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Chewing the pen
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Munhu WekuZimbabwe (an extract) by Memory Chirere
Kutsvodana kwamuri kuita uku matumwa namufundisi saizvozvi
kwatuma zvakawanda mukati kati mangu iniwo pachangu.
Ndatanga kuvhura mapeji zviya zvinoita vanopengeswa nefundo.
Kutsvodana kwamuri kusimbirira imimi vanhuwe
kwaita ndizwe kuti heya zviye neniwo ndinotoriwo nenyama
neropawo mukati umu zvinopisa samaware masikati aGumiguru?
Muchitotsvodana zvenyu pavanhu zvitsvene tsvenewo saizvozvi
ndotoonawo muchiringwa chero nebete riri pakati perwendo
richitomira kuti riringe iro risati rasvika kuchengo kwariri kuenda.
Muchitosainawo henyu mubhuku rerudo ketekete nepenzura saizvozvi
zvaita kuti nditi heya pasi pano pachiri kuitwa zvibvumirano nhai
zvisinei nekupopoma kwemvura murwizi kana kushaika kwayo?
Ndichidhidha mumazwi emanja anorohwa nevanhu muchitsvodana
ndaramba ndichiona sendakafa kare asi ndichimupenyu kudai
kunge ndiri kutonderwa nevaye vaye vaimbenge vari panyika!
Muchitsvodana kudai matumwa namufundisi anenge gondo
ndatonzwa inzwi rehupenyu hwangu kuti rashoshoma seremushamarari
werwiyo rwusina mudaviri kubva ndaita sendiri kurota pamambakwedza.
Ehe, ndayambuka ndokuona kakokorodzi kapwa hako sekusina kunaya.
Hapasi ipo here apa pataidhidha vakomana nevasikana, ndabvunza?
Ndadairwa nani? Vanhu vemazuvano vachaziva mibvunzo nemhinduro?
Kuita zvako sewakashanya asi uchiri munyika yaamai nababa.
Ndozowana pakadzikira mujecha kuti ndichere nemawoko nyore nyore
kuti ndibate mvura yepasi ndinyavise huro yangu yangoti papata.
Ndadzoka ndokuwana muchitotsvodana ndobva ndaita chadzimira
sezvinoitika ndichimhoresana neshamwari inobva kare kare kwazvo
yobva yanditarisa nepamusoro pehope yangu yashanduka nekurarama.
Ndobva ndatoda kuziva kubva kushamwari iya yakare kuti
dzichiripo kare nzvimbo dziya dziya taienda tose paupwere?
Kusatoziva zvangu kuti chinosara kwenguva ndefu muhwezva
wemhuka ichienda ichimhanya kekupedzisa iro bara riri muhudyu.
Mukati kufa nekushanya zvakanyanyosiyana here nhai veduwe?
Kana zvimapepa zvandainyora sejaya inga wani zvine ingi
asi inenge yanezuro kupenya kwayo ichidudza mazwi andaiveza
ndotoona mazwi andainyora sejaya ndichionawo kupinza
kwainge kwakamboita njere dzangu ndisate ndave kungotenderera saizvozvi.
Pfungwa dzangu dzaimbenge dziri banga chairo rinocheka nyama.
Munzeve ndodzinzwa nziyo dziya dzataiimba vadzidzisi vakabata shamhu
mabhazi achidarika nemutara aine migoro netswanada newaya nemagejo
nemadhiramu kana nembudzi pamusoro pawo akananga kuDande!
Heya muchiripo imi vachati? Muchiri kungotsvodana pamberi pevanhu?
Munozivawo here nhai vana imi kunyura kwezuva madeko richiti
tsvuu sechaimbove chiropa vafudzi vachiti tsiyo tsviyo zvimiridzo
vachindovharira mazimombe anodai kugwedaira setsikombi isingavhevheke?
Heya muchiri kutovsodana zvenyu nanhasi?
Ndanga ndaenda kwandakamboenda nemotokari yangu yandaive nayo
apo tangi rangu ndainge ndazadza ndichienda kusina mapurisa.
Dai kuri kungopera kwemakasa andaichovha zvaive nani.
Uku kupera kwepeturu ndisati ndapedza mitunhu yandaifanira kupedza.
Ehunde, ndiri kunzwa tsvodo dzenyuka idzodzo
nekuyeuka kuti ndigere pano newandakawanana naye gochanhembe
musati mazvarwa nekuti vaizokuzvaraiwo ndivo mazera angu inini.
Mufunge, tichiri vapenyu nekuti hapana kana akafa!
Zvakare kune mbeu dziri kubuda muvhu nyoro riri panze apo
nekuti kuchine zuva rinokudza kana zvinhu zvakaringana saizvozvi.
Ahiwee, penzura yangu yave kupota ichitsvedza iyi!
Ndichazvirega izvozvi zvekungogaronyora izvi
imi muchingotsvodanawo chete muchiroverwa maoko nemhomho
inosanganisira vabereki venyu nehama neshamwari vasinganyare kutarisa.
Naivo havazive kuti tsvodo kusveta derere here kana kuti kuridza muridzo?
Vanenge vanofungawo kuti tsvodo ndirwo rudo nerudo itsvodo.
Dai pfungwa dziri badza dai ndatodirovera padombo mundima ino
kuti rimwe ivhu ridonhe ndiwane kucheka pasi nyore nyore izvozvi
nekuti benzi rino ndizvo zvarinogona chete zvekurima nebadza repfungwa.
Hezvo, muchiriko here uko vachati? Idi, munenge munodanana imi!
Dai ndanga ndauya nekabhotoro kangu ndamboti ka kuti ndidzoke.
Vana ndakabara nemusha ndikavakawo asi ndinoramba ndichinzwa
sekunge ndiri chidzenga chakazvarwa chembere dzabva kudoro.
Ungati hapanawo chandati ndapa vanhu kuti vatambirewo
nemawoko kuti vachengete pakanaka pasingasvike zhizha nechando.
Yaita zvayo mvura yauya kuzodzima tsoka dzako nedzangu.
Njombo dzangu pamukova weimba isina munhu mukati umo
ichapupu chekuti paimbove nemunhu aipfeka chinhu kugumbo.
Chokwadi shoko rose randakataura kupfumbuka here seutsi?
Mati ini ndiende kundosangana neuma here nhaimi vanhu?
Imi musingamire zvenyu kutsvodana matumwa naiye mufundisi?
Muchandipei kuti ndigozoramba ndichikuyeukai kwandinoenda?
Tsvoda aiwa nekuti inoenda nemuridzi wayo ndichisara ndiri ndega.
(naMemory Chirere from Munhu WekuZimbabwe (forthcoming))
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'sermon' on the mount
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Charles Mungoshi turns 70
Legendary Zimbabwean writer Charles Mungoshi turns 70 today. He handles a broad range of literary genres and styles in a way that is very rarely surpassed by many in the Third World today. His literary profile is compact. He is a novelist, poet, short-story writer, playwright, film scriptwriter, actor, editor, translator, and consultant. In honour of his amazing ambidexterity and depth, the University of Zimbabwe – conferred an honorary doctorate degree (Doctor of Letters-DLitt) on him on Friday 14 November 2003.
While each of the other prominent writers of Zimbabwe like Vera, Marechera, Chinodya, Chiundura Moyo and Sigogo, have tended to write in English or Shona or Ndebele only, Mungoshi has written convincingly and continuously in both Shona and English. In 1975 alone, for instance, Mungoshi published two books: Waiting for the Rain (a novel in English) and Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva (a novel in Shona). These two works exude separate amazing qualities that one wonders how they could have been written “back to back.”That ambidexterity was no fluke because later, in 1980, Mungoshi repeated a similar feat, publishing Inongova Njakenjake(a play in Shona) and Some Kinds ofWounds (a short-story collection in English.) It is as if Mungoshi writes simultaneously with two pens - one in the left hand and the other- in the right hand!
In fact and as shown below, between 1970 and 2000, a period of 30 years, Mungoshi made an average of one major publication in every one and half years and won a prize of sorts for each of them.- Makunun'unu Maodzamoyo (Brooding Breeds Despair) (1970)
- Coming of the Dry Season (1972
- Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva (How Time Passes) (1975)
- Waiting For the Rain (1975)
- Inongova Njakenjake (1980)
- Some Kind of Wounds (1980)
- The Milkmen Doesn't Only Deliver Milk (anthology) (1981)
- Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (1985) (Silence is Golden?)
- The Setting Sun and The Rolling World (1987)
- Stories From A Shona Childhood (1989)
- One Day Long Ago (1991)
- Abide with me (1992)
- The Axe (1995)
- Gwatakwata (1995)
- Children’s Video Picture Book ((1998)
- Walking Still (1997)
- Writing Still (2004) an anthology in English with Mungoshi's poems
- Branching Streams Flow in the Dark (2013)
- International PEN Awards (1975 twice for both Shona & English and 1981)
- Noma Honorable Awards For Publishing in Africa (1980, 1984, 1990 and 1992)
- Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book in Africa for The Setting Sun and The Rolling World (1988)
- Honorary Fellow in Writing Award in the Creative Activities of the International Writing Program by The University of Iowa (1991)
- USIA (United States Information Agency) Award for participating in the International Visitor Program (1991)
- The Setting Sun and The Rolling World was a New York Time notable book of the year (1989)
- Order of Merit Certificate Award by Zimbabwe Writers Union for winning in 1984 & 1992 the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa (1997)
- Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book in Africa for Walking Still (1998)
- Charles Mungoshi as 1998 winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, he was to be received in audience by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. That year again the Queen graciously agreed to meet the winner at Buckingham (Tuesday 12 May 1998)
- Received 7 awards at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair's 75 Best Books in Zimbabwe for 7 of his books (2004)[5]
11. National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) Silver Jubilee Award (2006)
- One of Charles Mungoshi's poems has been curetted by the William & Melinda Gates Foundation as a permanent display as public art at their new headquarters in Seattle, Washington, in the U.S. 2011
- Certificate of Honor Award of the 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe International Book Fair for dedicated service (2013).
14. National Arts Merit Award 2014.
In the year 2004 Zimbabwe 75 best books,a project meant to come up with the best books ever to come out of Zimbabwe, Mungoshi appeared in the top 5 lists in both English and Shona categories – a feat completed by no other Zimbabwean writer. The late Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, a short-story writer and essayist, even joked in The Daily Mirror of the same week that had any of Mungoshi’s works been translated to Ndebele, he could also have led in that category!
On 3 March 2006, Mungoshi appeared in the final list of the recipients of the Silver Jubilee Literary Awards, alongside Shona novelist Aaron Chiundura Moyo, pathfinder literary critic, George Kahari and Ndebele novelists, Ndabezinhle Sigogo and Barbara Nkala. He had beaten other hot nominees: fellow writers like Chenjerai Hove, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Mordekai Hamutyinei, Thompson Tsodzo, Pathisa Nyathi, Ben Sibenke and the late Dambudzo Marechera, and Yvone Vera. As stated before, Mungoshi handles a broad range of literary genres and styles in a way that is yet to be surpassed by anyone in Zimbabwe. If the novel as in Makunun’unu Maodzamoyo(1970) or Waiting for the Rain (1975) offers the man a wider axis to explore and develop ideas, maybe his shorter bursts of inspiration find acute expression in shorter fiction as in Coming of the Dry Season (1972), Some Kinds of Wounds (1980) and Walking Still (1997). When that is done, the man does not linger long and suffer for he also broke into poetry in The Milk-man doesn’t Only Deliver Milk (1981). Feeling maybe trapped with traditional literary forms, he could, and as happened in 1992 with Abide with me, 1995 with The Axe and Gwatakwata,Children Video Picture Book 1997, get into writing for the screen. Not apologizing for it, or looking back, he can go into acting itself. For instance he appears in plays as “the journalist” in Ndabve Zera,“the store-keeper” in Makunun’unu Maodzamoyo and as Trebonius in Julius Ceasar (produced by Andrew Shaw.)
When it suits him, he can also hit the road and present papers in Zimbabwe and across the globe. The numerous invitations he has received are testimony to his status as an unofficial cultural ambassador of Zimbabwe. He has been Visiting Lecturer at the University of Florida in the 2000 Spring Semester and Resource Person at Netherlands’ Groningen Children’s Book Year Workshop in 1996. His profile shows that from 1980, 1990, Mungoshi did not go for a year without giving a paper in places like the University of Florida, Iowa, Durham University, Amsterdam, New Zealand, Australia, Cambridge University and many more.
Mungoshi is not very well known as a poet, arguably because he writes less poetry. However, his single poetry anthology, The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milkis deep and revealing. He refers to poetry in one interview as “only a sideline, a mere finger exercise” in his continuing endeavour to condense language to a spare state of fine precision. Mungoshi’s poetry exudes the styles and philosophies of his more celebrated prose.The greatest strength of Mungoshi literature is the life-like feel he has for people. He has sympathy for the under-dog, without over-writing. His characters belong to believable circumstances, place and time and are endearing. With use of deceptively simple language and plot comparable only to Mozambique’s Luis Honwana’s and maybe South-Africa’s Ezekiel Mphahlele’s too, Mungoshi tells stories about things you didn’t quite know about people you know.
For Mungoshi, writing is not external. It is participatory. It is not a profession or hobby. It is life. He says about writing parts of Waiting for the Rain:“I was living in it (the story didn’t happen in the past. It is a drum. It is happening, it is playing now.”
And maybe unknown to him, Charles Mungoshi helped introduce and popularize the techniques of psychological realism and stream of consciousness in Zimbabwean Literatures. At the attainment of Zimbabwe’s independence, African scholars in the Department of English of the University of Zimbabwe found Mungoshi’s quantity and quality of work very useful in arguing for a course on works by Africans in English language. The Rhodesian academics had often argued that there were not enough of such works to be studied in schools, colleges and at university levels.
A research conducted recently on the same department alone had very interesting revelations. First, Mungoshi’s works have been translated to numerous non-European languages; Waiting for the Rain from English: to Hungarian (1978), to Norwegian (1980) and to Russian (1983) second, Coming of the Dry Season from English: to Russian (1985) Third, The Setting Sun and the Rolling World, from English: to Japanese (1995) Fourth Stories from a Shona Childhood from English: to Swiss (1996), to German (1988), Walking Still from English: to Swiss (2006).
Born to a rural farming community in Chivhu on 2 December 1947, Mungoshi has very humble origins and has remained down to earth despite his international stature. Until the time he fell ill recently, he had travelled across Zimbabwe, mentoring young and new writers, sometimes for no fee. Records at the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Women Writers association can bear testimony. He has mentored writers who have gone on to win prizes, among them Ignatius Mabasa, Shimmer Chinodya, Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Albert Nyathi, Memory Chirere, Joice Mutiti, Lawrence Hoba, Chiedza Musengezi and others. He is well respected in the writing community of Zimbabwe. His style of writing has become a brand.
The essence of Mungoshi literature is about grappling with the issues of home, identity and belonging in the changing times. He is constantly asking key questions: Do we truly belong to this land? Is it possible to belong here and elsewhere? What must we change and what exactly must continue and why? Is there any space for the individual in our quest for collective glory? Are we right? Are we wrong? In this quest Mungoshi pens out “The Accident” a short story from Coming of the Dry Season which seems to question and challenge the stance of a people living under minority rules – the book lands him in trouble and is banned in Rhodesia only to re-appear later and has been studied in schools ever since. Mungoshi’s writings have also tended to evoke that strong sense of Zimbabweaness.
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A quote...and a new picture
And remember, no matter where you go, there you are-----Confucius
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ZIBF INDABA 2018 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
ZIBF INDABA 2018 CALL FOR ABSTRACT
The dates for the Zimbabwe International Book Fair have been set for 24-29 September 2018. The Indaba Conference will therefore take place on 24 and 25 September 2018. The theme of the 2018 Indaba Conference is “The Book: Creating the Future”.
Sub-Themes: Presenters are encouraged to submit their own innovative topics that speak to the theme, The Book:Creating the Future. The following sub-themes are meant to guide possible research areas although they may be used as research topics:
1) Reading and writing books that create and inspire the future
Papers should discuss issues around Creative Cities in line with UNESCO’s agenda, arts and culture imaginations and envisioning the future including multi-media publications. The following are additional areas of focus:
Ø Gearing the Book Industry for adult readers of tomorrow;
Ø Gearing the Book Industry for young readers of tomorrow;
Ø Use of social media for writing and publishing;
Ø Writing books for ECD; and
Ø Interfacing the book with other multi-media publications.
2) Transforming and modernising societies through reading and writing
Presentations may focus on national development trajectories to industrialise and modernise nations. They should also address the regional and international development agendas such as Africa Agenda 2063 and the UN 2030 SDGs regarding the need to transform people’s lives for the better in tomorrow’s future through the eradication of poverty; quality health through eradication of HIV & AIDS and other communicable diseases; and the need for education that transforms nations through industrialisation and modernisation.
3) Books for Science, Mathematics, Engineering, Technology and Medicine including Climate change.
4) Towards unity within the Book Industry
Access to Information for All as provided through National Book Policy, Intellectual Property, Copyright and eradication of Piracy.
We therefore urge and encourage contributors to the 2018 Indaba to come up with ideas that will benefit all participants in the book value chain.
SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
Abstracts of not more than 500 words and word-processed in Times New Roman script with 1.15 line spacing should be submitted by 31 May 2018 by email to events@zibfa.org.zw with a copy to zibfa@yahoo.com. The abstracts will be reviewed by experts and authors of selected abstracts will be notified by 30 June 2018. Presenters should submit the full papers and power-point presentations of the full paper by 31 July 2018. Power-point presentations MUST summarise the full paper in bullet form and should enable presenters to speak to the paper within the allotted time.
Thank you
Mr Jasper Maenzanise
Deputy Chair, Executive Board, Zimbabwe International Book Fair Association
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article in which I complain about the book situation in Zim
Find here The Sunday Mail article in which I complain about the current situation of books in Zimbabwe: https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/a-peek-into-zimbabwes-book-industry
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Shona anti-novel reviewed again...
Kunaka kweChibarabada kuri mukudhaka
Tinashe Muchuri. (2015). Chibarabada. Harare: Bhabhu Books, 200pages.
Edited by Ignatius Mabasa.
Edited by Ignatius Mabasa.
Zvandakapiwa Chibarabada naTinashe Muchuri musi watasangana paNational Gallery of Zimbabwe muHarare, handina kumbofunga zvokuti chingandidhaka kusvika pakukanganwa bhachi rangu pachiteshi chinokwirwa mabhazi ekuNorton.
Ini ndini ndakakanganisa, kuita rudo neChibarabada ndisati ndasvika kurabu kwandinogara. Chakanyanya kundikwezva moyo ibutiro racho raive nemifanikisoyezviso zviviri. Zviso zvine meso makuru nemeno ari pachena.
Ndaive nechidokwadokwa chokuda kuziva kuti zviso izvi ndezvanaani. Mushure mekuverenga rungano urwu, ndakazoziva kuti zviso izvi ndezvevanhu vandakambosangana navo vachikurukura nezveChibarabada.
Chibarabada chacho chimbori chii? Chibarabada ndiwe neni. Chibarabada iguta risina magetsi, chingwa nemvura yokunwa. Chibarabada mugwagwa uzere nemakomba. Chibarabada inyika yemapenzi.
Chibarabada inovhero rine manyorerwo akasiyana namamwe manovhero atajaira kuverenga. Pamwe pacho rwungano rwacho rwunoita kunge bepanhau riri kutaura zviri kuitika, pamwe pacho rwunoita kunge chikwangwani chinononngedzera vanhu kwachisingasviki, pamwe pacho rwunomboita kunge izwi ragodobori.
Shingi anotaura rwungano rwuno achisheedzera seanorova bembera, pamwe pacho anozevezera achisekera muhapwa, pamwe pacho anoungudza matama ake azere nemisodzi. Urwu rwungano rwunoyanika nyaya yokushungurudzwa kwadungamunhu, mhuri nenyika nekuda kwemakaro.
Shingi anokura achidya nokurasa. Hupenyu hwake hunotanga kushanduka musi unofa vabereki vake netsaona yemumugwagwa. Babamunini vake Merinyo nemukadzi wavo Eve vanomuonesa ndondo kusvika azonosarudza kugara kurabu reMosi. Ari ikoko anoona huipi nehutsinye hwemhuka dzinorarama muguta reMosi.
Muchuri anoshandisa chidavado chekuimba nziyo, nekutaura ngano mungano. Rwungano rwuno rwunoita seChibarabada, rwunotutuma furo rwuchiserera, rwotutuma furo rwuchigadzana, rwunotutuma zvakare rwuchiserera. Rwungano rwunoda kuverenga uchizororera. Ukaverenga kamwe kamwe unoshaya kwarwakananga. Rwunomboita kunge rwumbo rwejakwara, rwoita kunge tsamba yorudo, rwomboita kunge nduri dzenhorimbo.
Rungano rwuno harwudi kuverenga uri pako wega, rwunoda pane vanhu vazhinji pakaita sopamusangano kana mubhazi. Harwudi kuverengwa mumwoyo, rwunoda uchisheedzera semunhu asina hanya. Ukadaro harwukudhake seChibarabada.
+++naPhumulani Chipandambira, Norton, Zimbabwe, February, 2019.
to buy/order Chibarabada: +263782883203
to buy/order Chibarabada: +263782883203
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Charles Mungoshi dies
It is sad that the world renowned Zimbabwean writer, Charles Mungoshi, is no more. He died in the early hours of the day today, 16 February 2019 at a hospital in Harare. Although he had been unwell for the past few years, there was hope that he would make it back to his writing desk. It was not to be.
At his 70th birthday on the 2nd December 2017, Mungoshi listened intently as we spoke about the day to day challenges and quipped: Kana rwizi rwakazara musaruedze negumbo. Siyai rwakadaro. Rwuchaserera. (If a river is in flood, don’t dare cross. Wait until it subsides.) That was quite a mouthful and very characteristic of him too to produce lines with subterranean meanings. In 2006 he wrote a short note: Put the lead on the handle but don’t let the handle rot in your hand.
Charles Mungoshi handled a broad range of literary genres and styles in a way that is very rarely surpassed by many in the so called Third World today. His literary profile is compact. He was a novelist, poet, short-story writer, playwright, film scriptwriter, actor, editor, translator, and consultant.
Mungoshi wrote convincingly and continuously in both Shona and English where many of his compatriots tended to write in English or Shona or Ndebele only. In 1975 alone, for instance, Mungoshi published two books: Waiting for the Rain (a novel in English) and Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva (a novel in Shona). These two works exude separate amazing qualities that one wonders how they could have been written “back to back.”
That ambidexterity was no fluke because later, in 1980, Mungoshi repeated a similar feat, publishing Inongova Njakenjake (a play in Shona) and Some Kinds ofWounds (a short-story collection in English.) It is as if Mungoshi writes simultaneously with two pens - one in the left hand and the other- in the right hand!
In fact and as shown below, between 1970 and 2000, a period of 30 years, Mungoshi made an average of one major publication in every one and half years and won a prize of sorts for each of them.
- Makunun'unu Maodzamoyo (Brooding Breeds Despair) (1970)
- Coming of the Dry Season (1972
- Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva (How Time Passes) (1975)
- Waiting For the Rain (1975)
- Inongova Njakenjake (1980)
- Some Kind of Wounds (1980)
- The Milkmen Doesn't Only Deliver Milk (anthology) (1981)
- Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (1985) (Silence is Golden?)
- The Setting Sun and The Rolling World (1987)
- Stories From A Shona Childhood (1989)
- One Day Long Ago (1991)
- Abide with me (1992)
- The Axe (1995)
- Gwatakwata (1995)
- Children’s Video Picture Book ((1998)
- Walking Still (1997)
- Writing Still (2004) an anthology in English with Mungoshi's poems
- Branching Streams Flow in the Dark (2013)
Awards
- International PEN Awards (1975 twice for both Shona & English and 1981)
- Noma Honorable Awards For Publishing in Africa (1980, 1984, 1990 and 1992)
- Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book in Africa for The Setting Sun and The Rolling World (1988)
- Honorary Fellow in Writing Award in the Creative Activities of the International Writing Program by The University of Iowa (1991)
- USIA (United States Information Agency) Award for participating in the International Visitor Program (1991)
- The Setting Sun and The Rolling World was a New York Time notable book of the year (1989)
- Order of Merit Certificate Award by Zimbabwe Writers Union for winning in 1984 & 1992 the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa (1997)
- Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book in Africa for Walking Still (1998)
- Charles Mungoshi as 1998 winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, he was to be received in audience by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. That year again the Queen graciously agreed to meet the winner at Buckingham (Tuesday 12 May 1998)
- Received 7 awards at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair's 75 Best Books in Zimbabwe for 7 of his books (2004)[5]
11. National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) Silver Jubilee Award (2006)
- One of Charles Mungoshi's poems has been curetted by the William & Melinda Gates Foundation as a permanent display as public art at their new headquarters in Seattle, Washington, in the U.S. 2011
13. Certificate of Honor Award of the 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe International Book Fair for dedicated service (2013).
14. National Arts Merit Award 2014.
Maybe the greatest strength of Mungoshi literature is the life-like feel he has for people. He has sympathy for the under-dog, without over-writing. His characters belong to believable circumstances, place and time and are endearing. He says about writing parts of Waiting for the Rain:“I was living in it (the story didn’t happen in the past. It is a drum. It is happening, it is playing now.”
Mungoshi’s works have been translated to numerous non-European languages; Waiting for the Rain from English: to Hungarian (1978), to Norwegian (1980) and to Russian (1983) second, Coming of the Dry Season from English: to Russian (1985) Third, The Setting Sun and the Rolling World, from English: to Japanese (1995) Stories from a Shona Childhood from English: to Swiss (1996), to German (1988), Walking Still from English: to Swiss (2006).
Born to a rural farming community in Chivhu on 2 December 1947, Mungoshi has very humble origins and has remained down to earth despite his international stature. Until the time he fell ill recently, he had travelled across Zimbabwe, mentoring young and new writers, sometimes for no fee. Records at the Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Women Writers association can bear testimony. He has mentored or directly influenced younger writers, among them Ignatius Mabasa, Ruzvidzo Mupfudza, Albert Nyathi, Joice Mutiti, Lawrence Hoba, Chiedza Musengezi, Thabisani Ndlovu, myself and others. His style of writing has become a brand. In honor of his amazing ambidexterity and depth, the University of Zimbabwe – conferred an honorary doctorate degree (Doctor of Letters-DLitt) on him on Friday 14 November 2003.
The essence of Mungoshi literature is about grappling with the issues of home, identity and belonging in the changing times. He is constantly asking key questions: Do we truly belong to this land? Is it possible to belong here and elsewhere? What must we change and what exactly must continue and why? Is there any space for the individual in our quest for collective glory? Are we right? Are we wrong? In this quest Mungoshi pens “The Accident” a short story from Coming of the Dry Season which seems to question and challenge the stance of a people living under minority rules – the book landed him in trouble and is banned in Rhodesia only to re-appear later and has been studied in schools ever since. Mungoshi’s writings have also tended to evoke that strong sense of Zimbabweaness. We shall sorely miss him. NB: for all funeral arrangements, talk to family spokesperson Tendai Madondo at +263 783837098
+By Memory Chirere, Harare
The essence of Mungoshi literature is about grappling with the issues of home, identity and belonging in the changing times. He is constantly asking key questions: Do we truly belong to this land? Is it possible to belong here and elsewhere? What must we change and what exactly must continue and why? Is there any space for the individual in our quest for collective glory? Are we right? Are we wrong? In this quest Mungoshi pens “The Accident” a short story from Coming of the Dry Season which seems to question and challenge the stance of a people living under minority rules – the book landed him in trouble and is banned in Rhodesia only to re-appear later and has been studied in schools ever since. Mungoshi’s writings have also tended to evoke that strong sense of Zimbabweaness. We shall sorely miss him. NB: for all funeral arrangements, talk to family spokesperson Tendai Madondo at +263 783837098
+By Memory Chirere, Harare
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Charles through the eyes of David Mungoshi
When I accepted the invitation to stand in for Charles Mungoshi, it was with the confidence of knowing that he would be glad to know that I had done so, but understandably, and in accordance with social etiquette. I shall, of course, have to report back to him what I have done in his absence and on his behalf. That is the only way to avoid an elder brother’s wrath! Fortunately, there is no real trepidation associated with this obligation. We have always got along just fine.
I am told that when I was a tiny little baby on my mother’s lap, Charles, then known as Lovemore, and a perspicacious little brat of some two years of age or so, insisted, for some strange reason, that I was a chicken that he could play with. It did not matter that I had no feathers on me! It seems to me now, with hindsight, that even in those tender formative years, Charles, or shall I say Lovemore, was already exhibiting signs of being a lateral thinker, seeing things somewhat differently from others. Charles, according to my mother, stubbornly refused to shift form his contention that ‘Dovoot’ (David) was a baby chicken. No effort to convince him otherwise made the slightest impression on him. Nascent creativity?
After attending lower primary school at All Saints Wrenningham in what was then known as the Tribal Trust Lands (TTL) of Manyene, somewhere on the outskirts of the ‘Republic of Enkeldoorn’ [present day Chivhu], Charles did his upper primary school at Daramombe Mission where he remained for the next three years. Daramombe stands in the brooding shadow of the mystic Daramombe Mountain, a place where people had to be on their best behaviour or risk punishment from the spirits of the land. Such punishment could take the form of confused wandering on the slopes of the mountain for days on end. The mountain also served a utilitarian purpose in that herdsmen could stand on its summit and scour the surrounding countryside for lost cattle. In later years when I became a student teacher at the College of Christ the King, Daramombe, I could not help but wonder about the import of what to me sounded like the gruff and somewhat apocalyptic but evocative bark of the great baboon that ruled the troops on the timeless Daramombe Mountain. Later, the renowned enthnomuscilogist Dumi Maraire was to compose a choral eulogy with a lilting melody and epigrammatic lyrics that left vivid silhouettes of the russet and gold of early summer and the youthful freshness of village beauties etched enticingly upon one’s mind.
January 1963 saw Charles begin secondary school at St Augustine’s Mission in Penhalonga. St Augustine’s, popularly known as kwaTsambe or Santaga, was a prestigious Anglican Secodary School for African Children. To date, St Augustine’s has remained so highly revered as to be the motivation for a joke about how the people of Manicaland do not consider that someone has had a proper education unless they have the good fortune to have been to St Augustine’s.
In 1964 when Charles was in Form 2 at St Augustine’s, I enrolled into Form 1 at what was then the only secondary school for black children in the city of Bulawayo, the Bulawayo African Secondary School (BASS). This school was known in township lingo as ‘eHigh School’. Predictably, those of us who had the good fortune to be ‘high-scholars’ could not help but walk around with a conscious little swagger. We probably had more than our fair share of attention. We were probably quite conspicuous in our blue ties and black blazers. The badge had the caption ‘vela mfundo,’ a Ndebele exhortation to aspire for a acquisition of knowledge and education.
At about this time, we began what was to become a veritable flow of correspondence between us, talking about everything and anything: music, girls, literature and, yes you guessed it, ‘writing.’
It was while as St Augustine’s that Charles discovered his creative urge and began to nurture the rich talent that we celebrate today. As far back as the Daramombe years, Charles had begun to furnish me with vivid descriptions of his schoolmates. I remember a boy with a unique and poetic name. At the time I was blissfully unaware of the semantic ambivalence of the boy’s name. The sexual connotations in the now late Zvokwidza Chirume’s name only occurred to me much later, after I had become a little more schooled in the ways of the world and its mosaic of discourse universes.
In some of his letters, Charles described people like Mr. Darling, the science master whom he appeared to be quite fond of and Father Pierce, his headmaster and teacher of English. Charles’s letters were packed with all sorts of ditties.
Often, when in Manyene during the school holidays, Charles narrated other anecdotes that made me wish I could join him at the illustrious St Augustine’s school. One such anecdote was about Mr. Darling, the science teacher, remarking enigmatically to some naughty boy, ‘Boy, if you wanna play the kid, I’m gonna play the goat,’ or words to that effect.
Borrowed pedantic phrases like ‘You are intoxicated by the exuberance of your verbosity’ became part of our verbal arsenal and our shared jokes. We were both enthralled by the sound of words and our letters to each other became more and more artistic and articulate as the days went by. Regrettably, none of these ‘masterpieces’ survived. I suppose we could not have known then that we might in future want to recall their content or that other people might wish to have access to them.
It was while still at St Augustine’s that Charles began to develop a liking for theatre. He was often to be seen participating in end-of–year school plays. Of note was his role as the rascally but immensely likable Mr. Toad of Toad Hall. Not surprisingly, as we now know, he was later to write lays and film scrips as well as take part in T. V dramas.
During most school holidays, Charles and I spent much of our time in Manyene, herding cattle, splashing about in the waters of the Suka River or fishing with primitive fishing lines and hooks bought at the nearby Chambara Township or some other such shop. Sometimes we just wandered around the wetlands picking and eating the fleshy and juicy hute, a wild fruit that came in all sizes, the biggest being about thumb-size. They also came in a variety of colours, from a light purplish colour to a sort of deep navy blue or black. If you squeezed or crushed the leaves of the mukute, they emitted a pleasant and rather exotic smell and if you chewed them, your breath would smell fresh. The hute juice left the tongue a little dyed and most children loved sticking out their tongues to show the colouring.
At times we indulged our fancies and went exploring the Manyene hills, where an old man accredited with rain-making powers lived. We were so attracted to these ancient hills that we never tired of going there. What with the mountain goats and the underground caves said to have been places of refuge for the locals whenever war broke out in the past. I must admit though that I personally never actually saw any mountain goats although sightings of their droppings often had us in a sort of frenzy, a frenzy based on the belief that we were getting warm so to speak.
The ageless but paradoxically surrealistic ‘bushman’ paintings imbued us with a strange sense of timelessness. In the right season we ate the sweet but cloying wild fruit called tsvoritsvoto, a fruit that grows on a tree with shiny hairy dark green leaves and when ripe, the bright yellow of the tsvoritsvotois easily visible from a distance. If you eat too much tsvoritsvoto, the inside of your mouth would feel strangely acidic and your teeth would be on edge. But that is part of the fun!
As you might very well imagine, we constantly entertained ourselves with stories, things we had seen, heard or read. You could say that we were real chatterboxes. We talked incessantly, but sometimes much of our talk amounted to no more than just sweet nothing. We were, so to speak, just another pair of country boys enjoying the heat of life. Sometimes we sat on some flat rock (ruware] to weave whips form the fibre of the munhondo tree. We used the whips to drive and control the cattle of just for the fun of cracking them. How Charles could crack that whip, make it sing, almost! You could hear its lyrical echo across the forest. But try as I did, I never could crack the whip quite the way that he did, much to my disappointment. Sometimes we strengthened the whips with the entwined fibre [mukosi] of the mutsamvi tree. The bit made of mutsamvi fibre, the mukosi, would be at the tail-end of the whip. Those were days of rural innocence and children confidences.
Sometime around 1965-6, I met a girl called Rindai. She was a beautiful girl with an unusual name particularly when the name is viewed in the context of what was prevalent at the time-a time when it was fashionable to have so-called Christian names, names which, invariably, tended to be European or Biblical. I suppose that Charles must have been as enamoured of the name as I was of the girl, because many years later, he used it in his popular Shona novel Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva which has since been translated into French directly from Shona by the French Linguist and writer, Mishel Lafon. Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuvais the gender-sensitive, completely original and fictitious story of Rindai, a sensitive woman through whom Charles executes a kind of psychoanalysis of his characters. In comparing and contrasting Rindai and Magi, Rex Mbare observes:
Magi was reminiscent of a benefactor who floods you all at once with wonderful gifts. Your happiness is, not unexpectedly, quite profound yet so fleeting. By contrast, Rindai revealed the depths of her bounty in small but delectable doses, surprising you in stages until you begin to wonder whether you can survive the onslaught. The sweetness just seems to go on and on...
In the 1950s through to the later 1960s and about the early 1970s, PARADE Magazine housed in Salaisbury (Harare) at Inez Terrace, published original short stories from aspiring authors each month. In those days, PARADE was more or less at par with South Africa’s DRUM Magazine in terms of content and patronage. Both magazines contributed immensely to the development of literature in the region. Later of course, Zimbabwean magazines like MAHOGANY and HORIZON, both now defunct and one or two others also played a significant role in the realm of creative writing. People like Leon Lambiris and Tinos Guvi, of PARADE, deserve a pat on the back for having encouraged and nurtured some of what in time became Zimbabwe’s foremost writers.
I first become aware of the magic and the power of good poetry through PARADE when I read Tafirenyika Moyona’s poem A God’s Error whose diction and imagery were riveting, poignant and evocative. In the poem, Moyana decries the paradox of dark beauties with a surfeit of ravishing beauty juxtaposed with abject ignorance. Images evoked by the ‘thin wasp waist’ and ‘screaming wild chest,’ lingered on my mind for years.
Lest you start wondering where all this is leading, let me tell you that the first ever story that Charles had published was called ‘Cain’s Medal’ and was published by PARADE sometime in 1966, perhaps earlier, while Charles was still at St Augustine’s. Cain’s Medal was a murder story, written in the fashion of thrillers. The biblical allusion created some mystery in the story, making the reader keen to find out its relevance. PARADE later published many other stories from Charles. In the PARADE stories he used the pen name ‘Carl Manhize’. My hope is that the PARADE stories can be published one day so that we can have a fuller view of Charles Mungoshi’s writing career.
PARADE also published my one short story, ‘But Not Very Complimentary,’ in 1967. Never having been published before, I was very excited indeed. All my friends soon knew who ‘Sunny Mupozho’ was. My PARADE story was about petty crime and romance aboard an overnight train. In those days of thrill-seeking, we were trying to come up with exciting little anecdotes in the fashion of western thrillers.
But willy-nilly, our literary journeys had begun!
I wish to make the instructive observation that Charles is a voracious reader and has always been. He has probably read most classics and more besides. Thinking about Charles the avid reader makes me feel that any writer who does not read has no business writing. This is as true of him today as it was yesterday.
In the early days, he and I and many other boys of the time read a lot of literature cowboy stories, romances, detective stories as well as serious literature. It was also the fashion to follow the exploits of the rock stars of the day: Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, Little Richard and others. Film too had its attractions. I remember Charles rhapsodizing about Tommy Steele’s The Duke Wore Jeans.
Our favourite detective story-writer at the time was Peter Cheyney. He created many colourful characters including Mr. Lemuel G.H. Caution, otherwise known as Lemmy Caurion, a tough, rough- and – tumble detective. We both found Cheney’s dark series comprising Dark Hero, Dark Interlude and Dark Bahamas, Dark Wanton and Dark Duet quite appealing. We read them again and again over the years.
In Dark Bahamas a black sailor on a fishing boat is always either whistling or singing a song whose naughty lyrics go:
Nut-brown baby
Yo got rovin’ eyes
Yo don’t day nuttin
Wi’ dem honey lips
But yo sure say plenty
When you swing dem hips
An’ I feed de knife in me breeches.
We still find much joy camaraderie in these words!
However, and more importantly, I believe that it was in Peter Cheyney’s books that Charles and I first encountered the technique that Charles later perfected in Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva, a technique that made it possible for the reader to experience vicariously but vividly nevertheless, the intensity and immediacy of introspection in the lives of the characters.
Each chapter in Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuvais named after a character. The story is then narrated form that character’s angle of vision. The final chapter ties up all the threads and makes the plot more artistically coherent and effective. Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva epitomizes the use of internal monologue, which Charles employs in a sort of running commentary comprised of the tension between reality and appearance. While the characters say one thing aloud, what they say silently is quite another! This technique reaches fruition in his enigmatically entitled novel, Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (You also Speak When You Are Silent]. We see the likes of Chenjerai Hove in his own novel, Bones having recourse to this same technique.
So much has happened over the years that Charles may now only vaguely recall that his first attempt at writing a novel in Shona was when he wrote the manuscript entitled Handina Mwana Anozochema (No Child to Tie Me Down) which never saw the light of day.
All his manuscripts in those days were written in long hand using the fountain pen, an all-time favourite of his. At the 2003 ZIBF Writers Workshop, Charles read an extract from a story written in ink using a fountain pen in long hand in an old coverless exercise book. If you want to put a smile on his face, give him a fountain pen and a bottle of ink on his next birthday, sometime in December.
Perhaps the greatness of Charles Mungoshi’s writing lies in its deceptive simplicity, its incisive vision and its witty dialogue. The maxim ‘to write is to read’ applies aptly to Charles. He is probably one of the best-read authors anywhere in the world. He reads, reads and reads. Then writes, writes and writes. In the course of all this, Charles has developed his innovatively distinctive style, a style that depicts the world in a uniquely memorable way. May view is that his reading is at once his motivation and his tutor.
+Edited version of a speech delivered by David Mungoshi at ALLIANCE FRANCAISE at the launch of Michel Lafon’s French translation of Charles Mungoshi’s Ndiko Kupindana KwaMazuva, Harare, Friday, 17 September, 2003. The speech eventually got published in a book, Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader, pp273-78, 2006.
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ZIBF INDABA 2019 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
ZIBF INDABA 2019 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
The dates for the Zimbabwe International Book Fair have been set for 29 July - 2 August 2019. The Indaba Conference will therefore take place on 29 and 30 July 2019. The theme of the 2019 Indaba Conference is “Footprints of the Book: Milestones & Opportunities”. The many previous themes of the Indaba looked at the character and the future of the book in its various forms and looked too at important issues that affect the writing, publishing and sale of books like piracy, reading culture, pricing and the digital character of the book of today, etc. These, however, tended largely to bemoan the goings on in the book sector in Zimbabwe and Africa since 1980. We tended to be gloomy. It is the Association’s submission that a theme such as Footprints of the Book: Milestones and Opportunities, would give ZIBF an opportunity to look back and identify what stakeholders think are the milestones achieved so far, celebrate them as well as point out clearly how and where each milestone was achieved and what opportunities are should be exploited to bring back the renaissance. A case in point is to go back and see what caused the boom of the 1980’s (which saw the rise of Dambudzo Marechera, Charles and David Mungoshi, Barbara Nkala, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Yvonne Vera, Virginia Phiri, Chenjerai Hove, Musaemura Zimunya, Shimmer Chinodya etc) and find what facilitated it and how it could be triggered again.
Sub-Themes:
Presenters are encouraged to submit their own innovative topics and abstracts that speak to the theme, “Footprints of the Book: Milestones & Opportunities”.The following sub-themesare meant to guide possible research areas although they may be used as research topics:
1) Mutation and the Evolution of the Book
Ø ICT and the Virtual Library – Moving into the Future
Ø From Print to e-Books
2) Forwards and Backwards: Reminiscing the Book
Ø Indigenous Knowledge and Innovation – The Future of Africa
Ø Triggering the Renaissance of the writing and publishing of books in Zimbabwe, the Region and in Africa
Ø Evaluating the economic contributions and impact of the bookselling sector
3) Motivating Content Generation in the Digital Age
Ø Pros and cons of e-publishing
Ø Social media and e-publishing
4) Creating Synergies in the Book Industry
Ø The Nexus Between Books and People
Ø Evaluating the Book Industry’s focus on Climate , Science, Medicine, Environment etc
5) The Political Economy of the Book in Africa
Ø Role of Libraries in the Transformation of African Societies
Ø The Role of the Book in Achieving the SDGs, Women and Children’s issues
Ø Intellectual Property, Copyright and Piracy Issues
We therefore urge and encourage contributors to the 2019 Indaba to come up with ideas that will benefit all participants in the book value chain.
SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS
Abstracts of not more than 500 words and word-processed in Times New Roman script with 1.15 line spacing should be submitted by 15 April 2019 by email to events@zibfa.org.zwwith a copy to zibfa@yahoo.com. The abstracts will be reviewed by experts and authors of selected abstracts will be notified by 30 April 2019. Presenters should submit the full papers and PowerPoint presentations of the full paper by 31 May 2019. Power-point presentations ARE REQUIRED and MUSTsummarise the full paper in bullet form and SHOULD ENABLE presenters to speak to the paper within the allotted time. However, those that MUST READ the paper SHOULD summarise it and present within the allotted time.
Thank you
Mr Jasper Maenzanise
Interim Chair, Executive Board, Zimbabwe International Book Fair Association
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Stanley Mushava: Writing is a state of unrest...
Below, Phillip Chidavaenzi (PC) interviews award-winning author and journalist Stanley Mushava(SM) about Mushava’s creative methods and about his forthcoming poetry collection called Rhyme and Resistance. His first poetry collection, Survivors Café won The Outstanding Fiction NAMA award in 2018.
PC: How does you creative process work?
SM: I start with a feeling. Let's say love, sadness or settling scores with the system. Once I am aware of the feeling I want in ink, I become restless until it's captured. I am picturing Genesis 1:2. All the elements are in place but out of alignment and the Spirit of God is sweeping over the chaos, gathering beauty and order out the mess. That chaos, that's the cultural energy spread across my head which I must channel into a creation.
PC: So, this pushes you into a creative mode?
SM: Writing becomes a state of unrest until I have brought out this allusion, that double entendre, this rhyme, that metaphor to capture the feeling. Only then can my mind enter its Sabbath. These days, I take a meditative walk. By the time I sit down, I am no longer writing but just typing the poem or essay.
PC: You blend music and literature a lot. Where is the connection?
SM: Literature is state of mind; music is soundtrack of life. When I was in university, this brother at the house where I was renting would take a speaker with him into the garden and blast away as he worked all day in the sun. I wanted to know why he was such a loud neighbour and he answered that music was his way of taking his mind off unfulfilled dreams.
PC: You were tempted to try that out?
SM: Well, I had mine all figured out and I would be happy to be left out of his theory. Till I had to rummage through Gramma Records and YouTube for jit and sungura to help me cope with underemployment and alienation three years later.
PC: So that's how music ended up a part of your literary staple?
SM: My attachment to music could be habit-forming already, though I am still a good neighbour. When you look at my poetry, alienation is a sprawling theme and music is a sort of anti-depressant and also the underdog's reply to the system's post-truth stories.
PC: One also sees this thread in your latest publication...
SM: My new book, Rhyme and Resistance, is densely allusive to Zimbabwean music, Tembo, Mapfumo, Lannas, Skuza, Majaivana, Zakaria, Chimbetu, Zhakata, basically most genres from 1970s Chimurenga to 2019 Zimdancehall. That's because they are dope and I am celebrating them but this right here is a pun. The great Zimbabwean songwriters have much to say that connects with the alienated millennial condition. We need the music so that we don't feel the weight of the stones on our backs. More importantly, we need the music as we roll back the stones to the slavemasters.
PC: How do the two art forms relate in your works?
SM: I am into concept poems that I solidify by soaking up all the cultural materials available to me. When I wrote 'Oliver Mtukudzi', for example, I was waiting for my cousin in a beer garden, and the bartender was playing classic after classic by the legend as he had just died. So the scene spreads out in my head. Tuku isn't born yet. He is in Havilah, a heavenly city of the unborn, waiting to choose a country to get born in, and Masuku, Mapfumo, Madzikatire, Chimombe and Tembo are weaving in and out of the story as he decides. In a moment, I have typed out the story on my phone but it's actually nothing new. It's my pastiche of Tuku music, Mr. Nobody, the fantasy movie, Zimbabwean history and the Bible.
PC: Interesting...
SM: Zimbabwean music is important to my literature because I am looking for something I got that the rest of the world doesn't. Something to flaunt as my unique cultural ID. The Bible, critical theory, the English language, the Olympian Twelve, the Romantics, the internet, global entertainment, that's priceless and you can put a finger on my poem and trace samples back to all that...
PC: And you believe that gives you a unique cutting edge?
SM: Well, that wouldn't make my work different from say a post-modernist, Marxist or Christian writing in Europe or America. I have to foreground my own heritage which is why Sungura and Chimurenga are in your face when I am in my element. Also the reason why I have started reading African, but mostly Zimbabwean, histories, romances and oratures lately. With sungura, it's really effortless. I hardly got any memories outside sungura, from infancy to young love and broke days.
PC: From what you are saying, one can rightly say music has played an essential role in your development as a writer?
SM: I owe much of my development as a writer to music – my idea of when a line sounds just right, breaking down sizeable ideas into pop consumables, speaking to the powerful on behalf of the poor. All that my literature represents today.
PC: In your latest, 87-page collection of 37 poems, Rhyme and Resistance, you have several pieces that speak to Zimbabwe’s so-called “new dispensation”. Can the artist be politically neutral?
SM: That's the format I put out to protest State brutality during the events of January. I have since expanded and newly released the book. I am a devotee of politics but not of politicians. I can't see why an artist has to be politically neutral. I am biased towards the poor against the rich, towards the weak against the strong, towards the outnumbered against the privileged. In a world where the institutions that are supposed to be neutral are bloated with the excesses of power, I can't afford the luxury of being neutral, especially since I am poor myself. If I make heaven, though, this will be a different interview. I am sure there will be no Uncle Sam, New Dispensation, Silicon Valley, employers, puppetmasters, eunuchs, automatons, snitches, devil-kissers and uniformed murderers in heaven. So there will be no one to be biased against.
PC: You trace your passion for creative writing to primary school. What were your beginnings like? What and who were the influences?
SM: In primary school, I am the mission-bred introvert who would rather watch TV, make cuttings from the sports pages, read a novel or hire a movie than go out to play. I am terrible at chikweshe so I am mostly indoors. I like to micromanage content, buy notebooks with money for sweets and try books that I am not supposed to read yet. So I start soaking up culture, getting 'secondary' spellings right and thinking in English much earlier than my peers. In the house, there is a sizeable collection of novels and plays.
PC: What and who were the influences?
SM: I read Jekanyika, Sungai Mbabvu and Nhetembo in Grade 2 and never stop from there. Chine Manenji Hachifambisi, Kuridza Ngoma neDemo, Pfumoreropa, Rovambira, Tambaoga, Rurimi Inyoka, Ndinofa Ndaedza, the plays of Willie Chigidi and my uncle Janfeck Chekure's Rudo NdiMashingise are some of my earliest exposures so you can say I get my orientation mostly from crime fiction and old-world novels. And then the children's books, the folktales, the music, the Holy Childhood books from the Catholic Church, the crazy appetite for sports pages, the recitation of Ignatius Mabasa on closing day, the reverence for Renias Mashiri as I am starting to get serious with poetry. Whenever my father gets to drink a little, he likes to tell melancholic stories about how he overcame impossible poverty to become the first teacher in the family, how he got fined by the headman for flashing him with the village's first zinc roof. My mother is the neighbouring headman's daughter who got to witness stonings of puruvheyas during Second Chimurenga pungwes hosted by my grandfather and the persecution of her parents by Rhodesian soldiers.
PC: I can see the creative leanings began so early...
SM: Yes, and then it's still a thing for the sisters on the nurse-aide block to exchange Pacesetters and Shona novels and most get passed down to me. So I grow up overwhelmed by stories. From there my sister starts brings her Shona and Literature in English setbooks to holidays. In Grade 7 I start writing uncommissioned compositions, one rearranged off her copies of I Will Marry When I Want and Waiting for the Rain, one off Alexander Kanengoni's short story, 'The Loneliness of the No. 11 Player', and Zimbabwean refixes of newly imperial Nollywood. My composition book is taken to high school so that I am always meeting someone in disbelief of my age. From 2003 to date, I am always in anthology mode.
PC: Some readers feel sometimes your writing is not so easy to penetrate. Are you a "Marecheraen", so to speak?
SM: You know I could also write an essay called 'Me and Dambudzo', no homo. That's a defining influence on my work and, as with a number of fellow writers, I guess, my high school nickname. In 2004, my first year in high school, I am restless till I get my hands on a magazine I haven't read so that my father is always finding his things upside down. My biggest find is a prose poem extracted from The Black Insider by Moto, and the 'Dambudzo Marechera Was Bad' and 'Dambudzo Marechera Was Mad' columns by Chigango Musandireve (David Mungoshi) and Leonard Murwisi (I hope I remember the name right). That extract is photographically framed in my head and, along with Ikem's prose poem in Anthills of the Savannah, forms my bible of esoteric writing. It doesn't help that I soon meet more Marechera, Hove, Joyce, Eliot, poetry-writing Soyinka and other writers who tend to leave the reader out of their calculations at the Dewure High library. I love the cultural and philosophical intelligence in Marechera's work. He is the first writer from whom I branch out to other writers. In that regard, you could say I am 'Marecheran.'
PC: I love the way you use rhyme in your poetry, and still put across your theme strongly. Does this happen automatically or it’s something you have trained yourself to do?
SM: I started using rhyme in Form 3 as I was reading the Romantic and the Metaphysical poets. I was hearing that it's an English form that African writers had outgrown but all I cared for was the beauty and cadence it gave my poetry. My earliest surviving poems are Christian poems from A Level where I was, I think, comfortably using different rhyme schemes. I only resumed using rhyme in 2017 when I stumbled into the DAMN.album and became a rap initiate. I have tried originally patterning my own rhyme schemes, though I can't be too sure it's not something out there already.
PC: You have a publication titled Survivors Café? Why that title? What was the inspiration?
SM: My response to that keeps changing so I am probably not sure. It could be that I was surviving hard times when I wrote the book or maybe that just sounded nice to me. My most recent claim was that Survivors Café is a ghetto public sphere, which gels well with the Chitungwiza poems in the book and the vision behind my Underclass Books and Films label. Whichever way, I feel there is still something to retrieve from the title. Readers will probably do a better job.
PC: Is there a chance that we will see a novel from you, beyond the poetry and other short pieces?
SM: I try to write every now and then. Chapter 1 becomes a prose poem; Chapter 2 comes out weaker; Chapter 3 never happens. Since 2016, though, I have been sitting on a story outline that I hope to turn into a novel this year.
PC: You had a project planned with the comeback kid of local music, Michael Lannas. What became of it?
SM: We are working on something.
PC: Do you suppose projects of such kind, where writers and musicians come together to produce something, are feasible?
SM: Certainly. Some of the world's most influential literature is performance in transcript. Homer, Shakespeare, Tagore, Dylan... A case has been made about Illmatic and good kid m.A.A.d city being great American novels. When I listen to Lannas, Leonard Zhakata or Biggie Tembo, those are great Zimbabwean poets who happen to sing. There could just as easily write poems; and poets could just as easily write songs.
PC: Which artistes or writers have inspired you the most, and in what ways?
SM: That would be mostly writers and musicians. I can easily think of Alain Mabanckou for the sardonic tone in my political poems, Guy Debord for disaffection with the unreality of modern life, Leonard Zhakata for sustained opposition to the control system, Tocky Vibes as an example of hard work and original artistic vision, Bertolt Brecht for trenchant critiques of power that come across deceptively mythic. I can't forget my spiritual father, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, how he navigates conviction in a sea of complicated information. I guess it's the same reason why I got to be a K Dot stan.
PC: You describe your journalism as cultural. What does that mean?
SM: I decode culture and the transactions of power within it. My latest NewsDay piece, for example, marshals Marxism to analyse Zimbabwean love songs.
PC: What’s your take on the future of writing in Zimbabwe?
SM: The future is dope. Younger writers are naturally coming from a wider cultural base and have a lot to say about our condition. It's a pity our stagnant book industry and unrewarding economy suffocate new talent but we are pressing on. It's game on in the survivors café.
PC: Thank you, Stan. This has really been wonderful! All the best in your future artistic endeavours.
SM: Blessings.
© Phillip Chidavaenzi (2019)
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Call for Book Chapters on Musaemura Zimunya
Call for Book Chapters on Musaemura Zimunya
Proposed Title: Reading Musaemura Zimunya: Critical Reflections
Editors: Tanaka Chidora and Sheunesu Mandizvidza (Department of English, University of Zimbabwe)
Prospective Publisher: TBA
Musaemura Bonus Zimunya is regarded as one of the leading modern Zimbabwean poets writing in both English and Shona. He is usually read in universities alongside the likes of Okigbo, Okara and Mapanje who are also regarded as pioneers in the development of modern African poetry. He broke into print gradually in the early 1970s in periodicals like Two-Tone and Chirimo. Later, he appeared more emphatically in group anthologies like Kizito Muchemwa’s Zimbabwean Poetry in English (1978) and Gwenyambira (1979). Afterwards, the floodgates opened in such a record-breaking way for Zimunya. He published the following books of poetry: And Now The Poets Speak (1981) which he edited with Mudereri Kadhani, Thought Tracks (1982), Kingfisher, Jikinya and other poems (1982), Country Dawns and City Lights (1985), Samora! (co-authored in 1987), Chakarira Chindunduma (co-authored and edited it 1985), Birthright (1989), The fate of Vultures (1989), Selected Poems of Zimunya (published in a Serbian language and in English in 1995), and Perfect Poise (1993).
But that is just one side of Zimunya. He is also a pioneer in the history of literary criticism in Zimbabwe with his ground-breaking Those Years of Drought and Hunger (1982) setting the stage for a rich tradition of literary criticism in Zimbabwe, and becoming seminal in the understanding of Zimbabwean literature, especially those texts written during ‘those years of drought and hunger’ of the colonial period.
He has also written short stories and has been anthologised in various collections including his own, Nightshift (1993).
In the literature sector of Zimbabwe, Musaemura Zimunya has played an instrumental role, administratively speaking, with Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF), Zimbabwe Writers Union (ZIWU) and Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZIWA). Thus, what we are looking at here is a literary career that spans decades.
Such a career means that Zimunya’s creative, critical and administrative intervention in Zimbabwean literature cannot go unnoticed. Although Musaemura Zimunya has been featured in many critical works like Veit-Wild’s Patterns of Poetry (1988) and Teachers, Preachers and Non-believers (1992) and many journal articles, there is an absence of a full-volume critical work dedicated to Musaemura Zimunya like what we have in Charles Mungoshi: A Critical Reader (edited by Memory Chirere and Maurice Vambe, 2006)) and Sign and Taboo (a critical volume on Yvone Vera edited by Robert Muponde and Mandi Taruvinga, 1992). This calls for such a gap to be filled, which is where this call for book chapters comes in.
What we are inviting here are abstracts for critical writings on Zimunya’s creative works, meta-critical writings on his critical approaches to Zimbabwean Literature and critical reflections. This means the project is an attempt to have a cross-cutting approach to Zimunya which involves scholarly writings from academics who have interacted with Zimunya’s work (both creative and critical) and reflective pieces and testimonies from those who have interacted with Zimunya himself as fellow artists and readers. Such reflective pieces can include interviews and essays. Because the approach is cross-cutting, we have decided to have a laissez-faire approach to themes. The idea is that good abstracts that capture the essence of ‘Reading Musaemura Zimunya’ in any form, including a collection of his photographs that capture his art and his life, will be published! The photographs will be published in a separate section of this book and should be history making photographs. We happen to know that besides being a poet, he is a guitarist, farmer, fisherman and an avid follower of Zimbabwe’s Dynamos Football Club and England’s Arsenal!) Our aim is to give readers, students and teachers of Zimunya’s writings the world over a comprehensive critical and reflective volume that captures the diversity of approaches to Zimunya’s own life, history, poetry, short stories and critical works.
A 250-word abstract/proposal and a brief biographical note are to be sent to Tanaka Chidora (tchidora@arts.uz.ac.zw; chidoratanaka@gmail.com) by the 30th of August 2019. The deadline for submission of the article, of about 6 000 - 8000 words, is 28 February 2020
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↧
something coming soon-.
by shasha chirere
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MISQUOTED, a memoir by Desmond Kumbuka
Title: ‘Misquoted’: a Personal Experience in Journalism
Author: Desmond Kumbuka
Published by Passpoint Publishers Private Limited, Harare, 2020
Isbn:0 36000291452,210 pages.
Desmond Kumbuka indicates on the blurb that his book is “not journalism text book and does not pretend to be one.” I agree with him entirely. I however think that this memoir becomes many other things, becoming even more useful than the ordinary journalism text book. This is a story about what journalism has taught one man. It is a story about the good and bad goings on in the back stage of journalism.
For those into Media in Zimbabwe studies and the connoisseurs of journalism in Zimbabwe, Kumbuka’s book offers what I could call an intelligent peek into the who is who of key media personalities in Zambia and Zimbabwe, in the past forty years. The rich thread takes you from the mournful doe eyed Emmanuel Nyirenda, the irascible Vincent Mijoni, Adam Hamiwe, Giles Kuimba, Eric Richmond, Keith Simpson, Bill Saidi, Tonic Sakaike, Gilbert Mawarire, Stephen Mpofu, Davison Maruziva, Bester Kanyama, Douglas Takundwa, Chen Chimutengwende, Willie Dzawanda Musarurwa, Bornwell Chakaodza to Geofrey Nyarota and many others. It is more of an evaluation sheet through which you see the rise and fall of an array of characters and organisations in the local media.
I could not put this book down from the moment I first held it. Sometimes I took a break just in order to laugh or to shake my head in disbelief. Here is a book that reads like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. A book with the capacity to arm many young journalists with the do’s and don’ts of journalism, albeit in very subtle ways. In this story, the hero (Kumbuka) seems to be always falling into one misfortune after another, just like Pimbirimano from the Shona folk lore, but always getting out of trouble through his own resourcefulness, only to fall into a much bigger misfortune – on and on, without the possibility of a happily ever after.
Look at this: sometime in 1976, young reporter Desmond Kumbuka, who is coming from a nasty pub fight, walks home with a very ugly black eye. He is asked by his editor to attend a press conference at President Kenneth Kaunda’s State House. To hide this embarrassing injury, Kumbuka hurriedly acquires a pair of dark glasses on the streets of Lusaka. But President Kaunda singles out the suspicious young man with ill fitting dark goggles in the crowd and loudly offers to help him acquire appropriate spectacles. The President genuinely thinks that the young journalist has a real eye problem. Later, Kumbuka writes a letter thanking Kaunda for his kindness for he went to see the offered eye specialist. But Kaunda is not done. He writes back to poor Kumbuka, saying the young man’s letter was sincere and that “I (Kaunda) value your letter so much that I am asking you to sign it for you forgot to do that. I would wish to have it back for my personal file.” Journalists rarely receive such attention from heads of state.
It is while at the Zambia Daily Mail that Kumbuka is accused of actually misquoting a whole Police Commissioner of Zambia, one Fabiano Chela. Kumbuka story had made it on the front page of the daily, claiming that the Commissioner had actually said that the Zambian police force was full of criminals! The tragic headline read: “CRIMINALS RECRUITED IN THE POLICE FORCE - CHELA.”
Kumbuka is dragged before the feared police commissioner, regardless of the fact that the commissioner himself had told Kumbuka that “it is very possible (that criminals could be recruited into the Zambian police). We are not God. So how would we know whether one has criminal tendencies unless they have a criminal record on our data-base? It is possible to recruit criminals as police officers…”
Desmond Kumbuka is instantly dismissed from the Zambia Daily Mail. And the lesson learnt? “In the complex game of politics and corporate gamesmanship, it is not uncommon for a supposedly responsible national leader… to vigorously, and usually with a straight face, disown reports of actions or words attributed to them in the media, if such reports or actions expose them…
Kumbuka also admits somewhere in this book that reads like a thriller that; as a young journalist, he had the rather romantic notion that you find in most young journalists that a good reporter is that brusque, rough living, hard drinking and roguish character who causes the authorities headaches with probing and incisive questioning and articles that leave government officials with the proverbial egg on their faces.
He admits too to having a long affair with crime literature, through reading the likes of Spaghetti thrillers, James Hardley Chase, Mickey Spillane, Oliver Strange, Wilbur Smith, Mario Puzo and others, leading Kumbuka to enjoy crime reporting. At some point Kumbuka would actually join the police during their patrols so that he is acquainted with the crimes and the criminals he so much liked to write about. Clearly, this means a reporter ought to have an inherent interest in an area of his chosen specialization.
But discipline was not one of the strong points of young Kumbuka. In his next post at the Mining Mirror, a newspaper based in Mufulira, a small mining town bordering the then Zaire and Zambia, Kumbuka joins colleagues to drink regularly across the border in Mokambo. They have a nice time with buxom Congolese women “with their ample bosoms and rather accommodating proclivities.” It turns out that the guys are spending the proceeds from the sales of the paper, with the hope of repaying the money on the Monday, which was a pay day. On a Saturday, way before pay day, the Editor in Chief in distant Ndola, instructs them to bring the money to Ndola “right now!” Kumbuka and his colleagues get fired for it. He is back on the streets and the misery of a man in a foreign country is evident.
But Kumbuka’s life has not only known the down turns, which include sleeping in the open and in noisy 24 hour bars due to lack of accommodation. Life has taken Kumbuka to many very respectable stages. It is a life well lived. After Zimbabwe’s independence, Kumbuka finds himself at the eminent Sunday Mail in Harare, where he quickly establishes himself as a reporter and columnist, later taking over from Henry Maarsdop, a prolific columnist who penned a popular Sunday column called ‘Henry Maarsdop on Sunday.’ Kumbuka’s own column became known as ‘Muongorori’s View’ and it ran side by side with the one by Maarsdop.
For several years, Kumbuka branched off into public relations. At the inception of the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ), Kumbuka founded The Express Newspaper in Chitungwiza along with several other weeklies. He also found himself at what became the Daily News and Daily News on Sunday. Prior to his stint with ANZ, Kumbuka was also involved in the establishment of another newspaper, the Daily Gazette for which he was Deputy Editor.
It is very interesting that although Geofrey Nyarota ably edited this book alongside Ruby Magosvongwe of the University of Zimbabwe, Nyarota himself is not spared in this book. He is given his due; praised here and blasted, whenever Kumbuka thinks it is necessary. That Nyarota has allowed this to stand as it is, is a plus for Nyarota! ‘Misquoted’ is the most informative book that I read in 2020.
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The selected poems of Memory Chirere
The selected Memory Chirere poems
Selected from Bhuku Risina Basa Nokuti Rakanyorwa Masikati
published 2014 by Bhabhu Books, Harare.
Mashoko ekutanga
Sei mumabhuku ose andinoverenga
Musinawo zita rangu?
Kuti pakashayawo akatondera zita rangu?
Ndokushayawo akagona kuperetera zita rangu?
Kuti pane asingazive nyaya yangu?
Ndinofanira kunyora ndega zita rangu,
Ndichisima miti
Ndichitsikisa mabhuku
Ndichizvara vana!
Kurinyora parisingaore, zita rangu.
Bembera
Pamakambondishandisa
ndakati kudii?
Zvandave kuzvishandira
moti kudii?
Moti hero rombe
riri kuita zvinhu zvaro?
Pikicha
Mune iyi, ndainge ndichangozvarwa
ndakaradzikwa mubhasikiti zvaJesu chaizvo.
Ivo vachitoitawo saJosefa naMaria!
Mune iyi, takasimudza mawoko tagohwesa bhora.
Tarisa kushama kwatakaita kunge zvigatawa!
Mune iyo, mukuru wechikoro ari kunyemwerera achindikorokotedza.
Ndainge ndawana mubairo weChirungu chandaisataura kumba.
Mune iyi, ndainge ndakakugukuchira tiri mupaki, Sekai.
Ndaisaziva kuti rudo rwemukadzi rwunonaka nekuvava zvese.
Pane iri pakavha yebhuku rangu rekutanga,
ndainge ndakatarisa mberi ndichifunga kuti ndini Soyinka.
Ndaisaziva kuti bhuku haripere kunyorwa.
Mune iyi ndakatarisa mwana wangu wekutanga
ndichitya kuti achararama here.
Asi nhasi ave kukwira ega bhazi achienda mativi mana.
Mune iyo, vana vandaiticha vakasimudza maoko
asi nhasi vazhinji vavo vave kutonga nyika.
Ndinovaverenga mupepa ndoseka zvangu.
Mune iyi, ndakasunga tayi
ndiri pedyo chaizvo negurukota rehurumende.
Vari kumusha vanoti ndinodya namambo.
Apa, ndiri parufu rwaFarai
ndakakotamisa hope yangu pabhokisi rake
ndichiti, “Famba zvakanaka Fatso, ndichatevera.”
Mune yanhasi, ndiri pamunda wangu.
Ndini here uyu akapfeka kabudura kemurimi
achiteerera zvake kukura kwechibage?
Vasikana ava handichaziva mazita avo.
Asi uyu mutsvuku ndakamushaira mukana tiri pachikoro.
Kwaari ikoko Mwari ngaandichengetere.
Mune iyo iri pamusoro pesofa, mai mwana
tiri pamuchato wedu tichitsvodana tatumwa namufundisi.
Uchazvigona here izvi pazere vanhu?
Shamwari yaSarudzai
Shamwari yako inondinyara, Saru.
Kana ndikamutarisa anoringa pasi
asi ndikaringa divi anobva anditarisa.
Shamwari yako inoshereketa, Saru.
Patinomhoresana anoramba akandibata ruoko
ndonzwa kupiswa nemagetsi ake akawanda.
Shamwari yako ine shungu, Saru.
Patinombundikirana anozvambarara pachipfuva changu
ndonzwa kuremerwa nemusoro wake.
Shamwari yako inoona, Saru.
Kana ndikapfeka zvakanaka anokutangira kuzviona.
Kana ndikadikitira anokasika kubudisa hengechepfu.
Shamwari yako inonzwa, Saru.
Ndikataura zvinofadza anobva aseka kudarika iwe
achibuda tumisodzi tuchena tunenge mvura.
Shamwari yako haina guhwa, Saru.
Kana ndichitaura newe anoringa divi
achimirira kuti tipedzerane pachedu.
Shamwari yako inoyemura, Saru.
Kana mandioneka modigaira moenda
ndikangocheuka ndinoona achicheukawo.
Shamwari yako inondivhiringidza, Saru.
Anondivinga kuhope achiti tiende kwatete vake
asi iwe hausati wandiendesa kana kumukoma wako.
Shamwari yako inokasika, Saru.
Ndakasangana naye aine mukoma wake mukuru
vakanyemwerera vachinditi, “Kaziwai, babamunini!”
Ndakatarisa pasi ndokunyarara zvangu
nokuti unondinzwisa tsitsi kwazvo, Saru.
Nyika yedu
Tinoda nyika ino neupfumi hwayo hwose.
Kuti tiidye zvishoma nezvishoma pauzima.
Tichiseva muto wayo nemusuva wesadza.
Tichinyenyeredza pane nyama nedomasi.
Kuti tizozvinhonga pakupedzisira kwemutambo.
Tinoda nyika ino neupfumi hwayo hwose.
Kuti tiicheke hafu toisa mukabati.
Todya hafu yacho izvozvi nhasi uno.
Imwe hafu toti ndeyemangwana.
Hafu yanhasi toizora bhata zvese nedovi nejamhu.
Tozomira zvedu pavhuranda tichiidya.
Tichionekwa nevana vepaseri kuti tiri kudya.
Tinoda nyika ino neupfumi hwayo hwose.
Kuti tigoimenya tega seranjisi.
Tichikachidzwa neutsi hwayo tichikosora.
Tichibudisa tumisodzi tunokonzerwa nekunakirwa.
Tozoibvanzura tichiisa mukanwa ichingotapira.
Muto uchiyerera uchidzika nemagokora edu.
Tozounanzva futi muto iwoyo nerurimi rwunogwagwadza.
Tinoda nyika ino nerunako rwayo rwose.
Kuti tigoona zuva rayo richibuda muchikomo.
Tichiritya utsvuku hwaro hunoshamisa pamangwanani.
Tichiudzana zvedu nhasi kuchapisa mwachewe.
Tigoona mwedzi uchigara pamusoro pezviruvi zvemba.
Uchiita sekamwana kagere mudumbu maamai vako.
Tinoda nyika ino zvinototirwadza chaizvo.
Kunyanya kana zviye tiri kure-kure nayo.
Tinotorota tiri mumunda wechibage chakasvibirira
Tichitsvaga pane magaka, ipwa nemabvembe.
Tichizotyora chibage chinyoro tichiimba
Tichinochibika mumabhodho anopfungarara pamoto.
Hwema hweZhizha huchikwidza nemaraini.
Tinoitondera nemisodzi chaiyo nyika ino.
Nokuti yakatida tisati tatomboziva kuti tisu vanaani.
Tikaidawo tisati taziva kuti chinonzi rudo chii.
Yakatipa mazita anosekwa kwese kwatinoenda.
Vana Lovemore, Rosewita, Doesmatter naEvernice.
Hatiseke nokuti tinoziva zvaanoreva mukusareva kwawo.
Takatozoita zvokuchata nayo nyika ino muhana dzedu.
Saka painominyuka tinofashaidza mvura pamoto.
Kwave kuitova zvinyoronyoro nejira mumvura inopfumbuka.
Painoyuwirawo nesu tinonzwa hana kusimuka dzichibvondoka.
Tinoinzwisisa nemutsa nyika ino.
Painodikitira tinoipukuta nehengechepfu chena inenge gore.
Painochema semhuru tinonzwa mukaka kusisa mumazamhu edu.
Nyika ino ticharamba tichifa isu kuti iyo irarame zvayo.
Tichasiya tanyora mazita edu pamapazi ayo.
Tichishandisa mapanga, matemo, mbezo, reza namapadza.
Kuti vanopfuura nepano taenda vagoziva kuti tainge tiri panowo.
Naivowo vafambe zvinyoronyoro vasiye nyika ino chiri chidadiso.
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
ave kuita sewachi zvino
zvokuti achafira mumaoko evanhu.
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
anenge nguva yechando
paanoenda tichachema nemufaro
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
Anenge zimukuyu repanzira
nyora zita rako pariri ufambe, uyende.
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
anenge kapoto kasina ridhi
Kanokwata kusvikira kapwa
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
anenge kakova kasina bhiriji
Unotoyambuka kaserera.
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
anenge doro repataundishipi
Munotobvunzana, “Nhasi rakadii?” musati matenga.
Mukuru wekuchechi kwedu
anenge redhiyo ine bhatiri idzva
Munotokotsira achingorira.
Aka katetembo hakana basa nokuti kakanyorwa masikati:
Kakova kanonzi rudo rwangu
Kanobva pano kusvika pandinozofa apo-o!
Kana uchifudza
Kana uchifudza mombe;
unoramba zvaunoziva
ugobvuma zvausingazive
ugoziva wega zvaunoziva.
Kana uchifudza mbudzi;
unotadza kuziva kuti
uchiri kuenda here kana kudzoka,
Wotanga zvino kumhanyira kwauri kubva!
Kana uchifudza hwai;
unotadza kuziva kuti ndiriinhi zviya,
pawakamboona zvauri kuona.
Kana uchifudza vanhu;
uri kutsvaga chiri kukutsvagawo
Kana wasvika pachanga chiri,
Icho chinenge chave pawambenge uri!
Rudo
Rudo rwandisina kukupa:
kashiri kanodya masefa kachicheuka.
Rudo rwandisina kukupa:
ibenzi riri kumhanyira kwariri kubva
saka harisvike zvachose iwe!
Rudo rwandisina kukupa:
rwunombogwamba mandiri semafuta
rwuchizopepuka chete kana ndakuona
rwosimudza musoro senyoka yaona gonzo.
Ndinobva ndarwupuruzira iwe-e-e-e
kuti rwurare zvarwo sekatsi yakaguta
nokuti kana rwaona iwe rwunogwagwadza
rwozvongonyoka senyoka mumunda uchangorimwa.
A, ndiri kudzidzira kudzikama pandinokuona
nokuti rudo rwandisina kukupa:
imhodzi isina kuwira pavhu kwaro kuti imere.
Rudo rwandisina kuzokupa:
unorwuonawo here mumeso edu kana tasangana?
Kana kuti unongoti:
“Zvatakapotsa hanga, todya zvedu makunguwo.”
Pamuviri paShamiso
Zvinonzi Shamiso ane pamuviri pangu
nokuti tinonzwikwa tichiseka zvedu tose
kuchipisa, kuchitonhora kana kuchivhuvhuta
zvokuti vanhu vanosiya poto dzichitsva pamoto
kana kusiya nhau dzichiverengwa pawairesi
kana kusiya pombi dzichirasa zvadzo mvura
vachingotarisa ini naShami tichiseka zvedu.
Zvanzi tinoonekwa tiri tose kwose-kwose zvako
paMugovera, paChishanu, paChitatu kana paChina
vanhu vachitondera vachirasika zvakarewo
kuti kave kechingani vachiona ini naShamiso
kuye-keye-e zuva riye-riye-e nepaye-paye-e!
Saka zvinonzi pamuviri paShami pacho ndepangu chete
nokuti Shamiso kana aneni zviya anoshamisa
zvokuti haaite kunge kune imwe nguva nenzvimbo
iri nani muupenyu hwose hwatinoziva kunze kwepandiri.
Kwanzi kana aneni anoseka chikwe-e chaicho chamunoziva
iyo mitezo yake yakaita rurasademo chairwo
kunge pasi pano pasina minzwa, mafeso kana chaguduma.
Zvinonzi kana aneni, Shami anoita seane hama yake chaiyo
asi vozoona kuti hama nehama chaidzo-idzo dzatinoziva
hadzingakwizane mapendekete dzichiswera dzose saizvozvi!
Zvinonzi ndepangu chete pamuviri paShami, hakuna mumwe
nokuti handivhundutswe nenzeve dzake dzave kunjenjemera
kana kusvipa-svipa kwaave kungoita nekusarudza twokudya.
Zvinonzi ini pano husiku chaihwo hwezhizha nokuti
handione kuti dumbu raShami riri kungokura zuva nezuva.
Vanotaura vanoti pamuviri paShamiso ndepangu
nokuti murume nemukadzi havagone kungoshamwaridzana
zvikaperera chete muhurukuro nekuseka nekunzwanana.
Zvanzi chiripo chete chandinoda kubva kunaShamiso
chandinowana nyore-nyore nokuti dzangu dzakatenderera
zvakare dzaShamiwo dzinenge zinyekenyeke sedzangu.
Zvanzi vane nharo ngavamirire chete pachapona Shami
vagoona kuti ini naShami hataingoita zvekuseka chete.
Asika; ini naShamiso tinozviziva zvose izvozvo
ndosaka tichigaroseka zvedu sekunge kusina denga nepasi
tichitofara zvedu sekusina mangwana kana gore rinouya.
Chipikiri
Chipikiri chinorohwa nesando
musoro wega-wega uyu.
Chichidzika chichipinda chichibaya.
Chichirohwa musoro wese uyu.
Chichiimba chichihuta chichichema.
Chichidzama chichitenderera chichidzika.
Chichirohwa nesando musoro wese iwoyo.
Chichipfidza chichikumbira ruregerero.
Asi wesando anongoda musoro iwoyo.
Musoro-musoro musoro-musoro chete.
Achiunanga achiurova achiukoma.
Achiimbirira achitukirira achinyetera
Chipikiri chichienda chichidzama.
Chichinoita basa revamwe zvavo.
Chichisiya ngoma inonaka ichingorira
chichiasiya mabhebhi, maruva nemakeke…
Shoko Rekupedzisira
Mazwi evana vari kutamba panze apo
ndiro simba redu rasara:
dai kukaramba kuine zuva
dai kukaramba kuine mvura
dai kukaramba kuine mhepo
dai kukaramba kuine ivhu nembeu
Ndavanzwa ndikati:
Dai waro kwaramba kuine vana.
Mazwi emupepeti (Editor’s note)
Kupihwa kwandakaitwa nhetembo dzino naMemory Chirere kuti ndiverenge, rakave rombo rakanaka. Paakazodzoka zvakare kwandiri achiti ndipepete pamwe chete nekuzodziburitsa sebhuku saizvozvi, kwakave kukudzwa kukuru.
Chirere haachisiri chikomana chiya chandakanga ndichidzidzira kunyora nhetembo pamwe nacho tiri vana vechikoro kuUniversity of Zimbabwe kutanga kwema 1990. Iko zvino chitarisai muone! Atotumbuka muchekechera. Kunyora kwake kwave nemuchochororo nezvimbi. Kwave kunyora kwakatsiga kunge mabwe akagarana aunogona kufunga kuti achakuwira, asi iwe usingazive kuti kana naChaminuka akaawana akadaro, akangoasiya akadaro.
Mazuva andakashamwaridzana naChirere pamakore edu kuUniversity of Zimbabwe, takanga tichinyora nhetembo nehama dzinenge Chiedza Musengezi naNhamo Mhiripiri, naRuzvidzo Mupfudza, naZvisinei Sandi, naEmmanuel Sigauke, naThabisani Ndlovu, naJoyce Mutiti, naEresina Hwede nevamwe. Aive mazuva ekunakirwa nemukaka wenhetembo, kufanana nemhuru inoyamwa. Takanga tine pfungwa dzizere ngano, netsumo, nemadimikira, nezvirahwe pamwe chete nemabhuku evanyori vakuru vataida zvikuru. Takanga tisati taziva kuti nesuwo rimwe zuva tichazoitawo mabhuku edu asina basa kudai.
Kunyora kunobva kure. Tine mazuva atainyora nekuti takanga tichinyenga vasikana vachitiramba. Shungu. Tine mazuva atakanga tichinyora nekuti takanga tichisuwa hupenyu hwatakanga takura tiri mahuri kuDande uko kwatinobva, kune makomo eMavhuradonha. Ndiwo mazuva ataiona kuti nenhetembo dzedu dzakafanana nevasikana vacho vatainyenga. Kune nhetembo dzaitiramba, dzimwe dzichititiza. Kune nhetembo dzatairota nedzimwe dzaitishaisa hope. Asi nekufamba kwenguva, pane nhetembo dzatakazoroora, dzikabvuma kuita vana nesu. Saka nhetembo dziri mubhuku rino, hupenyu hwaChirere, imhuri yaChirere, rwendo rwake! Wanaiwo pamunokwana.
Pane kuruka tyava, nekuridza tyava zvekuti tsuro, shiri zvese nevanhu zvinovhunduka kuti pane charira kunge pfuti, asi chisiri pfuti zvacho. Pane kurova netyava, kunobvarura ganda, kuchitungidza moto wemarwadzo mukati menyama musingagone kukwenyeka. Ndizvo zvakaita manyorero aChirere izvozvo. Kuita Memory Chirere kunge mango mbishi yekuti ukadya inokukora igokudzidzisa kuti uiremekedze.
Pane kunyora kune maonero anodarika kuona kwemaziso. Kunyora kunoita kuti iwe muverengi unzwe ruzha rwekudonha kweumhutu chaiko. Ndiko kunyora kwaChirere mubhuku rino. Kunyora kunouya nemazwi akasiyana-siyana uye asingajairike. Kunyora kunoroya! Kunyora kunokutema nyora paganda ukazivikanwa nevanhu vese kuti wabva kun’anga. Chirere haasi ega! Handizive kuti vangani mukati make. Chirere mutinhimira.
Ndinofunga kuti; Zimbabwe haichawana mumwe nyanduri wechiShona anonyora saChirere. Kunyora kunenge kudada, kunenge kutsvinya, kunenge kutamba asi kwausingakoshiwe! Chirere ane chipo chekupaza, kupfudzunura, kutsokodzera nekupisa hunhu hwechinhu chamagara muchiti ndicho nhetembo. Nhetembo dzake dzinofamba nemakumbo dzichibva pamakadzirongedza, dzichienda kunogara pamaifunga kuti hapagarwe kana kusvikwa nenhetembo.
Mubhuku rino hamuna nhetembo dzandingati idzi ndidzo dzinotapira kudarika dzimwe. Nhetembo imwe neimwe mubhuku rino ine masimukiro ayo, nemagariro ayo akasiyana nedzimwe. Bhuku iri rinenge muti wakarembera nemichero yakaibva zvekuti unoshaya kuti ndotangira papi uye kana watanga kudya, unenge usisade kurega kudya. Handikwanise kuti ndisarudze nhetembo imwe chete kuti ndigoti iyi ndiyo yakabata bhuku. Uyewo, handina kuda kuti tiise nhetembo idzi muzvikamu – kwete! Takangoita zarura dzibayane, nekuda kwekuti zvekuronga nhetembo zvinonetsa kana uchishanda nenhetembo dzeshasha dzechimbo dzinenge Chirere.
Iwe unogona kufunga kuti nhetembo yake iri kutaura nezverudo, asi ukaramba uchiipindura mupfungwa dzako, ndipo pauchazoona kuti kwete – inogona kunge iri kutotaura nezverufu kana nezvematongerwo emusha! Zvakarewo, handibvume kuti kana nyanduri achikupai nhapitapi yemuchero wenhetembo, akumenyerei, obva akutsengerai, imi mozongomedza chete. Kwete. Zvibayei mega mungazoti mupepeti akaipa.
Kubudikidza nebhuku rino, Chirere avhura chitsauko chitsva pamanyorerwo nemashandisirwo enhetembo muZimbabwe. Pano pari kushandiswa mazwi mashomashoma akatetepa ayo aunogaroshandisawo iwe zvako mazuva ose. Bhuku Risina Basa Mazwi ari pano akashandiswa zvisina mutsimba zvekuti unogona kufunga kuti kunyora detembo kwakareruka sekunhonga mari munzira. Madetembo mapfupi aya akanyorerwa kuti akubatsire kuzvibvunza kuti: ndini ani, ndiri kuenda nekubva kupi, ndinodei panyika uye zvandinoita zviye ndinozviitirei? Pfungwa huru yebhuku iri ndeyekuti; funga, funga, funga! Funga usingamhanye, usingavhunduke. Kanawo izvi zvirizvo zvakasanganikwa nemumwe mundangariro nemuhupenyu, iwe sanganawo nazvo asi muri mubhuku! Ndinovimba kuti vana vedu muZimbabwe, kubva pafomu yechitatu zvichikwira, vachadzidza nekutapirirwa nemudyandakasungwa uyu. Bhuku ndiro risina basa, asi nhetembo dzirimo dzine basa! Dzakanyorwa masikati asi verengai zvenyu chero nguva.
+Ignatius T. Mabasa, Harare, 2014
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KwaChirere reads Grey Angels by Virginia Phiri
Grey Angels, novel in English by Virginia Phiri,
Published/reprinted in 2019, by Corals Services, Harare, Isbn: 9781779295033
Reviewed by Memory Chirere
When it finally breaks into mainstream reading society, Virginia Phiri’s latest novel, Grey Angels will definitely set tongues wagging, in Zimbabwe and beyond, for a number of reasons.
“I Linda Jojo, who is supposed to be Prof Joseph Jojo’s daughter decided to do the unthinkable…” says the narrator from the very start. And yet Virginia Phiri is using a clever technique coined “the unreliable narrator” by Wayne C. Booth way back in 1961.
In this kind of writing the narrator's unreliability is never fully revealed but only hinted at, leaving readers to wonder how much the narrator should be trusted and how the story should be interpreted.
Put differently; what Linda is seeing is very difficult for her or the less discerning reader to comprehend. It is our duty to find out the meaning of what she says she has seen. You may need to read between the lines and read backwards, or sideways, all the way. That is Virginia Phiri territory.
Linda’s father is an enigma. He is a master of sorcery, even opening what Linda calls “a bush school” in which selected children are forced to train in both cultural issues and the dark arts. Linda’s father is a leading Biologist in the country and has come up with ground breaking scientific researches. He is also a devout Christian upon whom the whole church relies. You keep on asking, is he a fake or a genius?
When Linda is born, he disappears with her to some unknown place during the full moon. When he returns, the baby is covered up in ritual blood. His mouth is dripping blood. He tells his cowed wife not to bath the baby for a specific period. And yet he does not tell his wife whether the blood is from animal or man.
On Saturdays, he takes the teenage Linda to the bush school for initiations which include; incisions, lacerations and having dragon tattoos drawn across her thighs. On Sundays he happily takes Linda and the family to the Christian church in his Pontiac. At some point, he tries to arrange a marriage for Linda but she wriggles out. He has a mentor, a shadowy university colleague called Dr Swaga Swaga. Together, they are indomitable until one is caught in bed with the other’s wife.
Linda offers passive resistance in order to save her mother and siblings from the marauding professor. Linda’s mother, Tandeka Jojo, is a hapless school dropout who was forced to marry a man double her age. She doesn’t know the real day to day activities of her very-very learned husband. She does not understand why her husband keeps bodies of various dead rodents and insects in the house. She does not understand the countless rituals that her husband performs everywhere in the house.
When the professor is inflicted by insanity and dies, the family is relieved as it is safer to mourn him than to live with him. The manuscript of his memoir is in the house, ready for publishing. Maybe only from that book will the truth emerge. His major weakness is not to reveal his agenda to the people around him. His angels can only be grey and not bright.
Virginia Phiri is no stranger to the genre of taboo writing. In Desperate, her collection of short stories of 2002, she writes about women in various kinds of prostitution. In Destiny, her novel of 2006, she writes about a character who is a hermaphrodite. In Highway Queen a work of 2010, she writes about the cross boarder trading women of Zimbabwe and the horrors that they confront and triumph over.
Virginia Phiri has featured in various poetry and short story anthologies in English, Shona and Ndebele. She has also contributed in non-fiction anthologies such as Women in Resilience (2000). Phiri is also an African Orchids expert and has published many articles in international orchid journals. In 1999, a new species of orchid was named after her. The orchid is called “Polystachya Phirii”.
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A VIDEO of me reading
You can see and listen to me reading “Roja rababa vaBiggie” (from my book, Tudikidiki) to a writing workshop audience on top of Chisiya Hill, Zvishavane way back in 2015, October. The video is here> Roja raBaba vaBiggie - YouTube
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KwaChirere reads Tanaka Chidora's Because Sadness is Beautiful?
Because Sadness is Beautiful? Poems in English by Tanaka Chidora,(with a foreword by Magdalena Pfalzgraf), published by Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Harare, 2019, isbn:978-1-77929-596-5
Tanaka Chidora’s first book of poems in English, Because Sadness is Beautiful? dazzles with that question mark at the end of the title. That question mark flips in the reader’s mind like disco lights. I think it is meant to challenge you to look at things inside out. That way, you may experience what the late David Mungoshi calls on the book's blurb “a near out of body experience.”
Beauty, as we know it cannot live side by side with sadness. They are meant to fight like fire and water or light and darkness. I will suggest that sadness, as you find in these poems, is beautiful because the poet has found a way of linking that sadness with concrete historical movements in Zimbabwe and all Africa. Put differently, sadness becomes beautiful when you can trace it back to its source. You start to separate man from his shadow, however hard they try to mingle. A terrible beauty is born in these poems, not because a revolution is waged, but because you have been persuaded to look and understand very clearly how you have become and how long the road ahead is.
Many of these poems talk about ‘the old that hides in the folds of the new.’ Growing up, our uncles told us horrifying stories about straying through sacred grounds at night where you run and run and run but always feeling that you were on the same spot! For Chidora the poet, “the ugly underbelly of the new/ reveals itself to a few.”
As a result, Chidora invents phrases and lines that startle through their intense internal opposition, like when he writes about ‘peace armed to the teeth,’ like ‘someone touched the hem of my smile,’ like ‘one day peace decided to have children,’ like ‘the river roaring, spinning and tearing its clothes…’ and ‘open your eyes and see that there is nothing to see.’
In that regard, you may probably like that short poem called ‘Leaving.’ For some people, as shown in this poem, leaving one’s country comes when one stops talking about the terrible situation in their country. It is strange that you may actually leave a country when you give up on it, while you are still in it, that you may not leave it physically. The poet could be suggesting that people and country are like the dog and its tail! One can never catch the other during a chase. Also, nobody may effectively leave a country once you are born to it and experience it.
The poem ‘Father’ could be the watershed poem in this collection. Father is a hopeless drunkard but you can see that he is also a protector, sometimes he is a preacher-philosopher and sometimes he is your weak friend whose injured body has to be ferried home by others. You do not need to open your eyes to see father because you see him with your eyes closed, because he is painted by Chidora with care and ease. Chidora’s ‘Father’ is not drawn with the usual stereotypical brush used for parents in literature. Chidora’s ‘Mother’ poem which comes earlier will definitely struggle against the ‘Father’ poem. Chidora's mother poem is a given. But, the father poem is a challenge.
Mbare features prominently in these poems. Mbare is often side-lined in Zimbabwean literature. ‘Magamba hostels’ portrays the known hostels as a wreckage seen from the sea shores at different times of day, sparking different mixed thoughts. Then there is another longer poem that dedicates a stanza to each of the 13 blocks of that historical hostel. Mbare is described as a cultural melting pot. Mbare is an embarrassment to the politicians who give empty promises. Mbare is a place where small men and women have opportunity to recreate and re-arrange themselves. Mbare is a language by itself. Mbare is a place of waiting, of arrival and departures.
These poems are torn between belonging and disinterest in the country. They search for something to hold on to, something beyond the misery around us. You come away from this book with the idea that; whatever the very crucial things we have experienced in history, they may not be good enough to keep us together for as long as we do not achieve peace, prosperity and harmony. I am also touched by the fact that this is one of the last few books that the late great David Mungoshi edited before his exit.
+Reviewed by Memory Chirere, University of Zimbabwe
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KwaChirere previews Diaspora Dreams, a novel by Andrew Chatora
Diaspora Dreams, A novel by Andrew Chatora
Published by KHARIS PUBLISHING,2021, isbn: ISBN-13: 978-1-63746-029-0
There are strong indications that the UK based Zimbabwean writer, Andrew Chatora, is going to release his debut novel, Diaspora Dreams with Kharis Publishing in the US very soon.
On noting the subject matter, I was initially tempted to assume that this new author would take the usual route about a young Zimbabwean coming to the UK because of the crisis back home.
Ever since Dambudzo Marechera of The House of Hunger’s “I got my things and left…” of 1978 to the present, the central character of such novels, who is almost always a young fellow, flees home and country in search of an alternative existence. After that, he becomes double faced, constantly checking on the new ground while peeping at the political goings on back home. He then to then becomes a keen political eye.
However, Chatora takes a very courageous and startling detour with this new book. The main character, Mr. Kundai Mafirakureva, is following up on his teacher wife, Kay in England. Her pregnancy is now very advanced and Kundai has come to be with the beautiful Kay in her time of need, something far away from Chikwava’s single minded man in Harare North.
But Kundai walks late. He does not know that he has in fact come to ‘school.’ He does not know that he is coming to the UK to learn about what women can do, sometimes, to their unsuspecting men when the survival instincts rise above love ties. If you are used to the many novels that dwell on how men typically abuse women, then this book is something else.
From the moment Kundai from N133A Dangamvura- Mutare, manages to secure a visa at Heathrow, a whirlwind takes over. Husband and wife are on new turf. This is the UK. Their constant power struggles over which relatives should receive money from the UK and who should not, begin in earnest. Traditional African filial ties are on trial.
Kay constantly reminds Kundai that he is just a black man, anyway and that black men in the UK have no favorable recourse to the law. “Kundai, remember, you are just a black man in the UK.” On several occasions when they have a row, the British police are called to the house and they come with a clear assumption that; when a black man is in a quarrel with a woman, it must just be him who is on the wrong. They are ready to assume judge and jury. They often advise Kundai to either come to the station with them or go put up somewhere else for the night. The stereotypes run deep and Kundai is walking down a well laid script.
The climax of their fights with Kay comes when Kundai notices that Kay’s mother, vaFugude, has the temerity to use DHL to send love potions or concoctions to Kay from her sangomas, all the way from Zimbabwe! These mixtures are to be used on Kundai so that he becomes a compliant husband. An avid believer in seers, medicine men and dark mystical forces, vaFugude makes it her specialty to consult these darker, underworld forces on behalf of her daughter, Kay.
Everything becomes a power issue with Kay. From sex to normal conversation, she has to have the last word. Their divorce is tumultuous and tends to prove to Kundai that the British legal system is rather impatient with the protestations of men folk in these matters. Kundai has to go to court a record eleven times, to be allowed mere contact with his children. This involves meeting periodically with the children under observation, in a neutral empty hall. The children become tormented and disgusted. They have a distant look in their eyes.
In search of comfort, Kundai goes on to cohabit with a white workmate, Zettie, whom he calls ‘a stunning looker.’ Zettie is a young liberal-minded white girl from an affluent Buckinghamshire family. She appears to be the answer to Kundai’s questing spirit. She quickly learns to cook traditional Zimbabwean dishes and tries to speak Shona. She wants to be the ideal wife to an African man far away from Africa. But on their first visit to Zimbabwe, Zettie falls for and gets impregnated with Kundai’s cousin, Kian! They hit it off straightaway with Kian, as they both sit long drawn-out hours on the veranda at the Vumba homestead, downing lagers and continuously chain smoking weed, as if they have known each other for ages. Once more, things fall apart for Kundai.
Kundai quickly moves on. He does not want to be alone. He hooks up with a woman on an online dating website. She is a Zimbabwean called Jacinda. They quickly get married and Jacinda joins Kundai in the UK. In no time, she starts to treat Kundai to the bitterest and scariest lesson of his life. You read on with a numbed face!
Kundai loses it all and his subsequent charmed incantations and chants while in an English madhouse, are the most revealing part of this novel. As a result, Diaspora Dreams could be of interest to those who study the male psyche and manhood. The losing black male is still a dark area, rich with distances to be traveled and depths to be probed.
But this novel is not just about Kundai and his women. It also dwells on what often goes on when you set out to teach English to English pupils when you are actually a black teacher from a former colony! To date, I have not come across a novel that dwells at equal length on the relationship between a teacher from Africa and white school kids, and the relationship between a black teacher and the white school administration in a white country.
Andrew Chatora received an MA in Media, Culture and Communication from UCL. He has written and published widely on topical issues with This is Africa publication. He is principally interested in the global politics of inequality which he interrogates through his writings. When he is not writing, he is working on his PhD thesis on Digital Piracy, with Birmingham City University’s School of Media and English
+Reviewed by Memory Chirere, University of Zimbabwe
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