tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/zimbabwe-artists-90960/articles
Zimbabwe artists – The Conversation
2023-10-29T10:07:08Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215555
2023-10-29T10:07:08Z
2023-10-29T10:07:08Z
Shepherd Ndudzo’s celebrated sculptures tell an untold history of southern African art
<p>The <a href="https://intethe.co.za/shepherd-ndudzo/">work</a> of award-winning Zimbabwe-born sculptor <a href="https://artafricamagazine.org/shepherd-ndudzo-2/">Shepherd Ndudzo</a> is instantly recognisable. Fluid, elongated black bodies and body parts flow from white rock in a typical work. The bodies are dancing or praying, holding hands or reaching out. </p>
<p>These figurative sculptures, carved out of stone (marble and granite) and wood (ironwood), were recently shown along with his abstract wooden sculptures (titled Seed) at the <a href="https://artjoburg.com/exhibitors/">FNB Joburg Art Fair</a> in South Africa by Botswana’s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/oraloapi_/?hl=en">Ora Laopi</a> contemporary art gallery and research project.</p>
<p>The work by the artist (born in 1978) was displayed as a celebration of the sculpture of Botswana, where he lives and works. The show was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/oraloapi">dedicated</a> to his father, <a href="https://www.mmegi.bw/artculture-review/ndudzo-a-patriarch-of-local-sculptors/news">Barnabas Ndudzo</a>, the famed creator of realistic, often life-size sculptures. In a <a href="https://vimeo.com/861254066?fbclid=IwAR1KfPY63fbSjGwOgg3BxVF0fwQ0e0LM7MC-68wtN54O6igXOSoMnQRCcNQ">documentary</a> produced by the gallery, Shepherd tells how he was taught to sculpt by his father. He says that his works speak about migration and help tell his family story.</p>
<p>It’s a tale that spans three neighbouring southern African nations, all known for their sculpture – Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa. It exposes a history of shared traditions and schools of teaching, of colonial-era gatekeeping and art world wars. It’s this history that informs the research for my <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/artsofafrica/people/doctoralresearchers/barnabastichamuvhuti/">PhD thesis</a> on Zimbabwean art.</p>
<p>It’s my view that Shepherd Ndudzo’s work can only be fully appreciated by understanding his transnational story and how it has shaped his life and career, showing how art traditions are invented and reinvented across borders.</p>
<h2>Kekana school</h2>
<p>His father Barnabas was born in Zimbabwe and attended the Kekana School of Art and Craft in the late 1960s. Early art schools in Zimbabwe were founded and run by white missionaries and expatriates. But the Kekana School was founded by a black artist and teacher. The school was started at St Faith’s Mission near Rusape by South African sculptor <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/job-patja-kekana">Job Patja Kekana</a> in the early 1960s, long before Zimbabwe attained <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">independence</a> in 1980. </p>
<p>Kekana had trained at Grace Dieu Mission Diocesan Training College near Pietersburg (Polokwane). The same institution was attended by <a href="https://www.art.co.za/gerardsekoto/about.php">Gerard Sekoto</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-methuen-mancoba">Ernest Mancoba</a>, two of South Africa’s prominent black modernists. (<a href="https://uobrep.openrepository.com/handle/10547/621830">Modernism</a> was an era of experimentation in art from the late 1800s to the mid 1950s. It saw new ideas, new media and the uptake of socio-political concerns.)</p>
<p>Kekana had settled at St Faith’s in 1944 and stayed until he died in 1995, except for the three years (1960-1963) when he attended art college in the UK. When Shepherd enrolled at St Faith’s High School in Zimbabwe in the early 1990s, he briefly met his father’s ageing mentor. </p>
<p>Shepherd mostly learned from assisting and observing his father at work. Like Kekana and all his students, Barnabas mostly carved realistic statues and busts.</p>
<h2>Art war</h2>
<p>Zimbabwe is famous for its <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/curations/shona-sculpture">“Shona sculpture”</a> tradition in which artists use handmade tools, patiently carving human and animal forms from <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/serpentinite">serpentinite</a> rocks. UK-born artist, teacher and museum curator <a href="https://africanartists.blogspot.com/2015/04/remembering-frank-mcewen.html">Frank McEwen</a> pigeonholed artists from various ethnic backgrounds and different countries – and not just from the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona people</a> – in a single <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171633?typeAccessWorkflow=login">misnamed</a> cultural basket. Their individual creative styles did not matter. </p>
<p>McEwen was the founding director of the Rhodes National Gallery (<a href="http://www.nationalgallery.co.zw/">National Gallery of Zimbabwe</a>). Although he was celebrated for his efforts at promoting Zimbabwe’s abstract stone sculpture tradition, ensuring that the world accepted it as modern art, his presence was bad for artists who worked with media like wood and were making realistic works, as well as for those stationed at <a href="https://cyrenemission.com/2016/11/08/history/">missionary</a> <a href="https://zimnative.com/blogs/historical-sites-and-ancient-ruins/father-john-groeber-and-st-mary-s-church-at-serima-mission">workshops</a>. (Figurative art represents existing objects. Abstract art usually has no real-life visual reference. Realism refers to accurate depictions usually portraying a sitter or model.)</p>
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<p>McEwen preferred working with sculptors from the National Gallery School and the <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/the-beauty-of-tengenenge-village/">Tengenenge</a> workshop until he had a fall-out with its founder, <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/just-in-fare-thee-well-thomas-blomefield/">Tom Blomefield</a>. As reported in the press, Blomefield accused McEwen of stealing artists from his stable. Art historian <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315714465_Patron_and_Artist_in_the_Shaping_of_Zimbabwean_Art">Elizabeth Morton</a> highlighted that when Kekana visited the National Gallery School soon after his return from the UK he was chased away by McEwen, who didn’t want to see him near his students.</p>
<h2>Barnabas</h2>
<p>With McEwen holding the most powerful position at the nation’s central art institution, artists from Kekana’s school found themselves on the periphery of Zimbabwe’s mainstream art canon. They had to rely on church commissions and teaching jobs. This probably explains why Barnabas briefly found himself conducting “ecumenical workshops” for the Methodist Church in 1970 and 1971. Today the national gallery doesn’t have a single piece of his in its collection.</p>
<p>Barnabas headed south, finding a home at the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/federated-union-black-artists-arts-centre">Federated Union of Black Artists</a> (Fuba), an academy in Johannesburg. He settled in Botswana in the mid-1990s. He taught art at Gallery Ann and other institutions before moving to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thapong.centre">Thapong Visual Arts Centre</a> where he continued to mentor emerging artists. </p>
<p>He gained considerable recognition and respect in Botswana. And it’s in Botswana that his son Shepherd continues to sculpt, having moved to the country initially to assist his father.</p>
<h2>Shepherd</h2>
<p>The younger Ndudzo collects the <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/ndafunga-dande-exhibition-opens-at-national-gallery/">hardwood</a> he uses from construction sites, especially from trees bulldozed for road construction. He prefers marble from Zambia and Namibia which comes not only in white, but also in various shades of grey and brown. He highlights how citizens of these countries walk across the countryside on this resource, hardly appreciating its importance. The black granite he combines them with is mostly from Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>Recently, Shepherd took me to his home in Oodi village in Kgatleng district. His vast open yard is his studio – where his artist neighbours tolerate the deafening noise of his sculpture making.</p>
<p>Though he <a href="https://vimeo.com/861254066?fbclid=IwAR1KfPY63fbSjGwOgg3BxVF0fwQ0e0LM7MC-68wtN54O6igXOSoMnQRCcNQ">talks</a> about moving away from his father’s realistic style, I still see strong elements of it in his work. The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/bas-relief">bas-relief</a> carving in the larger works of wood exhibited at the Joburg Art Fair is a good example. It’s a style inherited from Kekana, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aXMHEwVL0bgC&oi=fnd&pg=PT44&dq=barnabas+ndudzo&ots=4S2f9dwvF3&sig=QxJZpGay1iqYFxULB93gbd7LuFE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=barnabas%20ndudzo&f=false">who</a> “taught his students bas-relief carving, and realism and understanding of the wood grain”. </p>
<p>Thus I see Shepherd Ndudzo as an artist sustaining a legacy emanating from the Kekana school. However, his work oscillates between figuration and abstraction. It’s quite conceptual in that it is about ideas and quite experimental in that it blends different elements. The artist points to the likes of <a href="https://chapunguatcenterra.com/team/tapfuma-gutsa/">Tapfuma Gutsa</a> as his greatest inspiration. Gutsa transformed Zimbabwe’s stone sculpture tradition, blending stone with various other elements.</p>
<h2>Lineage</h2>
<p>Shepherd’s decision to dedicate his exhibition to his father and mentor is an important gesture. It highlights the story of a sidelined artist, mostly written out of history, like others from the Kekana school.</p>
<p>Artists do not make art in complete isolation. Highlighting the lineage Shepherd Ndudzo belongs to helps us understand his practice, choice of materials and aesthetic references.</p>
<p>It’s a lineage that’s transnational in outlook – linking Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe – and his materials are drawn from different countries. This helps us appreciate how artistic practice can feed off art ecosystems across southern African borders.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215555/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. </span></em></p>
His work can only be fully understood by observing the shared traditions of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti, PhD in Art History, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183390
2022-06-06T15:06:19Z
2022-06-06T15:06:19Z
Artist Richard Mudariki’s vision for a Zimbabwean contemporary art fair
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465043/original/file-20220524-19-4v4f9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The artist in his studio. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy Richard Mudariki</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In the past 20 years, a new generation of Zimbabwean artists has attained international acclaim, or emerged as stars with work showing at top galleries and museums, collected by prominent people such as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-12-20-zimbabwean-artist-draws-inspiration-from-rejection-to-world-stardom/">Jay Z</a>. One of these <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-zimbabwean-artist-kudzanai-chiurai-has-reinvented-the-idea-of-a-library-167163">stars</a>, Cape Town based <a href="https://zeitzmocaa.museum/artists/richard-mudariki/">Richard Mudariki</a>, is now using his growing fame and network to create a contemporary art fair to spotlight emerging artists in Zimbabwe. With it Harare has joined other major African cities like <a href="https://investeccapetownartfair.co.za">Cape Town</a>, <a href="https://biennaledakar.org">Dakar</a>, <a href="https://artxlagos.com">Lagos</a>, <a href="https://www.1-54.com/marrakech/">Marrakech</a> and <a href="https://klaart.org">Kampala</a> in bolstering its contemporary art scene.</em></p>
<p><em>Mudariki co-founded <a href="https://www.artharare.com/">artHARARE Contemporary Art Fair</a> with art historian <a href="https://uk.linkedin.com/in/aya-koudounaris-a28aa2192?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F">Aya Koudounaris</a>. The first editions in 2020 and 2021 took place online in a time of COVID isolation. Now it’s expanding its scope <a href="https://gogetfunding.com/artharare-contemporary-2022/">by fundraising</a> to take place in physical form in Harare sometime in November 2022.</em></p>
<p><em>While fairs are marketplaces where various galleries display art for sale in order to attract collectors, artHARARE is also driven by a sense of community building. It is addressing <a href="https://johannesburg.prohelvetia.org/en/2021/08/10/artharare-contemporary-art/">a lack of infrastructure</a> that continues to force young talent to look elsewhere for support. I spoke with Mudariki about the project.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Who attends or views artHARARE, from where?</h2>
<p>Because of the power of the internet, our growing audiences for the <a href="https://www.artharare.com/artharare21">two</a> <a href="https://www.artharare.com/artharare20">editions</a> of artHARARE were international. According to the website analytics and reports, we have a huge following from South Africa, Germany, the UK, the US and of course Zimbabwe. Most visitors (87%) came to our site directly, not from a link from another site, while 47% came through Google and 16% through our social media platforms. The majority of our audience are art collectors, curators, art institutions, journalists, art historians, art lovers, art students and artists.</p>
<h2>What kind of model is artHARARE built on?</h2>
<p>The model that artHARARE has adopted is unique in that it is an artist-run contemporary art fair. Artists are our key partners in this venture. Our value proposition is to bring under one umbrella and celebrate all leading contemporary Zimbabwean visual arts and cultural producers in an open, easy to view platform. Our mission is to attract the attention of leading international art collectors, art museums, art foundations, auction houses and corporate collections to acquire and add contemporary Zimbabwean visual art to their collections.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting on a wall is brightly coloured showing a figure reclining, faces emerging from the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465097/original/file-20220524-13-h7isq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&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="caption">artHARARE 2021 artist George Masarira.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy Richard Mudariki/artHARARE</span></span>
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<p>Over the past 18 months artHARARE has received tremendous support from the artistic community in Zimbabwe and its diaspora. The platform aims to deliver economic value to both the artist and the collector or art institution by being the go-to platform to showcase and discover art, explore Zimbabwe’s rich artistic heritage and establish competitive primary and secondary market prices. </p>
<p>We are heavily investing in building a robust network of artists, curators, collectors, galleries, art dealers, art historians, and art lovers, a form of social capital, or call it cultural capital. As an entrepreneurial venture, we have a time horizon of five years to develop the brand artHARARE, realise our vision and place it on the international art calendar.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting on a wall shows two rural figures." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465098/original/file-20220524-20-ns5bz9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&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="caption">artHARARE 2021 artist Option Nyahunzvi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo courtesy Richard Mudariki/artHARARE</span></span>
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<p>In our launch year, we saw significant contributions of skill, energy and time by many art professionals in Zimbabwe and in its diaspora, and a dedicated team that worked to launch the online fair in just under four months. A lot of value was created, with many artworks by emerging Zimbabwean visual artists being acquired in local and international private collections. In addition, a number of emerging artists who were showcased in the fair were picked up by international galleries in London and Milan. </p>
<p>Year two saw an increased interest in the activities of the fair both from the artists (more than 30) and art collectors representing all continents. We were privileged to showcase artworks of internationally recognised Zimbabwean artists such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moffat_Takadiwa">Moffat Takadiwa</a> and <a href="https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/portia-zvavahera/biography">Portia Zvavahera</a>. Their participation allows for the fair to have anchor artists that give it weight. The fair’s art prize was established and we facilitated a programme that brought an emerging female artist <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artist/prudence-prudie-chimutuwah/works-for-sale">Prudence Chimutuwah</a> from Harare to a four week residency in Cape Town.</p>
<h2>Why did you feel an art prize was a necessary intervention?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.artharare.com/artprize">artHARARE Africa First Art Prize</a> was set up to benefit emerging and mid-career artists working in Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean diaspora by increasing their profile. For the inaugural prize, we received a number of high quality submissions and the professional jury team – <a href="https://contemporaryand.com/magazines/fadzai-muchemwa-appointed-curator-at-national-gallery-of-zimbabwe/">Fadzai Muchemwa</a>, Moffat Takadiwa, <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/gallery-1957-accra-ghana">Marwan Zakhem</a>, Serge Tiroche and Richard Mudariki – had a hard time picking the two winners <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBAnoznjI4w">Wilfred Timire and Franklyn Dzingai</a>. A group exhibition of the shortlisted artists was held. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-zimbabwean-artist-kudzanai-chiurai-has-reinvented-the-idea-of-a-library-167163">How Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai has reinvented the idea of a library</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>It will be run as an annual prize. The sponsors, <a href="https://www.africafirst.art/about">Africa First</a> founded by art investment expert <a href="http://www.tirochedeleon.com/team/serge-tiroche/">Serge Tiroche</a>, share our vision of promoting contemporary art from the continent. </p>
<h2>What have you learnt so far?</h2>
<p>I have learnt these important lessons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Opportunities exist in the midst of a crisis.</p></li>
<li><p>Working with an energetic, committed and hardworking team makes a difference.</p></li>
<li><p>Zimbabwe is full of fresh talent and the artists are eager to be successful.</p></li>
<li><p>We need to work together and speak as one voice.</p></li>
<li><p>The digital renaissance in the global art market is here to stay.</p></li>
</ol>
<h2>In future will you change any aspects of the fair?</h2>
<p>Going forward, the fair will have a physical presence which seeks to activate various spaces in the city (and country) to host creative and artistic interventions. An art education programme is also on the plans to educate and encourage a new generation of young local art lovers and art collectors. This will also be complemented by an artist incubation programme that seeks to develop artists to become professional in their practices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183390/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>
Harare aims to join a growing list of African cities hosting high profile events to sell local art and bolster artists.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177927
2022-04-04T14:04:45Z
2022-04-04T14:04:45Z
A street art mural in Zimbabwe exposes a divided society
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451563/original/file-20220311-26-1f2kx8w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Lobengula holds Mbuya Nehanda in the mural.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screenshot/Leeroy Spinx Brittain aka Bow</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Shona">Shona</a> and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ndebele-Zimbabwean-people">Ndebele</a> are Zimbabwe’s two most dominant ethnic groups. Explaining the ever-present tension between them, historian Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni <a href="https://www.accord.org.za/ajcr-issues/nation-building-in-zimbabwe-and-the-challenges-of-ndebele-particularism/">points to</a> the abuse of the post-colonial state by the ruling Shona-dominated government “in its drive to destroy Ndebele particularism”. He explains, “This sets in motion the current Matabeleland politics of alienation, resentment and grievance.”</p>
<p>This continued marginalisation of Matabeleland (a region in southwestern Zimbabwe inhabited mainly by the Ndebele people) by the ZANU-PF-led government has rendered Zimbabwe so fragile a nation that even a street mural can expose its disunity. </p>
<p>The mural in question borrows two historical figures – King Lobengula and Mbuya Nehanda – to express the possibility of unity between the two dominant groups. How the mural was dealt with is the subject of this analysis.</p>
<h2>The mural that caused the trouble</h2>
<p>Over the weekend of 22 January 2022 a mural appeared at the Corner of Fife Street and 8th Avenue in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bulawayo">Bulawayo</a>, Zimbabwe’s second largest city and the main city of Matabeleland. The mural was by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/leeroy.s.brittain">Leeroy Spinx Brittain</a>, popularly known as Bow (black or white). By the afternoon of the 24th, the city’s municipality had erased it.</p>
<p>King Lobengula is portrayed with an arm around the shoulders of Mbuya Nehanda, in life-sized images resembling popular archival reproductions of them. In his other hand Lobengula is holding a heart-shaped balloon instead of his usual spear. It’s derivative of UK-based street artist <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-behind-banksy-4310304/">Banksy</a>’s mural <a href="https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-banksy/series-girl-with-balloon">Girl With Balloon</a>.</p>
<p>Bulawayo deputy mayor Mlandu Ncube is <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/king-lobengula-and-mbuya-nehanda-mural-erased/">reported</a> to say that the artist had not applied for permission and creating a mural without the city’s licence could attract a hefty fine or jail time. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1485854215176130563"}"></div></p>
<p>The artist was <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/zimbabwe-street-art-debate/">calling</a> on Ndebeles and Shonas to begin a dialogue and unite. But judging from the divisive comments on social media platforms like <a href="https://twitter.com/zimlive/status/1485854215176130563?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1485933578554904579%7Ctwgr%5Ehb_0_8%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.okayafrica.com%2Fzimbabwe-street-art-debate%2F">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/215170571826981/posts/5224165710927417/">Facebook</a>, few embraced his message.</p>
<p>According to online comments and news <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-214233.html">articles</a> some found the mural disrespectful and offensive – because of the contentious matter of the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-gukurahundi-43923">Gukurahundi</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2b5iVGCDs0">massacres</a>. </p>
<h2>Echoes of Gukurahundi</h2>
<p>Gukurahundi refers to an ethnic cleansing atrocity which claimed up to 20,000 lives in Matebeleland and parts of Midlands in the 1980s. It’s <a href="https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/shemurenga-the-zimbabwean-womens-movement-1995-2000">described</a> by feminist academic and activist Shereen Essof as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-gabriel-mugabe-a-man-whose-list-of-failures-is-legion-121596">Robert Mugabe</a> regime’s “first, and still unpunished genocide”. British author Hazel Cameron <a href="https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/wilful-blindness/">claimed</a> that the massacres were committed under the watchful eye of the British government eager to safeguard its significant economic and strategic interests in Southern Africa. </p>
<p>To this day, Zimbabwe’s leadership refuses to publicly acknowledge and address the massacres, with Mugabe once referring to them as a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2021.1954356">moment of madeness</a>. I would argue that the unaddressed atrocities have left Zimbabweans failing to collectively embrace and appreciate even a harmless but constructive expression of art. As long as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">Gukurahundi</a> continues to be ignored by the state, Zimbabweans will not find common ground.</p>
<h2>Who were Nehanda and Lobengula?</h2>
<p>Mbuya Nehanda is a <a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Zezuru">Zezuru</a> (Shona) ancestral spirit (mhondoro) said to possess different women at different times in history. The Nehanda in the mural is <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/zimbabwe-unveils-statue-anti-colonial-leader-mbuya-nehanda-180977835/">Charwe Nyakasikana</a>. She led the Shona resistance against <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a>’ colonising forces. For her role in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/181122?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">1896-7 First Chimurenga Uprisings</a>, she was hanged. To emphasise her importance, the ruling regime erected <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/26/anger-in-zimbabwe-at-nehanda-statue-amid-collapsing-economy">her statue</a> in Harare last year.</p>
<p>A son and successor of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-mzilikazi">King Mzilikazi</a>, founder of the Ndebele Kingdom, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lobengula">King Lobengula</a> ruled the nation from 1868 to the 1890s when his kingdom succumbed to the British. He was never captured. In polarised Zimbabwe, some Shona people blame him for signing the <a href="https://www.ipl.org/essay/The-Rudd-Concession-FJXAHDL4RG">Rudd Concession</a>. This paved the way for the colonisation of the country.</p>
<p>To this day Shonas and Ndebeles identify with these figures, who never met in the flesh.</p>
<h2>Public art in Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>This is the first major controversy around murals and graffiti in the country in years. Sometimes municipal authorities don’t erase work at all, despite it being created without permission. This is the case with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/mar/07/these-are-our-local-heroes-the-artist-painting-murals-of-hope-in-a-zimbabwe-township?fbclid=IwAR03t5tR74KcXwvd61LD5kFXJLhE7prCjW4k8rkA-UF7XGV9r-eym1R_0qE">Basil Matsika</a>’s murals in Mbare.</p>
<p>It is the state-sanctioned public art, mostly statues, that tend to attract controversy. Issues of patronage and who commissioned the work are crucial in determining whether it survives a critical and public onslaught. In 2010 people were generally unhappy when the government commissioned the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2010-09-30-north-korean-statues-open-wounds-in-zim/">North Koreans</a> for a pair of statues of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joshua-Nkomo">Joshua Nkomo</a> for Bulawayo and Harare. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A crowd with banners gathers around a statue of a man standing proudly on a plinth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451700/original/file-20220312-21-1xs6hew.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">Protesters at the Joshua Nkomo statue in Bulawayo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ZINYANGE AUNTONY/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nkomo was a nationalist and revolutionary leader of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which fought alongside (now ruling) ZANU in the country’s liberation struggle. Ndebele people in particular were incensed that Pyongyang had a hand in training the Fifth Brigade, a section of the Zimbabwe National Army responsible for unleashing Gukurahundi. Zimbabweans were also unhappy that no local sculptor was assigned to do the work.</p>
<p>Last year, the government withdrew the first statue of <a href="https://www.zimlive.com/2020/12/18/mnangagwa-rejects-youthful-and-big-booty-mbuya-nehanda-statue/">Nehanda</a> after a public outcry. The youthful, large-bottomed depiction of Nehanda went viral on the internet. The artist, David Guy Mutasa, was given a chance to amend his mistakes. The Nkomo and Nehanda statues went ahead because they were political posturing from the government, disguised as cultural revival initiatives. </p>
<p>The same cannot be said of Bow’s mural as an independent initiative. The artist has worked with advertising company <a href="https://www.facebook.com/caligraph.co/photos/?ref=page_internal">CaliGraph</a> to create murals of other figures like musician Sandra Ndebele and socialite Mbo Mahocs and these have not been removed. This would indicate that the authorities embrace his work as long as it is about aesthetics and not politics.</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>Alongside the likes of Black Phar-I, <a href="https://twitter.com/aero5ol">Aero5ol</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ckombo/?hl=en">Kombo Chapfika</a>, the Bulawayo-based Bow is part of a new breed of street artists. He is <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/muralist-behind-mbuya-nehanda-king-lobengula-bares-it-all/">reported</a> saying he was raised by a Ndebele grandmother and a Shona grandfather, which makes it difficult to assign him an ethnic group unless he identifies with one. </p>
<p>This makes him a neutral observer in the socio-political divide. Driven by his desire to see a more united Zimbabwe, Bow <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/zimbabwe-street-art-debate/">promises</a> to do more poster art and murals that call for unity between the Shona and the Ndebele. This will continue challenging the status quo and initiating dialogue around the country’s history.</p>
<h2>Freedom of expression</h2>
<p>Instead of the mural brewing a fresh tribal storm or creating a bitter debate – as highlighted in articles in <a href="https://thestandard.newsday.co.zw/2022/01/30/erased-mural-brews-tribal-storm/"><em>The Standard</em></a> and <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/zimbabwe-street-art-debate/"><em>Okay Africa</em></a> – I argue that Bow’s piece reminded the nation how polarised it has always been. </p>
<p>And the jail threats of the deputy mayor would certainly deter graffiti artists who desire to address contentious political matters that rattle the state. As long as the government continues to stifle freedom of expression, artists who do street art and graffiti are in danger of limiting their expression to commissions for social campaigns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History in the NRF SARChI Chair program in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, Rhodes University.
His Ph.D. research is partly funded by the Rhodes University African Studies Centre through its funding from the DFG, the German Research Foundation under Germany ́s Excellence Strategy, funding number EXC2052/1</span></em></p>
The unity between Zimbabwe’s two main ethnic groups is so fragile that even an inspirational street mural can expose it.
Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti, Ph.D. in Art History candidate, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179921
2022-03-28T15:11:42Z
2022-03-28T15:11:42Z
Synik uses hip-hop to discuss Zimbabwe’s issues despite the censors
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454319/original/file-20220325-19-1774bf2.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">Photo by Visual Narphilia courtesy Synik</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” This is how British Somali poet <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-writing-life-of-a-young-prolific-poet-warsan-shire">Warsan Shire</a> begins her now famous poem called <a href="https://seekersguidance.org/articles/social-issues/home-warsan-shire/">Home</a>. These words resonate with the experiences of many Zimbabweans who have been forced to leave their country in search of better opportunities elsewhere. </p>
<p>The beginning of the 2000s saw the rapid economic and political decline of the country, largely due to the inopportune <a href="https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=5082&context=etd">land reform programme</a> instituted by the government of <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">Robert Mugabe</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://hiphopafrican.com/2018/04/11/who-is-synik/">Synik</a> (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/synikzim/?hl=en">Gerald Mugwenhi</a>) is an award-winning Zimbabwean hip-hop artist currently based in Lisbon, Portugal. His first album <a href="https://3-mob.com/entertainment/synik-syn-city-album-review/">SynCity</a> details some of the challenges that force Zimbabweans to leave their homeland. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An album cover with a photo of a dreadlocked man in a brown coat from behind. In front of him a train passes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454322/original/file-20220325-21-1jttqpv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&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">Synik Records</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His latest album, <a href="https://www.greedysouth.co.zw/2022/03/new-album-travel-guide-for-broken-by.html">A Travel Guide for the Broken</a>, chronicles what it means to be Zimbabwean in a foreign country. Synik’s new album is a logical extension of his earlier themes. </p>
<p>I first began to explore the way music offers Zimbabweans a space to discuss social issues some years ago. I have argued in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18125980.2017.1322470">my research</a> that hip-hop artists like Synik offer a self-reflexive space to decry the diverse issues afflicting contemporary Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>In a country where the public sphere is heavily censored by the state, music proposes an alternative space to discuss what is happening.</p>
<h2>Censorship</h2>
<p>In Synik’s time numerous artists in Zimbabwe have had their work censored or banned. For example, visual artist Owen Maseko was arrested and his politically-charged <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-artists-have-preserved-the-memory-of-zimbabwes-1980s-massacres-143847">art exhibition</a> was banned. </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>Over the years numerous songs have been banned from the national airwaves for being critical of the government. This has included music by non-Zimbabweans. For example, South African group Freshlyground was <a href="https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2011/06/27/freshlyground">banned</a> from performing in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>Outspoken Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga explains in a <a href="https://codesria.org/IMG/pdf/Dangarembga_The_Popular_Arts-2.pdf">2008 lecture</a> that there “is practically no public sphere to speak of” in Zimbabwe:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those who wish to parade peacefully for non-political issues … are refused permits … Those who do not comply with the refusal, and march or parade, are quickly broken up by the police.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Almost 15 years later, nothing has really changed. </p>
<h2>Difficult Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>Released in 2012, SynCity was Synik’s first album. The central theme is life in Harare – however, what happens in the capital city embodies what happens elsewhere in the country. For example, in the song Power Cut, he describes a party scene that is disrupted by an electricity outage, one of the daily struggles faced by Zimbabweans. These struggles, as he states in Marching As One, are man made.</p>
<p>In a more critical song, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/synikzim/videos/synik-greed/10153613199522083/">Greed</a>, Synik paints a grim picture of how greed is to blame for the various challenges bedevilling Zimbabwe. The first part of the song focuses on how a small ruling elite abuses its political power by amassing obscene wealth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Steals from sanitation, from our homes and clinics</p>
<p>From our children’s education and the roads and bridges too</p>
<p>While they fly to foreign lands for their medical exams</p>
<p>Your folks are in the village dying without a plan</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Synik alludes to how those in positions of power steal from state coffers, so the basic infrastructure and healthcare needed by citizens is either non-existent or dilapidated. </p>
<p>This song ends on a didactic note as he proposes that “we got one world and its resources are limited, so we gotta check our greed if well all gonna live on it”. This is a recurring element in Synik’s songs. He calls for a change in the way people think and act.</p>
<h2>Diaspora blues</h2>
<p>On his <a href="https://synikzim.bandcamp.com/album/a-travel-guide-for-the-broken">new album</a>, Synik explains that although many problems cease when some move to foreign lands, they must deal with a set of new challenges there. </p>
<p>These include xenophobia, racism and racial profiling among many others. Dealing with them leads to a condition which Synik terms “diaspora blues”. In the song Underground he recounts some of these challenges:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Exploited daily, no unions rebuking the bosses</p>
<p>Who pay us half our wages to be boosting their profits</p>
<p>Working long shifts, modern enslavement in progress</p>
<p>Dependants back home is why we taking this nonsense</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He describes how foreigners are blamed for all the things that are wrong in the countries that they have adopted as home: “They are saying <em>kwerekweres</em> are the problem. They say we only there so we can rob them.”</p>
<p>While the diaspora offers economic possibilities, it remains an inhospitable place. In the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIBAbupfXok">Rukuvhute</a> (the umbilical cord), Synik refers to how Zimbabweans in the diaspora have to deal with numerous hardships:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Plodding through the hardest of terrains</p>
<p>Conscious of the strain of being estranged from where you came</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Music as critique and alternative archive</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man stand with his hands in his jacket pockets, in a grey hoodie with dreadlocks; he looks deadpan into camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454323/original/file-20220325-23-1gbcdh1.jpg?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">Photo by Visual Narphilia courtesy Synik</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the diaspora is inhospitable, it offers security for musicians such as Synik to openly critique the government back home. Academic Isidore Okpewho <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3821157.pdf">explains</a> how migration can offer a productive space of “asking the kinds of questions that lay the foundations for a morally responsible order of existence in the future”.</p>
<p>The music of artists such as Synik is important for its analysis of contemporary Zimbabwean culture and society. Against a background of a stifled and censored public sphere, music presents an alternative public arena. </p>
<p>Through music, Synik and other musicians create a space in which topical political issues can be discussed. The creation of “other” spaces of free speech is important in making known things which the state would rather stifle and obfuscate. Synik’s music is transformed into a tool of documentation that creates an archive of narratives and discourses that are ordinarily sidelined from the public sphere.</p>
<p>The critique offered by this alternative space is central in enabling us to challenge the role of politics and politicians in shaping not just our lives but, importantly, individual and national identity and consciousness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179921/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>
Synik’s new album continues to shape identity and consciousness in a country with limited freedom of speech.
Gibson Ncube, Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167163
2021-09-13T14:55:22Z
2021-09-13T14:55:22Z
How Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai has reinvented the idea of a library
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421011/original/file-20210914-23-1m5i8g1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Johannesburg version of the library.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthea Pokroy/Courtesy Kudzanai Chiurai</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe born artist <a href="https://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/kudzanai-chiurai#bio">Kudzanai Chiurai</a> is a phenomenon. He is one of the most challenging and inventive <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-09-01-00-evolving-cynical-and-everything-in-between/">figures</a> in contemporary African art. From large scale photos of fictional African dictators to experimental films and protest posters, rich oil paintings and minimal sculptures, his work is housed in the world’s top galleries and collections.</p>
<p>Chiurai, though, frequently shrugs off gallery spaces to show in warehouses, on the street or in urban locations. His latest project, <a href="https://kudzanaichiurai.com"><em>The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember</em></a>, is <a href="https://www.44stanley.co.za/the-library">housed</a> in a boutique shopping complex, 44 Stanley, in Johannesburg. It is built around his collecting practice focused on preserving archives and memorialising social and cultural history from southern Africa. He’s turned his own personal library and archive into a public art project. </p>
<p>It’s an idea informed by Chiurai’s obsessive <a href="https://www.riotmaterial.com/archive-fever-kudzanai-chiurai/">interest in history</a> and accumulation of artefacts such as books, pamphlets, zines, newspapers, vinyl records, political <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/38241">posters</a>, audio recordings and other ephemera – materials that explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements. </p>
<p>The work takes a pointedly nontraditional approach to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivist">archivism</a>. The selection and acquisition is determined by interaction. It is managed as a kind of commons where people can share and benefit from the artist’s collection and what is donated by others. Whereas most archives and libraries stress the preservation of materials, Chiurai’s library promotes access, physical engagement, and active use of the materials to maintain their continued relevance.</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>The library reflects Chiurai’s artistic repertoire, which deploys the use of mixed media to address social, political and cultural issues. It calls to mind his groundbreaking 2011 exhibition <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-4lRJrgwRw"><em>State of the Nation</em></a> which explored conflict by constructing an African utopia that enabled him to merge forms and mediums, juxtapose political ideas, evoke historical figures – like a speech by slain Congolese independence leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrice-Lumumba">Patrice Lumumba</a> delivered by artist Zaki Ibrahim – alongside a performance by contemporary musician Thandiswa Mazwai. </p>
<p>In his work Chiurai imagines new ways to activate, share, present and reinvent the archives, as he does with his latest project, the library. </p>
<h2>The library</h2>
<p>Initially, in 2017, <em>The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember</em> was of no fixed abode, usually incorporated into the artist’s own exhibitions. But the concept of a mobile library was altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted movement and live events. The library is about gathering, not just materials, but people. It is supposed to be a meeting place.</p>
<p>Now, Chiurai also invites others to curate this archive, to re-arrange it for regular public viewing in a rented space. He <a href="https://www.apollo-magazine.com/kudzanai-chiurai-goodman-gallery/">considers</a> the library to be: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Itself a form of liberated zone. It functions independently – I find a different librarian every time … and different people see the process of cataloguing differently. Some look at it visually, and some aurally – and so different librarians bring different things to my attention.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a structure within a room, two smaller rooms. One contains a large filing cabinet and the other a couch, record player and political posters. A man sits on the couch listening to a record." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421012/original/file-20210914-15-7sj3x.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"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anthea Pokroy/Courtesy Kudzanai Chiurai</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The library includes the artist’s extensive collection of vinyl records associated with liberation movements in southern Africa from the 1970s-80s, notably Zimbabwean <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/chimurenga">Chimurenga</a> and South African anti-apartheid <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/5-anti-apartheid-songs-you-should-know/">struggle music</a>. There are also recordings of speeches by historical political figures such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ian-Smith">Ian Smith</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-kwame-nkrumah-used-metaphor-as-a-political-weapon-against-colonialism-129379">Kwame Nkrumah</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Martin-Luther-King-Jr">Dr Martin Luther King</a> and even a dramatic re-enactment of the trial of <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power/black-panthers">Black Panther Party</a> co-founder <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bobby-Seale">Bobby Seale</a>.</p>
<p>The collection has continued to grow. In 2018 it obtained digital recordings from the US-based educational project, <a href="https://freedomarchives.org/">Freedom Archives</a> – radio interviews with political figures and women involved in the liberation movements in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Guinea- Bissau, as well as the US civil rights movement. Other materials are donated by individuals and institutions.</p>
<p>Accordingly, Chiurai treats these traces of struggle with great care. Some of these historical documents and posters are now framed and hung on the white walls. Once, these materials chronicled life in Black Africa or Black America as it happened. Now, they are artefacts of frozen moments in history. His library is conceived as a place of contemplation and reflection. There is a big green couch and listening stations.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="against a backdrop of angular colour block paintings, a bald bearded man in glasses smiles as he talks into a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420214/original/file-20210909-13-ewn3i4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kudzanai Chiurai in Accra, Ghana, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Linus Petit</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The art of remembering</h2>
<p><em>The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember</em> is part of an effort to <a href="http://designinglibraries.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=222">expand ideas</a> of what a library can be and its decolonisation. It is an extension of new ways people are using the ‘library’ as a place of inquiry and conversation with the past. </p>
<p>Perhaps, what is fascinating is that Chiurai’s library is not static, but re-arranges in the hands of a guest librarian, and has travelled from its first iteration in Harare, to Cape Town, Kalmar, Södertälje and Johannesburg. Previous librarians have been the political writing platform <a href="https://chimurengachronic.co.za/about/">Chimurenga</a> in Harare, writer and DJ El Corazone in Cape Town, and film director and deejay <a href="https://www.encounters.co.za/guest/sifiso-khanyile/">Sifiso Khanyile</a> in Johannesburg.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A depiction of The Last Supper with a black female Jesus figure." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420614/original/file-20210912-21-19wr5nn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A still from Kudzanai Chiurai’s film Iyeza.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab courtesy Kudzanai Chiurai</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What Chiurai is doing is to incubate a new model for artistic creation and knowledge production that interferes with the circulation, display and preservation of cultural objects. Who has a right to assign value? Who decides what is history? What kinds of materials should be collected? How can access be expanded to new publics?</p>
<p>Visitors also have a responsibility. They are not just passive observers, but collaborators, interpreters, and readers. The library becomes a place of provocation that allows multiple registers of value, because value is negotiated. It’s also about the reinvention of the library as a space for multiple forms of contemplation. It is still a destination for artists, scholars, curators, and collectors to research and engage with southern African history.</p>
<p>Remembering is a virtue that Chiurai extols. In Black communities it is often an expensive luxury, a privilege. But through this new space arranged in the form of a hybrid gallery, community center, library and archive, remembering is translated into a collective process of reimagining and of sharing heritage. It is also testament of the generosity behind Chiurai’s art practice, of care and community.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167163/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>
With vinyl records, zines and political posters instead of just books, The Library of Things We Forgot to Remember offers a way to reimagine African history.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/164973
2021-07-24T08:08:29Z
2021-07-24T08:08:29Z
Building an art gallery in the midst of war in Zimbabwe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412876/original/file-20210723-19-12podes.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hope Masike performs at Gallery Delta in the documentary Art for Art's Sake.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab/Granadilla Films</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After being disenchanted with his work as a detective inspector in Rhodesia’s <a href="https://bsap.org/history.html">British South Africa Police</a>, Derek Huggins quit his job and in 1975 decided to open an art gallery. The venture, <a href="https://gallerydelta.com">Gallery Delta</a>, is now an important institution in Zimbabwe’s art history. His partner and collaborator was his wife, Helen Lieros, a talented <a href="http://zimbosinlimbo.blogspot.com/2014/04/helen-leiros-zimbabwean-artist.html">artist</a> in her own right.</p>
<p>In a documentary, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvMCppR8OGw"><em>Art for Art’s Sake: The Story of Gallery Delta</em></a>, released in June 2020, Huggins explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>While we knew that a tiny gallery of three rooms in the midst of conflict and war and sanctions would not make a living for us … in those years it was run as a voluntary, part-time, weekends, nights occupation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After running the gallery for 46 years, the couple <a href="https://artreview.com/derek-huggins-and-helen-leiros-central-to-the-zimbabwe-art-scene-for-five-decades-1940-2021/">have died</a> in Harare, a week apart, but their legacy will live on. </p>
<p>In the four decades of their stewardship of the gallery they were involved in the curation, organisation, presentation and promotion of approximately 500 exhibitions. Their art magazine, placed in schools, became a vital resource for artists and art historians in Zimbabwe.</p>
<h2>A love story</h2>
<p>Huggins, born in Kent, England, moved to Rhodesia when he was 19 to join the British South Africa Police. He writes of his experiences in his 2004 book, <a href="https://readingzimbabwe.com/books/stained-earth"><em>Stained Earth</em></a>. And <a href="http://enthusemag.com/obituary/visual-artist-helen-lieros-obituary/">Lieros</a>, who was of Greek parentage, was born in Gweru, Zimbabwe, where she was a school teacher. </p>
<p>They met at a police station where Huggins was based, while Lieros was engaged as a composite artist who drew images of suspects. Their romance blossomed and they married in July 1966. As a union they extended their influence, amplified everything they achieved and uplifted everyone they interacted with. </p>
<p>I first met them in the early 2000s when I worked as a publishing assistant at Weaver Press, a small publishing house in Harare. Gallery Delta, their enterprise, has always been a favourite venue for book launches in the city. People would congregate there to hear authors read and for the free wine. </p>
<p>In 2018, as an academic researcher, I found a collection of letters between Huggins and the celebrated writer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/apr/27/guardianobituaries.books">Yvonne Vera</a> deposited at <a href="http://www.nelm.org.za">Amazwi South African Museum of Literature</a>. For the past three years we have been exchanging emails, or if I am in Harare, drinking and bonding over tea while we discussed this book of letters I am editing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a man and a woman, grey-haired and animated as they talk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=341&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412899/original/file-20210723-27-ofrrq7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helen Lieros, left, with her husband Derek Huggins, in the 2020 documentary Art for Art’s Sake.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab/Granadilla Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The First Act</h2>
<p>Gallery Delta’s formative years were at Strachan’s building in Manica Road (now Robert Mugabe Road) in downtown Salisbury (now Harare). It was a new, radical space in a city whose art world revolved around the National Gallery of Rhodesia (now the <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.co.zw/index.php/inspire/history/the-gallery-history">National Gallery of Zimbabwe</a>) under Frank McEwen, who was at the time invested in promoting the country’s <a href="https://mg.co.za/friday/2021-06-04-in-praise-of-african-art-how-shona-sculpting-emerged/">Shona stone sculpture</a> tradition while neglecting other art forms. There were small art organisations and societies but no art schools or other exhibition galleries to talk about.</p>
<p>Huggins <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvMCppR8OGw">said</a> of the time: “Consequently, we looked for young, talented and aspiring Africans who would rather be painters than sculptors. They were almost non-existent. There were few facilities for serious art study. It meant commencing at the beginning to encourage and promote a new movement in painting. One of the ways in which we undertook this was to promote a <em>Young Artists</em> exhibition at the beginning of every year but nonetheless few, if any, good African painters emerged at this time.”</p>
<p>For Huggins and Lieros, building a community was at the core of their work. Before opening the gallery they had been members of The Circle – a radical group of 12 painters. The group was responding to the political chaos of the decade – as a <a href="https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/21/zimbabwes-struggle-for-liberation/">liberation war</a> was being fought by Zimbabweans against white minority rule – but it also became a collective means to deal with the unrest. It was this spirit the new Gallery Delta fostered.</p>
<p>From its inception The Gallery also served as an alternative venue for art exhibitions, multiracial theatre and jazz performances during this tense environment prior to independence in 1980. But when the owners of the Strachan building decided to sell, they were forced out and had to look for a new home.</p>
<h2>The Second Act</h2>
<p>In 1991, Colette Wiles, daughter of the painter <a href="https://gallerydelta.com/artist/robert-paul/">Robert Paul</a>, offered Gallery Delta the old, dilapidated house at <a href="http://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/history-and-restoration-harares-oldest-house">110 Livingstone Avenue</a> in Harare, which had been his home for nearly 40 years until his death. Built in 1894, it lays claim to being one of the oldest surviving buildings in Harare. From 1991 to 1993, Gallery Delta – with the help of architect Peter Jackson, and many others – repaired and restored the house to its original appearance, and built an adjoining amphitheatre.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A house with palm tree, old red zinc roof and old facade, church-like on green lawns" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/412901/original/file-20210723-27-vapa9a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gallery Delta today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab/Granadilla Films</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Besides teaching, mentoring and supporting the production of new art, Gallery Delta also produced and published a visual art magazine under the title of <a href="https://gallerydelta.com/magazine/"><em>Gallery</em></a>. This was a 32 page, glossy quarterly publication, edited by art critic Barbara Murray, and for a short time by the publisher Murray McCartney, which ran to 31 issues. Each edition of the magazine had a print run of 1,000 copies. </p>
<p>Copies of <em>Gallery</em> were distributed free to schools and libraries, and it has become a vital research tool for students and collectors interested in the development of contemporary painting in Zimbabwe in the 1990s. The magazine is <a href="https://gallerydelta.com/magazine/">fully digitised</a> and freely available.</p>
<p>Several contemporary Zimbabwean artists have passed through Gallery Delta, as students or exhibitors. These include Berry Bickle, Andy Roberts, Greg Shaw, Lovemore Kambudzi, Cosmas Shiridzinonwa, Gina Maxim, Misheck Masamvu, Chiko Chazunguza, Masimba Hwati, Hilary Kashiri, Portia Zvavahera, Rashid Jogee, Admire Kamudzengerere, Richard Mudariki and many others.</p>
<h2>The Third Act</h2>
<p>What does the future hold for Gallery Delta? In 2008, in response to the dire economic situation in Zimbabwe at the time, the privately owned gallery was given over by deed of donation into trust to create the Gallery Delta Foundation for Art and the Humanities, governed by an independent board of trustees. </p>
<p>A new generation of stewards will now have to carry forward the work that Derek Huggins and Helen Lieros started. As their late friend Friedbert Lutz <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvMCppR8OGw">said</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Gallery Delta is a bit like a lighthouse which stands there quietly and flickers its light in spite of all the storms we have gone through, yesterday, today and maybe tomorrow.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164973/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>
Gallerist and writer Robert Huggins and his wife, the artist Helen Lieros, have passed away. But their lives are a testament to what kind of impact one African art gallery can have.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163288
2021-06-23T14:00:39Z
2021-06-23T14:00:39Z
Pasha 112: The struggles of women doing stand-up in Zimbabwe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407896/original/file-20210623-17-keu1e1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C83%2C983%2C603&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">file s y</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Being a comedian in Zimbabwe is no easy profession, particularly if you’re a woman. The problems women face range from violence – for example, Samantha Kureya, known on stage as Gonyeti, was abducted and tortured by masked gunmen – through to attitudes that frown on women taking to the stage. </p>
<p>But Zimbabwe’s women stand-up comedians are fighting the patriarchy. Munya Guramatunhu and Sharon Chideu are taking on the stand-up comedy scene with jokes about men, sex and motherhood. </p>
<p>In today’s episode of Pasha, Amanda Källstig, a doctoral researcher at the University of Manchester, first takes us through her research on stand-up comedy in Zimbabwe and the women who are taking on the industry. And Munya and Sharon share their experiences of being women doing stand-up in Zimbabwe. They wrap up with some light-hearted chats on men, women, dating and sex.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-stand-up-comedians-in-zimbabwe-talk-about-sex-and-the-patriarchy-156052">Women stand-up comedians in Zimbabwe talk about sex - and the patriarchy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Photo:</strong><br>
“Sharon Chideu aka Magi.” by Sharon Chideu</p>
<p><strong>Music:</strong>
“Happy African Village” by John Bartmann, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/happy-african-village">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a>.</p>
<p>“Ambient Piano Loop 11 (Ambiance)” by Erokia found on <a href="https://freesound.org/people/Erokia/sounds/477042/">Freesound</a> licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/">Attribution Noncommercial License.</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163288/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Through stand-up comedy, women in Zimbabwe can resist patriarchal power relations. There are still far fewer female stand-ups in the country but the field keeps on growing.
Ozayr Patel, Digital Editor
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/156052
2021-05-13T14:58:20Z
2021-05-13T14:58:20Z
Women stand-up comedians in Zimbabwe talk about sex - and the patriarchy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/398654/original/file-20210504-22-1li34q.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwean stand-up comedian Munya Guramatunhu.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Tirivashe/Munyaradzi Guramatunhu</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019, Zimbabwean comedy made <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49433387">international news</a> when comedian Samantha Kureya, known on stage as Gonyeti, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-12-04-00-you-are-too-young-to-mock-the-government-zimbabwean-comedian-relives-her-abduction/">was abducted and tortured</a> by masked gunmen. </p>
<p>She is one of many comedians in Zimbabwe who have faced violent <a href="https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/comedians-standing-up-to-repression-in-zimbabwe/2149424">repercussions</a> for their comedy. Interviewing 23 stand-up comedians in Zimbabwe in 2018 and 2019, I was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295?casa_token=LWvzKqY4ACAAAAAA%3Au60TJ9s5wVDkRiRGrw9GYKIY7duYZJwpIr4A1Gnwy1KpxZaloSJmAQJeUsgCqgWmO0w0xBMVRVdbMGg">made aware</a> of how several comedians had been intimidated, harassed or arrested because they joked about the “wrong” political party, policy or decision. </p>
<p>Samm Farai Monro, aka <a href="https://twitter.com/comradefatsooo?lang=en">Comrade Fatso</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422015591457">points out</a> how artists in the nation joke:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You have freedom of expression but not freedom after expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This highlights the potency of Zimbabwean comedy. After all, as I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295?casa_token=LWvzKqY4ACAAAAAA%3Au60TJ9s5wVDkRiRGrw9GYKIY7duYZJwpIr4A1Gnwy1KpxZaloSJmAQJeUsgCqgWmO0w0xBMVRVdbMGg">argued</a> recently, stand-up comedy has become one of the few spaces in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fantasy-that-mnangagwa-would-fix-zimbabwe-now-fully-exposed-110197">repressive</a> Zimbabwean environment where people speak out in front of a crowd. The possibilities that emerge from this are evident when female comedians resist patriarchal power relations through stand-up. </p>
<h2>Being a female stand-up in Zimbabwe</h2>
<p>In Zimbabwe the public sphere is regulated through gender norms that tend to delegitimise female actors when they try to <a href="https://theconversation.com/eternal-mothers-whores-or-witches-being-a-woman-in-politics-in-zimbabwe-142195">make a claim</a> at political power. </p>
<p>Zimbabwean academic Gibson Ncube highlights this in a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10130950.2020.1749523?casa_token=w8efWbqzy5UAAAAA%3ANANl4zIWhDhDsIbrnBQYUyVH83KZPc3Nc2lAKRNKBLzQkwJush1u78-fHdU-kgyUIB4Y8wxOksS5xRE">paper</a> that points out that female politicians have often been described either negatively as “whores” or “witches” when attempting to claim power, or postively as “mothers” when taking a more submissive role. This kind of reproduction of sexism through language in the Zimbabwean public space can also be seen in stand-up comedy.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P_emiD52vwg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe’s Munya Guramatunhu live in Kenya.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During my research, where I interviewed comedians, observed shows and talked to audiences, I identified only six active female stand-ups in Zimbabwe – highlighting that sexism affects women’s decision to engage in the art. </p>
<p>One female comedian explained that audiences will not become as attached to women stand-ups because they expect them to eventually settle down, get married, have children and stop performing. Another Zimbabwean stand-up, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/munya959/?hl=en">Munyaradzi Guramatunhu</a>, put it eloquently in a recent <a href="https://www.thestandard.co.zw/2021/03/07/guramatunhu-drives-emancipation-through-jokes/">interview</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not think that the reason we are not in the industry in great numbers is because we lack the confidence. It is because we do not get afforded the same grace to just be viewed as humans as the men are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This sexism also affects the choices Munya – as she is known on stage – makes about her performance before a show. Talking with me in 2018, she pointed out the added scrutiny that female stand-up comedians face, while their male counterparts can wear a suit or be casually dressed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you’re in heels everybody is judging how you are walking, if you are in heels and a skirt everybody is like, ‘Ohh and then we could see up her skirt, and she was dressed so appallingly.’ And then if you are dressed too casually: ‘No wonder she is a stand-up comedian, she doesn’t take herself seriously’ … Like it’s, just, a lot – because now this is also one of the few times you are on stage as yourself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet my research shows that once on stage, the women who do choose to perform stand-up in Zimbabwe feel empowered to speak out in ways that can interrupt and resist sexism.</p>
<h2>Empowered to talk about sex</h2>
<p>Both male and female stand-up comedians highlighted that they felt empowered to say things on stage that they normally wouldn’t. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/magi_bustoptvzw/?hl=en">Sharon Chideu</a>, aka Magi, captures this empowerment in sex-talk. She <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13600826.2020.1828295?casa_token=LWvzKqY4ACAAAAAA%3Au60TJ9s5wVDkRiRGrw9GYKIY7duYZJwpIr4A1Gnwy1KpxZaloSJmAQJeUsgCqgWmO0w0xBMVRVdbMGg">told me</a> how women are silenced in daily life: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Okay, traditionally, culturally … you are just there to make babies, you are just there to be a wife, and you don’t enjoy sex … And one-night stands, don’t cheat. That’s for guys.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Later in our interview she describes how these power relations are blurred on stage:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When you (are) talking about how (you) had sex, and you can sense the reaction, like: ‘Wow, she is talking about that?’ … ‘What!? She is going there?’ and then they laugh.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While the stand-up comedy stage is not unaffected by gender norms, the power relations during a set favour the comedian. They have more power to choose what will be talked about and what the interaction will look like. Do they ask the audience questions? Do they respond to hecklers; if so, how? Above all, through the use of the microphone, they are able to overpower any one single audience member’s voice without shouting. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W_HxKjtR-4o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe’s Gonyeti live in Harare.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Feeling a sense of empowerment onstage, female stand-up comedians are emboldened to address topics, such as sex, that society might normally deem inappropriate. Emboldened female stand-up comedians sit uncomfortably within a Zimbabwean society which often casts women as submissive.</p>
<h2>How to disrupt the patriarchy</h2>
<p>One of Chideu’s 2018 sets illustrates how empowered female comedians can resist patriarchal power relations. She draws on common conceptions of how women should or should not act in Zimbabwean society, neatly reframing them.</p>
<p>For example, Chideu jokes that her child was “ugly” at birth because it looked just like her mother-in-law, quickly adding that the child has grown to become cute. This joke plays with the idea that women should be nurturing and caring by showing, even if only for a moment, an instance where Chideu is not that. She is not always one thing, or another; she is a person who can be more.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/eternal-mothers-whores-or-witches-being-a-woman-in-politics-in-zimbabwe-142195">Eternal mothers, whores or witches: being a woman in politics in Zimbabwe</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Taking charge of her sexuality, Chideu jokes about the difficulties of being a single mother and also wanting to have sex. She explains to the audience that she is looking for a casual relationship, what she calls a “situationship”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Against a yellow backdrop, a woman with long hair and wearing agree coat holds a microphone, her other hand held up with fingers splayed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400016/original/file-20210511-13-1695s5y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharon Chideu aka Magi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Sharon Chideu</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On stage Chideu puts on display a version of her own life: she is a mother, an artist, sometimes caring, sometimes not, someone with sexual needs and desires who acts upon them because she wants to, not because she is forced to. </p>
<p>Emboldened, she unsettles narrative attempts to suppress her agency by affording herself, in Munya Guramatunhu’s words, “the same grace to just be viewed as humans as the men are”.</p>
<h2>Stand-up comedy and female emancipation</h2>
<p>Through stand-up comedy, women in Zimbabwe can resist patriarchal power relations. Although there are still far fewer female stand-ups in the country, the field keeps on growing and female comedians keep gaining more recognition. </p>
<p>Indeed, Kureya – who was abducted and tortured and who has performed both skit and stand-up comedy – was the first woman to be <a href="https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/womensadvancement/articles/2017/09/18/in-zimbabwe-female-comics-are-succeeding-in-a-male-dominated-field">nominated</a> for an Outstanding Comedian award at the Zimbabwean National Arts Merit Award in 2017. She was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/namaszim/photos/pcb.1982451655342516/1982450705342611">nominated again</a> in 2018 and followed, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i79AJZfWHPY">2019</a>, by another female comedian, Chideu. </p>
<p>To better understand women’s emancipation in countries like Zimbabwe, it’s useful to look beyond the so-called “serious” practices of institutional politics – to that which is often deemed “unserious”: live stand-up comedy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156052/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This work was supported by a studentship and fieldwork bursary from the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester.</span></em></p>
Despite the challenges of being a female comedian, the women who do choose to perform feel emboldened to speak out in ways that can resist sexism.
Amanda Källstig, Doctoral researcher, University of Manchester
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/143836
2020-08-18T14:24:10Z
2020-08-18T14:24:10Z
How grassroots video is building a film industry in Zimbabwe
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352943/original/file-20200814-20-1ivmbm9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tendaiishe Chitima, lead actress in the low-budget hit film Cook Off.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">WIKUS DE WET/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a general perception that there is no film industry to talk about in Zimbabwe. This argument is mostly based on comparisons with other well-resourced film economies, such as Hollywood, or even South Africa’s. </p>
<p>Based on my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2018.1534872">study</a> of the Zimbabwean <a href="http://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/15608">film industry</a> I disagree with this view. Zimbabwe does have a film industry, but perhaps, not one that meets everyone’s expectations and certainly not one that can be comparable to Hollywood’s formal value chain. </p>
<p>Zimbabwe, like many other developing countries, faces political and economic challenges and the film industry’s problems are compounded by a lack of either governmental or corporate support, which has led media scholar Nyasha Mboti to <a href="https://osf.io/smrwj/download">observe</a> that the sector is “orphaned”.</p>
<p>There are, nevertheless, efforts at the grassroots, of various informally constituted cottage industries producing video-film products. These include video-films shot in as little as a week, on very low to zero budgets and by remarkably lean crews (who may also feature as the acting talent). These efforts should be celebrated as indications of enthusiasm, creative genius and sheer endeavour that auger well for the future of an industry (by any definition).</p>
<h2>Making it work</h2>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696815.2019.1599829">recent paper</a> I argue that making a film in most developing countries is <em>mégotage</em>, as observed by the ‘father of African cinema’, Senegalese filmmaker <a href="http://newsreel.org/articles/ousmanesembene.htm">Ousmane Sembène</a>. The <em>mégotage</em> metaphor means that producing a film in such contexts is a desperate endeavour, akin to scrounging around for cigarette butts. </p>
<p>It is such a grit and grunt, huff and puff affair, to the extent that even a 10-minute short film has to be admired.</p>
<p>Evidence on the ground shows that the <em>mégotage</em> sometimes pays off. Zimbabweans are known for their resilience and ability to <em>kiya-kiya</em> (‘make things work’ in the Shona language) when faced with what seems to be a dead end. A large portion of the country’s economy is characterised by such <em>kiya-kiya</em> efforts, as anthropologist Jeremy Jones <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2010.485784">observes</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman looks downcast and pained." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352951/original/file-20200814-14-vgjuzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1070&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kushata Kwemoyo poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mirazvo Productions/Rain Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Zimbabwe’s film industry appears to thrive under very difficult circumstances. Recent video-films like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9012410/"><em>Kushata Kwemoyo</em></a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6541984/"><em>Escape</em></a>, <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/chinhoyi-7-film-is-finally-here/"><em>Chinhoyi 7</em></a> and lately, the Netflix hit <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52983564"><em>Cook Off</em></a>, all made during the so-called Zimbabwean <a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-deepening-crisis-time-for-second-government-of-national-unity-122726">crisis</a> (stretching from around 2000 to date) showcase the filmmaking talent and cinematographic capabilities abundant in the country. It’s what once led film scholar Frank Ukadike, in his book <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520077485/black-african-cinema"><em>Black African Cinema</em></a>, to remark that Zimbabwe was Africa’s Hollywood.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man holds a military rifle, dressed in camouflage gear." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352952/original/file-20200814-20-7qfa0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinhoyi 7 poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ster Kinekor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ukadike made his remark more than 20 years ago. It was based on the film-friendliness that Zimbabwe exhibited back then. At the time, many Hollywood companies, including the Cannon Group who were popular for blockbusters like <em>Missing In Action</em> and <em>Cyborg</em> featuring stars like Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme, used Zimbabwe as a filmmaking location because of its splendid scenery, efficient financial systems and durable infrastructure. Famous faces such as Sharon Stone (in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089421/"><em>King Solomon’s Mines</em></a>) and Denzel Washington (in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/10/cry-freedom-richard-attenborough-reel-history"><em>Cry Freedom</em></a>) graced the country as cast in the movies. </p>
<p>At the same time, Zimbabwe’s Central Film Laboratories serviced the southern African region’s film processing needs. All this promise has disappeared, owing to a combination of political and economic factors that have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02500167.2018.1534872">traumatised</a> most economic sectors, and this is the source of the pessimism.</p>
<h2>Riches from grassroots</h2>
<p>What I celebrate is that, in the midst of such adversity, filmmaking continues to thrive. A critical mass of youthful filmmakers armed with camcoders, laptops, cell phones and an assortment of improvisations, has emerged and continues to keep the filmmaking impulse alive. Among the leading lights are Von Tavaziva (<a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/the-ground-breaking-go-chanaiwa-go-reloaded/"><em>Go Chanaiwa Go Reloaded</em></a>), Shem Zemura (<em>Kushata Kwemoyo</em>), Joe Njagu (<em>Cook Off</em>) and Nakai Tsuro (<em>Mwanasikana</em>), to mention just a few. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K0WYd34FGyo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for the award-winning romantic comedy Cook Off.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most of the time, their route to audience is the DVD or Youtube, often for little or no returns. But the enterprising ones, like Von Tavaziva, have discovered ways of beating the scourge of piracy by producing high volumes of DVDs and selling them at very affordable prices in accessible city spaces. </p>
<p>With proceeds from such endeavours, they mount their next productions – no government support, no bank loan, no moaning!</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-apps-on-mobile-phones-are-changing-zimbabwes-talk-radio-143611">How apps on mobile phones are changing Zimbabwe's talk radio</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There are further encouraging signs, if the aesthetics of contemporary music videos is anything to go by. The work of <a href="https://www.chronicle.co.zw/thank-god-blaqs-didnt-retire/">Vusa ‘Blaqs’ Hlatshwayo</a> and <a href="https://www.herald.co.zw/meet-the-man-behind-jah-prayzah-videos/">Willard ‘Slimmaz’ Magombedze</a> indicates cinematographic competences that can further improve the video-film genre. A veteran of the crisis years, filmmaker <a href="https://www.africanfilmny.org/2013/tawanda-gunda-mupengo/">Tawanda Gunda Mupengo</a> (<em>Tanyaradzwa</em> and <em>Peretera Maneta</em>) <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696815.2019.1599829?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=cjac20">told me</a> that if people keep at it, the local art of filmmaking will only get better. He believes that emerging talent, even away from the major cities, should be encouraged and this will have a multiplier effect, not only on volumes of video-films, but also the human resource-base needed for profitable film business in the future. He says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Let there be a competent crew in Masvingo. If that crew makes a film that is successful, they will breed a community of filmmakers. They will be training people on the ground when they are shooting and editing, so that we have vibrant little pockets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The informal filmmaking practices (which are in fact Zimbabwe’s film industry), should be encouraged to thrive, with or without government support. The example of Nigeria’s film industry, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-nollywood-to-new-nollywood-the-story-of-nigerias-runaway-success-47959">Nollywood</a>, which has grown from rags to riches, offers inspiration in terms of how grassroots efforts may blossom in the long run. As it was for Nigeria, so can it be for Zimbabwe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143836/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oswelled Ureke 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>
Low-budget, grassroots video-film efforts are beginning to blossom and will shape the film industry in the long run.
Oswelled Ureke, Lecturer, Midlands State University
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>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1289075563236413441"}"></div></p>
<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>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<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>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Farrar, Straus and Giroux</span></span>
</figcaption>
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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.