tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/zimbabwe-writers-90959/articles
Zimbabwe writers – The Conversation
2024-02-19T13:36:02Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222403
2024-02-19T13:36:02Z
2024-02-19T13:36:02Z
Nervous Conditions: on translating one of Zimbabwe’s most famous novels into Shona
<p>The publishing journey of Zimbabwean writer and film-maker <a href="https://theconversation.com/tsitsi-dangarembga-and-writing-about-pain-and-loss-in-zimbabwe-144313">Tsitsi Dangarembga</a>’s <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Nervous_Conditions/UyZjAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Nervous%20Conditions">Nervous Conditions</a> wasn’t easy. Yet the novel is today considered by many as one of <a href="https://library.columbia.edu/libraries/global/virtual-libraries/african_studies/books.html">Africa’s 100 best books</a> of the 20th century and is studied at <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2020/08/african-literature-is-a-country">universities</a> around the world. </p>
<p>When she submitted the manuscript to publishing houses in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, they all turned it down. Dangarembga felt <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345839">at the time</a> that it was “very difficult for men to accept the things that women write and want to write about: and the men (were) the publishers”. It was eventually published to critical acclaim in 1988 by <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803124519397">The Women’s Press</a> in London. This made Dangarembga the first black Zimbabwean woman to publish a novel in English. </p>
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<p>Now a new translation of the book into Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona</a> language has been released, marking another milestone for Nervous Conditions, because African classics are seldom translated into African languages. Translation of African literature happens often, but mostly in European countries. Nervous Conditions itself has <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/formats-editions/1230558464">already been translated</a> into a dozen or more languages including Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. </p>
<p>The new Shona translation, titled Kusagadzikana and released by Zimbabwean publishers <a href="https://houseofbookszim.com/">House of Books</a>, was done by <a href="https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-7808_Mabasa">Ignatius Mabasa</a>, an acclaimed novelist who also wrote the first <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/facultyofhumanities/latestnews/africanlanguagesstudentwritesfirst-everchishonaphdthesisatrhodesuniver-1.html">PhD thesis in Shona</a>.</p>
<p>Even more remarkably, Dangarembga’s follow-up novel, <a href="https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/book-not">The Book of Not</a>, has also recently been translated into Shona as Hakuna Zvakadaro by writer and academic <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Tanaka+Chidora&btnG=">Tanaka Chidora</a>. This leaves just the last book in the trilogy, <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/tsitsi-dangarembga">the Booker shortlisted</a> <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/this-mournable-body/">This Mournable Body</a>, untranslated. </p>
<p>For a reader and <a href="https://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/cpt_people/mushakavanhu-dr-tinashe/">scholar</a> of Zimbabwean literature, encountering Nervous Condition’s story of a rural girl called Tambudzai in Shona is like waking up in a dream. I spoke with Mabasa about his translation journey and why it matters.</p>
<h2>Can you describe the process of translating the book?</h2>
<p>I started translating Nervous Conditions around 1999 when I was a visiting Fulbright scholar in the US, where I was teaching Zimbabwean literature. Nervous Conditions was one of the books I was teaching. Coincidentally, 1999 is the year that my first novel <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Mapenzi/qLMaAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=Mapenzi&dq=Mapenzi&printsec=frontcover">Mapenzi</a> was published and I used to talk to my students about the sad situation that there was more Zimbabwean literature in English than in indigenous languages. </p>
<p>I pointed out that the majority of the ordinary women whose story Nervous Conditions was telling would not be able to buy, read and understand Nervous Conditions in English, because of their literacy levels. I thought perhaps I could try to translate the book into Shona as a way of repatriating and decolonising the story. I then dived in and started translating the first chapter, tackling one paragraph at a time. </p>
<p>I was intrigued by how beautiful and sincere the story sounded in Shona. Tambudzai sounded more heartfelt in Shona than in English – I guess because Shona was her real voice. As someone who grew up in a village myself, I strongly identified with Tambudzai and, in translating, I faithfully became her in order to capture the pain and injustice in her family and the national politics in the story. I translated the book up to chapter three and had to stop because Dangarembga was involved in a <a href="https://www.change.org/p/ayebia-clarke-publishing-help-tsitsi-dangarembga-regain-the-rights-to-her-novel-nervous-conditions">legal battle</a> for its rights. I only resumed in 2022, but because I had lost the mood and feeling that I had when I initially started, I had to rework the translation from the beginning.</p>
<h2>Were there difficult parts and how did you deal with them?</h2>
<p>The title was one of the most difficult things to translate. Nervousness is something deeper, it’s beyond nerves. It’s a reflection of the physical, the psychological and the spiritual. The level of disturbance in Nervous Conditions is traumatic, immediate and long-term. I had to think really hard about the words that would capture all that. I’m pleased with Kusagadzikana as the final title because when I read Tanaka Chidora’s Shona translation of The Book of Not, I noticed that he uses the term <em>kusagadzikana</em> the same way I did.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/animal-farm-has-been-translated-into-shona-why-a-group-of-zimbabwean-writers-undertook-the-task-206966">Animal Farm has been translated into Shona – why a group of Zimbabwean writers undertook the task</a>
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<p>Another difficulty I faced was to do with the differences in the storytelling style of the two languages, English and Shona. Dangarembga does go into the human psyche in a complex and deep manner that is not usually found in Shona writing, and that needed to be handled delicately – there were times when it was like deboning a fish. An example is Tambudzai’s trauma caused by Babamukuru’s facilitated wedding of her parents. Also Nyasha’s emotional rollercoasters are key to the story – I had to slow down and make sure that I didn’t miss the metaphorically loaded twists and turns. Then there are some very English descriptions including elaborate colours, ways of dancing, fashion designs, foods that I had to deal with cleverly but without aborting the meaning.</p>
<h2>Why was it important for you to translate this book?</h2>
<p>Nervous Conditions is our story as indigenous people. The story had to be decolonised by making it come back to speak to the people who are victims of colonial injustices in a language that would enable them to tell “when the rain started to beat them” (as the saying goes) in order for them to start drying themselves. </p>
<p>The novel is an important documentation of our history and the translation makes it accessible and able to be discussed under a tree by ordinary folk, and not just by academics in air-conditioned conference venues. It is a form of liberation struggle – the liberation of many things that remain colonised, including our minds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It reads powerfully in the Shona language, and is one of two of her books newly translated into it.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221807
2024-02-08T14:00:35Z
2024-02-08T14:00:35Z
Books: folklore and fantasy combine in Langabi, a supernatural historical epic from Zimbabwe
<p><em>In 2023, award-winning Zimbabwean author <a href="https://www.icorn.org/writer/christopher-mlalazi">Christopher Mlalazi</a> published a new book, <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/langabi-seasons-of-beasts/">Langabi: Season of the Beast</a>. He’s the author of novels like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/zimbabwe-running-with-mother-robert-mugabe">Running with Mother</a> (2012), <a href="https://amabooksbyo.blogspot.com/2009/07/reviews-dancing-with-life-tales-from.html">Dancing with Life: Tales from the Township</a> (2012) and <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201405060380.html">They are Coming</a> (2014). His books grapple with diverse social and political issues in Zimbabwe. As a scholar of African literature, including speculative fiction, I have <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021989415615646">researched</a> Mlalazi’s previous books, especially his depiction of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">Gukurahundi Genocide</a> in Zimbabwe. Langabi is a novel that draws on the storytelling of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-South-African-people">Ndebele</a> people to recount the tale of a young man who finds himself in a heated political battle playing out in a historical kingdom. I spoke to Mlalazi about it.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> My first question is about categories. Into which <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/genre-literature">literary genre</a> would you place Langabi? I’m asking because it’s the first novel to be published by Mother, a new <a href="https://jacana.co.za/imprint/mother/">imprint</a> of Jacana Media that’s dedicated to fantasy, science-fiction, Afrofuturism and horror.</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> Categorisation can be challenging for a writer. When I first started writing the story, I told myself I wanted to write something that sounded like folklore. I wanted to write the kinds of stories our grandparents used to tell us when we were children in the village, <em>inganekwane</em> as they are called in the Ndebele language. I could say it is <em>inganekwane</em>, it has all the elements of one – supernatural creatures, a young protagonist with a quest, magic, song… From a western perspective, the novel can be categorised as fantasy, or mythology. I would like to place the story at the intersection of folklore, fantasy and mythology.</p>
<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> Langabi is a shift from the kinds of themes you’ve broached in the past. What inspired you to write it?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> When I began writing this story, I just wanted to experiment outside the contemporary political satire for which I am well known. I initially wished to write a story that would be light, adventurous, and also explore ancient southern African cultural and religious beliefs. But as the storyline progressed, I realised that as I was writing folklore, I was compelled to dig deep into the consciousness – as far as I knew it – of the characters that populate a story of that time. To not write far from the truth of their ways of life. I also had to write about it with pride, as it is part of the genetics of my people. And then somehow I found myself writing about the politics of that ancient time, about ruthless kings, the selfishness of the political elites, and I was back on home ground again.</p>
<p>I started writing the novel in 2012 and even then I wanted to write about a coup in that <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/ndebele-history">ancient time</a>. At first, I wanted to keep that political drama on the sidelines, but eventually it engulfed the whole story. I followed the wind and the characters and let them lead me to the unfolding of this story.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/african-science-fiction-rereading-the-classic-nigerian-novel-the-palm-wine-drinkard-145768">African science fiction: rereading the classic Nigerian novel The Palm-wine Drinkard</a>
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<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> The descriptions of people and places are very detailed. What kind of research did you need to do?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> I did a lot of research on this story. The main character and his family are blacksmiths and iron workers, so I had to buy and read this big book about ancient <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/african-iron-age-169432">African metallurgy</a>, how iron was processed in ancient times, and the beliefs around being an iron worker. There were many <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58509896-african-myths-legends">superstitions</a> around iron working, with some people believing that the iron workers practised witchcraft, or magic. At the same time, they were held in high respect for this magical skill. Some were the wealthiest in their societies through demand for iron tools. </p>
<p>I also had to research ancient southern African attire, animal skins for making what people wore at that time, hut building and types of soils used, especially colourful soils for decorating houses, or used as makeup. I researched names of flora and fauna, although I did invent a few of my own, especially trees. I also read a few fantasy books just to get a feeling of how other writers handle this kind of writing. I read books like (US author George R.R. Martin’s) <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/A_Game_of_Thrones_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire/JPDOSzE7Bo0C?hl=en&gbpv=0">A Song of Ice and Fire</a> series, on which the TV show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944947/">Game of Thrones</a> is based, also <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/black-leopard-red-wolf/9780241981856">Black Leopard, Red Wolf</a> by Jamaican writer Marlon James, Nigerian writers Ben Okri’s <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/ben-okri-how-i-wrote-the-famished-road">The Famished Road</a> and Amos Tutuola’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-science-fiction-rereading-the-classic-nigerian-novel-the-palm-wine-drinkard-145768">The Palm Wine Drinkard</a> and a few others. I watched survival documentaries to get a visual of surviving under harsh conditions in the jungle.</p>
<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> As in your other novels, humour underlines a serious story. What place does humour have in your writing and literary vision?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> Stories are supposed to be read for relaxation no matter how serious the matter that they are treating. I try to infuse humour into the stories, plays and poetry that I write. I love seeing people laughing, even at themselves. I know that if you write political satire people end up thinking you are a serious and angry person who does not see the funny side of life.</p>
<p><strong>Gibson Ncube:</strong> Finally, the back cover suggests it’s part of a trilogy. When should readers expect the next instalment and what can they expect in it?</p>
<p><strong>Christopher Mlalazi:</strong> Yes, I want to make the story into a trilogy, and I already have a few ideas about what the next instalment will be like. But I’ve started on another completely different fantasy story which is quite advanced as I write this, and I want to finish it first before I go back to the Langabi series. I might start working on the next book in the Langabi series at the end of this year; time will tell.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Christopher Mlalazi, award-winning novelist, was inspired by the stories he was told by his grandparents as a child.
Gibson Ncube, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/213370
2023-09-21T13:27:47Z
2023-09-21T13:27:47Z
Zimbabwean names are still haunted by the ghosts of colonialism
<p>In African cultures, the <a href="https://www.africarebirth.com/what-is-in-an-african-name-identity-and-naming-ceremonies-in-african-traditional-culture/">names given</a> to children play an important role because they are often laden with meanings. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/5392/professor-tendai-mangena">team</a> of <a href="https://afrikanistik.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/en/people/people/professors/mitchell-alice">professors</a> of literature, linguistics and onomastics (the scientific study of names and naming practices) we have shown in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00219096221141345">our research</a> that the names parents give their children at birth can help us make sense of many things, including a family’s heritage and events in history. </p>
<p>Our most recent <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2023.2232053">research paper</a> analyses naming practices in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/zimbabwe">Zimbabwe</a>. It shows that Zimbabweans in the former <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zimbabwe/The-British-South-Africa-Company">British colony</a> in southern Africa still often choose English names like Robert or Oliver over traditional ones like Vulindlela or Ntombenhle.</p>
<p>We conclude that names make it possible to understand the effects of colonialism and, in more recent years, the importance placed on restoring tradition. Embracing traditional practices matters as a way of keeping culture alive so that people can benefit from its knowledge.</p>
<h2>Relics of colonialism</h2>
<p>English-language names are abundant in Zimbabwe today. This could be one of the effects of the introduction of colonial languages and the displacement of indigenous languages. It demonstrates the difficulty of erasing the mentalities acquired in the colonial era. </p>
<p>We argue that British <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/european-missionaries-southern-africa-role-missionaries">missionaries</a> and colonisers “invaded” the “mental” space of the colonised and significantly changed the way Zimbabwean people use English and indigenous languages to name children.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-schools-use-language-as-a-way-to-exclude-children-64900">How schools use language as a way to exclude children</a>
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<p>“Typical” English names maintain a connection to a time when schoolchildren would often be given new, English names to mould them into British-like subjects. </p>
<h2>Names in literature</h2>
<p>Literary works can help us better understand names and naming patterns. Celebrated Zimbabwean author <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/yvonne-vera">Yvonne Vera</a>’s novel <a href="https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/zimbabwe/veray1.htm">Butterfly Burning</a>, for example, shows how names in Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-South-African-people">Ndebele language</a> were progressively abandoned for English ones. </p>
<p>This change saw the use of abstract English names such as Gilbert instead of meaningful indigenous ones like Vulindlela, a boy’s name meaning “open the way” that expresses the parents’ hope that the child will bring good fortune to the family. </p>
<p>This cultural shift can be considered a form of erasure of a significant component of indigenous cultures. Such erasure is part of the larger-scale losses suffered through colonisation. This cultural loss was never fully recovered even in the decades after <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">independence</a> in Zimbabwe in 1980.</p>
<h2>Naming practices in Zimbabwe today</h2>
<p>There’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2023.2232053">evidence</a> that, in the last couple of decades, parents in Zimbabwe use both English and indigenous languages to name their children. Naming practices from colonial times live on.</p>
<p>In Zimbabwe these English names fall into different categories. There are typical English names like Ashley and Jean. There are also biblical names, like Isaac and Peter. We also find Africanised biblical names such as Jowero (Joel) and Mateu (Matthew). </p>
<p>And then there are “Zimbabwean English” names like Decent and Choice: English names translated from indigenous names. Zimbabwean English names offer an opportunity to understand the potential of drawing from traditional African knowledge – where names record personal experiences and aspirations – through using English. Colonial entanglements reveal adaptations of traditional forms. </p>
<p>We also notice “religious” names translated literally from indigenous names – like Takomborerwa (We have been blessed). The alterations are clear effects of colonialism, emanating from the establishment of Christianity. Examples of these “vernacular Christian names” include the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona-language">Shona language</a> names Tapiwanashe (We have been given by God), Tawananyasha (We have found God’s grace) and Anotidaishe (God loves us).</p>
<h2>Biblical English names and Africanised biblical names</h2>
<p>Like the English language, Christianity was <a href="https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/video/wasnt-christianity-in-africa-a-result-of-colonialism/">at the heart</a> of colonialism in Africa, spread through missionaries. This saw the increased popularity of biblical English names in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>“Africanised biblical” names are related to Christian biblical names, adapted to “fit” indigenous language rules of grammar. Since the translated Bible remains an “English book”, Africanised biblical names do not become indigenous names, rather they remain biblical English names. For instance the Shona name Ruka is adopted from the biblical name Luke. Ruka is simply a Shona version of Luke. </p>
<h2>Zimbabwean English names</h2>
<p>Besides typical English, biblical English and Africanised biblical names, a large category of Zimbabwean English names are popular at present. These have also been called “non-standard” English names to disrupt the dominance of British English that created tropes like <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/strange-sometimes-hilarious-names-of-zimbabweans/">“hilarious names”</a>. Examples of such names are Bastard and Darling – used in Zimbabwean novelist NoViolet Bulawayo’s award-winning novel <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15852479-we-need-new-names">We Need New Names</a>. </p>
<p>The majority of Zimbabwean English names are literal translations of indigenous personal names, illustrating the enduring power and assumed prestige of the language of Empire. At the same time, translating indigenous names shows a clear interest by Zimbabweans in retaining indigenous values and naming patterns.</p>
<h2>Refashioning imperial debris</h2>
<p>In these uses of English names with and without indigenous equivalents, the long-term effects of the language of colonisation are made visible. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-history-of-zimbabwe-played-out-on-the-countrys-cricket-fields-162035">How the history of Zimbabwe played out on the country's cricket fields</a>
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<p>So, on the one hand, these names tell a story about how indigenous ways of life were looked down on and how this colonial disdain still influences people’s naming choices. This could be a result of an internalised colonial mentality in which the English language continues to index the power and prestige that it accumulated through the violence of the colonial era. </p>
<p>On the other hand, we see how these Zimbabwean English names draw on longstanding indigenous traditions and creatively reclaim the English language for local purposes. From this perspective, we interpret naming trends in Zimbabwe as a creative refashioning of imperial debris that helps keep traditional knowledge alive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tendai Mangena received funding from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for the project on Names in Zimbabwe and the diaspora on which this work is based. </span></em></p>
Variations of English names reveal the enduring effects of British rule - but there’s also a return to tradition.
Tendai Mangena, Professor of African Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210199
2023-08-02T12:52:29Z
2023-08-02T12:52:29Z
Zimbabwe’s rulers won’t tolerate opposing voices – but its writers refuse to be silenced
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539973/original/file-20230728-19-7tnmnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">NoViolet Bulawayo, Zimbabwean author of the politically charged novels We Need New Names and Glory.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Levenson/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ruling elite in Zimbabwe has always tried to <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/zimbabwe-43-years-independence-commemoration-marred-by-rapidly-shrinking-civic-space/">silence</a> opposing political voices and erase histories it does not wish to have aired. Although “democratic” elections have been held since 1980, the country has become what the scholar Eldred Masunungure <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24388181">calls</a> a state of “militarised, electoral authoritarianism”. </p>
<p>As Zimbabwe heads to the polls again in 2023, it’s worth considering the role that writers have played in engendering political resistance. Their voices have been important in challenging oppression, exposing social injustices and advocating for political change. </p>
<h2>The liberation struggle</h2>
<p>Literature was vital for raising awareness about the harshness of colonial rule. It was used to mobilise resistance against the white minority regime and garner international support for the liberation struggle. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of an African man against a spider's web, a needle stitching a wound on his forehead." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539976/original/file-20230728-27-n59hy5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heinemann African Writers Series</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Texts like <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/voices-of-liberation-ndabaningi-sithole">Ndabaningi Sithole’s</a> foundational 1955 novel Umvekela wamaNdebele (The Revolution of the Ndebele) and <a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-dambudzo-marechera-the-letters-zimbabweans-wrote-to-a-literary-star-144299">Dambudzo Marechera</a>’s 1978 magnum opus The House of Hunger were instrumental. Many others like <a href="https://www.gale.com/intl/databases-explored/literature/charles-mungoshi">Charles Mungoshi</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tsitsi-dangarembga-and-writing-about-pain-and-loss-in-zimbabwe-144313">Tsitsi Dangarembga</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/21/chenjerai-hove">Chenjerai Hove</a> produced texts that encouraged resistance against colonial rule. </p>
<p>These works showcased the resilience of Zimbabweans in the face of adversity, inspiring the population to continue their fight for freedom.</p>
<h2>Independence</h2>
<p>Since independence in Zimbabwe, there has remained little space for dissenting voices – first under the leadership of <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Robert Mugabe</a> and then <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-three-barriers-blocking-zimbabwes-progress-zanu-pf-mnangagwa-and-the-military-89177">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.fairplanet.org/story/zimbabwes-genocide-an-open-wound/">Gukurahundi genocide</a>, which novelist <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Novuyo_Rosa_Tshuma/">Novuyo Rosa Tshuma</a> called the country’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/09/house-of-stone-novuyo-rosa-tshuma-review">original sin</a>”, marked the first instance in which the state quashed opposing voices. Between 1982 and 1987, the government sent a North Korean-trained brigade to quell dissenters in the provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands. An estimated 20,000 civilians were killed. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of an African woman looking directly ahead with traditional hairstyle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=950&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539978/original/file-20230728-15-vc4suo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1194&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Women's Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, despite the shrinking of the civic and political space in Zimbabwe, literary production has thrived in providing political resistance.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/view/168612">My research</a> as a scholar of African literature has demonstrated that literature in Zimbabwe has highlighted diverse forms of state sponsored violence. Through their works, writers have raised awareness, sparked dialogue, and inspired readers to engage in opposition and activism.</p>
<h2>The turbulent ‘lost decade’ (2000-2010)</h2>
<p>From around 2000, Zimbabwe <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-inflation-idUSL1992587420070919">experienced</a> economic meltdown, coupled with an increased shrinking of the civic space. The rise of a formidable opposition, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Movement-for-Democratic-Change">Movement for Democratic Change</a>, in 1999 <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/election-violence-in-zimbabwe/movement-for-democratic-change-was-number-one-enemy-in-2000/2CB944ACBCDB63C2311FDAB85ACD8037">was met with violence</a> by the state. </p>
<p>This period also saw a flourishing in literary production. Fresh voices emerged, among them <a href="https://writersmakeworlds.com/brian-chikwava/">Brian Chikwava</a>, <a href="https://novioletbulawayo.com/about/">NoViolet Bulawayo</a>, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e1fad84a-903e-44ec-b7c5-920e88a91eac">Petina Gappah</a>, <a href="https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-5757_Eppel">John Eppel</a>, <a href="https://www.icorn.org/writer/christopher-mlalazi">Christopher Mlalazi</a> and <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/lawrence-hoba">Lawrence Hoba</a>.</p>
<p>Literature from this period captured the socioeconomic realities of the country. Gappah’s debut collection of short stories in 2009, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/faberbooks/petina-gappah-an-elegy-for">An Elegy for Easterly</a>, depicts the emotions experienced by Zimbabweans in the face of diverse challenges. Some characters express disillusionment and despair, while others maintain optimism and resilience, representing a complex reality.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with illustrative fonts spelling the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539979/original/file-20230728-24712-naw856.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Random House</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bulawayo’s award-winning 2013 novel We Need New Names depicts the political situation through the perspective of its teenage protagonist, Darling. The story delves into the effects of political turmoil, economic challenges and societal changes on regular lives. Her 2022 novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/noviolet-bulawayos-new-novel-is-an-instant-zimbabwean-classic-185783">Glory</a> parodies a dictatorship, protesting the irrationality of a police state.</p>
<p>White Zimbabwean writers have also criticised autocracy in books like Catherine Buckle’s <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/AFRICAN_TEARS/haxhDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">African Tears: The Zimbabwe Land Invasions</a> (2000) and Graham Lang’s <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Place_of_Birth/TzCsAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Place%20of%20Birth%20graham%20lang">Place of Birth</a> (2006). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration showing the portrait of a woman with butterflies instead of hair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539980/original/file-20230728-3718-jawgb2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Faber and Faber</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These novels portray the emotional effects of the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/zimbabwe/ZimLand0302-02.htm">Fast Track Land Reform Programme</a> on many white Zimbabweans, who found themselves dispossessed of their farms and their sources of income.</p>
<p>Writers from the 2000s have offered multifaceted portrayals, highlighting the interconnectedness of personal lives and political realities. The stories illuminate the human cost of political decisions and the resilience of ordinary people in the face of hardships.</p>
<h2>Literature in the Second Republic</h2>
<p>Literature after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-the-state-is-the-man-and-that-man-is-mugabe-a-new-era-begins-with-his-fall-87868">demise</a> of Mugabe and his four-decade regime – a period referred to as the Second Republic – has continued to grapple with Zimbabwe’s prevailing sociopolitical environment. In the book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Zimbabwean-Crisis-after-Mugabe-Multidisciplinary-Perspectives/Mangena-Nyambi-Ncube/p/book/9781032028149">The Zimbabwean Crisis after Mugabe</a>, my colleagues and I contend that today’s Zimbabwe is similar to the Mugabe years in many ways.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539974/original/file-20230728-19-7nqol2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsitsi Dangarembga was arrested in 2020 for staging a protest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zinyange Autony/AFP/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.batsiraichigama.com/">Batsirai Chigama</a>’s collection of poems Gather the Children captures the vicissitudes of contemporary life in Zimbabwe. In <a href="https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/article/104-29416_On-Chigama-8217-s-Gather-the-Children">his analysis</a> of this collection, literary scholar Tinashe Mushakavanhu explains: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Zimbabwe’s political crisis has been a different kind of catastrophe, one that has occurred in slow motion: its mechanisms abstract and impersonal, although the economic, physical, and psychological consequences have been very real and devastating. These strictures insinuate themselves into the ambience of everyday life and language, something that Chigama observes with careful attention. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In her poem Zimbabwe, Chigama writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like eating olives</p>
<p>we have acquired the taste of discomfort</p>
<p>over the longest time</p>
<p>it has gently settled on our tongues</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her poems highlight how Zimbabweans have normalised the abnormal.</p>
<p>Other writers from the post-Mugabe period like <a href="http://www.panashechigumadzi.com/bio">Panashe Chigumadzi</a> and <a href="https://novuyotshuma.com/about">Novuyo Rosa Tshuma</a> grapple with similar issues and themes. Writer and academic <a href="https://brittlepaper.com/2023/03/siphiwe-ndlovu-on-the-rise-and-rise-of-zimbabwean-literature/">Siphiwe Ndlovu</a> explains that in contemporary Zimbabwean fiction</p>
<blockquote>
<p>there is anger, outrage, disappointment, disillusionment, hope (and the loss of it), but most importantly, there is a call for reckoning and change that the politics of the country have failed to successfully address.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The power (and limits) of literature</h2>
<p>Despite its power, reading remains a luxury that many Zimbabweans cannot afford. Books are extremely expensive and few people have disposable income to read for pleasure. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of birds flying into a tree and down into a red backdrop." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539982/original/file-20230728-16223-8s27vs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ntombekhaya Poetry</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s for this reason that, since independence, the state has not banned the many novels which are critical of the situation in the country. Writer Stanley Nyamfukudza <a href="http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:240525/FULLTEXT02.pdf">explains</a>: “It has been suggested that one of the best ways to hide information in Zimbabwe is to publish it in a book.” </p>
<p>Literature can achieve greater effects if there is a robust culture of critical thinking and reading.</p>
<p>However, despite the continued oppression and the lack of a robust reading culture, Zimbabwean writers have been unrelenting in telling the world what is really happening in Zimbabwe. They have always spoken truth to power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210199/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Writers have challenged oppression, exposed social injustices and advocated for political change.
Gibson Ncube, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/206966
2023-06-11T05:58:48Z
2023-06-11T05:58:48Z
Animal Farm has been translated into Shona – why a group of Zimbabwean writers undertook the task
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530850/original/file-20230608-30-g3nm04.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Hopps/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since independence in 1980, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Zimbabwe/Rhodesia-and-the-UDI">Zimbabwe</a> has in some ways become like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Animal-Farm">Animal Farm</a>. Like the pigs in the classic 1945 novel by English writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Orwell">George Orwell</a>, the country’s post-liberation leaders have hijacked a revolution that was once rooted in righteous outrage. In Zimbabwe, the revolution was against colonialism and its practices of extraction and exploitation. </p>
<p>The lead characters in Animal Farm have the propensity for evil and the greed for power found in despots throughout history, including former Zimbabwe president <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Robert Mugabe</a>. Zimbabwe’s leaders have also acted for personal gain. They remain in power with no <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/zimbabwe-43-years-independence-commemoration-marred-by-rapidly-shrinking-civic-space/">accountability</a> to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-deepening-crisis-time-for-second-government-of-national-unity-122726">suffering</a> of the people they claim to represent. </p>
<p>Animal Farm’s relevance is echoed in celebrated young Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo’s recent novel <a href="https://theconversation.com/noviolet-bulawayos-new-novel-is-an-instant-zimbabwean-classic-185783">Glory</a>. Her satirical take on Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and the fall of Mugabe is also narrated through animals. And visual artist <a href="https://zeitzmocaa.museum/artists/admire-kamudzengerere/">Admire Kamudzengerere</a> founded <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjpVCcDZARQ">Animal Farm Artist Residency</a> in Chitungwiza as a space for creative experimentation.</p>
<p>It’s within this context that a group of Zimbabwean writers, led by novelist and lawyer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/13/petina-gappah-zimbabwe-writer-interview">Petina Gappah</a> and poet <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/wait-is-over-for-muchuri/">Tinashe Muchuri</a>, have translated Animal Farm into <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona</a>, the country’s most widely spoken language. A dozen writers contributed to the translation of <a href="https://houseofbookszim.com/product/chimurenga-chemhuka/">Chimurenga Chemhuka</a> (Animal Revolution) over five years.</p>
<p>It’s clear to me, as a <a href="https://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/cpt_people/mushakavanhu-dr-tinashe/">scholar</a> of Zimbabwean literature, that too few great books are available in the country’s indigenous languages. This matters particularly because there are few bookshops and libraries where young people can access good writing. But Zimbabwe’s writers are taking matters into their own hands. </p>
<h2>The translation project</h2>
<p>Translating Animal Farm into Shona makes perfect sense. Historically, Shona novelists have used animal imagery to conjure up worlds of tradition and custom, and also to examine human foibles. Great Shona writers – such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Solomon-M-Mutswairo">Solomon Mutswairo</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrick-Chakaipa">Patrick Chakaipa</a> and more recently <a href="https://munyori.org/2022/04/interview-with-ignatius-mabasa/">Ignatius Mabasa</a> – have written books that use allegory to respond to a range of crises in Zimbabwe. (Allegory is a literary device that uses hidden meaning to speak to political situations – such as using pigs instead of people in Animal Farm.) </p>
<p>Gappah kickstarted the <a href="https://pentransmissions.com/2015/10/22/on-translating-orwells-animal-farm/">translation project</a> in a private post on Facebook in 2015:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A group of friends and I thought it would be fun to bring the novel to new readers in all the languages spoken in Zimbabwe. This is important to us because Zimbabwe has been isolated so much in recent years, and translation is one way to bring other cultures and peoples closer to your own.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover featuring an illustration of the imprint of a pig's hoof in blood." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=867&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/530914/original/file-20230608-28-9rmwf5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1090&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The House of Books</span></span>
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<p>Eight years later, Chimurenga Chemhuka has come to life. It’s a big achievement, considering that publishing has not been performing well in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-economy-is-collapsing-why-mnangagwa-doesnt-have-the-answers-104960">dire Zimbabwean economy</a>. Gappah and her friends have ambitions to translate and publish Animal Farm in all indigenous languages taught in Zimbabwe’s schools. </p>
<h2>Chimurenga Chemhuka</h2>
<p>Though Chimurenga Chemhuka is mainly in standard Shona, its characters speak a medley of different Shona dialects – such as chiKaranga, chiZezuru, chiManyika – plus a smattering of contemporary slang. It’s a prismatic translation in one text. As leading UK translation theorist Matthew Reynolds <a href="https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0206/ch6.xhtml">explains</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To translate is to remake, not only in a new language with its different nuances and ways of putting words together, but in a new culture where readers are likely to be attracted by different themes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The use of dialects activates the book in a comical way that also leaves it open to different interpretations and connections. For example, Zimbabwe’s president <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-mnangagwa-usher-in-a-new-democracy-the-view-from-zimbabwe-88023">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, who does not have the same rhetorical gifts as his predecessor, has always tried to distinguish himself with his use of chiKaranga, a dominant dialect of Shona. He adopts a popular wailing Pentecostal style that rises and falls, raising laughter and dust among the rented crowds who attend his rallies.</p>
<p>The title, Chimurenga Chemhuka, is poignant and a direct reference to Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/renov82.10/renov82.10.pdf">liberation war</a>. Chemhuka (animal) Chimurenga (revolution) is not a literal translation of Animal Farm, but here the writers take liberties to connect the book to the country’s larger struggles for independence, commonly known as Chimurenga. </p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>This translation project is a significant event in Shona literature. </p>
<p>It’s done by an eclectic group of writers who are passionate about language and literature. They use Orwell’s book and its satiric commentary as a way to creatively express themselves collectively. If this was a choir, the choristers Gappah and Muchuri do a good job of leading a harmonious ensemble.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/noviolet-bulawayos-new-novel-is-an-instant-zimbabwean-classic-185783">NoViolet Bulawayo’s new novel is an instant Zimbabwean classic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This is also the first of a series of Shona translations from <a href="https://houseofbookszim.com/">House of Books</a>, a new publishing house in Zimbabwe. The book is being promoted via social media platforms, where it is generating conversation about the need for more Zimbabwean translations of classic literature.</p>
<p>Translation was a major activity in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. It was a way for the newly emergent nation to reintegrate into the pan-African intellectual circuit. As Zimbabwe again reels from political and economic oppression, the translation of Animal Farm reveals to the country that what it’s going through is not new. It has happened before, and it will happen again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Novelist Petina Gappah’s call for translators on Facebook has resulted in the publication of Chimurenga Chemhuka.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185783
2022-07-27T14:52:14Z
2022-07-27T14:52:14Z
NoViolet Bulawayo’s new novel is an instant Zimbabwean classic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475654/original/file-20220722-234-kbs6yj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Noviolet Bulawayo, Zimbabwean writer.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Zimbabwean author <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/19/noviolet-bulawayo-animal-farm-style-allegory-important-hope-zimbabwe-orwell-glory">NoViolet Bulawayo</a>’s new novel <a href="https://novioletbulawayo.com/books/glory/">Glory</a> – <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2022">longlisted</a> for the Booker Prize 2022 – animals take on human characteristics. Through this she explores what happens when an authoritarian regime implodes, using characters who are horses, pigs, dogs, cows, cats, chickens, crocodiles, birds and butterflies. </p>
<p>Bulawayo’s celebrated first novel, <a href="https://novioletbulawayo.com/books/we-need-new-names/">We Need New Names</a>, was a coming-of-age story about the escapades of a Zimbabwean girl named Darling who ends up living in America. Its hallmarks are accentuated in this new work: the troubled real world of class struggles, psychological dualities, colonial and postcolonial histories, war and the dog-eat-dog politics of contemporary Africa.</p>
<p>Glory is set in a kingdom called Jidada, which could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Mugabe</a>’s Zimbabwe, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Idi-Amin">Idi Amin</a>’s Uganda, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hastings-Kamuzu-Banda">Hastings Banda</a>’s Malawi, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a>’s Zaire, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/12/1/the-hypocrisy-of-emmerson-mnangagwa">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>’s Zimbabwe or any other authoritarian regime in Africa, for there are many. The tropes Bulawayo makes fun of are so recognisable and familiar. </p>
<p>Perhaps as memorable as the names in her first novel (Bastard, Godknows) are those of these animal characters (Comrade Nevermiss Nzinga, General Judas Goodness Reza). There is also a Father of the Nation, Sisters of the Disappeared and Defenders of the Revolution, Seat of Power and the Chosen. And there’s the Soldiers of Christ Prophetic Church of Churches.</p>
<p>In fact, there is something almost playful about this book. When politics becomes a farce, it only requires a virtuoso like Bulawayo to marshal the faux pas into a memorable fictional narrative. </p>
<p>The novel fictionalises the real politics of Zimbabwe, from the removal of Mugabe to the rise to power of his former vice-president, Mnangagwa, in 2017 and the years since, during which Zimbabwe’s economy has suffered and the political promises of the “second republic” have gone unfulfilled. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover in bright red and green with black animals illustrated - a horse, cow, dog and a pig on a yellow moon with the words 'GLORY'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475655/original/file-20220722-18-90zoy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chatto & Windus/Penguin Books</span></span>
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<p>But in order to transcend the particular, the novel is allegoric, capturing the essence of the matter as told by a bold, vivid chorus of animal voices that helps us see our human world more clearly. </p>
<p>In Jidada, the tyrannical Old Horse is ousted in a coup after a 40-year rule. At first there is excitement about the change that will come. But Tuvius Delight Shasha (a former vice-president) leads the country into despair. Destiny Lozikeyi Khumalo, a goat who returns to Jidada after a decade away, becomes a chronicler of her nation’s history and an advocate for its future. </p>
<h2>Humour as resistance</h2>
<p>In an interview in the immediate aftermath of the Zimbabwe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/nov/15/zimbabwe-army-control-harare-coup-robert-mugabe-live">coup d’etat</a> in 2017, Bulawayo talked about attempting to write about the fall of <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Mugabe</a> in nonfiction but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/19/noviolet-bulawayo-animal-farm-style-allegory-important-hope-zimbabwe-orwell-glory">abandoning that effort</a>. She found the novel to be a better form for political satire.</p>
<p>Bulawayo’s writing is distinctive. There is a lyricism to her prose, a poetics of language that mesmerises and surprises. This gives her fiction an applied, intense focus. </p>
<p>Translating a present-day political and cultural milieu is tricky. The political language of contemporary Zimbabwe is oppositional, underpinned in historically deep-seated ethnic “for or against” binaries. By refusing to limit her language, Bulawayo shows the shallowness and historical ignorance behind political power in her utopian African country. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-orwells-1984-and-how-it-helps-us-understand-tyrannical-power-today-112066">Guide to the classics: Orwell's 1984 and how it helps us understand tyrannical power today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Bulawayo also knows how to use language to good effect by deploying irony and comedy. Her use of humour in the novel is a form of political resistance that splinters the make-believe world of an out-of-touch political class.</p>
<h2>Massacres</h2>
<p>Glory is an unforgettable book that goes beyond the obvious comparison to its inspiration, the UK author George Orwell’s 1945 classic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Animal-Farm">Animal Farm</a>. His book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and provides a strong critique against <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stalinism">Stalinism</a>.</p>
<p>Glory has a lively rhetorical idiom; it is full of colour and vigour. As <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/books/review/noviolet-bulawayo-glory.html">one reviewer</a> wrote: “Bulawayo is really out-Orwelling Orwell.” Both authors reference the disarray and traumatic conditions of the world in a distinct and powerful way. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">How artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe's 1980s massacres</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Bulawayo’s novel is also an epic that narrates the misdeeds and violent adventures of the past history of Jidada, such as the time of “Gukurahundi” when the rulers tortured, raped and executed the animals. The Gukurahundi was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">genocide</a> that took place in Zimbabwe between 1983 and 1987 when more than 20,000 people were massacred in Matebeleland.</p>
<h2>A global story</h2>
<p>The challenge for Bulawayo, or any writer for that matter, was how to write about a coup still in progress that was described as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-20-zimbabwe-when-is-a-coup-not-a-coup/">a-coup-not-a-coup</a>. How could one write about the events that started when Mugabe was overthrown with the promise of new Zimbabwe that is yet to come?</p>
<p>The end of his reign was a festival of dancing and singing for a generation that knew nothing else but his brutality. Young people posed for Instagram photos with friendly-looking gun-wielding soldiers. They welcomed back a disgraced former vice-president who – like Tuvius Delight Shasha – became the new “Ruler of the Nation and Veteran of the Liberation War, the Greatest Leader of Jidada, Enemy of Corruption, Opener for Business, the Inventor of the Scarf of the Nation, the Survivor of All Assassination Attempts…”</p>
<p>It’s a particular challenge to write about regimes that enforce everything with violence. And yet Bulawayo’s vibrant satire succeeds in telling a political parable that also reflects the times. </p>
<p>Glory is a tour de force. It is not a story about endings but about unravellings. It is not a book about the past, but a book about the present and the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Playing out in an animal kingdom, Glory is a devastating political commentary on Zimbabwe today.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185494
2022-07-06T13:30:16Z
2022-07-06T13:30:16Z
Ndabaningi Sithole: Zimbabwe’s forgotten intellectual and leader
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472725/original/file-20220706-21-uer96h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ndabaningi Sithole, July 1977. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Central Press/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ndabaningi-Sithole">Ndabaningi Sithole</a> was one of the founding fathers of the modern state of Zimbabwe in southern Africa. In August 1963, he became the first president of the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803133457774">Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu)</a>, the militant liberation organisation that fought against white minority rule that he led for a decade before being deposed in a palace coup engineered by his rival <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Robert Mugabe</a>. Mugabe went on to become the post-independence leader of Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>Sithole was the most prolific black writer in colonial <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Rhodesia">Rhodesia</a> from the 1950s until the country gained independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. In that period he published nine books (one serialised in African Parade magazine). He also left an incredible archive of the liberation struggle that was generated in real time. Surprisingly, most of Zimbabwe’s liberation figures did not leave behind a lot of their own writings. Sithole is unique in that regard. </p>
<p>His most important book, <a href="https://www.african-nationalism.com/">African Nationalism</a>, which has recently been republished, is part autobiography and part polemics that provides a history of the liberation movement in Zimbabwe at its nascent stages. It was first published in 1959 and then in 1968.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover featuring a graphic of the map of Africa." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470768/original/file-20220624-16-3ltr5s.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Third edition of African Nationalism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ndabaningi Sithole Foundation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A third edition of African Nationalism is timely. It was released by his family through the <a href="https://www.sithole.org">Ndabaningi Sithole Foundation</a> which was launched last year to “honour and perpetuate his legacy as an advocate for civil rights and pan African democracy” through republishing his books and hosting events.</p>
<p>It’s timely because there is a reconfiguration of the politics of Zimbabwe. Mugabe, who was a dominant force for almost four decades, has since died. There is currently a vigorous contestation for power and legitimacy going on in the country. Figures like Sithole who have been sidelined in Zimbabwe’s history offer us an opportunity to reconsider suppressed views and perspectives.</p>
<h2>The philosopher-politician</h2>
<p>More than six decades after the publication of African Nationalism, it remains a critical text to think about topical subjects such as self determination, political representation and decolonisation. Sithole’s foray into active politics was primarily through his writings and thus his bona fide credentials as a leading intellectual were embraced. His book’s wide critical acclaim and translation into half a dozen European languages earned him respect among his peers. </p>
<p>Sithole composed the book in the US where he was a student of theology. He explained his impetus in his introduction:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was confronted by what some of my American friends said about African nationalism, which at the time was just beginning to be felt throughout the length and breadth of the continent of Africa, and which was also beginning to make fairly sensational international headlines. The big question which everyone was asking: Is Africa ready for sovereign independence? The majority greatly doubted that Africa was ready. Some regarded the rise of African nationalism as a bad omen for the whitemen in Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As historian <a href="https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-04/special_o_religion_nationalism_in_zimbabwe_2022-23.pdf">David Maxwell</a> writes, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism">nationalism</a> – supporting the interests of the nation-state – has been a powerful force in Zimbabwean history as a mobilising ideology. It continues to play a key part in the arena in which political ideas and participation are imagined. </p>
<p>Zimbabwean nationalism, a version of which historian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/18/terrance-ranger-obituary">Terence Ranger</a> called <a href="https://www.african.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/ranger.pdf">“patriotic history”</a> remains central to debates about who belongs, and who has the right to speak, to vote and to own land.</p>
<h2>The barrel of a pen</h2>
<p>Sithole’s tenure as leader of Zanu was mostly from prison, between 1964 and 1974. It was a treacherous time. Most of the black political leaders had been rounded up, detained, killed or forced into exile. Besides directing Zanu’s insurgent activities from his prison cell, Sithole also filled up time writing books: novels, poetry, and political tracts. He considered writing as a revolutionary tool. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four men in suits sitting on couches around a coffee table in a lounge setting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472730/original/file-20220706-160-hzrycn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From left to right, Chief Jeremiah Chirau, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, Prime Minister Ian Smith and Bishop Abel Muzorewa in New York, 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His manuscripts, smuggled from prison with the help of guards and sympathisers, were mostly published abroad to avoid censorship. Two of these included <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_Polygamist.html?id=xlQRAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">The Polygamist</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Obed_Mutezo_the_Mudzimu_Christian_Nation.html?id=p3Z0AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Obed Mutezo</a> – the story of an “African Nationalist (Christian) Martyr”. Sithole was also a leading contributor to the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=zimbabwe+news&so=rel">Zimbabwe News</a>, a newsletter that was published by Zanu to convey its revolutionary messages. </p>
<p>As if he knew history was not going to be kind to him, Sithole spent considerable time writing his ideas, but also about people he met as a leader. He partly coordinated the liberation struggle through the barrel of the pen. Sithole writes himself into history. He is not just a chronicler of the liberation struggle, as it is happening in real time, but also acts as an archivist for the future.</p>
<h2>The teacher and preacher</h2>
<p>Sithole was a primary school teacher at home before studying theology in the US between 1955 and 1958. He had been mentored by the revered missionaries <a href="https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/2265">Garfield and Grace Todd</a> at Dadaya Mission. This relationship was formative to his politics and civic interests. Despite later political disagreements, they maintained a cautious allyship and respect.</p>
<p>While in the US, Sithole published <em>AmaNdebele kaMzilikazi</em> in 1956, the first published novel in Ndebele in Zimbabwe. It was released by Longmans, Green & Co. in Cape Town before being republished in 1957 as <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Umvukela_wamaNdebele.html?id=GKZfPQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y"><em>Umvukela wamaNdebele</em></a> by the newly established Rhodesia Literature Bureau. The book is inspired by the events of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/second-matabele-war-breaks-out">Ndebele uprisings of 1896</a>.</p>
<p>Sithole was the product of an unusual progeny – a father from the Ndau clan and a mother from the Ndebele clan. As such, he was not easily contained by the Shona-Ndebele binary that has informed much of Zimbabwe’s modern politics. Growing up in rural Matebeleland, he was raised under Ndebele tradition and culture. It is not surprising that his first published book was inspired by Ndebele traditions. </p>
<h2>A complicated legacy</h2>
<p>To look at Sithole’s life and career in retrospect is to wade through so much hubris, of his own making and of others. His fall from grace was spectacular. He has been for the modern <a href="https://www.zanupf.org.zw">Zanu-PF</a> a persona non grata. But a figure like Sithole cannot be easily expunged from history, which he actively contributed to as a leading actor and as a writer.</p>
<p>At a time when a young generation of Africans are calling for decolonisation, Sithole’s ideas resonate even further. In the preface to the new edition of African Nationalism, former Kenyan prime minister, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Raila-Odinga">Raila Odinga</a> posits:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reading African Nationalism evokes mixed feelings of sadness and joy. It is sad to imagine that a whole book had to be written to try and explain to fellow humans why Africans were agitating for and deserved self rule.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is always important to look back to the past, in order to navigate the present and the future. His ideas aside, Sithole is also a reminder of the fickleness of politics and history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Despite being almost erased from history, Sithole’s ideas are still relevant today.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144299
2020-09-06T09:26:52Z
2020-09-06T09:26:52Z
Dear Dambudzo Marechera… The letters Zimbabweans wrote to a literary star
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354881/original/file-20200826-7165-a0o96v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dambudzo Marechera, 1986</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Ernst Schade via Humboldt University</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The writer <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1365977/dambudzo-marecheras-the-house-of-hunger-novel-still-plays-out-in-zimbabwe/">Dambudzo Marechera</a>, who died on 18 August 1987, remains a popular figure in Zimbabwe. He is heralded by a young generation as a radical and counter-culture figure.</p>
<p>Marechera became an instant star when his first book <em>The House of Hunger</em> was published to critical acclaim in 1978. The novella tells of growing up in colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in raw and exquisite prose, a harrowing portrait of lives disrupted and young disillusionment. The rumour is that he wrote it in a tent or squat, but then perhaps he did not, for as James Currey puts it in <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Africa+Writes+Back"><em>Africa Writes Back</em></a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Marechera developed his own life story with the self-regarding obsession of an actor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Everything to do with his conflicted legacy had a touch of mythology. Whether it was throwing plates and cups at his hosts at the Guardian Fiction Prize ceremony, trying to burn down a university library, or travelling without a passport between countries and continents. </p>
<p>His magnum opus, <em>The House of Hunger</em>, came immediately after his expulsion from New College, Oxford university. Though his publishers desperately expected him to produce the ‘great Zimbabwean novel’, Marechera’s later work was inconsistent. He saw two more books published: <em><a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/black-sunlight">Black Sunlight</a></em> (1980) and <em><a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/mindblast">Mindblast</a></em> (1984). Further work was released posthumously: <em><a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/the-black-insider">The Black Insider</a></em> (1990), <em><a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/cemetery-of-mind">Cemetery of Mind</a></em> (1992) and <em><a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/scrapiron-blues">Scrapiron Blues</a></em> (1994).</p>
<p>After confounding critics and foes, and leading an erratic lifestyle, the writer was dead at 35. Marechera embodies celebrity and politics, spectacle and radicalism, universality and self-aggrandisement. What endears him to a generation of readers is his refusal to offer easy answers or present static identities for his fictional characters or for himself.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover with an illustration of a man against a spider's web, a spider with a needle stitching a long cut on his forehead." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354613/original/file-20200825-15-1luo5zg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">House of Hunger.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heinemann Books London</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But who is Dambudzo Marechera? I never met him. He died when I was four years old and has always been an enigma. But I recently discovered a set of <a href="https://witswiser.podbean.com/e/tinashe-mushakavanhu-marechera-the-story-doctor/">old letters</a> which reveal the real import of <a href="https://uglyducklingpresse.org/publications/reincarnating-marechera-notes-on-a-speculative-archive/">Marechera’s influence</a>. </p>
<h2>A visit to the archive</h2>
<p>For a long time I associated the <a href="http://www.archives.gov.zw">National Archives of Zimbabwe</a> with bureaucracy and viewed it as an unwelcoming security zone. My early visits were focused on accessing the Marechera papers, or what remains of them. The more I visited, the more items went missing, and sometimes they were truncated. When I told friends about the appearance, disappearance and reappearance of materials, many suggested that the institution has a general suspicion of researchers and that it censors information.</p>
<p>It was during one of these visits that I saw a folder that contained a neat pile of hundreds of handwritten letters. The melodramatic structure and rhetoric of the letters disturbed the stable meanings I held about Marechera, especially their expressions of psychic pain, longing, desire, frustration, boredom, and the material details of the correspondents’ private lives – that now make them irresistible, intimate public archives.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="1010" data-image="" data-title="The Wiser Podcast: Marechera, The Story Doctor" data-size="40410300" data-source="Wiser, Wits University" data-source-url="https://witswiser.podbean.com/e/tinashe-mushakavanhu-marechera-the-story-doctor/" data-license="" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2041/tinashe-marechera-79nrq.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
The Wiser Podcast: Marechera, The Story Doctor.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="https://witswiser.podbean.com/e/tinashe-mushakavanhu-marechera-the-story-doctor/">Wiser, Wits University</a><span class="download"><span>38.5 MB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/2041/tinashe-marechera-79nrq.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>The letters are valuable historic documents; their inclusion in the national archives was a fate their writers could never have imagined. The value of these letters depends on their continued circulation. Yet, they have been ignored by researchers who have hollowed out black testimony in constructing the figure of Marechera. Much of the Marechera scholarship is scaffolded on white memory. </p>
<p>The letters function as a space of knowledge and confession and are complex objects positioned at the intersection of personal, institutional and memorial motives.</p>
<h2>The story doctor</h2>
<p>Addressed in care of the Dambudzo Marechera Trust, the letters were dispatched after Marechera’s death from urban townships, rural areas, growth points, mining compounds, farms; places that only appear in the news during election season or moments of catastrophe. In death, Marechera <a href="https://chimurengachronic.co.za/home-mean-nothing-to-me/">ruptures</a> the view of Zimbabwe as a little corridor that starts in Harare and ends in Bulawayo. These letters provide a unique psychological and physical map of his enduring influence – a community forged around issues of privacy, of friendship and of individual freedom.</p>
<p>The correspondents feel comfortable talking to Marechera. They know he will never scold them for what they say. He is ordinary like them, but constantly harassed by the state and its security apparatus. Most are school dropouts who absconded to join the war and came back to no jobs or unwelcoming families. </p>
<p>After the war, they were expected to grow up quickly and join the army of nation builders. But there were no systems created to deal with the traumas of war. Many returned with stories and nightmares and didn’t know how to share them, or where to turn for help. The government bureaucrats were unconcerned. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dreadlocked man stands at a microphone, holding a notebook in an outdoor city space, crowds of people around the platform he stands on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/354883/original/file-20200826-16-1ummmbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marechera reading in First Street Mall, Harare, during the International Book Fair Harare in August 1983.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Tessa Colvin via Humboldt University</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marechera decided to be the story doctor who provided an outlet for people to vent. He opened a small office in the Harare City Centre. The office was minimalistic, it had no furniture; there was a phone in the corner. Marechera had decided to build a healing platform outside the official system. He understood the sickness that was all around him that could only be cured through storytelling sessions. The writing surgery operated for four days before it was shut down by government agents. At least 1,000 young people had consulted Marechera.</p>
<p>They turned to Marechera who was the resident philosopher in Harare’s nightclubs and bars. They eagerly identified with his iconoclasm. To them, his was a <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/seminar/Mushakavanhu2019.pdf">fearless voice</a> that undermined every kind of complacency and hypocrisy.</p>
<h2>Death that refuses to be killed</h2>
<p>One letter, dated 18 May 1989, reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Never before have I encountered an author so seriously dedicated to his pen and voice as the late Dambudzo “Desperate” Marechera. He remains my luminary in my poetic endeavor; his courageous denunciation of “filthy first citizens” an undying inspiration to me. These are the bigots, now coming to the foreground dead and alive because of their sins, who kept Dambudzo well under foot till his death.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From the perspective of the speculative enterprise, Marechera’s death was a necessary death, a death that has had movement, that created a schism in the Zimbabwean imagination. For the political class it was good riddance, but for multitudes of young people Marechera’s death was the awakening. </p>
<p>It was a new type of death that refused to be killed. Marechera’s transcendence to the afterlife became an expression of the radical and new logic, a speculative process. </p>
<p>His death is the moment he is born again, every utterance of his name is a recreation of who he was, of who he should have been. He changes with every memory, every retelling. If Dambudzo Marechera had not existed, Zimbabwe would have invented him.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Mushakavanhu is the author of the just-released book <a href="https://uglyducklingpresse.org/publications/reincarnating-marechera-notes-on-a-speculative-archive/">Reincarnating Marechera</a>: Notes on a Speculative Archive. The public is invited to contribute to Marechera’s archive over <a href="https://marechera.com">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tinashe Mushakavanhu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Hundreds of handwritten letters found in an archive have revealed the real import of the writer’s enduring influence.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145331
2020-09-03T15:50:45Z
2020-09-03T15:50:45Z
Book shines light on Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most underrated poets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355798/original/file-20200901-18-1s7reif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A younger Dennis Brutus, president of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee in Montreal, Canada in 1976.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Neil Leifer /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fortunately for the rest of us South Africans, the apartheid police state often shot itself in the foot. On the one hand, after a horrifying <a href="https://www.thejournalist.org.za/pioneers/henry-nxumalo/">exposé</a> of jail conditions in <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668"><em>Drum</em></a> magazine at the end of the 1950s, it passed a total censorship statute on anything that went on inside prisons.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it incarcerated three of South Africa’s best poets – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dennis-brutus">Dennis Brutus</a> on Robben Island, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/breyten-breytenbach">Breyten Breytenbach </a> and <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jeremy-cronin-mr">Jeremy Cronin</a> in Pretoria Central – convicted for anti-apartheid activities. Surprise: after their eventual release, all the jails’ brutality and cruelties came out in graphic print for the world to read.</p>
<p>Tyrone August’s welcome, and overdue, biography – <a href="http://www.bestred.co.za/dennis-brutus-detail.html"><em>Dennis Brutus, The South African Years</em></a> – is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation at the University of the Western Cape.</p>
<p>This book both gives us readers the most thorough biography to date on Brutus, though there is nothing about where and how his seven children completed school and made their lives. The book focuses on how Brutus’ poems were influenced by the poets he read at school and university. Hopefully it will aid his poems becoming more prominent in future anthologies of South African poems, and in school books.</p>
<p>Brutus is one of the most underrated poets of South Africa. Among this reviewer’s treasured books are two collections, inscribed and autographed in his incredibly neat calligraphy.</p>
<p>All told, Brutus published 12 collections, starting in 1963 with <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sirens-knuckles-boots-Dennis-Brutus/dp/B0006CRN5W"><em>Sirens, Knuckles, Boots</em></a> and culminating in 2005 with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16155787-leafdrift"><em>Leafdrift</em></a>. In addition, Worcester State University (US) brought out a selected poetry collection <a href="https://libguides.worcester.edu/archives/Dennis-Brutus">in 2004</a> to honour his 80th birthday.</p>
<p>That none of his collections were published in South Africa testifies to apartheid police state censorship: leftists passed from hand to hand copies of his poems. This <em>samizdat</em> circulated in handwritten, typewritten, and later photocopied sheets of paper.</p>
<p>Brutus was born in 1924 in the country today named Zimbabwe; his parents returned to South Africa two years later. He started teaching in 1950 and married in the same year. The government banned him from teaching in 1961 because of his anti-apartheid activities, depriving him of earning a living.</p>
<h2>Jail and exile</h2>
<p>Brutus fled to eSwatini (Swaziland), then a British colony, in 1963. The British colonial authorities refused to grant him a residence permit. He crossed the border to Mozambique. The PIDE secret police in Portuguese colonial Mozambique handed him over to the South African police’s Special Branch that targeted political activists. </p>
<p>He was shot trying to escape, and sentenced to 18 months on <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/robben-island">Robben Island</a>. Repeated beatings, and harrowing assaults, culminated in months of solitary confinement, causing hallucinations and nervous breakdown. He finally left South Africa on a no-return exit permit in 1966 after his release.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dennis-brutus-south-african-literary-giant-who-was-reluctant-to-tell-his-life-story-141730">Dennis Brutus: South African literary giant who was reluctant to tell his life story</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>His first job in exile in the UK was as campaign director of the <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/gandhi-luthuli-documentation-centre/role-international-defence-and-aid-fund">International Defence and Aid Fund</a>, which raised money to hire lawyers to defend political prisoners and to send subsistence allowances to their next of kin. </p>
<p>In 1971 he emigrated to the US, becoming a professor in the English Department at Northwestern University. In 1975 he co-founded the African Literature Association. From 1986 he became professor of African literature at the University of Pittsburgh. He returned to South Africa in 2005 as an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Involved in wider causes than just in South Africa, such as the <a href="https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/southern-africa-southern-african-social-forum">Southern African Social Forum</a>, he died of cancer in 2009.</p>
<p>Dennis Brutus’ achievements were two-fold: as a political activist and as poet.</p>
<h2>Political activism</h2>
<p>He joined the Teachers’ League of South Africa in 1950, which was the major affiliate of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a>. Mostly comprising <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coloured">Coloured </a> teachers, it focused on anti-racism and anti-imperialism issues. But he was non-dogmatic, also participating in protests of the Coloured People’s Congress, affiliated to the African National Congress. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356057/original/file-20200902-20-1ohhsmn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He hid both <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> (top ANC leaders who had to go underground to avoid detention) in his home when they visited Port Elizabeth. He was also friends and worked with Eddie Daniels and Patrick Duncan of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party</a>, a small non-racial political party.</p>
<p>As a sports administrator, he founded the South African Sports Association and later the South African Non-Racial Olympics Committee (<a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization.php?name=South+African+Non-Racial+Olympic+Committee#:%7E:text=The%20South%20African%20Non%2DRacial,went%20into%20exile%20in%201966.">Sanroc</a>) to lead the campaigns to get whites-only sports codes boycotted by foreign touring teams. Their first victory came in 1956, when the International Table Tennis Federation admitted as member the non-racial <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/SPORT/SPORTRAM.htm">South African Table Tennis Board</a> instead of the whites-only SA Table Tennis Union. </p>
<p>Global football followed with the same ban in 1961. <a href="https://www.joc.or.jp/english/historyjapan/tokyo1964.html#:%7E:text=The%20Games%20of%20the%2018th,introduced%20for%20the%20first%20time.">The 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo</a> became the first to exclude whites-only or internally segregated South African sports organisations. Activists from both the Unity Movement and those aligned to the ANC built up this no-racism-in-sport movement.</p>
<p>Throughout the remaining apartheid decades, overseas protesters led demonstrations against whites-only Springbok (South African national) teams.</p>
<h2>Dennis Brutus the poet</h2>
<p>Brutus’ development as a poet was influenced by the English Romantics, including Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. He also read Yeats, Eliot and Auden. One major challenge for scholars of his oeuvre is that censorship compelled him to publish his prose and poems under a bewildering array of noms-de-plume: Anon., J.B Booth, B.K, le Dab, D.A.B., Julius Friend, John Player, and L.N Terry.</p>
<p>What demonstrated his originality and courage was that virtually no English language poets in South Africa had published poems on politics since <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roy-Campbell">Roy Campbell</a> in the 1920s. <a href="http://www.mwsfoundation.org.za/index.php/featured/304-welcome-to-unique-avcom">Mongane Wally Serote</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mandla-langa-1950">Mandla Langa</a> and <a href="http://www.apc.uct.ac.za/apc/researchers/professor-njabulo-ndebele">Njabulo Ndebele</a> were among the first literary critics to praise Brutus’ poems.</p>
<p>Probably his most widely circulated poem, <em>For a Dead African</em>, delineated the 1950s in its first stanza:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no heroes and no wars</p>
<p>Only victims of a sickly state</p>
<p>Succumbing to the variegated sores</p>
<p>That flower under lashing rains of hate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His second stanza chillingly prophesied the 1960s detentions of anti-apartheid activists:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have no battles and no fights</p>
<p>for history to record with trite remark</p>
<p>only captives killed on eyeless nights</p>
<p>And accidental dyings in the dark.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A topic repeated in his poem <em>In Memoriam</em> to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24764301?seq=1">Imam Abdullah Haroun</a>, a clergyman beaten and kicked to death in detention by the Special Branch:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>because he chose not to speak / he died</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Brutus showed his political colours in print in <em>At a Funeral</em> about <a href="https://escholarship.org/content/qt6tc554rb/qt6tc554rb.pdf?t=mniomb">Valencia Majombozi</a>, who died in August 1960, shortly after graduation as a doctor, after much hardship:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black, green and gold at sunset; pageantry and stubbled graves</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The ANC colours were then illegal. To fly them was punished by up to six months in jail.</p>
<p>Other widely printed lines come from <em>Nightsong City</em>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sleep well my love, sleep well;</p>
<p>The harbour lights glaze over the restless docks,</p>
<p>Police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;</p>
<p>From the shanties creaking iron-sheet</p>
<p>Violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed</p>
<p>And fear in immanent as sound in the wind-swung bell</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These relevant Brutus poems should be put up on the walls for tourists to view during the Robben Island Museum tours, which are led by former political prisoners as guides. This book should be in every library, and on your bookshelf.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.bestred.co.za/dennis-brutus-detail.html">Dennis Brutus: The South African Years</a> is published by Best Red, an imprint of the HSRC Press.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this review in his personal capacities as a historian and a poet.</span></em></p>
That none of his collections were published in apartheid South Africa testifies to the police state’s censorship.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/144313
2020-08-20T14:46:36Z
2020-08-20T14:46:36Z
Tsitsi Dangarembga and writing about pain and loss in Zimbabwe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353419/original/file-20200818-20-w69yhd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tsitsi Dangarembga.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jemal Countess/WireImage via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tsitsi Dangarembga has made a name for herself as a writer, filmmaker and activist in Zimbabwe. She gained international acclaim with her debut novel <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.1989.9675065"><em>Nervous</em></a> <em><a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/nervous-conditions">Conditions</a></em> (1988), which became the <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/nervous-conditions">first</a> published English novel by a black woman from Zimbabwe. The BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180521-the-100-stories-that-shaped-the-world">named</a> it one of the top 100 books that have shaped the world.</p>
<p>Now, over three decades later, Dangarembga’s latest novel – <em><a href="https://jacana.co.za/our-books/this-mournable-body/">This Mournable Body</a></em>, the third in a trilogy that began with <em>Nervous Conditions</em> and the subject of this review – has been placed on the <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/fiction/2020">longlist</a> for the 2020 Booker Prize. The news broke a few days before Dangarembga’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/14/tsitsi-dangarembga-i-am-afraid-there-have-been-abductions">arrest</a> for demonstrating against the government amidst a clampdown on critical voices in the country.</p>
<p>There have been other Zimbabwean women writers of note after Dangarembga, such as the late <a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/authors/yvonne-vera">Yvonne Vera</a>, and more recently <a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/authors/noviolet-bulawayo">NoViolet Bulawayo</a>, <a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/authors/novuyo-rosa-tshuma">Novuyo Rosa Tshuma</a> and <a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/authors/petina-gappah">Petina Gappah</a>. Most of their works have won international awards, with NoViolet Bulawayo being the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/an-african-writer-who-doesnt-mind-being-called-an-african-writer/279719/">shortlisted</a> for the Man Booker Prize for the novel <em>We Need New Names</em> (2013). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=938&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1179&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1179&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353424/original/file-20200818-20-kkwiw2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1179&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reading Zimbabwe/The Women's Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What distinguishes Dangarembga is her centralisation of burning issues concerning the freedom of women in Zimbabwe’s patriarchal socio-economic and political milieu. Besides her three novels, she has written plays, the best known of which is <em><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/She_No_Longer_Weeps.html?id=MJXEAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">She No Longer Weeps</a></em> (1987) and has played various roles in Zimbabwean filmmaking including writing and directing such films as the popular <em><a href="https://variety.com/1993/film/reviews/neria-1200431918/">Neria</a></em> and <a href="https://variety.com/1996/film/reviews/everyone-s-child-1200447659/"><em>Everyone’s Child</em></a>. </p>
<h2>The return of Tambudzai</h2>
<p>As a trilogy, <em>Nervous Conditions</em> was followed by <em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview20">The Book of Not</a></em> (2006) and <em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/12/this-mournable-body-by-tsitsi-dangarembga-review">This Mournable Body</a></em> (2018). <em>Nervous Conditions</em>, with its girl child protagonist, Tambudzai, is an introductory representation of British colonisation of Zimbabwe and how people, particularly women, coped with the intersectional oppressions of the racial, classist and gendered structure of relations. It ends with hope that Tambudzai, in her resilience, will triumph – only for <em>The Book of Not</em> to present her as a “non-person” who goes through some form of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2019.1704696">psychic self-annihilation</a> that reduces her to an “I was not” as she struggles to cope with the racial exclusions at her white boarding school. <em>The Book of Not</em> thus annihilated Tambudzai for me and I hoped that another sequel would resuscitate her. That is why I was excited to hear that Dangarembga had written another sequel and promised myself I would buy a copy. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353426/original/file-20200818-24-m5oyry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ayebia Clarke Publishers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, a few friends had thrown in spoilers and I also felt very apprehensive. I was torn between wanting to read the book and not wanting to. I love happy endings. If I read a book and it does not end as I expected, it weighs down on me and I take a long time to unwind myself from the story while trying to write my own suitable ending. As fate would have it, a student asked me to supervise their dissertation on Dangarembga’s trilogy. The book was literally haunting me, mourning for me to read it, but I held out until I was asked to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2019.1704694">contribute</a> to a published roundtable on the trilogy.</p>
<h2>The painful reading</h2>
<p>I borrowed a copy from a colleague and began the painful reading. I was horrified by the Tambu in <em>This Mournable Body.</em> She was unrecognisable from the rural, disciplined girl who subtly fought to get an education like her brother in <em>Nervous Conditions</em>; the girl who daringly uttered, “I was not sorry when my brother died”. I could easily identify with the young girl in the 1960s, when patriarchy preferred to send boys to school and raise girls for marriage. That young girl reminded me of my own mother’s tenacity in trying to acquire an education for herself and later for my brothers and sisters in the harsh economic colonial environment of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Rhodesia">Rhodesia</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of a black woman's legs in red and white shoes and stockings with human heart patterns." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353415/original/file-20200818-24-1npoahz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacana Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I could identify with Tambu’s victory on going to the mission school. Unlike her cousin Nyasha, she had a solid African background that would enable her to remain culturally rooted. She would even be more versatile and relevant than her uneducated aunt Lucia. She would not be as docile and submissive as her sister Netsai, who lost a leg in the liberation war in <em>The Book of Not</em>. The ending of <em>Nervous Conditions</em> was thus a happy ending for me, because of this promise of growth. </p>
<p>I now know that I had only driven myself to these conclusions in search of my own happy endings. No African novels I had read before <em>Nervous Conditions</em> had happy endings for “integrated” African characters. White contact had become synonymous with <em>ngozi</em>, a vengeful spirit.</p>
<p>I felt angry at Tsitsi Dangarembga for writing <em>This Mournable Body</em>. It was a very difficult book for me to read. The Tambu of <em>This Mournable Body</em> is like a wounded animal. I was even horrified by the aloofness in the narration and the spectatorship of rape and its trauma, to the indifference to violence and abuse.</p>
<h2>I am Tambu</h2>
<p>I have since realised that I am only angry at the reality of the Zimbabwean body of pain that <em>This Mournable Body</em> evokes. I did not want to read the novel because I did not want to face the individual realities that are so familiar among many men and women in my country. Like with Tambu, pain has been simmering in us over time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women holding placards get into a military vehicle as policemen usher them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/353438/original/file-20200818-24-fkadw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsitsi Dangarembga’s arrest on 31 July 2020 in Harare.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zinyange Auntony/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>This Mournable Body</em> blurs the boundaries of time. The Tambu of <em>Nervous Conditions</em> was one I could envision through my mother’s past, from a colonial history that I only knew by my connection to her. As I read <em>This Mournable Body</em>, I was aware of the conflation of the immediate post-independent period and the contemporary moment. Lucia’s and Christine’s war scars have easily defied temporalities. Many a Zimbabwean is hopping on Netsai’s single leg. There is no affluence even for the anglicised like Nyasha. I am Tambu. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">How artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe's 1980s massacres</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This Mournable Body</em> resonates with individual Zimbabweans at a personal level. Both the nation and its people become mournable bodies whose “grievability” is <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/zimbabwe/newsday-zimbabwe/20200623/281621012595577">exhumed</a> through the text and especially now when <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/zimbabweanlivesmatter?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Ehashtag">#ZimbabweanLivesMatter</a> is taking shape after the arrest of activists. </p>
<p>Tambu’s jealousies, her tears, and her madness are not <em>ngozi</em>. The Zimbabwean pain body courses through the novel like a daughter’s shame and a mother’s love and memory, packaged in a sack of mealie-meal. Who knows if it is a question of not knowing the womb or one of not knowing how to come back to it? <em>This Mournable Body</em> has a happy ending after all. Tambu comes back home. And as Dangarembga herself <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2019.1704700">states</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Writing a pain body and also reading such a body are acts of resistance and triumph.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rosemary Chikafa-Chipiro does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Her new book “This Mournable Body” was announced as a Booker Prize contender just days before her arrest for protesting against a government clampdown.
Rosemary Chikafa-Chipiro, Lecturer, University of Zimbabwe
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/143847
2020-08-04T15:24:33Z
2020-08-04T15:24:33Z
How artists have preserved the memory of Zimbabwe’s 1980s massacres
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350897/original/file-20200803-14-1vcb9b8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from a play about the Gukurahundi genocide, 1983 The Dark Years, performed in Harare in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JEKESAI NJIKIZANA/AFP/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Let people vent,” lamented performing artist and television personality <a href="http://almasiartsalliance.org/category/kudzai-sevenzo/">Kudzai Sevenzo</a> in a <a href="https://twitter.com/KudzaiSevenzo/status/1288407558097641472?s=20">tweet</a> as Zimbabweans on social media reacted to the death of <a href="https://apnews.com/7afe3ad83057f11f793dd54228e8e8d9">Perence Shiri</a>. Shiri was the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/zenzele-ndebele">Zenzele Ndebele</a>, an investigative journalist, also spoke out in a <a href="https://twitter.com/zenzele/status/1289075563236413441?s=20">tweet</a>: “Shiri gets to be buried like a hero. We never got a chance to mourn our relatives who were killed by the 5th Brigade.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/zimbabwe/who-is-perrance-shiri-black-jesus-dead-29-july-2020/">Shiri</a> was a military man who commandeered a praetorian army that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/19/mugabe-zimbabwe-gukurahundi-massacre-matabeleland">killed</a> over 20,000 civilians in the provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands between 1983 and 1987. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2b5iVGCDs0">Gukurahundi</a> saw his North Korean-trained unit, the <a href="https://gijn.org/2018/12/03/digging-up-zimbabwes-gukurahundi-massacre-dossier/">Fifth Brigade</a>, descend on provinces inhabited by the Ndebele people to quell dissent. <a href="https://bit.ly/2Po03WA"><em>Gukurahundi</em></a> is a Shona term referring to the early summer rains that remove chaff and dirt from the fields.</p>
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<p>The death of Shiri on 29 July 2020 has kindled flames of debate that the ruling party has tried to shut down for many years. </p>
<p>I argue, in a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021989415615646">paper</a> on Gukurahundi, that writers and artists have left behind a richly textured memory on what writer <a href="https://www.novuyotshuma.com/">Novuyo Rosa Tshuma</a> has called the country’s “<a href="https://www.theelephant.info/features/2018/12/06/old-faces-new-masks-zimbabwe-one-year-after-the-coup/">original sin</a>”.</p>
<h2>Enforced ‘collective amnesia’</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of Gukurahundi, <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">former president</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Mugabe</a> enforced collective forgetting of this period in Zimbabwe’s history. He referred to it simply as a “<a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/mugabes-moments-of-madness">moment of madness</a>” and suggested that discussing the events would undermine attempts to nurture national unity. </p>
<p>His successor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/will-mnangagwa-usher-in-a-new-democracy-the-view-from-zimbabwe-88023">Emmerson Mnangagwa</a>, Minister of State Security at the time of the Gukurahundi <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml">genocide</a>, has also implored Zimbabweans to “let bygones be bygones”. At his 2017 <a href="https://bit.ly/2PqhhSY">inauguration</a> he said that the past cannot be changed, but “there is a lot we can do in the present and the future to give our nation a different positive direction”.</p>
<p>However, as l contend in another <a href="https://journals.assaf.org.za/index.php/tvl/article/view/1548">paper</a>, silence on Gukurahundi has not led to any national cohesion. Instead, it has been a part of what’s responsible for the culture of state violence and impunity in Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. </p>
<h2>Writing against forgetting</h2>
<p>Yet, a rich body of literary and visual artworks has emerged thematising the genocide. There have been books in indigenous languages such as <em><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Uyangisinda_lumhlaba.html?id=U80JAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Uyangisinda Lumhlaba</a></em> (This world is unbearable) in Ndebele by Ezekiel Hleza and <em><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Mhandu_dzorusununguko.html?id=jBAkAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Mhandu Dzorusununguko</a></em> (Enemies of independence) in Shona by Edward Masundire. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351046/original/file-20200804-24-11pe3tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Farrar, Straus and Giroux</span></span>
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<p>There has been an even bigger corpus of texts written in English. Among them is the late Yvonne Vera’s 2002 novel <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781466806061"><em>The Stone Virgins</em></a>. It details the horrors faced by villagers from a ruthless army. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/16/zimbabwe-running-with-mother-robert-mugabe"><em>Running with Mother</em></a>, a 2012 novel by Christopher Mlalazi, a child narrator, Rudo, recounts the arrival of the Fifth Brigade in her village.</p>
<p>Peter Godwin’s largely autobiographical <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/book-title/mukiwa-a-white-boy-in-africa/"><em>Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa</em></a>
in 1996 gives a picture of Gukurahundi from the eyes of a young white journalist. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/books/review/house-of-stone-novuyo-rosa-tshuma.html"><em>House of Stone</em></a>, the 2018 novel by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, tells the story of an orphaned young man trying to explore his past. He’ll find out that his father is Black Jesus (a name by which Shiri was known). Tshuma’s descriptions of the genocide are detailed, graphic and ghastly. </p>
<p>Literary creativity has made it possible to remember, commemorate and document experiences that otherwise would have been forgotten or dispersed through wilful omission. In doing so, literary texts create narratives of Zimbabwe’s history and national identity. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351049/original/file-20200804-22-1gyina7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">W. W. Norton & Company</span></span>
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<p>“To write is to banish silence,” writes Vera in her 1995 <a href="https://ocul-yor.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_YOR/q36jf8/alma991010694059705164">doctoral thesis</a> on colonialism and narratives of resistance. “As a writer, you don’t want to suppress history, you want to be one of the people liberating stories.” </p>
<p>She explains that “to write is to engage possibilities for triumphant and repeated exits, inversion and recuperation of identity”. In this line of thinking, writing can offer victims of Gukurahundi a voice which the state continues to deny them. </p>
<h2>Art of torture</h2>
<p>Visual artworks have also engaged with Gukurahundi, such as in the exhibition <em>Sibathontisele</em> by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/04/zimbabwe-artist-arrest-mugabe-censorship">Owen Maseko</a>, which has stood for years as a material text-under-erasure in Zimbabwe. <em>Sibathontisele</em> is a Ndebele word meaning “we drip it on them”. It refers to an infamous torture technique used by the Fifth Brigade in which they dripped hot and melted plastic on victims.</p>
<p>Unlike literary texts, which have remained unbanned and uncensored, Maseko’s 2010 exhibition was banned by state security a day after its opening at the <a href="http://www.nationalgallerybyo.com/">National Arts Gallery</a> in Bulawayo and the artist was arrested. Visual art, it appears, is deemed more subversive than written texts. In spite of such restrictions, Maseko’s exhibition has been hosted outside Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>The artist explains in this <a href="http://archive.kubatana.net/docs/artcul/osisa_trials_tribulatn_of_artist_110630.pdf">article</a> that art, justice and human rights are intricately interrelated. Visual art plays a role in bringing to the surface narratives on Gukurahundi, which have been buried for almost three decades.</p>
<h2>The rich memory</h2>
<p>Writers and visual artists are able to create alternative spaces for marginalised and forgotten stories. And Zimbabwe’s artists have created a rich memory and archive that counters the culture of forgetting and criminalising open discussion of Gukurahundi. </p>
<p>Through their works, histories are revisited so that they can be better understood and can be accorded their rightful recognition. They have opened new spaces of discussion and have gestured towards the importance of remembering and learning from the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143847/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Artists are filling the state’s silence by revisiting history so that it can be discussed.
Gibson Ncube, Associate Professor, University of Zimbabwe
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.