The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
This is the last instalment of the series I have dedicated to articulating the role of female writers in contributing to the narratives of our struggle.
In last week’s piece I indicated the crucial role that has been played by our distinguished black female writers in distinctly offering a unique capture of our national memory — the struggles of women in the face of brutish patriarchal dominance and how the colonial system promoted gender disparities which obviously had a disempowering effect to the girl child and the ordinary woman.
In the book being reviewed, “The Other Side”; a collection of short stories by Ericah Gwetai, the subject of gender emerges as key theme exploited to read the socio-economic and political affairs of our time.
Through the lenses of history Gwetai exposes her contemporary reader to the origins of the present challenges facing the African in the post-colonial state. She tackles race, class, ethnicity and gender from a high historical perspective.
While Gwetai has the privilege to ignore the past to fit into the contemporary literary trend she chooses a position which bridges the knowledge gap.
This is because most of our writers are consumed in appeasing the contemporary civil society sponsored rhetoric of “democracy and human rights”.
Unlike the rest she chooses to be relevant to a group of readers exhausted from the excess of the humdrum of our current literary creativity.
Guided theming to denigrate the political order of the day; deliberate abhorring of our past to erase the continuum of colonial systems and approaches to appreciating ourselves as a people.
Through an omniscient story-telling approach, one gets to encounter life as lived in the townships, in the farms and in the mission school.
This is courtesy of the stories bordered within the given diverse settings in the book to account for the multi-dimensional effects of colonial harm in pre-independence Zimbabwe.
These various settings in Gwetai’s compendium also depict the magnitude of the institutionalisation of colonialism as a culture, system and a source oppression and subjugation of the African.
At the same time, Gwetai uses Rachel as one character who defies the role of education as a means of liberating the girl child. Just like in Tsitsi Dangarebgwa’s work, Gwetai sees education as an institution which radicalises the girl child to deconstruct social expectations.
This is because the society and its order is defined by hierarchies which subjugate women to being recipients of instructions and social commands. Just like the main character in Tsitsi Dangarembgwa’s She No Longer Weeps, Rachel is that rebel who defies submission.
She falls in love with Victor and instantly switches of her gross focus on books and the entire grooming which the school system was trying to instil in her.
She becomes a school drop out and that is deemed the apex of deviance factoring in that she was a beneficial of a white’s philanthropy and there she crushed the opportunity offered to her.
Some readers may take the view that she was not grateful for an opportunity given to her to learn and yet she chose to drop out.
This symbolised her dismissal of a structure of qualifying to a structure of bourgeoisie to the colonial system.
As cited in the previous article public institutions were deliberately structured to perfect disorientation of the colonised. They have colonial names or names that buttress imperial cultural conquest.
One character is called Master; a name which represents intense admiration to servitude and worship of those instigating subjugation.
The other are biblical names like Rachel and Maria. They symbolise proletariat conformity to borrowed religious values.
These names, like many other names which were inherited from our interaction with the colonial system, pose as imprints of the deep seated effects of our identity expurgation.
Moreover, names of the white characters in the stories suggest how the colonial project was carried out by descendants of numerous European countries.
At the same time, the menial jobs of the black characters in the book substantiates an essentialist social stratification process which made Africans mere workers with no access relevant to the means of production.
In their own country, a land of their birthright; they are subjected to abject poverty.
Strangers own farms, the African’s life is at the mercy of the “good makhiwa” like Mr Van Heerden.
His occasional commitment to offer stipends to his farm workers is treated as mega benevolence which earns him the name “Good Makhiwa” from his farm workers. Van Heerden’s philanthropy is prominently proved when he pledged to support Rachel, a big sister to the person in the central story, “The Other Side”.
After passing her Grade 7 exams, Rachel is granted immunity from doing work in the farm and is given an opportunity to go on full-time study at a Mission school.
The seemingly benevolent gesture by Van Herdeen is appraised and yet in real essence he had just served an obligation any employer is supposed to take care of particularly in terms of his workers’ welfare.
This further exposes the roots of exploitative labour relations.
Therefore, as one reads this book its clear that the present conditions of labour relations borrow much from the colonial labour structure which was characterised by rampant exploitation.
Class struggle also occupies a greater part of the stories in Gwetai’s collection. The divide between the black townships and white suburbs arrogantly depicts the class divide of pre-independent Zimbabwe.
This enables the young person reading Gwetai’s work to understand that the current economic marginalities and social class differences have a history and that there is no way the colonial system must be praised for civilising Africans.
Such reflections also help in creating an understanding of how we shall continue to have issues of social disgruntlement giving direction to our political debates of the day.
Moreover, this further explains public resistances to indigenisation of the economy.
This is because our people have been socialised to be workers and having a livelihood which is dependent on changing jobs from one employer to another.
I appreciate this book because its mind opening and proffers critical appreciation of how our past has informed our present realities. As such, we must continue to learn from our past to make the best of what the future holds for us beyond what the past has done to downgrade our being.
We have the power to liberate ourselves and create The Other Side in a bid to reverse the faults of the past to rename the future. As such, I recommend this book to any reader interested in refreshing their memory on the history which continues to determine the Africans’ “otheredness” in reclaiming power and being.
I also recommend this book to lovers of good stories.
It’s so small, a collection of short stories for both lazy and avid readers. I enjoyed it to bits and I urge others interested in national memory capturing stories to get this lovely book in their personal library shelves.
It can make a good festive read for those of you who usually take this time of the year for interacting with books.
