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They say every day a star is born but it’s not every day a star stops shining.
But this February has not been nice especially on the arts scene. First the passing on of musician Oliver Mtukudzi and now the death of literary giant Charles Mungoshi who battled a neurological condition for a decade to which he succumbed on Saturday last week.
Mungoshi was a family man and that’s revealed in one of his last novels, Branching Streams Flow in the Dark, published by his very family.
The book marked the long awaited return of the legend who gave us among many award winning Coming of The Dry Season and Waiting for the Rain.
What’s even painful is that Branching Streams Flow in the Dark took 20 years to finish largely because he fell sick during the writing of this novel. In its notice his surviving wife, actress Jessi Mungoshi said:
“It took Charles over 20 years to write this book and he was still perusing through it when he fell into a coma on the 30th of April, 2010. He has thankfully recovered in time to see it in print.”
What makes Charles’ works outstanding was his use of language to portray contemporary themes such as HIV and Aids.
In his last full length novel Branching Streams Flow in the Dark he writes about a woman during her darkest and loneliest moment, when her baby dies of Aids and her husband runs out of the house and her mother is virtually unkind, one Serina Maseko sees through herself and others, as if she were beyond pain and reproach. She is floating because during this period, before the advent of Anti Retroviral Therapy use in the management of the Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (Aids), being diagnosed as having the infection was an automatic death sentence.
Below are eight things not known to many about the late Charles:
– He skipped a grade in primary school then known as standard 2.
– He published his first novel in 1970.
– In 1996, he worked as a Resource Person at Groningen Children’s Book Year Workshop in the Netherlands.
– He started writing poems and short stories while he was still in primary school.
– In 2000 he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Florida in the United States of America where he was also a lecturer in the department of African Studies.
– In 2003, he received an honorary doctorate degree (Doctor of Letters-Dlitt) from the UZ.
– He has won 5 local and international awards for his work.
– He was married to Jessie Mungoshi who played Neria alongside Oliver Mtukudzi in the popular drama Neria in the 90s. They have a son called Charles Mungoshi Junior.
He was buried on Tuesday at Mungoshi homestead, rural Chivhu in a ceremony that was attended by hundreds of mourners.
derick.khumalo