The state of Zimbabwean writing
By Tinashe Mushakavanhu
25 August 2011
The 2011 National Arts Merit Awards [NAMA] edition had one glaring omission: nominees for the Outstanding First Creative Published Work category. This very glaring omission, or is it lack of new writers is reflective of the state of writing from and within Zimbabwe. It is now pretty much obvious, there are many people who claim to be writers and yet a few of them can actually write publishable material. Or perhaps, the ailing local publishing industry is failing our writers.
What is the business of publishers if they are not publishing new writers? Our publishers have been complicit in this problem. There is a culture in Zimbabwe to anthologize its writers and poets, and while understandably it is a cost effective method of collectivizing our writers, it is stifling individual talents, as some of our writers never get to blossom individually. Who is collecting and publishing the poetry of the late Phillip Zhuwao and Reuben Pakaenda, the short stories of Ruzvidzo Mupfudza? We remember them and we know them as fragments, never in the wholeness of their genius. Rather than being treated and appreciated as individual voices, it seems in Zimbabwe there is no space to articulate singular creative visions.
Publishing was certainly one of the industries that was hit hard by the political and economic crisis of recent years. The small market there had been for books fizzled out because people were more concerned with the nourishment of the belly than with the nourishment of the mind.
Recognition of new writers can also be seen in the launch of many publishing imprints, specifically focusing on emerging literary voices and unfortunately that is something we are lacking in Zimbabwe. Apart from Weaver Press and amaBooks, there are no other alternatives. And once upon a time there were the older companies – Zimbabwe Publishing House, College Press, Mambo Press and Longman – who have sadly become names or insist on servicing the textbook market.
This sad reality is further compounded by our celebration of what in many instances always turns out to be mediocrity. These are the writers who write as if no other writers have existed before. These are writers who write and demand to be read and yet don’t read other writers themselves. To be a writer of quality there must be a clear investment in one’s craft. So many of the wannabe writers have read nothing beyond school textbooks and yet reading is the best apprentice for any writer.
One of Zimbabwe’s most illustrious authors, Shimmer Chinodya, recalls of a young man who, at the end of one workshop, came up to him with a big fat khaki envelope and self-imposingly said, ‘I am a budding writer. I have written two books. I want you to read them and correct them for me. I want you to help me get them published.’ He found the writing was racy, pretentious, littered with mistakes. ‘How much have you read?’ he asked the young writer.
‘A lot,’ he replied.
‘Have you read Zimbabwean authors?’
’Oh yes,’ he said.
‘Which are your favourite Zimbabwean authors?’
‘Oh, man. You are one of them. I’ve read all your works.’
‘And which of my books do you like most?’
‘Waiting for the Rain,’ he replied, without batting an eyelid.
‘But that’s Charles Mungoshi’s book,’ Chinodya protested. He handed the envelope back to the young man and said, ‘Go back and read twenty good novels. Clean up your stories then send me one chapter.’
The moral of this exchange is too clear. You can’t be a writer unless you read. I have received so many badly written novels and poetry that has left me traumatised for days on end. Most of these writers are quick to want to be published for the glory of it more than anything else. What is actually frightening is that there seems to be more writers and so few readers.
I think we are consumed with the shallowness of celebrity that we have lost sight of the value in self-development that expands our horizons in meaningful ways, intellectual ways. All one has to do is look at the disproportionate coverage of sleazy celebrity fluff in our media (print and broadcast). How many know what the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing was won by a Zimbabwean writer? Yet, almost everyone knows about the Zimbabwe reps in the Big Brother reality show or the country’s top models.
Isn’t it strange that we are supposedly the most literate country on the African continent and yet a population of illiterates? Zimbabwean people read to pass exams. This is a commonly held perception inherited from our colonial past that emphasised that books were purely educational. Our whole education system is too mechanical and career driven. We all have to study to become Accountants and Doctors and Lawyers and Engineers. We were conditioned to be robotic and perform our functions without questioning them. We were not encouraged to read, to develop our mental and spiritual selves. We were blind folded from the liberating potential of reading. We were taught to condemn reading for the sake of reading as self-indulging luxury. Some elements of our society still hold on to that archaic view. And now it seems with the allure of the DVD, why bother reading?
