adminElliot Ziwira
At the Bookstore
THC Stevenson (1913), defines the modern middle class as a class between the poor working class and the upper class. It comprises professionals — academics, managers, lawyers, doctors and senior civil servants, among others.
The characteristic traits of this class are normlessness, arrogance, hypocrisy, individualism and deceit. Because of an inclination towards Western standards, spurred on by Western education acquired through tertiary schooling, the middle class shuns traditional cultural norms. It does this through escapism, using Pentecostalism with its prosperity mantra, or atheism.
Non-productivity and consumerism pervade this class as lifestyle overshadows investment.
If allowed to have its way, this class is capable of running down a whole nation, as it is not only driven by ambition, self aggrandisement and avarice; but it is a class which society draws inspiration from for its forward thrust, because the middle class is presumed to be knowledgeable.
However, the nature of knowledge acquired through bookish learning, makes over-reliance on this class tragic.
In his later works, “Queues” (2003), “Tavonga” (2005), “Chairman of Fools” (2005) and “Strife” (2006), Shimmer Chinodya makes a paradigm shift to middle class experiences in a masterful way. By satirising the middle class of which he is a part, and condemning its tendencies, Chinodya is able to effectively play the role of the satirist, who “is usually conscious of the follies and vices of his fellows and he cannot stop himself from showing that he is”, (Pollard, 1970:1).
He explores the universal social neurosis prevalent on the national psyche, because of the dearth of ideas on the part of visionaries and thinkers.
As Chenjerai Hove aptly notes in “Palaver Finish” (2002), “the death of the Kingdom begins with the death of ideas”.
In the short story “Queues”, in “Writing Still” (2003), published by Weaver Press, Chinodya condemns myopia, selfishness and avarice on the part of torchbearers. He explores the nation’s challenges as having a historical link.
In his condemnation of vice, Chinodya uses realistic traits of modernism and the autobiographical mode. He does not only seek solutions from the world of yore, which he juxtaposes with the present one of woes, but he uses the experiences of an atheistic artist-hero and his lover/friend, Rudo.
Through this technique, which also obtains in “Tavonga” in “Writing Now” (2005), Chinodya lashes out at the hypocritical tendencies pervading middle class experiences that burden the marriage institution and bleed the nation.
The artist-narrator and Rudo are given problematic identities which are fractured into several voices. Their metonymic representation may be studied from different platforms as they embody different aspects of the national psyche.
The narrator is deliberately endowed with two voices; the first person singular and the first person plural, or collective one. These two voices interact and merge into the national biography.
In the first person singular voice, mostly in the present world, the narrator is a middle class man, who toils in the day to day hullaballoo of a nation.
Because his family is broken up, he seeks solace in the company of Rudo, an egotistic middle class widow who seems to have reservations on the institution of marriage.
However, there is more to it than meets the eye as the implicit nature of their relationship is exposed when it is superimposed into the collective voice.
In the present world, the narrator is hoist in a whirlwind voyage of love, deprivation, betrayal and intrigue. In the collective voice he embodies the decadent nature of the national psyche, which he satirises as having its roots in obscured vision on the part of leaders.
Women have become mean as they have lost their motherly glow espoused by Sisi Elizabeth, becoming abundantly independent of expression as suggested by Rudo’s wearing of “a black see-through blouse and angle length denim skirt with a long slit on the side;” yet they remain parasitic on men.
Single mothers like Rudo and Jean in “Queues” and JC in “Tavonga”, who people Chinodya’s middle class, are also an indication of the break-up of the family unit, at the heart of the nation, which robs children of proper parental guidance. Although this condition is usually a result of the egotistic and conceited nature of middle class women emancipated by Western education to pursue their own careers, instead of hoping into marriage or sticking to it, men are also to blame as their culture of consumption is detrimental to the marital base.
Rudo, like JC and Bena in “Tavonga”, conform to Isabel’s philosophy in Henry James’ “The Portrait of a Lady”, who believes that one should not “begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do”, and holds that “a woman ought to be able to live to herself” as “it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse minded person of another sex”. To Bena, an accountant like Veronica in “Chairman of Fools” (2005), who finds the elixir in religion, “marriage, like drinking, is purely a matter of choice”. It is this shunning of the claustrophobic nature of marriage to the ambitious middle class woman which is tantamount to moral decadence as these same independent, egotistic and intelligent women are rebuffed by the chauvinism and sexism inherent in men.
As a result, they are left to nurse their egos as single mothers, because, like Bena, “who is too good to find a man to match her”, they are deserted; becoming “perfect small houses” clinging to married men.
What Chinodya seems to conscientise the nation on is that marriage, though purely a matter of choice, as Bena pointed out, and Isabel complemented, is convenient as it moulds the national consciousness.
As is enshrined in the Christian Bible, the love for money jeopardises family virtues as individuals are in a hurry to grab as much as possible of whatever the material world has to offer.
The scriptures teach:“He who loves money, will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth, with gain; this also is vanity” (Ecclesiastes, 5v10).
Individualism, ambition and deception are vices that Chinodya raps in the middle class as patriotism and humility are traded for materialism.
This is suggested by this class’ obsession with “durable consumer goods such as cars or real estate, rather than the creation of wealth” (Kgomoro Nyanto in “New Africa Magazine”, cited in “The Sunday Mail”, May 7-13, 2006).
The middle class’ nature of investment, as Nyanto avers, does not promote national welfare and the creation of employment.
Members of this class clutter social media streets with their acquisitions, all for show, yet in real terms such gains cannot be considered wealth, for wealth goes beyond the individual and narrow familial constructs to enjoin national aspirations that favour the common good. Farai, the writer-professor in “Chairman of Fools” has several houses and flats, yet when disaster strikes him; he becomes parasitic on government facilities like the Annexe, which are sponsored by public funds. This is the kind of society that Chinodya is contemptuous of in his later works.
The general neurosis at the heart of the nation today, therefore, has its roots in the individual psyche, because the “decay of the human body begins with the decay of a small part of it” (Hove in “Palaver Finish”). Ironically, that “small part”, is the middle class — the supposedly torchbearers.
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