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Elliot Ziwira At the Bookstore
It has been four years now, but I just cannot stop thinking about Charles Mungoshi.
I have been thinking about him so badly that it hurts.
Could it be that we are in February? And, forget Valentine’s Day, February is such a bad month.
Maybe, it is because the legendary wordsmith coined his last prophetic line, an epitaph, rather, in “Branching Streams Flow in the Dark” (2013), which was fulfilled on February 16, 2019.
It prophetically reads, “Today I am wearing blue, tomorrow I will be in white, and you will be in black.”
Heartbreakingly, it is in February, precisely, February 16 that another gifted man of letters, Soul Musaka (Soul Jah Love) unlocked his last intelligent puzzle about the nature of the human soul.
The novel goes beyond the supposed murky waters of the stigmatisation and stereotyping associated with HIV/AIDS, to heart-rendingly poke at the tragic nature of individualism on the family unit, which reflects on the national consciousness.
On the other hand, Soul Jah Love proved beyond reasonable doubt that, indeed, heroism is more than a gun affair, for liberation is multifaceted; declaring “Ndini Uya Uya” “Pamamonya Ipapo”.
His voice was, and remains a more powerful machine gun; a bazooka, a landmine and an AK47, all rolled into one. And boy, did he know how to use it?
Chibaba could shoot from all angles. He could shoot from the hip with such precision that could only take the ear by storm and mellow the heart.
Regardless of the situation, he just had the right volley for it. He would hit you hard, with a combination of rhyming salvoes and wordy prowess, but you would feel no pain.
The dosage would be therapeutic, just fine.
Jah Love had a way of telling his story in such a way that it became yours; or maybe he had a way of running riot with your story, our story of hope and toil, the story of the ghetto youths, claiming it to be his.
Such is the nature of the human soul.
He fought for the Homeland in his own musical way; doing proud to the bogeyman forever used to frighten children, for musicians in our backyard have not always received societal sanction.
Surely, Chibaba fought the good fight with the Motherland’s flag draped around his gargantuan shoulders in his own lean and rebellious way.
But, Lord! I am thinking about Charles when I should be at Jah Love’s graveside today, not burying him as such, for artists do not die, but celebrating him.
But you see, we, at the Bookstore, celebrate books and writers.
Without taking anything away from Chibaba’s contribution to music, particularly the genre known as Zimdancehall, we believe that books permeate our everyday toils.
Our Charles was promoted to the other side of life on February 16, 2019 at the age of 71, barely a month after national hero Oliver Tuku Mtukudzi.
He was buried on February 19 at his rural home in Chivhu. Most people from various walks of life testified after his death, indicating his global status as a writer.
True to the words of his cousin Dr Geoffrey Chada, Charles, who by “Grade Seven, was almost an accomplished writer on articles, and an accomplished one by the time he did his Form Four”, is “the Shakespeare of Zimbabwe”.
Perhaps we let him down here at the Bookstore. It could be that we did not make enough noise to be heard. Maybe, we thought he whispered, through his works, in every one of us’ ears as a people. Perchance, words evoke different emotions when put in song.
But is not silence also speaking? Charles would have put it succinctly: “Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura?”
I have had the pleasure of knowing the two gifted Mungoshi siblings: Charles and David (may their souls rest in eternal peace!). But, today I am thinking about Charles. I really miss David, though.
I first met Charles when I was in Form Two when our headmaster invited a group of luminous writers to apprise us on the art of writing.
By then, I had already read “Coming of the Dry Season” (1972), “Waiting for the Rain” (1975), “The Milkman Doesn’t Only Deliver Milk (1981), “Makunun’unu Maodza Moyo” (1970), Ndiko Kupindana Kwemazuva (1975), “Some Kinds of Wounds and other Stories” (1980), “Inongova Njakenjake” (1980) and “Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura?” (1983).
Today, I am not in the mood to recall my exchanges with Charles on that particular day, save to say he has not lost a disciple. In any case, I said it on this platform before.
Well, it is not our culture at the Bookstore to write obituaries, nor is it our way to sing eulogies. We simply state facts, which to our understanding do not lie.
The Bookstore is poorer, though enriched, without the blessings of one of the literary world’s greatest luminaries, whose chosen path remains thorny in the absence of resilient and courageous likes of him.
For us at the Bookstore, Charles Mungoshi is not dead. He lives in the depth of our literature; the literature of combat, the literature of liberation, which resonates with yearnings of a world that we wish to live in, and yet seems to be ever receding to the horizon.
He lives among us today, tomorrow and forevermore, just as he used to do yesterday.
The master of metaphor cannot be silenced because he never uses his mouth to speak, for his words are not meant to be heard.
Their silent screams will echo from the millions of pages cutting across the universal landscapes of the burdened; even though his body and soul partook of their inevitable separation. He cannot be gagged because the stifled muffles of the wretched escape in millions of decibels from his silent mouth, giving voice to their anguish through metaphors and symbolical elements that only he, Charles, could give meaning to. And, we, his disciples revel in it.
In his condolence message to the Mungoshi family, following Charles’ departure, President Mnangagwa said: “The late Dr Mungoshi ranks high among a pioneering generation of national writers who used their pen to creatively engage the national question, especially in colonial days when issues of decolonisation and African cultural self-expression and self-assertion ranked high.”
He added, “What put the late Mungoshi in a league of his own was his use of both, his mother tongue, Shona, and the foreign English language to express himself, thus shaping a broad, bilingual, literary tradition for our nation.
“We owe it to the prominent writers like the late Charles Mungoshi that Zimbabwe today stands tall as a literary nation.”
The metaphors of drought, wounds, waiting, streams and hunger that Charles effectively uses in “Waiting for the Rain”, “Coming of the Dry Season”; “Walking Still” (1997) and “Branching Streams Flow in the Dark” (2013), capture the spiritual, cultural, intellectual and creative crisis at the centre of the national psyche.
All the characters in “Shadows on the Wall” and “Coming of the Dry Season” are victims in one way or the other.
What is paramount, however, is the way they find an elixir out of their conditions. The starting point is for them to identify themselves in the many sites availed to them through imagery and symbolism.
Trust Charles to be the custodian of the key to unlock the images and symbols that make us Zimbabwean.
The family unit remains central to his works as is portrayed in “Waiting for the Rain”, “Branching Streams Flow in the Dark”, “Ndiko Kupindana Kwamazuva”, “Kunyarara Hakusi Kutaura?” and “Walking Still”.
Having battled illness for nearly a decade, Charles Mungoshi reminds one of Saidi, the protagonist in “Branching Streams Flow in the Dark” (2013), his latest novel.
Metaphors in the hands of a seasoned writer of Charles’ calibre are powerful tornadoes that can sweep the reader off his/her feet, and catapult him/her into the dizzy heights of literary Nirvana, albeit in one swift swish.
A grandmaster of metaphor: his forte, our Charles effectively uses metaphors to lambast individual scavenging as opposed to collective foraging for the benefit of the entire family, community and nation.
As long as its flow is smooth and calm, a stream is symbolic of life, abundance, hope and fruition. When a rivulet feeds into a bigger one, then the better it is for the community.
However, in “Branching Streams Flow in the Dark”, Charles’ metaphorical streams are branching from the main source, and are precariously flowing into the unknown; in the dark, which is symbolic of blind hope, death and desolation.
This nature of events leaves the reader aghast, and yet thrillingly engulfed as different episodes are stitched into one national blanket of consciousness.
It is ironic that the tragic hero in the novel, Saidi, is a musician, whose family of entertainers, like Charles’, and fans, kindle his hope as they cheerfully encourage him to blow on the horn, the instrument that gave him fame, at his final show.
The protagonist is aware that he is dying. He believes that there is hope in another world, where everybody tolerates everybody else, regardless of their afflictions or foibles.
In that world, where a “Big Conference” awaits the faithful, there is no pain, emotional or physical. Yes, there is so much hope in death, not as the end, but the beginning of a better life.
Saidi, therefore, is happy to catch a flight to that world, having played his part in finding a common flow for the different streams that flow in the darkness of neglect, ignorance, frustration, betrayal and individualism.
He prophetically tells his exuberant fans: “Today I am wearing blue, tomorrow I will be in white, and you will be in black.”
It is to the “Big Conference”, beyond the clouds, where everybody is a brother’s keeper and a friend too, that our Charles caught a flight to, and now rests.
Indeed, he remains Master of the Pen, and one of the greatest writers to have graced our shelves at the Bookstore. And, today, as the earth preserves Tuku, one of our national heroes, and the Soul of Zimdancehall, I just cannot stop thinking about Charles.
Online Reporter