The Sunday News
Raisedon Baya
THERE is a beautiful TED video of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche making the rounds on social media. In the video the acclaimed writer talks of the dangers of single narratives and calls for multiple narratives. She argues that a single narrative narrows people’s understanding of a people; that a single narrative is not enough to describe or summarise the psyche of a country and that reading one story about Africa is not enough to make one an expert on Africa. (Something along those lines). That had me thinking.
Here was Chimamanda talking about the need to shape national identities through many stories. Stories matter, she says. And I totally agree. I believe national identities are as complex as individual ones and before we all start shouting and screaming about national identities we must start with ourselves, at individual level. For example do we really know who we are? And what we stand for?
Seeing that we are the middle of a national election I believe most people have asked themselves the above questions. Who am I? What am I? And what do I stand for? If you haven’t asked yourself those questions pause a bit and introspect. Once you know who you are and what you stand for it might be easy to vote. The thinking here is that if you know yourself and where you want to be in a few years’ time you will definitely know who to vote for.
Honestly, the question of identity in Zimbabwe, and particularly in the city of Bulawayo is a serious one. There is an assumption that Bulawayo is a single identity, that Bulawayo is a one story city. Some politicians would want us to believe this. Some want us to believe that Bulawayo is about knife-wielding and violent men. Or koMfazi utshay’ indoda. Or just a broke city whose industries have been turned into churches! And that is so wrong. Bulawayo has so many stories and so many identities.
Currently we have a generation of people, especially the young, moving about and minding their own business, completely unaware of who they are and what they stand for. Young people that are not asking the right questions. Some even think we are in America.
These should be asking questions like: Who is Zimbabwean? What exactly is a Zimbabwean identity? What does it mean to be Zimbabwean? Then who is Bulawayo? And what is a Bulawayo identity? How does one identify with or even just project being Zimbabwean or ‘‘Bulawayan’’? Coming down, a lot of us should be asking about the identities of our families and linking them to our place of residence.
How many of us who live in this city can proudly stand up and say they are proudly Bulawayo? Remember globalisation has and continues to erode individual and family identities, especially on the African continent.
What about local youths? Do they identify with the city and what it stands for? Do they even know what the city stands for? To make matters worse there is not serious and consistent discourse around identities in this country — the only discourse loud enough is dangerously separatist. I hope we are all aware that everything that is influencing our children and the youths come from outside. Music, films, literature, media images and everything.
The sad truth is there is no deliberate policy to use the arts, film, theatre, literature, visual art, music and others to mould proper identities for our children and the youths.
Who are our national heroes? Who are the local ones? There is serious confusion here. Take away political heroes and our people struggle to list a few heroes — both local and national. Our children’ heroes are foreigners, people they have never met and will never meet in their lifetime.
They are too embarrassed to be associated with local do-gooders. The truth is they don’t know any local do-gooder and that says a lot about us as a people. As parents we have failed the young generation.
As an artiste I think this is an opportunity for artistes to use storytelling to remind or even shape the identities of our people. Like Chimamanda says, story matters. Many stories matter. Let’s have many stories, in whatever art form, explaining to our children and the youths the importance of knowing who they are and preserving that. Of course the truth is there are so many identities we need to acknowledge and celebrate. We need stories that embrace our diversity.
Happy voting!
