adminElliot Ziwira @ The Book Store
IN the African tradition, hunting has always been a preserve for men of valour as it was a dangerous yet necessary undertaking. A great hunter’s family never lacked, both in clothing and food. Hunting was not always confined to known localities as the growth of communities and the depletion of wildlife would force hunters into the unknown. In some cases they had to travel to faraway lands, days or weeks on end in pursuit of that elusive lifeline for their families. Because of the dangers that perennially lay in wait the meek would never make it back home; the daring would assume a higher standing in society; the adventurous and gadabout would not seem to remember how to come back.
Famine was also known to displace entire communities.
As captured in folklore, folk epics and folk song, through the use of the journey motif, societies could stagnate or face their demise if they do not adapt to the changing tides thrown their way.
The advent of colonialism also ushered in a new era of hunting as the African responded to the imperialist’s creations of the city and its insatiable destructive appetite. Displacement, economic disparities and taxes forced the oppressed Africans to seek employment not only in local cities but in foreign ones as well. The hubs of activities that attracted the migrant workers were in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, especially in the mines.
The literal hunting which pervades folkloric drama transforms into the metaphorical arching of both colonial and post-colonial African societies.
Colonial oppression necessitated the need for this hunt through its creation of disparities which remain uncorrected in post-colonial Africa years after independence. It is this colonial hegemony coupled with post-colonial plunder, mismanagement and individualism which have remained burdensome on the African as he toils to keep body and soul together. Because his forests are over-hunted, and the depleting prey can no longer sustain an ever increasing population, the modern hunter, like his predecessors has set his eyes on foreign lands.
Pursuant of the journey motif and the metaphor of hunting, modern story tellers capture the bane of materialism, individualism and mismanagement of resources leading to the dearth of familial and societal values, as hordes of fortune seekers set their sights on the Diaspora.
Emmanuel Sigauke in “Forever Let Me Go” (2008) chronicles the desperate nature of lack, despair, ambition and hope in the same way that “Hunting in Foreign Lands and Other Stories” (2010) edited by Muchadei Alex Nyota, Barbra Chiedza Manyarara and Rosemary Moyana, does. Sigauke’s collection of poetry tells the Zimbabwean story at home and in the United States where he resides. It is divided into three parts; Back home, Restless and Transition & Return.
In the first part, the poet examines the intricate nature of hope premised on hopelessness as the individual seeks movement, yet remains marooned on an island of mediocrity, stasis and idiocy.
He traces the root of the sordid and mundane existence of the Zimbabwean which forces him/her to abandon home for the honey bird’s calling in the Diaspora, which turns out to be a farce, as no honey combs come to fruition. The perpetual hunter yearns for home yet he is aware that home is homely no more as a new dispensation has taken root.
The opening poem “The Teacher and the Curtain” exposes the tragedy of outward appearances as opposed to reality, through a teacher who has gone for three months without getting his salary and is expected by the community to buy a curtain to dress his window.
It is not that he can ill afford the curtain but he realises that there is no need to hide his shame which to everyone else is a sign of lunacy. The people’s poet writes: “He left the window’s groin exposed/He hated clothing that window,/Had no desire to block the shameless sun/Nor the sly moon, whose eyes crept in/To find him naked on his sleeping mat/Nor other teachers gawking and hatching/plans to coax him into admitting lunacy.”
Society finds it prudent to shame the individual whose purported lunacy is traceable back to the society itself. It is society that should be ashamed in this case for causing the desperation that it wants the demoralized teacher to cover.
The transparent window whose groin is exposed metaphorically stands for the society that brings suffering on the individual and his refusal to dress it is suggestive, not only of his despair but his refusal to be cajoled to accept a system that plays havoc with his sanity.
He finds it unreasonable to embrace privacy in a society that refuses to accept its own nudity; and fake “ownership of room, /Space not his, not with no means, /No salary…” Yes, society should see him as who he really is; poor, desperate and without means; through him society should learn to correct its foibles instead of encouraging him to sugar over the devil.
In “The Unforgettable VaBhunga”, Sigauke laments progress borne of displacement and oppression as he revisits colonial machinations of the 1930’s. VaBhunga embodies the native chiefs, the custodians of the land, who were displaced to create vast estates for colonialists and their progenies.
Hopeless, defeated and frustrated the Chief decides to leave but he fails to linger “anywhere beyond Chisiya and Chigorira, the hills that flank his home”. His spirit continues to appear on the periphery “long enough for his offspring/To plant crops that may flourish.” There seems to be so much hope in this poem regardless of the malaise and paralysis that appear to be dominant in it.
Poems like “Summer is Here”; “Early Dreams” and “Brothers, Wives and Compounds” explore the possibilities that avail in journeying although such possibilities are possible if they are juxtaposed with the impossibilities that also come with hunting in foreign lands.
Part 2 highlights the restlessness that imbues the individual in his quest to locate his biography in the national discourse. Using the autobiographical mode, the poet lambasts student activism of the 1990’s especially at the University of Zimbabwe, in the poem “UZ, 1994”.
His pen spews venom: “Even university students/bankrupted/Zimbabwe;” as “throngs of tight-stomached/book-fugitives … throw rocks and hurl boulders of anger: ‘Give us our money!’” in “Stone People” and “Beyond Green” the resilience of the Africans in the face of adversity is highlighted through their toils in foreign capitals in an attempt to harness fugitive hope.
“Into Azania” also reminds one of the early migrant workers whose sap oiled the mines of imperial power, with them getting nothing but diseases and death in return, but still they could not learn anything from it.
The political melting pot which indeed cannot be ignored in the mass exodus of desperate hunters to foreign lands, finds home in “When I move the Mountain” and “Mounting Kenya”. Western-sponsored democracy and its hypocrisy rears its ugly head in Kenya in the 2007 general elections which are used as a barometer to gauge the pressure on the 2008 harmonised elections in Zimbabwe.
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