Colonialists in many parts of the world sought to undermine the traditional values of the original inhabitants of the lands they conquered. In the case of Zimbabwe, those subjugated were the Shona and Ndebele people. In Africa, Islam and Christianity sought to gain spiritual supremacy by undermining local traditional beliefs and practices, paving way for colonial settlers who, in turn, assumed superiority in terms of military, political, and economic power. The educated and converted Africans partly became agents of oppression as they further propagated missionary and colonial agendas by way of preaching against their very own traditions, a phenomenon which still prevails in post-independence Africa today. Yet the African roots that are shaped by oral tradition remained part of African memory, whether the people were educated or not. This cultural memory became an auxiliary tool in shaping nationalist goals in the struggle for political independence and economic freedom. African orality became an agent for achieving what Creary (1999) calls “the hidden transcript” through allegoric articulation of literature and verbal performance.
In African Oral Story-telling Tradition and the Zimbabwean Novel in English, Maurice Taonezvi Vambe analyzes English novels written by black Zimbabweans and exposes readers to the pervasiveness of African orature and its strength in communicating the goals of African resistance during colonialism, through the liberation struggle to postcolonial Zimbabwe. Vambe deliberately follows a timeline in analyzing novels by eight well-known writers of Zimbabwe and writes a book that has a tripartite function. First, as a folkloristic text, the work opens with a detailed conceptual framework of the genres to be explored, defining them in the Zimbabwean perspective. Second, Vambe’s work is a detailed review of many books in which he shows how the authors use allegory, folktales, myths, spirit possession, and cultural memory in constructing resistant agendas of the given historical times. Third, Vambe’s work is in itself a historical narrative that uses novels as the primary source of data as opposed to other methods, such as ethnography. In the process, Vambe provides a historical continuum of events by showing how writers have used oral tradition to explicate ideas of national resistance in colonial Rhodesia and in postcolonial Zimbabwe.
Chapter One opens with a detailed conceptual framework of the genres to be explored. In reference to spirit possession, the author makes a detailed distinction between vadzimu, mhondoro, mashavi, and ngozi and provides the reader with Shona peoples’ conceptualization of their spirit world. However, this conceptualization leaves the reader unclear as to whether or not the Shona spirit world includes a God. An explanation of mashavi could have further explicated the dual meaning that the term carries. While mashavi, as the author rightly puts it, denotes evil spirits, it may also mean a talent, as in shavi rekuvhima which means a talent for hunting. Furthermore, Vambe does not discuss these same issues in the Ndebele context, leaving the impression that Zimbabwean folklore and culture can only be understood in the context of the Shona people, a notion that has created problems the author himself argues against in later chapters.
In reviewing English novels by Zimbabwean authors, Vambe shows how each of them uses genres of oral tradition as a vehicle for explaining various forms of resistance in colonial Rhodesia during the liberation struggle and in independent Zimbabwe. In Chapters Two and Three, he provides the background interface of orality to ideas of resistance in books that are analyzed in subsequent chapters. In his analysis of different novels, Vambe exemplifies his ideas through selected plots from each book and makes a case as to how allegory, folktales, myths, spirit possession, and cultural memory are used to explicate ideas of resistance in a given time.
In Chapter Four, the author examines the use of allegory in the novel Feso by Solomon Mutswairo. Vambe explains the way Mutsvairo engages the story of Chief Nyang’ombe (Cattle Owner) and Pfumojena (White Spear) to allegorically instill ideas of resistance in colonial Rhodesia. Explained in a similar way is the use of folktale in Jikinya by Geoffrey Ndhlala where heroism is accorded to the weak, thereby asserting the position of the colonized as in the case of Zimbabwe. Vambe also succeeds in examining the use of spirit possession in the novel Chaminuka: Prophet of Zimbabwe, written by Solomon Mutswairo. In analyzing this book, Vambe is able to show how Mutswairo uses spirit possession to re-forge the historical identity that some colonial written accounts deny the Shona people of Zimbabwe. At the beginning of this analysis, however, Vambe points out how ethnic identity can become a threat to national identity in newly-independent nations like Zimbabwe. This analysis is appropriate given that the novel in question was published in the early days of Zimbabwe’s independence. The way spirit possession is articulated gives a correct historical account of Shona resistance against the invasion of both the Ndebele people and the white settlers. Vambe discusses Mutswairo’s portrayal of this resistance as a divisive element within the newly independent nation.
Chapter Five is an analysis of three novels by three writers, namely, On Trial for My Country by Stanlake Samkange, Waiting for the Rain by Charles Mungoshi and A Son of the Soil by Wilson Katiyo. In these novels, Vambe examines the way fantasy, mythic legend, and fable are respectively used to explicate ideas of resistance in both colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe. The main thrust in this analysis is how these novels shift from ideas of military resistance to ideology, and how they further bring out contradicting ideas of nationalism.
A close analysis of Chenjerai Hove’s Bones and Yvonne Vera’s Nehanda constitutes Chapter Six, in which the author further articulates the use of spirit possession in constructing ideas of political resistance during the colonial era. Added to those ideas is the feminist ideology of resistance during the same era. This is evident in subheadings like "Voices of the Ancestors," "Female Narratives in Bones," and "Spirit Possession in Nehanda." Both books revolve around Mbuya Nehanda, a Shona female spirit medium who led the Shona rebellion against the British settlers in 1896 and was later executed by the same settlers, becoming a national hero and a symbol for African nationalism.
In Chapters Seven and Eight, there is a deliberate concentration on how genres of oral tradition continue to be used by writers in post-colonial Zimbabwe to create a logical continuum of historical events. In these chapters, the author analyzes the use of allegory in Dambudzo Marechera’s novel, Black Sunlight, and the use of cultural memory in Yvonne Vera’s novel, Stone Virgins. Vambe shows how, through these genres of oral tradition, these authors express ideas of resistance against the ZANU PF’s political hegemony as a ruling party in independent Zimbabwe.
My observation here is that the author assumes that every reader has an adequate background on the selected works and is therefore familiar with their main texts. In such a scenario, Vambe’s method of extracting plots from the novels would make sense. However, the reality is that his book is open to many readers in different disciplines. A brief overview of each book under discussion would have been helpful, particularly for folklore and history students outside Zimbabwe.
The work under review is, in itself, a historical narrative that uses novels as its source of data. Historians can follow the history of Zimbabwe from 1830, through colonialism and the liberation struggle, to the present day. While Vambe sustains a focus on oral genres, he also clarifies, for the reader, history and its problems, including the ethnic factionalism that prevails in Zimbabwe today. Among the eight authors discussed in the book, Vambe makes a comparative analysis of two of them, Mutswairo and Vera. He compares Mutswairo’s notion of Shona rights over the land and his use of spirit possession to Vera’s use of cultural memory to explicate events of post-colonial Zimbabwe, particularly the dissident war in Matabeleland. This paves the way for understanding ethnic issues and the related forms of resistance that prevail in Zimbabwe today. However, Vambe does not exhaust his comparative analysis and that creates further problems for the reader and presents a chaotic picture of Zimbabwe as it stands today, which might not be wholly accurate.
African Oral Story-telling Tradition and the Zimbabwean Novel in English is indeed a well-written book in which the author articulates oral genres of folklore and their interface with ideas of resistance in a detailed scholarly manner. This work is accessible to readers in different disciplines. However, the way spirit possession is handled leaves the reader with the impression that it is not, in fact, a realistic performative act involving mediation between the dead and living, but rather an expression of cultural memory of the past. Such is the explanation of the author in his analysis of Bones and other texts analyzed in this book. Above all, the author should be commended for exposing to a general readership, particularly that of the Western world, that Africans do, in fact, have a tangible history which they transmit orally through folkloric forms. This book is indeed an informative text on folklore and Zimbabwean history.
References Cited
Berliner, Paul. The Soul of Mbira: Music and Tradition of the Shona People of Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Bucher, Hubert. Spirits and Power: An Analysis of Shona Cosmology. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Chinyowa, Kennedy C. “ Orality in Shona Religious Rituals.” In Orality and Cultural Identities in Zimbabwe. edited by Maurice T Vambe, 9-18. Gweru: Mambo Press, 2001.
Creary, Nicholas M. “African Inculturation of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe, 1958-1977” in Find Articles. http://www.findarticles.com. Accessed September 20, 2004.
--------
[Review length: 1598 words • Review posted on April 26, 2007]