenda.

Sadomba further argues that ZANU and President Mugabe only sided with the veterans when the referendum to decide on a new constitution got a ‘No’ vote in year 2000.Just after this result, war veterans occupied a white owned farm in Masvingo. They claimed that the referendum, an event in which the country’s white population had participated more actively that any other election since independence, was in essence an organised ‘No’ vote against the land clause included in the draft constitution.

The clause stated that the land for resettlement would be taken compulsorily and only land improvements would be compensated. Compensation would have to be paid by the British government as the power behind the colonial machinery that had originally appropriated land from the Africans of Zimbabwe.

This book shows how the veterans engineered the movement which attracted peasants, urban workers, professionals, farm workers, political activists, security forces and others. They are moments when war veterans were loaned from where they were highly concentrated like Guruve and Mount Drawin to help in areas of less concentration like Nyabira, Mazowe and Matepatepa. There are sections on various methods of occupying a farm, sections on how how white farmers variably reacted to the occupation of ‘their’ farms, sections on the role of chiefs and spirit mediums, sections on how information was relayed and the resultant changes in the farming systems as a result of occupations.

Going through this work, you feel that indeed there are no permanent friends but permanent interests. This book is a must for all those who wish to get detailed insights into the complexity of relations between and among major players in the land reform of Zimbabwe.

Wilfred Sadomba himself is a veteran of the liberation struggle and this work is an indictment to all veterans of the liberation war of Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa that it is important to document their experiences not only on the war but also the aftermaths.

NoViolet Bulawayo: I love language for its beauty if done properly

2011-10-31T08:07:00.000-07:00

Below is an interview that Gary Goldon (G) of Daily Brink did with Zimbabwean writer, NoViolet Bulawayo (N) who recently won the coveted Caine Prize for “Hitting Budapest,” a short story depicting the lives of a starving gang of children from a shanty town. Here she talks about her life as a writer.

G: Let me first ask you about your personal background. Where were you born and raised, and how early on did you know that writing was going to be, if anything, your passion?

N: I was born and raised in Zimbabwe and left for college in the U.S. where I was supposed to study law, but since there was no authority to tell me what to do and enforce it, I could afford to follow my passion when I got here, which is how I eventually ended up in the Cornell MFA program. I was into storytelling and writing as early as primary school, mostly because I was raised on orature. But I didn’t know then that I’d eventually live for writing, because growing up I never saw writers around me, and anyway, we were raised to pursue “traditional, sensible careers.” Writing wasn’t one of them, and for this reason I really didn’t expose my pursuits until the Caine, or should I say the Caine exposed me.

G: For our readers who might be unfamiliar with your work, can you briefly tell us what type of literary pieces you’re interested in writing, and what your award-winning story “Hitting Budapest” is about?

N: I’m interested in literature that engages with real social issues, and I love language for its beauty if done properly, as well as great storytelling for how it allows us to experience other worlds, so my pieces try to embody these things. “Hitting Budapest” is about a group of starving kids from a shanty who raid an affluent neighborhood for guavas because they are hungry, and while there, meet a clueless Westerner who fails to connect with them on a human level. The kids steal, eat, go back to the shanty to meet a dead woman dangling from a tree. Their hunger allows them to conquer their fear of death and they steal her shoes so they can sell them in order to buy bread. But the real story is in the class divide, in the loss of innocence, immigration, violence: things that remain under the surface but are very much part of these children’s realities.

G: Congratulations on winning the Caine Prize for African Writing! Tell us a bit about that experience — from the intimacy of writing a book to now having it out in the open for the world to read. How has your life changed in the past few months?

N: The Caine is one of Africa’s most prestigious prizes and it happened to me when I wasn’t trying to win any prestigious prizes; I mean, I was in school when I wrote the piece and like any other young writer, still working on sorting myself out. Having the whole world read the story has been both exciting and terrifying, but I’m not complaining, especially since Zimbabwe has only won the Caine Prize once, in 2004, so of course I’m glad to be representing my country. In terms of changes on a personal level I guess I now have a writing ticket that’s making my life easier. I’m also challenging myself more than ever before; I’m just getting started and I have places to go.

G: Our team was astounded by the power of “Hitting Budapest.” You deal with a lot of themes such as crime, poverty, injustice, and post-colonialism. Because of Zimbabwe’s dramatic predicament, do you think that your work will always involve socioeconomic themes — may it be in your stories or poems?

N: I suspect that my work will always have these political overtones even if things in Zimbabwe changed for the better; that’s just what concerns me as an artist. That, together with my imagination, has no borders; I’m starting to write about America now and those themes are following my work so I guess that’s who I am on the page. Let’s see what I’m doing two, three novels down the road.

G: It often feels like African writers are underrepresented and certainly “under-published” in the United States. Is this an accurate perception, and if so, why do you think that is?

N: It can always be better, but I think as the world is getting smaller people are becoming increasingly interested in reading about other places, so I feel like the time is right for the African writer, but of course books have to be written, and well-written, especially now, in order to find their way to any shelf. To that end it’d be great to see opportunities for African writing improve, especially at the preparation level; that’s what will make it possible for us to be more present on the world stage.

G: Therefore, do you feel a responsibility toward the citizens of Sub-Saharan Africa or South Africa? A need to accurately depict their lives, issues, and everyday struggles?

N: I write what I want, of course, what moves me, but because I engage in real issues, I end up depicting “real lives” and “real stories” even though that’s not always necessarily what I set out to do. One of the sobering moments for me after the Caine was to get emails from people who could identify with the story and my other stories in one way or the other, and while I was happy being reckless and doing my own thing before, I find myself inevitably thinking about the real person attached to my characters now. Still, I don’t want to surrender to accuracy; that would take the fun of creation away. My responsibility, then, would be to write well and be at my best. That’s all I can give.

G: What are some of your future projects? You have been published on a wide diversity of platforms. Are you planning to publish a novel?

N: I’m putting the final touches on a novel and working on an AIDS memoir based on my family’s experiences with the disease. I’m also fantasizing about traveling the world and just writing while I’m at it; for me that’s where the stories are and I think I’d do much more, but of course I’m allowed to have an imagination!

G: I have to ask: who are some of your literary heroes, and why? Are you influenced by any other cultural mediums?

N: There are too many, but the Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera is very important to me for being fierce and fearless; her work gave me some serious keys back when I needed to open some doors as an unsure young artist trying to find the courage to write. In terms of influence, I’d say I was raised on orature and so that’s how I came into story. Even today I write through speaking; I literally have to speak the story out while I write it, or before, and in a way I’m able to put myself in the listener’s shoes and decide if the story is worth telling to begin with. There are times when music will carry me through; I don’t write to it, but it can serve as a text that allows me to be in dialogue with it, and of course it can also help me tap into my characters’ spaces, or just serve as a medium when I need to be in a particular zone that I can’t otherwise access on my own.

G: What are you reading right now?

N: I’m just finishing Justin Torres’ short but fierce novel, We The Animals, where I was stunned on almost every page, and I’m reading Jon McGregor’s Even The Dogs, a deliciously challenging read.

G: What is the single most important message you try to convey to your students at Cornell about writing?

N: It’s your story: act like it and write it on your own terms.

(From: http://www.dailybrink.com)

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza: unveilling of tombstone

2011-10-19T03:31:00.000-07:00

Unveilling of tombstone for the late writer Stanley Ruzvidzo Mupfudza will be held at Mupfudzapake homestead, Guruve on Saturday 22 October 2011, from 11am to 2pm. Information: 0779271147/077242081

"I am concerned with questions of identity. For a long time I wandered through the mazes of our own Zimbabwean condition -- western education, acculturation -- looking for a centre. I even dabbled in Eastern philosophy, always felt on the outside of mainstream society. Then I started delving into our own religion, history and mythology. One of my short stories is called "The Lost Songs" which is about a singer who repudiates his past, his rural family and gets lost in the seedy life of the city, pop music... Then one day he forgets all the lyrics to his songs... Things begin to fall apart around him, his so-called friends abandon him... Then he makes the journey back home, to his mother where he reconnects with his family history and he discovers an ancient mbira which was passed down from generation to generation in his family and through mbira music he finds his place in the scheme of things."
-Ruzvidzo Mupfudza: Conversations With Writers, Friday July 13, 2007-

'Destiny In My Hands' by Primrose Dzenga

2011-10-14T05:12:00.000-07:00

(picture:Primrose reading from 'Destiny In My Hands')

Title: Destiny In My Hands
Author: Primrose Dzenga
Publisher: Salmonpoetry, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-907056-55-0
Page Count: 72
(A review by Memory Chirere)
Primrose Dzenga’s poetry collection, Destiny In My Hands is about women’s reflections on their passionate love and sometimes hate and hurt relationships with men. To read it is to snoop and listen to a woman’s heartbeat and passions. You come away with the knowledge that to relate is to invest and to risk.

At this point I want to restate what I wrote and published in 2006 about Shona women’s love poems in Shona: ‘While the traditional Shona woman had the latitude to compose and perform love poetry specifically for her man in bed (madanha), the modern Shona woman of the written word tends to avoid, in several ways, writing fully fledged love poems in the Shona language. After observing some of the key Shona poetry collections, one clearly notes that love poems written in Shona by women, avoids explicit references to ‘women in love’. Most of these poems are very rarely from a woman’s point of view. In the very few poems that portray women in love, there are usually no in depth and meaningful explorations of the love of women for their men.’

But Primrose Dzenga has fearlessly joined the few brave Zimbabwean voices of Kristina Rungano and Eve Nyemba in writing about how a woman in love (and outside love) feels. The themes of power and political violence appear to have been overplayed in contemporary Zimbabwean literature.

In ‘If he made love’ a man skilfully plays an instrument at a public gathering that the woman persona, gawking at him from the crowd, wishes she were the instrument in his very able hands:

‘If he made love,
With such joy and abandon
Tenderness and care
If he caressed
Velvety feverish caresses
Like he did the cords,
Sweet cords of his piano…’

For me, this could be one of the best love poems to come out of Zimbabwe, if it is finally agreed that it is a love poem! It is both direct and indirect.The woman is transfigured by both the music and the intimate way in which the unsuspecting man musician plays the instrument. This is in tune with Shona folklore where a man wins a woman by playing the drum from morning to sunset and a woman wins a man by dancing until she sinks into the ground beneath her and until water pours from the crater that her dancing feet have dug.

The Shona admire such arts to the extent that such a mythical girl is known to this day as Jikinya (the inimitable dancer who stamps the earth with her feet). In ‘Illusions’ the persona bemoans the dearth of true love of the old world. Men of today ‘do not kiss, they bite’ and ‘they do not caress but scratch’. Inversely, the maidens of old: ‘saw the beauty in a man’s eyes’ and ‘the depth and need of a man’s heart’.

In keeping with the old world, you find out that twilight, night, midnight and dawn are important in Dzenga’s poems. Darkness is surely the colour of love. In the village of old, night is the moment for half hidden faces of lovers in true passion, dance and ritual. It is time for truthful and undivided reflection:

‘I think of you at midnight
I dream of you awake at dawn
Conversations in mystic tongue
Lie pearly jewels between you and me’

‘Broken sentences’ is a poem in which a roguish man of today is enmeshed in his roles as woman-basher and senseless ravisher of women. During the moment of the poem, he is finally running away from the innocent woman he has just murdered. But the woman is everywhere; in his impish thoughts, in the beer mug in front of him and in his running legs. He has defeated her but his victory over her is not victory. It is a journey into doom because to kill a woman is to kill your mother and to kill the source. In the Shona world, fighting a woman or one’s mother is like falling into an abyss where you tumble endlessly, hitting against the walls of the tunnel as you descend, and your anguish cries reminding the world of the folly of raising your hand against Mother. And such is the tragedy of action without conscience.

And yet Dzenga suggests that it is not always easy and safe for a woman to give her heart to a man. And when she finally does, as in ‘Whisper’, it is with a sense of sacrificial surrender to fate and the unknown, because he has capacity either to cause her a terrible joy or to walk away with her destiny in his hands.

Sometimes a woman desperately falls for a man and at this point, she wants him to declare his love and set her and him free:

‘Whisper my love, whisper, I need to know
So free and homeward bound I can set and glide
Free my herat and soul the core of me
I am bound and stuck by your magic’

Primrose Dzenga’s poetic voice comes from a little hole on the top of a hill, rolling down fast and sometimes, haltingly towards your waiting ear. Very beautiful and nasty. All in all, these poems shock you with the insistent suggestion that the woman’s heart has twin capacities; to love uncontrollably or to suffer intensely. Suddenly you notice that there are so many women, past and present, whom you owe an explanation, maybe an apology as well.

Charles Dambudzo Marechera and Charles Muzuva Mungoshi... the good old days

2011-10-02T09:05:00.001-07:00

Harare, June 1987, picture from Ernst Schade

Followers of Dr. Charles Mungoshi literature all over the world will be delighted to know that although he has not been feeling well for the past one year, a new book by the veteran writer (completed before he was taken ill)is soon to hit the streets! His family has decided to go it alone and publish his novel script called 'Branching Streams Flow In The Dark'. The typeset is ready. Those who would want to assist the family to publish this book can contact, Jesesi Mungoshi +263774054341, +263773616247, +263772634918 or email: themovietrain@gmail.com, info@cjmf.com thank you.

NoViolet is “with violet” at Cape Town’s Open Book Festival

2011-10-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

picture: Oliver Nyambi with Noviolet
Noviolet Bulawayo demystified myths surrounding her name at the recently held Open Book Festival – Free the PEN Reading in Cape Town. Speaking after a reading of some of her poems and a short story, the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing winner and author of the astonishing “Hitting Budapest” allayed fears that her name was an attention-seeking gimmick. The bubbling writer who also teaches Creative Writing at Cornell University in New York unpacked the etymology of “NoViolet – which she says is actually a combination of two words in two languages, isiNdebele and English, translating literally into “with violet”. NoViolet shared the stage with world renowned Trinidadian writer Earl Lovelace best known for his novel The Dragon Can’t Dance who, however, read from his recent hilarious novel Is Just a Movie. Also on stage with NoViolet was the Angolan Jose Eduardo Aqualusa whose chameleon narrator in his novel The Book of Chameleons left us itching for a copy. But it was NoViolet, young and armed with an amazing verbal artistry who stole the limelight and left no doubt that she is yet another big ‘thing’ to grace Zimbabwe’s literary scene from the diaspora. After her reading at the modestly packed Fugard Theatre, NoViolet socialised with Zimbabwean doctoral students at Stellenbosch University, Oliver Nyambi, Kizito Muchemwa, Faith Manyonga and Mickias Musiyiwa who were elated by her promise to unveil a novel and a memoir, soon. NoViolet’s short story is also part of the Caine Prize Shortlist Short Story anthology To See the Mountain and Other Stories. She will be in Zimbabwe over the end-of year festive season.
++By Oliver Nyambi, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

call to support Charles Mungoshi's new book

2011-09-28T03:33:00.000-07:00

Followers of Dr. Charles Mungoshi literature all over the world will be delighted to know that although he has not been feeling well for the past one year, a new book by the veteran writer (completed before he was taken ill)is soon to hit the streets! His family has decided to go it alone and publish his novel script called 'Branching Streams Flow In The Dark'. The typeset is ready. Those who would want to assist the family to publish this book can contact, Jesesi Mungoshi +263774054341, +263773616247, +263772634918 or email: themovietrain@gmail.com, info@cjmf.com thank you.

Mashingaidze Gomo takes his Congo war novel to the UZ

2011-09-22T03:42:00.003-07:00

picture: Mashingaidze Gomo)

As part of the ongoing University of Zimbabwe Arts Festival, Mashingaidze Gomo: author of 'A Fine Madness' and former Airforce of Zimbabwe gunner and helicopter technician will be talking about and reading from his Nama Award winning novel (which is based on his experiences in the recent Congo war.) He will be joined by Madlozi Moyo who has just published poems in 'Ghetto Diary and Other poems' at the university's Beit Hall on Friday 23 September 2011 from 8-10am. Entry is free!

Primrose Dzenga clashes with David Mungoshi

2011-09-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

Primrose Dzenga, author of 'Destiny in My Hands' and David Mungoshi, author of the prize-winning novel, 'The Fading Sun' will be reading and talking about writing on Thursday 22 September 2011 at the University of Zimbabwe's Beit Hall from 8-10:30am. This is part of the ongoing UZ Arts festival. Be there! Entry: free!

Tonight, 21 September: 5-8pm there will be the official opening of the UZ Arts festival at the university's Great Hall and writer Ignatius Mabasa will be guest speaker.Entry: free!

Zimbabwe Writers Association: news release

2011-09-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Shimmer Chinodya's boy is looking for his mother

2011-09-13T00:58:00.000-07:00

Title: TINDO’s QUEST
Author: Shimmer Chinodya
Publisher: Longman Zimbabwe, 2011
Isbn: 978-1-779-03492-2
Pages: 61
Reviewer: Memory Chirere

Prominent Zimbabwean writer Shimmer Chinodya has published yet another scintillating novel for young people, entitled Tindo’s Quest.

In this story, a twelve year old boy slowly realises that perhaps the woman whom he calls mother is not his real mother! Sadly, nobody in the family is prepared to tell him the truth. He pieces together scanty information and sets out on a solo and unauthorised search for his real mother. His resolve is unbreakable as it is nearly self destructive.

The journey takes this gangly boy across Zimbabwe. First he goes to Chegutu, to pick very vital information, and back to Harare. He does not go back home because he is now very inspired. He hitchhikes to Kriste Mambo and Bonda HighSchools where his mysterious mother could have attended, and back to Harare. He does not go back home because mother must be found. Finally he goes to Bulawayo by train.

The search becomes a fight!

The search for one Maybe Mhlanga takes Tindo through light and darkness. He eventually learns that both his real mother and his foster mother are women who have little choices in this life. His father, Shingi has made many mistakes in his life, one of which being not being able to tell the truth to the right people at the right time.

But because all this happen during the period of Zimbabwe’s recent economic meltdown, Tindo’s quest takes him to the depths of a society torn apart and characterised by deep ironies. Once in a while one’s luck runs low and sometimes one is helped out, ironically by street people, shebeen queens and women of the night. In this story suffering unites people and, strangely, love separates people.

This is a book for ordinary readers and for those into family law, culture, anthropoly and history. It is not easy to search for a woman whose identity continues to shift as you come closer and closer to her. Sometimes you are taken to the wrong woman. Then you begin to meet people who tell you that your description fits a certain woman across the road but her name is not Maybe Mhlanga! You come across people who say they saw the woman you are talking about a few days ago, but when you meet her, you discover that this is not Maybe Mhlanga! So the search continues and people in the Bulawayo townships get to know you ‘as the boy who is searching for his mother’ and your story touches all the gamblers, pimps and the police and the whole community joins in the search with you.

Shimmer Chinodya has been one of the most outstanding writers from among those who became prominent after Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. His writing tends to dwell on the young individual in the family in the fast changing times in Zimbabwe.

The literary community of Harare gathered at the Zimbabwe- Germany Society early this year to launch Shimmer Chinodya’s German translation of his 2007 Noma Award winning novel, Strife. The German version is called Zwietracht and was translated from English by Dr Manfred Loimeier under the Afrikawunderhorn series.

A veteran educationist, Shimmer Chinodya is close to children’s issues and is also an author of schools textbooks. His series called Step Ahead: New Secondary School English Course is read in nearly all-Zimbabwean schools. In 1995-1997 he was Visiting Professor in Creative Writing and African literature at St Lawrence University in the USA. He also holds an Honours Degree in English from the University of Zimbabwe and an MA in Creative Writing from Iowa. Tindo’s Quest will surely add a feather to Chinodya’s growing plumage.

Eve Nyemba's Look Within/Aus voller Seele

2011-08-30T06:19:00.001-07:00

Title: Look Within/Aus voller Seele
Author: Eve Nyemba
Publisher : kalliope paperbacks
Date: 2008
Isbn 978-3-9810798-6-9
Orders: www.kalliope-paperbacks.de

These poems in English and German ring with an unmistakable vitality of youth, searing passions and sweet-sad meditations. Of all known women’s poetry of Zimbabwe, Eve Nyemba comes closest to Kristina Rungano especially ‘A Storm Is Brewing’.

These poems are about love; as a woman searches for it or as she gets to know the colour of its brutal insides. These poems are about passionate and difficult men too. These poems are an attempt by the individual to look deeply into herself and take stock of how her mind works or not work. When you are there, you are in Kristina Rungano territory. There is that ability here, to pause and think about the small bricks that make up the huge fabric.

In ‘When Silence speaks’ you find a tattered woman who has had the worst of the ‘man’s world’. Abused, is the word. Deep pain, is her situation. She suffers in silence, and that disturbs. Eve Nyemba uses a dark shade to give the woman a Christ like figure because as she suffers in silence, there are depths in her that the external blows cannot reach. She comes across like many of Yvone Vera’s victim women, especially the sisters in the novel ‘The Stone Virgins’. Their mere presence, in spite of what they have gone through, leaves a discerning reader in awe.

But women need not be victims especially if they learn to ‘look within and find faith’. The poet invites the woman not to go beyond herself ‘out in the pounding rain’ for salvation. But the African woman is beautiful too with her hair ‘the colur of the dusty earth’ and should leave alone the body modifications like plastic surgery from the west.

But Nyemba can snoop well into the world of menfolk and see the other reality of men in the Third world. It is a ‘man’s world’ but how many men own that world? Sometimes, as in ‘Manchild’ men are also victims of various social forces that even they can lose control and cut very lonely, little and saddened images:

His shoulders are hunched
His steps falter
The load on his head
Drains him for reason

This is a man who becomes a father when he does not have the means. He is a castrated fellow, a fatherless father!

Sometimes it is the women who give one another a very raw deal. In ‘You think,’ a woman boasts of how she can take over another woman’s man. In Zimbabwe this husband stealer is known as ‘small house’. So the husband stealer boasts about how the poor man will always run away from the mansion to have a nice time with the small house in the ‘single quarters’.

But if one is looking for the Eve Nyemba philosophy, ‘The secret places’ is the poem:

The secret places of my heart
Exist in the corridors of love.
The secret places of my love
Lives in you.

Indeed, you and me. The secret that the world fails to uncover is Love. Of course, different forms of Love. We need to love and love properly is an idea that runs through these poems. But sometimes in these poems, Love is a tempest, ‘a ravaging vortex of a dust devil’ and when it fails to be consummated as in Consumed, the desire for the other becomes very overwhelming.

This is a collection for those who look for poetry that talks from the soul. Those who look for the secrets that only poets tend to see in every community.
Reviwer: Memory Chirere, University of Zimbabwe, Harare

All the world's a stage

2011-08-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

William Shakespeare - from As You Like It 2/7)

Dambudzo Marechera died today!

2011-08-18T05:53:00.000-07:00

Dambudzo Marehera died today 24 years ago.Must have been a Tuesday.

"Life is a series of minor and major explosions whose dying echo settles comfortably at the back of one's mind" House Of Hunger

"i dont hate being black, im just tired of saying its beautiful"

'Somewhere In This Country' now in Namibia

2011-08-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

If you are in Windhoek, find 'Somewhere In This Country' at the Van Schaik Bookstore at UNAM. Going for N$ 69.95. Tel: 00264612063364 or email vsunam@vanschaik.com

Lion Press books now available in Harare

2011-07-27T06:01:00.000-07:00

The Lion Press books are now available in Harare at; Innov8 Bookshop at 23 George Silundika Avenue(close to Herald House),the Bookshelf (Arundel village)and the Avondale bookshop. Mobile:00263772425387 Tel;00263764400 email: bookshop@innov8.co.zw

and many more!

Zimbabwe International Book fair: INDABA 2011 PROGRAMME

2011-07-24T01:42:00.000-07:00

THEME: “ BOOKS FOR AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT”

Venue: Crowne Plaza Monomutapa Hotel

25 JULY DAY ONE
08:15 to 08:30 Arrival & Registration: ZIBFA Secretariat
08.30 to09.00 Welcoming Remarks
Chair: Dr Xavier F Carelse, ZIBFA Executive Director
ZIBFA Chairperson Mr Musaemura Zimunya
09.00 to 10.00 Keynote Address:
Professor Helge Ronning “Books for Africa’s development”.
10.45 to 11.15 Tea break

11.15 to 12.00 Opening Ceremony
Chair: Dr Xavier F Carelse, ZIBFA Acting Executive Director
Norwegian Embassy, Culture Fund, British Council
Honourable Dr L Dokora, Dep. Min. of Education, Arts, Sport and Culture
Discussion
First Session Part One: Book Policy
Chair: Dr Xavier F Carelse, ZIBFA Acting Executive Director
12.00 to 12.30 Mr Kay Shiri “Book Policy: The key to development”
Discussion
First Session Part Two: Cultural Diversity
Chair: Mr Charles Geti
12.30 to 12.50 Dr Angelina Kamba “Cultural diversity:a creative force for development”
12.50 to 13.00 Discussion
13.00 to 14.00 Lunch

Second Session: Raising Social Awareness
Chair: Ms Maria Tsvere
14.00 to 14.20 Dr Emma Phiri “HIV and stigma”
14.20 to 14.40 Mr Milton Kamwendo “Books as an instrument to spur development”
!4.40 to 15.00 Dr Orseline Carelse “Herbs, nutrition and health”
15.00 to 15.30 Discussion
15.30 to 16.00 Tea break

Third Session: Getting Books to the People
Chair: Mr Samson Dube……………………………………..
16.00 to 16.20 Mrs Themba Malapila , “African librarianship in the 21st century”
16.20 to 16.40 Mrs Talent Nyathi.”Flying on the wings of my soul”
16.40 to 17.00 Mr Mukesh Kumar “International perspectives on Zimbabwean publishing”
17.00 to 17.30 Discussion
26 JULY DAY TWO
Fourth Session: Technology for the Challenged
Chair: Dr X F Carelse
09.00 to 09.20 Mrs Carla Leonardi “Technical aids for children with disabilities”
09.20 to 09.40 Mrs Hannah Maisiri
09.40 to 10.00 Sr Catherine Jackson and Nozipho Khanda “To be blind in Zimbabwe in a global
digital age
10.00 to 10.30 Discussion
10.30 to 11.00 Tea break

Fifth Session: Legal access to copyright and the threat of piracy
Chair: Mrs Sarah Moyo
11.00 to 11.30 Mr Greenfield Chilongo “Effective licensing models in literature”
11.30 to 12.00 Mr Cletus Ngwaru “Piracy and book development”
12.00 to 12.30 Discussion
12.30 to 14.00 Lunch

Sixth Session: Information Technology
Chair: Mr Fred Gweme
14.00 to 14.20 Mr Collence Chisita “Harnessing ICT to transform the roles of library professions
provision of library services”
14.20 to 14.40 Mr Thomas Gama “Freedom of information dissemination”
14.40 to 15.00 Dr Ron Braithwaite “e-books: Africa can leapfrog digital technology”
15.00 to 15.30 Discussion
1530 to 16.00 Tea break
Rapporteur’s Presentation
Chair: Dr Xavier F Carelse, ZIBFA Acting Executive Director
16.00 to 16.45 Mrs Josephine Muganhiwa “Rapporteur’s report”
16.45 to 17.30 Discussion
Closing of Indaba

18.00 to 20.00 Publishers’ Book Awards
+ The ZIBFA Indaba is an annual Conference which is the major forum for debating critical issues to the book industry in Africa. It is also a unique national platform for networking and collaboration among stakeholders

NoViolet Bulawayo wins 12th Caine Prize for African Writing

2011-07-13T07:49:00.001-07:00

Caine Prize Official Press Release:

Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled ‘Hitting Budapest’, from The Boston Review, Vol 35, no. 6 – Nov/Dec 2010.

The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday 11 July) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Hisham Matar said: “The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles. Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language.”

NoViolet Bulawayo was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She recently completed her MFA at Cornell University, in the US, where she is now a Truman Capote Fellow and Lecturer of English. Another of her stories, ‘Snapshots’, was shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN/Studzinski Literary Award. NoViolet has recently completed a novel manuscript tentatively titled We Need New Names, and has begun work on a memoir project.

Also shortlisted were:

Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from The Bed Book of Short Stories published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010

Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from Bad Company published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008

David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’, from The Mistress’s Dog: Short stories, 1996-2010 published by Picador Africa, 2010

Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010

The panel of judges is chaired by award-winning Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, whose first novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. His second novel, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published by Viking this March.

He is joined on the panel by Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, publisher, film and travel writer Vicky Unwin, Georgetown University Professor and poet David Gewanter, and the award-winning author Aminatta Forna.

Once again, the winner of the £10,000 Caine Prize will be given the opportunity to take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

Last year the Caine Prize was won by Sierra Leonean writer Olufemi Terry. As the then Chair of judges, Fiammetta Rocco, said at the time, the story was “ambitious, brave and hugely imaginative. Olufemi Terry’s ‘Stickfighting Days’ presents a heroic culture that is Homeric in its scale and conception. The execution of this story is so tight and the presentation so cinematic, it confirms Olufemi Terry as a talent with an enormous future.”

Previous winners include Sudan’s Leila Aboulela, winner of the first Caine Prize in 2000, whose new novel Lyrics Alley was published in January 2010 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, as well as Binyavanga Wainaina, from Kenya, who founded the well-known literary magazine, Kwani?, dedicated to promoting the work of new Kenyan writers and whose memoir One Day I Will Write About this Place will be published by Granta Books in November 2011.
Story courtesy of our sister blog,WEALTH OF IDEAS

Zimbabwe International BOOK Fair 2011

2011-07-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

Theme: BOOKS FOR AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT
The ZIBFA invites all interested parties to participate in the special six-day event as follows:
EXHIBITIONS venue: Harare Gardens, Julius Nyerere Way
Admissions Free!!! To the Exhibition, 28 July – 30 July 2011
Time: 1000 – 1700hrs.

INDABA CONFERENCE
venue: Crowne Plaza Hotel: By registration

Day 1: 25 July 2011 08:15 – 1700hrs
-Book Policy
-Providing Appropriate Reading materials for development,
-Books for social progress and Challenges of Access to books.

Day 2: 26 July – 08:30 -1700hrs
Technology for the challenged, Licence, copyright and the threat of piracy, Information technology, positives and negatives

YOUNG PERSONS INDABA!!
Reading, Writing and Literature for The Youth
Date: 27 July 2011 By Registration
0900 – 1700hrs at Crowne Plaza Hotel

WRITERS WORKSHOP!!
The Zimbabwean Writer and The Computer, The Future is Now.
Date: 30 July 2011 By invitation

LIVE LITERATURE CENTRE and Children’s Reading Tent
1000hrs-1600hrs 28 July-30 July 2011
ADMISSION FREE!!!

+++ For further details contact ZIBFA on: 04702104, 04704112, 04702129
Email: events@zibfa.org.zw

The Story of Zimbabwe International Book Fair

2011-07-07T00:34:00.001-07:00

Genitals are Assets: a full book review

2011-06-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

(Watch Ruparanganda)

Title: Genitals are Assets:
Subtitle: Sexual and Reproductive Behaviours of ‘Street Children’ of Harare, Zimbabwe, in the era of the Hiv and Aids Pandemic
Author: Watch Ruparanganda, Dphil
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011
Isbn: 978-3-8443-3080-9
Pp 303
++ Orders: info@lap-publishing.com
Reviewer: Memory Chirere, The Herald, 27 June 2011, p9.

Watch Ruparanganda’s book, Genitals Are Assets is extremely thought provoking and will make you want to laugh and cry at the same time. It explores the sexual and economic relations amongst the street children of Harare, Zimbabwe in a language that is effortless and compelling. This is a book for both the deep academics and ordinary readers. Underneath everything else, this book goes into important theoretical and methodological debates about power differentials between men and women in society

The author spent over fifteen months on the streets of Harare and the adjacent areas, slowly and carefully stalking, watching and listening to the street youths in order to understand their life styles and sexual behaviour and also to get to their individual life stories.

In many of the interviews, the youths who live in the open become so free and familiar that they refer to the author as ‘Big Dhara’, which is the Harare slang for boss. The author chats to them as they ‘work’, as they relax on the pavements and as they hang around the bars and the restaurants. They form a very deep sub culture with a well developed and clever language. For example, a street dweller is called mugunduru (one who sleeps anywhere, anyhow). Sexually transmitted diseases are called 'sikon’o'. Men with lots of money are called 'mhene'.

This is a groundbreaking book in that; while much research and writing has been done before on survival strategies of street children in Zimbabwe by the likes of M. Bourdillon, L. Dube and Y. Chirwa, little research had gone into exploring sexual encounters, dating, courtship and general romance conducted by street youths who are normally beyond the term child.

This book reads like a tragic-comedy, beginning with the origins of orphanage, destitution and street dwelling. Consider this: A girl from Zvishavane gets to Masvingo and during her second night at Mucheke bus terminus, two boys force themselves upon her. She resists all night by locking up her legs until the early hours when she gets exhausted and succumbs. When she flees to Harare, a fight ensues between two boys on who is to have her first. They do not bother if she consents. But as the boys are scrambling over her like that, an elderly destitute shoos them off, drags the girl behind the public toilet and the rest is history.

Even boys are not spared. One of them is sodomised at the age of eleven when he comes to live on the streets. He is quite bitter that the boy who molested him dies before he revenges. That culprit is swept away by stream waters during a heavy storm whilst sleeping in one of the city centre drainage canals.

It is clear to the author that sexual matters on the street are power issues. The street girls offer sex to men from mainstream society and to some destitute men in exchange for money, food, clothing and protection. They are not allowed to work or to openly associate with men other than those who ‘win’ them and begin to act as their husbands. But these are tough ‘marriages’ because often the men refuse to wear protection and are very brutal and uncompromising.

These youths who live in the fringes have some survival strategies too. For instance they believe that it is better to use herbs from the Mbare township and market to cure sexually transmitted diseases than to go to some public hospitals. They have what are called street ‘pharmacies’. Those who become very ill retire towards Mukuvisi River to rest, slow down and die, far away from the prying eye of the public.

But they also have various link with the bigger society because some bigger and more experienced boys are sometimes hired for sexual gratification by well to do lonely women in the leafy affluent suburbs whose spouses ignore them or have died of Aids or some natural causes or have gone to the diaspora. The youths are picked from designated points in the city at specific moments. The boys receive money, beer, clothes and other goodies. And those who seek pleasure from these people are from every class and race of society.

Maybe, the most exciting part of this book is the revelation that ritual sex has become rife in Harare! Businessmen pay young boys to have sex with prostitutes in hotels and harvest sperm in condoms for ritual purposes. Sperm is associated with regeneration of life and could be used to boost one’s business in terms of popularity, growth and profits. On being asked why they consent to this, one street boy says: ‘Big Dhara, a mugunduru is like a soldier. We are prepared for anything.’ Sometimes the street youths are taken to hotels in the avenues and are given new clothes in exchange of their old clothes with their sweat and dirt which are taken away for juju.

This is a very honest book which demonstrates the link between the sexual behaviour of street youths and the rest of society and provides a sound justification for arguing that there is need to adequately deal with both the Aids epidemic and the question of street youths. It is a book that all policy makers of the developing world need to read.

The author holds a Dphil in Social Sciences and currently he is the Chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Zimbabwe where he is a lecturer. His forthcoming book is called, Children With Adult Hearts which is about child headed households.

++ The author wishes to chat with you at mobile:00263773000080 0r wruparanganda@sociol.uz.ac.zw

WOMAN IN THE SHADOW

2011-06-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

Her voice, he had bound
He had strung, her voice
Her voice, he had strangled, strangled, strangled…
When she spoke of his
Binding, binding, binding her
When she spoke of his
Strangling, strangling, strangling her
He broke her voice with a pick axe …
Smashed her being … for years
Crushed her consciousness … for ages
And enslaved what remained of her spirit
Worked her hard by day
That his fields grew greener each year
Toiled her by night
That stout-limbed children were born
By the bound, strangled, crushed woman.

But one day in a hundred years
As a shadow she came
One day in a thousand years
She rose from her living death
And demanded back her voice
This one day, she spoke with the voice of freedom
The man heard the terror speak
In his mind he saw his green fields deserted
Weeds choking the rich green
Hunger … hunger crunching at his children’s health…
No… no… no…

Rope in hand, he flew at her
To bind, to strangle her again
But the shadow, the slave, the woman
Had unbound herself
Horror seized his reason
When he saw his one time slave-woman about to flee
In wild desperation he called for more rope
For more hands to bind her …
But the ropes, in their thickness
Had become too thin to bind her anymore
In her eyes were the spear and sword of her freedom
To him for the first time she said,
“I’m the woman you’ve been killing for ages, ages, ages …”

By Robert Muponde

**Robert Muponde is Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and Assistant Dean for International Affairs and Partnerships, Humanities, at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D in Childhood studies. Muponde is also Co-editor of numerous works, including Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture; Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera; and Manning the Nation: Father Figures in Zimbabwean Literature and Society.

Lecture at the South African boarder post, 2008

2011-06-21T23:41:00.000-07:00

You Zimbabwean fools
Go back across the boarder, quickly
fools!
You chased away your white men
and now you cross over here in such a hurry
to grab all our jobs and women!
Go back across the boarder, quickly
fools!
And stop chasing away your whites,
fools!
(by Memory Chirere)

Desire

2011-06-15T08:37:00.001-07:00

Desire is a fire that burns unattended
With nothing to burn-
Desire is a river that never runs dry
With no fish to swim in it.
Desire is the finest black fruit in
an unseen valley
With no one to pick.
Desire is the bluest sky
With no colourful wings to caress.
Desire is the itching in the heart
Scratching cannot cool that down.
Desire and its cousin dreams
Was all we had
being black and poor.
(by Garikai Kamanga)

enter Saiwe Chimbetu!

2011-06-08T12:06:00.001-07:00

(Sulumani Chimbetu and Saiwe Chimbetu: picture courtesy of the Chimanimani Arts festival)
During the 2010 Chimanimani Arts festival, Sulumani Chimbetu introduced her sister, Saiwe Chimbetu to the audience and they did a duet of their father's song, Samatenga. Boy, the sister can do all the Chimbetu moves. She can sing like Simon Chimbetu. She can whistle like Simon Chimbetu. She can do the Chimbetu jive- going east, going west and bobbing up and down! For me that moment was the climax to the festival. Am already looking forward to the 2011 version of the Chimanimani Arts festival!

Zimbabwe Writers Association elects substantive committee

2011-06-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

HARARE-On Saturday 04 June 2011, the Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA)
held its first elective Annual General Meeting at the Zimbabwe Film and
Television School. A seven member substantive executive committee was elected to run the affairs of the association for the next three years. They take over from an interim committee that had been in charge of the association since the umbrella writers' organisation was launched last year.

Veteran writer and university lecturer Musaemura Zimunya who had been the
chairman of the interim committee was retained. He will be deputised by
Zimbabwe Woman Writers' director Eresina Hwede. Tinashe Muchuri a young
writer with a long association with the Budding Writers Association of
Zimbabwe (BWAZ), was elected a secretary. Prominent motivational writer and
speaker Beatrice Sithole was retained as treasurer. Academic writer and
historian Karukai Ratsauka was voted in as the resource mobiliser. Prolific
writer, blogger and university lecturer Memory Chirere and poet/journalist
Dakarai Mashava were made committee members.

Speaking after his election, Zimunya thanked ZWA's funding partners in
particular the British Council, the Culture Fund, and the embassy of Spain
for being very supportive. "I would like to thank our funding partners for their generous support and the outgoing interim committee for being diligent in the execution of their ZWA duties at great personal expense".

Guest of honour at the event, veteran author, educationist, Dr. Thompson Tsodzo was the returning officer for the elections. The elections were graced by such prominent authors as Noma-award winner Shimmer Chinodya, National Arts Director Elvas Mari, Tawona Mtshiya,Virginia Phiri, Ignatius Mabasa and Samuel Makore, the chairman of Zimbabwe Academic and Non-Fiction Authors (ZANA).The objectives of ZWA include among many others promoting writing in all its forms and in all the languages of Zimbabwe and standing up for the rights and welfare of the Zimbabwean writer.For more information please contact [Musaemura Zimunya] by calling[0772334919], or e-mail [Musaemura] at [musaz@arts.uz.ac.zw]

ZIMBABWE WRITERS ASSOCIATION GENERAL ELECTION SATURDAY 4TH JUNE 2011- DETAILS

2011-06-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

I write to confirm that we are on schedule to hold the meeting and The Elections for the substantive Board to run the affairs of The Association. You are also reminded
that this is your occasion to nominate - and feel free to be nominated - competent, open-minded, dedicated and trustworthy individuals to direct the operations of The Association for the next THREE YEARS, in accordance with The Constitution:

Date: 4th June, 2011

Venue: Zimbabwe Film and Television School of Southern Africa,
(Along Mazowe Street between Parirenyatwa Hospital and S
African Embassy)

Agenda

08:30 Arrival and Registration

09:00 Welcome Note Dr R Zhuwarara

09:15 Introduction and Report Back,
Question and Answer, Announcements M.B. Zimunya & Committee

09:45 Tea Break

10:15 Elections Returning Officer DR T K Tsodzo

11:15 Vote of Thanks Executive Committee

11:25 Handover-Takeover

SPREAD THE WORD.

Musaemura B Zimunya
Chairperson, Interim Committe(ZWA)

Interim Committee of ZWA: Musaemura B Zimunya, Ms Primrose Dzenga, Ms
Beatrice Sithole, Mr Memory Chirere, Ms Karukai Ratsauka, Mr George
Mujajati, Mr Dakarai Mashava

'a woman grows on love' by Nyasha Mboti

2011-05-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

A Woman grows on love
(poem By Nyasha Mboti)

There is only
One way to love a woman
And that
Is to love her.

Love her like
She exists in a dream.

Love her
And give her unforgettableness
Unforgettable sweetness.

Ah, use your hands to find her
Bring her to your side
Give her gifts of fire.

Love a woman
Because she grows on love
She grows and grows
And you wonder at her ripeness.

Do not cheat a woman
Do not ask her things
That she cannot answer.

Do to a woman, love.
Do to a woman the good things
That are in a man
Do to her, love.

There is only
One way to love her
To reserve all your gentleness
For her
To conserve your manliness
To please her:
Then she will grow.

Remembering late writer, Reuben Pakaenda

2011-05-25T09:30:00.000-07:00

On 27 May 2008 I did an obituary on a young and very promising writer, Reuben Pakaenda. It was published by The Herald in Harare. This week I remember his passing on and I reproduce (below)the obituary as it was then. May his soul rest in peace.

Writer Pakaenda Dies
by Memory Chirere
Young writer Reuben Pakaenda has died. His friends in the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe (BWAZ) across the country will sorely miss him.

Rarely do young men and women leave their beer and fashion shows and hole themselves up in the lonely business of writing. Writing in Zimbabwe does not pay. It fares very badly when put against the lure of selling five litre pitchers of petrol by the road side.

But Reuben would not quit. He knew the power of art as a tool. In 2004, he eventually published 13 brilliant poems in the ZPH anthology called Zviri Muchinokoro Kunaka! alongside his heroes, Ignatius Mabasa and Chirikure Chirikure.

He wrote about the joys of friendship and the frailty of the human soul. The book is now on the Advanced Level school syllabus.

That publication gave Reuben intense joy and confidence. At writing workshops in Chiredzi, Mudzi, Abre Acres, Chinyaradzo . . . you would see the glitter in his eyes as he volunteered to perform new and old poems. He liked and respected the late great Mordekai Hamutyinei and loved to talk about his troubled relationship with the elderly poet. Well before he was through with his Ordinary Level studies, Reuben had written a letter to Hamutyinei in Gutu, asking if he could show him a collection of poems.

It is said Hamutyinei took out his red pen and marked Reuben's letter for spelling errors until it bled red and wrote on the flipside: "Kana muchivhiringa kunyora tsamba chaiyo, muchiri kure Changamire."

Reuben kept the letter all his life. He had learnt a lesson that all young writers learn in the long run. The need to perfect one's art. Now a published young writer, Reuben never looked back. You would see him with novels like Jekanyika, Kutonhodzwa KwaChauruka, Feso, Tambaoga Mwanangu and many more.

He wanted to specialise on the old world novel, he said. Three days after his burial, a local publisher said they had received an old world novel manuscript from one Reuben Pakaenda entitled Hameno Kuti Sei. It is a well neatly typed and bound script in a folder with cream seams.

Reuben knew that good writers are wide readers. He liked Mungoshi's Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva especially moments when Rex Mbare introspects.

He liked Steibeck's Tortilla Flats and The Grapes of Wrath. On his deathbed at Parirenyatwa he said he had discovered Hemingway's Old Man and The Sea. He talked about the old man's famous question: When I was away, was I missed? Reuben liked the struggle between man and fish in that story. We told Reuben that he was now like the old man in the story and must talk to the "disease" so that he could get well and come out of hospital. But that was the last time we talked books with him. He died on Friday May 16 just before the evening's visiting's hour.

His closest friend and fellow writer, Tinashe Muchuri says towards the end of his life Reuben had developed a kind of responsible haste especially where his writing was concerned.

Friends at Sharon School in Milton Park where he worked as a clerk receptionist, say he was an understanding man who loved the arts in general.

And when the largely Christian gathering almost forbade Trust Mutekwa from playing the mbira at the funeral, Reuben's mother helped out and doused the altercation.

"Gwenyambira, mwanangu, huya zvako uridze mbire," she said amid laughter and celebration.

As mbira played her mother cried out: "Ndizvo zvaaida izvozvi mwana wangu." As Mutekwa played you looked in the fire and the winter night resonated with mbira.

Reuben will be remembered for his never-die attitude to life and his art. BWAZ workshops will never be the same without him. He believed in its founding concept and whenever he stood up to make remarks, he would speak with animation and the director, Dudziro Nhengu's voice would ring out with caution, "Ndakunzwa Reuben. Thank You Reuben".

He would go out into the lobby to take a quick cigarette.

Reuben Pakaenda is survived by his wife Joyce Gwiza. He was buried in Hoyuyu Resettlement scheme in Mutoko.

Genitals Are Assets

2011-05-19T07:32:00.001-07:00

A stimulating and provocative new book on sexual behaviour patterns of the street youths of Harare, Zimbabwe. The author, Watch Ruparanganda, holds a Phd in Social Anthropology. He is a lecturer in the department of Sociology of the University of Zimbabwe where he is the current chairperson. He spent sometime on the streets of Harare, observing and relating with the street youths who live and sleep in the open. This book reads like a tragic-comedy, beginning with the origins of orphanage, destitution and street dwelling. The book was published by Lambert Academic Publishing in Germany. Order: info@lap-publishing.com
The author wishes to chat with you at mobile:00263773000080 0r wruparanganda@sociol.uz.ac.zw

The inimitable Linda Gabriel!

2011-05-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Linda Gabriel performing the poem below at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa)a fortnight ago.

Swedera Pedyo Neni
(by Linda Gabriel)

Ko nhai mudiwa
zvakaipei kana ndikati:
Swedera pedyo neni?
Uswedere pedyo kuti undipewo
Zvako zviya zvegore rakapera,
mwedzi wakapfura,
vhiki rakapera
Kunyangwe nanhasi mangwanani
muimba yekubikira
Undibate zvinyoro nyoro,
zvakaporera,
zvine unyanzvi
Zvinotekenyedza,
zvonozipa,
zvinodakadza

Zvakaipei kana ndikati swedera pedyo neni
Undibate zvako zviya zvamazuva ose?
Ini ndinonyatsobvuma
Muviri wose wodairira
Makumbo nemaoko zvobvunda
Hana yorova sendinomhanyiswa

Saka zvakaipei
kana ndikati swedera pedyo neni?
Nyatsoswedera,
chipfuva chako chive pane changu
Mazamu angu neako ave mapatya
Ndoda kuti hana yangu irove
pamusoro peyako
Maoko ako onyatsotamba pamuviri wangu
Uchizevezera nyaya dzerudo
munzeve dzangu
Uchinyatsozuwa kuti uchandiita sei
Ini ndichinyatsoteerera
nekunyerekedzwa.

Saka zvakaipei
kana ndikati
swedera pedyo neni?

Zimbabwe's latest thriller novel!

2011-05-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

This is a thriller in 13 chapters by new author, Violet Masilo and published by the Zimbabwe Women Writers.It is highly engaging!It is written in a simple and at times earthy language that you will be able to identify with. The text explores the lives of four city girls of the fast lane;Anne, Heather, Joylee and Catherine. Thy often meet at the Tea Cosy, a place famed for its drinks and the music. The place also has got a cosmopolitan hue where people of different races and the ‘yuppie’are found. From the Tea Cosy, we tend to get the lives of the four ladies through their thought patterns, in the fashion of a stream of consciousness that is individualistic. The individualistic voices then pour onto a communal voice. Never mind my use of ‘communal’ in this regard because there is a lot of subversion, intrigue, individualistic cunning and craftiness.

At the centre of the narrative is a case of culpable homicide. Steve is killed by Heather and Catherine. In the documentation of this crime we tend to get resonates of Sigmund Freud’s theory.In this case Catherine is quick to get into a rage of fury due to an attempted rape suffered at a tender age. Also, Steve had been sodomised by a Nigerian neighbor in Europe and in return he vents vengeance on the society starting with sexually abusing Mrs Gwen’s daughter in Europe.Still related to crime, Steve becomes a drug addict and together with Farai they dabble in cocaine, etc. It also takes the esoteric gift of Ma Sibanda to point directly to Joylee that she aborted three times in her life. This is a sick society. Corruption is captured from the level of the individual and this in turn corrodes the society.Each of these women here has great style. She knows how to reward a good man. She knows how to take down a brute and more important, how to move on into the setting sun, in search of love, treasure, trust and fulfilment.(Taken from Edwin Mhandu's review)
++For orders Tel:00263712525228 email:bwpzim@yahoo.com

Crime in Alice Walker's works

2011-05-04T11:14:00.000-07:00

Published and distributed by Lambert Academic Publishers in Germany (info@lap-publishing.com), this insightful book explorers the portrayal of crime in Alice Walker’s works especially The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Meridian, In Love and Trouble, You can’t Keep a Good Woman Down and The Colour Purple. Alice Walker captures a wide range of crimes such as rape, incest, theft murder, public fighting, infanticide, domestic violence, among others.

The author, Edwin Mhandu lectures in Literature in the Department of English, University of Zimbabwe. He insists that the definition of morality and crime in the US is a product of the Puritanical values of its founding fathers and is skewed against black people and that by some scantily defined logic, the Blackman is projected as the driving force behind women’s indulgence in prostitution, adultery and extra marital affairs.In any case, Mhandu argues,the portrayal of black women as prostitutes and adulteresses feeds onto the canon of the black bitch stereotypes created by Caucasian America.

Shimmer Chinodya launches ZWIETRACHT

2011-04-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

(picture: Shimmer Chinodya)
The literary community of Harare gathered last night at the Zimbabwe- Germany Society to launch Shimmer Chinodya’s German translation of his 2007 Noma Award winning novel, Strife. The German version is called Zwietracht and was translated from English by Dr Manfred Loimeier under the Afrikawunderhorn series.

The Noma Award for Publishing in Africa is considered the most prestigious literary award in Africa. Published by Weaver Press in Harare, Strife has moved the frontiers of the Zimbabwean novel in the ways in which it explores individual turmoil from inside of the nucleus family. The concept of ngozi (the avenging spirit) is explored in far greater detail than what has occurred in any Zimbabwean creative writing in English. Part of the citation of the Noma jury goes: ‘… the brilliance of this powerful and haunting story, in notably innovative form, brings a new dimension to African writing.’

In her introductory remarks German student, Franziska Kramer described Strife as ‘a family epic’, insisting that it will remind German readers of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrocks.

Shimmer Chinodya has been one of the most outstanding writers from among those who became prominent after Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. His writing tends to dwell on the individual in the family in the fast changing times in Zimbabwe.

Simmer Chinodya was born in Gweru in 1957. His first novel, Dew In The Morning(1982) is about Godi’s parents leaving town for the rural areas where Godi undergoes a lot of transformation as he observes the rural community’s life and its reliance on the forces of the changing seasons. Godi tries to come to terms with the witchcraft, ghosts and all the materials that erupt from the underworld.

In Farai’s Girls (1984), Chinodya delves into teenage hood. Farai is a teenager, who like other teenagers’ is growing up to the knowledge of the dictates of his passions. Every girl that Farai dates becomes a school.

In Child of War (19850), written under the pseudonym, Ben Chirasha, Chinodya explores a young man’s involvement in the Zimbabwe’s liberation war of the 1970’s liberation. But his more powerful and maybe more thrilling war novel is Harvest of Thorns (1989). The craftsmanship portrayed here is very high. It is, maybe, Zimbabwe’s most exciting book on the war of liberation by a non combatant writer. Harvest of Thorns put Chinodya on the literary map by winning him The Common Wealth Prize for Literature (Africa Region) in 1990.

Chinodya’s short story book, Can we Talk and Other stories (1989) demonstrates Chinodya’s ultimate maturity as a creative writer. Here you find stories that delve on what happens to the human soul as one grows up, as one relates further than one’s father and mother and as one queries success or failure. This collection employs various literary techniques that had never been employed by any Zimbabwean author.

Tale of Tamari (2004) is a novel for young people. A 14-year-old girl’s parents have died and she is left with brother, Kuda in a house with various lodgers. Their greedy uncle constantly eyes the rent money and the house itself and the struggles between him and the orphans span the whole book. This is arguably the first creative work in Zimbabwe on HIV/AIDS which does not harp endlessly on how to die or not die from AIDS.

In (2005) Chinodya published a novel called Chairman of Fools. It became a real curiosity on the Zimbabwean scene because it dwells on an unusual subject, dementia. A prominent scholar slides into madness when he fails, among other things, to manage his success and to keep in touch with the aspirations and desires of his own wife and children.

Shimmer Chinodya is also an author of schools textbooks. His series called Step Ahead: New Secondary school English Course is read in nearly all-Zimbabwean schools. In 1995-1997 he was Visiting Professor in Creative Writing and African literature at St Lawrence University in the USA. He also holds an Honours Degree in English from the University of Zimbabwe and an MA in Creative Writing from Iowa. Strife is the second of Chinodya’s book to be translated into the German after Harvest of Thorns.
(Essay by Memory Chirere)

Petina Gappah

2011-04-08T08:40:00.001-07:00

Photo: Sarah Lee

TUE 12 April 2011, 5.30-7pm,Harare, Book Cafe Literary discussion: ‘READING IN ZIMBABWE’ – Award-winning writer, PETINA GAPPAH, Ian Holding, Daniel Mandishona and Blessing Musariri discuss the importance and pleasure of reading and explore how Zimbabwe can truly become a literate country. Presented by the Harare City Library and Pamberi Trust. (Information obtained from the Book Cafe)

Be There!

A rare photo of Marechera and Mungoshi from Ernst Schade

2011-04-03T03:57:00.000-07:00

'Destiny In My Hands' by Primrose Dzenga

2011-03-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

(photo:Primrose Dzenga)
Title: Destiny In My Hands
Author:Primrose Dzenga
Publisher: Salmonpoetry, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-907056-55-0
Page Count: 72
(A review by Memory Chirere)
Primrose Dzenga’s poetry collection, Destiny In My Hands is about women’s reflections on their passionate love and sometimes hate and hurt relationships with men. To read it is to snoop and listen to a woman’s heartbeat and passions. You come away with the knowledge that to relate is to invest and to risk.

At this point I want to restate what I wrote and published in 2006 about Shona women’s love poems in Shona: ‘While the traditional Shona woman had the latitude to compose and perform love poetry specifically for her man in bed (madanha), the modern Shona woman of the written word tends to avoid, in several ways, writing fully fledged love poems in the Shona language. After observing some of the key Shona poetry collections, one clearly notes that love poems written in Shona by women, avoids explicit references to ‘women in love’. Most of these poems are very rarely from a woman’s point of view. In the very few poems that portray women in love, there are usually no in depth and meaningful explorations of the love of women for their men.’

But Primrose Dzenga has fearlessly joined the few brave Zimbabwean voices of Kristina Rungano and Eve Nyemba in writing about how a woman in love (and outside love) feels. The themes of power and political violence appear to have been overplayed in contemporary Zimbabwean literature.

In ‘If he made love’ a man skilfully plays an instrument at a public gathering that the woman persona, gawking at him from the crowd, wishes she were the instrument in his very able hands:

‘If he made love,
With such joy and abandon
Tenderness and care
If he caressed
Velvety feverish caresses
Like he did the cords,
Sweet cords of his piano…’

For me, this could be one of the best love poems to come out of Zimbabwe, if it is finally agreed that it is a love poem! It is both direct and indirect.The woman is transfigured by both the music and the intimate way in which the unsuspecting man musician plays the instrument. This is in tune with Shona folklore where a man wins a woman by playing the drum from morning to sunset and a woman wins a man by dancing until she sinks into the ground beneath her and until water pours from the crater that her dancing feet have dug.

The Shona admire such arts to the extent that such a mythical girl is known to this day as Jikinya (the inimitable dancer who stamps the earth with her feet). In ‘Illusions’ the persona bemoans the dearth of true love of the old world. Men of today ‘do not kiss, they bite’ and ‘they do not caress but scratch’. Inversely, the maidens of old: ‘saw the beauty in a man’s eyes’ and ‘the depth and need of a man’s heart’.

In keeping with the old world, you find out that twilight, night, midnight and dawn are important in Dzenga’s poems. Darkness is surely the colour of love. In the village of old, night is the moment for half hidden faces of lovers in true passion, dance and ritual. It is time for truthful and undivided reflection:

‘I think of you at midnight
I dream of you awake at dawn
Conversations in mystic tongue
Lie pearly jewels between you and me’

‘Broken sentences’ is a poem in which a roguish man of today is enmeshed in his roles as woman-basher and senseless ravisher of women. During the moment of the poem, he is finally running away from the innocent woman he has just murdered. But the woman is everywhere; in his impish thoughts, in the beer mug in front of him and in his running legs. He has defeated her but his victory over her is not victory. It is a journey into doom because to kill a woman is to kill your mother and to kill the source. In the Shona world, fighting a woman or one’s mother is like falling into an abyss where you tumble endlessly, hitting against the walls of the tunnel as you descend, and your anguish cries reminding the world of the folly of raising your hand against Mother. And such is the tragedy of action without conscience.

And yet Dzenga suggests that it is not always easy and safe for a woman to give her heart to a man. And when she finally does, as in ‘Whisper’, it is with a sense of sacrificial surrender to fate and the unknown, because he has capacity either to cause her a terrible joy or to walk away with her destiny in his hands.

Sometimes a woman desperately falls for a man and at this point, she wants him to declare his love and set her and him free:

‘Whisper my love, whisper, I need to know
So free and homeward bound I can set and glide
Free my herat and soul the core of me
I am bound and stuck by your magic’

Primrose Dzenga’s poetic voice comes from a little hole on the top of a hill, rolling down fast and sometimes, haltingly towards your waiting ear. Very beautiful and nasty. All in all, these poems shock you with the insistent suggestion that the woman’s heart has twin capacities; to love uncontrollably or to suffer intensely. Suddenly you notice that there are so many women, past and present, whom you owe an explanation, maybe an apology as well.

Harare!

2011-03-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

Ah, to be back in Harare!

Pane chimwe chinhu chiri muzita rinonzi Harare chete. Pane chimwe chinhu chinoita kuti wava muHarare ukanganwe twese twawabva wakaronga kumusha kwako. Pane nyemwe rinongouya, nyemwe rinenge shave reurombe, rinongokuti kwindi waera wati kwiti muHarare... Kana wavaonekana navo (kune imwe nzvimbo)masikati akare iwayo, vanobva vaita sawaive navo gore rakapera... Charles MUNGOSHI,1975.

I pick another NAMA!

2011-02-20T01:36:00.000-08:00

News from Zimbabwe is that last night, my latest book, Toriro and His Goats, won a NAMA award in the Children's Literature category.I am in Namibia at the moment and my wife, Edith and our daughter, Shasha stood in for me.Many thanks to my publisher, Sarudzai Chifamba Barnes of Lion Press in the UK, for such a wonderful children's book. The National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA)is Zimbabwe’s biggest arts awards event. This is my third NAMA award. I won alongside the Zimbabwe Women Writers (ZWW)in the Outstanding Fiction category in 2006 with Totanga Patsva,a short story book that i compiled and edited for ZWW (I love you, dear friends). I won again in 2009 in the Children's Literature category with Tudikidiki, a collection of short stories published by Priority Publishing who are based in Harare, Zimbabwe.This, my third NAMA, is dedicated to my family and many friends in the Zimbabwe writing fraternity. Imiwe-e, munendipasa manyemwe!

I must also congratulate a dear comrade, Mashingaidze Gomo, for winning in the Outstanding Fiction category with apparently his bebut novel, A Fine Madness, published by Ayebia Clarke in the UK. Zvinoda kutendwa, baba!

Chekhov, Oh Chekhov!

2011-02-04T02:24:00.000-08:00

The Death of an Officer
By Antony Chekhov
ONE fine evening, a no less fine government clerk called Ivan Dmitritch Tchervyakov was sitting in the second row of the stalls, gazing through an opera glass at the Cloches de Corneville. He gazed and felt at the acme of bliss. But suddenly. . . . In stories one so often meets with this "But suddenly." The authors are right: life is so full of surprises! But suddenly his face puckered up, his eyes disappeared, his breathing was arrested . . . he took the opera glass from his eyes, bent over and . . . "Aptchee!!" he sneezed as you perceive. It is not reprehensible for anyone to sneeze anywhere. Peasants sneeze and so do police superintendents, and sometimes even privy councillors. All men sneeze. Tchervyakov was not in the least confused, he wiped his face with his handkerchief, and like a polite man, looked round to see whether he had disturbed any one by his sneezing. But then he was overcome with confusion. He saw that an old gentleman sitting in front of him in the first row of the stalls was carefully wiping his bald head and his neck with his glove and muttering something to himself. In the old gentleman, Tchervyakov recognised Brizzhalov, a civilian general serving in the Department of Transport.

"I have spattered him," thought Tchervyakov, "he is not the head of my department, but still it is awkward. I must apologise."

Tchervyakov gave a cough, bent his whole person forward, and whispered in the general's ear.

"Pardon, your Excellency, I spattered you accidentally. . . ."

"Never mind, never mind."

"For goodness sake excuse me, I . . . I did not mean to."

"Oh, please, sit down! let me listen!"

Tchervyakov was embarrassed, he smiled stupidly and fell to gazing at the stage. He gazed at it but was no longer feeling bliss. He began to be troubled by uneasiness. In the interval, he went up to Brizzhalov, walked beside him, and overcoming his shyness, muttered:

"I spattered you, your Excellency, forgive me . . . you see . . . I didn't do it to . . . ."

"Oh, that's enough . . . I'd forgotten it, and you keep on about it!" said the general, moving his lower lip impatiently.

"He has forgotten, but there is a fiendish light in his eye," thought Tchervyakov, looking suspiciously at the general. "And he doesn't want to talk. I ought to explain to him . . . that I really didn't intend . . . that it is the law of nature or else he will think I meant to spit on him. He doesn't think so now, but he will think so later!"

On getting home, Tchervyakov told his wife of his breach of good manners. It struck him that his wife took too frivolous a view of the incident; she was a little frightened, but when she learned that Brizzhalov was in a different department, she was reassured.

"Still, you had better go and apologise," she said, "or he will think you don't know how to behave in public."

"That's just it! I did apologise, but he took it somehow queerly . . . he didn't say a word of sense. There wasn't time to talk properly."

Next day Tchervyakov put on a new uniform, had his hair cut and went to Brizzhalov's to explain; going into the general's reception room he saw there a number of petitioners and among them the general himself, who was beginning to interview them. After questioning several petitioners the general raised his eyes and looked at Tchervyakov.

"Yesterday at the Arcadia, if you recollect, your Excellency," the latter began, "I sneezed and . . . accidentally spattered . . . Exc. . . ."

"What nonsense. . . . It's beyond anything! What can I do for you," said the general addressing the next petitioner.

"He won't speak," thought Tchervyakov, turning pale; "that means that he is angry. . . . No, it can't be left like this. . . . I will explain to him."

When the general had finished his conversation with the last of the petitioners and was turning towards his inner apartments, Tchervyakov took a step towards him and muttered:

"Your Excellency! If I venture to trouble your Excellency, it is simply from a feeling I may say of regret! . . . It was not intentional if you will graciously believe me."

The general made a lachrymose face, and waved his hand.

"Why, you are simply making fun of me, sir," he said as he closed the door behind him.

"Where's the making fun in it?" thought Tchervyakov, "there is nothing of the sort! He is a general, but he can't understand. If that is how it is I am not going to apologise to that fanfaron any more! The devil take him. I'll write a letter to him, but I won't go. By Jove, I won't."

So thought Tchervyakov as he walked home; he did not write a letter to the general, he pondered and pondered and could not make up that letter. He had to go next day to explain in person.

"I ventured to disturb your Excellency yesterday," he muttered, when the general lifted enquiring eyes upon him, "not to make fun as you were pleased to say. I was apologising for having spattered you in sneezing. . . . And I did not dream of making fun of you. Should I dare to make fun of you, if we should take to making fun, then there would be no respect for persons, there would be. . . ."

"Be off!" yelled the general, turning suddenly purple, and shaking all over.

"What?" asked Tchervyakov, in a whisper turning numb with horror.

"Be off!" repeated the general, stamping.

Something seemed to give way in Tchervyakov's stomach. Seeing nothing and hearing nothing he reeled to the door, went out into the street, and went staggering along. . . . Reaching home mechanically, without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and died.

Ethel Irene Kabwato, Blessing Musariri, Fungai Rufaro Machirori and Joice Shereni

2011-01-20T04:45:00.000-08:00

Title: Sunflowers in Your Eyes – Four Zimbabwean Poets
Editor: Menna Elfyn
Publisher: Cinnamon Press
ISBN: 978-1-907090-13-4
Year: 2010
Reviewed by Memory Chirere
89pages
These four women poets of Zimbabwe in this collection are young. Ethel Irene Kabwato, Blessing Musariri, Fungai Rufaro Machirori and Joice Shereni are poets who belong to the contemporary working class of Zimbabwe. It means that all of them are decision makers and amongst them you may find a mother, sister, wife or friend of someone big or small in Zimbabwe. They variably write about individual scapes. They write about woman’s love for man who usually does not return the favour in equal measure. They write about their country (Zimbabwe) at a time of deep political strife. Each of these women answers, in her own way, to the questions: what does a woman want? What is love? What is country?

Fungai Machirori’s is a questing poetry, sometimes demanding, and praying too, for the restoration of the dignity of woman. Machirori’s persona insists that she is:

…not ketchup,
to be had on the side,
Along with a main course

She wants to be the main meal itself because she is ‘distinct and complete’. Fungai Machirori could be the most ideologically nuanced poet in this collection. She creates balance between suffering and hope and one is reminded of David Diop, the Senegalese poet. Sometimes Machirori’s poetry is about resurrection from a fall or the contemplation on it. Her persona, a radical feminist cries out: ‘No man is worth fighting for’ and ‘no man is worth dying for’, too. And if a genuine man’s love is hard to come by, she says:

I’d rather wrap cold chains and iron locks
Around the throbbing core of me
And watch and let my fetters grate and rust and cool
My blood

Machirori has no regrets and she writes with a clear certainty of those who are used to traveling until they arrive at destinations. Her other poem is even boldly entitled ‘Tears Will Not Cure’.

But Joice Shereni writes for matrimony. She does not give up on anything. Hers are probably the deepest poems in this collection, compelling and conversational. Her persona wants to reach out, to converse and reconcile with the runaway man and heal from old wounds. She hurts very deeply from inside. Suffering is not a curse but a school. It is even a career. She knows how fire burns. But she also does not want to lose control. ‘Should I let myself need you?’ she asks in ‘Destiny’. In ‘Hunters’ she feels that when you are an object of pity, you become naked until you run for cover like Adam and Eve. Shereni addresses man out there who doesn’t know how to be husband. Any man who participates in the humiliation of woman is also humiliating himself, seems to be the philosophy here.

Blessing Musariri’s poetry has lots of room, literal and metaphorical. She writes maybe the most transcendental poetry of the four, causing collocation of time and place. She is carefully laid back, edgeless like fog and reminiscent too. You find that in ‘Last Goodbye’. Musariri is a calm day that promises to be hot right there in the morning. She can also be as treacherous as honey! Because her lines pretend to wonder about, when in fact, they gather up bits and pieces to brew a final whirlwind effect as in ‘Breaking News’ and in ‘Related’. Her prose poetry is sometimes deliciously dreamy:

Daytime flights are dangerous because you see the place you might land should you chance to fall. Here among rolling clouds my thoughts meander- this is as close to snow as I as I’ll get today, as close to you- standing in the foyer, laughing about how your father bought you an Easter egg for your birthday. A glass of wine with lunch has aroused my fancy- touching cool glass as I have touched your face. High in this blue sky, in nothing else but sky, I am further than I have ever been from you.

Ethel Kabwato’s haiku are better than all that she writes here. There is especially the very short poem ‘Hate’ which goes:

So consuming
like uncontrolled
veld fire.

Or the other one called ‘Painting’:

Show me that painting
again
of happy children
playing.

But Kabwato’s political persona is a rock with a jagged edge. She goes deep to the jagular vein, as violent sometimes as Zimbabwean politics. She shouts at what she sees as betrayal of the nation by its own politicians. She writes the most tumultuous poetry in this collection, pricking you especially where the heart is supposed to be. Kabwato has no faith in the nation’s history or its institutions for she thinks that they are only full of political mobs. You travel down her lines and discover that she actually has faith in the individual conscience that registers and registers and registers the misdemeanors of those with power, reminding you of Charles Mungoshi’s friend in Waiting For the Rain, who is being buried alive, ‘minding the sand no more’.

This is a collection to remember; crispy, inspired and sparsely put together for readers who hate melodrama and verbosity.

Contemporary african literature: call for essays

2011-01-15T23:40:00.001-08:00

New and young poets from different African countries performing together an improvised piece at a recent SADC Poetry festival in Gaborone.

Call for Essays
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN LITERATURE:
THEMATICS AND CRITICISM (2011)
To be Edited by
J. K. S. Makokha (Free University of Berlin, Germany)
&
Leonard Acquah (University of Cape Coast, Ghana)
We are seeking critical essays for a new edited volume on major works of African literature by new writers emerging after 2000 or by established writers but published after 2000AD. Contemporaries of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Ngugi represent the two age groups of African writers. We are interested precisely in new critical essays focusing on themes and thematics in the new works of these two writers and/or their African contemporaries across the continent or living in Diaspora.
The first decade of the 21st Century has just ended affording critics with the window for retrospection needed in order to ensure objectivity in our critical enterprise as set out in the intention of this project. The aim of this celebratory collection of new essays is to offer emergent critical perspectives on the concerns highlighted in the exciting new literary output of African writers after the fin de siècle. The works under study should be in English or in other Afrophone or Europhone languages with English translations.
The contributions should be original and couched in relevant and current theories and frameworks of literary interpretation. Essays on new African literature that are related to the broad focus of the collection (i.e. theory of literature) and move beyond specific cases in an attempt to expand the discussion within a theoretical perspective are highly encouraged; the role of African literature or writers can be two good points of such a broad focus. Contributions are invited on essays that explore any of the following topics/themes/ideas in prose, poetry or play genres. Moreover, we explicitly invite contributions on topics or thematics not mentioned below but still fitting under this book project title above:

1. Representing the Diaspora
2. Gender
3. Memory and Hybridity
4. Cultural translation
5. Borderland subjectivities
6. Translocation and multilocality
7. Migration and nomadology
8. Multicultural and/or multilingual writing (narratives)
9. Traveling Selves
10. Maps and Mapping
11. Postmodernism and Postcolonialism
12. Genre Criticism
13. Politics of Writing/ Cultural Politics
14. Democracy and Governance
15. African Renaissance and new Pan-Africanism
16. Urbanization and Cosmopolitanism

NB: Send us a short abstract of 300 words via the email adds below by February 14, 2011

JKS Makokha - makokha@zedat.fu-berlin.de copy to jksmakokha@yahoo.com and
Leonard Acquah – leoacquah@yahoo.com

The book will be published in 2012. Kindly note the important dates below:

1. February 14 – February 28, 2011 – Assessment and Selection of Abstracts.
2. March 1, 2011 – Notification of Acceptance.
3. March 5, 2011 - July, 5 2011 – Writing and Submission of Article.
4. July 5, 2011 – August, 5 2011 – Blind Peer Review Process.
5. August 5, 2011 – October 5, 2012 – Revision of Articles in line with Peer Review Reports.
6. October 6, 2011 – Deadline of Submission of revised articles.
7. December 5, 2011 – Submission of Complete Book Manuscript to Publishers.

The formatting guidelines will be sent on March 1, 2011 to the authors of the selected abstracts.

writer Julius Chingono dies

2011-01-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

KUDZAI (by Julius Chingono)
Kudzai when your first birthday passed
Without a word
Without a symbol
You kept quiet
And when your second passed
Without a present
Without a party
You kept quiet
But when your third birthday passed
You made your own car
A mud car you drove around
Making your own world
Marking your life with care
At the closed gate of privileges.

** Famba zvakanaka mudhara wangu

some more African Stories brought to you by Dike Okoro

2010-12-30T01:42:00.000-08:00

Dike Okoro(ed):Speaking For The Generations: An Anthology of Contemporary African Short Stories, 2010, Trenton, Africa World Press, pp218, isbn: 1-59221-719-2
Speaking For The Generations (edited by Dike Okoro) reminds me of this sharp but inexplicable feeling that I have had since coming across Grace Ogot’s and Barbra Kimenye’s short stories many years ago. I have always appreciated the enduring quality of an African story that can be detected even when rendered in non African languages. It is about the uncanny ability to tell a story in a very simple way, without the inhibition of jawbreakers and complex plots. The story depends on the narrator's belief that what he is telling is no story but reality itself, as you find here for example in Akoli Penoukou's The Fury of The ancestors. A feeling that you are listening to this story by the fireside, with the owls hooting a mile away.

My Mother Dances in The Night by Jackee Budesta Batanda is my best story in this book. It is a swinging story which ends up rolling and tumbling like blues and jazz. A mother practices her dances in the night, unaware of her child's eye. She is both a spook and a jilted woman, and you wonder why women with souls like hers tend to float by themselves in this life. This story reminds me of Langston Hughes whose short-shorts I carry everywhere I go.

These African short-short stories trickle like threads of streams, rolling down the rocky hill like tears, and the bus you are driving in will not stop to allow you a closer look: A dead father visits a suffering child to deliver useful counsel and the poor boy cannot tell if this is dream or reality. A woman thinks that there is something in her that all the black men in her life fail to get to. A crippled man tries to tell his son that human beings will never be able to fly and that they have always wanted to fly.

Then if you are interested in issues Zimbabwean, you may not avoid Emmanuel Sigauke’s A Long Night and Eresina Hwede’s Doomsday.

In Joseph Obi’s Just A Moment, an African man is surprised that he is dying in a huge European airport public and no one will notice! You want to laugh at this story but you end up tittering uncomfortably because death is neither near nor far.

After reading one or two, or three (of these 48 stories from across Africa), you may want to look for an easy chair and decide to spend a day indoors, with this effortless book from AFRICA!

Dambudzo Marechera's 'dissertation' on language

2010-12-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

Language is like water. You can drink it. You can swim in it. You can drown in it. You can wear a snorkel in it. You can flow to the sea in it. You can evaporate and become invisible with it. You can remain standing in a bucket for hours. The Japanese invented a way of torturing people with drops of water.The Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique also used water to torture people. The dead friend Owen, who painted the mural on my wall, used to dream about putting LSD into South Africa’s drinking water. It seems inconceivable to think of humans who have no language. They may have invented gelignite but they cannot do without water. Some take it neat from rivers and wells. Some have it clinically treated and reservoired. Others drink nothing but beer and Bloody Marys and wine but this too is a way of taking your water. The way you take your water is supposed to say a lot about you. It is supposed to reflect your history, your culture, your breeding, etc. It is supposed to show the extent to which you and your nation have developed or degenerated. The word ‘primitive’ is applied to all those who take their alphabet neat from rivers, sewers and natural scenery – sometimes this may be described as the romantic imagination. The height of sophistication is actually to channel your water through a system of pipes right into your very own lavatory where you shake the hand of a machine and your shit and filthy manners disappear in a roaring of water. Being water you can spread diseases like bilharzias and thought. Thought is more fatal than bilharzia. And if you want to write a book you cannot think unless your thoughts are contagious. ‘Do you still think and dream in your first language?’ someone asked me in London. Words are worlds massively shrunk:

In yonder raindrop should its heart disclose,
Behold therein a hundred seas displayed.

When thought becomes wisdom, the scholar can say:

I came like water, and like wind I go.

And the believer can only sing:

Celestial sweetness unalloy’d
Who eat thee hunger still;
Who drink of thee still feel a void
Which only thou canst fill.

The languages of Europe (except Basque, Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish) are descended from one parent language which was spoken about 2500 to 2000 BC. This indo-European group of languages – in their modern form has been carried (by colonization, trade, conquest) to the far corners of the earth. Thus the Indo-European river has quite neatly overflowed its banks like the flood in the Bible has flooded Africa, Asia, America and all the islands. In this case there does not seem to have been any Noah about who built an ark to save even just two words of all the languages and speech, which were drowned. Literacy today is just the beginning of the story. Words are the waters which power the hydro-electricity of nations. Words are the chemicals that H2O human intercourse. Words are the rain of votes which made the harvest possible. Words are the thunderstorm when a nation is divided. Words are the water in a shattering glass when friends break into argument. Words are the acronym of a nuclear test site. Every single minute the world is deluged by boulders of words crushing down upon us over the cliff of the TV, the telephone, the telex, the post, the satellite, the radio, the advertisement, the billposter, the traffic sign, graffiti, etc. Everywhere you go, some shit word will collide with you on the wrong side of the road. You can’t even hide in yourself because your thoughts think of themselves in the words you have been taught to read and write. Even if you flee home and country, sanity and feeling, the priest and mourners, if any, will be muttering words over your coffin; the people you leave behind will be imagining you in their minds with words and signs. And there will be no silence in the cemetery because always there are burials and more burials of people asphyxiated by words. No wonder it is said:

In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God.
And the Word was God,
All things were made by him;
And without him was not any thing made
That was made.

No wonder too it was said:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into dust descend;
Dust to dust, and under dust, to lie
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and-
sans end !

Suddenly the other side of the world is only an alphabet away. Existence itself becomes a description, our lives a mere pattern in the massive universal web of words. Fictions become more documentary than actual documentaries. The only certain thing about these world descriptions is the damage they do, the devastation they bring to the minds of men and children. You do not become a man by studying the species but his language. The winds of change have cooled our porridge and now we can take up our spoons and eat it. Go, good countrymen, have yourselves a ball.
*** This is just my favourite passage of all Marechera literature. It is from 'The Black Insider'

INVITATION TO THE FIRST ZIMBABWE WRITERS GENERAL MEETING

2010-11-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Fellow Writer, Colleague and Stakeholder

The Interim Committee of the proposed new umbrella writers organization of Zimbabwe, in line with the mandate granted to it on 27 August 2010, is inviting you all writers who have been supportive of this initiative from the beginning as well as all other willing writers of Zimbabwe to a meeting on 4 December, 2010 at the Zimbabwe Film and Television School of Southern Africa at 57 Mazowe Road, Harare (Close to Parirenyatwa Hospital and opposite The Sudanese Embassy) from 08:30:00hrs to 13:00hrs.(Photo: Some Zim writers)
The major business of the day will be (a)tabling The Draft Constitution for discussion and adoption, b)adopting the name of the organization and c)mapping the way forward.
Background:
On 29 July 2010, on the sidelines of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF 2010) 33 Zimbabwean writers who attended a Workshop at the Zimbabwe German Society to discuss the status of writers and their organizations in Zimbabwe unanimously agreed to form a new national organization that serves to unite the various associations in one voice where their common welfare is concerned. A few notable experiences may serve as useful examples in this regard:
- The Charles Mungoshi situation
- Ruzvidzo Mupfudza’s problem and subsequent death
- The Unicef-Longman Project
- The National constitutional consultative exercise
- Contractual rights with publishers
- National policy on literature in schools curriculum
- National Book Policy Crisis
- Copyright issues
- Other problems and grievances impacting negatively on writers’ welfare.
In the end, a Steering Committee was set up to consult widely with other writers not present, approaching publishers to provide names and addresses of those writers who were not present at the meeting; enquire if individual writers’ organisations would support the idea of a new national writers’ organisation and if so, what kind of organisation they envisaged and report back to plenary on 27 August 2010. On this date an Interim Executive Committee was elected and given the mandate to:
- Draft a constitution for the new organization
- Raise funds for the initial operations of the organization
- Call a General Meeting to for tabling, discussion and adoption of the Draft Constitution
- Registration of the Constitution with National Arts Council
- Go on a membership drive in preparation for Elections of substantive Executive Committee to subsequently take over from the Interim Committee by end of February, 2011.
To this end The Draft Constitution is now in place and will be put before the members during the meeting of 4 December 2010. The agenda is as follows:
ZIMBABWE WRITERS GENERAL MEETING
DATE: 4th December, 2010
VENUE: ZIMBABWE FILM AND TELEVISION SCHOOL OF SOUTHERN AFRICA
57 MAZOWE ROAD, HARARE
(Close to Parirenyatwa and opposite The Embassy of Sudan)
PROGRAMME:
08:30 Arrival and Registration
09:00 Opening Remarks - Dr Rino Zhuwarara
09:15 Minutes of 27th August, 2010
09:25 Introductions and Report Back(Interim Committee)
10:00 Tea Break
10:15 Discussion of Draft Constitution
11:30 Way Forward
1l:45 Closing Remarks - Mrs Tawona Mtshiya
12:30 Lunch and Networking
Yours Sincerely
Primrose Dzenga
(Secretary, Interim Committee.
Members of the Interim Committee: Mr. Musaemura Zimunya(Chairperson), Ms Primrose Dzenga(Secretary), Ms. Beatrice Sithole(Treasurer), Mr. Memory Chirere, Mr Dakarai Mashava, Ms. Karukai Ratsauka, Mr. George Mujajati(Members)

(Photo: Some Zim writers)

Bongwi the baboon...

2010-11-16T08:21:00.000-08:00

A haunted soul put under ban,
A hunted beast that has to roam,
The voiceless image of a man
With neither speech nor home-
Upon the summit of the height,
Where only wind-swept lichens grow,
Bongwi, lit by the dawning-light,
Watches the plain below.

Fierce eyes, low brow, protruding mouth,
Short hands that twitch and twitch again,
The hairy gargoyle of the South-
A man without a brain;
Upon the highest krantz he waits
Dim-lit by golden streak of dawn,
Guarding the interests of his mates
Who wreck the fields of corn.

Far down the mealie-gardens lie,
And he, a patient sentinel,
Shouts, ‘Boor-hoom!’ to th’ offended sky
To show that all is well.
A white fish-eagle sails along,
His mighty pinions harping tunes,
Till dawn throbs with Aeolian song
And, far below, the brown baboons

Look up and note the paling East,
The fading moon, the stars that wane,
And, gorg’d, they quit their stolen feast
And seek the open veld again.
And Bongwi sees. But turns his view-
Brown-eyed – towards the breaking morn,
And gazes through the soundless blue,
The golden distance of the dawn.

(By Kingsley Fairbridge)

‘The short story pricks like the doctor’s needle’: Somewhere In This Country and Tudikidiki by Memory Chirere

2010-11-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

On 25 October 2010,'The Herald' of Zimbabwe published a piece in which Edmore Zvinonzwa interviews me. Some of you said you could not get to it on The Herald site. Here it is:

Zimbabwean author Memory Chirere enjoys reading and writing short stories and some of these are published in No More Plastic Balls (1999), A Roof to Repair (2000), Writing Still (2003) and Creatures Great and Small (2005).

He has also published short story books: Somewhere in This Country (2006), Tudikidiki (2007); Toriro, his Goats and Other Stories (2010) and together with Maurice Vambe, compiled and edited a critical text on Mungoshi, Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader.

Chirere has poems published in Tipeiwo Dariro (1994).

Beyond his creative work, Chirere has compiled and edited various other short story books; Totanga Patsva (an all-women short story book), Children Writing Zimbabwe (a book of short stories for children by children).

Alongside Ignatius Mabasa and Christopher Mlalazi, Chirere is one of the more visible young writers writing from within Zimbabwe today.

He has won various national literary prizes.

Memory Chirere writes with a certain playfulness and sense of mischief and employs satiric humour. The titles of his stories, Three Little Worlds, Jazz, Beautiful Children and Sixteen are enigmatic and enticing. In this interview with our writer, EDMORE ZVINONZWA (EZ), CHIRERE (MC) speaks about Zimbabwean writing in general as well as his own works in particular.

EZ: Would you like to briefly tell readers about yourself and how you evolved into the creative writer that you are today?

MC: It is difficult to tell. I know that I enjoy reading and writing.

EZ: Who and what would you consider as the biggest influences to your writing? Maybe there were different influences for each distinct work?

MC: There is the Mozambican short story writer, Luis Bernardo Honwana. I keep going back to his smallish collection of short stories, "We Killed Mangy Dog". I also keep going back to Charles Mungoshi’s book, Coming of The Dry Season. I also cannot avoid Luanda by Viera of Angola. I have come across many better and bigger books but those three are important to me.

EZ: Having been a student of literature in secondary school (I guess I am right) and at the University of Zimbabwe, that meant you had to read. Did you like reading before university or you became a reader then out of necessity.

MC: It all went on and still goes on, side by side, reading and writing.

EZ: In an interview with Ignatius Mabasa sometime, he mentioned you, the late Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Eresina Hwede, Zvisinei Sandi, Emmanuel Sigauke and Nhamo Mhiripiri as some of his contemporaries. How exactly did this partnership impact on your development as a creative writer?

MC: It was the best of times under the tutelage of very able people, the likes of T. K. Tsodzo, Rino Zhuwarara, Chenjerai Hove, Musaemura Zimuya and others. We had the opportunity to read literature in the context of a very wide variety of ideas and theories. We have grown into many different directions but I think we still dialogue through what we write.

EZ: What would you finger as the major challenges to you as a writer?

MC: I believe people should be allowed to write what they like. And conversely, the writers should allow people to say what they like about what they write. I do not think we have struck that balance.

EZ. Zimbabwe’s literary landscape in general? Have Zimbabwean writers been able to tell the Zimbabwean story to the world?

MC: There is a lot of good writing going on inside and outside of Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans. Ignatius Mabasa is intriguing. You think you have got the best from him but he comes back the following day, like a furious in-law, with even better work. With his latest novel, Ndafa Here? he has outdone even the feminist writers. Wonder Guchu’s stories are amazingly simple that you realise they were not simply written. Then you wish you had all day to talk about Noviolet Bulawayo, Christopher Mlalazi, Petina Gappah, Brian Chikwava, Emmanuel Sigauke among others. The Gods have opened a floodgate in Zimbabwean literature!

EZ: Why is it that not many Zimbabwean writers have been able to survive or live on their works or writings? You were at ZIBF 2010 and must have heard Deputy Minister Lazarus Dokora’s comments on Charles Mungoshi.

MC: I am also always asking myself the same question!

EZ: What would you like to see happening in the book industry? Also how would you describe the relationship between writers and publishers?

MC: If you happen to have a publisher who really respects you, you can go very far. The publishing industry in Zimbabwe is reawakening very, very slowly. A book wins a national prize but it is never seen on the shelves. Now that is crazy! I hope one day writers can be able to live on their writings.

EZ: You have written in both Shona and English and it appears the short story is your favourite genre. Which language are you more comfortable with and why do you seem to like the short story?

MC: I have always preferred reading and writing short stories over anything else. Short stories prick like the doctor’s needle. You read and re-read until you do not know whether you are still just reading or are now recreating without the author’s permission. On the issue of language, it is a real blessing to be able to create and publish in more than one language.

EZ: How would you sum up the major concerns of your writings?

MC: In Somewhere in This Country, I had no specific focus because these are stories previously published in very many different places. They were brought together into one volume (now called Somewhere In This country) by the then series editors of Memory and African cultural Productions at UNISA Press, Maurice Vambe and Abebe Zegeye. These stories are about little individuals caught up in various very personal circumstances.

EZ: I find one of your stories in Tudikidiki, Roja Rababa vaBiggie a captivating read? What made you write that satirical piece?

MC: In Bindura where I was staying, an angry lodger went up the towerlight and threatened to fly down to his death. He held to the pillars clumsily and demanded justice from his now shell-shocked landlord and it was painful to watch.Tudikidiki, as the name of the book implies, is a collection of short short stories. With it I was experimenting. I wanted to do stories that would appeal to both the old and the young readers. Each story had to be short enough to be read in one sitting.

EZ: In an article, Beavan Tapureta says of all the writers of your generation, you use laughter most. Tell me about it.

MC: I laugh a lot myself. My characters laugh a lot, too. But they also laugh when they should be crying. I want to do a story that teases the reader by occupying the territory between poem and short story.

EZ: Do you think Zimbabwean writers are producing enough books for children?

MC: Due to the economic hardships even children’s literature has suffered.

EZ: Any comment on Zimbabwe’s writers’ unions — Zimbabwe Writers Union, Zimbabwe Women Writers, Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe, among others? I remember National Arts Council director Elvas Mari pointing out one day that literary artists are lucky in that they have a distinct advantage over other artists — they are literate. Their associations, unions do not seem to tell the same story? Any recommendations?

MC: Writers in Zimbabwe are in the process of reconstituting their various organisations. We had become very weak on the ground.

EZ: What picture do you have of the future of Zimbabwean writing?

MC: Great.

EZ: Any advice to aspiring Zimbabwean writers?

MC: Do what you can when you are still around.

EZ: Any other comments you may like to make?

MC: The love for a good story will never die.

edmore.zvinonzwa@zimpapers.co.zw

Kakuwe kedu kaye-e

2010-10-30T02:02:00.000-07:00

(from left to right:Ignatius Mabasa, Memory Chirere and the late Stanley Ruzvidzo Mupfudza in the early 1990's)

Taseka kakuwe kedu kaye-e kane tunhopi;
Zvichangopera paya togadzikana,
Tanyarara, nyama dzendangariro dzodzoka,
Ndinotya karunyararo – karufu here?
Kandisingazivi kuti ndodii nako.

Kana zviya ndakukwidza chitima
Kana chogojona sebenzi
kana zviya ndaringa divi
Ndonanaira ndodzokera kwatambenge tiri tose
Ndinotya dima rezvichauya uri kure neni.

Kana zviya takuviga, pfuchepfuche,
Takukanda mukanwa mevhu mawakabva
Ndinotya njere dzinonditokonya, dzichiti:
“Zvinorevei kumbove tose, hochekocheko,
zvizobatsirei kana wondisiya ini ndichikuda?”

Thaph’ uluju!

2010-10-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Title: Thaph’ uluju: Iqoqo lezindatshana, Ilifa lakho
Author: short stories in Ndebele by written by various authors
Editor: by Barbara C. Nkala, 2010
Publisher: Radiant Publishing Company, Harare, 2010
Pages: 275

(A preview by Jerry Zondo)

How I got my stories included in the new Ndebele short story anthology, Thaph’ uluju: Iqoqo lezindatshana, is both a sad and good story.

I attended the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association Prize giving on a day in 2007 at the Crowne Plaza in Harare and there were winning entries for English and Shona but there was nothing for Ndebele. On asking why, we were all told that there had been no entries for Ndebele in all of 2007. So no literary texts had been published in Zimbabwew in all 2007! That was not enough because another warning came: If Ndebele writers continued to sit on their laurels, they would be nothing again in 2008, 2009 and 2010!

As Ndebele writers, we all felt sombre and started reflecting a lot. We talked at the foyer and resolved that we would do something about it. I had never written a short story before. I had by then published one poem only in Giya Mthwakazi 1990. All my other poems were in school texts books between form 1 and form 4 and in the web site Poetry. A friend would ask me to write a précis on Ndebele Literature and on a couple of prominent authors in Ndebele for his blog and I would agree. I even got an offer to do a chapter for a book on Zimbabwean literature in Ndebele. But writing a short story? A story for someone else to read and review!

The publishing houses in Zimbabwe do not seem to want poetry in Ndebele, and that is where I do well! Thulani Moyo said he would write a novel manuscript and send it to one publisher. I said I would compile short stories for the other publisher and children’s stories for yet another publisher. Eventually it did not work out well with all these publishers. One of them said they had no Ndebele editor in 2007-2008.

Eventually, Virginia Phiri convinced Barbara Makhalisa to use her Radiant Publishing company for a Ndebele publication. Makhalisa took up the challenge and invited short stories in Ndebele. She would only accept stories from the 2008 to 2010 experiences… the economic melt down, the queue culture, the empty shelves, getting petrol through coupons form the UK and many more.

That is how my six short stories came to be part of the Thaph’ uluju manuscript!

I wanted my stories to be different. They probably are, and may provide that element that Ndebele writing has always missed. Short stories in Ndebele have come from Isaac Mpofu in his anthology UMaweni. From Ndebele students of the 2005 stream at UZ on Hiv/Aids. They present the scourge from the sociology and psychology of the student. From Zimbabwe Women Writers organization with 2005’s Vus’ Inkophe edited by Makhalisa. The Zimbabwean Women writers express their views on diverse issues but with an additional voice of advocacy for women’s rights and the democratization of economic, political and social spaces for women in Zimbabwe.

Thaph’ uluju consists of 27 stories in 275 pages, the largest copy in Ndebele to date! The stories are from five men and thirteen women authors, new and established. They look at a wide range of Ndebele experiences (and some sound so actual) connected with the years 2007 to 2010. There will be the story that will of course look at events before that period, like “Ngubani Iqhawe?” (Who is a hero?) which is based on the Zimbabwean liberation war.

Various authors now place incidents and events within specific time period. Actual dates are mentioned, a departure from Ndebele writing where publishing houses have been in the past hiding the year of the story (for example by deleting dates on letters written to protagonists or antagonists - leaving the letters timeless for an unknown reason!). The stories now fit and sit in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 bringing a new realism and concretisation of themes in Ndebele.

The story writers are now moving to specific areas of concern that have led to the Diaspora experiences, “Lakanye langenza iphawundi” (The pound has put me in a fix) with the consequent dislocation of family life and the liaisons between maids and husbands when wives have gone to the United Kingdom and the United States of America – “Siphepheli;” the harsh realities of working in foreign lands in fear of arrest and deportation, are painted in lurid and distinct forms that hit the reader with the hard and stubborn impact that draws the reader to the sorry aspect of economic hardships on the Zimbabwean scene.

The slave like toil of the woman against the demands of those “at home” for a satellite dish, is an ironic and filthy relationship that spells out the fate of ‘economic refugees’ in foreign lands. The filth is local too as the city of Bulawayo in “Amarabisi Mpthu!” (Utter rubbish!) with its piles of uncollected rubbish, smelling and polluting the ‘scenery’ is depicted by Makhalisa as the very epitome of utter rubbish. Human actions and decisions have turned into rubbish as males choose rubbish partners in the city with their lawful and wedded wives languishing somewhere in a forbidding country home.

Makhalisa specifically shows a transformation in her narration and a departure from her earlier forms of story telling. The anthology offers this time, a set of mature readings which are providing Ndebele readers with a new aspect to Ndebele thinking and writing.

While the anthology has leaned a lot on the 2007 to 2010 period, a few stories draw inspiration from the war in Matebeleland in the early 1980’s. The Ndebeles express their concern at the kind of world and the kind of people that should occupy it - in “Xolela inja yakho baba” (Please forgive your dog father) schools should work and teachers should commit themselves to their noble calling, (readers will feel a slight discomfort in Mpofu’s short story; Mdluli wants to change the attitude of lazy and incompetent teachers, but he does not seem to see the root cause of their behaviour in the whole of Tsholotsho! The story might underline some now accepted stereotypes on Zimbabwean teachers!) in “Uyisalukazi yini wena baba?” (Are you an old woman dear sir?) Bulawayo City Council should get its water back on track for ratepayers to enjoy that civic privilege.

The anthology Thaph’ uluju provides opportunity for the maintenance of mature and committed writing. When readers and critics of Ndebele complained yesteryear because of the absence of mature reading materials, they can not do so now. The challenge set by Thaph’ uluju is for a new responsible writing that can only mature into the compelling works of literature that spell out a new world with its new order of commitments. Radiant Publishing has introduced a whole new world of short story writing and the short story will never be the same again in Ndebele!

A critic of Ndebele writing will want the anthology Thaph’ uluju to be the pall bearer for new Ndebele writing that will catapult Ndebele to the next level; it is fulfilling that a project of this nature has been successful. The 2011 Book Publishers Association competition will have and entry after all!

I am only glad that I have contributed in my small way towards the development of that enterprise.But, we Ndebele writers are largely responsible for what may or may not happen to Ndebele literature, wherever we are and in whatever circumstances!
** Jerry Zondo lectures in Ndebele Language and Literature at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare.

do you remember Gabriel Marquez?

2010-10-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

'One Of These Days'

Monday dawned warm and rainless. Aurelio Escovar, a dentist without a degree, and a very early riser, opened his office at six. He took some false teeth, still mounted in their plaster mold, out of the glass case and put on the table a fistful of instruments which he arranged in size order, as if they were on display. He wore a collarless striped shirt, closed at the neck with a golden stud, and pants held up by suspenders He was erect and skinny, with a look that rarely corresponded to the situation, the way deaf people have of looking.

When he had things arranged on the table, he pulled the drill toward the dental chair and sat down to polish the false teeth. He seemed not to be thinking about what he was doing, but worked steadily, pumping the drill with his feet, even when he didn’t need it.

After eight he stopped for a while to look at the sky through the window, and he saw two pensive buzzards who were drying themselves in the sun on the ridgepole of the house next door. He went on working with the idea that before lunch it would rain again. The shrill voice of his eleven-year-old son interrupted his concentration.

“Papa.”

“What?”

“The Mayor wants to know if you’ll pull his tooth.”

“Tell him I’m not here.” He was polishing a gold tooth. He held it at arm’s length, and examined it with his eyes half closed. His son shouted again from the little waiting room.

“He says you are, too, because he can hear you.”

The dentist kept examining the tooth. Only when he had put it on the table with the finished work did he say:“So much the better.”He operated the drill again. He took several pieces of a bridge out of a cardboard box where he kept the things he still had to do and began to polish the gold.

“Papa.”

“What?”He still hadn’t changed his expression.

“He says if you don’t take out his tooth, he’ll shoot you.”

Without hurrying, with an extremely tranquil movement, he stopped pedaling the drill, pushed it away from the chair, and pulled the lower drawer of the table all the way out. There was a revolver. “O.K.,” he said. “Tell him to come and shoot me.”
He rolled the chair over opposite the door, his hand resting on the edge of the drawer.

The Mayor appeared at the door. He had shaved the left side of his face, but the other side, swollen and in pain, had a five-day-old beard. The dentist saw many nights of desperation in his dull eyes. He closed the drawer with his fingertips and said softly: “Sit down.”

“Good morning,” said the Mayor.

“Morning,” said the dentist.

While the instruments were boiling, the Mayor leaned his skull on the headrest of the chair and felt better. His breath was icy. It was a poor office: an old wooden chair, the pedal drill, a glass case with ceramic bottles. Opposite the chair was a window with a shoulder-high cloth curtain. When he felt the dentist approach, the Mayor braced his heels and opened his mouth.

Aurelio Escovar turned his head toward the light. After inspecting the infected tooth, he closed the Mayor’s jaw with a cautious pressure of his fingers. “It has to be without anesthesia,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you have an abscess.”

The Mayor looked him in the eye. “All right,” he said, and tried to smile. The dentist did not return the smile. He brought the basin of sterilized instruments to the worktable and took them out of the water with a pair of cold tweezers, still without hurrying. Then he pushed the spittoon with the tip of his shoe, and went to wash his hands in the washbasin. He did all this without looking at the Mayor. But the Mayor didn’t take his eyes off him.

It was a lower wisdom tooth. The dentist spread his feet and grasped the tooth with the hot forceps. The Mayor seized the arms of the chair, braced his feet with all his strength, and felt an icy void in his kidneys, but didn’t make a sound. The dentist moved only his wrist. Without rancor, rather with a bitter tenderness, he said: “Now you’ll pay for our twenty dead men.”

The Mayor felt the crunch of bones in his jaw, and his eyes filled with tears. But he didn’t breathe until he felt the tooth come out. Then he saw it through his tears. It seemed so foreign to his pain that he failed to understand his torture of the five previous nights.

Bent over the spittoon, sweating, panting, he unbuttoned his tunic and reached for the handkerchief in his pants pocket. The dentist gave him a clean cloth.

“Dry your tears,” he said.

The Mayor did. He was trembling. While the dentist washed his hands, he saw the crumbling ceiling and a dusty spider web with spider’s eggs and dead insects. The dentist returned, drying his hands.

“Go to bed,” he said, “and gargle with salt water.”

The Mayor stood up, said goodbye with a casual military salute, and walked toward the door, stretching his legs, without buttoning up his tunic. “Send the bill,” he said.

“To you or the town?”

The Mayor didn’t look at him. He closed the door and said through the screen:
“It’s the same damn thing.”
***By Gabriel García Márquez

27 - 29 Aug 2010: SADC Poetry Festival: people and moments

2010-09-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

My friend, the festival in Gaborone had its people and moments

(Above)Zimbabwean poet, Nqobile Malinga and Lesego Madingwane of Botswana started by rehearsing a long and sad poem (in Ndebele and Tswana!)and as they went on and on, they actually broke down and cried real tears! For me, this was the climax to this festival. And below, I too had moments to be merry and crack jokes. What else can you do when you are amongst very inspiring people? Jairos Kangira and Tinashe Muchuri are born actors.
I honestly think that the most outstanding poet from this festival was Botswana's Kaone Koka (below) You see, in Botswana they have some kind of communal poetry which is just amazing. They gather together in a semi circle and sing, breaking in between to allow Kaone to do some of the most heartrending recitations that I've ever come across. He chants, he croons and cries, twisting and turning like a man who must die now-now! Ah, Kaone Koka! And you Batswana, look after this genius. Its a command!
At the end of each poem they actually have to mob Kaone and calm him down back to reality.
(Below)Award winning poet, Tania Tome of Mozambique is just something else. Her poetry is like a roll of drums! Then suddenly she becomes musical. She makes you feel/think that the soul is a fruit. Tania is a volcano. I could not have enough of her and I do not want to forget her.
*** pictures by Zanele Muholi and Joseph Molapong

How they would wish to be remembered

2010-09-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

Just before I could unpack my bags after the Sadc poetry festival 2010 in Gaborone, two dear souls departed. An uncle and two days later, a great friend's mother.So I hit the road and could not post anything here (and I could not say anything about the great people I met for the first time at the festival; the likes of Mozambican poet, Tania Tome and Botswana's Kaone Koka (oh, what a voice and emotion!) Instead, i will post below David Mungoshi's poem about death. As you put the dead to rest, you reflect on how they would wish to be remembered.

How They Would Wish To Te Remembered
The old woman - wrinkled and wry
Spoke in a tremulous voice
And made her wish:
Lay me down
At the passing of my days
Against the polished earthen bench
Where once rivers of my blood
Signalled new lives.
Let my eyes caress
One last time
That old fading sun
And when my eyes
Smart from the smoke
Feed the fire with munhondo faggots
Then fan it and let it blaze
Like the passion that once filled my breast.
Let no one stand by the door –
I must bid a last farewell
To the blades on the grass
The leaves on the trees
And that stony path
I have walked so often.
Sit by me quietly if you can
As the strains of the song
Of the laughing dove
Nod me gently
Into the unseen world of my fathers
Till at last you put me to rest
Under the ancient wild fig tree
Where the spring bubbles.

The vivacious woman – vibrantly alive-
Glowing with life’s red embers
Spoke with feminine exuberance:
If ever I should be remembered
Let it be as one
Who lived and loved
When she would –
One whose laughter and sighs
Have blended with the wind
And the breeze
In a felicitous song of life.
All my life
I’ve done what I know best –
I’ve been a woman!

The lonely leper full of disfigured zest:
Freedom and flight
Sustain his pavement and bus stop existence.
The words he spoke montage of harsh experience:
Let me be remembered
As one who threw off the shackles
Of social indifference.
No one would shake my hand
Or share a meal with me.
I became a stranger in the land
So I left, to struggle and be free
In the hot sun
And the biting cold.
I am one from a rare breed –
A professional survivor
Quite at odds with greed
But comfortable with the laws of survival
My epitaph?
He too loved to cuddle
And drown in woman’s blissful embrace.
He too would have driven a Bluebird
If he could –
And reclined in the effeminate softness
Of those cushioned seats
But life threw him to the pavements
Where he found a paradoxical kind of freedom.

The old man – battered and bald
Shaking finger pointing at me
Blessed me with the wisdom of the ages:
Young one, walk with care
For your road leads to where I am.
One day you too will be willing
But your flesh will be weak
They look more beautiful each day
But you cannot retrace time though you would
When it’s all over for me
Remember me as one
Who could have done great things
Had time been on his side?
*** By David Mungoshi

The Sadc Poetry Festival 2010

2010-08-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Tinashe Muchuri

The Sadc Poetry Festival 2010, organised by Artsinitiates-Southern Africa will be held in Gaborone, Botswana at Alliance Francaise de Gaborone from 27 to 29 August 2010. This year's theme will be My Voice, Your Hand while the festival, which is funded by Prince Claus Fund, will explore poetry-art or Ekphrastic poetry. Poetry-art is where poets and visual artists work together either basing each other's art work on the poem or a piece of visual art. The festival that was launched in Windhoek last year will this year attract a visual artist and a poet from each Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, South Africa, Angola and several from the host country, Botswana. Zimbabwean journalist and author, Wonder Guchu is the founder of this festival.

Zimbabwe will be represented by four poets; Tinashe Muchuri, Batsirai Chigama, Bhekumusa Moyo and Siphosethu Mpofu

Batsirai Chigama

Program:

27 August FRIDAY ACTIVITY

16h30 – 17h00 Arrival of participants

17h00 – 19h30 Welcoming and Introduction of participants

19h30 – 20h15 Performances

20h15 – 20h30 The role of Arts in the integration of the region (15 minutes)

20h30 – 20h45 Official Opening of the event (15 minutes)

21h00 – Open MIC/ refreshments

28 August SATURDAY ACTIVITY

09hh00 – 10h00: Presentations on the state of poetry country by country reports (to be facilitated by Memory Chirere)

10h00 – 11h00: Exploring the visual arts and how they function: are they a technique or an art? (to be presented by Raphael Chikukwa)

11H00 – 11H30 BREAK

11h30 – 1230 Practical session with

1. Bandile Gumbi
2. Pam Dlungwana
3. Donna A Smith

12h30 – 13h00: Open Discussion

13H00 – 14H00: LUNCH

14h00 – 15h45 Exploring possibility of networks between poetry and visual arts.

15H45 – 16H00 BREAK

16h00 – 17h00 Readings (with Joseph Molapong)

17h00 – 19h00 Break

19h00 – 21h00 Recitations (with Memory Chirere)

29 August SUNDAY
09h00 – 13h00: Taking the art to the people – recitations around selected venues in Gaborone (with Joseph Molapong)

13H00 – 14H00 LUNCH

14h00 – 15h30 Closure of festival

30 SEPTEMBER MONDAY
09h00 - Breakfast and departure

from Emmanuel Sigauke with love

2010-08-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

Emmanuel Sigauke

By the time Brutus stabbed me, Mukoma had already left to fight with the Mhere boys. Earlier in the morning, at home, he had told me that he just wanted to hear my English, and to see if I had the right gestures for it, adding that he was not interested in the prize-winning ceremony that would follow the big performance, nor did he care about meeting my teachers to discuss my progress. I don’t think when he left I had finished dying because even before Mark Anthony arrived on the scene, half the audience had left the play and had gone to watch Mukoma’s fight. At first, I had no idea what was happening, until Miss Mukaro, the teacher who had directed the performance, signaled Mark Anthony, acted by Chari, to stop talking, walked to where I lay dead and whispered, “Caesar, your big brother.” I sprung up and looked where Mukoma had been standing and saw that he was gone…

**** so goes the first paragraph of my favourite story in Emmanuel Sigauke’s forthcoming collection of short stories. Right from the first line, you get hooked and the story races with you in its jaws. I like the concept of ‘a fight inside the insides of the fight’ used in that story. Emmanuel Sigauke may not admit now, but when it finally comes out, this collection of short stories tentatively called ‘Mukoma stories’ is going to be his major project to date. He has been at this script for years now and I think he is close to releasing it…. The stories revolve around a teenage boy and the escapades of his roguish elder brother (mukoma). The boy has had to become a thinker and not a boy, in order to survive because mukoma is as unpredictable as his mortar mouth. These pieces come very close to the skin, akin to the short stories of Marechera, Chinodya and Naipaul. Manu, let go! You have an extremely exciting script.

Zimbabwean gunner and helicopter technician writes fiction on the Congo war

2010-08-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Title: A Fine Madness
Author: Mashingaidze Gomo
Publisher: Ayebia Ckarke Publishing Limited, UK
Isbn; 978-0-9562401-4-9
174pages
When an excited friend brought to me the manuscript of Mashingaidze Gomo’s A Fine Madness, at first I thought that there was something unfinished (and spooky too) about it as the jagged lines ran and ran seemingly incongruous. But I began to sense that the script was deceptive and I could have been fooled into dropping it. I started reading it in the middle of the night and I was alone and I never went to sleep afterwards. I felt that the room was peopled by all the heroes and traitors we read about in African History.

The other time when a work of art had slowly dragged me to its depths was with Brathwaite’s The Arrivants. The second time was with Cesaire’s A Notebook of the Return to My Native Land. The third was with Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons. You pick a book, saying, ‘What do we have here?’ Then – gone!

With such works of art, the act of reading becomes a long and wide dream in which you are taken through the paths of human joy and agony, ending in a whirlpool of emotions. You want to curse. You want to laugh. You want to revenge. You want to walk about the room. You want to go away and be mad. You want to forgive and be forgiven.

Immediately after, I asked to see the author because I had been told that he was a gunner with the Airforce of Zimbabwe. I wanted to see him in order to believe that he had indeed written A Fine Madness. Then the man I saw was a soft spoken gentleman. It was really an anticlimax! Later, I was to conclude that the Mashingaidze Gomo case is interesting in so far as he doubles up as a man of action and a philosopher. He lives at the cutting edge of history but he is able, meanwhile, to reflect on the African condition.

Then I gave the script to a colleague, a professor of Zimbabwean literature. He threw the script among his old papers saying, ‘We will see.’ He was used to many pretenders over the years that showed him things that they called stories. Things that ended up eating up one’s time for nothing. Then one day the professor came to me in the morning with red eyes and said, ‘I didn’t sleep, last night’. It was because he had made the mistake of reading the first pages of A Fine Madness. He was not able to stop!

We were both agreed that this script should be published because A Fine Madness is a charmed, mad and maddening prose poetry in which an armed man snoops into Africa’s history of deprivation and strife to do the painful arithmetic. Meanwhile, the Congo civil war of the late 1990’s rages on like a monstrous fire, eating and allowing brother and sister to get eaten by the syphilis of the West’s relentless desire to plunder. At the centre of this story is the anger and the question why the West is always at the centre of African conflicts, siding with one side and arming it against the other, as in the 1998 civil war in the Congo.

The narrator who is out at Boende in Congo sometimes reflects on his relationship with Tinyarei, an African beauty back home in Zimbabwe:

"The woman I am missing now is a beautiful woman
An older woman aged in beauty
A beauty that hangs on even as age takes its toll
Lingering on like a summer sunset… reluctant to go
A beauty digging in…making a last stand around the
eyes where her smile is disarming.
I missed Tinyarei with a wretchedness that was like
madness
A very fine and enjoyable madness
And it always feels pleasant to miss a woman
Sometimes it is even better to miss than to be with her
And at Boende, it felt nice to miss Tinyarei..."

But, Tinyarei is a lover, a mother, a trophy to be won and sometimes she stands for mother Africa herself.

Sometimes the narrator watches the Congolese men, women and children dance to Ndombolo and wonders why poverty sucks and stinks and erodes self confidence. The Congo war which pitied brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor, gives Mashingaidze Gomo opportunity to listen to human voices and messages from the Congolese flora and fauna and come up with multifaceted pan African philosophies. He also wonders why we often give in easily, why we think less about our dignity, why we are turned against the real substance and asked to take in abstract values, why we don’t wonder why we are considered ‘the whiteman’s younger brother’… and why… and why?

I agree with Ngugi Wathiongo when he says (in the preface) that this prose poetry book is not only about ‘the horror and loneliness of war; but also the beauty of resistance’ and that Mashingaidze ‘can yoke the most contradictory into a searing insight.’ And yet I do not agree with Ngugi that the emergence of postcolonial dictatorships and their actual relationship to the Western corporate bourgeoisie’ can always be explained better by always taking a class perspective. This book’s forte surely transcends explaining the emergence of postcolonial dictatorship in Africa. A Fine Madness dwells on the varied patterns of the relationship between the North and the South from before colonialism to date.

A Fine Madness is the best book that I have read this 2010!

(Reviewed by Memory Chirere)

New writers organisation formed in Zimbabwe

2010-08-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

One of the major highlights of the Zimbabwe Book fair 2010 was the formation of a new umbrella writers organization of Zimbabwe at a writers' meeting/workshop which was held at the Zimbabwe German Society. It was attended by 33 writers. It was a long day of emotional discussion.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the status of writers and their organisations in Zimbabwe. Although the meeting was scheduled to end at 1pm, it only ended after 4pm - demonstrating that the matter at hand affects many writers of Zimbabwe. What is good is that at the end of the day, there was a tangible outcome - the writers unanimously resolved to form an umbrella national organisation representing the rights and welfare of writers in Zimbabwe because the current situation of sectarian organizations was not effective in championing writers’ issues in Zimbabwe.
This decision was arrived at after it had been considered to revive the Zimbabwe Writers Union (ZIWU). The idea to revive ZIWU was shot down after the writers noted that there was a risk of inheriting ZIWU and its problems. Also, it was noted that there was need to respect ZIWU and treat it in the same manner as other sectarian organizations like BWAZ, ZWW, ZANA, ZALWA and WIN ZIMBABWE . These existing organizations and their members are also free to affiliate to the new Umbrella organization.
In the end, an interim committee was put in place to consult with independent writers, publishers and writers organisatiions
The names of the members in the interim committee are:

1. Malvin Sithole

2. Vivien Lucas

3. Primrose Dzenga

4. Blessing Musariri

5. Beatrice Sithole

6. Tinashe Muchuri

7. David Mungoshi

8. Musaemura Zimunya

9. Virginia Phiri
The interim committee will meet on Monday 2 August 2010 at the Zimbabwe German Society at 1430hrs to 1600hrs to map the way forward. From 9am to 1pm, Friday 27 August 2010, all writers interested in the new organisation for writers are invited at the ZGS for a plenary session.

The Stephen Chifunyise Thatre Arts Festival

2010-07-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

The 'Stephen Chifunyise Theatre Arts Festival' held at the University of Zimbabwe’s Beit Hall on 6 July 2010 to celebrate Chifunyise's work was a wonderful idea. Chifunyise has been involved in top Zimbabwe drama for over three decades now. For me, his major works are Two Angry Young Men, Wedding Night, Intimate Affairs, Muramu,Waiting for Constitution and Heal the Wounds. The last two are currently on a national tour after showing at the Theatre in the Park.There was enactment of excerpts of key scenes from a cross section of Chifunyise drama and various testimonies by people who have worked with the playwright and scholar. The man sat there, humbly and quietly picking his teeth with what appeared like a matchstic.Many thanks to the Theatre Arts Department (UZ)for coming up with this idea.

Zimbabwe International Book Fair 2010

2010-07-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

MAIN BOOK FAIR 2010
THEME : “Promoting Cross Cultural Dialogue ”
ZIBFA invites all interested parties to participate in the special six-day event as follows:

“EXHIBITION” Venue: Harare Gardens, Julius Nyerere Way

ADMISSION FREE!!! to the Exhibition
Dates: 29 July – 31 July 2010
Time: 1000 – 1700hrs

“INDABA” Venue: Crowne Plaza Hotel : By Registration

Day 1: 26 July 2010 0815 - 1700hrs

 Constitutional Rights and Culture……………………………...
 School Syllabi, Technology and Culture……………………….
 Publishing and Marketing…………..…………………………..
 Intellectual Property and Copyright …………………………..

Day 2: 27 July 2010 0830 - 1700hrs

 Globalisation, Media and Culture…………………………….
 Language, Literature and Cross Cultural Dialogue…………
 Medicine and Culture…………………………………………..
 MDGs Religion and Culture…………………………………...

“Young Persons Indaba”!!!
Date: 28 July 2010 By Registration
0900 - 1700hrs at Crowne Plaza Hotel

Will focus on developing the skills of authorship

If you wish to participate please register for the workshops by 20 July to avoid disappointment!!

LIVE LITERATURE & CHILDREN’S READING TENT
1000 - 1600hrs 29 July – 31 July 2010 ADMISSION FREE!!!

DON’T MISS OUT!
For further details contact us at ZIBFA on: 04 702104, 704112, 702108and 702129 Email : events@zibfa.org.zw

*** NB: This note has been inserted by the ZIBF events coordinator in Harare

More pictures from the book donation

2010-07-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

Virginia Phiri in the library boardroom
Zimunya gives a vote of thanks as Ms Chimuka and I listen

Library and academic staff at the book presentation

Virginia Phiri donates copies of her books to University of Zimbabwe library

2010-07-10T02:29:00.001-07:00

On 1 July 2010, Zimbabwean writer, Virginia Phiri donated copies of all her books (including the latest, Highway Queen) to the University of Zimbabwe library. It was a brief but memorable session attended by some library and academic staff members including poet and University of Zimbabwe lecturer, Musaemura Zimunya. Ms Y.Chimuka, head of the library Reader Service division, received the books on behalf of the library(above)

The Zimbabwe International Book Fair Indaba draft program for 2010

2010-07-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

The Zimbabwe International Book Fair Indaba draft program for 2010 (below). As usual, the INDABA will run along the major Book Fair from Monday 26 July to Saturday 31 July. The ZIBFA Indaba is an annual Conference which is the major forum for debating critical issues to the book industry in Africa. It is also a unique national platform for networking and collaboration among stakeholders.)

DATES: 26 JULY DAY ONE

VENUE: CROWN PLAZA

THEME: Promoting Cross Cultural Dialogue

08:00 - 08:30 Arrival & Registration
ZIBFA Secretariat

Chairperson: Greenfield Chilongo

08:15 -09:00 Welcoming Remarks and Official Opening: ZIBFA Chairperson

Chair: Ruby Magosvongwe

09:00 - 09:45 Key note paper on the THEME: Promoting Cross Cultural Dialogue.

Speaker: Mrs Angeline S. Kamba

First Session: Constitutional Rights and Culture

Chair: Pathisa Nyathi

09:45 - 10:05 Justice Rita Makarau (JA)

10:05 - 10:25 Emmanuel Magade

10:25 - 10:45 Discussion

10:45 ? 11:15 TEA BREAK

Chairperson: Ruby Magosvongwe

11:15 - 12:00 OPENING CEREMONY
Culture Fund representative
Minister of Education, Arts, Sport and Culture
British Council
Norwegian embassy

Second Session: School Syllabi, Technology and Culture

Chair: Prof Rosemary Moyana

12:00 - 12:20 Pharaoh Joseph Mavhunga

12:20 - 12:40 Ellen Machingaidze

12:40 - 13:00 Dr. Xavier Carelse

13:00 -13:15 Discussion

13:15 ? 14:15 LUNCH BREAK

Third Session: Publishing and Marketing

Chair: Murray McCartney

14:15 - 14:35 Ndai Nyamakura

14:35 - 14:55 Jane Katjavivi / Akossi Afori Mensah

14:55 - 15:10 Discussion

15:10 - 15:25 TEA BREAK

Fourth: Session: Intellectual Property & Copyright

Chair: Greenfield Chilongo

15:25 - 16:45 Witness Zhangazha

16:45 - 16:05 Sara Moyo

16:05 - 16:30 Discussion

16:30 Closing Remarks
Cletus Ngwaru

*******************************************************************

27 July 2010 DAY TWO

08:30 ? 08:45 Registration
ZIBFA Secretariat

08:45 - 08:50 Welcoming remarks
Prof Z.Gambahaya

Fifth Session: Globalisation, Media and Culture

Chairperson: William Chikoto

08:50 - 09:10 Prof. Helge Ronning

09:10 - 09:30 Dr. Dumisani Moyo

09:30 - 09:50 Dr. Rino Zhuwarara

09:45 - 10:00 Discussion

10:00 - 10:20 TEA BREAK

Chairperson: Jerry Zondo

Sixth Session: Language, Literature and Cross Cultural Dialogue

10:20 - 10:35 Prof. Herbert Chimhundu

10:35 - 10:55 Dr. Ali Mathonsi

10:55 - 11:10 Dr Itai Muhwati

11:20 - 11:40 Dr. Reuben Chirambo

11:40 - 12:00 Discussion

Seventh Session: Medicine and Culture

12:00 - 12:20 Dr. Duri

12:20 - 12:40 Dr. Chirenje

12:40 - 12:55 Discussion

12:55 - 14:00 LUNCH BREAK

Eight Session: MDGs Religion and Culture

Chairperson: Nondo Simon

14:00 - 14:20 Dr. Charles Mugaviri

14:20 - 14:40 Mr. Fred Gweme

14:40 - 15:00 Prof. Ezra Chitando

15:00 - 15:20 Prof. Maurice Vambe

15:20 - 15:45 Discussion

15:45 - 16:00 TEA BREAK

Ninth: Session: Indaba sum up : Rapporteur

16:00 - 16:30 Musaemura Zimunya

16:30 Closing Remarks
Ruby Magosvongwe

18:00 - 20:00 Book Merit Awards managed by the Zimbabwe Book
Publishers Association (ZBPA)

Wednesday 28 July 2010

YOUNG PERSONS INDABA

Venue: Crown Plaza

Chairperson: Stephen Chifunyise

09: 00 - 09:10 Opening remarks: ZIBFA Chair person Cletus Ngwaru

09:10 - 09:45 Keynote Speakers: Shimmer Chinodya and/ Barbara Nkala

09:45 - 10:00 Discussion by Panel

10:00 - 10:30 TEA BREAK

10:30 - 11:45 Break Away Groups

Theatre: E. Vutuza
Short stories:
Novel: Ignatius Mabasa
Script and Film: Tsitsi Dangarembga
Performance Poetry: Albert Nyathi / Chirikure Chirikure
Writing Poetry:
Indigenous literature: Elvas Mari

11:45 - 13:00 Report back and Plenary Discussions

13:00 - 14:00 LUNCH BREAK

14:00 - 16:30 Theatre in the Park: to stage of the two plays by Stephen Chifunyise -
Heal the wounds and / Waiting for a new Constitution?

16:30 Closing remarks & END

Virginia Phiri's new book: 'Highway Queen'

2010-07-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

‘Highway Queen’ is a collection of five short stories (in English) which are individual but related as in Miguel Street. It was published by Coral Sevices in Zimbabwe this 2010. Virginia Phiri chronicles the trials and tribulations of women cross boarder traders of Zimbabwe during what has become known generally as ‘the Zimbabwean crisis’. You find here desperate women at the boarder posts, scheming and scheming. Sometimes they are ensnared and raped for a free ride on the long distance trucks. But on a good day, they snatch little but sweet victories in order to feed their unsuspecting husbands and children. They bail out families from hunger and certain death. ‘Desperate,’ Virginia’s first book, in which a woman bites and chews a rival's ear in a love triangle, was published in 2002. Her second book ‘Destiny’, a story about a hermaphrodite girl, appeared in 2006. Virginia’s works include co-authoring Zimbabwe Women Writers anthologies in both fiction and non fiction and in various Orchid journals. She was writer-in residency at Le Chateau de Lavigny, Switzerland in Summer 2006 and Villa Waldberta in Germany in Summer 2008. She is also an Accountant by profession and is also an African Orchid expert. Orders: corals@telco.co.zw

WOMAN IN THE SHADOW

2010-06-27T06:21:00.000-07:00

(By Robert Muponde)
Her voice, he had bound
He had strung, her voice
Her voice, he had strangled, strangled, strangled…
When she spoke of his
Binding, binding, binding her
When she spoke of his
Strangling, strangling, strangling her
He broke her voice with a pick axe …
Smashed her being … for years
Crushed her consciousness … for ages
And enslaved what remained of her spirit
Worked her hard by day
That his fields grew greener each year
Toiled her by night
That stout-limbed children were born
By the bound, strangled, crushed woman.

But one day in a hundred years
As a shadow she came
One day in a thousand years
She rose from her living death
And demanded back her voice
This one day, she spoke with the voice of freedom
The man heard the terror speak
In his mind he saw his green fields deserted
Weeds choking the rich green
Hunger … hunger crunching at his children’s health…
No… no… no…

Rope in hand, he flew at her
To bind, to strangle her again
But the shadow, the slave, the woman
Had unbound herself
Horror seized his reason
When he saw his one time slave-woman about to flee
In wild desperation he called for more rope
For more hands to bind her …
But the ropes, in their thickness
Had become too thin to bind her anymore
In her eyes were the spear and sword of her freedom
To him for the first time she said,
“I’m the woman you’ve been killing for ages, ages, ages …”

**Robert Muponde is Associate Professor of English in the Department of English and Assistant Dean for International Affairs and Partnerships, Humanities, at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D in Childhood studies. Muponde is also Co-editor of numerous works, including Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture; Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera; and Manning the Nation: Father Figures in Zimbabwean Literature and Society.

Recipes from a Shona world

2010-06-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

'Kubika Machikichori' Shona for preparing delicious meals, carries traditional recipes from Goromonzi, about 50 km out of Harare. This book was compiled by founding member of Zimbabwe Women Writers (ZWW), Colette Mutangadura and edited by Keresia Chateuka. Read about how to prepare pumpkin soup powder, how to prepare mealie rice in peanut butter, how to make puddings from figs or watermelon, how to make porridge from the baobab fruit, how to make coffee from okra seed, how to make jam from guava fruit and many more! Some of the contributors are Colette Mutangadura herself, Claudia Muzembe, Plaxedes Kaseke,Shirley Gumbodete and others.For querries and orders phone: + 263 042925688 or +263 0712525228

'Toriro and his goats'.... the real-real thing

2010-06-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

It is now out...and watch this space for details!

"Chirere has successfully taken the traditional art form... and others...to emerge with universal lessons of love, pain, fear, innocence and guilt with such dexterity that it escapes no reader's notice."
-Edmore Zvinonzwa- The Herald, 14 June 2010.

The ground that African women stand on

2010-06-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

'The ground that African women stand on'
(the reflections of sister Achola Pala)
So many of us have often accepted the notion of African “traditional culture” as if it were the enemy of women, and the word “Western” as if it contained women’s rights. Perhaps we should substitute the word “original” for “traditional,” meaning the ground we stand on is rooted in African millennial cultures that supported us long before the arrival of colonial conquerors with patriarchal religions and political systems.

As a young woman growing up in the village culture of west Kenya, for example, I knew that we had a bill or rights and a human rights code by which we lived long before colonization.

The idea of the sanctity of personhood and human agency was enshrined in everything we did. As children we were taught to play together and accept defeat honorably if you lost a game. In principle and practice, human rights were the cornerstone of life and a good mind.

Every human being—child, woman, man, stranger and foe—had the right to be and to be heard. Therefore consultation was at the heart of decision-making. My culture forbade wanton killing of people and violation of people, including children and women. We were taught to treat each other with respect, protect the rights of persons with disability and include them in all activities to the best of their ability.

A widow had the right to choose the man to be with after the death of her husband and she had the right to ask him to leave if the relationship proved unsatisfactory. And a married woman had the protection of her favorite brother-in-law, referred to as the “leopard skin” to denote his critical role in protecting and supporting the sister-in-law from danger or exploitation.

Quarrelsome men who treated their wives with disdain were not respected in the community and were often chided in gatherings for their unbecoming conduct. A woman who married out of the community still kept her family ties in her place of birth. My mother inherited several goats from her mother and always went back to visit her family where she enjoyed enormous respect until her death. And today, my sisters and I (all married with our own homes) continue to have access and use of our mother’s house and a freedom that far exceeded that in cities where women were often forbidden in public places by law on the grounds that women must be “loitering” and must be prostitutes. My sisters and I were educated in the colonial version of education, but equally with my brothers because my parents understood we would need the protection of education and jobs as much if not more.

If we look into our cultures even today, wherever we are in the continent, we will find the ground we are standing on and how to build new viable institutions and equality norms going forward.

As a young anthropology scholar, my early work led me to conclude that African women, by and large, had greater recognition, more rights, greater security of tenure in land and protection, and greater control over their reproductive lives under their original political and economic systems than under the systems adopted from European colonial models.

Even a cursory analysis of the period preceding colonization—looking at matrifocal societies like the Ashanti of Ghana, for instance, or the Bemba of Malawi, that had complementary roles for men and women—points to great strengths of the leadership of women in Africa’s economy, politics, spirituality and arts.

It’s not surprising that the patriarchal colonial gender regimes deprived African women of identity (at marriage, the requirement to drop her own name for that of her husband), livelihoods (communal authority over land became reinterpreted as individual men’s rights) and human security (women became commodities to exploit, prostitute and violate in slave trade, trafficking, tourist commerce and war).
In 1880, when European powers sat down in Berlin to divide Africa into pieces they would colonize regardless of the interest of African peoples, the result was the nation-state. The colonial structure served to separate indigenous communities, language groups and families by artificial borders often drawn with the purpose of dividing and controlling people. Indigenous populations became non-people under the law, and women were even more marginalized.

As violence against African people became normalized, a new culture of violation of women’s rights became part of the overall plan of forced relocation and concentration of indigenous people in marginal lands.

The colonial economy legitimized the destruction of African biodiversity and natural resources, food base and environment through logging, commercial hunting, alienation of communal land, imposition of new intellectual property rights and patents over common goods and communal medicinal plants and vegetables. Chemical fertilizers began to deplete soil fertility and destroy drinking water sources. The shift undercut indigenous farming systems over which African women held considerable expertise and power.

At the same time, forced and under-remunerated jobs took men away from their home communities, truncating family livelihood strategies. Men working in far away cities and mines had little or nothing to send home to their villages. The separation was exacerbated by commercial laws establishing ‘legal’ boundaries between rural ‘reserves,’ commercial plantations and towns—which in Kenya, as in Zimbabwe, redefined gender relations through the restriction of movement and social interaction between ‘tribal’ and urban spaces.

Before the 1880s, borders between language groups had been porous, and a cooperative gift and barter system allowed groups to build trust by exchanging seeds, products and tools. African women played a pivotal role in this economy, especially during periods of scarcity. Imposition of ‘reserves’ disrupted an economy that appreciated cultural diversity, erecting an ideological barrier of ethnicity in its place, which was to become an incendiary nightmare in the 20th Century.

In addition, the colonial need for urban spaces both divided Africans from Asians and Europeans by law and excluded and disenfranchised women. Women could enter the wage economy only informally, in the outskirts of towns and later as domestic workers and nannies. The criminalization of their presence in towns as prostituted women devalued women as a group, and many more were trafficked in the emerging commercial urban sex industry. For women, the rule of law was almost entirely punitive, depriving them of development opportunities and perpetuating social inequalities and violence.

The effects of these policies and laws rippled across Africa and were felt even more acutely in the countries of Algeria, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, Namibia and South Africa. As opposed to West Africa, these “settlement colonies” were structured around a small immigrant white population invited in and subsidized to exploit the colony for their motherland. The settlers could acquire large tracts of arable farmland and create black squatter populations to serve as labor.

Today Africa pays the price of embracing colonial structures ill adapted to our well-being. Countries face a paradox in which the “rule of law” is touted as a panacea for good governance but often flouted in ways that undermine citizens’ ability to rely on judicial institutions. Laws that are incoherent and fragmented result in opaque and corrupt judicial practices, and justice is not easily assured for ordinary citizens unable to buy the services of a lawyer. For women, the burden of inequality is often worse.

In many countries we are still stuck with this dichotomy.
No wonder the success of the African state, today, as a protector of citizens is a mixed bag. In some cases, the state is developing as a defender of majority interests, and women are over or close to half of parliaments in countries like Mozambique and Rwanda. In Tanzania, women hold key ministerial posts. Yet in others, heads of state maneuver state apparatus to extend their terms in office. In a number of cases, my country of Kenya included, we have seen failed elections—hints that citizens may be unable to muster the necessary might to exercise rights even where these may be entrenched in a nation’s laws and constitution.

Along with this turmoil, we have seen an unprecedented rise in violence against women, some of it state-sponsored. So we do have to ask ourselves what is driving this change towards violence against women? And what is the kind of state responsibility we want to see in our region?

The common belief is that a rights based approach comes to us from a more universalistic and therefore more legitimate realm of thought, and African culture has come to be regarded as the enemy of women. But we must understand how gender based violence became normalized in the context of colonialism and that the Human Rights approach is essentially a Eurocentric paradigm born out of an expansive phase of capitalism marked by economic competition, slavery and invasion of territory.

What we as African women must do is to identify those aspects of our own political, economic and cultural history that make African women great, and ensure that those are incorporated as rights within the emerging structures of our countries. That is the ground we stand on.
** Dr. Achola O. Pala is a Kenyan feminist researcher, writer and educator

PROVERBS from the Great Temple Complex of Amun

2010-06-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

Wisdom from the Great Temple Complex of Amun of Karnak in Thebes, Ancient Egypt:

•If you would know yourself, take yourself as starting point and go back to its source; your beginning will disclose your end.

•Know the world in yourself. Never look for yourself in the world, for this would be to project your illusion.

•If you would build something solid, do not work with wind: always look for a fixed point, something you know that is stable ... yourself.

•If the Master teaches what is error, the disciple's submission is slavery; if he teaches truth, this submission is ennoblement.

•The first concerning the 'secrets': all cognition comes from inside; we are therefore initiated only by ourselves, but the Master gives the keys.

•Man must learn to increase his sense of responsibility and of the fact that everything he does will have its consequences.

•The kingdom of heaven is within you; and whosoever shall know himself shall find it.

•The body is the house of God. That is why it is said, "Man know thyself."

•Popular beliefs on essential matters must be examined in order to discover the original thought.

•To know means to record in one's memory; but to understand means to blend with the thing and to assimilate it oneself.

•A man's heart is his own Neter (God).

• A house has the character of the man who lives in it.

•The first thing necessary in teaching is a master; the second is a pupil capable of carrying on the tradition.

•The man who knows how to lead one of his brothers towards what he has known may one day be saved by that very brother.

“I am right handed but left footed” : BRIAN CHIKWAVA

2010-05-25T06:40:00.000-07:00

The UK based Zimbabwean writer, Brian Chikwava won the Caine Prize for African writing, Africa's highest literary award for his short story "Seventh Street Alchemy". In February 2010 his debut novel, Harare North won the Outstanding First Creative Published Work category in Zimbabwe’s National arts Merit Awards (NAMA). In March 2010 Harare North alongside Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly was among the books selected for the Orwell Prize longlist.

The weaverpress website describes Chikwava’s debut novel: Fearlessly political, laugh-out-aloud funny and with an anti-hero whose voice is impossible to forget… When he lands in ‘Harare North’, our unnamed protagonist carries with him nothing but a cardboard suitcase full of memories and a desire to find his childhood friend, Shingi. In this astonishing debut novel, Caine Prize winner Brian Chikwava tackles head-on the realities of life as an asylum-seeker. This is the story of a stranger in a strange land – one of the thousands of illegal Zimbabwean immigrants seeking a better life in England. But our narrator has a past he is determined to hide. From the first line the language fizzes with energy, humour and not a little menace.

Below is the interview that I did with him. I really wanted to take him to the basics and find out what makes him tick.

Memory Chirere: At the Oxford Harare North launch in May 2009, I asked you from the audience, “What do you anticipate to be the kind of response to your book back in Harare?” You said, “Laughter.” Now, Harare has responded and you have won a NAMA award. Congratulations. I was in the audience during NAMA and there was a huge applause as somebody received the prize on your behalf. I didn’t know you had so many fans and readers in Harare. Any special messages?

Brian Chikwava: Was very pleasantly surprised and must thank the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe for the good work they are doing. Such surprises make writing a bit more bearable.

MC: To the reading public, you first appeared with the short story ‘Seventh Street alchemy’, in Writing Still, 2003. There is no trail of you before that. How were you made?

BC: I started off trying my hand not at fiction but visual art reviews. That was after I joined the short-lived Zimbabwe Art Critics Association. After learning how to write a review, I thought I may as well try the short story and poetry. I had to ditch poetry quickly because I feel shockingly well off what was acceptable.

MC: It is also reported that you were ‘once a member of the now defunct Zimbabwe association of Art Critics’. What was all that about?

BC: The Zimbabwe Art Critics Association had the noble hope of getting more art enthusiasts to engage with art. Those who felt moved to try their hand at art reviews were given a guiding hand and sometimes with the help of Barbara Murray, then editor of Gallery Delta Magazine, ended up with their work in the Herald or the Daily News.

MC: It is said that you collaborated with some of Harare’s upcoming Jazz musicians then. Who are these musicians and what instrument do you play?

BC: Oh yes, we did mess about trying overly ambitious experiments that we had to abandon in exhaustion. A number of the experimentally inclined people who are now scattered across the globe leapt in; the likes of ex-Luck Street Blues Pascal Makonese; Noble Mashawa, briefly of Andy Brown’s Storm; the long-suffering Luka Mukavele who kindly gave us use of his recording studio, and his Mozambiquean compatriot, drummer Suleiman Saide.

MC: You recorded and released Jacaranda Sketches. What is this about?

BC: I sometimes think it was only a platform for trying out new things in the then new London environment. But for a number of reasons, I’m increasingly terrified of even listening to it now since it demonstrates to me how capricious good judgment can be – one year you think you have, and the next you are shocked by the choices you made.

MC: You are a Science major, writer and musician. Is this a mixed quest? Are you ambidextrous?

BC: Unfortunately not. But I am right handed but left footed.

MC: So far I have seen all your stories in group anthologies: Seventh Street Alchemy, Zesa Moto Muzhinji, Fiction, Dancing To The Jazz and His Goblin Rhythm (my favourite) and others. What is your relationship with the short story form and should we expect an anthology?

BC: I’ve been thinking about an anthology but somehow feel terrified of making a start. That’s because I find stories a bit of a tight rope walk. Hopefully I will rediscover the courage.

MC: Harare North, your debut novel has been applauded for ‘experimenting with language’. Ikhide Ikheloa says you use ‘pretend-language’, back in Harare, Irene Staunton says you use ‘patios’. My students wonder what you wanted to achieve because “Zimbabweans are well known for their ability to speak English.” In what circumstances did you decide to abandon the standard English language you used in the short stories?

BC: I tried standard English and it just didn’t work. The manuscript read stilted and the character had inhabit. That’s when I thought of – is it Achebe, I can’t remember? – who talks about bending the English language in order to make it carry the weight of the African experience. The language that I use in Harare North is not a true language in the sense that it is not spoken on the streets of Zimbabwe, but I believe it expresses the Zimbabwean sensibility better than standard English.

MC: Harare North has been referred to as being ‘fearlessly political’ and for being laugh-out-loud funny’. What did it take to maintain the various balances that one finds in this novel?

BC: I think you can properly inhabit a character, a lot of things fall into place and you cast aside the eye that constantly makes judgments and concentrate on only making it a decent piece of art.

MC: This might be too personal, but at how many points, if any, does your path and that of your main character come together?

BC: No, not at all. The story genuinely crystallized after I met an ex-Lord’s Resistance Army guy on the street. We had a chat and he told me how he missed his past life, how he missed holding his AK47. At first I thought it was all a joke but quickly realized he was serious. More than anything I was struck by his stance, knowing how un-pc it is to confess to loving the LRA. So I though, well, why not create a Green Bomber who comes to London and is just as unyielding in his beliefs.

MC: In Harare North the characters go through stubborn pride and ironically, shame and self loathing too. Is this the psychology of exile?

BC: In the right dose, stubborn pride is good if one is an exile, I think. But what I also did not want to do is to fall into representing Africans in exile as objects of pity, which they commonly are in the media. As for self-loathing, I guess that can be the price one pays for a rigid approach to life.

MC: Again the students wondered whether you are saying home is better than exile in spite of the sociopolitical and economic challenges in Zimbabwe? In Harare North, the diasporans are clearly marooned. The kusina amai hakuendwe (foreign land is hostile) message is very clear but the dzoka uyamwe (home is best) message is missing.

BC: Yes, that message is missing because I could not do that without being didactic. But I also think that the question of home vs exile is complex and requires a nuanced approach.

MC: What have you learnt from doing and reading Harare North yourself?

BC: I’ve probably been demoralised to realize how much I’ll have to do before I can write a book that is anywhere near perfect.

MC: What should we expect from you soon?

BC: Ndiriku wunganidza tunhu twangu – miseve, pfumo, nembwa. After that, chamuka inyama. (I am quietly putting together something.)

Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza (an Obituary by Memory Chirere)

2010-05-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

Ruzvidzo.You cannot go just like that. I only learnt about it a day after when I phoned the guys at BWAZ over an otherwise happy matter. I didn’t know you had been ill in hospital. For over six months you were unreachable. You had suddenly disappeared from the social scene. This was not the first time that you disappeared from the scene.

You took a very quick and solitary exit.

A week before your death, I bumped into Ignatius Mabasa at an Avondale ice cream shop and he said he had seen you! He said you had talked. And as the kids ran around, licking their ice cream and bantering amongst themselves, Ignatius said you said that you felt that most of what you had written in the past was rather bleak and you were reworking some of your unpublished stories and poems (and novels too) because you now realized that, after all, life was a positive thing. We were impressed and were almost certain that one full volume of your work would eventually come out.

And now-this!

Is this the end of the end? Always the more courageous, I hope you faced your end with courage.

We first met in 1991 at the University of Zimbabwe. We went to English, History and Economic History classes together. One afternoon you came to my room NCI F105. Being a day scholar, you wanted somewhere quiet to sit and do some work. I went down to the foyer to pick the 4 pm tea. (To think they served free teas then!) When I came back with two cups, (yours and mine) you said you didn’t take tea!

We were strangers then. As I slowly went through the two cups, you said you had heard from people that I sometimes scribbled some poems and stories. You also wondered why I was reluctant to be referred to as a writer. I am not published yet, I said. You laughed loud and long and I thought you were a proud little fellow.

A writer does not need to publish to be called a writer, you argued. A writer writes, you added. Later, I got to see your point.

Then I asked about your totem and your roots and you argued that totems tended to take us backward. Totems were old things. You said that you were a cosmopolitan man, something like that. I quietly sympathized with you! This is in contrast to recent times when you became a fierce Pan Africanist and an avid follower of African traditions.

It is about this time that you began to say you wanted to be free. You said it regularly and pompously too and it began to overflow into your seminar presentations in class. We laughed at it: Dudziro Nhengu, Nhamu Tamari, Khumbulani Phiri and I. Can anyone in this world be free, we wondered. You even talked about being a ‘free spirit’ and that became your nickname.

You quarreled bitterly with those who taught us ‘Literature and Socialism’ and ‘Theories of Literature’ and we asked you to be careful because that was a sure way of failing. But, strangely, they let you off the hook for things all of us could have been punished. To demonstrate your desire for freedom, you started attending a certain meditative oriental art form somewhere on Pendennis Road. You said your lady instructor taught you self defence, and soul searching. You said you were being taught to see the world ‘from inside one’s soul’. You developed a distant look in your eyes that never left you. The way a bird looks into space after taking a sip of water from the trough.

Then a few months later you suddenly changed and joined the Shorin Ryu Karate club on campus.

We began to take writing more seriously. We joined the writing class conducted by Chenjerai Hove the writer- in- residence then. There were many of us in there: Nhamo Mhiripiri, Ignatius Mabasa, Joyce Mutiti, Emmanuel Sigauke, Zvisinei Sandi, Thabisani Ndlovu, Eresina Hwede and others. Our mentor had just won the Noma Award but behaved like he had just simply sold a goat. Hove listened as we read out our stories. Then he would close his eyes, hold his chest and say: ‘Vapfanha, writing comes from here’. We laughed at that but up until your death; we slowly awakened to the message behind that riddle. You will remember my story in which a writer’s book causes a revolution! I had set the story in South America. Why did I hope to succeed with a story set in unfamiliar lands? Naivety.

Then there was the trip that the three of us; Ignatius Mabasa, you and I made to Bulawayo on the invitation of author Chiedza Musengezi. She was working on a script for a children’s book and she wanted us ‘to tear it apart’. What a weekend! It was our first time in Bulawayo.

For a couple of days we chatted deep into the night, reading out loud and critiquing one another’s works. Then on a Sunday morning Chiedza asked us to ‘just go out and see Bulawayo for yourselves.’ That was good. But as soon as we got to a bar in a semi industrial area near Malindela, you and I (because Ignatius does not drink) had one, two and maybe three each and Ignatius reminded us that we needed to move on.

You refused flatly. You said you wanted to see the soul of Bulawayo because there was much of it in this bar and we should hang around longer. We quarreled bitterly and this is the closest that you and I ever came close to blows.

We dragged you out as you held an unfinished pint. I said nasty things about you and you retaliated. Finally Ignatius intervened when in fact, he had caused the altercation himself by suggesting we move on. He and I went out to explore Bulwayao and you stubbornly walked back into the bar. Later, you said you had walked out too and explored Bulawayo all by yourself. We met again in the evening at Chiedza’s place. Strangely, we were all cheerful and I think to this day, Chiedza has not learnt about this.

After UZ, I went to teach at Chipindura High in Bindura and you went to Oriel Boys High. During one of my visits, I noticed that your students 'worshipped' you. Their teacher was a celebrity. You had written a very powerful article in the Moto magazine about the sticking point of race relations in Zimbabwe. There was uproar in academic circles. You were in the papers and on tv. Judith Todd herself paid you a visit at home to congratulate you.

You allowed your pupils some liberties which other teachers did not. You asked them to think freely. No wonder that some of your former students like Mabasa Sasa later became your workmates. I began to look forward to a novel because I think you had many such scripts.

You were a self confessed admirer of Dambudzo Marechera. In an article in The Herald of 2 May 2001, page 7, you admit that you had ‘once walked in the shadow of Marechera’ before finally finding your own voice. You proceed: ‘Now, I am grown, I have not stopped questing for and exploring new horizons… the roads and the journeys I take are mine and not Marechera’s. Whereas he would balk at the thought of being leveled ‘an African writer', I have become a fierce Pan Africanist.'

From Marechera, you adopted a hypnotic and intense writing style. But as evident in your stories like ‘The eyes of a walk’ and ‘Mermaid out of the rain’, you adopted a fusion of Marechera with the charmed realism of Allende and Marquez. There is a suggestion that you felt that while Marechera was brilliant, he needed to dig deeper and benefit more from African folk, myth and wisdom.

I think your days at the Ibbo Mandaza's Mirror Group of papers will always stand out. You were the Acting Editor of the Sunday Mirror for a long time. You wrote lengthy articles under the title 'Muhera Wekwa Pfumojena'.You wrote about the return to Guruuswa, the return to Gomba rekwaNyashanu. This was no simple mythical quest.

You wanted to say, I think, that we need to return to the source. Not to go back to matehwe and nhembe, but to go back and reconnect with our upward thrust in history. To go back and pick again those values and qualities which are enduring and timeless, in order to face the present.

For me this was the most dramatic stretch in your life. The Sunday Mirror was something to look forward to. With a crop writers like Mabasa Sasa, Laura Chiweshe, Phillip Chidavaenzi, Trust Khosa and others, you were destined for great heights. Yes, there was also the Scrutator! You gave more space to the Arts and features in a way that has no comparison to this day in Zimbabwe.

I remember that you bought various sets of mbiras and placed them along your guitar in your study and learnt to play both at the same time. You started to draw too, having felt that maybe the written word was inadequate on its own.

You bought an expensive walking stick and appeared with it in public. One day at the Throgmorton internet café (Coner Julius Nyerere and Samora Machel), you cut a sharp figure; dreadlocked, brandishing the walking stick, clad in a three piece suit and a long snuff horn protruding from your pocket. After the usual greetings you went across the intersections and walked straight to the Mirror. I really felt that you had arrived.

You were against one super way of viewing the spiritual. You also liked the bible, particularly the Old Testament. I remember finding you reading it in your office, explaining to a charmed colleague that God is manifest in all cultures and that the devil of the Christians is not necessarily the devil of all the non christians.

You wrote about biras that you had attended in Mhondoro, Nyashanu and Guruve and even Mbare itself! In one BWAZ workshop that you conducted, it is said you knelt down and prayed to the ancestors for guidance with the workshop. All were stunned. Now people called you by your totem, ‘Mhofu’. Your new found quest opened you up and gone was my ‘antitotem’ boy of the early 1990’s. You apologized for what you had said about totems way back in 1991. I forgave you.

Then we went to Bindura to attend a Marechera commemoration one August day in 2004. It was arranged by one Ngoma of Shimmer, a policeman and a member of the BWAZ. There were a lot of readings. There was a lot of sunshine and inspiration.

But when we decided to return to Harare that evening, a curse fell on us. It took us over seven hours to travel the 88kms between Harare and Bindura. For over four hours, we did not get a lift to Harare. We decided to hitch hike to Glandale. We hoped to get better chances because Glendale connects Harare and Bindura and Harare and Chiweshe. We got a few beers from the nearby shopping centre and came back to the main road. For hours on end there was not lift for Harare! We decided to light a fire. We even went back to buy more beers and came back and rekindled our fire.

Past midnight and all the songs we had sung were exhausted. From nowhere, a spooky truck carrying cattle came along and we jumped in among the calves and the cows.

As we drove away, you looked back at our lone midnight fire and said, ‘I am sure he is now alone by the fire, poor man.” Without asking, I knew you were referring to Marechera. Most Marechera events have a tendency to be accompanied by some mishaps, you said. I remember that when I got down at Second street shops, you continued to the city centre. You phoned an hour later saying you had got a kombi to Southerton but picked a quarrel with somebody inside there and ended up getting down and walking all the way to Southerton and now you were not in bed but perched on a bar stool, drinking in good familiar company. I laughed and switched off.

Ruzvidzo, Free Spirit, you know too well that I have lots of respect for you.

a Ruzvidzo Mupfudza poem

2010-05-07T23:50:00.000-07:00

In 2006 the late Ruzvidzo Mupfudza (in picture) gave me about ten poems for an anthology that I was building. Now, here is one of them:

Hard Choices
(By Ruzvidzo Mupfudza)
When you've come face to face with Death unmasked
Or, at least, what in your terrified mind approximates
The visage of the Grim Slayer
You think of all the chances you've had
But foolishly watched as they slipped away

You hear again the call:
Seize the moment! Seize the moment! Seize the moment!
Yet you did not, you preferred instead
To slowly adjust your mental microscope
And analyse the moment in minute detail

Well, while you adjusted the lense, the moment vanished
Now as the Grim Reaper leaves, he scars your face and heart
Sunken cheeks, bloodshot eyes, ashen face
You realise and resolve never to laugh away
Chances and opportunities, half or otherwise
Never again to sneer at the open window
In favour of the brick wall

Ruzvidzo Mupfudza... a picture to remember

2010-05-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

I will soon do an obituary for my friend, writer Ruzvidzo Mupfudza who sadly passed on on 3 May 2010. In the picture above, it is a July weekend of 1993 and we are in Chiedza Musengezi's house in Malindela, Bulawayo.We are downing some wine after a good supper. The late Ruzvidzo Mupfudza is the dreadlocked man. I am in a UZ track top. Ignatius Mabasa is holding his chin.Our host has a white head scarf. We have taken time off from UZ where we are reading for our first degrees. Chiedza wants us to evaluate her new scripts and (as she says) 'tear them apart'. For the three of us, this is our first time in Bulawayo. We, who are living will not forget this weekend out in Bulawayo.

Shuga

2010-05-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

Isa maoko kumusana
uve munhu kwaye.

Pfugama

utsinzinye
unamate
sezvandakakudzidzisa.

Ehe-e;
chiburitsa rurimi
ndi
ku
kande
shu-shu-shuga.

(naMemory Chirere)

Stanley Nyamfukudza and the Zimbabwe of the early 1980's

2010-04-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

(Memory Chirere's reflections)
For Zimbabwe, turning thirty brings unbearable memories of 1980. But, maybe, for us interested in Literature the joy is also in picking, sometimes at random, on any book or story based on the feelings, thoughts, promises and revelations of around the independence period 1980.

One settles on Stanley Nyamfukudza’s 1983 collection of short-stories called Aftermaths especially those that go beyond celebrating 18 April 1980. These stories by Nyamfukudza dwell on “finer” reactions to independence. They explore various emotions, expectations and some anxieties of a freshly independent people.

In that context, you cannot also avoid the fact that during the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe Stanley Nyamfukudza went to exile in Britain. He was part of the 1973 University of Rhodesia black students who were imprisoned for protesting against racist policies on the campus and the whole country. Some of Nyamfukudza’s contemporaries in this act have become prominent names today in different fields. Among them the late politician Witness Mangwende and fellow writer, Dambudzo Marechera.

This generation went to exile or crossed boarders into Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana to bolster the nationalist war of liberation. Aftermaths is exciting because some of the stories here are decidedly based on the ‘the return’ home of the exiles and fighters around 1980.

In the title story “Aftermaths” a “returnee” goes down his boy-hood street in the location trying to reconnect. He tacitly takes a mental register and inventory of the township houses and folk. The signature of time is plastered on the walls of the township and although there is an air of carefree, a sense of tension is discernible.

The “return of the native” is generally a fascinating theme in Literature.

Many stories in Zimbabwe are told of the ex-combatants who threw large parties on their return. Their people wanted them to sing the war songs, to crawl on the ground as they did in the war and to sneak through the bushes and disappear as they were reputed to have done during the war. Many who returned from exile boasted about their impeccable English, German, Swiss or Swahili.

Time and experience had created a certain unbelievable social gap between those who had remained at home and those who had “gone away.” Nyamfukudza’s persona feels “robbed, childishly but painfully.” One takes note of a hazy suggestion that this is a community that has gone through a shock and soon there would be time to stand up and be normal again.

Maybe Nyamfukudza’s most dense and poetic story of the new 1980’s era is “Settlers.” It is apparently based on the earliest Zimbabwe’s resettlement programme. A young man and his pregnant wife find themselves clearing up dense bush to set up home and field.

Looking at his own circumstances, the man is overwhelmed. The Zimbabwe revolution had delivered a first, offering virgin land to the formerly dispossessed peasants:

“Sometimes, in the morning, standing there with
his pick, shovel and axe on his shoulders, it
seemed pointless, mad even. How could one
man and woman fight against all this thick
forest, sustained only by the dream that if
they kept at it, they would in the end claim
some room…”

One cannot escape from the “garden of Eden” feeling evoked by this story. By extension, husband and wife are Adam and Eve, respectively. The whole metaphor extends to the new nation state of Zimbabwe. Reading on, one recalls the heavy rains of the first Independence summer season and the subsequent bumper harvest. The phrase “Zimbabwe the bread basket of Africa” stuck as people flocked from “tired” territories in Masvingo, Madziva, Chiweshe, Gwaai… to open up heavy virgin tracts of fields in Muzarabani, Sanyati, Gokwe... Indeed “swords turned into plough-shares.” All of a sudden one wanted to be useful, to dig a hole in the earth and rest like some kind of a veldt bird.

Sleeping, working or walking, husband and wife “felt they were intruders, fenced in by a forest which just stood there, as if watching and waiting…” Implicit in the references to the flora and fauna is the plunder of nearly a century that had made a people stranger to their own space. Colonialism raptures spiritual connection between men and his heritage.

But the fecundity overflows into the human world in this subtle short story. The man likes to sit by the fire-side “watching her (wife’s) by now faintly swollen belly as she moved about in the small, smoke filled kitchen, preparing the evening meal.” The young wife’s pregnancy creates a sense of continuity and celebration which typifies 1980.

The forest in “Settlers” is however not that new or impenetrable. Physically and spiritually this is a place that leaves one with a feeling that one has been here before. Only one does not know exactly when and why.

Nyamufukudza also dwells on the other part of the miracle of 1980: the massive journey back to school. After the war old schools reopened and new uncountable ones sprouted. They were called ‘Upper-tops’ but even the derision in that title was thankfully ignored. Old tobacco barns became schools. Old churches became Adult literacy spots. Under the big Baobab tree a black board was erected, a teacher was found and a school was founded! Someone thought the old Rhodesian camp could be put to some good use and a school was founded. Men with beards and women with protruding breasts put aside the war memories and went back to school! Minister Dzingai Mutumbuka traveled the length and width of the country preaching, coercing and opening schools.

In the story “A fresh start” there is captured a small school in the middle of a rural community that is emerging out of war. Everything about the school is small, makeshift and experimental. One classroom block, three teachers who stay in thatched houses and pupils who wore neither shoes nor uniforms. Everything has the magical touch of “a fresh start.” The major character in the story is a teacher from the urban areas who happen to have a soft spot for the rural and the natural. For him “the lack of amenities, basic books even, seemed hardly important.”

The scene, typical of the rural Zimbabwe 1980, is set for adventure. After the war, communities tended to be inward looking. The basics first, seemed to be the dictum. A people had to have at least several shops, a bar and a grinding mill at the “growth point.” Then people needed a deep tank and a small school for a start. The teacher in “A fresh start” is part of the spirit of educating the nation. His pupils are his family. They keep a distance of respectability as he shares with them his knowledge and sometimes his own food. They respect and revere him and he knows it. The parents fraternize with him, always using the word “teacher” before his name.

But part of the fresh start here is that the teacher stumbles into a very beautiful woman who has sadly been maimed mentally in contact in the previous war. As he takes in the wonder and the beauty of the river, one day, she strays onto his hideout and he cannot believe there could be such a beauty out here.

The teacher goes through a restless panic. The ugly side of the just ended war is typified by this very beautiful young woman who will never have her mind again nor speak. The message that the war was a give and take and not romance gradually descends on the teacher. In that reawakening, he is first “sad and thoughtful” and later settles on the seemingly personal but national project. “The children looked up at him expectantly. He cleared his throat… were these the only available redeemers, if he was to recover from the rigours of apathy and jaded hedonism?”

Nyamfukudza captures the feelings of the times with a touch that is very personal and eternal. He has a certain sympathy for people that does not allow him to easily paint them right or wrong. Nyamfukudza leaves you feeling that individuals in their private endeavors represent the scattered conflicting sensibilities that make a nation.

Aftermaths is a natural sequel to Nyamfukudza’s war-time novel, The Non-Believer’s Journey