adminElliot Ziwira At the Bookstore
In “Harare North”, Brian Chikwava skilfully examines how language is used as an oppressive tool against the migrant worker who seeks hope in foreign lands.
The author highlights how language becomes an obstacle to progress as the migrant worker navigates unfamiliar topographies across alien borders.
Man’s heart may seem impregnable, as he derives excitement from others’ trauma, but he has no power over words—they are a powerful weapon capable of dissecting his seeming fortress.
Nuclear weapons or missiles, as arms of mass destruction, may beget fear, deification and betrayal, but, as compared to words, they falter.
Words perforate the toughest shell that makes up Man’s citadel; not to destroy it though, to deface the heinous phantom, and expose the inner man.
It is this inner man whose inborn virtues impose a peaceful, tolerant, harmonious and corrigible world.
However, for words to positively impact on interlocutors, they must have a shared meaning, lest communication becomes void.
Since words are mere symbols to the undiscerning ear, they must be coined into a language.
As Chikwava highlights in “Harare North” (2009), when language is used as a tool of instruction, emotions remain subdued, thus, leading to psychological and emotional oppression.
In the novel, the use of the term “original native” and Shona names give authenticity to the rationale of the master-servant relationship prevalent in post-colonial Africa.
Compounding this is the use of Pidgin English, as the language used should only make the servant follow instructions.
The use of rustic language in “Harare North” purveys a far-reaching relationship with roots in colonial states where Chilapalapa was used on farms and mines in Southern Rhodesia.
Jeater (2006:188) points out: “In this Africa of a thousand languages and dialects, it is essential for the success of the natives, as wage earners, that they should have a common language, intelligible to each other and their masters.
It does not matter much what the language is, so long as it is adequate for the ordinary purpose of life”.
The “ordinary purpose of life” as prescribed to the African native is to labour for the benefit of the imperialist. Therefore, the language used should just serve that purpose.
However, it was not only in Southern Rhodesia where lingua Franca (bridge language) was used for purposes of exploitative communication.
It was also rife in Northern Rhodesia and South Africa, where it was referred to as ChiKabanga and Fanagalo, respectively.
Therefore, language becomes a form of neurosis, as Lacan (1973) argues, and subsequently, a communicative tool, which, according to Fanon (1952, 1967), is as universal as colonialism, and a direct response to imperialism.
The African remains attached to the colonial master for his “purpose of life”, and to him or her, language remains a symbol of oppression.
The original native, the anti-hero, in “Harare North”, is obsessed with freedom.
Like a patriot that he is, he wants to return to his homeland. Hence, his consciousness is reduced to figures—US$5 000.
Whatever he does, thinks of or dreams should add up to US$5 000.
Eventually, he becomes a problem, not only to others, but himself.
He alienates himself from his friends Shingi, Paul and Sekai and his cultural norms.
The unnamed first person narrator’s obsession is deep-rooted. His repetition of thought is worrisome and his habitual fantasizing irritating.
His desire to raise US$5 000 at whatever cost makes him selfish, amoral and outright snobbish.
His past becomes his nemesis as he says: “When the past always towers over you like a mother of children of darkness all you can do is hide under she skirt.”
Closely linked to the oppressive nature of language is the motif of the chestnut tree.
The tree is symbolic of the universal neurosis at the core of humanity in general, and pertinently the African story.
Homeless, hungry, jobless, normless and despondent migrants, and other vagrants meet under the chestnut tree in search of hope.
Since they all come from different social, political and cultural backgrounds, but are historically linked, a language of hope has to be coined.
It is not only Africans who seek solace under the tree, but Europeans and Asians too.
The chestnut tree embodies the universal degeneration rooted in imperialism and prevalent in post-colonial states.
Britain as the empire or colonial master, exercises authority over her former colonies.
It is ironic that migrants from these former colonies, who seek asylums, are held at ransom.
Getting asylum means assuming British protection from imagined, or real enemies home, until the said regime cedes power or collapses.
However, this does not always happen; which means the asylum seeker will not return home to his or her loved ones. He or she becomes a source of cheap labour and taxpayer.
The narrator laments: “Immigrant people’s contribution to this country is equal to one Mars bar in every citizen’s pocket every year”.
On the other hand, if the asylum is denied, the cat and mouse games that the migrants have to play with authorities aggravate their suffering, and reduce them to sycophants, always fleeing from their own shadows.
The mental breakdowns they endure remain two-fold. The malaise at the family level deepens, because social responsibility is trivialised to monetary gain.
Psychologically, as in the case of Shingi and Aleck whose papers are in order, the provider suffers as he or she is unable to go back home, because of restrictions of the asylum provided by the erstwhile imperialist disguised as protection. Homesickness burdens the migrants, and mother tongue becomes therapeutic when it is uttered within one’s earshot. This is typified in the case of Tsitsi when she meets Mai Musindo for the first time. The communication of oppression pargeted on the migrant’s face, is immediately despised.
So, the chestnut tree offers respite out of a condition which is rather permanent.
As the migrants converge under the tree to chance on meeting fellow Africans and brothers from home, so that they express their feelings adequately in their vernacular languages, the different neuroses that burden them become a universal condition that cannot be simply wished away.
Dave and Jenny, who are white and British, as well as the Polish hooker that Shingi loses his virginity to, do not only complete the coloniser-colonised relationship, but purvey the oppressive nature of language; psychological, emotional, physical and mental.
Characters who meet here are drawn from different trades, and level of academic qualifications, but sharing a common vision-less hope. Inasmuch as the former colonial master would want to project a clean image as far as poverty, violence and social ills are concerned, characters like Dave, Jenny, the Polish hooker and the lunatics of the mental streets, put the empire to shame.
It is under the chestnut tree that the anti-hero meets Cde Commander Mhiripiri (MFH). It may be an epitome of love, hope and spiritual connectedness as in Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”, but because it is a rare tree susceptible to attack from the chestnut blight, the solution it offers is ephemeral.
Thus, hope remains etched on the horizon, compounding the paralysis and malaise central to national consciousness. The last time the narrator visits the “holy” tree seeking solace, he finds it deserted. Such is the nature of ephemeral catharsis.
Because he has lost everyone and everything as a result of his excessive fears of the past, his HIV status; and obsession, which reduce him to a monster, the narrator’s faculties that were hanging precariously at the periphery, degenerate and collapse.
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