DAMBUDZO MARECHERA’S LIFE A TIMELESS POSER

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Beaven Tapureta

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Guests mingling few minutes before the start of Marechera commemoration at the ZGS, Harare, March 13


(Photo: Zimbabwe/Germany Society)

Following the publication of short personal narratives on the late Dambudzo Marechera’s love affair with his biographer Flora Veit-Wild (who authored the narratives) in the current issue of Wasafiri, a London-based journal for international contemporary writing, Marechera’s life has become a poser that will keep challenging even literary and cultural luminaries in new, interesting ways.


The power of Marechera’s life story, which is inseparable from his texts, was clearly felt at his  commemoration held at the Zimbabwe-Germany Society, Harare, on the evening of March 13.

The event, running under the theme “Re-visiting Dambudzo Marechera: Old Texts Brought to Life”, had a mixed-bag of panelists drawn from different fields in the literary sector and was moderated by Flora Veit-Wild.

And as usual, Marechera continues to draw a large audience from across the racial and cultural divide, bringing both artists and non-artists into his fold.

One of the interesting aspects of this event was the presentation by South Africa based academic Kudakwashe C. Muchena whose paper titled “A Psychobiography of Dambudzo Marechera” used Alfred Adler’s theory of individual psychology to explore and describe Marechera actual motivations and psychological workings.

Muchena said Adler’s theory of individual psychology is holistic and stresses the uniqueness of each person and the unity of personality, contending that people can only be understood as integrated and complete beings that strive toward self-determined goals and organize their lives accordingly.

Tracing Marechera’s family background, his lifestyle, early recollections, feelings of inferiority and psychological make-up as evidenced in his works and life, Muchena brought a new analytic mirror with which to view Marechera and understand who he was.

He selected three quotations from Marechera’s famous book House of Hunger (Heinemann, 1978) which are “I got my things and left”, “The sun was coming up” and “I couldn’t think of where to go” and used these to highlight Marechera’s habits that reflect how affected he was by the socio-political milieu in which he grew up.

Muchena said after Marechera’s father died in a road accident and the subsequent family's eviction from their township house and his mother’s succumb to drinking and prostitution, Marechera, then thirteen years old, began the habit of “getting his things and leaving”.

“Mostly he was escaping from the shame of his family, the poverty, the chaos, the pain, The House of Hunger. He was always leaving the houses of hunger, seeking the sun, the sun, in most instances, would turn out to be school scholarship,” explained Muchena.

There is also Marechera’s constant reference to his early childhood experiences in his texts and these early recollections, according to Alderian theory, contains “the fundamental estimates of the individual and his situation…it is his subjective starting point, the beginning of the autobiography he has made up for himself”.

Muchena said that in The House of Hunger Marechera described several early memories from which his basic convictions can be derived.

Some of these early memories include when his mother clapped him for speaking to her in English, his father’s death, his famous stammer and various others.

“Dambudzo Marechera was an important voice of African literature. Although he died young and his output was regrettably small, the difference in his voice, in his concerns, and his attitude added something special and enduring to the body of African literature,” said Muchena who said that his application of Alderian theory in Marechera’s biography would be part of his university thesis.

Dr. Nhamo Mhiripiri, a writer and senior lecturer at the Midlands State University, presented a paper titled “Cinematographic Expositions of Dambudzo Marechera” which highlighted audio-visual records of Marechera’s life as relevant in understanding him (Marechera).

Mhiripiri said there are only three known documentaries about Marechera which can give insight into the author. The first one was done by Chris Austen although the filmmaker later fell out with the author and the second, a documentary featuring various authors such as Charles Mungoshi and Stanlake Samkange, was done by Olley Maruma and is available from the national archives.

Mhiripiri said the third documentary was captured while Marechera was a teacher at the People’s College in Harare. The film, however, is unrefined as it is not exactly Marechera-centered but was part of a journalism assignment which only chanced to take place at the college where Marechera was teaching.

Others who contributed at this event include Memory Chirere who read the preface to Amelia poems and read his own short story “Ariko” from his collection Tudikidiki, Batsirai Chigama and Sam Munro aka Comrade Fatso who both did poetry dedicated to the celebrated writer. A poet simply called Biko from the Toyi-Toyi Arts Collective also engaged with Marechera’s poem “Throne of Bayonets” which he translated into Shona language.

Drew Shaw, a Marechera scholar who also lectures at the National University of Science and Technology, read passages from Mindblast.

Flora read her short story “Lake Mcllwaine”, which is a fictional account of a moment she shared with Marechera recently published alongside the essay “Me and Dambudzo” in Wasafiri, Vol. 27, 1, 2012.

“For me this is nerve breaking,” she said before she read the touching story. Asked by Memory Chirere how she has come to terms with the publication of her revealing short pieces in Wasafiri, Flora said, “Your life writes a story and this is a story that had to be written.”

The two pieces, she added, were submitted to Wasafiri sometime in 2010 but were not published due to a backlog that Wasafiri had. The pieces only appeared this year in February.

When asked if she was the Amelia in Marechera’s sonnets, Flora referred the question to Chirere who said, “It would be reductionist to say Amelia is Flora but granted, there could be aspects of all that.”

If Dambudzo is so highly celebrated, someone asked, what was his own perception of God? Did he believe in God? And this question was answered by the poet Biko who had people bursting with laughter when he said, “Marechera was in the process of creating his own religion.”

Musaemura Zimunya, one of Marechera’s contemporaries, narrated his own experiences with the eccentric author from the days they met at the University of Rhodesia in 1973 where together they participated in the famous “pots and pans” student demonstration against racial discrimination at the campus. The demo resulted in the expulsion of many students from the university, including Marechera, Zimunya, and other well-known writers.

Marechera is also known to have staged a one-man demonstration along the now Sam Nujoma Street against the colonial government of Ian Douglas Smith.

In all his life, Marechera questioned the worth of their education in the context of colonialism, said Zimunya who added that he at one point singularly waged war against the Censorship Board for banning Marechera’s 1981 book Black Sunlight and eventually the ban was lifted.

When Marechera landed in Zimbabwe after his exile in London, the first house he stayed in was Zimunya’s.

“All I know is that Marechera stood for what he believed in. I never hated him, no matter how much he would ‘abuse’ some of us,” said Zimunya.

There was not much people could say at this event about Marechera except to say that he lived his life to the fullest and he will continue to haunt all who are interested in understanding him.

“Regardless of what people say, Marechera had freedom and he was a lucky man,” said Virginia Phiri who also attended the event with her husband.

Concern was also raised about the unavailability of Marechera’s books in Zimbabwe but Flora said she will help solve this problem. Anesu Katerere, one of the new poetic voices inspired by Marechera, asked about a school named after Marechera which is being constructed in his home area of Nyanga but Flora said she is yet to visit the school and know more about it.

The event was a true remembrance of a man whose life wrote its own different story that will remain not only a Zimbabwean or African story, but also a universal story, for pigeon-holing was one of the things that Marechera disliked.

The Goethe-Zentrum Harare/Zimbabwe-Germany Society (GZH/ZGS), which organized the event, is a non-profit organization established in 1983 with a mandate to promote transfer of knowledge through teaching languages and foster inter-cultural exchange between the people of Zimbabwe and Germany.