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Picture
Novuyo   Rosa Tshuma is the author of the book Shadows. Her short fiction has
been featured in publications which  include A Life in Full and Other Stories; Caine Prize Anthology, The Bed  Books of Short Stories, Where to Now?  Short stories from Zimbabwe and Sentinel Literary Quarterly. She won  the Intwasa Short Story Competition  2009, now known as the Yvonne Vera Award,  for her short story You In  Paradise. She was shortlisted for the  Zimbabwe Achievers Literature Award  2012 for her short story Doctor S.  She is currently studying towards a  Bcom in Economics and Finance at the  University of Witwatersrand in South  Africa.

A tripping down the Zimbabwean Landscape

My recent trip to Zimbabwe evoked a mixture of emotions in me; it was lovely to be  home and heartbreaking at the same time. Home makes me squirm; perhaps it is both personal and social; the me in Zimbabwe resonates an uncomfortable social   intimacy; am  now more accustomed to the me here in South Africa, who easily melts into the many folds of anonymity in this huge and vigorous space. At  home, one meets familiar faces at every corner, and one is ever  aware  at  once of  belonging to a larger, more intimate social quilt. One embroiders these seams with something of the expected social discourse.
 
I  think home - Zimbabwe - is still a very hard space. There has been a lot of  talk  on the social networks about how much progress has been made - perhaps  indeed it  has - but that progress I feel can only be fully appreciated when it  is finally  translated to the greater masses, an improvement of the standard of  living for  that man on the street. There is still a disturbing, even delicious  aspiration  towards corruption, and I mean corruption even on the basic level. The people I  spoke to made it clear that the only way to 'make it' was to be  'clever' and  partake in some form of 'dealing' or 'other' because 'straight  things don't  pay'.

For   example, when I asked about the banking system, somebody laughed and told me  that they would never keep their money in the bank.

  'Why?'  I asked.

'Because  several banks have failed and closed down, and once they close down, you shall  never see your money. I know of somebody who lost a whole $50  000.'

I  was incredulous. 'And there is nothing you can do?'

'What  can you do? Many of these new banks are indigenous banks. It's like this. If  you  own a bank and I ask you to loan me money, and you give me because I'm your   friend even if I'm not credit worthy, and then we spend that money together...   even if I don't pay, there is nothing you will do because we are in this loan   scheme together, and so you file for bankruptcy and you have no money. So  people  don't trust the banks. It's estimated that about $2 billion is in  circulation in  Zimbabwe, on the streets and not in the banks.'

Somebody  who runs a civic organisation said how difficult it is to try and operate in remote areas of the country, such as the rural areas, in trying to mobilise,  for  example, youth participation in civic matters. The people there were always  suspicious, I was told, wanting to know which political party one belonged to,  and would not believe that one did not belong to any political party and was  there on civic matters as a principle. Furthermore, the local authorities and local police of the remote areas were unco-operative, I was told, and were a  law  unto themselves. They laughed at documents such as interdicts from the High  Court, and banned gatherings at their whim, saying, 'these pieces of paper don't  mean anything here. We decided what happens here.' They were  unashamedly  disrespectful of the rule of law. In one area, the police bragged about having  arrested the Minister of National Healing, in 2011, Mzila Ndlovu,  on his way to  a gathering to address a crowd on the very matter of National  Healing. More  frightening were the stories of people who 'disappear'. One is never sure  whether it is a long inherited paranoia or an accurate depiction of  the state of  things, but I was specifically told not to speak about certain
things and not to  mention certain things in public, such as Gukurahundi. I was told that it is an  absolute no-go area, a taboo subject. Of course, this would  not be surprising  following things such as the arrest in 2010 of the arrest of artist Owen Maseko  because of his Gukurahundi exhibition. Talking to a few  people about such  things, the atmosphere seemed to be that people 'do not want  trouble', and are  aiming for a 'better existence' in Zimbabwe, and don't want things that will  'set them back' or 'bring them trouble'. But this I feel is a notion which is  circular and ends in one shooting oneself in the foot. What is  trouble? I  wonder. Burying a blister does not make the pain of it go away. 
 
On  books and reading and the Zimbabwean landscape:  I think we can intellectualise and discuss the matter all we want, but the facts  on the ground are harsh. I had all these ideas about reading, about books and  how it is a shame that local societies do not buy their own books, how a book  is  a precious thing to be cherished. Indeed, it is true that the society which  reads a piece of work is as much a crucial part of that work as is the ability  of the writer to pen it. Before, Africa was being spoken for, by texts such as  'The Heart of Darkness' which became iconic of Africa; now, Africa has a plethora of writers and many voices which attempt to speak for her. But her  audience is largely Western, and hence there is still that power play, because  an audience does decide what a piece of work means, and at present, many  African  authors are not held accountable by the societies about which they  write simply  because those societies do not read and interrogate the works that  are  produced.

All of this sounds very nice and I arrived in Zimbabwe convinced that I would try  and preach about this.

But  now.

There I was, walking the streets of Nkulumane, a township in Bulawayo. Little  children  were scampering across the street, cradling empty bottles of water, on  their way  to the communal borehole. The region had bad rains last year, and  there is a  water shortage. Water goes 3 times a week, and is set to go 4 times. Electricity  goes everyday except Tuesdays.

Lying  on a mattress listening to the rhythms outside, the girls next door complaining  about their hair as they made a fire for cooking, all the nice sounding  preaching fled from my lips. Walking in the morning, just watching the film  that  is the township, the vendors setting up their wares by the roadside, at  the Flea  Market opposite Sokusile Shops, where everything from soaps and  lotions to sofas  to kitchen table sets to car parts can be found, I wondered:  what could I tell  these people? How could I preach to them about 'the value of  a book, buy books  and read them,' how could I chastise them about being 'a  society that does not  appreciate the value of reading,for leisure and pleasure!  The West reads your  books, and there is a certain power because now they get to  decide what your own  work is!' When exactly would these young girls, in between
collecting water,  firewood, cooking and cleaning and all the other practical  chores, get a space  in which to breathe a book? Suddenly, smack-dab in the  middle of that landscape,  the neat and pretty words evaporated, and in their  place was a reality which  made my mouth dry.

A  reluctant realisation - 'buying a book, the value of buying a book', was  something of a ridiculous notion in this landscape. Something very intellectual and idealistic, that perhaps would lack a practical vehicle to back it up. In a landscape where people are struggling to  pay school fees for their children and provide three meals a day, in a  landscape where people are after the tangible things that can be translated  into immediate  money, a book is a surreal thing, a far off thing. Sure enough,
they will go out of their way to buy a book if it's for school purposes, because it is understood, even if it is no longer totally believed, that school  is the gateway  to social and financial success, an escape route from current  poverty and  hardship. A book in such a landscape, becomes something of a  'social  responsibility'.

It's  really more than just the tangible reality of it, but the atmosphere of it. The  mountain is huge. Here in South Africa, I have encountered a different sort  of  attitude to a book, and perhaps it may be because the landscape is 'ready'  for  it? Zimbabwe faces so much still; I sensed a certain attitude, an attitude  I  thought I had left back in 2008, with the queues; a lack of faith in the  leaders, from the basic level of council, that sinks people into a state of  apathy. So if you speak to somebody you find they are still complaining, but  that complaint ends in a shrug. In that sense, I would think that the love  within South African communities of taking to the streets and  toyi-toying  is a good thing; it fosters within a community the sense  that they can do  something about their situation, that they still have a  measure of power to have  their voices heard, and that they can make a
difference. This sense of communal  power is I think crucial for any society,  and seems dead in  Zimbabwe.

So, I found this trip on a whole a bit frightening for me, because it is as if Zimbabwe has not changed. I speak of the atmosphere of it, the suspicion of it,  the way things are done, the open belief that corruption is the way to get  ahead, since those who 'have money', are a few compared to the population, and  since many of them seem to have gotten ahead through corrupt means. Perhaps it  frightens me because I was viewing and questioning this from a comparison to  South Africa which, although it has its fair share of problems, exhibits a more  democratic and auspicious landscape, with a healthier debate platform and a  plethora of opportunities.

Reading  Jane Bryce's essay 'Imaginary Snapshots' in 'Sign and Taboo: Perspectives on  the  Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera', a paragraph she quotes from Ben Okri's 'The  Famished Road' stood out, and became, at that moment of reading it, pondering
my  surroundings, a poignant depiction: 

By  his presence, the photographer calls people into being as individuals who would otherwise remain faceless, and provides a record of events which otherwise  would  pass unrecorded into oblivion... Later, when the security forces come
looking  for the photographer, the narrator is witness as: 'His camera flashed and thugs  in dark glasses appeared from the flash and proceeded to beat him  up... The  thugs jumped on the camera and stamped on it, trying to crush and destroy it.  And the people who were inside the camera, who were waiting to  become real...  began wailing and wouldn't stop.' (ibid., 173) - page 45.
 
  
Reality is a frightening thing, and perhaps hence why one seeks refuge in the pen, where  one can remap even the harshest glare. But a writer of fiction, what is a  writer  of fiction in this landscape? He is a pretty thing, a decoration, yes perhaps  with 'something to say', but, something to say to the people,  with them, or about them, I wonder? As long as they are not engaging their  own work, or do not have the means to engage their own work,  they remain the  subjects of it, the fascination of it to be pondered and  dissected elsewhere, to  be mapped and made real elsewhere. A writer sees this landscape and is  fascinated by it, is inspired by it, picks up his pen in a  feverish state, but  he is also moved to flee from it, lest he finds himself drowning in the fear of  it, and wakes up one day to find he has lost the fascination of  words.

It  is a shame.