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Writing still – Snapshots from Zimbabwe
Last year Irene Staunton from Weaver Press Harare asked several Zimbabwean authors to write a short story about Zimbabwe at the turn of the century.
The resulting collection of stories shows us a multifaceted picture of Zimbabwe.
“Fiction … is a way of telling the truth, and is sometimes the only way of telling a complex truth” notes Irene Staunton, the editor of “Writing Still” in her introduction. While reading these stories you learn a lot more about life in Zimbabwe than from newspaper articles and reports that focus on facts – how people handle their everyday life, how they get on with each other, how they feel and what they dream about.
The differences between the authors (the oldest born in 1937, the youngest in 1973) and the complexity of their biographies are perhaps the reason for the diverse images they present us. Most of them have spent their life in different social environments, have had several professions and lived not only in Zimbabwe but also South Africa, England, Canada, the USA or even the Middle East. Some of them have an international reputation, like Yvonne Vera or Charles Mungoshi, for others this is their first publication, with impressive results.
Surviving in Zimbabwe
The stories involve people of all social classes. In “The Kiss” (Chihota) for example, a highly successful but cold-hearted businessman loses his wife to a diamond dealer employed by him.
Brian Chikwava delineates the life of people who are struggling to scrape a living at the margin of society: Sue, who shares a bed with her mother, a street vendor, has no sympathy for the state propaganda she listens to on the radio. She’s more concerned where to get her next ration of sugar and cooking oil. Although talking about misery, Chikwava, like other authors, doesn’t lack humour: policemen try to get at least a snack from a musician who cannot pay his fine.
Here, as in many of the stories, political events and personal developments are intertwined: Charles Mungoshi describes a conflict between father and son that has a political dimension. He reminds us of the mysterious car accidents of the past years in which many people of the opposition died.
The burden of the past
In “The Winning Side” (Saidi) political events destroy two generations simultaneously: a street kid who has become an orphan because of the political repression visits his wealthy uncle. This man has sworn to belong to the winning side after the death of his parents in the war of liberation. In this story we see the world from the perspective of children, likewise in writing about life on a white farm before independence (Fuller) and the massacres in Matabeleland (G. Ndlovu) for example. A little girl describes a sadistic commander in the war of liberation (“That special place”).
The authors paint a panorama of the most recent history of Zimbabwe which is influencing the present. Topics like gender and homosexuality aren’t overlooked either: Kilalea presents the difficulties of a homosexual relationship between a black and a white man in colonial Zimbabwe.
And you can see incidents that could also take place in Europe: the humiliation of a housemaid by her potential employer (Chingono), the misogyny in a middle class quarter (Mupfudza) and the difficult life of a disabled person (Musengezi).
Hope for reconciliation
Even so, the discriminated disabled man in the story of Musengezi is loved and promoted. So you can see asilver lining on the horizon and the hope of reconciliation in many stories in spite of all the brutality. In the story of Kanengoni (reprinted in our newsletter) people of different origins and political affiliations exchange their opinions and try to get together, like the policeman and the liberation fighter in the story of Huggins or the white Zimbabwean and the black smuggler on the bus to Zambia in Wilson’s story who are united by a song of Oliver Mutukudzi.
A multilayered, beautiful book, which can be bought in Germany without any difficulty.
Writing Still. Hrsg. von Irene Staunton. Harare: Weaver Press 2003.
ISBN 1 77922 0 18 9 ( ca. 32 Euro) Übers Internet: www. africanboookscollective.uk
Annelie Klother
(Thanks to Klaus Graichen and Barnabe for helping me to translate my review into English)
In: ‘Zimbabwe Netzwerk Rundbrief’, Nr. 46 / Oktober 2004, Germany
