Peter Orner - Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives

HOPE DEFERRED

This book is dedicated to all the people who spent many hoursand in some cases dayssharing their stories with us.

And to the writer Charles Mungoshi

VOICE OF WITNESS

McSWEENEYS BOOKS

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ISBN (E-book): 978-1-940450-95-7

VOICE OF WITNESS

The books in the Voice of Witness series seek to illuminate human rights crises by humanizing the victims. Using oral history as a foundation, the series explores social justice issues through the stories of the men and women who experience them. These books are designed for readers of all levelsfrom high school and college students to policymakersinterested in a reality-based understanding of ongoing injustices in the United States and around the world. Visit voiceofwitness.org for more information.

VOICE OF WITNESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

DAVE EGGERS

Author; Co-founder of 826National, the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, and the Zeitoun Foundation

LOLA VOLLEN

Visiting Scholar, Institute for International Studies, UC Berkeley; Executive Director, Life After Exoneration Program

JILL STAUFFER

Assistant Professor of Philosophy; Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Concentration, Haverford College

VOICE OF WITNESS BOARD OF ADVISORS

ROGER COHN

Former Editor-in-Chief, Mother Jones

MARK DANNER

Author, professor, UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

HARRY KREISLER

Executive Director, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

MARTHA MINOW

Dean, Harvard Law School

SAMANTHA POWER

Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

JOHN PRENDERGAST

Co-Chair, ENOUGH Project

ORVILLE SCHELL

Arthur Ross Director, Asia Society

WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN

Author

FOUNDING ADVISOR

STUDS TERKEL

Author, oral historian

TRANSCRIBERS: Gabrielle Chiarenza, Joseph Chikowero, Kelly Connelly, Hannah Edber, Dominique Farrell, Teresa Iacobelli, Elizabeth Jewett, Esther Lam, Meghan Moran, Lindsay Pinkham, Nadia Prupis, Blair Rainsford, Kate Reeler, Brian Rutledge, Claire Sarraille, Laura Scott, Kizzie Shawkat, Meera Sinha, Jon Vandenberg. PROOFREADERS: Joseph Sunra Copeland, Jill Haberkern, John Knight, Ben Shattuck, Valerie Woolard. COPY EDITOR: Oriana Leckert. RESEARCH: Meritt Buyer, Jamie Falinski, Joanna Green, Kristina Kearns, Yumi Wilson. VOICE OF WITNESS SERIES EDITORS: Dave Eggers, Lola Vollen. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: mimi lok. DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATE: Juliana Sloane. EDUCATION PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Cliff Mayotte.

CONTENTS

by Brian Chikwava, author of Harare North

It may be apposite to start in the tradition of the authorities of Zimbabwe by declaring that over the past decade this little country has been a land of milk and honey. Of course one way of reconciling this with the hard realityas the ordinary Zimbabwean always must in jaunty township barswould be to further the story and suggest that Zimbabweans are flies. For a fly that lands on honey is doomed, as is one that finds itself floating in a pail of milk. Only when it lands on dung does it truly strike bliss. Curious then how, given what has gone on in Zimbabwe over the past decade, bliss has been elusive, except for a few. Again, in the township bar, such discrepancy may be resolved by suggesting that it is not Zimbabweans that are flies per se, but their political elite who thrive on dung.

The disconnect between the stories told by a state and those told by its citizens at best obscures the moral choices that must be made, and some states may well prefer it that way. It is probably for this reason that the novelist Louis De Bernires once said that history ought to be made up of the stories of ordinary people only. Indeed, no matter how long one stares at the darker patches of a nations history, it is only from the low, street-level vantage point of the ordinary person that one is able to point a torch at the cost of the choices that nation is making or has already made. From the lofty heights of men of power the torchlight vanishes into the vast night long before it hits the ground. For that reason, yes, one can understand why political history must be read alongside social history; on its own the former becomes a vulgar abstraction of the truth if not a clanging lie, in which case it deservedly becomes the subject of ridicule in the local bar.

The histories, or stories that we tell ourselves, like the songs we sing, make us who we are. On the personal level, our stories are the tools by which we recall events of import in our own lives, how we interpret those events and ultimately how we hold our sense of self together when times are such that we could easily lose ourselves and our way. Once, I was told of a young and restless writer-woman living in exile in the capitals of Europe. Her family was a closely knit unit with whom she had lived for nearly all of her life, until she had to come to London. But exile is a hard place even for the toughest; one has to find a place in a new environment, wrestle loneliness, sometimes suffer a temporary loss of social language and be plunged into expansive silences in life. As is often said, you can be at your most lonely right in the middle of a throbbing crowd. In the crowd that is London, this young woman felt herself slipping through her own fingers. And so started a compulsion to call her family every evening and unfailingly relate her day to them and describe how her plans worked out. Asked why she felt that compulsion, her answer was that if she failed to talk over what had happened during her day, sometimes it felt as if it had not happened at all; what had happened and what had been imagined became impossible to tell apart. Probably a rare case, hers, but what can not be underplayed is what it says about the psychological significance of storytelling and holding onto ones self.

One reads this collection with heartbreak, at times laughter, but ultimately a sense of triumph against all odds. In some way a good number of the people behind these stories have, no doubt, been alone in the crowd of humanity heaving across our globe and known exile on so many levels, physically and in their minds. As the poet Gwyneth Lewis once shrewdly observed: exile, with its attendant loss of language, mimics depression, and vice versa. Yet perhaps the greatest achievement of this collection of stories is how it has enabled each of these individuals to emerge out of their blue depths clutching their experiences and to reclaim themselves in a manner at once irrepressible and life affirming. There are indomitable spirits like Elizabeth, whose fearlessly free-thinking instincts could not be accommodated within her family; quietly resilient individuals like Samuel, who have known what its like to have your innocence rudely yanked from your hands; the wild and unaffected George, who has witnessed brutality and prejudice by both the Rhodesian and Zimbabwean states; Aaron, who knows why the devils household has an appetite for its servants heads; and Zenzele, whose noble determination to serve the people saw him unwittingly step on the devils tail.