daniel chigunweElliot Ziwira At the Bookstore
Writing an autobiography requires great skill owing to the inherent human folly of training the lenses on the self, disregarding other players; forgetting that the story belongs to all.
Self-justification is usually cited as the major weakness of the autobiographical mode owing to the inclination to downplay one’s shortcomings and highlight one’s heroic antics.
Such tendencies make it burdensome for the reader to distinguish the writer and the experiences highlighted, so that the story maintains a universal appeal.
Notwithstanding its flip side, the autobiographical mode is unique in that it affords the writer a chance to interact with his/her own experiences and capture them for a communal and national audience.
This is so because an artist functions as a virtual recorder of events predominant in his/her community at a particular time.
Unlike a historian, who relies more on others’ eyes and ears, the artist is his/her own eye and ear. Therefore, his/her lenses are more reliable than the historian’s blurred ones.
In the hands of a good storyteller, the autobiographical mode has a way of hooking the reader into the story, making him/her wonder how his/her own story can be so much linked into the artist’s regardless of geo-political boundaries.
The characters have a way of coming to life as they take on the traits of your granny, your mother, siblings, cousins and neighbours in the ‘hood’.
Each one of the characters becomes someone that you already know; their experiences become your own, and their aspirations, despondency and frustrations become intertwined with yours.
African writers who easily come to mind as doyens of the autobiographical mode are Ezekiel Mphahlele in “Down Second Avenue” (1959), Peter Abrahams in “Mine Boy” (1946), Alan Paton in “Cry the Beloved Country” (1948), and Robert Muponde in “The Scandalous Times of a Book Louse: A memoir of a Childhood” (2021), among others.
The carefully selected images, symbols and metaphors Mphahlele, Abrahams, Paton and Muponde use assume a captivatingly universal appeal, which you can easily identify with.
The passion with which the writers tell their stories of toil and hope in the slums and villages created by apartheid and colonialism leaves the reader aghast as he/she willingly participates as a co-storyteller.
Such is the essence of a good story in the hands of a great storyteller; it never tires because it is given life anew irrespective of the many times it may have been told.
Because a writer functions as a recorder of mores and events, he/she cannot simply tell his/her own story without drawing in his readers.
It is against the backdrop of the journalistic role of the writer that I find the reading of Stephen Mpofu’s “Creatures at the Top” (2012), apt and evocative.
If the writer functions as a journalist or recorder of events, as Hove (2002) posits, what would one expect from a scribe with four decades of experience in his bag, close to two decades of which as an editor?
Indeed, there is so much to expect.
It is this that makes Mpofu’s autobiographical novel more than just a good read. It is a must-read, for he really has something serious to say; something worthy of your attention.
He has not only travelled the familiar path, but he has a way of dragging the reader along with such familiarity that leaves one dumbfounded.
Using the autobiographical mode, Mpofu brings to a cirque the many interacting episodes shaping his experiences as a young man, not only questing to shape his own destiny, but that of his homeland, through the pen.
Believing that a story told is worth more than a thousand ones subdued through fear, violence, brutality and hopelessness, the narrator, Sam, who is Mpofu himself, finds himself exiled in Zambia, in 1963.
His dream is to train as a journalist, which he eventually does.
With hope dreams shining ever brighter, the young narrator hoists the reader onto a whirlwind voyage of intrigue upon a scribe’s scroll.
There is so much obtaining on the political front in Africa under the weight of colonial oppression, which makes it worthwhile to follow the creatures that have been fashioned out to give a face to a suffering people.
The year 1964 sees Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) getting its independence from Britain, and many revolutionary outfits, like ZANU, ZAPU, ANC, FREELIMO and MPLA, are domiciled here.
Without pretensions, as a journalist and Zimbabwean living in exile, Sam highlights the crumbs that Southern Rhodesia brings to the tables of blacks, both at home and in the Diaspora.
As a reporter and News Editor for the Times of Zambia, the narrator has to juggle between being an exile and a political insider.
It is through Sam that one gets to understand the Zambians’ position regarding Zimbabweans in general, and pertinently ZAPU and ZANU, the two revolutionary outfits that brought independence to the motherland, through their armed wings; ZIPRA and ZANLA, respectively.
One also gets a kind of insider’s understanding of what it means to be an exile, yet fighting for one’s country.
Stephen Mpofu also takes the reader to Mozambique from where a protracted onslaught against the Smith regime is plotted by ZANU leaders and ZANLA commanders, and the United States of America, where he encounters first-hand the squalid conditions that blacks have to put up with.
The euphoria that comes with Independence in April 1980, does not fail to excite Sam’s pen, which emits on end, the need to remain on guard.
Through Sam, Mpofu exposes the seeds of despondency in both blacks and whites as Robert Mugabe, the Prime Minister of the newly independent Zimbabwe advocates reconciliation.
In politics as in sport, losing is as disheartening as winning is exhilarating. Those who lose do not take it gracefully, as those who win want to remain on the winning side.
The Americans, British, South Africans and their Western cousins wish the new nation state a stillbirth, while black Zimbabweans on the losing end push their mouths to their noses in gloom, wishing doom to their fellows.
Such a recipe can only be a perfect one for disaster in waiting; especially when one thinks of the cocktails prescribed against Prime Minister Mugabe’s Government, disguised as aid.
Mpofu is not lost to this, because as a journalist he is privy to the American indulgences, as well as those of the creatures at the top.
As a voice of vision, Mpofu is conscious of the fact that the leaders should not deviate from the revolutionary tenets that put the masses first, lest they become complicit to the bruised whites’ belief that a black government cannot take the nation forward.
The November 2017 Operation Restore Legacy was, therefore, on point in correcting such deviations from the ideals of the liberation struggle.
Tapping into the discontent of those who felt that they had been left out, Mpofu adeptly captures the disturbances of the early and mid-1980s, otherwise known as Gukurahundi, culminating in the Unity Accord of December 22, 1987.
The writer uses his experiences as a journalist in Zambia, and at Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited, after Independence, where he worked for over 20 years in editorial positions at The Herald, The Sunday Mail and Chronicle, which he edited for 12 years, in “Creatures at the Top”, to highlight the challenges that journalists face in the line of duty, particularly when it comes to corruption in high places.
One cannot help reflecting on the talented crop of journalists and dedicated war veterans that Mpofu was in contact with, during and after the liberation struggle for the beloved motherland.
The familiar names that the reader comes across lends credence to the narrator’s timeless experiences.
Stephen Mpofu’s must-read masterpiece, is indeed an evocative, enthralling, thought provoking and informative repertoire of individual episodes adeptly stitched-up into a selfless blanket of national consciousness.
Online Reporter