Ode to a Misunderstood Friend
Alexander Kanengoni
BECAUSE I was out on the farms, I missed Olley Maruma’s burial at Granville Cemetery last Sunday afternoon.
I missed the graveside testimonies that people gave about him.
I would have wanted to hear what his family thought about him. I would have wanted to hear what his friends thought about him. I would have wanted to see the people who came to bury him.
Olley was an unconventional man.
The previous night, Albert Chimedza had phoned to tell me Olley had died.
I was shocked because I had not heard about him being ill.
In fact, I had met him hardly a month before and he had not looked ill at all.
Perhaps he had been involved in an accident. His sudden death came as a complete shock.
Later, the radio carried the news of his death, profiling his life.
I thought how official profiles deprived people of their personality and character!
Olley Tsino Maruma was born in Bulawayo in 1953. He attended Goromonzi High School and later obtained a degree in law at the University of Kent in England.
He trained as a television producer at the British Council’s Media Department in London.
At independence, he returned to the country and worked for ZBC as a producer/director for television.
He was also a lecturer in television production at the Harare Polytechnic’s Institute of Mass Communication.
He produced numerous films including the award winning “Consequences.”
He was a prolific writer and published a novel titled Coming Home. He was currently a board member of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings. He is survived by two children. His service to promote the arts will be greatly missed.
Not that there is anything wrong with such a profile. The problem is it is so austere it can fit practically any person with a similar background.
It’s grave and colourless. Olley was a lively and flamboyant person.
That was why I wanted to hear the graveside testimonies from people who knew him, especially the sahwira.
They are the people who throw away the barricades after the praise singing has ended and tell the truth.
Olley was easy to misunderstand.
Because he straddled two worlds — his previous two marriages were to white women, you did not expect him to hold such a radical world outlook.
This aspect of him belonging to two worlds would come out in my discussion with his uncle at his Avondale home the day after his burial.
The old man put the point across in a very interesting way.
He said bluntly that whites dominated Olley’s world.
Interestingly, I had made a similar observation in my review of his novel, Coming Home, which he had personally asked me to review after the book’s launch towards the end of last year.
In my review, I said after the protagonist’s return from England and in keeping with the title of the novel, one would have expected him to rush to Highfield and Mhondoro where his parents and grandparents lived.
It is certainly these people that represent the notion of home to most of us.
But from the airport, he went to a cousin’s flat in the Avenues, a predominantly white residential area and elected to stay there.
It was from the Avenues that he began to establish a network of social relationships most of which were with people who resided in the predominantly white northern suburbs.
But all that did not diminish his radicalism. He was a fierce nationalist.
One day, we joked with a friend that by choosing to stay among whites, Olley wanted to take the fight to our former colonisers!
But in the shade of the jacaranda tree in the backyard of his Avondale home the day after his burial, Olley’s uncle disagreed. He saw it as a tragic loss of identity.
That was why I wanted to see the people who had come to bury him. I wanted to see whether they reflected the fact that he belonged to two worlds.
But if there were no people across the colour line at his burial, I would not be surprised. It confirmed his radicalism. Most whites I know felt uncomfortable with Olley.
A white colleague once told me that Olley’s extreme views bordered on racism and she wondered how he ever got married to white women at all.
But interestingly, Albert told me he had got the news about Olley’s death from Olley’s ex-wife in Cameroon who phoned to enquire whether what she was hearing that Olley had died was true.
The man belonged to two worlds but that did not dilute his radical world outlook.
He was not easy to get along with. Many people who worked with him say so. I never really worked with him as such.
We only met to do specific literary projects or to do specific television recordings.
In fact, I never imagined I would write his obituary were it not for a colleague who suggested that I do it because I was Olley’s friend. Olley’s friend? I was surprised. Then I was overwhelmed because I had not imagined my relationship with him could be viewed in that light. I had not realised we were friends.
When he was writing Coming Home he told me many times that he would send me the draft for my opinion although he never did it.
Those who knew him well said it was a rare honour to be asked to do that by the man, that he only did it to people whose opinion he respected. I was chaffed.
A month or so before the publication of his novel, he told me he had disagreements with his publisher and editor.
As a result, he was taking over from them and doing it himself.
Of course, I knew it was a freak decision taken on the spur of the moment.
How he reminded me of Dambudzo Marechera! Once I met Dambudzo in Rusape and he lamented: “There is no way I can stay here. It’s too small!”
He personally came home to invite me to the launch of his novel.
I naively thought he did it because he wanted me to review the book until a colleague told me the man was my friend.
At the launch he whispered in my ear that if the people he had tasked to organise the event continued with the mess he would take over and do it himself.
It was difficult to see what he referred to as “the mess” because from outside, things seemed to be proceeding quite smoothly. He was easy to dislike. The atmosphere at the Avondale home the day after the burial was solemn. Only a few people remained, close relatives I presumed.
Job Jonhera, a fellow board member with Olley at ZBH was there. I knew him because I once worked with him at ZBC.
At first I thought he was there in his capacity as a fellow board member but when I noticed he was doing most of the legwork in and out of the house, I thought that was odd for a board member.
I did not know he is married to Olley’s paternal sister, that he was there as a son-in-law.
He introduced me to Olley’s sister and I immediately recognised her from Coming Home.
There was his young brother and cousins.
There was also his uncle who gave a vivid description of the party that they threw for him in Highfield when he returned from England nearly three decades ago.
The description was like a chapter from the novel.
The uncle’s regret was that the young man retreated to his strange world with foreign people after the party.
There were other people most of whom were packing their bags to return home to Mhondoro.
They said Olley complained of stomach pains after Christmas, which they suspected could have been reaction to some food he had taken.
When the pain persisted he was admitted to hospital and he underwent an operation.
He did not survive.
First appeared in The Herald.