Mazwi

Writing in Times of Crisis

By John Eppel

I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War, my parents’ crisis, who grew up in the shadow of the First World War, my grandparents’ crisis. I grew up as a member of an oppressive white minority regime, which sowed the seeds of future personal crises of guilt and alienation. I took part, on the wrong side, in the crisis which came to be known as the Second Chimurenga – the war of liberation.

The joy of independence was short-lived: crisis after crisis followed as the politics of patronage and cronyism with its concomitant culture of blame began to destroy our economy. The symbolism of our once proud flag has been replaced by the symbolism of wabenzi: the Mercedes Benz. Anybody with a sense of history can see that power corrupts, so that today’s oppressed will become tomorrow’s oppressors. Davids are Goliaths in waiting. The practice of writing – stories, poems, novels – keeps me detached (sniping distance) from this ugly cycle.

I began writing, poems mainly, in my early teens. At that point I had no political awareness. I grew up – a fourth generation settler – in a small, extremely conservative mining community in rural Matabeleland. I wrote about the so-called deep subjects like God, beauty, love and death. Treating black people, whose land and whose dignity we had usurped, did not occur to me as a subject worthy of iambic treatment. From the late 60s my first poems began to appear in print. I was about 18 years old. I imitated the poets we had been introduced to by our expatriate primary school teachers: Alfred Noyes, Walter De la Mare, John Masefield, Robert Louis Stevenson among others. The emphasis was on prosody. Here is an example (first published in Spoils of War, Carrefour, Cape Town, 1989).

Sunday Evening. Colleen Bawn

Yes. I feel the music throbbing
through the dark mimosa trees;
hectic palpitations pitching
pods in a game with the breeze,
and the drone of beetles darting
down, like model aeroplanes.
I am sitting on the granite wall,
above the laughing drains
that gurgle round and down among
our village public ways;
and you are with the music,
and the others, and their praise.
And when you take the high road home
with moonlight in your eye,
someone’s jacket round your shoulders,
someone’s fingers on your thigh -
when you pass the dark mimosas
you may hear the branches sigh.
They are sighing after music
that has had a ‘dying fall’
in a laughter of hyenas,
in the nightjar’s creaking call,
in a Sunday evening sickness
stretched along the granite wall.

Echoes of Orsino! When I became politically aware – it happens late or never in a rugby and barbeque culture – I realised that prosody was not appropriate in the colonial context unless I learned to use it ironically, as a tool of self-criticism, a tool to accuse the culture that produced it. So, I don’t write sonnets, I write parodies of sonnets. I reject for my less juvenile verse what J.M. Coetzee wrote about Thomas Pringle’s: “The familiar trot of iambic tetrameter couplets reassuringly domesticates the foreign content.” However, this sometimes backfires.

Readers think I write sonnets and odes and sestinas because I am colonial-minded. Similarly my prose satires are frequently misconstrued. Readers conflate me with my characters, especially the grotesque racists. What follows is a sample of my prose satire. The piece was published in The Caruso of Colleen Bawn and other Short Writings (‘amaBooks, Bulawayo, 2004).

WHO REALLY BUILT GREAT ZIMBABWE?

(After Jorge Luis Borges)

[The original letter is in the estate of Great Aunt Nora, along with an India rubber dildo preserved in talcum powder, and a signed copy of The Well of Loneliness. While we have ascertained that the book and the dildo were private possessions, it is almost certain that the letter, a fragment of which follows, was the creation of a mischievous South African organization, bent on sowing seeds of division between the black and white peoples of the then Rhodesia. Great Aunt Nora’s twin brother belonged to one such despicable organization, and he is the likely author. The text is in English but one or two Afrikanerisms justify the conjecture that it was translated from the Afrikaans.]

…will now focus on one of the most shocking monuments to power in Africa. My example is politically correct because, contrary to popular belief, it was not built by black Africans.

This so-called monument is comparable to the pyramid of Gizah and Die Taal Monument in South Africa as a symbol of male dominated political power, power over people. When the king coughs, you cough. When the king his balls scratches [sic], you your balls scratch [sic].

One theory is that it was created by Phoenician gold traders; another, by the queen of Sheba; yet another, by the Monamatapa dynasty: one group of the Shona speaking peoples. None of these theories is remotely true.

Great Zimbabwe, as the ruins are now called, was built – or the bulk of it anyway – by the Rhodesian rugby squad. In order for them to achieve peak fitness for their games against the New Zealand All Blacks and the British Lions, they went into secret training at a camp seventeen miles south of Masvingo, (then called Fort Victoria).

Their coach chose this site for two reasons: steep kopjes [sic] to run up and down and millions of stones lying around for the players to carry around while they trained. His fitness programme was simple but effective. At a central point in the valley, the players were into groups divided [sic] and each group was given an area to run to. They had to run with a stone in each hand and deposit it when they reached their given area.

In this way the tight forwards built the Acropolis, the loose forwards built the elliptical building, and the three quarter line built the rest. I was told by a surviving member of that squad, who wishes not to be named, that the so-called conical tower, which his group built, was their idea of a “whopping jaloga”, and that he, himself, had carved the so-called soap stone birds based on a condom he had once seen which was tipped with a hard rubber pineapple. I asked about the crocodile that rests below the bird, and his nostrils flared proudly when he explained that the space between the jaws of the reptile and the claws of the raptor signified the glans of the penis, the focus of masculine glory.

All peace-loving Zimbabweans will be relieved to know, at last, that the ruins called Great Zimbabwe are nothing more than a vulgar Rhodesian aberration, and are no longer to be feared, as they have for centuries been feared, along with Die Taal Monument and the Pyramid of Gizah, as shocking symbols of masculine …

No more of the letter has been unearthed.

Now here is a sample of a sonnet parody. It was published in White Man Crawling (‘amaBooks, Bulawayo, 2007). It’s a response to the government’s Operation Murambatsvina, “clean out the trash”, which resulted in instant homelessness for more than 700 000 poor urban Zimbabweans.

SONNET WITH ONE UNSTATED LINE

See the shambling gait of the unemployed,
the vacant stare of the dispossessed;
the plastic bags by breezes bouyed
or, when evening settles, at rest.
Hear the cry of hornbills lost in yards
of rubble and rags, to split the ears
of those who stand and watch; and the guards
unguarded, hammering, hammering.
Smell the blood and mucous, ashes damp;
breath of birds turned children clamouring,
children clamouring. A tyrant’s stamp:
a boot, a fist, a fourteen pounder:
come and witness our city flounder.

The fourteenth line of the sonnet has been appropriated by a very large hammer! I use parody to attack what I consider to be bad behaviour, self-righteousness in particular. My first novel, the bulk of it, was written in 1978, 15 years before it found a publisher, a tiny poetry press in Cape Town called Carrefour. This press, three years before, had published my first book of poems. It had taken 12 years to find a publisher for those.

The editor was Douglas Reid Skinner for whom I am still, despite our differences, grateful. None of the Zimbabwean presses would publish me; none of the mainstream South African presses. Influential academics (and editors of anthologies), not only at home but in those countries starched with political correctness like post-independent South Africa, Germany, Canada, and England, dismissed me as morally questionable or simply ignored me. Until fairly recently, my name did not appear in the bibliography of Zimbabwean authors.

Of my pre-independence contemporaries and the independence generation, black writers like Charles Mungoshi, Musaemura Zimunya, Chenjerai Hove, the late Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangaremga, Shimmer Chinodya, Cont Mhlanga, Chirikure Chirikure…. only one has sincerely accepted me as a fellow writer: the equally ignored Julius Chingono, bless him.

The same is true of those white Zimbabwean writers like Peter Godwin, Alexandra Fuller, and Alexander McCall Smith, who have tickled the world’s fancy. But the younger generation, the “born frees” are different; they don’t seem to have a problem with my socio-political liabilities. Petina Gappah, Christopher Mlalazi, Brian Chikwava… they talk to me. And guess what? They too are satirists, unafraid to ridicule the regime that thinks nothing of torturing and killing its conceived critics.

Of the many atrocities that have occurred in this country from 1965 and beyond, to an hour ago, the worst by far were the genocidal activities of the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade. No one knows the exact number but it is estimated that about 20 000 innocent people from rural Midlands and Matabeleland were massacred. Ostensibly the role of the Fifth Brigade was to wipe out so-called dissidents, a few hundred ZIPRA soldiers loyal to Joshua Nkomo, who had deserted from the army of “national unity” because, allegedly, they were receiving hostile treatment from the ZANLA soldiers loyal to Robert Mugabe. In reality Joshua Nkomo was closer to the truth when he expressed fears that their role was the imposition of a one-party state in Zimbabwe. The Fifth Brigade was established in the very first year of Independence. President Mugabe called his squad Gukurahundi, a Shona expression meaning “the rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains.” Sinister words!
Writers have been afraid to record this dark period of our history, possibly because many of the instigators of Gukurahundi are still alive and still very much in power. The one famous writer who did have a go was the late Yvonne Vera. No one can deny her courage in tackling taboo subjects like incest and abortion, but The Stone Virgins is abject cowardice. Shona writers with ZANU PF sympathies are still in too much denial to tackle this shameful period, so close to the euphoria of independence from white rule.

I don’t only write satire; some of my stories and poems are direct protests like this one based on a true incident, which took place in the run-up to the recent, so-called Presidential elections. It was printed in Quadrant (Australia, 2009) and was put to music by a vibrant Zimbabwean activist known as VIOMAK.

Broke-Buttock Blues

They beat me with branches wrapped up in barb-wire,
they beat me with branches wrapped up in barb-wire;
my baby she crying, her face is on fire.
They say you are sell-out, you vote Tsvangirai,
they say you are sell-out, you vote Tsvangirai;
my baby, she dying, please God, tell me why?
They beat first my head then my back then my bums,
they beat first my head then my back then my bums;
they laugh and they say is like playing the drums.
I beg them for water, they say go ask Blair,
I beg them for water, they say go ask Blair.
Please, put out the fire in Mucheche’s hair?
My bottom is broken, can not sit or stand,
my bottom is broken, can not sit or stand;
Mucheche can’t breathe with her mouth in the sand.
They burned all our mealies, our chickens, our dog,
they burned all our mealies, our chickens, our dog;
my uncle, they hit him to death with a log.
For hours they beat me, for hours I cry,
for hours they beat me, for hours I cry;
please God, save my baby, do not let her die?
When they leave, like a tortoise I crawl very slow,
when they leave, like a tortoise I crawl very slow;
but my baby stopped crying a long time ago,
mwana wangu stopped crying a long time ago.

And I don’t only write protest. Many of my poems are personal – attempts to do what mainstream poets do – try to transmute private experience into something universal, try to create a world in a grain of sand like, yes, Blake, or Hopkins, or Yeats, or the greatest of them all – Robert Mugabe’s and Thabo Mbeki’s fellow countryman – Will Shakespeare. Here’s an example, first printed in Carapace (Cape Town, 2008).

Grass in Winter

I gather armfuls of tow-headed grass:
the dusty smell is intoxicating;
then I dance until the last flaxen stalk
drifts away on a cross-breeze. In winter
grass is blond like the children of settlers;
and at dusk, there’s a wisp of gold, a rasp
of strawberry, a rustle of ash, a
sighing of bottles without corks. The moon
begins to climb, then all is platinum
cooling my nostrils, corners of my eyes,
shells of my ears, fingertips. Winter
spins itself into a blanket of love,
which, neither puffed up nor vaunting, briefly
transcends faith, and hope, and doubt, and despair.

I sometimes feel that the politics of Southern Africa, let alone the politics of the rest of the world, is draining me of my satirical energy. Robert Mugabe, Jacob Zuma, King Mswati – who can caricature a caricature? There are richer pickings in the expatriate community and the NGOs that employ them. Ever since Independence in 1980 they have been pouring into Zimbabwe with a mandate to help “actualise” the gains of the revolution. They have a mantra: “black skin good; white skin bad”. I’m generalising of course, but like bathos, hyperbole, burlesque, travesty, irony… generalisation is a tool of the satirist.

These parasites, many of whom can’t find jobs in their own countries, have their cake and eat it. It’s easy to go about barefoot when you have twenty pairs of shoes in your cupboard back home. They have good intentions, no doubt about that, but they have no idea how destructive these intentions, “actualised”, can become, especially once – after one year, two years, a decade – they up sticks and return home or transfer to some other Godforsaken part of the world, which, nevertheless accepts Visa and American Express. Here is a sample of NGO bashing. It was published in White Man Crawling (‘amaBooks, Bulawayo, 2007).

NGO Games

NGOs, like all of us, need time to unwind. They work under great pressure, and often in great danger, so utterly committed are they to the suffering masses of this earth. Once or twice a year it is the custom of those NGOs based in Sub-Saharan Africa to get together at some secluded venue, a safari lodge, say, and debrief(s) each other.

NGOs are a paradoxical lot. Among them you will find failed doctors, failed educators, failed lawyers, failed poets, failed priests, even. Yet as NGOs they are successes, precisely because they failed in their chosen careers. Jesus might have put it this way: “Those who fail will succeed.”

Success comes at a cost, however. These people are not too far from the front line when it comes to human rights issues. They avoid being beaten up or imprisoned if they can help it, but they compile reports, many many reports, on those unfortunate souls who do get beaten up and imprisoned. Report writing is what NGOs do best, and report writing is one of the main events at the NGO Games. Other events include variety of sexual partners (not for the sake of sex but for commitment to tolerance and universalism), off-road driving skills, eating mopani worms and/or mice (to show solidarity with the suffering masses), video-watching marathon (of videos endorsed by Oxfam and Amnesty International – the last person to fall asleep wins), and an egg-and-spoon race.

At this year’s games a number of countries was represented, countries which tended to have high unemployment rates at home, and which saw the NGO world as a respectable dumping ground for those sons and daughters of theirs who couldn’t face the stiff competition back home. Canada was there; Ireland was there; Germany was there; Denmark was there; Norway was there; Australia was there; South Africa was there; the Vatican City was there. Favourite for the “variety of sexual partners” category, this year, was Norway.

This is not a racial thing, you understand. The concept of race, at least in biological terms, does not exist. The term is redundant. Genetically we are all the same (and not that much different from tomatoes); environmentally, however – and here colonization is largely to blame – we can be very different; hence the key word “variety” in this category. The countries represented had all done each other, but Norway had gone much further afield: Norway had done Swazi, Dinka, Hutu, Sezuru, Gikuyu, Hottentot, Berber, Pigmy, Maori, Easter Islander, and even – only once, mind you – Walloon.

As it turned out, Norway was beaten, edged out by relative newcomer, Vatican City; though Norway (good humouredly of course) cried foul at the fruits and vegetables on Vatican City’s extensive list. The Off-road race was won by South Africa, only because favourite, Canada’s vehicle had been painted maple leaf red. You see, a strict rule of this event is that all NGO vehicles (diesel fuelled Toyoto 4 x 4s) must be painted white. Canada was disqualified. There was some consolation for Canada, however, which won the video-watching marathon, pushing the highly favoured Australia into second place. The first ten videos were on the plight of refugees all over the world; the second ten were on AIDS sufferers; the third ten were on North American prisons, the fourth on child soldiers, and the fifth… but nobody, not even Canada, got that far… was on female genital mutilation.

No one could match Germany in the report writing category. In the three days over which the course was run Germany produced no fewer than fourteen reports, all on the same topic, AIDS, and all pretty much repeat runs, but that is the nature of your NGO report. It’s the tautological approach, where you say the same thing over and over again, but you say it differently. A typical NGO report would be structured in this way: first you say it in simple words, then you say it in difficult words, then you say it in words unfathomable to the layman, then you say it in pictures, then in maps, then in graphs, then in charts, then, and finally, in appendices.

The other countries cried foul (good humouredly of course) when Ireland won the eating contest because Ireland, it turned out, was Zimbawe in the diaspora, and Zimbabwe rated among its delicacies, mice and mopani worms. And who won the egg and spoon race, the positive highlight of the games? Why, Denmark won it. So the only two countries not to take home a medal were Australia and Norway. But don’t worry, they had a good time; they still are if that fuggy swaying 4 x 4, those Scandinavian shrieks and Antipodean groans are anything to go by.

Finally, I’d like to return to what I think I do best, parody, not satire this time but an expression of admiration for what I consider to be one of the greatest poems in the English language: “Ode to Autumn” by John Keats. In Zimbabwe the months of March, April, and May approximate the autumnal season in the northern hemisphere. The poem’s form is an exact replica of Keats’s ode. It was first published in Sonata for Matabeleland (Snailpress, Cape Town, 1995).

March Lily

Evening of love and soft-hued hopelessness,
Amaryllis to the outspoken day
and the buttoned-up night, and me, I guess -
suspend the dusty perfume of your stay,
dove-light cooling a borne-in-umbels sky;
I ask you to hold it half an hour,
at least until the sausages are done
and the sauce has been thickened with flour.
Too early for the children’s lullaby,
too late, you see, to pass the neighbours by;
mosquitoes are coming, house-flies are gone.
I hear you like a simple melody
sung by a tenor from the Golden Age:
“Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie”,
and its joy, and its pity, and its rage.
Evening of beer and precious company,
lily of death-in-life and life-in-death,
let linger your fingers of musk on my
face, warmer than tongue-tip, cooler than breath.
As the light recedes from the tallest tree
and the children tilt their faces to see
Venus re-kindling the west, late birds cry,
a cricket and a rusty gate-hinge creak;
we stand to stretch then go inside to eat,
discuss tomorrow and the coming week,
Panama, Poland, Ceausescu’s defeat.
There’s mash with the sausage, and aubergine.
The children are kissed and sent off to bed;
they’ll want a story, and a song, I guess -
I’ll tell of the living, I’ll sing of the dead.
Belladonna lily, who has not seen,
some mild March evening, your trumpet sheen,
not felt, with hope, your soft-hued loveliness?

Published in State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry (2009)