Interview with J. Tsitsi Mutiti
By Emmanuel Sigauke
J. Tsitsi Mutiti was born in Mt Darwin, Zimbabwe and married to writer, Dr Nhamo Mhiripiri. She did her primary education in Gweru and Concession before going to Harare for her high school education at Arundel School. She I didn’t study the Arts after secondary school, but opted for the sciences. She, however, read widely, both the so-called classics and science-fiction, of which she believes “has been under-estimated, yet it is the imaginative fiction for our times and the future.” Mutiti has published short stories and essays on music.
Please start by telling us a bit about yourself (writing, education, career).
At the University of Zimbabwe I studied Metallurgy, which I dropped after two years when I realised I that I had misplaced my interests. It is at the UZ that I met and befriended a number of young writers and critics amongst them Ignatius Mabasa, Praise Zenenga, Memory Chirere, the late Patrick Machakata, Albert Nyathi, Ruzvidzo Mupfudza and Nhamo Mhiripiri. We all at one time or the other attended, after our normal academic classes, sessions conducted by Chenjerai Hove, then the writer-in-residence. Hove was popular with us partly because his novel Bones had just won the prestigious NOMA Award. The sessions provided a place to hang out together. It also drew eccentrics such as the late Larry “Warlord” Chakeredza who went on to found Sangano Munhumutapa, a black empowerment group, and was also a self-styled Chief Munhumutapa III . He too read his poetry and works there like all of us. I don’t particularly remember any female student writers attending those sessions, although a few of my friends from high school occasionally turned up with me. I’d met Nhamo on campus and we started dating and married soon after when we were still students. Because Nhamo is more of the “conventional Arts person” he quickly knew where stuff was getting published, so it explains why we have often published in the same collections starting with the Bloom – a journal started by students in the English department. We have published together in two other projects, and editors only realized we are a couple after selecting our stories independently because I publish fiction under my maiden surname.
My short story, “Two Diners” is published in A Roof To Repair (2000) an anthology by Zimbabwean writers that won second prize in the 2001 Zimbabwe Book Publishers Awards. Another short story “Spokesman” is published in Dreams, Miracles and Jazz (2008), a collection of short stories by contemporary writers of African descent on the continent and in the Diaspora edited by Helon Habila and Kadija Sesay. Yet another, “The Old Woman” has been selected for publication in the forthcoming collection Women of Resistance edited by Elizabeth Browdy for the University of Wiscounsin’s African Women Writers Series. After dropping out of the University of Zimbabwe I went on to attain a Graduate Diploma in Purchasing and Supply with the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply. I worked in the automobile industry rising to the position of parts manager. In 2002, I was in the pioneering MBA class at the Midlands State University where I currently teach. I have also taught at the Chinhoyi University of Technology. I now work as a Supply Logistician with the Medicines Sans Frontiers and teach part time at MSU. I have published a journal article on copyright and the Zimbabwe music industry which I co-authored with Nhamo. It’s published in Muziki: the Journal of Music Research in Africa under the name Joyce Mhiripiri. I am currently working with Nhamo on abook on the same subject funded by the Zimbabwe Culture Fund. I am a mother of three teenagers, Kudzai, Antoinette and Tawanda, who, unfortunately, we are now teaching at home ourselves because there are no teachers and no food at their boarding school. We brought them home since the school system has collapsed.
In “To Give and Not Count…” the persona is an advocate for destitute children and the economically dispossessed. Is this poem a direct response to the economic and political deterioration in Zimbabwe?
This poems is a direct response to the events following the March 29 2008 elections in Zimbabwe, which saw many children witness the brutalisation and murder of parents, relatives, teachers, neighbours and friends and all the subsequent events which have happened. I wrote this on the day the “Deal” was signed because I was very upset by the whole thing. After listening to the speeches before the signing and not hearing much substance about what the deal contained, my heart turned to all those who had lost loved one’s and how they might be feeling at that time. At the same time the poem also addresses the general exploitation of weaker groups and nations by more powerful ones. It allude to fact that much of the wealth and power enjoyed in the world today is built on the back of the suffering of others. It seems almost a part of today’s logic that kakara kununa hudya kamwe. If it is not a powerful nation doing this to a lesser nation, then it is a powerful group doing it to less powerful groups right down to the individual level. Apparently confusingly, this is taking place in a time filled with the rhetoric of “human rights” and “economic rights”, “sovereignty”, “free trade”, “terrorism”, ” democracy”, “property rights” in a world where so many only own the right to breathe, and rather filthy air at that. This poem addresses the ironies inherent in the fact that those who declare that they are willing for their blood to flow in case such a thing happens or threaten bloodshed are seldom the ones whose blood is shed. It is of course always easier to volunteer other people’s blood and sacrifices as the price for one’s continued power or ascent to power, if one is in a powerful position and they are not or if one has a gun and others have not.
I have read that you have established yourself as a fiction writer. Do you write poetry as what Mungoshi would call “finger practice”? What other writing projects are you working on?
Quite often I write poetry to help me discharge of some powerful emotion that will have gripped me as a response to an event in my life. My poetry writing is a kind of emotional catharsis and I use it usually to work off negative energy from painful emotions. However sometimes I will also have an overwhelmingly beautiful moment that I want to capture in words or just a weird experience that I want to explore and better understand. I find that poetry is the best medium for me to express myself at such times. I am currently working on any number of short stories, a translation project, which will see the translation of an award winning Shona novel into English and some academic research into how mainstream business might incorporate all those marginalised groups working in the informal sector as small manufacturers, particularly in arts and crafts.
I have often said, you know, in all these different blogs and other internet forums, that these trying times in Zimbabwe may lead to a literary explosion, something akin to a Zimbabwean Literary Renaissance. Am I close to being right? Do you see the gap between writing and reading widening, leading to a situation where we have more books than we have readers?
Well yes to the first question. The bewildering array of unexpected and unusual events and behaviours being demonstrated by those “captains of our industry” and our nation must surely lead to such an explosion as people grapple with the situation to try to understand it, as others are moved by the heartbreaking experiences and brutal and ruthless deeds that they will have witnessed to write if not in advocacy then at least to stand as witnesses that the world may know what has gone on and that our descendents may also know how we their ancestors squandered so many opportunities through sheer selfishness to end up spending even their capital. The gap between writing and reading will grow, given the expense of books. On the other hand the sheer numbers of those in the Diaspora who wish to hear about home may create a market for Zimbabwean literature in the rest of the world.
You teach, right? How has that helped or hindered your writing?
Ironically, I teach business management and business has often rightly been regarded as a heartless practice that put profits first and people last, despite the rhetoric towards “ethical business practices” and “corporate social responsibility”. I am interested to discover from my students, many of whom are business managers, what acts of this nature are possible given the turbulent socio-economic and political context of the past decade. Not surprisingly there is not really much in the way of these activities going on, although one is surprised occasionally by a business which can afford a surprising degree of magnanimity in these tough times, not only in giving to the community but also in looking after their employees. The ironies that I encounter in teaching business management give me much food for thought and though they may not directly inspire my writing, can give me a starting point. Teaching both helps and hinders writing in that sometimes you are just aching to write something but things are very tight and there’s hardly a spare moment. Other slack moments give one much time for reflection for writing.
This is a random question. What do you think about Dambudzo Marechera in the context of contemporary Zimbabwe?
Dambudzo’s writing and his themes of decay and hunger and pain resonate with contemporary Zimbabwe very much. His visions of how the “povo” are exploitable resources are even more true today than when he wrote his “Oracle of the Povo”. To think on Dambudzo is to consider all those pockets that have been lined by BACOSSI dollars and other rent seeking behaviour which is rife in the nation at this time. At the same time that he writes so militantly against abuses of the powerless, Dambudzo also reveals in his writing his own fragility and vulnerability in a way that can sometimes render him a sympathetic character, sometimes an obnoxious one. This also exposes to us our own fragility and the precarious nature of our existence. To think on Dambudzo is also to think HIV/AIDS and the many precious voices that have been lost to Zimbabwe through this. To think on Dambudzo for me is to think on my friend Patrick Machakata, who died young without fulfilling the great promise that he showed and many others like him who have left great spaces in our lives and are remembered with aches in our hearts. In many ways Dambudzo epitomises Zimbabwe, a nation of great promise, wracked by “economic/political virus” created by the reckless and irresponsible choices of many who should have known better- which is in the throes of an excruciating and prolonged social devastation.
Do you have anything else you would like to say?
Only that I still hold out hopes for Zimbabwe, although clearly there is no going back to the pre 2000 economic levels as the demographics, socio-economic and political context have been irrevocably changed. Still we can build a better nation and honour all those whose lot is has been to be blood donors for our nation building project.
First published on Munyori.com