KwaChirere interviews writer, Fatima Kara

                                               Fatima Kara

Fatima Kara’s debut novel, The Train House on Lobengula Street, published this 2023 by Envelope Books, is a rare story about Indians coming to settle in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The story is about the Kassims; a traditional Indian Muslim family taking the economic opportunities that Southern Rhodesia offers to migrants from the east in the challenging 1950’s and 60’s. Virtually a villager from Hunyana village in India, Kulsum, the main character, is caught up in a struggle against both Indian Muslim traditions and the racist terrain of Southern Rhodesia. In The Train House on Lobengula Street, Fatima Kara delves into her childhood experiences in the Indian community in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) in the 1950s and 1960s.

Below is my interview with Fatima Kara done this August 2023:

 

Memory Chirere (MC): Fatima, congrats on your debut novel. I see that there is not yet much information on you on the internet. Tell me about yourself.

Fatima Kara (FK): As a third generation Zimbabwean, I was born and educated in Bulawayo. I received a BA and Graduate Certificate of Education from the University of Zimbabwe. Stories about people have always captured my interest. I find working cross culturally particularly engaging. The creative process of inventing characters inspires me. I use lots of description to help place my readers in the story and spending time in different locations in Zimbabwe helps me to capture place.

MC: When you are not writing, what do you do?

FK: I propagate trees that give us food: pawpaw, mulberry, avocado, and fig with the purpose of offering these saplings to community leaders to plant orchards at schools and community centres around Zimbabwe.

 

MC: What is your idea of a good novel?

FK: I like characters to be believable as I enjoy following their emotional journeys and essential to this is realistic dialogue. Fluidity of prose and the richness of language are essential to high quality creative writing.  For me the significance of the subject matter is key. My novel is based in historical facts. I find creative writing that approaches difficult human issues without flinching, very engaging. In my novel writing about Kulsum’s deep desire to give her children a life better than hers was compelling. There were times when her emotional journey got heavy and was painful, but I persevered.     

 

MC: How much of Zimbabwean writing have you experienced?

FK: My favourite Zimbabwean writers are Charles Mungoshi and Petina Gappah. Some excellent writing came out of the struggle for independence. Charles Mungoshi immediately comes to mind. He portrays with ironic detachment the devastation of local Shona communities, materially and spiritually, by the settler regime.  On the other hand, Petina Gappah’s stories are compelling, and the satire is brilliant.   

  

MC: What do you say about your situation as a Zimbabwean writer of Indian origins?

FK: I was born and bred in Zimbabwe. Although I am not African, I consider myself fully Zimbabwean. Growing up and being educated in Zimbabwe is a formative part of my life and fundamental to who I am. As you know, the space I describe in my novel is the city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city located in the largely Sindebele-speaking province of Matabeleland. This is where I was born and therefore my stories are based in the culture that is not the majority.

 

MC: At what point did you get into writing? What was your journey like up until the publication of this novel in 2023?

FK: During my childhood in Bulawayo’s vibrant Indian community, I saw a lot of things that troubled me – like young women travelling to faraway places to enter arranged marriages and Indian men practicing civil disobedience against the white police. I couldn’t know for sure what happened to them all, but I wanted to write a version of their stories. I was always curious about the life experiences of older members of the community and I listened to their stories and wrote them down. A few years ago the story was ready to emerge from my mind and onto paper.

 

MC: In The Train House, you go episode by episode, from 1940 to 1969, pursuing the life of Kulsum particularly. You put very specific contents into specific years. What was the influence behind this time bound structure that you use?

FK: The story is grounded in historical facts and the places it describes are realistic but it’s a work of fiction. I wove broad social history together with details of the Indian community. The novel is important to me because I wanted to  tell the story of the contribution of the Indian Bulawayo community to the struggle for independence, a story which most Zimbabweans don’t know.

 

MC: There is the very sensitive issue of arranged marriages at the heart of this novel.  How do you relate with this practice as an individual?

FK:  In the early part of the twentieth century, arranged marriages were the cultural norm and the bride and groom rarely met before the wedding with caste playing an important role. Over time, the system of arranged marriages has evolved and at present they are more negotiated. Today the families are still involved in introducing suitable partners but nowadays the men and women have a choice.

 

MC: You write solidly, packing every episode with both the tiny details and fundamental experiences of your characters. I find your style meticulous and elaborate, demanding that the reader put aside everything and sit down with your book for a while. Was this deliberate and what has been the influences behind that kind of writing?

FK:  Thank you. Yes, it was deliberate. I want to bring my reader into the minutiae of the lived reality of my characters, especially the women, and that means describing how they spend their days, how they relate to each other and their families and to the external realities and forces they come up against. These are immigrants to Southern Africa, bringing with them and trying to preserve their own cultures, to negotiate and find their place in a new and often very different culture. As with many other novelists, I feel the need to speak truth to power, through my characters and their experiences. The writing of this story was organic and based largely on my own experiences, as the struggle for independence goes on in tandem with the family saga, where Nurse, Amar the barber and Kulsum’s husband Razak, help to provide safe houses for activist leaders. Kulsum, the story’s protagonist, fights for her daughters to get an English education that will free them from a caste system that ensures their continued dependency on men.

 

MC: In this novel, your women are generally very conscious of the menfolk and of traditional norms around them. What do you think about the role of women in societies closely conscious of tradition and religion?

FK: How could they be other than conscious of what their men and their society’s norms expect of them? This is their reality and it’s one of the reasons I want the reader to see it from the women’s lived experience. Kulsum and Razaak fall in love and respect each other, but their relationship is put under huge strain by the societal demand that their daughters be married within the caste. The women characters in my novel know that Indian women must play the part given to them. But they are astute enough to see that in the baffling new world they have entered in Southern Africa things are different. With Nurse’s guidance and encouragement Kulsum, Lakshmi and Manjula make the decision not to be victims. We follow Kulsum’s emotional journey as wife, mother, businesswoman, magical gardener and nurturer as cook. At the same time all three women keep a balance between tradition and modernity.

 

MC: To me, Kulsum herself appears to dither between accepting her fate as a woman in an Indian Muslim family and finding her own way. What do you say?

FK: Kulsum does not dither. She is determined to give her children the best that life can offer in the colony and like a chess player she moves her pieces with brilliance and shrewdness. She successfully gets her daughters to have an English education, she takes her family out of poverty by starting her own vegetable business and then she builds her own house where she can bring up her children. Kulsum learns and is guided by Nurse and Lakshmi, gurus of wisdom and life. She becomes a leader who crosses cultural boundaries. She in turn guides and helps the young widow Manjula, the tearoom owner, thus advancing women’s dignity.

 

MC: For you, what is the purpose of Kulsum’s daughter, Zora? Is there much distance travelled between mother and daughter?

FK: Zora is central to the story. Kulsum fights for her and her sisters to have an English education. Zora does brilliantly at school and helps her father in the business. When she has an arranged marriage and is sent to Uganda, Kulsum is devastated, and she plots to go and see for herself how her daughters are doing. The bond of understanding and love between the mother and daughter is strong.

 

MC: Your men; Abaa, Razaak and Osman appear to be steeped in the family norms and into making a living as Indian traders abroad. They appear cleanly cut into this role. What do you think is the crisis that the Indian men away from India have had to face over the years?

FK: It was economic survival. The government dictated what part of the economy they were sanctioned to enter. Farming and industry were the domain of the whites. Indians were only allowed to be merchants in designated areas, not in the city centre. The Indian business community cultivated bonds with the Blacks and the Blacks in turn made a conscious decision to support another disadvantaged group classified as Non-White, rather than choose a white business. Solidarity came from supporting each other and the Blacks built these alliances because they were largely treated with respect and dignity by Indian merchants. There is a scene in the novel in Latif Trading where one of Zora’s customers, a senior black seamstress talks about how Zora taught her how to count money and helped her to work out measurements for the articles of clothing she sewed, and these skills empowered her to start her own sewing business.     

 

MC: In this novel, we do not seem to move out of the Indian family to engage with the non-Indian Bulawayo community. The closest that we come to Africans is through the houseboy, Jabulani. And even then, he is not so much part of the story. Was that a conscious decision and what led to this?

FK:The Train House on Lobengula Street revolves around segregation, racial discrimination and people fighting for their human rights. In Rhodesia Blacks, Indians and Coloureds were all classified as non-whites. The Bulawayo Indian community stood up as a community to fight injustice. They cultivated links with the activists and did not just take being denied the privileges of citizenship lying down. The protest tradition in Southern Rhodesia preceded the rise of the nationalist movement. There were people fighting for the rights for recognition as humans and for human dignity and that manifested itself in campaigns of civil disobedience like when they drove their cars to the whites-only driving cinema and blocked the entrance until admission was granted to people of all races. They fought and won the right to enter public libraries and swimming pools. They supported the activists; provided safe houses in Bulawayo, visited political prisoners in detention centres and provided money, groceries and school uniforms for the families of detainees in the high-density suburbs. They also took a great risk in printing and distributing an underground magazine to politicise Indian youth.

 

MC: You are based in the US at the moment. How do you negotiate the various spaces you occupy, Indian woman from Zimbabwe who sometimes works in the US?

FK: The “spaces” you refer to are geographical. I write from the space inside my head and my soul, and this requires focus, deep concentration, solitude and time. Quite like Kulsum, I constantly collect and cultivate herbs and seeds to share with others, fostering friendships that extend across many parts of Zimbabwe. I am in the fortunate position of being able to live in diverse cultures and so I engage, learn and appreciate whichever culture I have the privilege of being present in.

 

MC: Besides this novel, what else should we expect from you?

FK: As peoples in the diaspora are intimately familiar with, our stories are intricate and layered and don’t always fit neatly onto chronological frameworks that are easily plotted. There are many more adventures that my characters experience and I look forward to sharing these with my readers. I am working on the sequel to The Train House on Lobengula Street.       

 

MC: Thank you.

 

 

 

Daves Guzha returns with AIKAKA!

 

Yesterday, Wednesday, 9 August 2023, in the evening, I went to the Theatre in The Park in the Harare Gardens to watch veteran dramatist’s, Daves Guzha’s one man play called Aikaka! The play is showing every evening between 7 and 8, until the 12^th of August.

In that one man play, the major thread is based on the former President of Zimbabwe, RG Mugabe, rising from the dead and starting to wander about Harare, musing at what life has become in his short absence. 

I must admit that Guzha brings the RG deportment and mannerism, without doubt. That characteristic line of hair just under the nose and RG’s typical sudden shifts between emphatic anger and joy, the up and downs of his shoulders….his emphasized pronunciation of certain letters in a word as in s-o-v-e-r-e-i-g-n-ty and Z-i-mbabwe!

It is a satire on all of us and, interestingly, on RG himself. None of us are spared as RG lingers the longest at the Mbuya Nehanda statue erected at the intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Julias Nyerere Way in the Harare's central business district. “I am sorry, ambuya, but I could have done a better thing for you…” RG says in his long speech, stepping all over the place as he looks at the 3-meter high statue. He turns to the Reserve Bank and says very critical issues about the major characters in that building. He serves his best when he turns to the imposing Zanu PF Head Quarters.

Sometimes RG chides his successors, and he clearly and notably overrates himself and the audience is ironically allowed to see through some of his weaknesses as a man and leader. There is the clever use of a delicate, believable but unreliable narrator! It is criticism that allows you to critique the critic!

Guzha expertly turns to change his wardrobe and appears as several other personae. The climax, I think, is when the svikiro turns to the three major characters in the coming 2023 presidential elections of Zimbabwe who are hanging on a puppeteer’s rack, turning and twisting. Guzha  taunts the presidential candidates with fundamental questions. It is like some kind of under-worldly inquisition. The puppets were done and controlled by Booker Sipiyiye. I could only marvel at the timing of the play! If it had come a month earlier or a month later, the effect could surely have been less.

Although this is a solo act, there is exciting contributions from renowned poet Tinashe Muchuri and playwrights, Stanley Makuwe and Patience Phiri. Aikaka is a typical Shona interjection and it expresses the speaker’s utter surprise at the sudden turn of events or the sighting of the least expected things in life. Aikaka points at incongruence for example, when you see a man flying or when you see the hare chasing a dog!

If you are in Harare this week, this is a play worth watching! Veteran actor and director, Daves Guzha, has been off stage for over fifteen years. His most well known one man play was called The Two Leaders I know. Subsequently it was turned into a movie.

+This review by Memory Chirere

 

 

 

KwaChirere reviews Fatima Kara’s debut novel

 

Title: The Train House on Lobengula Street,

Author: Fatima Kara

Publisher: Envelope Books: London, 2023

Isbn: 9 781915 023094

 

(A Book Review by Memory Chirere)

Fatima Kara’s novel, The Train House on Lobengula Street is a rare story about Indians coming to settle in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It is a carefully crafted story about sojourning and transitioning.  You are stunned that such a mature piece of work is only a debut attempt.

This is also a family novel because the sojourner is still within a part of her family. She cannot necessarily renew herself totally or remain stagnant because there is always family to consider. If you run, they stop you. If you linger, they push you on.

Meanwhile the sojourner’s traditions and beliefs are put to an acid test at the same time by three entities: family, time and the new space. This is a novel about continuity and change. Water and fire are in the same mouth.

On the surface, this is the easy-going story about the Kassims; a traditional Indian Muslim family taking the economic opportunities that Southern Rhodesia offers to migrants from the east in the challenging 1950’s and 60’s. The author does well to weave a solid narrative that constantly persuades the reader to slow down and linger. Sometimes you stop to cross reference details. This is something you find in other compact novels such as Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing and Spiwe Mahachi’s Footprints in the Mists of Time; two novels also about the trials and tribulations of newcomers to Rhodesia.

This novel gradually opens up like a wild and magical onion. The more you read the more you are paid. It is a story in which the least expected is always waiting by the corner.

This is a detective novel of sorts too; working out from 1969 backwards to 1940, up until 1969 once more, in order to establish why and how Razaak grows to become unsympathetic to his wife. You find Razaak sending his daughters far away to Uganda to arranged marriages. He is so determined to scatter his family while hiding behind tradition.

The case of an emaciated Zora, running away from a failed marriage in Uganda, back to Bulawayo with her sympathetic mother, to be asked by her father to go back to Uganda, is quite startling. Zora’s sisters are also unhappy, and they feel like slaves sold down the river. This is a very sensitive story about a long-standing custom that has sustained generations. The author shows without preaching. 

The story spins in time, meticulously finding out how tradition and culture turn a once sweet man like Razaak into a scoundrel and a hater of his wife who is a woman who gives Razaak eight children without complaining. Razaak gradually becomes cold towards a woman whose life is spent being routinely pregnant; calling on the nurse and the elders to help with her deliveries.

What will a newly arrived and newly married young Gujarati woman in colonial Bulawayo of the 1960’s want from her people and the colonial government? That is complicated. Kulsum comes to Bulawayo just after marrying Razaak in India and they settle in the broad Kassim family, led by a laid-back patriarch called Abaa. 

Virtually a villager from Hunyana village in India, Kulsum is caught up in a struggle against both Indian Muslim traditions and the racist terrain of Southern Rhodesia. She is in a double bind. Once outside the bustle of the train station in Bulawayo on her first day, Kulsum is fascinated to see that there are no rickshawallahs here, no loud vegetable sellers, no children playing, no beggars, no goats and no cows too!

While she is still working out her new geographical location, Kulsum senses that Razaak is more inclined to forget her! As soon as Razaak sees his long-lost father, his wife becomes second fiddle. When father and son hug and exclaim at the station, it is left to the black servant, Jabulani, to smile at poor Kulsum and ask her to join the celebrating party in the car. The marriage and attachment between Razaak and Kulsum end as soon as Razaak meets his father! Even when they get home, Kulsum becomes an invisible woman, and her opportunistic mother-in-law quickly takes over, more or less like an irate prison warder.

When Kulsum meets her mother-in-law, Jee Ma, she does not even ask after Kulsum’s sisters nor offer condolences on the death of Kulsum’s mother. Jee Ma becomes Kulsum’s competitor with an upper hand. That Abaa says Kulsum cooks better than Jee Ma makes it worse! Soon Kulsum gives birth to a boy when Jee Ma has no son to boast about! You are given opportunity to see how some women treat fellow women in the race to please men.

Then one day Abaa fumbles with her daughter in law wanting intimacy. This horrifies Kulsum who cannot report. She wonders if it is because she struggles to secure her scarf, the laj. Jee Maa overworks Kulsum like a donkey even when she is going through many of her pregnancies. The malicious backbiting continues until Kulsum and Razaak move out of Abaa’s place in the middle of the night to find refuge amongst other Indians in the vicinity.

Meanwhile the nationalist movement is growing in Rhodesia and the Indians realize that they are only tolerated as a white man’s buffer against the black people. Fortunately, there are the politically conscious people such as Amar. There is the radical coloured woman, the nurse, who is dragging the Indian community to take their resistance. There is Lakshmi, the Hindu neighbor, who realizes that people had better quickly grow and transcend tradition.

Kulsum has to deal with her own in-built contradictions. She constantly feels that although her in laws ill-treat her, she has a right to their love. She fights hard to embrace those who reject her until the option is to move on. This is consistent with the question she is asked by Nurse: “So, tell me, which place did you like living in best; in Hunyana, your ancestral village, or Madagascar, where you sold fish, or here, where your husband sells spices?”

And Kulsum's newly minted answer is: “This place.”

Razaak appears radical at first, taking on his family when he is wronged and even asking to leave in protest with his wife children in the middle of the night. But as soon as his wife proves to be more enterprising and conscientious than him, Razaak starts to want to fall back on tradition. He hates the house that his wife builds for the family on Lobengula Street because, as many say, it looks like a train house! But the truth is that they now have a house of sorts.

At one point Razaak cries out: “I am the father and I decide (for my daughters). We will court trouble if we do not follow tradition.” He feels defeated by his wife and falls back on the extended family which has all along looked down upon him. In chapter 17, which is the climax for me, Razaak spills the beans pitifully: “I don’t have the courage. Abaa was right about sticking to tradition. You, Nurse, my wife-you are all moving too fast for me.”

While this is a rare story about the lives of Indians in Zimbabwe, sadly the Africans are totally behind the scenes, only coming in as houseboys. Jabulani, for instance is rather unexplored. He is seen but is not heard.

Asked by Asjad Nazir of the EasternEye on what inspired her to write this novel, Fatima Kara says, “During my childhood in Bulawayo’s vibrant Indian community, I saw a lot of things that troubled me — like young women travelling to faraway places to enter arranged marriages and Indian men practicing civil disobedience against the white police. I couldn’t know for sure what happened to them all, but I wanted to write a version of their stories.”

On Amazon it is indicated that Fatima Kara is a Zimbabwean writer living in the USA and that the author has an MFA from Spalding University in Kentucky. When not writing, she propagates fruit and nut trees, and plants them in schools and rural communities around Zimbabwe.

The Train House on Lobengula Street was shortlisted for the UK’s Laxfield Literary Launch Prize in 2020. The book can be ordered through: Amazon.com: The Train House on Lobengula Street: 9781915023094: Kara, Fatima: Books

 

 

 

The writer from Matobo speaks...

Vuso Mhlanga (VM) interviews Zimbabwean novelist, Tsitsi Nomsa Ngwenya( TNN) on her new novel, A Portrait of Emlanjeni published by Carnelian Heart Publishing in the UK this March 2023.

VM: Your new novel, A Portrait of Emlanjeni is basically about a country girl from Matobo who is made pregnant while she is still in school and her painful fights. Why did you pick on a young woman and accidental pregnancy as the central issue to this story?

TNN: Understandably, the story is not solely about Zanele and her pregnancy. Indeed her matter is one of the main reasons for the story. I write about things that break my heart. When growing up in Matobo, I saw a lot of girls with brilliant minds being turned simply into mothers and wives of men who only visited their families once in two years or never returned from eGoli.

VM: Sad indeed

TNN: Yes, my heart goes to the girl child of Matobo and all Zimbabwe. The girls become mothers prematurely not because of their willingness but because of the environment. Schools are few, scantily-resourced, and far away. After walking 10 kilometers to and from school, the girls come home to help with house chores thereby making them fail to study. That is not the only problem; male school drop outs wait for these girls by the river or in the valleys and persuade or force them into these doomed relationships. That is is the Zanele territory!

VM: And I also see that these voracious boys actually have one destination, eGoli!

TNN: The matter does not end there, in most cases, these marriages fail and even these young mothers end up going eGoli too, to work. Children are then left with senile grandparents who cannot properly manage. Even if Emlanjeni people try to preserve their moral values and culture, these new issues cause the moral fabric to decay. Children no longer belong to the community because the generation of young and middle-aged parents is not there to keep the social values as they were before. This is the matter of this novel.

There is need to balance the socio - economic situation in building more schools with teachers and revival of industries so that families can stay together and built a more responsible future. South Africa is the only place where Emlanjeni people can work, but this is not about Emlanjeni village only. Almost every family in the country is supported by members who work outside the country. It is not a problem of Emlanjeni alone.

VM: Zanele is an intelligent girl but during her first accidental slip, she is made pregnant by a fellow village boy. What lessons should young people have from this?

TNN:  Young people, not girls only, must always guard their bodies and think about a future and a life they want.  They must know that it does not take many sexual encounters to fall pregnant.

VM: Someone may say that you carefully present the breathtaking environs of Matobo as a rich and key character to this novel just like in Cry the Beloved Country and Waiting for the rain. What do you say?

TNN: I had to take the reader with me presumably from Bulawayo, to Emlanjeni village, where the story is happening. We discussed this a lot with my initial editor, Tanaka Chidora. So, making Emlanjeni Village a character was at the back of our minds.

VM: Can you say anything about your growing up in Matobo? What place does it hold in your heart?

TNN: I cannot even imagine growing up in any other place. Ah, Matobo; the sounds and smells of the mornings and evenings shaped my being. I feel the cool morning air of that place and the cold on my shoeless feet. I feel the September heat. I hear the Matobo cows mooing and the cockerels announcing the hours of day. I hear the women laughing by the well as they fetch water and tell each other stories about their men, their children and their many dreams. Even now, I see the men cutting wood and talking among themselves lazily as they share a beer calabash and the momentary cigarette. Rich memories came into this novel and I hope my readers will wallow in them.

VM: The title Portrait of Emlanjeni suggests that this story is some kind of a picture of Emlanjeni. What did you mean by that title? How did you arrive at it?

TNN: The story is about many stories in one, many issues intertwine. It is all about Emlanjeni people’s traditions, culture and their way of life. There is the issue of contestable traditional practices affect women. There is, for example, MaMpunzi being married to her late aunt’s husband. It will cause rich debates. There is the avenging spirit and some will say is it real? There are issues concerning Christianity versus traditional religion, working together as a community, sharing everything and helping each other in everything. There is judicial conflict. The whole thing becomes a portrait, a picture. For that, Chidora said let’s settle on the portrait word. Even the second editor and ultimate publisher, Samantha Rumbidzai Vazhure liked it too.

VM: The women in this novel are explored deeply; especially the way they talk, love, work and feel. For me, they erupt from the page!

TNN: Thank you, Vuso. I did not set out to write as deeply as you say about the women. I just wrote. The women of Emlanjeni are what they are. Working together, accepting, understanding and helping each other. I am still, in my own way, one of those women. I am in each and every one of them. I exist because they do and see, appreciate and value my existence too.

VM: There is a lot of humor and comic moments in this novel and yet the novel also dwells partly on the civil war and tragedies of the early 1980’s that took place in Matobo and the whole southern region of Zimbabwe. How were you able to handle all that together but coming up with a beautiful story?

TNN: I am able to mention the evil tragedies of the early 80’s because the pain, sorrow and fear still exist in the people of that region. It is something that cannot be ignored. Looking at Bhalagwe mine continues to remind the people of what befell them in that time. It is there in our country’s history. It was going to be a mischief and betrayal on my part not to mention, even in passing, since the story of Emlanjeni travels through the place.

VM: How long did it take you drafting, writing and finally publishing this novel?

TNN: I wrote the story in 2013, in anger and mental turmoil, after I had shut down my business. I wrote the whole first draft of the manuscript in 21 days. I was not talking to anyone.

VM: What have you learnt through writing and producing this book?

TNN: Through writing this book, I learned that writing a book and getting it published is not a one man or woman show. Many people are involved who become part of the book. The first person to read the first draft, David Mungoshi, passed on before the back was published. As authors, we must be patient and work well with others. This book went through the hands of four different people because the final editor.

VM: Could you take us through all the books that you have written and what each is about.

TNN: I have published four books so far. The two Ndebele novels, Izinyawo Zayizolo and Zalabantu Ziyebantwini have helped in preserving language and culture for the future generation. The collection of short stories in English, The fifty Rand note and other stories has been well received by readers and scholars.  

VM: What is your view about publishing this story with Carnelian Heart Publishing who are out of Zim?

TNN: I am happy that the book was published outside Zimbabwe by a publisher with the means to take it across the world and back to Zimbabwe itself. It is no secret that local publishers are overwhelmed by economic challenges and have downsized greatly on fiction. Very sad! The other issue is that the local market is struggling under current economic challenges and people cannot afford buying books. The book now competes with mealie meal and relish. So people tend to photocopy or to share that one copy in the village or township. So it is the time to publish abroad.

VM: In Portrait of Emlanjeni your pen takes us back in time to a world of powerful chiefdoms and benevolent, wise and powerful kings. Tell us more about that world and what inspired that motif!

TNN: Tsitsi Nomsa Ngwenya: I was a keen reader of Wilbur Smith, in his stories; he portrays African people as people with no system, no brains, no order. So I was answering his views on issues to do with the hierarchy of the Villages to the Chief and to the Spiritual leaders of African people. I was trying to show that we do have the order, and that in our own ways, we could live in peace and respect of each other.

VM: Thank you so much for your time and responses, Nomsa.

+Vuso Mhlanga is a literary critic and academic based at the University of Zimbabwe where he teaches Literature in English. He also has a keen interest in Law and educational matters.

 

 

 

 

 

Ignatius Mabasa writes intro to Shamhu YeZera Renyu

 Musumo

Shamhu Yezera Renyu raita kuti ndifunge kuti, mudetembi Memory Chirere anonetsa kuti umuwanire mupanda kana tasvika panyaya dzekunyora nhetembo.

Chirere munyori asvika panotyisa pakasiyana nepaaive mazuva aakanyora nhetembo dziri muna Tipeiwo Dariro, kana muna Bhuku Risina Basa. Munyori Chirere ari mubhuku Shamhu Yezera Renyu abva zera uye akwira manera asi kwete evaRozvi ekunoturunura mwedzi.

Uyu ave munyori anoziva kuti kuve munyori hachisi chipo chake semunyori, asi chipo chevanhu chinofanira kubuda maari chichinopinda muvanhu kuti munyori agove murapi anorapa vanorwara mumagariro. Kunyora kwaChirere nhetembo dzino kunenge kupakura kwamai vane vana vazhinji, vanopakura vachisara vasina, asi chinovapa kuguta kuziva kuti vana vavo vaguta, nyangwe ivo vaine nzara.

Nhetembo dziri mubhuku rino dzinotaura kuti Chirere ave kudivi revakuru vanoona zviitiko zvehupenyu hwazvino, asi vachiona kuti kwavakabva, makuriro avakaita nezvavakanzwa imhodzi dzakaputirwa muchipepa dzikapfekerwa muchengo chemba. Kubudikidza nenhetembo idzi, Chirere ari kuvhomora, oputunura chipepa chine mhodzi dzakare idzodzo, odzidyara muvhu renguva ino, odziyemura dzichimera, kukura nekubereka. Ari kukoka vaverengi kuti vadye naye nhopi yenguva dzaakanga ari kakomana kuNyombwe, kumakomo eMavhuradonha. Tinokura tiri mumisha yedu, asi makwenzi, miti, tsine, zvuru, nzizi nemakomo atakakwira zvinodzoka kuzotiyeuchidza kuti paye pawakadarika nemandiri, mweya wangu wakanamira pauri, uye zvaunofunga nekurangarira ndini newe.

Asi kana zvake Chirere ari nyanduri, nhetembo dzake dzinomutengesa kuti iye mutauri wengano nemunyori wenyaya pfupi. Manyorero aChirere haasi  emunhu anoda kuti vanhu vafunge kuti kunyora nhetembo ibasa rekuvhiya svosve kuti ugosara nedehwe racho kuti urirovere paruware nehoko, kwete! Chirere anonyora nhetembo dzake seanotamba, uyewo seanotambisa pfungwa dzevaverengi. Kashoma kuti unete kana kunzwa kuda kusiira nhetembo dzake panzira, nekuti kufanana nengano, muverengi anongoramba achibvunza kuti “Chii chakazoitika?”

Chirere anosetsa muverengi, asi achidzura shumba ndebvu, nekusvina mamota embwende. Anotamba nemazwi, asi achifukunura mazimbambaira eruzivo rwuri mururimi rweChiShona zvekuti unobva waona kuti chokwadi vanhu vanonyora vakapakurirwa nemugwaku kuti vave mhizha.

Maziso ake anoona zvinoonekwa neruzhinji, asi chipo chake chiri mukutora izvozvo zvamunoti zvemazuva ese, obva azvisvinyanga semusuva wesadza. Munomuona Memory Chirere achiseva musuva iwoyo mumarwadzo kana mibvunzo inenge minzwa michena yemuunga mosara makashama iye achitsenga.

Nhetembo dziri mubhuku rino dzinobata nguva, nzvimbo, maonero nematingindira akawanda. Chave kudiwa ibhuku rekupenengura zvinhu zvakawanda zvaanobata – maonero ake ehudiki, pfungwa dzake pamusoro perudo, kuseka kwake hupenzi huri matiri – kusvika mumaburitsiro aanoita mapere ari murima rehupenyu hwedu.

Ignatius Mabasa, Harare, 2023.

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KwaChirere reads Austin Kaluba's new stories

Author: Austin Kaluba
Title: Mensah’s London Blues and other Stories
Publisher, Carnelian Heart Publishing in the UK, 2023, 117 pages
Paperback ISBN 978-1-914287-04-6
Hardback ISBN 978-1-914287-05-3

The exciting Zambian author, Austin Kaluba, who once wrote a letter artistically and impeccably, like Dambudzo Marechera, has published his own collection of short stories with Carnelian Heart Publishing in the UK! It is a book entitled Mensah’s London Blues and other Stories.

Amongst these short stories, of course, is the people’s favourite piece “Dambudzo Marechera’s letter to Samantha” and Kaluba’s fans will be happy to find it here. Until recently, very few people knew that the so called “Dambudzo Marechera’s letter to Samantha” was not written by Marechera himself but by Zambian writer, Austin Kaluba, as part of a broad 2011 project in Marechera’s memory. Kaluba imagined what Marechera would sound like writing to his ex-girlfriend after having expelled from Oxford University.

Kaluba's “Dambudzo Marechera’s letter to Samantha” generated an avalanche of positive responses in Zimbabwe and among Zimbabweans in the diaspora. Because of the very successful imitation of Marechera style and language demonstrated in that piece, many believed it was actually written by Dambudzo himself. The responses even crossed to academics who thought the letter was written by Dambudzo himself. When it was revealed that the letter to Samantha was not written by Marechera himself, many were disappointed to the extent that, for a while, they rejected the revelation itself. Such is the power of art.

When I interviewed Austin Kaluba a few months ago, he had this to say about his "Dambudzo Marechera’s letter to Samantha": “I had read works by the late Zimbabwean writer and tried through extensive reading on his life to understand his troubled upbringing in colonial Zimbabwe, his years in England and his bohemian life that could have qualified him to be some kind of black Oscar Wilde. Yeah, I had to get it right by not leaving any detail that summed up the life of the shamanic writer he was…”

Kaluba continued, “Marechera’s vulgar language and mistrust of any other person who did not share his views about the crooked world had to be crammed into the story. Dambudzo thrived on shocking people using sexual symbolism and other unconventional ways of driving his point home. I had to get all this right. I also ensured the story worked at two levels; Dambudzo representing Africa explaining himself to his white girlfriend who is representing Europe. In short the story is about the damage Europe has done on its former colonies…”

The Marechera letter begins: “Dear Samantha. I think by now you have heard what happened when those hypocrites in administration chased me from their white university giving me an option between being sectioned or expelled. I chose the latter, a decision which shocked them out of their warped wits. I have forgiven them because together with you they thought as an African student from some remote Southern African country I was privileged for receiving tertiary education at Oxford, a learning institution they have overrated as a citadel of knowledge just like Cambridge or Harvard. It is such  academic mad houses that  keep on churning out arrogant, snobbish, hypocritical and pea-minded bastards who enter the world with the superior airs of holier-than-thou, we and them attitude calling themselves Doctors, Professors or any stupid titles to distance themselves from other ordinary folks whom they look down on as dunces…”

The story about Marechera’s troubled stay in England is well known as it appears in many versions in many of his autobiographical narratives and they have now over spilled into Kaluba’s collection.

In Mensah’s London Blues and other Stories, Austin Kaluba writes short stories about characters from across Africa; apartheid South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi and others, sometimes picking snippets of the various mother tongues from each of those countries. It is a collection that shows how the UK has become a melting pot, a cultural confluence even. There is the overpowering sense of how Africans play out their crucial drama away from Africa.

There is an antagonistic relationship between the destination and the home left behind by the one who travels. This is more closely related to the old but constantly resurfacing ‘centre – periphery’ theory.  Generally the western city is the centre and the home of those in the Diaspora is the periphery.

The characters in these short stories are constantly aware that they are in foreign territory. Their activities show that they are constantly looking back at home in the periphery, which in turn is either checkmating them or aiding them down a rebellious path from the culture and norms of home.

However, this collection makes a calculated and laid back take off with a child narrator’s story called "Kippie Goes Home."  It is during apartheid South Africa, a boy is given a suicide note written by a neighbour’s son so that he could read it loudly to two elderly women. After that the letter reader is never the same again. He is transformed. The boy from next door who has slaughtered himself suddenly comes alive. As he reads the letter, the boy is transfigured. He is nolonger reading. he is now living the life of the writer.

The title story itself, "Mensah’s London Blues" begins with the voice of a forlorn Ghanaian man: “I came to England as John Mensah, then I became Kofi Gyan, and later I came to be known as Kwame Ampiah. I was busted for my deception when my real name appeared in all the newspapers. My dark face popped out of the picture sheepishly, as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. The headlines mostly ran along the lines of “Illegal Immigrant Arrested for Drug Trafficking.”

It is a story about the life of many migrants to the UK. It recalls the writings of Brian Chikwava, Andrew Chatora, Leila Aboulela and others. The current migration of young Africans from Africa to the West for economic reasons has given birth to a rich literary tradition that tries to open up the challenges and even the opportunities brought in by this mass movement. In these stories, western space causes a lot of havoc on the body and mind of the traveller.

Maybe my favourite story in this collection is "Mrs Skerman." It shook me to the core. Because his visa in the UK is running out, Kofi plans to find just any female British citizen to marry and be allowed to stay. In this tragic-comic story, the hunter becomes the hunted! Kofi meets Mrs Skerman through a dating agency. She is 20 years older than him! His first description of her is something to recall as it reveals Austin Kaluba’s power of description which also runs through this collection:

“The first thing I noticed was her pronounced ugliness. The skin on her face was thick and leathery, making her resemble a walrus. She had wrinkles around her eyes and a deep frown line in between her brows, as though a small axe had made its mark. She had a fleshy double chin with a beard sprouting from it, and though she shaved every morning, it never helped to smoothher complexion. The blade left ugly red marks which were worse than the beard. She was also unusually tall for a woman and walked with a shuffling gait, her meaty hips moving piston-like. She spoke in a halting voice that fell somewhere between a whisper and a growl…”

And their first dance in the seedy bar is described thus:

“With so many beers in my belly, when she suggested dancing, I jumped up and led her to the dance floor. It was a slow beat. She held me close in a bear hug, our movements closer to body combat than ball dance. I repeatedly stepped on her shoes, but she didn’t seem to notice. I felt we really looked funny, but the other people were too drunk to see…”

What follows in this story is a huge lesson to all young African men who think that they can take advantage of elderly white women to win what may look like easy pickings. The final twist to this tale left me wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.

“Auntie Agatha’s Quest” is a story about a Zambian woman whose imitation of whiteness goes overboard. She is always constantly writing her O level English and failing. The harder she tries, the harder she falls. When she crosses over to settle in England with her husband, her drive for white things is still unstoppable and this leads to one tragic moment after another. Only when she is ill does she resign and loudly break into perfect ChiBemba, “Ntwaleni kumwesu eko nkaye fwila. Teti mfwile mwanabene. We chalo uli mukali.” – Take me home to die. I don’t want to die in a foreign land. Oh, what a cruel world.

“Maria’s Vision” is a story about two Zimbabweans in the diaspora who are drifting apart. They are coming from a tumultuous Zimbabwe but as soon as they get to England, that change of zone helps them realise that they are just a terrible mismatch.

The more Tapiwa watches tv the more they re-enact what is on tv: “Tapiwa finished his meal and switched on the TV. He changed channel after channel till he settled on a repeat boxing match between Daryl Harrison and Danny Williams. He moved his head at the landing of each punch from the two boxers. Maria hated finding herself with such a difficult man. She had thought long and hard about how she could end her miserable marriage, especially now that she was in Britain where divorce was easier than back home. But something always held her back, not least of all the fear of shaming her family and acting contrary to her Christian faith…”

Then there is the Nigerian, Obi Akwari who is always writing essays about why the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria ought to secede from the rest of the country. In his work, he is not only targeting Nigerians, but the Western world as his audience, especially the Britons and the French, who were responsible for the genocide against the Igbos during the Biafra civil war during the late '60s and early '70s. He believes in his work so much so that he sometimes faints with emotion in the middle of his sentences!

Austin Kaluba’s best stories have a psychological realism and concision seldom matched by other writers.

About his own life as a writer Austin Kaluba once said to me: “I am an introvert who is highly opinionated and bohemian. I write poetry, short stories and do translations. One of my translations Frown of the Great in English was previously published as Pano Calo in ci-Bemba (the commonest language in Zambia). It has been re-published in Zimbawe by Mwanaka Media and Publishers as a bilingual collection.  I am also working on a collection of short stories Mensah’s London Blues and Other Stories to be published in England. The collection has two stories with Zimbabwean characters A Dream Deferred and Maria’s Vision. The latter has been made into a movie by Tendai Mudhliwa, a UK-based Zimbabwean film maker. The movie stars Memory Savanhu and a cast of UK-based Zimbabwean actors like Goodwin Ngulube, Lydia Nakwakilo,Ashley Majaya ,Belinda Majego and Kudzai Manyeku. So you see Memory, my love for Zimbabwe has not ended with writing about Dambudzo but contributing a movie to Zollywood. I have also translated John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress into ci-Bemba…”

+Memory Chirere

 

 

 

 

 

When Three Sevens Clash: a book review

 Reviewing When Three Sevens Clash

A book review by Memory Chirere, Harare.

I am yet to recover from a tumultuous experience I had recently in coming in touch with When Three Sevens Clash, a book cum magazine conceived and published by veteran journalist, Percy Zvomuya, as his own initiative towards the end of 2022. The major focus of this work, largely in narrative form interspaced with drawings and pictures, was to highlight the life and music of legendary Zimbabwean musician, Thomas Mapfumo.

From a distance, Thomas Mapfumo appears to be generally intimidating but on the cover of this publication, there is a mug shot of him smiling. It is as if Thomas is a boy again; looking down at his peers from atop the bus window, just before a trip from the Chihota Communal lands where he spent part of his boyhood. In the 1950's journeys by bus from any place to Harare, Salisbury, tended to be far apart. These were considered great occasions as one’s folks came to the bus stop to say goodbye. There would be tears of joy and pain, too.

We are fortunate that a group of renowned writers and artists; Farai Mudzingwa, Geraldine Mukumbi, Tony Namate, Tawana Mudzonga, Brooks Marmon… have just given us a cross sectional gaze at the life and times of Thomas Mapfumo. They delicately marry the music to the environment, explaining and clarifying the many things around Thomas Mapfumo. 

The pieces by fictional authors, Musaemura Zimunya and Brian Chikwava are particularly most focused on Thomas Mapfumo, from the 1950’s to the present day. For me they make the pith of this magazine and should not go without mention.

Editor, Percy Zvomuya says the title When Three Sevens Clash comes from Joseph “Culture” classic Hill’s 1977 album Two Sevens Clash. When on 7 july 1977, whe actually four sevens clashed; seventh day, seventh month, seventy-seventh year, many in Kingstons did not venture out lest they be caught up in the apocalypse. Thomas Mapfumo, who was born in 1945, turned 77 in July, the seventh month of the year: three sevens clashing once more!

Percy Zvomuya meets Musaemura Zimunya at the funeral of Thomas Mapfumo’s musician young brother, Lancelot’s burial at Warren hills in Harare on 10 October 2022 and it becomes a moment to review the route and roots of Thomas Mapfumo and Chimurenga music. A kind of workshop is planned and this book carries such proceedings.

The longest rendition comes from renowned Zimbabwean poet, Musaemura Zimunya, himself a relative and once publicist manager of Mapfumo when Coen and Merz were attempting to do a documentary on Thomas Mapfumo in the mid 1980’s. Zimunya writes with care and precision.

Place and people are critical in Zimunya’s rnarrative. Born and raised in Chihota Communal lands amongst his mother’s people, it is indicated that Mapfumo has a Christian background, rather untypical for a man who eventually becomes the icon of Zimbabwean traditional music with mbira at its core.

It is all in order that during his early days in Salisbury, now Harare, Thomas played drums and the saxophone in the the African Christian marching Church where he went with his mother.. He was imbued in the Christian harmonies and vocal arrangements. But latter you learn that this was an unintended apprenticeship! Suddenly you notice that this s the same route that other Zimbabwean musicians tended to take.

Then there was the dramatic entry of rock and roll into the life of Thomas from the big world out there. Out goes classical jazz, and Thomas is now in Mbare, then Harari township. Thomas and his peers are found  spotting the rockabilly haircut  known as “the Elvis cut” after Elvis Presley of rock music, of course. Teenage radicalism and the windfall of  sixties enter and Thomas escapes rather forcefully from the conservative Christian clutches of the family. He finds himself with a band, the Cosmic Four Dots which he forms with his peers. They are doing covers for various rock artists. Life is sweet. Thomas is good on stage and soon, he sings Prestley’s part for the Springfields  at an event in Harari and they immediately smuggle him!

Thomas is now very active. he quickly helps compose and record Shungu Dzinondibaya, Anopenga Ane waya and Conie, in chacha style, songs that later became great hits in Shona music. But soon Jimi Hendrix dies, and with him, the hippies. Thomas had to move on musically.

Zimunya’s first encounter with Thomas was is in 1973 when he is sneaking out a politically turbulent University of Rhodesia. Just about the historic mukwembe demonstration that brough black students in collision course with Iam Smith’s bully boys. Thomas was at home busy learning to play the saxophone. His reason was that Jimi Hendrix and the guitar had been too mainstreamed in the community and that there was need to move on and create other sounds and other images.

In their young men’s conversations, Zimunya works out that Thomas imagined starting on African rock in which the brass would play a central role almost in the mould of Osibisa, the Ghanaian British outfit of the times. More and more, the big black world was becoming radicalized. In the US, the great American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated in 1968. In Rhodesia itself, there was a growing political crisis that saw the detentionof nationalist leaders like Ndabaningi Sithole, Joshua Nkomo and many others. Accordingly the sociopolitical space naturally spawned new expressions, thrusts and genres.

Soon the emergence of the Hallelujah Chicken Run band at the Mangula Mine west of Salisbury, created space to experiment with traditional Shona rhythms. At the centre of this project were trumpeter Daram Karanga and bassist Robert Nkati and they needed a vibrant young vocalist and in came Thomas Mapfumo on vocals and drums. There would be guitarists, Elisha Jossam and Joshua Hlomayi Dube. The journey from rock and roll and pop music to African based sounds and rhythms was set.

There came the singles Hoyo Murembo and Torido Mutoridodo.  The experiments were quite rich and soon Thomas Mapfumo the vocalist and front man of this band had opportunity to reenact the Shona svikiro medium during the shows. In one picture in this magazine, Thomas is shirtless, holding in one hand, the microphone and in the other, a gano, the traditional ceremonial axe and a spear. Below that Thomas is wrapped in retso, the spiritual cloth. At this moment, Thomas had crossed the threshold. In Highfield in 1965, Zimunya says Mapfumo mesmerized the urban revelers with his trance like performance of the revolutionary traditional song, Hoyo murembo.

Mapfumo and his musical peers; Zexie Manatsa, Oliver Mtukudzi and others become typical characters in typical circumstances. They started to forge music “that told of the cunning brutality of the settlers, their seizure of land and the suffering of Africans through forced labour,  political detention and imprisonment.” A revolutionary spirit had seized them. Music is being actively directed by the events on the ground. Often they clash with the powers that be but the audiences across the country urge them on.

Musaemura’s critical view is that; by fusing the traditional Shona sounds of mbira  and modern pop sounds such as Afro rock, Thomas helped to reconfigure Zimbabwean music and that “in the five short years it took him to rise to super star status, he dragged a brainwashed and reluctant people out of their confusion and defeatism.” No wonder his music became known as Chimurenga music. Murenga is the term for the radical and warlike great Shona ancestor.

This article also traces the key figures in Zimbabwean music who have worked closely with Mapfumo as his Chimurenga music develops. These are many watershed characters in Zimbabwean music. There is the guitar maestro, Jonah Sithole a co-founder of the Chimurenga music because Chimurenga is said to be based on his mbira guitar. In his moments of anger, he loudly reiterates this fact to Thomas Mapfumo himself.

There is also Charles Makokowa who was also good at adapting well known popular songs and sounds from the Shona folk tradition. There is Chartwell Dutiro, who could play the tenor saxophone, the mbira, ngoma, hosho and provide backing vocals. There is trumpeter, Ernest Ncube and trombonist, Cannan Kamoyo. There is the inimitable keyboard player, Lancelot Mapfumo, and the heavily disciplined bassist, Washington Kavhayi. For a musical form to develop there must always be consistent instrumentalists.

Thomas Mapfumo produced great hits that have become part of the Zimbabwean folklore like Pfumvu paruzevha, Dangurangu, Wakura, Bhutsu Mutandarika, Kariba, Corruption, Hanzvadzi, Chipo change, Pemberai and many others.

Zimunya is acutely aware of the ups and downs in the life and music of Thomas Mapfumo and his tendency to openly lampoon whether the country is under Ian smith or Mugabe or Munangagwa. This is his most consistent feature. Maqpfumo’s fall out with the ruling style of Robert Mugabe, whom he previously supported, is well known. Subsequently, Mapfumo goes into self imposed exile but exile appears to be the downsize as it coincides with the coming of age of the great artist.

Zimunya’s article dovetails principally with that of Brian Chikwava, a distant admirer of Thomas Mapfumo from a different generation and now living in the UK. He is the author of the prizewinning novel, Harare North.  Brian Chikwava has very interesting observations. One of them is that Thomas Mapfumo, just like Robert Mugabe, is a proud and headstrong man, especially where sticking to principles is concerned. In Chikwava’s view, the two men are each other’s shadow! Two men with a rural and Christian background who find themselves supporting the same cause albeit from different angles and eventually clashing…

Chikwava writes that Mapfumo could not be short changed because, for example, he knew his real worth. Chikwava recalls one moment when Thomas arrives at the Harare Agriculture show with his band to play and asks the organisors, “So how much are we getting paid?” The organizers mentioned a number and emphasized that that it is what everyone was getting. “Saka mungatienzanise nana Pengaudzoke?” (Can you equate us with the little band Pengaudzoke?) and Mapfumo asked his band to leave the place immediately.

Using the iconic song Zuvaguru as the quintessence Thomas Mapfumo music, Chikwava says that song is “the soundtrack of my childhood post independence Zimbabwe.” Zuvaguru was that song which Chikwava’s father invariably put on the gramophone when they had visitors.

It is a song about the great day when what has been hidden in the bushes will come out. On the flipside is Motobika doro in which Mapfumo goes deep into the roots of the new nation, Zimbabwe, into the customs and traditions out of mbira out of which Chimurenga music emanates.

Brian Chikwava wonders why this record is never found amongst any of Mapfumo’s music on cd or vinyl, or to download or stream. “I have only the vinyl copy that once belonged to my father.”

About Mapfumo’s project of bringing mbira to the people through electric guitars in modern venues with Dube and Sithole, Chikwava has this to say, “(this is) the luminous discharge of energy that manifest when Africans brought their sensibility to bear on a space previously assumed not be theirs. At these crossroads, new identities are forged, there is an awakening, and we see new horizons beyond which the song persists, even after the physical object has varnished.”

When Three Sevens Meet is a critical read for those connoisseurs who wish to get accurate details on the development of Thomas Mapfumo as a musician in oreder to fill in the gaps. The other articles in this book dwell on musical venues of the times, the cultural setup from which Mapfumo derived his music and many other exciting things.