Homage to migrant labourers

Fraternity is one road less travelled. The dispersion of Africans far and wide to eke out sustainable livelihoods is a leap into the night, with millions detached from their cradles longing for an anchor in the face of alienation and deprivation. Notable feats, from the outset of history, owe their actualisation to seldom acknowledged contributions of migrant labour.
The world-acclaimed Egyptian pyramids were pitched off the sweat from Semitic brows, while the matchless affluence of Europe and America was oiled on forced African labour, thanks to the double-barrelled atrocity of slavery and colonisation.
The Zimbabwean Diaspora continues to provide an intellectual engine for varied host countries, buttressed on its record as Africa’s most literate country, yet not much is made of this community which is meanly branded as a horde of economic refugees.
Stereotypes flare in the face of émigrés as they have to juggle means for sustenance on the tightrope of indifference and hostility.
Scores have been caught in xenophobic crossfire, while many others have to constantly brave alienation and deprivation.
Isolated voices have slammed African Union and its sub-regional satellites for retailing masterly pan-Africanist and pro-integrationist discourses, while their member states wax their borders each against     another.
Artists have also leapt to the podium to champion the plight of migrant labourers pushed from their domiciles by challenges of history only to brave new hurdles as they merge into their adopted countries.
Xenophobia has featured eminently as the uncomely stain in Africa’s closet and millions live in the shadow of insecurity as the problem is yet to be conclusively plugged.
While migrant communities in other countries constitute forceful voices with a considerable stake in host politics, Zimbabwe’s émigrés are a relatively silent minority, either because they have flawlessly assimilated with their hosts or because they lack a vocal champion of their plight.
Decades on, émigrés have a versatile champion fighting in their corner, one Spiwe Mahachi-Harper who has gone great lengths to compensate for the century of silence with Zimbabwe’s longest novel, “Footprints in the Mists of Time”. Originally published by UK-based Abba Press in December 2012 and now being published locally by Booklove, “Footprints” is by far the longest Zimbabwean novel at 181 008 words and 419 pages.
Interestingly, the launch of “Footprints” will coincide with the screening of “Much to the Land of Promise”, a documentary on the challenge of immigration by local film-maker on October 6 in the UK.
Literary Outlook caught up with Mahachi-Harper, who shed light on the noble venture which is already revelling in critical acclaim, with glowing commendations from such authorities as Memory Chirere and Betty Makoni. “I decided to tell the story of this marginalised group because I feel it is about time they had a voice. They have been silent for too long despite their invaluable contribution to Zimbabwe for about a century.
“Their story needs to be told, their fears, anxieties as well as joys understood by those who, to this day, still refer to them as foreigners as if they are expected to pack up and go back to their homelands one day,” MahachiHarper said.
“Footprints can be best described as historical fiction. Though the story is based on fictional characters, the theme and various sub-themes are drawn from actual historical events such as the labour migration at the beginning of the century, the Wankie Mine disaster of June 6, 1972 and the events leading up to independence in 1980,” she said.
Mahachi-Harper is upbeat about the impending book launch: “Many people have registered to attend and I feel humbled that they are choosing to disrupt their Sunday to come from as far afield as Nottingham, Middlesbrough and Birmingham to be part of this event.
“Quite a number of them are descendants of these so-called immigrants.
“One of them has thanked me for writing this story and she says she wishes her father were still alive to see this tribute paid to their sacrifices at long last,” she said.
The author of two previously published novels “Trials and Tribulations” and “Echoes in the Shadows” said her work is unavoidably emotive and rather tends to provoke sadness in her readers.
“A reader confessed to me that she cried after reading certain pages, she did not tell me which ones and I was afraid to ask lest she said the whole book.”
Mahachi-Harper broke down the title of her novel to a reference to two significant pointers: the journey undertaken by migrant labourers from Nyasaland to Southern Rhodesia on foot and the subsequent lapse of decades which the novel retraces.
“The story unfolds over a century since the beginning of the Witwatersrand Labour Association (WNLA) labour recruitment drive to the present day. Colloquially referred to as Wenela, WNLA had offices in various towns in about three countries in Southern Africa, from where it recruited labourers from Central Africa to go and work in the mines and on the farms in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.
“The labourers tended to be mostly from Nyasaland which had no natural resources of its own. Most of the migrant workers found the journey arduous and dangerous, and once they arrived at their destinations, they were loath to embark on a return journey.
“As the years went by, they found it easier to just settle down in their adopted countries and the homeland became a foggy memory at the back of their minds.
“These people who settled among us those many years ago were, at best tolerated and at worst, shunned and despised but never really accepted until just about a decade or so ago. Their sacrifices are not sung about yet they are humble and peace loving people.
“Most of them continue to exist, to this day, on the fringes of society as if they have to make excuses for existing in our part of the this patch of Africa. They have been away from their homelands for so many generations they almost now have no links with the people back there.
“They can no longer go back and claim any space there yet they live apologetically among us. They are the people for neither here nor that place, and now fare worse than the Israelites who wondered about in the wilderness for 40 years, unable to proceed to the promised land and unable to retrace their steps,” Mahachi-Harper said.
She has given the right hand of fellowship to enterprising local filmmaker whose debut offering, “Much to the Land of Promise” similarly borders on the émigré experience.
“The film by Cosmo Itayi Zengeya, which was launched at the Alliance Francaise early this year could be taken for visual version of this theme of the history of the people that Cosmo and I are both passionate about.
“For us this is not just creative work of rich untapped content. It is about the people we understand very well and whom we have now come to regard as family.”
Mahachi-Harper attributes the historic length of her novel on the enormity of the matters she was dabbling with as well as the time-line.
“Footprints is more than 400 pages long. That is quite long by Zimbabwe literature standards but I could not have packed the story spanning close to a century and told through four generations of one family in just 200 pages or thereabouts.
“I had to deal with the journey, the everyday issues of life in a mining community, the diseases of the mines and the Wankie Colliery Mine disaster which claimed over 400 lives and at the time went on read as the fourth worst mining disaster in the world and the worst in Southern Africa,” Mahaci-Harper said.
She lamented the faltering visibility of Zimbabwean literature: “I strongly feel that once a book has been published the story ceases to belong to the writer alone. It is the duty of publishers to bring Zimbabwean literature to the readership.
“Readers can only buy whatever is available. There is need for our writings to be visible on the literary scene and the vehicle that can deliver it is the publishing industry,” she said.
“There has been an emergence of new voices on the Zimbabwean literary scene in the last decade, despite the economic hardships suffered by most publishing houses which have been forced to focus more on publishing academic books as that is regarded as a more profitable market.
“I am not sure Zimbabweans still read as they used to in the era just after independence but there was a time when the ordinary Zimbabwean struggled to make ends meet and could hardly afford the luxury of a printed story. It would be great to get the populace reading again and to see books flying off the shelves fast.
The publishing industry took a slump at the turn of the millennium and ended up majoring in academic titles which promise guaranteed revenue.
“I am informed that local publishers mostly take contracts from other publishers outside the country to bring in foreign books for which they do not have to shoulder the costs. I suppose we are still at that stage,” Mahachi-Harper said.
Prolific literary critic Memory Chirere prefigured on his blog that “Footprints” is poised to upset the status quo and claim an eminent place in Southern African literature, which is currently the preserve of established names.