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| Beavan Tapureta (Photo Credit: KwaChirere) |
Book: Drums of Africa
Editor: Kennedy Madhombiro
Publisher: Diaspora Publishers (2013)
Drums of Africa, an anthology of contemporary Zimbabwean poetry, is a trove of artistic nuggets, framed and polished for a range of impressions.
The poets, local and diasporan, converge from different backgrounds, to address with different poetic implements, conditions underlying their international experience.
Most of the issues under deliberation are old discourses addressed by new voices – familiar terrain traversed through freshly beaten tracks.
The artists cross their notes into one Afropolitan symphony. The joint effort is, altogether, a refreshing notification that Zimbabwean poetry is entering a new stretch.
Their thematic taskbar oscillates from universal phenomena such as love and strife, ghetto scares such as stray sewer, destitution and unemployment, to futuristic convictions and subjunctives about the maximisation of Africa’s destiny.
My immediate gripe, however, is that most of the featured poets do not register much headway beyond recycling arguments from the traditional canon.
Without the technical proficiency to make up for the deficit, a number of the poems tend to be predictable and prosaic, despite being pertinent in subject matter.
The Afropolitan sensibility, a balance between identity consciousness, cosmopolitan influences and counter-attitudes which characterises Africans working, studying or living abroad (and the rest of “netizens” resident in the country), resonates through much of the anthology.
The anthology is a gathering of new arrivals and fairly established names, including Tendai Huchu, Beavan Tapureta, Theodora Chirapa, Mcgini Nyoni and Boldwill Hungwe.
Hungwe, the opening contributor, is a combative diasporan, who believes that every child of the continent has an indispensable stake in making Africa great, forfeiture of which the continent falters below the optimal mark of destiny.
“Stand up and be part of history. Never give in to scepticism, because the moment you do that you give scepticism the creative power to define our future as a continent,” Hungwe urges.
Hungwe bemoans the cosmetic fetishism which is effacing the authentic, self-perpetuated African identity and replacing it with laboured Western impersonations in his poem “Forever I will be an African.”
He queries in the tenor of a frustrated bride-hunter: “Where have the beautiful girls gone? / I only see the shadows polished in the intruder’s paint.” Beauty is distorted by artificial add-ons. Can the real African princess stand up please?
Men are not exempt. The real man is making way for an effeminate carbon copy – the metrosexual “made in China” for the global village: “Where are the men who used to have their hearts cast in iron? / I only see fake resemblance of the intruder’s mind/ Fake deeds, fake accent, fake music, fake food/ And I am told you are safe only when you lean on a white wall,” charges Hungwe.
It is a timeworn issue, approached from varied angles by different artists in the past, yet ever so pertinent as the problem gets worse by the day. One is thrown back to Oliver Mtukudzi’s “Tsika Dzedu” – the case for pride in one’s race, personality and ancestry.
The conquest of cultural imperialism on the oiled wagon of globalisation has shorn Africa of self-definition. The typical youth is one without a set frame of reference. He or she is constantly on the digital trail to keep up with the new rules of fashion, often to self-deprecation.
Hungwe laments the manipulation of Africa’s hospitable disposition, an abiding characteristic of ubuntu, into a proxy tunnel for colonial subjugation. “I love, I don’t surrender, and I am hurt/ Hurt that some have found comfort in my weakness/ Interpreting my kindness to mean folly/ I have given up enough/ I have given up more than enough.”
When post-nationalist critics urge writers away from “tired colonial arguments,” they obviously miss the currency and pertinence of the issues.
A glaring instalment by New African editor Baffour Ankomah entitled “The Great Conundrum,” earlier this year, decried a cruel situation whereby most African countries are benefiting less than 10 percent their resources’ worth, in some cases because their leaders are spineless stooges on the multi-national capitalists’ kick-back payroll.
Africa’s soft underbelly must provide warmth for her children and not be open to capitalist plunder at zero profit to the citizens.
In “Burst Sewers, My Guts!” Naison Twafla decries the gross incompetence of the municipal authorities most of us in the ghetto are daily witnesses to.
Twafla writes of sewage “parading the streets” not just as an eyesore but also as a health hazard. The municipal authorities are certainly in deplorable shape and having just spend two, in previous cases four, weeks without water in my own part of the city I will readily fold Twafla’s page and double-underline his poem for readers in high places.
Fairly enough, the poet does not just take issue with his council only but unruly, in some cases practically evil, residents, including vandals and baby-dumpers. This is a pertinent wake-up call against blaming everything on our authorities while abdicating our own civic and moral obligations.
Lloyd Machacha’s “Upholding African Values” voices up against the current onslaught against indigenous moral standards by decaying Western countries and their cheap non-governmental proxies.
Machacha points out that protecting democratic rights must not equate “a trade-off in basic values.” “Let’s honour personal rights and freedom/ But avoid being moral lepers like Gomorrah and Sodom/ Social distemper and national immorality/ Beget social ills and national calamity.”
A case in point are the shrill calls by American and European presidents and premiers on the back of the aid-bait for African countries to embrace homosexuality and sell themselves into vassals of Babylon.
Zimbabwe has posted a laudable example. “Zimbabwe’s unique advantage is the convergence by Christian leaders and traditional leaders on fundamental issues such as gay and anti-abortion issues. With Zimbabwe having lost donor goodwill, the fiscus is not based on international aid, all resource are domestic and dominantly localised, hence not subjected to external influences,” observes the African Apostles Council.
“In the name of democracy/ We should not nationalise sin/ Moral sin and compromise injure the society/ They tear the moral fabric of the country,” Machacha says. It is an observation I feel can be extended to our generally evolving standards of decency which now both condone and institutionalise semi-naked troopers on the streets as a stimulus for tourism.
Tragedy runs the thread of Theodora Chirapa’s poetry. The same persona, apparently, hurls her anger at life in “Oblivion,” “The Frontline” and “Yesterday.” There is a futile longing for what cannot be actualised – a picture effaced with the setting of the sun – irredeemable as the new day shines not hope but disillusionment.
Life is, for the persona, “a lonesome journey/ A tiresome trek/ With no destination.” The poems capture the bad vibrations of a generation that is digitally connected but spiritually offline – where life is detached from its meaning.
Beavan Tapureta, a widely published writer and journalist, has the last say. In “Fighter Writer,” Tapureta reverts to Shona to articulate his dilemna as a writer. He portrays himself in a fight for his life, unsure of his reward, supplicating to God, inquiring whether his trouble is worth the while, to which a still small voice answers “Fight on, you are a hero; do not tire.”
Tapureta’s dilemna is representative. Other writers have reached the end of their tether, capping their pens in the face of lukewarm reception, a dying reading culture and next-to-nothing monetary proceeds. As a mentor to budding writers, Tapureta urges resilience, rightly so, because the art gallery has always outlived the bank.
