“Words are like weapons”
– they change the way we think about the world
Lene Bull, Roskilde University
Zimbabwe can boast of having fostered many of Africa’s most celebrated writers, such as, Dambudzo Marechera, Chenjerai Hove, Yvonne Vera, Charles Mungoshi, and Tsitsi Dangarembga. Their writing is closely tied to the country’s turbulent and often painful history. But it is also painted with the colours of a rich culture and the enduring spirit of a people with warmth, intelligence and humour. Zimbabwean authors have tried to make sense of their nation as it ties in with their own lives. They describe the horrors of war, the rough township life and the beauty of lovemaking in a language that is at once universal and very Zimbabwean. For Zimbabwean writers literature is a place where they can be free to express criticism of the way society works. Through the different generations of Zimbabwean writers, engagement in social issues has been a common concern. The issues that have driven authors to write have therefore shifted with the many developments the country has seen.
The first generation of writes were living under the oppression of the Rhodesian state, where the White regime tired to control the literature of Black writers. These writers were therefore trying to write books that were inspirational for the budding nationalist movement, but would not be banned by the government. One book from this period which inspired the resistance against the Rhodesian regime was the novel Feso written by Solomon Mutsvairo in 1959. The book was set in pre-colonial Zimbabwe, but the nationalist resistance movement read it as an allegory over the Rhodesians. The book inspired many young writers to explore literature as a form of resistance against oppression.
Under the civil war between the Black nationalist movement and the White Rhodesian state between 1965 and 1980, a diverse generation of writers emerged. The writers of this generation were both nationalists, politically ambivalent and directly dystrophic. Some of them had to live in exile, which influenced their writings. Many writers of this generation saw it as their task to help build up pride in the Black population as part of building the new nation from the ashes of the war. They were a mixed group, and they tried to describe the horrors of the war and the way the Black population had been oppressed by the Rhodesians. Others tried to describe the difficulty of being a young ambitious Black intellectual in a world that would want you to either take up arms or betray your people. Some of them like Chenjerai Hove, Charles Mungoshi and Shimmer Chinodya are still writing today, and have been hugely influential in shaping the way generations of Zimbabweans remember the war and Rhodesian oppression.
The most internationally acclaimed writer of the war-generation is Dambudzo Marechera, who wrote dark, satirical and controversial books about his life in the townships and his life as an academic in Oxford. Marechera was the odd one out both in the academic circles of Oxford and in Zimbabwe, to which he returned in 1982. Marechera was always a critical, and his hard hitting satire got him into trouble with the newly elected Black government. When he died from AIDS in 1987, he had become a destitute outcast. And only after his death did his books become celebrated for their literary genius and their almost prophetic insight into the political corruption of the new government. Today young Zimbabwean writers and poets take much of their inspiration from Marechera. They draw on his legacy of critical thinking and on his use of satire as a form of resistance.
During the 1990s a new generation of Zimbabwean writers began to open up new issues in literature. Most importantly; women began to let their voices be heard. In the two first generations of writers very few women had had a chance to write, and even fewer chances to get published. Now, young women who were well educated, very intellectual and critical of the power men had over women’s lives cropped up in the otherwise male dominated world of Zimbabwean literature. Two literary ‘stars’ came out of this period: Tsitsi Dangarembga and Yvonne Vera. The first novel written in English by a Zimbabwean woman came from Tsitsi Dangarembga. Her semi-biographical novel Nervous Conditions from 1988 was a ground breaking insight into the life of Zimbabwean women. Nervous Conditions describes the circumstances under which a bright young girl comes to attain an education against all odds in colonial Rhodesia. The novel levels stark critique both at the patriarchal beliefs of the Black community and against the racist structures under which this community must live. Dangarembga went on to become a filmmaker and only published the sequel The Book of Not in 2006.
Her feminist voice was soon joined by other women writers, the most famous of whom is Yvonne Vera, who with five novels has also been the most productive of the Zimbabwean women writers. Vera published her first novel Nehanda in 1993, while she was completing her PhD in Canada. Nehanda is a dreamlike and deeply spiritual book. It is at once a homesick declaration of love for her nation, and a strong feminist reinterpretation of the nationalist myths that were being abused by the government. Yvonne Vera was arguably the most intellectual writer of her generation. Her books tackled such difficult and controversial issues as rape, incest, suicide and child-murder, in a style of writing that was more akin to poetry than to prose. She was also a postmodern writer, who was fascinated with African oral storytelling traditions. This made her books less accessible to an unschooled Western audience, but spoke very powerfully to Zimbabweans who understood this narrative style. Vera cared deeply about the political traumas of the Zimbabwean nation, an issue which became more and more apparent towards the end of her short life. Her last novel The Stone Virgins from 2002 was one of the first works of literature to break the taboos about the so-called Gukurahundi genocide of the early 1980s, where 20.000 people were killed by government forces in the southern province Matabeleland. Like Marechera, Yvonne Vera died young from AIDS in 2005. Before her death, she had been working on a novel Obedience, in which she had begun to confront the political crisis of the 2000s. At a memorial in London in 2005 a close friend read an extract, in which she depicted the political slogans of the government as ‘leaving the tongue stuck to the roof of the mouth’ – both hard to swallow and at the same time silencing any reply.
For Zimbabwean writing there have been two great effects of the crisis. Firstly, people have stopped buying books, simply because no one can afford them. And even though there are many promising young writers, it is difficult to get published. Secondly, the government’s strict control of the media is also having an effect on writers. There is still a few publishing houses that are operating independently form government control. But many writers and publishers are afraid to publish critical writing because of the constant threat of violence from the government. Therefore, new books from young Zimbabwean writers are few and far between. In this respect, the young writers of today are very much like the generation of writers that emerged during the civil war. Many of them live in exile, and they are engaging in the country’s difficult political and social situation from a number of different perspectives.
An issue which is becoming very important to people in the midst of the social and political crisis is the risk of HIV and AIDS. In Zimbabwe at least 20% of the adult population is infected with HIV. For many years it has been taboo to talk about sex, and many people still see campaigns for condoms as morally offensive, because they believe that condoms encourage sexual immorality. But young writers have started to write about the difficulties of having a love life in a time of AIDS. Many Zimbabweans blame the spread of HIV on prostitution and what they call ‘small houses’, which is slang for married men having girlfriends whom they support financially. These ideas are fed both by Christian moral ideals and by local patriarchal views on women’s roles in society. Marriage is seen as a very important institution in Zimbabwe. Under ‘traditional law’ polygamy is still allowed, but most people do not live after these rules, and ‘small houses’ is a modern practice that draws on ideals of polygamy. Married women are expected to uphold moral standards of sexual virtue and fidelity, while men often see it as a status symbol to be able to support more than one woman. As we shall see in the text The Uncertainty of Hope, these ideals and practices can complicate people’s lives, and are problematic for many women in Zimbabwe in the context of HIV/AIDS. While some women see married men as a way out of poverty, married women struggle to trust their husbands, and they all face the danger of HIV infection.
Source – www.od.dk