By Takura Zhangazha*
So back in my youthful days I used to read Wole
Soyinka. Particularly the biography that
was titled ‘The Man Died’.
Reading such a book was as fashionable as it did not get you
girls. I remember telling an amazing
heart crush female cde that I had read such a book and she was completely
blank. With the benefit of hindsight I
should never have mentioned it. That was
not how courtship was done. Unless one
wanted to do the impressionability of TK Tsodzo’s “Pafunge” satirical narrative
on love and its meaning. Or even Shimmer
Chinodya’s ‘Harvest of Thorns’ character who wrote one of Zimbabwe’s most humorous
love letters. Almost as though to
confirm how love between a man and a woman was arrived at in courtship.
It appears to be as abstract as it remains a reality based
question. In post Covid 19, does ‘love’
mean the same? In our African contexts? And no, this is not a
self-righteousness individual question.
But one that asks of us “ Are we still the same people. Post Covid19?”
The easy answer is ‘yes’. Including a perspective that we
can easily revert to what obtained. With
or without relatives that we lost due to the Covi19 pandemic.
This is something that would be fair and if only memories
did not come back to haunt us. We died and
many of us almost died as Africans. That
it spoke of us who survived Corona does not mean we remember it as an integral part
of our lives. Instead we choose to forget. Because of our own personal helplessness. And
our continued admiration of the global north that reflects more an inferiority complex
than it does an existential reality.
But essentially this is who we are. We consider ourselves as lesser people in a
desire for perpetually inferiority motivated recognition from elsewhere.
With our current government, we know it has the challenge of
confronting itself in the mirror. A task
that it ambiguously does and contradicts itself on social media.
One of Dambudzo Marechera’s most contradictory statements
based on one of his underrated lines his
novella “Black Insider”is, “We are what we are not. That is the paradox of Fiction.”
There are many ways to translate or view this. We either believe
our own lies or we believe in ourselves.
Its as simple as that.
Unfortunately a majority of us have chosen to believe in our own lies. To ourselves.
In the images and expectation or the other. It sort of works but it again unfortunately
remains hollow.
But I sort of get it.
A majority of urban Zimbabweans live almost as an urban performance
gallery. Its as tiring as it is
abstract. A recognition that means no
more no less beyond the ghetto gate and street you grew up in. Almost like an escapism that you have to
prove eventually worked. Mainly because you left for the Diaspora or Diaspimbi.
And there is no way you should allow anyone back home to consider you a
failure. If they would even consider it,
it would remain better never to return
home altogether.
But let us think about it. We live and we die. We try to make the most of our existence as
given by societal norms. But we have no
option but to believe in an organic progressive future. And to be stubborn about
it.
It does not matter that you were founder of one party or the
other. We can only ask you what do you
believe in? And what does your belief mean for the rest of us.
Because we understand the passage of time. That things at
some point will never be the same. And it is this passage of rime that makes
remember who we are and who we can be.
That’s why I initially quoted from Soyinka’s “The Man Died”.
Because African intellectualism died. Wjhat
happens next I do not know. But I am not tired. We suffer, we continue.
By Takura Zhangazha (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)*
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