Nama promises fireworks

Assistant Director for Zimbabwe National Arts Council, Audrey Charamba, who is responsible for the contest.
Many artists entered the contest from the country and the diaspora. The contest was stiff in that established writers entered. The unique feature is that some authors wrote for specific age groups.
The entries were of high quality in terms of editing and printing. The participants came from all parts of the country and the students who have been published are fairly represented. Nama complements the activities which took place in the book industry during the past year when the focus was on the poor and the people who are living with disabilities.
The review which attracted most interest was about the book whose theme has a lot in common with the Presidential Scholarship Fund for students from Zimbabwe that go to study at the universities in South Africa. The mothers wanted to know how they can get access to this fund so that their sons and daughters can also be able to go to university. The draw card was the young woman that President Mugabe said should be given everything that she wanted so that she would be somebody when she started her studies.
She qualified as a chartered accountant and drove to State House with her grandmother to show the President the Mercedes Benz which she had bought for herself. Arts custodian Angeline Kamba infused some sense of patriotism in the people of Zimbabwe when she said at the Book Fair that she had to speak six languages to a man in the street to prove to him that she knows her mother.
“When I went to park at my usual bay in Borrowdale,” said Kamba, “I asked the man of the place to check pressure in the tyres of my car.
“A man who happened to have heard me said to the attendant that I had spoken to him in English when I could have done so in the mother tongue.
“I felt blood rushing to my head and spoke to this other man in six languages – in one breathe – to prove to him that I know my mother tongue very well.
“That man ended up looking very foolish indeed in front of the crowd that had gathered to find out why I was speaking to him like that.”
Self-publishing trailblazer Virginia Phiri describes woes of the cross-border trader in her exciting book Highway Queen. “Around eleven at night I heard a shout: ‘Run . . . run! It’s a raid!'” says Sophie. “The people ran in all directions. The children were screaming.
“I picked up my bag with batiks and ran. The bag slipped out of my hand when I was jostling to push through the gate. There was no way I could have picked it up. I lost my batiks, a dress, a purse which had money and my ID. I had slept with my tackies on fearing that they could be stolen.
“I spent the night huddled up with women and children in our hideout – the basement of a restaurant which we had reached through the sewerage drain.
“The raid was meant to flush out thieves and prostitutes. I had to run. If I had been caught, I would have been loaded into a truck and locked up in cells for screening. I couldn’t afford that when I had a family to look after.”
Book rights activists discovered that Lonely Tiger author Tatiana Sharpe could be the youngest published writer who is living in Zimbabwe. She wrote the blockbuster in 2005 when she was seven-years-old and illustrated the book herself. She gave all the money from the sales of the book to the poor.
“Would you like to be my friend?” asks Tatiana in the book. “Everyone needs a friend.”
Budding writer Addlis Sibutha made her debut with Between Two Men in a collection of short stories and poems from artists in Bulawayo. She describes how a gunman rapes MaSibanda after threatening husband Ncube to mind his business. MaSibanda asks herself why Ncube didn’t do something to fight off the rapist. Ncube thinks that perhaps MaSibanda knows this man from somewhere.
Ncube metes instant justice on the scoundrel when he meets him at the bar while MaSibanda suffers in silence at home. Readers showed a lot of interest in autobiography Petal Thoughts which Ericah Gwetai wrote about how she gave birth to author Yvonne Vera at Mpilo on 19 September, 1964. She fainted at the bus terminus in Lobengula Street, Bulawayo, and came to, to find a crowd of excited people surrounding her.
“A woman was shouting: ‘She’s pregnant!'” she writes. “Another shouted: ‘It’s true!’ A smart young man whispered: ‘Babe, you’re pregnant and beautiful.’
“I was shocked to learn that I was pregnant. I was 17. The doctor confirmed that I was two months pregnant. Together with Jerry Vera (the father) we sought a way I could have an abortion. My friend Ka, who had had an abortion herself, helped me.
“Ka used all the methods that she knew to induce the foetus to come out. Nothing happened. We tried a doctor who was known for helping girls wanting to remove unwanted pregnancies. He gave me some liquid to take. It didn’t help. I showed the liquid to my friend – a nurse. She laughed: ‘This tonic is for people feeling low after an illness.’ I realised the doctor wanted me to keep the pregnancy.”