Lion Press books now available in Harare

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

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

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

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

Genitals are Assets: a full book review

(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

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.