“The Chosen Generation” a historical novel by Thomas
Sukutai Bvuma
Independently published in 2021, 207 pages, isbn:
9798585091247
(Reviewed by
Memory Chirere)
Young Masara Musamba of Sakubva, Umtali, Rhodesia, is
involved in the war of liberation that gave birth to Zimbabwe as a ZANLA
fighter. This is his story told under his war name; Nyika Yababa, or simply
Yababa.
He quickly joins the war after beating up his white
boss who had beaten him for a flimsy reason at a fruit canning factory where the boy is working temporarily while waiting to go and enroll at the prestigious University of Rhodesia.
It is a serious crime in Rhodesia for a black man to
beat up a white man, for whatever reason. You would rather run before the police catches you. So
Masara abandons his job, his pay and his very beautiful girl friend, Wadiwa and
rashly clambers up the mountains on the western side of Umtali, crossing the border
to join the guerrillas across in Mozambique by first getting to Chibawawa
refugee camp in September 1976.
Masara had met some ZANLA guerilla before in his own
Mutambara communal lands and had always had a romantic view of the war of
liberation and the guerrillas. He had always hoped to join the liberators one
day. This historical novel is renowned Zimbabwen poet, Thomas Bvuma’s first long
prose offering.
But who is Thomas Sukutai Bvuma in Zimbabwean
Literature? Initially, using the pen-name Carlos Chombo, Thomas Bvuma wrote the well known poem,
“Real Poetry” at the height of the war in the late 1970’s.
“Real Poetry”
eventually got more “visible” publication in the Zimunya-Kadhani edited post
war collection called And NOW the Poets Speak (1981). Musaemura Zimunya and
Mudereri Kadhani set out to bring together poems which reflected on the
Zimbabwe revolution then.
Bvuma’s “Real
Poetry” defines struggle as people’s real poetry. Very reminiscent in content
and form to Jorge Rebelo’s poem called “Poem,” “Real Poetry” quickly became a
classic of sorts.
Zimunya and Kadhani
could not “resist using (the poem) as a choric prelude to this selection.” They
wrote somewhere that they also “found (in this poem) the power of the
intellect, control of rhythm and style well combined and married to idea,
action and reaction” and that through it, one recalls the more prominent
Angolan war poet, Agostinho Neto himself.” Zimunya nad Kadhani also used a
section of the poem on the blurb of the cream coloured And Now The poets as the
theme poem and the poem went viral.
Thomas Bvuma, like
Alexander Kanengoni and Freedom Nyamubaya, wrote poems at the war front in
between battles either as a pastime or a means to reflect on the war he was
participating in. He is still writing and publishing poetry long after the war
of liberation and some of his key pieces constantly jog one’s mind. More of
Thomas Bvuma’s poems were later published in Every Stone That Turns (1999)
almost two decades later! They are arranged in a way that sets out to capture
the changing times from war to independence.
But his latest work, the historical novel called The
Chosen Generation, appears to give the more elaborate materials that inform the
turmoil and thought that one finds in the poem “Real Poem” and the collection
of poems called “Every Stone that Turns.”
This novel fits in and tucks in real critical
geographical and historical factors that have been glossed over by many writers
of Zimbabwean war fiction and even those in war history..
Through this novel, places critical for training and
refugees like Chimoio, including its attack by Rhodesians on 23 November 1977,
Chibawawa, Tembwe and others are brought to life from the point of view of a
recruit and soon to be a trained cadre. There are no sacred cows in this
narrative.
As you read this novel, you are forced to compare and
contrast it with such iconic works such as Chinodya’s Harvest of Thorns,
Kanengoni’s Echoing Silences, Mazorodze’s Silent Journeys From the East,
Mutambara’s The Rebel in Me and Miles Tendi’s The Army and
Politics in Zimbabwe: Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker.
The story is written from a rather laid back point of view of an ex combatant
now sitting in his house in poverty stricken post war Chitungwiza township of
the economically tumultuous 2008. He is for searching his place in all the
tricky things that have happened and sometimes he thinks that his generation is
not chosen but cursed. But he insists that he wants to judge them fairly.
The narratives moves gradually, with ease, finding facts and fallacies, even
fitting the 1970’s within the context of the world’s rebellious youths of the
hippies, rock music and many other things. The story takes you to places and
decisions made outside Rhodesia and the war front. The war in Rhodesia is part
of world events and that is the strongest theory propounded by this book.
In chapters 10 to 13, which are very critical, the writer recreates
Chimoi as it was in the context of the war against Ian Smith. He goes for
geographic space within historic and social context. You begin to read into the
détente period, Zanla conscription methods as from 1976, the rise and fall of
the Vashandi ideology, love affairs, betrayals, Zipa, Zanla-Zipra relations, the
battle of Mavhonde, Tongogara, Herbert Chitepo, Robert Mugabe, Rex Nhongo and
the attacks and counter attacks between and amongst people and systems.
This book is a must read for all people with a genuine interest in the emerging
perspectives on Zimbabwe’s difficult war of Independence and how much it is a
prelude to what took place within zimbabwe soon after.
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