The terror, beauty of life in Zim
Tinashe Mushakavanhu
ALEXANDRA Fuller is the author of the memoir, Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. The book describes the terror and beauty of growing up in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in the 1970s, when the country was in the midst of an armed struggle pitting white settlers determined to hold onto power, against black nationalists agitating for independence.
It was published in 2002, a year in which there was the tightly contested Presidential election, a proliferation of political speech, writing and reportage on the land reform programme in Zimbabwe.
And perhaps, as an act of defiance to Robert Mugabe’s insistence that white Zimbabweans all belong to Tony Blair’s Britain, Fuller is overt in claiming a white Zimbabwean identity from the outset in her gripping memoir, though after independence in 1980 the Fullers had to move from one African country to another.
How did you pick the title of your first book, the memoir Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight?
FULLER: I picked the title from one of a vast collection of quotation books I obsessively collect and read. Titles have been easy for me both times. After the whole agony of writing a book, the title seems the least of my worries.
Scribbling the Cat was suggested by my editor. I had wanted to call the book Who Says Words With My Mouth because it felt as if I was talking about something both so unspeakable and also so unspoken.
And what would you say prompted you to sit and write this autobiography?
I WROTE Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs as a reaction against the painted-over, whitewashed “white” memoirs that had come out of Africa. I think a lot of the books written by whites as a memoir of the place are soft, feel-good books about a thin layer of their experiences that ignore the innate struggle below their comfortable existence. In most white memoirs until recently, the violence and the racism had been ignored.
I wanted to show my life exactly as it had been in all its contradictory, messy, violent, poetic chaos, the tragedy of living in a “white bubble”, the tragedy of fighting so hard for something so morally corrupt.
I know it was not the experience of all Rhodesians at the time but we were a part of the fabric of that time and it was certainly the way we lived.
Because you begun writing about your childhood experiences, would it be just to conclude that your childhood influenced you to be a writer?
I DON’T think my childhood influenced my need to write. I think people are either born writers, or they are not and if you are a born writer you can’t help writing. My mother read to me a lot and I think she gave me a love of words.
As an individual, can you explain why you write?
I WRITE to explore the human condition. I am always amazed by the range of emotions my books evoke in people. Some people are enraged, some amused, some confused, some feel as if I have told their story. I suppose I try and show, in my work, that we’re all connected – I want the reader to suspend his or her judgment about race and racists; about whites and blacks; about Africa and the West and read the story of individuals. At that very personal level, we are all connected to one another. We are the fault of one another; we are one another’s responsibility and burden and blessing.
In your own view, do you think there is any political difference between colonial Africa and post-independent Africa?
WHEN you asked me if there was any political difference between colonial Africa and post-independent Africa, my instant reaction was, “What a silly question!” but then I paused and thought about the question for a long time, and I came to an uncomfortable conclusion.
The horror of my answer is no, there are not enough differences and there are far too many similarities between the old regimes and the mimic regimes that have taken their places.
Corruption, oppression and economic apartheid have too easily filled the blank places left when the colonial powers moved on. Where is that dream we once had of a colourless, equal and fair society? Too few African countries can show us an example of fair, wise governance and it is disheartening and discouraging.
Would you describe yourself as someone in exile from her motherland, since you consider Africa as your true “home”?
NO, I am not in exile from Africa. I am married to a foreigner, and have chosen to live in his country for now, that is all. I think that Zimbabweans all over the world long for their home, and that many of them consider themselves in exile. In any case, I don’t really see myself being able to write about a place other than Africa, so I will have to come eventually, before I forget the smells and feel of the place altogether!
And finally, can you describe the writing process for you?
WRITING is a matter of discipline. Hours of writing are followed by hours and hours of furiously chopping away at my words until they are tight and sensible. The talent and story-collecting is really the easy part.
*Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969 but in 1972 when she was only three years old, her family moved to a farm in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia. She is now based in Wyoming in the United States where she lives with her husband and two children.
First published in The Standard