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BZS Zimbabwe Review Nov15 Final Zimbabwe Review Issue 15/4 November 2015 ISSN 1362-3168 The journal of the Britain Zimbabwe Society In this issue ... 1 Chenjerai Hove: obituaries and two poems ........................................................................... Page 2 2 Freedom Nyamubaya obituaries and two poems ....................................................................... Page 4 3 Political commitment in the writings of Chenjerai Hove and Freedom Nyamubaya ............. Page 7 4 Of fading parks, street raids and daily struggle to survive in Zimbabwe ............................... Page 10 5 The making of ‘Remaking Mutirikwi’ ...................................................................................... Page 11 6 Guy Clutton-Brock – hero of Zimbabwe ................................................................................. Page 12 7 New Books from and about Zimbabwe .................................................................................... Page 13 8 Zimbabwe Health Training Support ........................................................................................ Page 14 9 Report of BZS AGM, Zephaniah Phiri .................................................................................... Page 15 Chenjerai Hove and Freedom Nyamubaya This issue of the Zimbabwe Review is largely dedicated to the memory of two great Zimbabwean writers who both sadly died earlier this year, and who will be hugely missed both within and outside their country. Freedom Nyamubaya: this photograph Chenjerai Hove addressing the 2013 BZS Research © Irene Staunton. Day : this photograph © Beth Norton 1 Chenjerai Hove: 9 February 1956 – 12 July 2015 The following is a slightly shortened version of an obituary that appeared in The Guardian on 21 July, written by Stephen Chan Chenjerai Hove, who has died aged 59, was a an interview in London in 2007 with the academic leading Zimbabwean novelist and poet, and a bea - Ranka Primorac, he said: ‘For me, even ... financial con of integrity and dissidence. [and] economic corruption begins with the corruption of language. Look at people talking about “American He had lived in exile in the west since 2001, and interests”, or Mugabe talking about “sovereignty” along with Dambudzo Marechera, Yvonne Vera and and “patriotism”. All of a sudden there is a new def - Charles Mungoshi, was one of the founding figures inition of patriotism. Suddenly, some of us who are of modern Zimbabwean literature – a group of writ - critical of the system are no longer patriots or nation - ers whose work dealt with both pre- and post-inde - alists. Of course, the person who is in political power pendence. Of these, only Mungoshi now survives. is in charge of defining who is a patriot, who is a na - It is a feature of Zimbabwean literature that many tionalist and what is sovereignty. All of a sudden of its writers have achieved international acclaim. In - these words are being given a new meaning. So the deed, the story of Zimbabwe – a country with a deep corruption of language, for me, psychologically and history and a legacy of stone cities, of white colonial - emotionally, is the beginning of a multiplicity of ism followed by white rebellion against the crown, other corruptions.’ of heroic liberation struggle followed by reconcilia - It was as a champion of language as a means of tion and, lately, by racial division and economic melt - remaining truthful about nationalism, land and values down – has made it an obvious place for literature of that Hove spent his time in exile, producing ... poetry an intense order. and plays as well as essays and novels. He won many Hove was a writer with an impeccable command awards and fellowships, and became the inaugural both of English and Shona. The triumph of his great - president of the Zimbabwe Writers Union in 1984 as est novel, Bones (1988), the tale of Marita, a farm well as a founding board member of the Zimbabwe worker in pre-independence Rhodesia whose son has Human Rights Association in 1990. disappeared into the forest to join a band of liberation fighters, is not just its application of Shona folklore Hove was born in Mazvihwa, in rural Rhodesia, the and mythology – often in extremely nuanced form – son of a local chief. He was educated at two Catholic but the way in which its use of English allows the boarding schools: Kutama college in the Zvimba area, reader to understand the complexities of Shona lin - and Marist Brothers, in Hwange. He later studied at guistic expression. ... Bones ... renders Zimbabwean both the University of South Africa, in Pretoria, and thought as the equal of European thought and, with what is now the University of Zimbabwe, in Harare. great subtlety, embarks upon a meditation on land In his early days after university he made his living as and its meaning. a teacher and in the publishing industry. Hove was far from convinced of Robert Mugabe’s In exile, Hove longed to return to Zimbabwe, and use of the value of land as a reason for seizing white- had hope for the future. ‘Dictatorships, tyrannies, owned farms. And he was certainly opposed to the they are transient: they come and pass,’ he said. ‘I accompanying turn to authoritarianism by Mugabe’s understand that, and I will go through that.’ Sadly he government from 2000 onwards. His collection of es - failed to get to the end of the Mugabe era, but he will says, Palaver Finish (2002), is a sustained indictment be remembered as someone who wrote beautifully of the descent of Zimbabwean political society, its and who did not sell his soul for the squalid rhetoric title a call for an end to empty talk. Hove was an that dominates Zimbabwe today. early target of the regime and, after death threats and He is survived by his wife, Tekla, and by six attempts on his life, took himself into exile in 2001, children. first to France, then to the US, and then Norway, • Chenjerai Hove, writer, born 9 February 1956; died where he was living at the time of his death. 12 July 2015 s A cosmopolitan person, he adapted well to life outside Zimbabwe and continued to write luminous © Guardian News & Media Ltd: this article is re - works. Extremely aware of the uses of language, in produced with permission of the copyright-holder. 2 The following is taken from an obitu - image seems, at best, romantic and naïve, and at worst, dangerously misleading.’ ary published in The Zimbabwean on Despite such criticisms, Hove remains the first 23 July, by Trevor Grundy Zimbabwean novelist of international stature to place At literary seminars after Zimbabwe’s independ - voiceless women centre stage. His concern for the ence in 1980, Chenjerai Hove told large audiences little person led to his alienation from Mugabe and that writers of his generation and background the ruling party, Zanu (PF). His house in Harare was had heavy jobs before them – the burden of per - broken into by secret police. His manuscripts were suading a largely indifferent world to listen to taken away. His computers were wrecked. His family Africa’s cries of helplessness. was threatened. He fled in 2001 with the help of the Interna - ‘As writers,’ he said, ‘we have as well to turn around tional Parliament of Writers, [eventually finding and be publicists for the sake of the survival of our a home in] Stavanger in Norway, where he was a people.’ It was his literary mantra and lifelong guid - guest writer through the International Cities of ing principle. Refuge Network, an organisation that aids endan - Like Voltaire, Hove believed that the best way to gered and exiled writers. get rid of dictators was to laugh at them. In one col - Used with permission from The Zimbabwean: see: umn, Hove asked his readers to remember the stories http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2015/07/novelist- they’d heard as children – especially the story about forced-into-exile-from-his-native-zimbabwe/ the proud monkey who climbed to the top of the tallest tree, seeking applause from below. When he got there, all the animals on the ground below roared with laughter. They cared nothing about his prowess as a climber but were delighted to get a worm’s-eye view of the size of this self-important mamma’s big fat red bottom. ‘And so it is with power of any kind, political or otherwise,’ Hove wrote. ‘The higher one ascends the tree ... the more the public have a chance to observe and scrutinise one’s political and economic bottom.’ *** From a compassionate literary observer, Hove de - veleloped into a cultural politician. Between 1984 – 89 he was Chairman of the Zimbabwe Writers’ Union (ZWU) and in 1989 he won the prestigious Noma Award for his novel Bones , in which he told the story of Marita, the poor, illiterate farm labourer who sets Chenjerai Hove at the Zimbabwe International Book out for the city to search for her son who left with the Fair in 1984. this photograph: © Biddy Partridge freedom fighters and never returned. Marita was one of the hundreds of thousands of lost Chenjerai Hove's novel Bones combined so much and lonely women who walked the Zimbabwean earth of what was best about his writing, the poet and after independence, often no better off (sometimes a the realist. It was also the first novel in English lot worse) than they were in colonial times. Bones re - that lives through the medium of Shona in tone, ceived glowing reviews and was translated into several rhythm, metaphor, and evolution. He thus pro - languages. It was followed by two other important vided a new terrain for the expression of English novels – Shadows (1991) and Ancestors (1996). in Zimbabwe implicitly offering an alternative to In her book, Teachers, Preachers, Non-Believers the notion that the only way to uphold one's cul - – A Social History of Zimbabwean Literature ture is to write in an indigenous language. (Baobab Books, Harare 1992) Flora Veit-Wild writes, Irene Staunton, Publisher, Weaver Press ‘Hove seems to have met certain expectations that critics and international readers have of the modern African tale … His attempt to recreate the African 3 TO A DICTATOR Tichaona Freedom Nyamubaya: in your time 5 July 1957– 2015 you took away the flowers of our freedom.
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