ZIBFA Chairman’s statement Country on Focus Gazebo fire

We regret to inform the book industry in Zimbabwe and all our stakeholders and partners abroad about the fire that destroyed the iconic ZIBF Country of Focus Gazebo at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair grounds and the immediate vicinity in the early hours of Saturday morning of 29 May 2021.

We want to thank the City of Harare Fire Brigade for their quick response once they were informed. They managed to put out the fire. But being a timber and thatch building, the speed at which the fire moved means that the structure was burnt beyond repair.

At this point, the cause of the fire and other details are not yet known. We await feedback from the municipal authority fire team and the police who attended the scene.

As the book industry, this blow comes after a long period of subsequent trials. The sector has been reeling under the impact of piracy. Covid-19 shutdowns derailed the 2020 ZIBF and we had no traditional face to event in the Harare gardens. This left our hearts bleeding.

However, we are glad to announce that some partners have already stepped in to assist us with rebuilding the gazebo and the vicinity. You may want to know that the ZIBFA Executive board and the General Council were already seized with redoing all our structures and the vicinity as a matter of urgency.

With the support of our partners, we are looking forward to a whole new look which will maintain our strong cultural background and natural look while incorporating high safety standards against man-made and natural disasters.

We are still in the process of engaging other partners and all Zimbabweans and people abroad are welcome to lend a hand. We are much encouraged by the positive response we have received so far.

We will be announcing specifics of these exciting development over the next few weeks in due course.

The destroyed gazebo is where the iconic Chinua Achebe alongside Luis Bernardo Honwana of Mozambique and others showcased their literary oeuvre and addressed the media during their joint first visit to Zimbabwe. That spot had become a destination for book connoisseurs from across the world with books being displayed and briskly sold both on the ground and first floor. This has also been the venue for the Hifa Poetry Café for sometime, now.

ZIBF has profiled Zimbabwe internationally on an annual basis, through the international exhibitions that have been running for more than thirty years since its inception in 1983. We are therefore calling upon all stakeholders to help in retaining and safeguarding this longstanding legacy. 

Since then, ZIBF has annually exhibited Book Fairs in the Harare Gardens, a central venue in the Capital City, also conveniently located within reach of the CBD and hotels that host international delegates and stakeholders that annually come for the Fairs. Closely tied up with the presence of ZIBF Offices in Harare Gardens and the peaceful environment, is the twin aspect of both domestic and international tourism that Zimbabweans will seriously consider in preserving the present site and purpose of Harare Gardens as a strategic venue for Critical National Projects such as ZIBF.

Situated next to the ZIBF is the National Art Gallery which also houses the national treasure trove of artworks, specifically stone-art or sculptor. Both these spaces promote, preserve and disseminate local cultures while marketing and promoting the same to the regional and international communities. These two functions add value to the importance of the Harare Gardens to the populace.

ZIBF values your continued support and would appreciate your views or further inputs to this.

Our theme for Zibfa 2021 is still; Book Industry: the dynamics within is receiving positive responses for the traditional July-August event.  Having observed that most of the themes from 2011 to 2016 addressed developmental and philosophical issues, the board decided to select a theme that may give us a rare opportunity to look more closely at the internal welfare and goings on of real people and institutions (big and small) in the book industry itself in Zimbabwe and Africa. We want to dwell on the work relations between our writers and publishers, printers, booksellers and librarians, readers for example. We are convinced that a very introspective gaze at both the open and behind the scenes of the book sector may be exciting and enriching.

Enacted in the early days of the first decade of Zimbabwe’s independence, this gazebo and its vicinity were used each year by a country that we chose to focus for showcasing their books and other cultural materials. Nigeria, Iran, Ghana and others were once stationed in that spot.

I thank you.

Your faithfully

Memory Chirere,

Chairperson of the Executive Board of the ZIBFA

Ziso ReZongororo, a novel by Ignatius Mabasa

Published by Oxford University Press, 2021, Cape Town.

Isbn:978 0 19 072177 0.

A Review by Memory Chirere

Ziso Rezongororo, which translates to; the eye of a millipede, is the most recent Shona novel by the inimitable Zimbabwean writer, Ignatius Mabasa.

These are Shemhu’s very-very delicate recollections of his very turbulent boyhood. Shemhu, the dramatic name, is equivalent to shame in English. That name worries the boy immensely as he refers to it as ‘zita rinorwadza.’ He wonders if his parents were ashamed to have a baby boy or; they were having a go at all the people who, for some reason, had declared that they would never have a baby.

The boy’s insensitive teacher would look at Shemhu in class and say, “Shame on you, Shame.” The boy would cringe.

Shemhu’s parents divorce when he is just a boy of five. On the day his mother leaves the homestead, somebody very sympathetic asks Shemhu to go pick some cucumbers from the fields, and when he comes back, his mother is gone and gone forever!

The boy hopes his mother has gone away on an ordinary visit. He waits for days on end and his spirit crumbles. When she does not return, that is when the boy learns about the terrible word ‘divorce’ for the first time.

Years later, Shemhu writes a letter to his mother but neither does he know her address nor affords an envelope and a stamp. The letter eventually rots in his back pocket. Part of the letter goes: Amai, muri kupi? Muri kuitei ikoko? Muchadzoka here? Muchiri kundida here kana kuti mandikanganwa? Mufunge zvenyu amai, ndakatukwa ndichinzi uri mwana wenyoka.” Something like; mother where are you? What are you up to? When are you coming back? Do you still love me? Mother, they say that I am the young one of a snake…

Every child appears as innocent and seemingly as blind as the millipede; zongororo. But the millipede is to be seen going everywhere, feeling its way up and around objects, almost blind but sensitive. For Ignatius Mabasa, the mind of a child is like that, questioning, active, indefatigable and overly sensitive. That is Shemhu’s condition.

As he gropes on after his parents’ divorce, Shemhu goes on an intense mental search. Many people don’t know how it feels for a boy to try to work out why his parents can no longer be together. That is the forte of this novel.

Shemhu asks Dhanyere (an older nephew whose parents are also divorced) about the meaning of divorce and all he says to Shemhu is, “It (divorce) is something close to what happens when a cow is forcing its calf to stop suckling when the calf still desperately needs to suckle…, the cow running away from the poor calf and sometimes having to kick the poor calf in the face..”

The boy, Dhanyere, works out that divorce is not mutual; the cow wants the suckling to stop but the calf wants to continue…Your mother is gone, the people eventually tell Shemhu. But Shemhu wonders why he was not consulted before the so called divorce!

Immediately, Shemhu’s father gets married to a new woman. Shemhu fails to relate with the new woman. He also loses touch with his father. You come face to face with what a child feels to see his dear father being suddenly tender to a new woman who is not the boy’s mother!

Eventually, Shemhu’s father dies too and the boy is adopted by his father’s brother who transplants Shemhu from the village to the city. Sadly, Shemhu’s uncle takes the boy home with no prior arrangement with his wife, maiguru, in the city. When uncle gets to his Highfields house with Shemhu there is a huge row between him and maiguru.

The well fed and stubborn woman complaints loudly that she will not tolerate God forsaken strangers from the village into her home just like that: Zvekuunzirwa tuvanhu twune mazino anenge embeva, twusingagezi ndizvo zvandisingade” The frightened boy waits outside the house as he hears his uncle plead with his wife until he is grudgingly accepted.

You tremble with the book in your hands.

For me, the tense relationship between Shemhu and maiguru is, most probably, the worst person to person relationships that I have encountered in all Zimbabwean literature. Shemhu says, “maiguru vaindibata sebepa rafuriswa madzihwa rinofanira kuraswa,” meaning; maiguru treated me like used tissue paper that needs to be thrown away.

Shemhu is very dark in complexion. He is generally darker than all the people around him and he suffers from a kind of racial segregation in the extended family. Maiguru tells Shemhu that he is just too dark and scary to look at: “Shemhu, unotyisa unozviziva! Maziso ako matsvuku ayo, neganda rako dema iro zvinoita kuti uite kunge munhu wemashave. Chakachena chete pauri mazino.”

At some point, maiguru tells her son, Simbai that Shemhu is a monster! “Simbai, tiza! Hokoyo naShemhu uyo!” afterwards she bursts into uncontrollable fits laughter. She also says words like, “Shemhu uri firimu chaiyo. Uri Chituta chine kirimu!” meaning the boy is as amazing as a film star and is prince of all idiots.

One day, when maiguru is miffed that Shemhu is taking too long in the bathroom, she bursts into the little room and starts to relieve herself in full view of the stunned boy who is still bathing!

This is a story that will make you cry. This is a story that will make you laugh. This story will change your relationship with children and young people. You will be happy to know that this story has no sad ending and that Shemhu’s relationship with maiguru ends well.

Ziso ReZongororo has been prescribed by Zimsec for A level Shona exams from 2021 to 2023.

It is not difficult to see why Ignatius Tirivangani Mabasa is considered one of the leading writers of his generation in Zimbabwe. He is also a storyteller, and musician, who writes mainly in Shona. He was born in Mount Darwin and grew up on his grandfather's farm there. Mabasa is the first Zimbabwean to write a PhD thesis in Shona at Rhodes University, South Africa. Mabasa's debut novel, the satirical Mapenzi (Fools), won first prize in the Zimbabwe Book Publishers’ Association Awards in 2000. His second novel, Ndafa Here? (Am I Dead?) won the 2009  (NAMA) Outstanding Fiction Book as did his novel, Imbwa yemunhu (You Dog) in 2014. He lectures in Media and Journalism studies at the University of Zimbabwe.

“The Chosen Generation” a historical novel by Thomas Sukutai Bvuma

Independently published in 2021, 207 pages, isbn: 9798585091247

(Reviewed  by Memory Chirere)

Young Masara Musamba of Sakubva, Umtali, Rhodesia, is involved in the war of liberation that gave birth to Zimbabwe as a ZANLA fighter. This is his story told under his war name; Nyika Yababa, or simply Yababa.

He quickly joins the war after beating up his white boss who had beaten him for a flimsy reason at a fruit canning factory where the boy is working temporarily while waiting to go and enroll at the prestigious University of Rhodesia.

It is a serious crime in Rhodesia for a black man to beat up a white man, for whatever reason. You would rather run before the police catches you. So Masara abandons his job, his pay and his very beautiful girl friend, Wadiwa and rashly clambers up the mountains on the western side of Umtali, crossing the border to join the guerrillas across in Mozambique by first getting to Chibawawa refugee camp in September 1976.

Masara had met some ZANLA guerilla before in his own Mutambara communal lands and had always had a romantic view of the war of liberation and the guerrillas. He had always hoped to join the liberators one day. This historical novel is renowned Zimbabwen poet, Thomas Bvuma’s first long prose offering.

But who is Thomas Sukutai Bvuma in Zimbabwean Literature? Initially, using the pen-name Carlos Chombo, Thomas Bvuma wrote the well known poem, “Real Poetry” at the height of the war in the late 1970’s.

“Real Poetry” eventually got more “visible” publication in the Zimunya-Kadhani edited post war collection called And NOW the Poets Speak (1981). Musaemura Zimunya and Mudereri Kadhani set out to bring together poems which reflected on the Zimbabwe revolution then.

Bvuma’s “Real Poetry” defines struggle as people’s real poetry. Very reminiscent in content and form to Jorge Rebelo’s poem called “Poem,” “Real Poetry” quickly became a classic of sorts.

Zimunya and Kadhani could not “resist using (the poem) as a choric prelude to this selection.” They wrote somewhere that they also “found (in this poem) the power of the intellect, control of rhythm and style well combined and married to idea, action and reaction” and that through it, one recalls the more prominent Angolan war poet, Agostinho Neto himself.” Zimunya nad Kadhani also used a section of the poem on the blurb of the cream coloured And Now The poets as the theme poem and the poem  went viral.

Thomas Bvuma, like Alexander Kanengoni and Freedom Nyamubaya, wrote poems at the war front in between battles either as a pastime or a means to reflect on the war he was participating in. He is still writing and publishing poetry long after the war of liberation and some of his key pieces constantly jog one’s mind. More of Thomas Bvuma’s poems were later published in Every Stone That Turns (1999) almost two decades later! They are arranged in a way that sets out to capture the changing times from war to independence.

But his latest work, the historical novel called The Chosen Generation, appears to give the more elaborate materials that inform the turmoil and thought that one finds in the poem “Real Poem” and the collection of poems called “Every Stone that Turns.”

This novel fits in and tucks in real critical geographical and historical factors that have been glossed over by many writers of Zimbabwean war fiction and even those in war history..

Through this novel, places critical for training and refugees like Chimoio, including its attack by Rhodesians on 23 November 1977, Chibawawa, Tembwe and others are brought to life from the point of view of a recruit and soon to be a trained cadre. There are no sacred cows in this narrative. 

As you read this novel, you are forced to compare and contrast it with such iconic works such as Chinodya’s Harvest of Thorns, Kanengoni’s Echoing Silences, Mazorodze’s Silent Journeys From the East, Mutambara’s The Rebel in Me and Miles Tendi’s The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe: Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker.

The story is written from a rather laid back point of view of an ex combatant now sitting in his house in poverty stricken post war Chitungwiza township of the economically tumultuous 2008. He is for searching his place in all the tricky things that have happened and sometimes he thinks that his generation is not chosen but cursed. But he insists that he wants to judge them fairly.

The narratives moves gradually, with ease, finding facts and fallacies, even fitting the 1970’s within the context of the world’s rebellious youths of the hippies, rock music and many other things. The story takes you to places and decisions made outside Rhodesia and the war front. The war in Rhodesia is part of world events and that is the strongest theory propounded by this book.

In chapters 10 to 13, which are very critical, the writer recreates Chimoi as it was in the context of the war against Ian Smith. He goes for geographic space within historic and social context. You begin to read into the détente period, Zanla conscription methods as from 1976, the rise and fall of the Vashandi ideology, love affairs, betrayals, Zipa, Zanla-Zipra relations, the battle of Mavhonde, Tongogara, Herbert Chitepo, Robert Mugabe, Rex Nhongo and the attacks and counter attacks between and amongst people and systems.

This book is a must read for all people with a genuine interest in the emerging perspectives on Zimbabwe’s difficult war of Independence and how much it is a prelude to what took place within zimbabwe soon after.

A preview by Memory Chirere

It is not every day that one previews a work of fiction. The fast-rising UK based Zimbabwean writer, Andrew Chatora, has a second novel in the wings. It is set to be released soon on November 30, 2021 by his US based Publishers: Kharis Publishing.

The forthcoming Where the Heart Is could be, partly ‘a novel of ideas.’ A 'novel of ideas' is a novel whose story expounds and explores a particular philosophical perspective on the world. The idea is as important to the book as plot, character, and setting.

Chatora’s story clearly expounds on and explores a particular debate which may not have been fully explored by many novels from Zimbabwe. For instance; when the native leaves the periphery (Harare) for the centre (England) due to economic reasons, does it make sense for him to want to return to the periphery once more?

If he does return, is this homecoming or second coming, really possible? Are people really able to fully return to their source without sparking contradictions? The man who returns, why does he return at all? Or, to what does he return? You may go back to the source physically but is it viable economically, spiritually and socially?

Chatora’s native returns from the centre (London) to the periphery (Harare) intending to stay for good but returns to the centre in a huff! When a man goes and returns and goes away again, what do we call him? Is such a native confused or he is merely confusing the observer?

Where is his heart?

But there are some in our midst who may say, wait a minute, even if going back to one’s country from the diaspora is difficult, could it be viewed as an entirely wrong thing to do, if one wants to? Which one is one’s country?

Well, Fari Mupawaenda tries to return to good old Harare from England and through him, the novel sparks a storm.

When it finally hits the market, Where the Heart Is, is going to be one of the very few novels by a Zimbabwean that fully imagines the joys and hazards of a physical return home from the diaspora. Olley Maruma tries it with his text Coming Home (2008), but I think his main character does not leave behind any stake in the UK. His is the return of a post pubertal man. He also does not leave for the UK once more. Stanley Nyamfukudza tries it with Aftermaths (1983), but he is only working on the matter in one short story from a whole collection.

The diaspora-based literature by Zimbabwean writers rarely thinks about this crucial reverse trip and its subsequent rich psychology. It is often assumed that it is easy to return because one was born here, anyway.

Yet, as dramatized here by Chatora, the reverse trip is also a story about the human body, a memory test and the struggle between geography and anticipation. During this reverse trip, the traveller is actually carrying heavier and multivarious cargo than during the first outward trip.

In Fari’s case, part of his crucial cargo has actually remained behind in the UK. His wife, a zealous cosmopolitan, the daughter, a conflicted bed hopping undergraduate and the son; a budding homosexual, will not follow Fari in his trip to what they see as the back of beyond. They have decided to invest fully where they are.

Fari is convinced that whatever he achieves in the diaspora should only make adequate sense only if one returns to the source. He constantly judges people and things around him from the point of view of a country that he has long left behind. And yet he has changed.

I enjoy the underlying suggestion that Fari is both right and wrong in trying to return. That is the strongest lesson that I took away from this novel. If you return you are damned. If you don’t return, you are damned too!

I also want to call Where the Heart Is, a ‘thinker’s novel’ because you can never read it and not re-examining issues like culture, distance, centre, periphery, family, love, sex, marriage etc .

Just like what we witnessed with Chatora’s first novel, Diaspora Dreams, the latest novel will surely throw the readers into irreconcilable camps because the men and women in this story are not always sharing the same ideological pedestal. The women are vehement and their criticism of their men is close to the bone.

And the men, too, are not always agreeing with one another. The silent competition is an act of attrition.

The author also uses sexual intercourse as an extra language of unity and disunity, and this will set tongues wagging.

As in Pepetela’s Mayombe (1979), Charles Mungoshi’s Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura? (1983), Ignatius Mabasa’s Mapenzi (1999) etc the characters in Chatora’s latest offering come out very clearly individualised. They speak from a very private angle. Each of them has a distinct signature . 

Where the Heart Is, is Andrew Chatora’s second novel after Diaspora Dreams which was published by Kharis Publishing in the US.  

It’s now available to pre-order on Amazon’s url link below:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Where-Heart-Andrew-Chatora/dp/1637460848/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RUCJ071FZ6NQ&keywords=where+the+heart+is+andrew+chatora&qid=1636276312&sprefix=where+the+heart+is+andrew+chatora%2Caps%2C63&sr=8-1

In Harare, copies will be sold by Book Fantasticks Booksellers reachable on:

Brian: +263 77 921 0403

Kudzi + 263 715 072 288

Email:
fantasticbooks.21st@gmail.com

https://bookfantastics.co.zw/

Title: For Women Trying To Breathe and Failing

By Batsirai Chigama, Ntombekhaya, Harare: 2021, 132 pages

Isbn: 978-177925-791-8

There are many ways of writing protest poetry. One of them is for the poet to take on that which she abhors, head on. The poet could settle on subjects like politics and violence and get to their roots, sampling their DNA, pointing out the perpetrators themselves etc etc.

The poet could also lambast the way men ill-treat women in general. She could even write against the usual clobbering of women by men for no particular reason. The poet could go round and round until the page is wet. Or, she could grieve all the way, burning a hole that runs from cover to cover.

The poet could then breath in and out, take a walk or make a quick cup of tea for herself. Or, she could just rest and settle like fog upon the earth.

But in this her new book called For Women Trying to Breathe and Failing, Batsirai Chigama has, for me, one very special section called How Love Should Be. In that section, Chigama chooses to protest against man’s abuse of women by actually giving us the alternative man. This is a rare feat! Here is a man that the women would prefer…

In school we used to call that the control experiment!

When a male reader goes through that section, he may definitely come face to face with what he could have been when the world was fresh and the hills were still soft. It is like coming home in the middle of a rainy night to find your better version sleeping in your very bed! When that happens, and you are able to control your nerves, you may see what you could have been and not the brute that you have become. We tend to come into the world too late or too early to be sane.

In one of those poems by Chigama, a woman gazes at a man and thinks, “of all the places (that) I could live, your heart is the paradise I choose.” In another, a woman refers to her man as “a best seller to me” and more specifically, “babe I would carry you around in the duffel bag of my heart, flip through you, slowly grasp(ing) every single word profound…”

Then she describes an imaginary good, lovely and well behaved man with:

“There are some rooms in your palms

Where I feel I belong

Quiet

Calm

Steady

Warm

Full of you.”

These are the kind of men’s palms that women look for everywhere without finding. Those palms with rooms! But that is only the beginning because in yet another poem, the title poem to this section itself, the poet writes about her man’s “gentle softness” and her man’s “dewy kindness that drips each time you look at me and hold me strong in the embrace of each syllable.”

And the man is so good that the woman even admits her own faults, “I am a mess I know, yet the way each vowel curves in your iris is the magnet that centres my universe.” And that electric section of poems continues unabated.

In another piece, a joyful woman reads a book of poems by the window as her caring man wears the apron to prepare a toast for her, roasting a chicken drumstick for her and the sad part is that the man does it that only on Sundays. If he could do it more regularly, the better!

Here you find a man who knows how to spell love even in his sleep. There is also talk about “a man who smiled with his eyes,” causing a woman bloom like a flower in season. That is not even enough because in yet another poem, “ a woman meets her former lover (so that she is able) to touch the wrinkles on his body and realizes that she still loves him even more than before and that it was really “stupid (hat they had) let each other go the way we did.”

Then there is a section called For Women Who Forget To Breathe While Alive, which has poems about how women’s woes affect their private and bodily lives. There are also sections about women failing to survive and another more reassuring section about “women finding their feet.” There is also a section that carries “the random thoughts of a woman sojourner.” Maybe these are about the poet’s feelings at all the different spaces she has visited (at home and abroad.)

And yes, this collection has sections about politics, particularly our turbulent politics and how much we have developed wounds that run deep. Zimbabwe of the recent times goes under appraisal.

This is Batsirai Chigama, unplugged. With this her second collection after Gather The Children, which won the NAMA award 2019, this poet decided to come out more flaming and establishing her identity as a poet about raw feelings and the troubled internal landscapes as experienced by woman and country.  

Very ably edited by fellow poet, Ethel Kabwato, with designs by Chiratidzo Chiweshe-Sauro, this book will find a place in Zimbabwean poetry alongside firebrand poets like Freedom Nyamubaya, Eve Nyemba, Primrose Dzenga, Hope Masike and others.

+ Book review by Memory Chirere, Harare.

In this wide-ranging interview, multiple award-winning Zimbabwean journalist, editor, musician and scholar, Moses Magadza (MM), talks to celebrated Zimbabwean writer, Ignatius Mabasa (IM),  about many issues, including: Mabasa's iconic PhD; promoting the vernacular; some of his books; religion and creative writing; the power of storytelling; the infamous tiff between the late Les Enfant Terrible of literature, Dambudzo Marechera and Aaron Chiundura Moyo, the current state of writing and publishing in Zimbabwe; and being a musician.

MM: You are the first Zimbabwean to write a PhD thesis on a subject studied in English in your vernacular Shona at Rhodes University, South Africa. What inspired this?

IM: There must be a first of something, right? The Shona PhD thesis had to be a first. It had to be done. Zimbabwe got its independence in 1980. We are now a 40-year-old country but we still don’t value our languages. I think it’s a scandal and a shame!

By looking down upon our languages, we are perpetuating the cognitive domination that existed during colonialism where the colonised depended on the coloniser’s concepts and categories to think about his own reality. Then what is the value of political independence if we are looking at the world through borrowed paradigms? At what point will we tell our own stories - if we ever get to tell them - because we are forgetting them and forgetting ourselves? Chinua Achebe says the story is our escort and without it we are blind. There is a mental battle going on, unfortunately in this ideological battle, most Africans are like the wolf that ate its own tail thinking it had caught a very fat squirrel.

MM: This matter about your iconic PhD has gone viral on social media across the world. How do you respond to people’s reaction to you – almost like Ngugi WA Thiongo – doing a major work in your vernacular?

IM: My PhD written in Shona has shown me that there are a lot of Africans out there who identify with the problem of being mentally colonised. There is a strong desire to decolonise the mind. The challenge is that most key institutions - like schools and universities, government departments in charge of arts and culture, and the media - are unwilling to decolonise because the decolonisation agenda is not appealing to the cocacolonised mind. We still think wisdom speaks in English. We are proud when our children are articulate in English yet look at us blankly when we talk to them in indigenous languages. Our governments must understand the nexus between language and development. Borrowing is not sowing.

MM: Your thesis is titled “Chave Chemutengure Vhiri Rengoro: Husarungano Nerwendo Rwengano Dzevashona". In English, the title equates to "The folktale in confrontation with a changing world”. Please say more about your topic and your thrust.

IM: Chemutengure is a deceptively simple indigenous folksong composed when the whites came into Zimbabwe with their many wagons. The song effectively serves as art, media, theory, as well as a critique of capitalism and colonialism. Unfortunately, as part of Africa’s heritage and indigenous knowledge system, Chemutengure has not been carefully studied in African schools and tertiary institutions alongside other national narratives and symbols.

Chemutengure is “pedagogy of the oppressed,” and critiques the need for Africans to pry, as Last Moyo (2020) puts it, “the grip of Eurocentric, Western-centric, and monocultural universalism to a more progressive cultural politics of a multicultural, inclusive, emancipatory theory and pedagogy.”

 If Chemutengure is an indigenous folksong that was created to critique, to analyse, to document, to generate communal and national dialogue – it means the so-called “primitive” indigenous people without the aid of European education and knowledge could make sense of an observed reality and guide the collection and evaluation of evidence.

Chemutengure is a knowledge product that fights against what Walter Mignolo described as the “inscribing conceptualization of knowledge to a geopolitical space (Western Europe) and erase(d) the possibility of even thinking about a conceptualization and distribution of knowledge ‘‘emanating’’ from other local histories.”

MM: What did you learn from writing your thesis?

IM: I learnt that it is okay to practice epistemic disobedience. I discovered that our fear of the gatekeeping in academia is also a design in the colonial system that stands in the way of intellectualising and theorising in African languages. I thank open-minded academics like Professor Russell Kaschula, one of my supervisors for the trailblazing work he is doing to intellectualise African languages. But here in Zimbabwe we need an academic revolution and even learn from our Chinese friends on how much they value and use their languages for development.

MM: Did you do your thesis as a writer or a scholar and how does the writer in you relate with the scholar in you - which is stronger?

IM: Initially I wanted to do a PhD in creative writing, because I am a writer and a storyteller. When I applied to one of the universities in South Africa that offers PhD studies in creative writing, they didn’t seem interested in indigenous language creative writing. A Professor friend of mine, Flora Veit-Wild, told me about auto ethnography. This is a way of doing research about one’s culture, not as an outsider (the way anthropologists from Europe used to study our cultures), but as an insider and active participant of that culture.

Auto ethnography as a methodology is also a product that demands very high levels of creative writing. I read a few articles on auto ethnography and just loved it. I think it is what most of arts and culture practitioners in former colonies should be doing in big numbers – because it allows us to build our knowledge systems as well as to reflect and think critically about processes that we consider ordinary. So, my thesis is a great conversation between the writer and the scholar in me.

MM: You burst on the literary scene in 1994 with Shona poems in Tipeiwo Dariro. Could you reflect a little on that first writing project?

IM: Tipeiwo Darirois actually one of my many poems that I wrote after being frustrated by lack of publishing opportunities and being denied a voice as an aspiring young writer. It is a plea for a space in a sphere that is dominated by established voices. I had been writing poems and being published in magazines and literary journals – and those poems published in the different publications were some type of validation that I had what it takes to be considered a formally published writer.

It was after meeting with Chirikure Chirikure on a radio show that I read some of my poems. I can’t remember who else was there among budding writers, but after the radio show, Chirikure, who besides being a poet himself was also working for College Press Publishers as an editor, asked us to submit some poems to be considered for publishing. Tipeiwo Dariro was published in 1993.

MM: You then published Mapenzi, a novel.  How did this book impact the landscape in Shona literature?

IM: Mapenzi was my first novel. It was published in 1999. It was a result of a wonderful opportunity I got to be taught the history of the Shona novel by the late Professor Emmanuael Chiwome. Having been raised by my grandmother’s folktales, and then discovering Shona novels when I was about eight years old – I got the opportunity to see the trends of the development of the Shona novel including how the early writers were influenced by oral literature. So, during the lectures by Professor Chiwome, my colleagues were writing notes to pass the exam, but for me as a budding writer, I had found a very rare opportunity to get guidance on how to write a novel that avoided the many weaknesses found in the Shona novel.

So, you find that from the title “Mapenzi” you are confronted by an almost surreal world that at the same time allows the reader to be tossed in a vortex of psychological debris.  The style is almost unlike anything one had seen in a Shona novel – it is a fragmented story that is so sincere in how it critiques society in post-independence Zimbabwe. The storyline is so many things bedevilling an independent state. In a way the moral, political, economic and social decadence in Mapenzistinks to the core.

So, I think Mapenziwas a success because it ditched the narrative style that had become associated with the Shona novel. The use of madness as a device to drive the story allows for so many possibilities and even allows readers to feel safe in their own madness.

MM: Some people have described your other novel, Ndafa Here? as a feminist project? How do you respond to this characterisation of the novel?

IM: It is very true. Actually, when I wrote Ndafa Here? I was very worried that I was going to be attacked for trying to speak for women, yet I had to because I was witnessing the cruellest and dehumanising things that were happening to two women that I knew – and these things were being done by other women. Again, like Mapenzi– I think the success of Ndafa Here? comes from the way it does not gloss over things that make other writers feel are too sensitive to write.

Literature must speak the truth or shut up – especially when it chooses to be advocacy literature like Ndafa Here? I met a woman in Harare who approached me and asked if I was Ignatius Mabasa. I said yes – and she sighed and said something like: “Thank you for writing the Ndafa Here? story. It’s my story – you were writing about me.”

She went on to tell me about how her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law ganged up against her and caused her divorce. She ended up in tears.

MM: You also wrote the novel Imbwa yemunhu. Now that title! What was going on?

IM: Imbwa yemunhu is a very spiritual and experimental novel. It is the only Shona novel I know that takes place in locations and settings that are spiritual. When you read the book, you will realise that when we judge people we have no time to love them, but if we sincerely love people, we give them medicine to heal. Musa, the protagonist is a “failure” in life because he is running away from an old man with a pack of dogs who is only visible to him. Musa gets labelled “a dog” because he is considered such a huge failure who at 40 is failing to get married and settle down. When Musa finds love, it is a married woman who is desperate to escape her marriage to a homosexual husband. The novel seems to be asking, “Who is without sin? Let him be the first to throw a stone!”

MM: Imbwa yemunhu is often called an antinovel. Talk a little about that.

IM: These are perceptions of critics and other learned people. I am not sure why they would call it an antinovel. I know that the style is different – the setting is crazy and the storyline very experimental. It brings together visions, dreams, talking cockroaches, songs, poems and still allows the reader moments to laugh. All I know is that of my four novels – Imbwa yemunhu is very special to me.

MM: Your other works, including the latest novel Ziso Rezongororo, have often been called extended Christian sermons. How do you respond to that?

IM: I guess I have always wanted to be a preacher. I am a lay preacher, and I love the word of God. As you know, we carry ideologies of who we are, where we live, what we love and read as well as the education we will have received. I guess this is why my works have such a strong aroma of Christ. I consider creative writing as a gift to influence society and in line with the biblical command that each one of us must use their gifts for the benefit of others.

As you might know, the experiences of an artist have a way of following him in his writings whether consciously or unconsciously. My grandfather was a preacher and from when I was eight years old I used to read the Bible to him because his sight was failing. So besides being a child of my grandmother’s folktales, I loved the stories that I encountered in the Bible.

MM: You are a pious man. How do you juggle creative writing and your religious life as a Christian?

IM: I am not sure why you are asking this question, but I guess it could be to do with the belief that most people associate with artists – that they are an unpredictable and weird lot who talk to themselves or argue with their characters. Here I am thinking of Charles Mungoshi’s Garabha in Waiting for the Rain. As for me, I write and create because God has given me the spirit to create, to teach, to challenge, to disturb, to nudge and even be silly and cause comic relief.

I identify a lot with Exodus 31. I guess this is why you can sense the aroma of Christ in what I write and in my worldview.

MM: You are also a story teller on stage and radio. What does that achieve that the written book cannot?

IM: Storytelling in front of an audience is the real deal! In the beginning was the word. Of course, when the Bible says this it is talking about Jesus, but for us as a people, before the written word, God spoke and we spoke too.

I started telling stories before I could read or write. My grandmother told me stories that she heard from her mother and her grandmother. All those were not written, but stored in their heads. Now here is the power of the spoken story – it is alive and flexible. It is not fixed but it responds to situations and circumstances. It changes as society changes and that can make it very rich and relevant to the people of any given period of history.

I love live storytelling because I get to see the responses from my listeners. It energises me as a storyteller and allows the spirit of the story to envelope the teller and the audience. This is why stories traditionally were told in a dimly lit hut after supper. They were a performance that relied so much on tone and pitch of voice as well as body movements. The atmosphere would just become alive.

I remember how after a story session we would be so afraid to go to our sleeping quarters because the rustling leaves outside would make us think that the rogue hyena had escaped from the story world into our real world! Stories are better when told than when written.

MM: How does your work as a Shona novelist and a fabulist relate with your work at the University of Zimbabwe where you teach in Media studies?

IM: I teach digital storytelling, filmmaking, photojournalism, global media industries among other courses. All these are ways of storytelling. The only difference is that they are visual. So, I am very much at home and I am even challenged to explore new ways of storytelling – especially transmedia storytelling.

MM: How do you think your philosophy of life has been captured in your work so far?

IM: This is a difficult question. It has not been much about my philosophy as an individual, but about who we are as a people because none of us is as good as all of us. We need to see how our God-given values as Africans have been captured by capitalism such that we have become shallow in our relationships, in our languages and our thinking. But that is not who we are. Munhu haasi muzvinhu, asi ari muvanhu nehunhu. No matter how well we speak English or bleach our skins, we will never become white people. And if you look at it, you will see that the West is now sick and tired of itself and they want us to be like them.

MM: More recently, you wrote an essay about the tiff between writers the late Dambudzo Marechera and Aaron Chiundura Moyo in the early 1980s as regards the place of Shona language in literature. What is the major thrust of your argument on the issue between Chiundura and Marechera?

IM: As a Shona language author and advocate I didn’t take lightly the contempt expressed by Dambudzo Marechera for the Shona language and its writers. Marechera is alleged to have dismissed Shona author Aaron Chiundura Moyo on two separate occasions, saying, “Aaron munyori, he is not a writer.” Like I pointed out in my essay published by Brittle Paper, through the statement, Marechera was condescending and promoting the philosophy of imperialists who took English to be superior to the “native,” his being, language and culture.

Marechera scholars have argued that his statement was banter. I argue that treating Marechera’s utterances as banter demonstrates how effective Marechera is in exploiting cultural practices such as jokes, drunkenness, “eccentric antics” and postmodern deniability as platforms for distinguishing himself from the “village” other.

In Marechera’s fight for recognition and relevance, the local is inferior and the global superior. Marechera used the English language as a hegemonic tool to shut out narratives by the muted subaltern and remove their dignity and confidence, while also expecting cultural affirmation from them. There is no doubt that Marechera was a genius, but he mobilized the same qualities to become an agent for the exclusion of the Shona language and its knowledge systems.

MM: What have been the turning points in your life as an artist?

IM: Having my novel Mapenziselected by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair as one of Zimbabwe’s best 75 books of the century. Being awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach in the USA in 1999. Being invited by the San Francisco International Poetry Festival to go to America to read my Shona poems in 2009. Being appointed by the University of Manitoba as writer and storyteller in residence in 2010. Sharing a NAMA award with Charles Mungoshi for the best creative work for my novel Imbwa yemunhu in 2014. Having my fourth novel Ziso rezongororo published by Oxford University Press who coincidentally published the very first Shona novel by Solomon Mutswairo titled Feso.

MM: What is the current state of writing and publishing in Zimbabwe?

IM: The writing is getting better and going international – see the likes of Tsitsi Dangarembga, Petina Gapah, Tendai Huchu, Novuyo RosaTshuma, NoViolet Bulawayo and others. However, domestically the publishing is getting weaker and weaker. We have lost the ground gained after independence.

We have seen local publishing houses close or scale down operations. Zimbabwe Publishing House, Baobab Books, The Literature Bureau are dead. While Mambo Press is still there, it is no longer as vibrant as it used to be. The Zimbabwe International Book Fair too is on its knees. The Budding Writers Association of Zimbabwe which played a key role in mentoring and developing writers also died.

We have efforts to support budding writers by the Writers International Network, but it needs organised support from those ministries charged with arts and culture. A nation that does not invest in telling its own stories will soon become colonised because cultural productions are not just a type of ideology, but hegemony as well. Besides de-colonisation, we need to have a de-westernisation project at a national level.

MM: You are also a musician. What inspires you and what have you achieved in this regard?

IM: I am a poet who loves to blend poetry with music. I have named my poetry with music – gospoetry because it is gospel poetry with music.  I have done three albums – the first two were with Ngaavongwe Records and the third one I did independently. I see poetry served with music as a beautiful and enjoyable way of communicating. I have received good airplay on radio and I have people who still treasure the poems up to today – especially the song “Yadhakwa nyika” that I did with my friend Albert Nyathi.

+the end

Very few people know that the so called Dambudzo Marechera’s letter to Samantha, which has gone viral on many websites, was not written by Marechera himself! It is actually a work of art by Zambian writer, Austin Kaluba. Kaluba wrote it as part of a 2011 project in Marechera’s memory. That is the fact! Often you see it written in many places that (the letter) was written by Marechera “to his white ex-girlfriend, Samantha, after Marechera had been expelled from Oxford University.” Many ordinary readers and scholars have taken the bait.

 Austin Kaluba was born in northern Zambia in 1966 and studied journalism at the prestigious Africa Literature Centre in Kitwe-Zambia. He then joined the national newspaper The Times of Zambia as a features writer. He studied creative writing at different institutions in the UK. Kaluba’s poetry has appeared in the black UK newspaper The Voice and his short stories have been published in magazines in Europe.

KwaChirere recently interviewed Austin Kaluba about the sensational letter. We also replay the letter here just after the interview.  

 KwaChirere: Austin, is it true that you wrote the so called Marechera’s letter to Samantha, Yes or No.

Kaluba: Yes,

KwaChirere: When did you write this letter exactly?

Kaluba: It was in 2011 when I was living in Oxford in England. I did write the piece which is in epistolary form. At that time I was living in Oxford where I was studying Creative Writing at a Diploma level at Oxford University (Department for continuing education). I was frequenting several pubs where Dambudzo used to hang out when he lived in the university city. The pub is City Arms along Crowley Road.It is a real place. One old guy who knew Dambudzo likened my character with that of the Zimbabwean writer. I used to hit the bottle quite hard, was argumentative, anti-social and writing as my spirit dictated.

KwaChirere: Why and under what circumstances did you write the letter?

Kaluba:Ivor Hartmann, a white Zimbabwen writer, came up with an idea of cerebrating Dambudzo's posthumous 59th birthday in 2011 and thought of putting together an ebook anthology entitled "Remembering Marechera," consisting of essays, reviews, short stories and poems to be published by StoryTime Publishing. He invited submissions until the 6th of April 2011. If my memory serves me well I think American-based Zimbabwean writer, Emmanuel Sigauke,  was to write some poetry while another Zimbabwean writer, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, who had studied Marechera at Phd level, was to do an essay. The Nigerian literary critic, Ikhide Ikheloa, offered to do some reviews on the late writer while Ivor Hartmann was to do some short Stories. The project was aborted and I thought of posting my piece online.

KwaChirere: Do you by any chance know how and why the letter went viral?

Kaluba: Not at all. I was just surprised to read about the avalanche of positive response the story generated in Zimbabwe and among Zimbabweans in the diaspora. Many believed it was written by Dambudzo. The response even crossed to academicians who thought the letter was written by Dambudzo himself. I had read works by the late Zimbabwean writer and tried through extensive reading on his life to understand his troubled upbringing in colonial Zimbabwe, his years in England and his bohemian life-style that could have qualified him to be some kind of black Oscar Wilde.

KwaChirere: This is very close imitation of what has been known as Marecherean language. Do you write your own works using this kind of language?

Kaluba: Sure, I identified with his anger and indignation at the corrupt world. I would say the Dambudzo in the letter has some characteristics that are purely mine. I agree with him at so many levels though I didn’t experience what he went through in life.

KwaChirere: When one looks at your letter, it comes close to real details in Marechera’s life, his expulsion from Oxford, his having had relations with white girls, his constant fear of being deportation back to Rhodesia etc. What is your comment?

Kaluba: Yeah, I had to get it right by not leaving any detail that summed up the life of the shamanic writer he was. His vulgar language and mistrust of any other person who did not share his views about the crooked world had to be crammed into the story. Dambudzo thrived on shocking people using sexual symbolism and other unconventional ways of driving his point home. I had to get all this right. I also ensured the story worked at two levels; Dambudzo representing Africa, explaining himself to his white girlfriend who is representing Europe. In short the story is about the damage Europe has done to its former colonies.

KwaChirere: What do you think you have achieved through this?

Kaluba: I though writing about Dambudzo was daunting. I had to go out of my way by getting into his character. I had to act like a method actor who sheds his self to enter into the character he is depicting. The success of the story to me lies in the reaction from people who knew Dambudzo personally and the other group that read his works. If the two groups can see him in the letter, then that is an achievement for me.

KwaChirere: May you please speak briefly about your own individual life and life as a writer.

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

I have also translated John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress into ci-Bemba.

The letter itself below:

Dear Samantha

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

These idiots have done little in changing the world for a better place. If anything, they have contributed in making it worse by joining their counterparts in the right-wing maggoty camp influencing policies that worsen this Babylon called earth. They wear gowns and mortar boards receiving degrees from pink-faced old blokes who shake their hands and congratulate them for entering the world of knowledge.

I am glad I never graduated to attend the graduation ceremony which I find nauseating. If I had, I vow I would have dressed in my blue jeans with a T-shirt or overall, just to show how stupid the all fucking thing is.

I had the same experience at the University of Rhodesia which was normally attended by middle class white boys when those white buffoons in administration kept telling us black students how lucky we were to receive education at the institution of higher learning.

You always accused me of being strange, eccentric, bohemian or even mad. I can assure you that I am as sane as any bloke right-thinking people consider as being normal whatever that means.

Do you remember the night you took me out on Valentine’s Day or some other stupid celebration at City Arms along Cowley road in Oxford and you kept on hanging on me and kissing me like we were movie stars. You were hysterical that I was not returning your love as you expected. I am always annoyed when a white person starts showering too much love on me. I am less angry when you people are hostile against my race or even blatantly racist to the extent of calling me Nigger, Kaffir or even monkey. I wouldn’t fight back or take much offence as some blacks would do. A white person fawning over me never fails to arouse sleeping demons in me that are hypersensitive to hypocrisy which I have been encountering since my childhood in Rusape shortly after my father died.

I have had so much of this sympathising from my school days at the mission school and university back home when those hypocrites felt they were doing us a favour by civilising our cursed lot. I am almost paranoid when it comes to racism masquerading as colour blindness.

Remember how mad you became when I even rubbished the idea of marriage as another form of societal hypocrisy. I see no difference between marriage and fornication, whether one is sanctioned by some holy man claiming to represent God, here on earth or two, horny fools deciding to copulate in the back of a car, on top of an office table or in some dark alley. Whenever I tried to explain to you things that have shaped my life, my childhood problem of stuttering nearly came back scaring the shit out of me.

I have elected to write you this letter long after we have parted just to explain some of my views on life. I know I am anti-social, but I feel most people who readily classify me to be equally anti-freedom of an individual or even mad. I live outside their narrow and provincial world just as I consider them outsiders in my world that is hinged on freedom of an individual.

My physical and mental insecurity that have dogged me since my father died have made me a stranger in a world where hypocrisy, lying and dishonesty reign supreme making anybody calling the perpetrators of these vices broods of vipers, an odd one out or a dissident.

Since coming over here, I have gone through several stages of identity crisis, self-hatred, self re-examination, excessive Afro-optimism, excessive Afro-pessimism, reversal racism, escapism and alienation. Maybe it is a manifestation of these conflicting mental feelings which made the authorities think of sectioning me.

After living rough in Oxford where I pitched a tent near the Uni shortly after being expelled, I am hanging a lot with my good Rasta friends in London. I am somehow in tune with these rootless, ganja-smoking pseudo-ideologists. We agree on many issues like the world being Babylon-the western influenced materialistic, oppressive, manipulative, and capitalistic. There is too much ganja and reggae music which I find soothing. I don’t however agree with some far-fetched ideologies of my Rasta brothers of revering Haile Sellasie, that dictatorial midget in Ethiopia as God. I also don’t agree with their excessive promotion of blackness which I find hypocritical and escapist.

Samantha, they say writers are show businessmen trying to interpret the world on paper unlike their counterparts in music who use music. There are two musicians I find interesting. It is Bob Marley and Jim Morrison. I connect with both of them in my lifestyle and telepathically. Both were shamans who died young and only received recognition when they were six feet under.

I have a premonition that I will die violently or young. I don’t care because I don’t feel I belong to this world. I am like an Abiku child in Yoruba mythology, a spirit child who is fated to a cycle of early death and rebirth to the same mother. Sometimes I dream of living in another age where I was a griot who was burnt at a stake for lambasting some tyrannical chief. At other times, I dream that I lived in another era as a poet who was drowned by the chief’s henchmen for refusing to apologise for an insulting poem he had read in a village arena against injustice.

Do you remember how Mrs Brown reacted when I wrote a short story on how I worked in a chief’s palace as a pussy shaver shaving the pubic hair of the women in a harem? I still remember the opening of the story. It read: ‘My job in chief Molokolo’s palace, who, all along thought I had been castrated, was to shave the pubic hair of his wives at the palace. The story ended with me bedding some of his wives and paying the ultimate price of death. You remember how white Mrs Brown turned when I read the story? She screamed that I was mad. Well, the morality of the story is that many leaders in power think their subjects are blind to their excesses in urinating on people’s rights. They think we are castrated until we rise up and unmask their hypocrisy or demand for justice.

I might go back to Zimbabwe because I can’t continue living like a tramp. I have already seen the inside of British Police cells twice or thrice. I have to finish the book I am writing first. It is called House of Hunger. I have destroyed several manuscripts of other books that I have attempted to write because I don’t feel they capture the message I am trying to communicate.

However, as a citizen of the world, a polyglot, I feel going back home won’t calm the demons in me that cry for a just society where the freedom of the individual is paramount. What I am reading in the Papers on Zimbabwe seems to be miles away from that ideal world which, both the repressive white regime of Smith or the popular nationalist black government of Mugabe, are miles away in realising a society I dream of.

Many African societies which benefited from the wind of change in the sixties have already failed to cut the umbilical cords of colonialism that connects them to their former masters both economically and socially. Nationalism might even be a guise of deep envy of the lives colonialists live. Many African leaders just introduce follow-fashion-monkey societies that emulate the system they replace.

You see Samantha, this thing called colonial mentality eats at the core of your heart or soul like a cancer. Many nationalists, and even academics, are both irredeemable victims of colonialism whether consciously or unconsciously. They don’t realise how entrenched the problem is in their makeup like DNA. They achieve what they call independence ( from what?) and change flags and national anthems but fail to establish new home-grown societies based on their cultures, values and norms.

Many erroneously think it is getting independence that is the most difficult stage in the freedom attaining process. I feel to the contrary that what is difficult is establishing a nation that is compatible with modernity. It is like having a baby. Every fool who has a healthy dick can impregnant a woman with no intention of having a baby. It is raising a baby that is the trickier part since you have to nurture the baby to young adulthood.

I know a number of my African intellectual friends who reject everything European in favour of everything African or black. These idiots need psychoanalysing by God himself since this is an extreme manifestation of self-hatred highly masked as race pride. Though I abhor most western things, I am equally nauseated by most things African. The Nigger who sang Say It Loud, I am Black and Proud was in actual sense saying Say It Fucking Loud, I am Black and Ashamed. Oh, yes isn’t it Louis Armstrong, hailing from the same shabby background who honestly complained in song that the colour of his skin was a sin?

Apart from my name Dambudzo, I don’t think Samantha you remember me revering Africanness or blackness. Most whites are racists, including you and several so called liberals, who shower us poor souls with love when they are consciously or unconsciously pitying us for being black. As I said earlier Samantha, a white person expressing excessive love for a black person is simply saying you are also a human being which is worse than any racist insult.

I remember my English teachers both at St Augustine’s Mission School and the University of Rhodesia praising me for getting good results by saying ‘well done Charles. You are such a brilliant black boy’. A brilliant black boy? Fuck! I could have killed those sons of bitches for not praising me because I was a brilliant pupil, and not a brilliant black boy. I know you would argue, Samantha, that I was being oversensitive, but what do you expect from someone whose race has received numerous insults since blacks and whites came into contact?

That’s why even now as I strive to establish myself as a writer, I don’t want the title to go with the adjective ‘black writer’. Fuck even other demeaning terms like black, Negro, coloured or African. A writer is just that, a fucking writer! Period.

Knowing how condescending you are, just like many of your kind, you will quickly find a word in your language to define me. Strange, bizarre, eccentric, bohemian, unconventional, odd or even mad. It is your language. I wish I could describe whites in Shona - that is deep Shona with idioms and proverbs that would elude even the most educated white linguist in my language. However, I associate the language with backwardness, provincialism and even the squalor.

I might link up with you when I come back to Oxford. Meanwhile, I am still squatting with several friends.

Yours

Charles William Tambudzai Dambudzo Marechera.

Published by EssentialBooks Publishing Co. Norton, Zimbabwe, 2022, pp105

Isbn: 9781779209443

 (A review by Memory Chirere)

This book is a sweet little thing written in easy Shona. It does little crucial things that no book on the history of Zimbabwean music does. Let me go gradually and haltingly before I forget all the things that I want to say.

This is the first complete book on the history of Dendera music. It is elaborate; beginning with the brothers, Simon and Naison Chimbetu down to the successor Dendera musicians.  This book is a gift to those who are into the history of music genres. You see here the interconnectedness of the Dendera music genre with other related music genres of Zimbabwe, making this a book about both our sad and happy days as a nation. 

This book is the first one to follow astutely the life of a Zimbabwean musician; beginning with his parents in Tanzania, going into how and why they left Tanzania down to all the sons and daughters they beget and all the grandchildren.

This one is the first book to pursue individual Dendera songs, slotting them into clear categories: Love songs, songs about death, songs with bird motifs, songs with animal motifs, songs in Swahili, songs in English, songs in Shona, songs in Ndebele.. on and on… This book is a bank of sorts.

This book goes into the functions and purpose of each of Dendera guitars and how they relate with the lyrics. It also goes into voices. The intricacies!

This is the first book to list the number of awards won by Dendera musicians starting with the founder, Simon Chimbetu to the latter day Dendera chanters.

This is the first book to carry all the pictures of Dendera band leaders and those of their band members.

The technique used by the author is centered on showing how the life of author, Biggies Chiranga, intertwines with Dendera music itself over the years and what all that mean to Chiranga himself. You may say that this book is Biggie Chiranga’s diary. Chiranga is a renowned Shona poet and educationist who had opportunity to come very-very close to Simon Chimbetu.

But this is not a perfect book. Not at all! It still needs much closer and more active proof reading and a more edifying cover. Some of the photographs may need a total recast. There is need to make an English version of this book as a matter of urgency.

This book answers many of the questions that you may have had on Dendera music and other musical genres of Zimbabwe. I hope that you can also see that I love Dendera music so much.

I wish we could have other books like this one on Zimbabwe musicians.

Shona version: Musumo (Preface to Musambo weDendera)

Bhuku rino unotove mudyandakasungwa zvawo!

Bhuku rino rinoita zvinhu zvandisati ndaona zvichiitwa nechero bhuku zvaro munhooroondo yose yemabhuku emuZimbabwe.

Regai ndidome zvishoma zvacho ndisati ndakanganwa.

Rino iri ndiro bhuku rekutanga kunyorwa pamusoro penhoroondo yemusambo wemumhanzi  weDendera kubva paunotangira naSimon naNaison Chimbetu kusvika pauri nhasi.  Bhuku iri chipo chaicho kuvanhu vanoita zvenhoroondo yemimhanzi. Unoona bhindepinde revanhu veDendera nevamwe vaimbi vakawanda veZimbabwe, mukufara nemukusuwa.

Rino bhuku ndiro bhuku rekutanga kutevedza hupenyu hwemhuri yemuimbi kubva kuna baba naamai vachiri kuTanzania kusvika kuvana, kusvika kuvana vena vavo- zvichingodaro... Unobva watoona kuti mhuri yekwaChimbetu iri kubva apa ichienda apo, ichienda apo. Kunge rwizi rwuri kuyerera…

Rino ndiro bhuku rekutanga kutevera nziyo dzose dzemusambo weDendera richidziisa muzvikwata. Dzerudo padzo, dzerufu padzo, dzine mhuka neshiri padzo, dzehondo padzo, dzerurimi rweSwahili, Chirungu, Ndebele neShona padzo…zvichingodaro zvichidaro. Kureva kuti bhuku rino ibhangi zvaro.

Bhuku rino rinopinda mumaimbirwo eDendera nehurongwa hwemagitare acho. Ihochekoche.

Rino ndiro bhuku rekutanga kudonongodza mibairo yose yakawanikwa nevaimbi veDendera kubva munguva yaSimon Chimbetu kusvika nhasi.  

Ndiro bhuku rekutanga kutakura mifananidzo yevaimbi vose veDendera zvose nemifananidzo yevanhu vavanoridza navo.

Bhuku rino rinoshandisa chidobi chokutipa nhoroondo yokuti munyori Biggie Chiranga anosangana papi muhupenyu hwake nenziyo dzakasiyana siyana dzeDendera, zvakare nziyo idzi dzinorevei kwaari.

Bhuku iri tingariti dhayari raiye Biggie Chiranga.

Ukaverenga bhuku rino uchaona richipindura mibvunzo yako mizhinji pamusoro pemumhanzi weDendera nemimwewo mimhanzi yeZimbabwe. Ndinofunga kuti matoona kuti kana neni ndinoda musambo weDendera. Dai tikawana mamwe mabhuku akadai pamusoro pemhanzi yemuZimbabwe.

Memory Chirere, University of Zimbabwe, 2022

The UK based Zimbabwean author, Andrew Chatora, has yet another new novel on the way! This is the third novel in three years from the fast rising writer from Mutare. It is called Harare Voices and Beyond.

This story is based on the troubled lives of a white commercial farming family who dramatically lose both their very active father and their farm in Mazowe to jambanja. The term jambanja is Shona for fast and sometimes dramatic activity. Jambanja became the other term for the recent occupations of white farms in Zimbabwe.

After such a loss, the Williams drift reluctantly to their house in a posh northern suburb of  Harare but soon inactivity and poverty set in. The two white boys; Rhys and Julian Williams start to drift away physically and mentally. They go south of Robert Mugabe Way, into the traditionally poor black territory of Harare in search of survival, beer, dangerous drugs, easy sex and other things. Meanwhile, their mother, Doris, becomes a sitting duck. She floats mentally and the sudden fall of fortunes leaves her close to being an invalid. 

The boys are gradually 'going native' as they become involved in spaces and activities not usually associated with the well-heeled white masters of Zimbabwe since occupation. They are newcomers to a world of lack that they had only watched from a safe distance. There is always a price to pay when one falls from privilege. In colonial discourse, the term “going native” means the white man is becoming one with the 'savages' or the natives, to the extent of eating what they eat and eventually feeling as they do… 

When the worst comes, this family is caught up in a wave of loud misunderstandings amongst themselves and in the subsequent melee, the mother and one of the boys allegedly kill the younger of the boys by accident and in fear, they secretly bury his body in their home, until it is eventually discovered.

This is, to my knowledge, the first fully fledged novel by a black Zimbabwean writer to look at the setbacks suffered by white folk during the Zimbabwe land reform. Andrew Chatora searches delicately for the place and scope of the white community in post independent Zimbabwe.  Being a pathfinder of sorts, many may find this novel either unsettling or satisfying, or both.

Many critical questions shall be asked. How do you write white people effectively when you are a black writer from Zimbabwe? Would that tantamount to speaking on behalf of the enemy? Would you be able to show that their loss is as a result of complex events within and beyond Zimbabwe? The author’s real test was in tactically navigating this very contentious terrain.

Chatora has chosen a subject that is emotive and well followed across the world; the land reform of Zimbabwe. Was the reform right? Was the land reform necessary? Was the process, right? Was Mugabe right? Should Mugabe be bashed all the way for leading this land reform? What should the white people have done to come out unscathed? Have we ever seen a reform of a similar scale in all post independent Africa? How does jambanja echo the earlier process of white occupation of black land a century earlier?

But Harare Voices and Beyond does not disappoint.

The fast track land reform phase brought Zimbabwe into the international media, arguably much more than the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe itself. In a widely circulated website interview with Nordiska Afrikainstitutet of (February 2004), Zimbabwean writer and literary scholar, Robert Muponde, argues that ‘Land is the text of Zimbabwean History and Literature.’ He is referring to the centrality of Land in the earlier seminal Zimbabwean literature texts set in Rhodesia. Some of them are Waiting for The Rain, Dew in the Morning and Without a Name. In all these novels, land is either an issue in the background or is a side show with varying degrees of prominence.

As I come to the end of Chatora’s novel, I recall that Robert Muponde adds: “…the writer who a year ago was urging the politician to seize land, even factories and shops belonging to white people (as suggested in Mujajati's Victory of 1993), in the name of the people, now finds that the politician has not only outdone the writer in shouting the presence of inequalities in society. The politician has gone further. He has left the writer with two stark choices: the writer must endorse the politician's and war veteran's actions because that is what he (the writer) was urging in his poems (in the case of musicians, in their songs), or he must condemn the actions as reckless, etc.”

As I think about that, I realise that perhaps, a big take away from this novel is the author’s ability (which may surprise Muponde) to skillfully showcase and dramatize to the reader that the land reform in Zimbabwe has its sharp and irreconcilable contradictions. There are many versions of the land reform story of Zimbabwe, depending on who is telling which part of the broad story, where... and who is listening!

In many ways this is a detective story narrated through Rhys and Marina, two prisoners at the Chikurubi Prison as they recount their personal life stories which have brought them to their present realities. They are a crucial link to the mafia style underworld of Harare. In the dead of the night, Harare crawls with the least expected liaisons between the rich and the poor, black and white and at every corner, there is a surprise meeting between rivals. In this space you meet perverts, street people, hard core criminals, politicians, preachers, drug pushers...

Chatora is now a master at delicate subjects. In his first novel, he shows us the trials and tribulations of a determined black teacher from Zimbabwe who tries to teach English to white children in England. His second novel is about a native who leaves the periphery (Harare) for the centre (England) due to economic reasons, but later returns to the periphery (Harare) and returns to London once more!  

Harare Voices and Beyond is published by Chicago based Kharis Publishing – an imprint of Kharis Media LLC and is released on 1^st February 2023. Copies will shortly available to order in digital, paperback and hardback format from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, Walmart, Target Christian books and other online book retailers.

The book adds on to Andrew Chatora’s growing stable of contemporary fiction/migrant literature as it is a welcome addition to his cannon, two other books: Diaspora Dreams and Where the Heart Is are also published by Kharis Publishing and available from  Amazon.

 +Preview By Memory Chirere, University of Zimbabwe

Title: Starfish Blossoms

Author: Samantha Rumbidzai Vazhure

Publisher: Carnelian Heart Publishing, 2022

Hardback: isbn: 987-1-914287-27-5

Paper back: isbn: 978-1-914287-28-2

E-Book isbn: 978-1-914287-29-9

I am hoping to refer to Samantha Rumbidzai Vazhure’s latest collection of poems, Starfish Blossoms, as a multi-tasking anthology.

It often occurs to a poet that one of her books may carry pieces from the many different periods of her life, ably reflecting continuity and change of the poet’s vision and methods over time. This is the essence of a multi-tasking collection. 

Through such a book, the poet makes definitive statements on a wide range of themes and subjects under one cover. Later in life, the poet herself may actually sit back, like any other reader, and re-read her own book in search of the growth of her own philosophy of life and the development of her craft.

As a result, Starfish Blossoms is a festival of sorts. Many of these poems ring with the unmistakable clarity of biographical information from the life of the poet herself; the ups and downs of life, the poet’s discoveries, the poet’s mental experiments and the poet’s acute personal memories. You could draw the poet's graph, underlining your favourite pieces and flipping over others for further reading.

I may want to call this book a diary anthology, too.

What is however clearer to me than my other observations is; this collection is decidedly based on the firm foundations of the wisdom of one’s female ancestors, both in mythical and real time. This book can be read as an archive of women's thoughts and sweet secrets from one generation to the other.

In these pieces, there is the hovering presence of the persona’s paternal grandmother, vaChivi. She is the spirit of the lioness, hunting relentlessly for game in order to feed her pack of cubs. VaChivi is more vicious and runs much faster than her lazy and redundant male counterpart. Hunting is not sport. It is a matter of life and death.

There is also the maternal grandmother, aChihera, the woman of the Shava Eland totem. Charwe Nehanda of the first Chimurenga is amongst the strong Chihera women of Zimbabwe. They are renowned in Shona lore for their resilience and sometimes they are known to be strong headed, fighting harder than their fathers or their husbands!

These two archetypes VaChivi and aChihera demonstrate that this poet is coming to the world stage already armed with ready-made stories of the brave women from her own community. She is not looking for new heroes. She already has the blood of heroines running through her veins. She is only looking for a broader audience. For me this is Samantha Rumbidzai Vazhure’s greatest achievement.

In the very first poem the persona recalls her time with her grandmother out in the countryside. It is a return to the stable source and to roots that go deep.

Grandmother hides her monies everywhere; inside her crimpling doek, under the reed mat and even inside her G-cup bra. Meanwhile the corn is roasting by the fireside. When she asks her granddaughter to count her money, the younger woman says, “but you can’t see the money even if I were to count it for you!”

And the elder answers: “These eyes can see what they want to see.” Meaning I would not have asked you to count the money if you were not a trusted fellow. This poem is a story about the easy camaraderie between women from across generations.

In the poem Hanyanani, the poet goes even deeper into the Shona mythology. An old woman lives in the drought smitten district of Chivi in a year when the famine is at its bitterest. There is danger that the many-many orphans that she is keeping in her homestead may actually starve to death. VaChivi goes up and down amongst her neighbours and she finds no food to cook. But the orphans gather around her crying louder and louder...

VaChivi comes up with a plan which has become legendary amongst the Shona people. She lights a fire as if everything is alright and puts a pot full of water on the fire. There is still nothing to cook and VaChivi picks pebbles from the bare ground and throws them into the pot and she tells her grandchildren that she is now cooking something and she will make soup out of it. She dishes out the ‘soup’ eventually. It is the mere hope amongst these children that the hot water that they are taking in is real soup. That saves their lives;

And there’s an old woman from Chvi

who cooked stones and drank the soup.

She did not swallow the stones.

Did she not know that those

who swallow stones do not die?

The Chivi woman’s story is about intense hope and resolve. In the same area there is a contemporary tale about Hanyanani, a ghost that goes ahead with its ghostliness without thinking about what people say about her as a ghost. Sometimes Hanyanani terrorises wayfarers who walk the paths in the middle of the night from beer drinking binges.

The daring drunkards even think s Hanyanani is a fresh new prostitute from more urbane place like Masvingo, Harare and Bulawayo and on being taken to her home, the men fall into deep sleep. When they wake up they find that they are actually resting in the graveyard! In a more contemporary period, Hanyanani is often reincarnated as Peggy, the other terror ghost of the other Zimbabwean towns of Chiredzi and Triangle.

These are stories about woman triumphalism retold in poetic form. Vazhure does not exactly rewrite these myths but her allusions to them through her poetry are powerful and strategic. Vazhure uses local materials to talk about global issues.

The story of the girl, Fatima, in the title poem Starfish blossoms, is retold by a girl child narrator. Fatima works for other people looking after their home and children. Fatima uses herbs in order to elongate her sexual organs and improve the general fecundity of her body. She is aiming at attracting one powerful suitor. The result is tragic but Fatima does not collapse and cry. Her spirit of resistance remains in the mind of the girl narrator who tells this story. The narrator wants to avenge Fatima and create a freer version of her. Fatima, Just like the widely spread starfish flower in blossom, has some overarching influence on other women including the persona.

In one transcendental poem, My mother aloft a raging fire, the persona sees mother way before mother is born. That recalls the Shona proverb chisionekwi humhandara hwamai, it is impossible for anyone to meet their mother during her girlhood! But the persona is that rare seer who has powerful visions of her own mother’s girlhood. She was there before and during her own mother because she is a fellow woman:

In my dreams of mother, rare as true love

she looks nothing like the end, but rather, the beginning

before I was born – a vivacious stunning queen…

Afro glowing like a golden halo…

In her youth, which no son or daughter can ever see, mother was a terrible beauty. Strangely, when mother tries to pass on the cooking stick, like a baton in athletics, she is raising it by the wrong hand and the persona runs away from receiving the cooking stick! Presumably, the daughter is running away from the seemingly disabling traditional women’s duties. But is clear that in her wild and speedy flight, the daughter persona runs with no baton, tripping and falling along “abysmal tracks” of athletics and wakes up very tired and exhausted.

This poem challenges us to see the womanly duties differently. You may choose to see slavery in women’s domestic duties but beyond that, the caring duties of motherhood have actually sustained generations.

Woman’s duties have been a subject of heated debate. If you perform them you are damned, if you don’t, you are damned too. The life of a mother appears to beg for a more careful reading. There is pain in a mother’s life but there appears to be life at the end of mother’s pains. We have come this far because of our mothers.

Down the pages, in a more cryptic poem, the poet clarifies her position: “An abused mother is too sore and too drained to nurture her children the way Mother Nature intended her to.” As confirmed in Barbed crowns, suffering should not be the crown of thorns that a woman should continue to wear. Women should rebel from oppression but should not refuse the natural task of suckling and healing the whole nation.

Samantha Vazhure’s poems are a useful addition to the rich tradition of Zimbabwean poetry. Her views on how women ought to proceed from the concrete local foundations as they grow globally, are going to provide space for discussion amongst scholars and theorists. Samantha Vazhure studied Law and Business Administration at the University of Kent. She works in the UK as a regulatory consultant in financial services. She has published various collections of poems and short stories in Shona and English.

-   Reviewed by Memory Chirere

"Harare Voices and Beyond"– Confessional Family Drama Extraordinaire: A Welcome Addition to the Canon

Child abuse, domestic violence, and incest all find a voice in Chatora’s new book: Harare Voices and Beyond which offers a difficult but essential read.

Tariro Ndoro

While the literary novel dominates the Zimbabwean scene, genre fiction is no stranger to the nation. The crime novel is a particularly guilty pleasure with titles such as All Come to Dust by Bryony Rheam and the “Detective Sibanda Series” (Sibanda and the Rainbird, Sibanda and the Black Hawk Sparrow, Sibanda and the Death’s Head Moth) by C.M. Elliott being prime examples. Although these novels are mainly set in the southwestern region of Matebeleland, Andrew Chatora’s Harare Voices and Beyond is a welcome addition to the cannon.

Set in the capital city of Harare and mainly narrated from the confines of Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, Chatora’s novel is greatly reminiscent of Petina Gappah’s A Book of Memory. An  interesting twist to Harare Voices and Beyond, which would make it more of a suspense novel than a traditional crime novel is that the plot opens with the main protagonist, Rhys Williams, on trial for killing his brother, and at no point does Williams deny the murder, rather choosing to allude to extenuating circumstances that led to the death, making Harare Voices and Beyond a "whydunnit" rather than a "whodunnit." Such a theme is brought out well in crime novels that often ask the reader to weigh what they deem good, bad, and morally grey:

This is it for me and mother. Are we going to die. There’s no other way the courts will let us off for the murder of my brother, Julian – Mother’s youngest son gone rogue.

Rhys Williams narrates the story of his brother’s death, beginning at the point in time when his family traumatically lost their farm in Mazowe at the time of the Land Reform Project in Zimbabwe. Traumatised, his younger brother, Julian, turns to drugs to numb his pain and it is this addiction that eventually leads to the destruction of the family as a whole. However, the novel as a whole is narrated from the viewpoints of multiple characters.

As Chatora wrote this story, he showed all sides of Julian’s addiction, highlighting the circumstances that often lead to drug use and abuse in Zimbabwe, which is an important theme as drug abuse in Zimbabwe is on the rise owing to youth unemployment and poverty. As one of Julian’s drug dealers note:

In reality most of my ilk in our downtown Harare gang had similar lives like me stemming from broken homes devoid of a father figure. Those who ran away from home, living on the streets. Ben was one such fellow, he was brought up without a father, his mother struggled to make ends meet, so he used to do anything for a living.

This opens up the broader conversations surrounding addiction in Zimbabwe as many young people are recruited into drug rings early. Another ugly aspect of the drug trade is the way in which it tears apart families as addicts care less and less about the people around them as they chase the next high. Chatora capably describes Julian’s downward spiral into stealing from his family to feed his meth habit:

But I needed a fix. How else can I get my fix if I don’t get to nick Doris’s jewellery or any other household valuables which came my way? One has to do what one has to do. What people seem not to know? Downtown Harare drugs didn’t come cheap. And hearken people, you don’t really understand what it’s like when one needs their fix do you? Now, don’t you go tell me you do, because clearly you don’t. 

On the other hand, Rhys Williams meets sultry Marina Thompson a vivacious mixed race British lassie. Whilst Julian’s story is that of a privileged young man who turned to drugs after surviving trauma, Marina represents the other side of the coin as she grew up in the British foster care system as a drug addiction rendered her only parent an unfit mother. Despite her disavowal of recreational drugs, Marina finds herself embroiled in this world through no choice of her own. Perhaps Chatora chose to include Marina as a character to embody the long-term consequences of drug abuse in society. 

Chatora also looks at other themes such as belonging. While his earlier works position Zimbabweans in the Diaspora and provide social commentary on their adaptions to living in the UK, Harare Voices and Beyond questions the place that white Zimbabweans and immigrants (Malawian and Mozambican) hold in their nation and how this speaks to their enfranchisement or lack thereof, posing the question to the reader of who should belong and which criteria (in any) guarantees nationhood.

Harare Voices and Beyond asks its readers to actively participate in the conversations surrounding weighty topics such as substance abuse and belonging while itself taking the accessible form of a suspense novel and thus making these topics alive for both literary aficionados and the casual reader alike.

Harare Voices and Beyond is published by Chicago-based Kharis Publishing – an imprint of Kharis Media LLC and is released on February 27, 2023. Copies are shortly available to order in digital, paperback and hardback format from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, Walmart, Target Christian books and other online book retailers.

The book adds on to Chatora’s growing stable of contemporary fiction/migrant literature. It is a welcome addition to his catalogue, Diaspora Dreams and Where the Heart Is, also published by Kharis Publishing and available from  Amazon.

Author Biography

Andrew Chatora is a Zimbabwean novelist, essayist and short-story writer based in Bicester, England. He grew up in Mutare, Zimbabwe, and moved to England in 2002. His debut novella, Diaspora Dreams (2021), was approvingly received and nominated for the National Arts Merit Awards (2022). His second book, Where the Heart Is, was published in the same year to considerable acclaim. Chatora’s forthcoming book, Born Here, But Not in My Name, is a brave, humorous and psychologically penetrating portrait of post-Brexit Britain. Chatora is noted for his acerbic and honest depiction of the migrant experience. Heavily influenced by his own experience as a black English teacher in the United Kingdom, Chatora probes multi-cultural relationships, identity politics, blackness, migration, citizenship and nationhood.

+Reproduced here with the kind permission of: "Harare Voices and Beyond"– Confessional family drama extraordinaire: A welcome addition to the canon (thisisafrica.me)

Tsitsi Nomsa Ngwenya’s novel, A Portrait of Emlanjeni, is set to be published by the UK based Carnelian Heart Publishing this March of 2023. It will definitely bring us to the literature and environment subject. From a human perspective, it is very easy to declare that this is a story about the rise and fall and rise of one Zanele, the daughter of Hadebe of Matobo, Zimbabwe.

The first time that I read the opening phase of this intriguing novel, I kept on saying to myself, but where are the people, where are the people? As in Mungoshi's Waiting for the Rain and Vera's The Stone Virgins, you may only fully appreciate the people if you are ready to feel the pulse of the landscape from which they erupt.   

In what many will be able to call an environmental novel, Emlanjeni in Matobo, is integral to the story and it becomes one of the major and very active characters. It is an art that uses a known geographical area thoroughly, describing and dwelling on its natural features elaborately in order to show that the life, social relations, customs, language, dialect or other aspects of the culture of an area and its people, can indeed become overridden by what the environment is becoming.

“To reach Emlanjeni, one has to plan a three-hour drive from Ematojeni, about twenty kilometers South of Bulawayo…” the novel begins. You know that you are already journeying. Then you are warned, “The place is dry. One can smell its dryness. Acacia bushes dot the flat landscape which is littered with little, whitish, dusty stones. The whole surrounding area, all the way to Mwewu River, is mostly gullied and dry, giving the impression of a place being frequently cleaned by nature’s maids....”

Then you are taken into the sky: “If one cared to imagine the aerial view of the two rivers bordering the village, Simphathe and Marabi, with the Kwanike hillocks on the south, the picture would be a breath-taking one, the kind you find framed as a monument in a museum. The sandy loam, some patches of black clay on some areas and red soils on the other, holds the ground together.Grass slowly dies of thirst after the February-March rains only to come to back to life during the October-November planting season…”

Then you are told that the journey has always been bumpy, “...that is the bridge that makes bus drivers forbid women and children from occupying the front seats. As the bus descends, fearful passengers on their maiden trips to Bulawayo, koNtuthuziyathunqa, let out shrieks which sometimes cause the driver to lose control of the steering wheel…”

Eventually the people fully pour into the story, creating a din- “Most young boys in Emlanjeni do not take school seriously. The schools are far apart such that pupils walk long distances. Even if some, especially girls, want to pursue education, they fail to do so because idlers and school dropouts wait for them on their way from school. These girls are persuaded and forced into love affairs which lead to pregnancies and hastily planned marriages…”

You have now landed in the territory of Malayitshas who bring groceries in big tshanganabags from South Africa and Botswana, blankets and other items given to them to take home.  It is said that some mothers, upon receiving these parcels, forget their disappointment. Those whose daughters send a malayitsha frequently, are seen wearing beautiful izishweshwe dresses, berets and sneakers to village parties and other communal meetings.

It is also indicated that everyone cycles in Emlanjeni and women even as old as seventy cycle to church, miles away. They are serious about attending these church services where they give God the love they could have been giving to their absent children and spouses! At the local St Joseph’s Secondary School, bicycles can be seen balancing on each other, piled on trees within the school premises. Younger women cycle to clinics with babies strapped on their backs. Some experienced women even cycle balancing beer calabashes to village parties.

Then suddenly we come to the eye of the storm when Zanele, the apple of Emlanjeni’s eye, and one of the greatest scholars in the region, realises that a “wrong” person has made her pregnant somewhere in the thorny bushes! She decides that this has to be her secret because if the world knows then her very own world will fall apart.

Zanele has a very challenging predicament. The man who makes her pregnant is a known layabout- a long time friend of hers who dropped out of school because he has nobody to pay his fees. Sipho is his name and he herds cattle, reading books and writing brilliantly desperate poetry in the arid bush.

During some moments, Zanele thinks that she loves Sipho. But in some, she tends to think that she actually pities him and that this cannot be the basis for a good marriage. Besides, Zanele wants to remain in school like her niece, Nonceba. But… Zanele is already pregnant! How will she go back to boarding school? 

Sipho wants her to stop going to school. Sipho does not want to see any man close to Zanele. His knife is already sharpened and ready. He follows her everywhere, listening into her conversations with people from behind the scanty bushes.  He is becoming an animal, making appointments with Zanele in the bush so that he beds her with a curious sense of vengeance. Zanele is both attracted to and repulsed by him…There is a morbid attraction between them and that thing runs across this story. You read on with a sense of trepidation as the least expected happens…Discordant lovers in their beloved dry land.

Meanwhile the dry countryside goes on, rendering this book a festival of a variety of cultural materials. This novel is a bewitching manual on how to make beer for the rain making ceremony. You read about the ijumo ceremony: “This is a cleansing custom which is performed before the rain dance ritual they are brewing beer for. All village men, including boys, wake up early to clean the forests of dead animal carcasses and bones, bringing down disused birds’ nests, removing debris thrown on the riverbanks and destroying abandoned homesteads.”

This book teaches you;  how to prepare isitshwala with impala biltong in marula-nut sauce,  how to prepare isitshwala senyawuthi, a type of thick porridge cooked withfinger millet, served with amasi for supper, how to use the umsuzwane herbs to heal deep wounds, how to draw beautiful portraits on walls of huts using  white ash, how girls play the inkente game and you also read about the character of the now defunct Nholowemizana ritual, which was about a bride having to have sexual intercourse with her father-in-law… and many other items.

This book teems with characters; various and unpredictable. There is Mamoyo who “would darn, darn and darn, her hands moving softly, slowly and carefully.” There is Sikhwehle Jiyane, a fully grown man and “had things been alright with his mind, he would have made a wonderful husband and father. What baffled a lot of people was that most of the time his faculties seemed quite alert. This made some people think that he was alright after all, while others were not too sure of that. He was one of those people the villagers called ‘umuntu kaMlimu,’ meaning God’s person.” There is Sibanda who rapes his daughter in front of his wife. There is also Tholakele Mpunzi, an extremely beautiful woman in her late twenties who is married to an old man and men try every trick in the book to woo her.

A Portrait of Emlanjeni tries to take a panoramic picture of this place from the unique landscape, the minds of the people, their rich culture and the subsequent challenges that they face in the changing times in Southern Zimbabwe. It is a story told through a woman’s gaze, very sensitive on how women experience a landscape made by nature and men.

Tsitsi Nomsa Ngwenya grew up in Matobo in Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe. She was first published by University of South Africa Journal, Imbizo, in 2014. In 2016, Radiant Publishing House published her first novel, Izinyawo Zayizolo written in her mother tongue, IsiNdebele. The novel was received with much critical acclaim in the academia. In 2017, Royal Publishing House published her collection of short stories titled, The Fifty Rand Note.

+previewed by Memory Chirere, Harare. 

A book review by Memory Chirere, Harare.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+Memory Chirere

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ignatius Mabasa, Harare, 2023.

+order this book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Shamhu-Yezera-Renyu-Memory-Chirere/dp/1914287118/ref=sr_1_2?crid=547U5IZCHOHM&keywords=Memory+Chirere&qid=1686870413&sprefix=memory+chirere,aps,179&sr=8-2

+ Get a copy of this book in Harare for $17usd. Contact Book Fantastic on +263779210403. They meet anyone in town (cbd) and offer delivery services anywhere in Harare and the country (for an extra fee)

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

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

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

VM: Sad indeed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: The Train House on Lobengula Street,

Author: Fatima Kara

Publisher: Envelope Books: London, 2023

Isbn: 9 781915 023094

(A Book Review by Memory Chirere)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+This review by Memory Chirere