How do Zimbabwe's women writers contribute to the re-imagining of their community and the re-appropriation of their history against

the patriarchalnationalist discourse of the Third Chimurenga?

Abstract I have chosen to survey a cross section of prominent Zimbabwean women's literature that has been published since the turn of the century. Since independence, and especially since the appearance of democratic opposition in 2000, Zanu-PF has propagated the all-encompassing ideology of the Third Chimurenga in order to provide itself with spiritual and historical legitimacy and exclude any dissenting voices from the national community by placing them as part of the colonial enemy. This strategy creates a unitary and exclusive vision of the Zimbabwean community and limits political debate to issues concerning the nation and decolonisation, ignoring many issues which are important to women in the country, and especially drawing attention away from economic mismanagement. I will be focusing on Yvonne Vera's 'The Stone Virgins' (2002), Tsitsi Dangarembga's 'The Book of Not' (2006), and Petina Gappah's 'An Elegy for Easterly' (2009). They reclaim the suffering and contribution of women and challenge official histories. They also question the unitary and eternal definition of the Zimbabwean nation by the use of multiple voices. Through the genre of fiction these writers offer an alternative and autonomous forum, which is more representative of the experiences of Zimbabwean people, allowing them to re-appropriate their history for themselves. In a country whose national political discourse is very much locked into the (all-male) coloniser-colonised binary the introduction of female perspectives on history allows for a critical deconstruction of nationalist myths. Traditionally, the keepers of the oral history of the community were typically male and thus told histories that were specifically male in focus, concentrating on the deeds of great warriors and chiefs. Fiction that is matri-lineal in emphasis thus presents a radically different perspective on history. Zanu-PF relies, for political legitimacy, on aligning itself with the spirit of liberation that led to the First and Second Chimurengas and then presenting this struggle as eternal, with itself as the only true route to 'total decolonisation'. Thus, this period of history has become a contested political space and fiction is one way that people are able to present their experiences and critique the official narrative. The liberation wars were an extremely traumatic period during which a lot of people suffered terrible hardship and loss, that is not represented by Zanu-PF's 'Patriotic History.' Of course, fiction is not history, and this is where the element of the imagination comes in. By creating an imagined space that is rooted in actual historical events writers are also able to expand their vision of themselves and act as agents in the making of their own history and community, rather than simply acting as consumers of nationalist discourse. One experience that seems to be common in the texts is that of poverty and suffering; a

traumatised Zimbabwe. (Chan, 2005) Through their exploration of trauma the writers prompt us to ask the questions that all ruling elites in Zimbabwe most want to avoid. Those concerning whether the current political system, even the nation-state itself, is the most suitable structure of organisation for the country. Especially, they question how, even after the struggle for independence, Zimbabwe is still not a free and equal place. They suggest that it is only through imagining a unified and inclusive picture of Zimbabwean history and community that Zimbabweans will come closer to this goal and deal with the traumas of the past. Indeed, these books have been written at a difficult stage in Zimbabwean history. Thirty years on from independence the shallow, self-serving nature of Zanu-PF policies have become clear to everyone. We can see this through the development of the ideas of writers like Vera and Dangarembga, who have been writing across the years since independence. Paradoxically as the betrayal of the ideology of liberation that inspired the Second Chimurenga has become more obvious people have become less free to point this out due to censorship and violence. Writers, however, use their characters and plot devices to symbolise and explore this betrayal, looking at how it is rooted not only in the colonial legacy but also in the very nature of oppressive social relations. It should be pointed out that a great many Zimbabweans live in exile, due to political persecution or economic hardship, in many countries across the world, and this was the condition under which all these books were written. From the safety of exile writers are able to express popular dissent and mock the ruling elite in a way that is powerful because it expresses the sentiments of so many suppressed voices. However, fiction itself also creates a separate space for looking at history and social relations and integrating people's diverse, and marginalised, experiences into a representative whole. Before taking a closer look at the devices employed by the texts and the counter discourse that they help to build it will be helpful to highlight the key parts of the Third Chimurenga discourse that they are writing against. The Third Chimurenga is defined as: A narrative strategy that represents the Zimbabwean nation as an eternal community forged in the struggle against colonialism. (Christiansen, 2005. p.203) There are three things that seem important to me here. Firstly, as mentioned before, the discourse of

the Third Chimurenga is locked in the coloniser colonised binary. It is taken here that, Both coloniser and colonised are unthinkingly male and the Manichean age of decolonisation is waged over the territoriality of female, domestic space. (McClintock, 1997. p.261) Therefore, the concerns of men are prioritised at the same time as marginalising those of women, and denying them any direct agency within the national community. Secondly, the logic of the Third Chimurenga also places the power of defining the boundaries of the community in the hands of the elite. Anyone who is opposed to them is automatically presented as part of the colonial enemy. Thus, the opposition MDC party can be portrayed as 'neo-colonialists' aligned with the eternallyhated Britain. In reality, both parties, who have now in fact been forced to share power, form the political elite of the country that has inherited control of the colonial institutions of governance and, therefore, social control. Lastly, Zanu-PF has appropriated history in order to legitimate its absolute control of the nation-state, in other words it is a nationalist myth. This is evident in the pompous and self-congratulating rhetoric that is easy to find in official speeches: Without doubt, our heroes are happy that a crucial part of this new phase of our struggle has been completed. The land has been freed and today all our heroes lie on the soil that is emancipated. Their spirits are unbound, free to roam the land they left shackled, thanks again to the Third Chimurenga. (National Heroes Day, 2005) It should be noted that this speech was conducted at the same time as brutal township clearances that left many thousands of people homeless, lending, in my opinion, an extremely heavy irony to Mugabe's words. An official version of 'Patriotic History' is expounded in schools and books like 'Inside the Third Chimurenga'.(Mugabe, 2001) However, there is a growing sense of a lack of authenticity in these movements and writers seek to distance themselves as much as possible from nationalist romanticism. I will expand more on these themes below in reference to each specific text. These authors seek to illustrate a condition of despair with the actuality of political life, which has failed in its project of rebuilding an authentic Zimbabwe free from the legacy of colonialism. We can look at fiction as an alternative forum for integrating experiences and bringing national institutions into critical relation with other social structures e.g. the family and kinship

networks. Indeed feminists are critical of states, defining them as, Contested systems of cultural representation that limit and legitimise people's access to the resources of the nation-state. (McClintock, 1997. p.260) They highlight the fact that the nation-state acts as a tool for elite control and suppression, no matter which ethnic division, or political ideology, is represented by the people is embraced by the elites that control it. As Yvonne Vera neatly states, A woman writer must have an imagination that is plain, stubborn, that can invent new gods and banish ineffectual ones. (Vera, 1999. p.1) She suggests that a woman writer can either use her words as tears, to highlight women's issues and experiences, or as weapons to critique and challenge male institutions and theories. These writers respond to the need to avoid essentialising and totalizing women's experience but at same time create a shared women's history, It is this sense of representation in history as essentially consolidating and totalizing that makes the very idea of history in the fluid context of the novel potentially revolutionary.(Wilson-Tagoe, 2003 p.156) 'The Book of Not' (2006) is the sequel to the famous 'Nervous Conditions' (1988), which received a great deal of critical acclaim as one of the seminal texts representing the traumas and fragmentation of identity that are the legacy of colonisation, both of the land and culture. There has not been a great deal of critical work on this novel but I believe it to be an important work in its own right as it presents a development of Dangarembga's ideas over the twenty years since independence. She continues to employ a starkly realist mode of storytelling that is matri-lineal in emphasis, paying excruciating attention to describing situations of social unease and a mental state of self-deprecation. We watch Tambu struggle against the pressure of society through the Liberation Wars and into independence, where she does not find a marked increase in her quality of life and social dynamics: It was a puzzle to me, as I listened to the crackling short-wave broadcast, why Babamukuru, who insisted that I write a letter of apology to Sister Emmanuel, should be listening to this 'freedom' radio station. Wasn't I meant to have freedom myself? (p.95) As with Yvonne Vera, Dangarembga is concerned with the betrayal of the revolution and the necessity to express a different perspective on this period of history than the narrow confines of

Zanu-PF rhetoric. Whilst obedient in her actions, in her thoughts Tambu struggles to reconcile the spirit of the liberation with the continued entrenchment of patriarchal social relations, that continue to keep a significant part of the population unfree. In almost every task Tambu is set against herself. The colour of her skin, her gender, her background, her personality seem to haunt her and block her dogged attempts to move herself up in life. Nonetheless she tries to better herself by living in accordance with the concept of unhu, a philosophy that encourages the individual to see themselves as constitutive of a wider social whole: Tiripo, kana makadini wo! I am well if you are all right too!...Everything was reciprocal and so were we; we all knew it, so said it every day in our greetings. This meant that what people saw you as being was a large part of what you are. (p.65) Tambu struggles against the definitions of herself that are imposed on her by society, but she is firmly committed to being the best she can be, in order that others might also be better. However, in all her endeavours Tambu is denied recognition, at every turn she is prevented from realising her potential by the actions, and discriminations, of other people. It does not seem that society wants to reciprocate her goodwill. Indeed, it seems 'The Book of Not' is more concerned with the disintegration of community, especially of the kind traditionally promoted in that part of Africa, as a negative consequence of modernity and individualism. The book ends with an image of despair and isolation as Tambu finds herself alienated from everything around her contemplating the meaning of her new identity: I had forgotten all the promises I made to myself and providence while I was carrying forward with me the good and human, the unhu of my life. As it was, I had not considered unhu at all, only my own calamities, since the contested days at the convent. So this evening I walked emptily into the room I would soon vacate, wondering what future there was for me, a new Zimbabwean. (p.246) There is a marked deterioration of hope from the young girl who worked hard in the fields to earn herself a place in school and a guarantee of progress and development for herself and her family. We leave Tambu alone in the city, avoiding contact with her family, again having credit for her own work taken by a white male, still struggling with the same problems of asserting herself in a world that is stacked against her:

Dangarembga challenges our definitions of alienation by linking the question of development as implication in the modern world to the process of a young girl developing into an adult voice. In this, Dangarembga challenges our usually male-defined sense of alienation and modernity to suggest a female paradigm. (Wiley, 2001. p.62) Tambu develops into an educated woman capable of telling the story of women, but she is only afforded this initial opportunity due to the death of her elder brother. The bleakness of this book is itself an act of rebellion against the continued pomp of nationalist rhetoric that presents the country as free and constantly progressing towards some final liberation, when in fact it falling apart both in real, economic, terms and mentally, in terms of people's allegiance to the Third Chimurenga and even the nation itself. Dangarembga's, stark realist style also contrasts powerfully with the government's focus on rhetoric at the expense of the lived experience of the Zimbabwean people. It has been suggested that the process of nation building involves a collective 'imagining' of the national community. This means that a collective history and identity must be attached to the nation-state in order for people to identify themselves as part of it. (Anderson, 1991) There is some debate as to whether this process is elite or mass driven. I would argue that it depends where you look. Zanu-PF would like to limit this community to its comrades and supporters, particularly in the maShona heartland of Zimbabwe. In reality Zimbabwe is a diverse mixture of maShona, Ndbele,whites, and Indian and other immigrants living and working in bustling urban centres and slums, as well as peasants living in rural areas. Many people have negative experiences and opinions of the ruling party, although they may feel unsafe to voice them, due to election violence, land redistribution policies, forced evictions and famine and disease as a result of economic mismanagement. I believe that one of the biggest contributions of these works is in expressing this dissent and building a plural vision of the Zimbabwean community that is far removed from the outdated socialist rhetoric of the Third Chimurenga: Zanu-PF has used a specific narrative of the liberation war to delimit the nation's imagined community discursively by defining different agents in relation to the schema of inclusion and exclusion. (Christiansen, 2005. p.204) The power of Zanu-PF to define the limits of inclusion and exclusion is something that is countered by the use of multiple perspectives as well as the use of personal accounts of tragedy that attack

their legitimacy by aligning them with the same kind of oppression that existed under colonialism If we look beyond the official rhetoric of the Third Chimurenga we can find evidence of a more mass-driven process of 'imagining community', that asks more open-ended questions as to the nature of the new community, Imagine, Tambu! Just imagine it. Can you? Imagine living in Zimbabwe! (Dangarembga, p.94) 'An Elegy for Easterly' (2009) is a brilliant and multi-vocal collection of short stories, which presents the voices of many different Zimbabweans in a collage of different identities that builds a diverse picture of the community. This polyphonic narrative space breaks down the unitary and exclusive vision of the nation propagated by Zanu-PF. Unlike the others two, this book is not historical in focus, rather choosing to portray the reality of life in Zimbabwe since independence. It is interesting that Gappah chooses voices from the richest and poorest walks of Zimbabwean life, many of them female. In 'At the Call of the Last Post' we hear the reflections of a widow of a 'national hero' at a drawn-out state funeral: These are the ceremonies that give life to the ruling party's dream of perpetual rule, the pompous nothingness of the President's birthday celebrations, the state-sanctioned beauty pageants from which they choose new mistresses, the football matches with predetermined outcomes.(p.20) This story is filled with images of hollowness, highlighting the emptiness of political rhetoric and posturing, of the kind quoted in the National Heroes Day speech above. Indeed, they bury a coffin full of earth as she has insisted her husband be buried in his ancestral home. Radically, some might say, the story, and indeed the whole book, opens with the image of a woman gazing at Mugabe and looking forward to his death, Does he count the years and maybe just months and days that remain until he, too, is sounded away by that bugle to lie beneath the blackness of polished marble. (p.3) Mugabe's image is everywhere in Zimbabwe and the experience of staring at his face and contemplating his death must be common to many Zimbabweans. Every story deals with some experience of death which Gappah builds into the image of a community waiting, hanging on, for the death of, and freedom from, an eighty seven year old man who has suppressed them for the last thirty one years.

She paints a portrait of foolish nationalist pride and fervour in her late husband who, stamped his patriotism on his children before leaving them with names that could mean nothing to the intended recipient of the message, to the white man who chose to live in native tongues.(p.11) Humorously, the children have names like Muchakundwa - you shall be defeated. The narrator of this story is bold and confident, she has a shrewd and mocking understanding of how 'big men' and their politics work, she speaks of her own contributions to political debate and bargains for a farm and a seat in the senate for herself. It was perhaps not so much the fear of my husband's ngozi spirit that made them treat me with respect as it was the necessity of avoiding the embarrassment that would result if I carried out my threat to go to the private press.(p.22) She uses the power of her voice and will not be silenced, despite the fact that she has been sidelined in the past as a barren 'mhange'. This is another example of a woman being empowered by the death of a man, as with Tambu in 'Nervous Conditions'. In 'An Elegy for Easterly' we see the opposite end of the spectrum: a child born of rape to a madwoman in a, soon to be demolished, township. In 2005, Mugabe ordered the destruction of over 700,000 homes in a brutal clearance programme that reportedly affected 2.4 million people. (BBC, 2005) As usual the government denied these events as lies coming from 'spies', terrorists etc. However, Gappah urges us to remember them with her 'elegy', Long after the memories of the Queen's visit had faded and the broken arms of the arrested women were healed, Easterly Farm took root.(p.32) This story contains another infertile woman and the troubling pregnancy of a mentally disabled woman, Martha Mupengo, who was raped by her husband. Gappah draws us into the life of this community and its range of its inhabitants in order to make real again what the powerful have sought to both physically and mentally erase. She names the buildings according to their occupants as they are each in turn destroyed.(p.51) We are left with the deeply personal and poignant image of Martha's body amongst the rubble as the bulldozers, finally lumbered towards Martha's house in the corner and exposed her body, stiff in death, her child's afterbirth wedged between her death.(p.52) In contrast to the previous story Martha will have no heroes funeral and

salute, she remains exposed. Gappah continues to weave layers of symbolism throughout the text, each story drawing us into a particular framework of existence building into an elaborate crosssection of present day Zimbabwe. Whilst the voices contrast with each other they all exist in a hollow, decaying environment pervaded with death and betrayal. At the same time as being sharply critical, in some cases satirical, of the existing situation she contributes towards a more inclusive and realistic vision of a traumatised community that transcends national, ethnic and racial boundaries. In an interview Gappah herself suggests that whilst she shares the concerns of Zimbabwe she tries to transcend ideas of nationality and depict genuine characters that can be universally understood. She reiterates that Zimbabwe was never a paradise, and, like Yvonne Vera, impresses her desire to deal with the 'demons' of the past through her work. (CNN.com, 2009) History, then, is very much alive in Zimbabwe, and there has been much comment on the interplay between the disciplines of history and fiction and the dual function of the novel as both form of knowledge and aesthetic object (Wilson-Tagoe, 2003. p.155) Similarly, in the emptiness of official rhetoric we can find evidence of the way that the narrative structuring of history is 'invented' in a similar way to fiction. Official histories and fictional histories collide, and indeed the discourse of fiction can provoke movements in historical discourse. By declaring a 'Third Chimurenga', which is defined as a final de-colonisation, Zanu-PF defines itself as the liberator of the nation and its political opponents as agents of the colonial oppressors. This discursive appropriation of the First Chimurenga and the liberation war articulates the history of the First Chimurenga and the liberation war into a temporal schema that equates the Chimurengas with an on-going struggle against neo-colonial forces. (Christiansen, 2005. p.204) Thus, the elite explain the need for an eternal state of emergency as part of a never-ending struggle against colonial oppressors. In fact, ongoing violence has a lot more to do with ensuring that a certain group of people maintain exclusive access to state resources than in stamping out the activities of a host of neo-colonial spies. Thus, we see women writers attempt to make sense of this suffering by giving voice to the silenced experiences of destruction and pain as a result of the liberation wars, and ongoing political violence, While the war may have settled issues of power at the macro-level of society, it has simultaneously opened a multitude of wounds in people's local and

personal lives which remain to be healed. (Primorac and Muponde, 2005. p.7) We could see these texts as a verdict on the war and also as a popular way of coming to terms with the betrayal of the liberation struggle by elites who used ordinary people as pawns in their power games. Yvonne Vera has made an exploration of suffering and an attempt to deal with the past a focus of much of her work. In line with her reputation for handling taboo subjects in 'The Stone Virgins' (2002) Vera breaks the silence surrounding the Matabeleland massacres that occurred from 1981-87. Also referred to as 'The Gukurahundi' these massacres were ordered by the ruling party in order to suppress dissenting factions in the predominantly Ndebele regions of Zimbabwe most of whom were supporters of Joshua Nkomo. Widely viewed as a genocide, due to its ethnic character and the use of civilians as targets, it is a silent wound, it is denied by the few but sorely remembered by many. Vera offers people a way of remembering and living with the Gukurahundi through a personalised account that focuses on the ways in which the past is especially a burden to women. She explores the ways in which women have been abused within and by the secrets and silence of patriarchal 'tradition. (Ranger, 2003. p.205) She fights back by using matri-lineal mode of storytelling, that places women at the centre of history. In her earlier books, such as 'Without a Name' (1994), Vera deals with the violence and suffering that were wrought upon women as a result of the Liberation Wars. She focuses on the body and excruciatingly detailed experiences of suffering, to the extent that the book is almost sickening to read. I believe she pushes herself, and the reader, to the limits of revisiting suffering with the image of Mazvita, her dead baby bound to her broken back, returning home to die, in order to highlight how much has been missed out of collective consciousness by nationalist triumph and later barefaced lies. In 'The Stone Virgins', however, she moves on from dealing with private trauma to looking at public tragedy. She takes us into the beauty of the Zimbabwean landscape and its people and then probes the mind of the haunted and murderous Sibaso exploring how his psyche shifts from that of student idealist to a cold blooded killer. He is of course an allegory for the betrayal of the revolution. Terence Ranger has produced a great deal of work on Yvonne Vera and the relationship of her

writing to historical narrative. He quotes her speaking about 'Nehanda', I wrote it in a very emotional state of clarity of understanding that there are alternatives to 'History'...Because as Africans, our history is there to serve us, not us to serve it. (Vera in Ranger, 2003. p.204) Vera is asserting the fact that through her writing she is acting as an agent in the making of her own history. Her stream-of-consciousness style of writing has often been compared to that of a spirit medium, Vera is keen to appropriate the oral tradition and work it into her literary style in order to reclaim the cultural legitimacy that is inferred by the ancestors: In 'Nehanda' Vera places her writing beyond accepted margins by creating a narrative that derives its metaphysical source and performative form from the oral tradition and at the same time works powerfully to suggest new interpretations of history.(Wilson- Tagoe, 2003. p.162) 'The Stone Virgins' represents a counter discourse to ZANU-PF appropriation of history, in which the spiritual narrative of the nation becomes blurred and broken. By voicing the reality of the Gukurahundi Vera disrupts the imaginary spiritual connection between the first and second Chimurengas,It is not a book that establishes a deeper truth through myth and invented ritual. It is a book that confronts the reality of History and which transcends that reality by means of confrontation. (Ranger, p.206) A novel can of course, only go so far presenting a political condition but this is certainly a novel of trauma that moves beyond the purely poetic voice. (Chan, 2005) However, many people feel that recognition of the Matabeleland massacres is a necessary part of the restoration of history and, thus, the national consciousness. The pressures of the past are being stifled by the logic of the Third Chimurenga. As we have seen, literature has been given the focus of de-silencing in Zimbabwe, of asking and answering questions that are not asked, and challenging the social conditions that continue to suppress people even after independence. The texts I have discussed illustrate the important contribution of literature to the development of a public sphere in a country that has been dominated by dictatorship for the last twenty years. They form part of the struggle against attempts by ruling elites to freeze and fix all socially produced meanings through the discourse of the Third

Chimurenga. (Primorac and Muponde, 2005. p.4) What is crucial is that through their works the authors are providing a privileged space for polyphony and the intermingling of disagreeing voices. (p.18) This critical space helps to circumvent censorship and widen debate away from the contest between two political parties to questioning the nature of democracy and the nation-state itself. We have seen a growth in the critical confidence of writers over the years, perhaps due to the safety of their position in exile, but may also be due to their position as novelists. The nature of literature, which allows writers to challenge a situation from a certain level of distance, allows for a freedom of critique that may not be possible from within the setting itself. Vera suggests that it is also easier for women to express themselves in this way: If speaking is still difficult to negotiate, then writing has created a free space for most women much freer than speech. There is less interruption, less immediate and shocked reaction.....It retains its autonomy much more than a woman is allowed in the oral situation. Writing offers a moment of intervention.(Vera, 1999. p.3) Whilst women may remain marginalised by the oral tradition, they are empowered by the more removed nature of literature, as well as liberated by the imaginative ability of fiction. Matri-lineal story telling allows for a feminist re-imagining of the community and re-appropriation of history. It has also been suggested that the ability of the novelist to view the past from an inconclusive present is what gives fiction such potentially revolutionary power: Within this fluidity the novelist acquires a new relation to the past and a new positioning within the work. He/she can experiment with multiple voices to disperse meanings in texts and provide space for debate, dissent and rupture the entire dynamism inherent in the way human beings construct, maintain and contest relations with their worlds and each other. (Wilson- Tagoe, p.157) Thus, works of fiction, like the ones discussed above can form a crucial part of the building of a counter-culture of the imagination in a climate of decreased freedom of expression. They also provide a freer space for marginalised groups to articulate their experiences as well as a privileged position from which to view the past and create counter-narratives to official historical discourse. Where history is such a crucial aspect of the struggle for power, fiction offers a way to rework the past in a way that is more useful, to the marginalised in particular, and to the community as a whole.

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