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Elliot Ziwira
THERE is something befuddling about madness in that there is nobility in it as long as it exists in others and we leave them be, in their hallucinatory stupor. But when it creeps into us, we seldom realise it until somebody else points it out to us. However, if others do not realise that discord has fallen upon the music of our souls and are convinced that we can take them to kingdom come, and blindly follow, unaware that they are being led to the mire and the void beyond, then it becomes catastrophic.
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king because he may be relied on as he has knowledge of sight. What happens then if a whole community of presumably sane people is put on leash by a half wit? This is the question that will ring in one’s ears as one reads Chinodya’s “Chairman of Fools” (2005).
In the novel, Chinodya catapults the reader into the intriguing world of Farai, a middle-aged professor and writer who is revered, not only by his extended family but by the entire community, because of his sound education and wealth; and his wife Veronica, an egotistic accountant and born-again Christian. Though he may be said to be benevolent, he is somehow eccentrically inspired by his own precepts and axioms of nirvana, which makes him believe that everyone else should swoon to his bidding.
Unable to juggle between his excessive drinking habits as a way of escaping from a prison of his own creation because of his gadabout nature on the one hand, and a father and a family man on the other, he stutters and discord plays hide and seek with his soul as he slips into the world of the insane.
Subsequently, he is taken to the Annexe, an institution at Parirenyatwa Hospital where people of his ilk are rehabilitated. Of interest is the composition of the inmates at the institution as they are drawn from a cross-section of society. In their quest for a fair representation of their interests, they unanimously elect Farai as their chairman.
From then on, events take a ghastly turn with dire consequences which can only be discerned by suspending any semblance of sanity and engrossing into the world of madness, “a very fine madness”, as Mashingaidze Gomo glorifies it.
As posited by Muchemwa (2001:103): “Sanity is a very strange commodity in the fictional world created by the new generation of story tellers.” Zimbabwean writers in both Shona and English have been pre- occupied with frustration, hopelessness and loss to an extent that they use madness as a means of escape.
In “Echoing Silences”, Kanengoni examines the dehumanising effects of war, despondency, betrayal and disillusionment by using the metaphor of madness. To Marechera in “House of Hunger” (1978), living itself is a lunatic asylum where one is confined for life. Muponde also examines the chaotic state and paralysis of the nation by alluding to the storm in portraying the mental state of the narrator in “The Storm” (2001).
Sanity or lack of it is the basis upon which Chinodya explores the dreamlike state of the nation and hopelessness in his later works, especially in “Chairman of Fools”. Chinodya uses realistic and existentialist elements of modernism as a way of exposing the void, paralysis, malaise and individualism at the depth of the family unit and the nation.
His use of events drawn from his own experiences not only as an artiste but an individual makes the reading of “Chairman of Fools” an authentic experience. He also discards the restrictions of the first person narrator which he uses in “Queues” (2003) and “Tavonga” (2005), for the omniscient and omnipresent third person narrator which allows for authorial comment.
He also uses interior monologue to allow the reader to shape the inner feelings of individual characters. Also remarkable in the novel is the author’s use of the present tense as it makes the story cinematic.
By satirising the middle class as a decadent class, the author is able to effectively rap at the follies and vices inherent in humanity.
Chinodya does not condone moral blackmail, hypocrisy and social neurosis prevalent in the middle class because “the satirist is not an easy man to live with. He is more than conscious of the follies and vices of his fellows and he can not help showing that he is”, (Pollard, 1970:1).
Therefore, through the “exposure of folly and the castigation of vice”, in “Chairman of Fools” as is the case in “Queues” and “Tavonga”, Chinodya effectively plays his role as a satirist. He uses the autobiographical mode to merge his individual biography with the national one so as to forge an authentic national discourse.
The protagonist like Chinodya does not only write novels but he is also an educator as he writes educational books which are used by the entire spectrum of the nation. Also, like Chinodya, he is a visiting university professor. Hence, he is not only a thinker or philosopher the nation depends on for connectivity and development, but he teaches other thinkers and leaders.
Such is the tragedy of Africa and its reliance on the middle class which betrays and deceives its own society, which does not only think like them, but should also be seen to be doing what they believe to be right. Ironically, if this class becomes decadent and loses its wits as is the case with the artiste hero in the novel, then the whole nation is affected. Mad thinkers can only rule over mad followers.
Farai’s authenticity as an artiste and teacher becomes questionable as the woman police officer asks, “Do you have to get drunk to write your books Mr Chari?” and Sister Nondo who was reading one of his books which is a set text at O-Level and seem to be Chinodya’s “Harvest of Thorns”, says: ‘’I did it in my literature class at O-Level, so when you were admitted, I already knew who you were so I said to myself, ‘Maybe he thinks too much that’s why he is like this’, and I dug the book out of my trunk, so as to read it again and see what goes on in that sascam head of yours.”
By using the metaphor of madness, Chinodya is able to ridicule middle class tendencies which are destructive to the consolidation of the nation.
He also raps the hypocritical tendencies at the centre of this class and explores the effect of fundamental religious beliefs as enshrined in Christianity, on the national psyche.
He examined the aesthetic of ideology through the use of a non-believer at the centre of the family unit, community and the nation.
As a teacher, Chinodya educates the nation on the need for an authentic national ideology which upholds the values enshrined in the national consciousness. Sekuru Tumai embodies such societal values in his belief in the spiritual world as opposed to Farai’s lack of commitment to any belief.
A stranger to national values, the protagonist is inspired by nothing, stands for nothing and belongs to nothing. His decision to “sit on the fence” is tragic to the national consciousness as expressed in Sekuru Tumai’s interior monologue thus:
‘’Such a wonderful, educated young man, but so hopeless. They are all beautifully educated but still naked to evil winds…Books, books, books. That’s all they know… for black people there is no choice but between the Bible and ancestral spirits. And maybe science. No one can idle in neutral gear forever’’.
An authentic ideology therefore, can only be sought through combining all the ideologies that constitute the family unit, community and nation. Compromise is the only way out in the molding of an acceptable ideology through which the national psyche may be mirrored.
Chinodya also lambasts the culture of consumerism and escapism through dreams, death, alcohol and religion. Using the dream motif and the symbol of death and the west inspired by modernist traits of nihilism and surrealism, he examines the destructive nature of escapism. Farai is unable to release himself from the labyrinth in which he entangles himself, as he is unable to unshackle himself from himself as a result he seeks solace in alcohol and dreams. Dreams permeate his life as he strives to locate himself in the national biography. Finding himself dwelling on the fringes of its boundaries, in his quest to escape from the restrictive nature of the family structure, he seeks a psychological vent into the world of reverie as a way of authoring his own epic.
Dreaming is compounded by alcohol and Farai finds himself slipping from reality as insanity beckons him. Living life as a nightmare, he seeks comfort in death. Death becomes not an end to life but a transition into a purposeful beginning as one may be able to manipulate how one should die. However, instead of mitigating his problems he aggravates them as he slips further into the mire; dragging others along. His wife, Veronica on the other hand abandons principles and escapes, like most women burdened with suffering, through the religious vent and the family is left unattended.
Although Farai is redeemed as he realises his folly and helps himself to recover, his condition may not be completely remedied as he is reminded that “Nobody who is hospitalised here is ever discharged…You are still a patient forever”.
Online Reporter