adminMorris Mtisi
INDEED Stanely Mushava is right —dead right. “Africa is not a cultural island; Zimbabwe should not strive to be one.” (The Herald, February 16 2015).The Literature-Today columnist blogs at medleycity wordpress.com as I do in The Manica Post. Bravo ‘yanga man!’
More power to your elbow!
We agree hook, line and sinker that never must our school curriculum flush out Shakespeare. I have said so before on this space and laboured to state my case as open-mindedly and intelligently as my range of understanding Literature could stretch. It is not necessary to make the same argument here today.
There is nothing I can say better than Mushava’s intelligent response to Retired Brigadier General Agrippa Mutambara’s prescription and plea that Shakespeare be flushed out of the school curriculum now, and not later:
Stanely argues there are serious problems with Mutambara’s prescription. And he (Stanely) is right. ‘Parliament has no business deciding what we can read or what we cannot read,” he said. I say, ‘hear, hear!’
“Literature being an open domain for ideas needs to run autonomously without puritanical, protectionist or parochial interference.” Hear, hear!
He continues, “If we do not like other people’s books, we should write our own, as Achebe said, instead of gagging them.” Come on, tell them, Stan!
I am not motivated to engage in a debilitating interrogation of what the good Retired Brigadier says, now.
As a Literature pundit, activist if you like, like Stanely Mushava, I find the retired brig’s prescription and argument hopelessly tired.
What is worrying me is that some lazy acquiescent teachers listen to such lazy suggestions.
Indeed we cannot circumscribe literature to the eulogisation of the armed struggle because it is a beautiful story to tell. Certainly it is a beautiful story of frightening historic courage and determination, but it cannot be the only one we can and must tell.
It is my humble submission that we whole-heartedly embrace the literature of our glorious struggle-why not? It gives us a sense of universal suffrage and pride…and honour. But nothing can be more naïve than suggesting that Shakespeare and Chinua Achebe must therefore give way.
The argument the good Ambassador attempts to launch, as I said before, is agonisingly tired, debilitating. This is the kind of suggestion Gerry Nel would have described as ‘shockingly inappropriate.’ The retired brig puts up a tired argument that amounts to a disgraceful off-side goal. To suggest that schools must scrap off Shakespeare from the curriculum and make way for liberation war chronicles indeed sounds honourable but smacks of high-strung jingoistic simplicity.
And jingoism is not the same as patriotism. Jingoism refers to the belief that one’s own country is the best. In the Ambassador’s context it may as well mean the belief that one’s own history or culture is the best. Is it?
A yes-answer suddenly struggles with objectivity and fact, does it not?
In Stanely Mushava’s words, “The study of books must never be meant to nurture ideological automatons but free, conscious, critical thinkers capable of conscious engagement with texts from any world view.”
In my own words I think it is best to use an analogy of argument the retired army guru will find easy to understand.
His suggestion to dump Shakespeare and/or Chinua Achebe ostensibly for their lack of relevance or immediacy is like arguing that the war of liberation must have been fought using catapults, bows and arrows, spears which are ethnic artefacts, and flush out AK-47s and the bazooka. Shakespeare and Chinua Achebe are the AK-47 and bazooka of our literature liberation struggle in Africa and the world at large.
No real exploration of life can be done without the two authors/ writers Ambassador Mutambara prescribes must be scrapped out of the curriculum, now and not later.
It is like God’s assistant during creation of the homo-sapiens, advising God to leave out the heart and the brain.
My instalment next Friday for this space will interrogate the prudence or lack of it, of literary censorship as suggested by Baba Mutambara or anybody else for that matter who may entertain the same interesting prescription.
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