Chapter Eight

What we’re looking for is a complete change of government, a complete turn-around from the way we’ve done things. A new set of ideas, from a new set of heads. Another way, other than the coercive form of silence the Mugabe government has continued to use time and time again. Reconciliation for them has always meant drawing a line over the past and whitewashing it, ensuring it is never spoken of publicly at any significant level. As a writer, I am determined to see this not happen again. It is my belief that a writer cannot be an indifferent person, a person who floats above the world and its events. As an editor who will remain nameless once said to me, the writer has to allow himself to be used as a mouthpiece, so let us be mouthpieces to the voices that have been whitewashed over for far too long, no matter how old they are.

It is my dream that this will prevent the spread into pandemic proportions of what I have seen as the root cause of various tribal differences across the continents, and that through expression, healing will come for everyone that has been wronged by the government, regardless of race, creed, religion, tribe or whatever factors we as human beings have used to separate ourselves or others into distinct units rather than see ourselves as members of a single group.

If I do this, and other writers join me, we will eventually produce a body of emotions\ expressions\ deep truths and confessions that victims of this era will be able to look at and feel ‘counted’, and this, in my view, will be the beginning of the real Chimurenga, the final Chimurenga, the Fourth Chi – mu – re – nga.

Chapter Seven

It pleases me that the poetry reading is in an enclosed space. I walk into the room on time to find fellow poet Nabila, her family, and a few other faces. The emptiness lends an air of confidence to the soul. It hovers, expands. 30 minutes later the audience has grown, and my soul has shrunk. Fear has begun to set it, and I’ve indulged it. Behind it, my stutter glares at me, then giggles. The event begins and Anjum introduces Nabila. I hear nothing of her poetry, which I normally enjoy. I spend the time looking at the high windows and the slowly crowding up exit door, weighing my chances. The audience claps, and Nabila sits down. I eye up the windows, and eye up the door. Anjum stands up. I imagine myself climbing out of the window, dashing through the door. Suddenly, Anjum stops talking, and the audience turns its collective head and stares at me…

The thing with performance poetry is that you either hate it the first time, or you love it. I loved it. Soon after the Rochdale reading came opportunities at Exodus, the Manchester Library, Eloquent Protest, The Frog and Bucket, for the Voluntary Service Organisation, etc

The problem is this; people often like the style of my work, but they’re not always too comfortable with the content. They too, want ‘a moving on’, but how can I move on, when the world refuses to move on, when year after year, dictators get replaced by freedom fighters who soon become despots themselves. I write poetry because sometimes the things witnessed need such an immediate reaction, that poetry is the only real alternative I have. Its a release mechanism.

Chapter Six

I base the new novel on fact. Little boys and girls forced to watch the rapes of their mothers, sisters and grandmothers by soldiers of a new African government. The questions: What is the psychological effect of this on these boys? How does this affect their future relationships with not only women but also their own penises? I dig deeper: Why do soldiers in conflict resort to rape in the first place? Is this just an army-taught tactic or the result of Me Tarzan you jane social engineering? If it is then does it have to be an endless cycle? If not then who will put a stop to it?

Que David, my protagonist.

David initiates the Fourth Chimurenga. The final struggle. We are with him from its conception; as a little boy he watches from behind a school fence as a government soldier violates a woman he is secretly besotted with. We follow him through his personal and political struggles right through to his Fourth. The Finale.

And what scares me into writing the novel is this: Zimbabwe has had a violent history. Some of the people in parliament at this very moment are survivors of what went on the purges of the 1980′s. At a certain point, I was covinced that true freedom would arrive when this baggage-carrying generation died off, because lets face it, when a little boy or girl of about 10 years old witnesses the rape or murder of their parents, hears them shrieking from inside burning huts until at last, no sounds can be heard and only ashes remain, that experience affects their pyschological make-up. Something breaks, something tears apart. And Africa in those days just didnt, much like most of the world at that time, focus on identifying the disorders that such experiences might cause, let alone attempt to deal with them. And these are the guys we have in parliament now, all grown up, making laws about the family unit, making laws about civil liberties, making laws…

But now with this current fiasco going on, what will happen when these kids who’ve been forced into the National Youth Service where they’ve raped and murdered people grow up? Won’t some of them surely become legislators, judges, mothers, fathers? What sort of laws will these people make? What sort of attitude will they pass onto their own children?

What will happen to Zimbabwe then?

Chapter Five

There are so many voices out there without faces. And so many faces without voices. My place, as a writer, is to be the bridge between the two. And with that said, I would like to add to the already overwhelming mass of words and pictures that have already been written by Journalists far and wide, which prove the contrary of what the Mugabe government claims.

How?

Take a picture from the last 7 years of Zimbabwe’s history and inhabit it. Deconstruct the pixels and extract the 1000 words it takes to make it. Paste them into the comments section of this online space and help me create a sort of … online Truth and Reconciliation missive. It could be it a short story, poem or haiku. Whatever it is, it has to try to out “the complexity” of the situation; “what it felt like to be there, in that situation, what values, what principles came to the fore and why, how these related to individuals and how they embraced, challenged or evaded them…”

 Why??

Because expression still heals.

 

Throughout history, burdens have been created through the removal of platforms of expression.

In the 80’s, Mugabe’s soldiers raped and slaughtered women in the middle of their villages and left their corpses exposed for everyone to see, and yet these women’s families were forbidden to mourn their dead, to bury them even. It was a sort of double-edged psychological warfare, and it worked.

Years later, the spirits of these families are twisted and gnarled and they walk tall but they are hunchbacked. They don’t speak, they snarl. They express their anger in hushed tones behind closed doors to the only audience that will hear them; their children, and they pass on this condition.

So what began as an act in a village ends up trickling through time to infect those who like me once considered themselves lucky to have been born after those times. So now even my peers walk around feeling angry and hurt about things they didn’t witness, mourning people they never knew and hating perpetrators they’ll never identify.

And yet we exist.

If our parents and grandparents had been provided with platforms to speak openly about what they saw and how it made them feel, if they had been given the chance to confront the soldiers that terrorised them, if those soldiers had been given a chance to approach their victims, we might truly have been the first ‘born free’ generation of Zimbabwe.

But this never happened. And I doubt any generation in Zimbabwe has so far been born free. I look forward to a day when that generation will come though.

Chapter Four

The first real lesson I learnt in novel writing is this – all first drafts are excrement (Hemmingway). It’s unwise to allow your emotions to get wrapped up in them. Granted, I learnt this a little late, three rewrites into my novel in fact, and by the time I sent out my latest rewrite to Mother in 2006, my meilleur travail, I too felt somewhere within the recesses that four years was more than probably any publisher had given any aspiring writer, so I simultaneously sent a copy to someone I will call The Editor, and waited.

Mother’s rejection came surprising fast; none of this 3 months business. I think she was genuinely disappointed, as was I. The official reason was the rising cost of paper, something I didn’t doubt was also true, but I didn’t keep that rejection slip, my emotions were too entangled in the rewrites.

Turns out the novel isn’t quite what The Editor expected either. He looks at my 250-odd pages of toil, sweat and brilliance and calls me into his office. The manuscript lands on the table between us. He sits opposite me, and delivers the line “you came across as the most gifted of all the writers… but I feel it has become unstuck in terms of theme…” The manuscript, in all its whiteness, suddenly looks unclean, and I want to disown it.

At best, he says, the first 30 pages are salvageable. A short story perhaps. The rest – Excrement. “The atrocities committed under the Mugabe government are rightly decried and depicted. What we would look for is either (a) a more historical contextualising of the Mugabe era so as to show its antecedent phase … or (b) a ‘moving on of the plot’… perhaps how one of the characters grows to some kind of political activism”

The words hover in the air like plumes of atomic dust. From his lips, they entomb me in the explosive cloud. I start coughing. Reader’s Semantics. I was back where I started.

As I leave the office, sunlight crashes the halo floating above my head, breaking it. I pick up the pieces and reassemble them. Name: Gift Nyoni. Occupation: Writer Rewriter.

It is at this point, I think, that the marechera mimicry stops and my own identity as a writer emerges. I choose the second option, rethink, re-plot, re-characterise and basically start a new novel. I start with the title; out with the old, in with the new; the new novel is going to be called Inside the Fourth Chimurenga.

Chapter Three

Performance Poetry.

After my mother died in 1995, I found myself sat behind a desk, trying to describe, creatively, the hyena-like sounds of wailing relatives.  That was my first attempt at creative writing, although it wasnt long before I abandoned it.

Fast Forward to May, 2008. I’m in London, reaching for my vibrating phone. The message pops up in the middle of the screen before fading into the background: Yahoo Email. Anjum Malik. Usual niceties. Point: Poetry Reading in Rochdale. I heard that you dabble. Interested?

I reply the email: Delighted to be invited. Accepted. All this positive language.

I know a fair few of Manchester’s poets, and after a BrothaTalk event one evening at Contact Theatre, Segun Lee French prophetically signed my book ‘Gift, the world awaits you on the stage!’

I smiled of course. Thanked him. Niceties. The world could wait.

The problem was always my stutter. At some point in my youth, it was so severe I could hardly talk.

But I agree anyway. Warning to Anjum: I’ve never performed or even read my erm, poetry before. Translation: You caught me at a strong moment. I’m accepting your offer now but I’m likely to cancel later. I’m afraid. I’m af – the phone vibrates again: You’ll be fine. No, I wont. I’m afraid I’ll get arrested by my reflexes before the audience. Imprisoned by my tongue. Caged inside my irregular teeth. I’m afraid I might start sweating. I’m afraid I might lash out at the giggling face in the crowd…

At the start, the event date is unclear, but eventually, its set for 12 July, my Mother’s birthday, and I realise I can’t refuse…

Chapter Two

Chi – Mu – Re – Nga. 

It means Struggle.

Those that lead Zimbabwe believe the country is in the grips of its Third and final Chimurenga. I think we’ve actually moved into a Fourth Chimurenga. But this is besides the point. 

I believe our role as writers is to –

To Bear Witness to the Times (CLR James) – While others may feel that ‘the times’ have passed, or that the worst is past, and that modern Writers, as opposed to Writers from Africa’s colonial era, have missed the boat, I feel that there is still a significant role that can be played by writers in the healing of our national wound. And this will be achieved by:  

Telling the Truth – To quote Irene Staunton, “Art is the telling of truth and is the only available method for the telling of certain truths.”¹ She also says “For me literature is an incredibly important way of telling the truth. In fact I actually think it is more important than history, although, of course, I do not mean that one would want to exclude one for the other. In terms, however, of the enormous complexity of different situations: what it felt like to be there, in that situation, what values, what principles came to the fore and why, how these related to individuals and how they embraced, challenged or evaded them, can only come through literature. It does not come through history in the same way, not how it felt to be there, not the confusion of feelings, ideas, emotions, beliefs.” ². 

Asking Questions – Someone else, forget who, said that the role of a writer is to ask tough questions rather than to supply answers.   

Writing in Spite of the State (To Spite the State) – Marechera, contrasting the writers role against that of state-approved ‘African Literature’, the aim of which was to assist in nation and identity building, argued that the writers role was to be against the state, in the sense that the writer didn’t stay within the bounds of nation-building rhetoric, turning out didactic literature, but remained true to himself, and ultimately (in my view) to remain true to yourself, is to remain true to your characters.

Now, Mugabe’s government would like the world to believe that innocent people haven’t died from politically motivated violence. They would like the world to believe that a unit of soldiers wasn’t specially trained by Koreans in the early 1980’s that killed more than 3 thousand Ndebele people and seriously wounded and maimed hundred’s and thousands more.  They would like the world to believe that they’ve not done this again, this time across the tribal spectrum, despite promising never to repeat it. They would like the world to believe that state security agents haven’t been abducting, torturing and murdering innocent people and members of the Opposition, with thousands more in secret camps and prisons, lives hanging in the balance…

 

 1. Post Colonial African Literature: The Experience of Zimbabwe – The Seventeen Year War and Its Immediate Literary Aftermath. 

2. Interview in Harare, 2 November 2002 – http://www.nai.uu.se/research/areas/cultural_images_in_and_of/zimbabwe/literature/staunton

Chapter One

The Novel starts in 2002 after a chance encounter with a stolen Marechera.

Marechera; dreadlocked, vulgar, rebellious; performing mind-boggling verbal and visual acrobatics on the page. I was 19 and fresh out of the school curriculum, reading anything but the post second-chimurenga war-porn the government had churned out in the name of literature and stuffed down our throats from the time they taught us how to read; 19 and crushing rose-tinted glasses underneath the soles of boots whose side welts also concealed bottles of spirits that would later be consumed in nightclubs before pouncing on half-dressed women in the darkness. 19 and hooked by a writer who had the gall to use the image of a prostitute as a symbol of Rhodesia, which for me of course, was interchangeable with Zimbabwe.

It begins its life scatterbrain. Ramblings. A flaming hot jigsaw puzzle. Twelve of them. Short stories, or so I called them. Two editors expressed interest and I could hardly believe my luck. The one in Johannesburg thought they were part of a novel and wanted to read the full novel. Novel?

I quickly sewed the twelve pieces into one; a crack-job performed in darkness and panic, without skill. I added eyes, fingernails, body hair and sent off the body.

My first rejection slip.

I kept it. It was poignant.

The second editor was kind. Let’s call her Mother. Her Readers read two of the ramblings and responded very kindly. 6 months later, I sent her a cautiously revised half of a novel with promises of more if she liked it. The reader responded favourably, or so I thought. I have learnt that Readers can be subtle at times. Terms such as: I have mixed feelings about/ I am not sure whether/ If the reader were aware/ Perhaps this is an intentional hypocrisy/ I would recommend…

Obviously, a lesson in the semantics of Readers was due…