Tomorrow

We want to live

In a tomorrow

Where our past

Can be looked at with pride

And not the shame

Of rotting corpses behind bushes

Raped mothers

traumatized orphans

and brothers and sisters

skedaddleing all over the world in terror

Of an uncertain future

Child Of Two Cities

When I was a foetus

In the warm womb of my mother

I lived in Halimane village

Land of my ancestors

Entwined by a river

Striving to straighten its limbs

Between trees that rained smiles of leaves

When autumn dawned, and our hearts melted.

I walked the forests of Halimane ceaselessly

Drinking in the crisp air

Watched by frisky squirrels

Pausing between their ferreting

To sit back on their hind legs

As I did a few months

After I was born into Halimane village

Reviewing A Review

 Is a writer supposed to respond to a critical review of his story or book?  We think not, unless if the reviewer has mixed up facts, and one wants to point out corrections.

Other writers might have a different take on this, but my argument is that the critical review is an interpretation of one’s work as perceived by the reader, to whom you sent your message as the writer/encoder.  The critical reviewer is trained to make a fair attempt at decoding the message or messages encoded into our text, and explain them to his or her audience, and so when the piece has been published, no amount of complaining by the writer will reverse anything, you just have to sit back and be brave, and hope to walk out still sane from the whole experience.

The good reviewer, whether s/he slams your story, or praises it, has this value to the writer – s/he tries to explain your story for you, and if there are any inconsistencies, to also shine a light on them, so that they are visible for scrutiny. 

What does the writer gain from all this – if s/he is a good listener, the next time s/he tries to write another book, s/he will carefully consider what was suggested in the previously reviewed book, and maybe use, or not use the input, all in the drive to become a better writer telling better stories.

As much as we as writers hate reviewers sometimes, the fact is that they are a Godsend to all forms of artistic endeavor.

But where does the reviewer draw the line from making personal attacks on writers or publishers?

With that, it was with amazement when we read the so called review of Running With Mother from The Partisan newspaper in Zimbabwe, a site which, ironically, if you try to open it online, you get the message –‘ this site might be harmful to your computer.’

Hahahahaha!

We showed the so called review to a few people, and here are just two comments from them about this ‘review:’

‘It is hate speech…’

‘…spiteful…’

We are happy that people are able to see what this ‘review’ really is, and that, despite this attack from The Partisan, our resolve is still unchanged, we are writing more stories about our beloved country and its beloved people, romances, thrillers, political satires, you name it – no subject is taboo for us.

We leave you with the review in concern, and like we mentioned, open the link at your own risk.

We hope The Partisan will be happy too at this free publicity we are giving their newspaper.

Good luck.

http://thepatriot.co.zw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1211:weaver-press-oh-weaver&catid=6:analysis&Itemid=39

Weaver Press, Oh Weaver!

Written by Patriot Reporter, Evans Mushawevato

IT is common knowledge that works of art be they books, sculptures or painting are influenced by ideologies.

The book we review this week, Running with Mother claims to paint a picture and provide a vivid account of events surrounding the disturbances in Matabeleland in the 80s.
The book published by Weaver Press and written by one Christopher Mlalazi heaps the blame on the disturbances and unfortunate incidences that happened in Matabeleland on the Government of the day.
The book tells the story of how Government soldiers went on a killing spree butchering women and children and burning them while alive in their houses.
“What had seemed one thing was many, a mass of human bodies burnt together, charred limbs, bones shining white in the moonlight and defaced skulls. The stench of burnt flesh was intense,” says the protagonist Rudo.
The book that Weaver Press describes as a ‘short, but powerful novel’ is a narration of horrors committed by Government soldiers.
Last year, The Patriot published a consolidated 64 page police report of the atrocities that the dissidents perpetrated on the population in Matabeleland, Midlands and Mashonaland West between 1981 and 1987. 
Information about events of the time show that soldiers went in to assist the police to contain the atrocities.
But in Running with Mother villagers were more afraid of Government security forces and atrocities were committed by soldiers on a ‘mission’ to ‘wipe out the Ndebeles’.  
Evidently the book is another offering with a heavy Rhodesian influence.
Rhodesians having realised that they cannot overtly fight and ‘regain’ what they feel they ‘lost’, have resorted to mechanisms that create animosity between the people of Zimbabwe.
And the country’s army has not been spared as it is said its leadership is made up of ZANU PF apologists.
“Running with Mother provides us with a gripping story of how Rudo, her mother, her aunt and her little cousin survived the onslaught,” writes Weaver Press. 
And predictably, the book will be shortlisted for some skewed award from the West.
The book is not based on fact and twists events to suit the regime change agenda.
It is an attempt to ‘Indict’ the Government of the period led by ZANU PF.
It is common knowledge that there are elements in the country that have been tasked with the duty of gathering information that will be used to charge the likes of Robert Mugabe with ‘crimes against humanity’, whatever that means.
Thus in the book we are told of Government soldiers wantonly killing villagers.
‘Come my child, we have to hide. The devil has come to our village’. 
“The soldiers came to the clinic and burned it down too.”
“It’s hard to believe the people today were really government soldiers. Government soldiers are trained and disciplined and they would not go around burning up people and children in their homes,” the reader is bombarded. 
It is highly unlikely that Mlalazi said these words!
As we celebrate silver jubilee of the signing of the Unity Accord one is best reminded that the book is a typical example of the employment of the divide-and-rule strategy.
Here is a book produced to fan the tensions between the Shonas and Ndebeles.
“The message was chilling. It was speaking in Shona,” states the writer.
Mlalazi is currently hopping from one Western capital, of our former colonisers, to the next. 
They are feting him because he is spewing out the kind of story that they used to colonise us: to ‘stop the Africans from exterminating each other’. 
The writer may proffer all sorts of argument for his work, but as he is hosted in Europe he must never forget that there is more that unites us as Zimbabweans, as Shonas and Ndebeles than divides us.
Seeds sown to cause disharmony among Africans by whites using surrogate blacks might germinate, but will not grow. 
Weaver Press does not know this. 
That is why Zimbabwe has survived the unprecedented onslaught    

Now to the opinions on the theme

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/opinion-9905-Gukurahundi%20was%20not%20genocide/opinion.aspx#news

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/opinion-9934-Gukurahundi+was+definitely+genocide/opinion.aspx

My dearest beloved Blog.

My dearest blog, www.christopher-mlalazi@blogspot.com, I write this letter to you with a great deal of embarrassment.  I know I have really been a bad bad boy, for look at you you, just lying there alone on your cyber bed, heavily neglected, and your face a mask of unhappiness.

How could I do this, I ask myself. How could I neglect especially you, you who conferred status on my shoulders when I was still nothing. Is that a good way to pay back, I find myself asking myself sometimes in moments of reflection.

For I clearly remember too that you were very difficult to propose to, and needed my deepest resources, unlike my new blue lover – no, my new blue friend, that one called Facebook.

I don’t know if I should tell you this, about my bedroom secrets with my blue lover, because you might think that I am trying to make excuses so that you can accept me again, but you did not have not have billions of people sniffing at your sex and speaking your name at every corner, or writing across your bums or bosom – no, you were more discreet than that, for it seems the vulgar, the ones I know at the bottle store, don’t want to come to you, which is a reflection of the goodness of your soul, so I am beginning to realise.

I was vain, I was a fool, I thought that the best girlfriend was the one who is in fashion, the one who wears blue very high heeled shoes, very tight (blue) stretch jeans, and the most elaborate hairstyle (blue) over a face that looks like it came by aeroplane.

Well, ignoring my inner good sense, I proposed to the blue girl, and she accepted my proposal, for after all, I didn’t mind about her colour, it was interesting, and I thought a touch of cross colour relationship would bring a new meaning to my life.

One thing that is funny is that while her name is Facebook, and I easily called her F, and loved it, now that letter F seems to have taken another connotation – and if you still love me my blog, I hope you wont laugh at me and say what really did you think you were trying to do. But do you think I have been a fool?

But we have a saying, what goes round comes round again. Here I am again knocking on your door. Please get up from your bed, take a bath, dress up, and let’s go and have some fun, for I am back, and I promise you this time I won’t go off on some half baked chase of blue girls trying to write all types of vulgarity on their bums.

Do you think I am telling the truth? Well, I hope I am too, but we will see with my activity on you’re my darling blog just to prove that this time I not only want to make love with you, but I want children – the posts on you that will come from my ejaculations.

Pass my tender greetings to all blog families and especially my blog followers.

Always Yours (Even if I sneak back again to the blue lover with the name that starts with the big F)

Chris

The Side Roads Of Story Creation

If you have a keen sense of the value of evolution, never be rigid with the first draft of any concept.  Ask my good friend the dinosaur about that.

The original concept is the stem, or the main road, but some other branches can take off from the stem, and these in the long run bear the precious fruit or answers or story that we are seeking for.

If you follow the main road forever you will never reach your destination, you will only but get near it, but not there. 

In order for you to get to the destination, you have to turn into a little side road, but not a detour as this will make the journey even more taxing.

The main stem of a tree aims at nothing but the open sky, the main road to the heart of a city, but the branch from the stem aims to bear flowers or fruit, and the side roads bring us to our homes.

Some stems can bear fruit, but these are not in the majority.

This is easily applicable to the arts, or writing.  We start a story with a concept that feels and sounds so good that by merely thinking over it we feel this is the main road that you will follow until you reach the conclusion.

Well, some do that and produce good stories - maybe, as I have never met anybody who has done so yet. 

Some follow this initiating concept until they reach a blank wall, and they put their story to rest, hoping that a blessing will fall on their shoulders from the heavens one day and they be able to continue with that same spine of the story till they have a book at the end.

Sometimes that can work, and sometimes that can result in a very frustrated writer. 

But why wait?  Why not re-read the story from the beginning with a pen poised to break away from the main story should any hint of opportunity present itself in the storyline even if you have just revised one paragraph of the first chapter?

Even rivers burst their banks to form new streams that will one day become new rivers.

We know it is traumatic to dump a baby.  Our stories are our babies.  But these are fictional ink and paper babies.  The laws of any state in the world allow you to dump them at any moment should you feel like it.  No one is going to arrest you for it and send you to the hangman.

And do you know something?  Should you have an aversion of leaving your story for the promising branch, there is an easy way out. Copy and paste the story on to a new page leaving the original still intact. Title the new story revision 2, and then have a go on it with scissors and cut and branch out on it where you were afraid to do so on the original draft, for after all, the original draft is still safe and sound on another page.

As you are doing this, keep telling yourself you are experimenting on this copy, yes it is a copy of the original, just as that photocopy of your birth certificate - you can delete, yes even change titles as you like.

You can even send the entire new document to trash if you want to should you not be satisfied with it, for your original draft is still intact isn’t it so?

But tell you what, treat the re-write with caution, because it has the power to bloom that can never be explained to anyone…

The Story And Story Conflict...

A story can never be found to be gripping if it does not have any conflict.  Commonly, when we mention conflict, those not initiated into the creative writing craft will immediately jump to political conflict, that which deals with politicians and their vices, but it will be found that this kind of politics is nothing but a mere element in the broader story conflict spectrum.

To isolate the concept, conflict is a child of the tension between two opposing elements.  The tension can be visible to an onlooker, as a physical fight, or it can be invincible and only exist internally - in the mind and emotions of the subject. In this case for this internal conflict, only an in-depth analysis of the mind and emotions of the subject will reveal it, and of course this lies in the realms of psychoanalysis, or crazy writers.

This also pulls us to the fact that the story teller must be widely read on any subject, or if not well read, must be a good observer, as these tidbits of knowledge will be found to add depth to their stories – there is nothing as boring as a story that only scraps the surface… no matter how small the organ, a highly skilful usage of it will bring total satisfaction…

A story without conflict will immediately begin to sound like a simple explanation, and will immediately lose the attention of the reader, or if it is in theatre or film, the audience.  Where three people are trying to tell their stories at the same time, as it usually happens in bars when we have had a beer or two, we will always focus on the story which tells us why John kept failing to get to point B from point A, and not the one which tells us how John slid from point A to point B without any mis-adventure.  The story teller who keeps failing to grasp this simple fact will always take a long time to attract readers or publishers to their work. 

Of course there are some who say they do not writer for readers, but only write for themselves – but most will be found to be lying on this, and will be secretly seeking for audiences and bugging their mirrors to have taste of their work..

To give an example of the power of conflict, and to use an example outside creative writing, even when one watches a bottle juggler performing their act, if one looks at this act closely, we will discover that even if one is drawn to the sheer beauty of observing the act of the flying bottles and the skilful catching, one is also drawn by conflict to the performance, but the conflict is within the perceiver – one side of you tells you the bottles are going to fall and break, and the other is disagreeing and saying no they are not going to fall – and so we have the enthralled audience!

We are also aware that aesthetics hold a vital position in story telling – brilliantly assembled sentences, descriptions of scenery and people, descriptions of the condition of nature, humankind, and also the creations of humans – the societies, the machines and so forth – but the thread holding this quilt together is the conflict that is the subject of the composer.

It seems that people are so much drawn to conflict that, even in peacetime, they create it as a pastime for their leisure time so that they can always get their adrenaline fix.

We have created all sorts of sports whose epicentre is conflict between individuals or  teams. Imagine if boxers were two countries at war with each other, or even in the mind sports, chess and the like. But we are happy that we seem now to want to contain our aggression within soccer stadiums or boxing rings or any other sports venue, and also contain it between teams with referees watching over them.  Of course we have these incidents in sports stadia where the audience becomes so much infected by the conflict between their teams that they take the conflict to themselves within the terraces and slug it out between each other.

The sports are also a good example where conflict is nicely wrapped up in excellent aesthetics, the beautiful uniforms of the sports people, the green lawns, the adverts, the beautiful cars in car racing, the flags, the national anthems if its national teams playing, and even the beautiful manoeuvres or actions of the sports people themselves.  Of course now and then we have this crazy person leaping over the barricades in football stadia separating the people from the players and running across the turf  amidst the players in protest or celebration and now bringing a new dimension to sports conflict.  An action like this can be a beautiful distraction to sports lovers, but the wary story tellers will always try to lop off a trend like that if it starts protruding from their story construction – imagine a shooting star doing a wobble streak across the sky…But sometimes this is an out of the world fascination that we would like to explore to the fullest before we discard it.

Of course there is the belief that there is no formulae to creative writing.  This also holds true too, as creative writing is an eternal process of experimentation, just take the story where it wants to go as long as you can burrow through that tunnel to the sun on the other side.  But whatever, do not forget what got Hyena into trouble in the animal Kingdom, or how Janet lost her boyfriend to her best friend….

Can A Writer Write On An Empty Stomach?

It has often been said that the best works of art have been produced by people under straitened economical conditions.

I would also like to add that this category of people, the poverty stricken ones to use a less polite term, are also victims of dire mental anguish – they are in a position that has pushed them against a corner with no escape, and the only way they can escape it is by giving birth to the beauty inside them – a time tested way of opening any door of opportunity that lies before you.  Society is a sucker for all things beautiful.

But what is it with art and poverty?  If we were to separate the two, art is dealing with aesthetics and the appreciation of beauty, and poverty is ‘the state of being extremely poor.’

Poverty can also be lack in any required amounts.

Can we equate art to religion?  Can we be justified in saying that it can be also perceived as a system of worship, for surely, if the question can be asked, don’t artists worship their calling?

That said, we will begin to notice that, on a profound level, art is a spiritual condition, and we do not need to tell one that most spiritual discoveries, just like character, are discovered when an individual is under pressure. 

The pressure can be internal (within the mind, body and soul), or external – societal etc.  And what it burns down to is that, even if the pressure is external, outside the body, if more pressure is added on to this pressure, the mind internalises it, and it now becomes internal as well as being external.  And once the pressure is internal, then comes a change in the constitution of the psyche, which will lead to the birth of the new person with a new resolve, and on the negative side, the mind can go haywire.

I am not a psychiatrist, but years of writing and analysing characters have taught me a lot about the mind and how it works, but not as much as the shrink let me add…

We now have this individual, who through extreme hardship has discovered the new person within themselves that had lain submerged under these piles and piles of day to day life pre-occupation, and this new person is the artist (or the mentally challenged man).  The artist now begins their practice, and as any newly born, they attack it with vigour – when they smile, the world smiles, and when they cry, the world cries too.

Year piles on year, and the manuscripts are now a ceiling high pile in their bedroom.  Let’s also remember that most dedicated artists don’t marry before they become stars in their trade, and so the manuscripts keep on piling, and now in every room of the house.

If they are using a computer, they now have heaps and heaps of back up CD’s and flash drives stacked in some drawer or other.

In the streets they walk tall and proud even if their work has not started selling, because they know they have this enormous wealth in their minds, or on the tip of their fingers if they are guitarists or some other artists who rely on their fingers.

And the years pile on, they are still unmarried, own nothing in the world, not even a spoon, as they are banking their lives on a future big sale. 

Their friends are now all married and have families and own houses, and they are still bachelors or spinsters  and now with uncontrollable tempers when they have had a  drink or two.

Then comes a time when their work is now known around the country and the world, but still they are failing to make that illusive big sale. 

And in cases of countries like Zimbabwe, there are no arts grants or even recognition from government of their work and status of being custodians of national cultures.

And one day they wake up to the fact that, even if they are producing beautiful stories, poems, sculptures, they are poverty stricken, and now it is not that poverty they had at the beginning that made them discover the artist lurking inside them, but it is that poverty that will see to it that when they die in a few years, they are going to receive a paupers burial.

On that note, we would like to urge the public, families, and friends to support the nearest  artist by buying their art work, and not ask for freebies, or limit themselves to gazing at it only.

The amount of work an artist can do an empty stomach is limited.  Maybe when she or he is voluntarily fasting, but not when the ‘cat is now sleeping on the fireplace’ because there is now no cooking fire to chase it away.

Amen…

Let The Writer Write

This is an old subject, but I think I want to return to it as I have never let my opinion on it get known.

There is a school of thought amongst some writers, readers, and critics that sometimes make me sick when I hear them writing and also articulating that they think writers should stop writing about the wars, the hunger, dictatorships, and all such images they think portray a negative picture of the African continent and the Third World.

Some go on to tell the picture they want to see written about, describing the beautiful natural landscapes and wild life of the continent.  Some have even go far and tried to suggest that why don’t these ‘negative’ writers write romances or thrillers or some such literature that does not touch on the hungers, the wars, the child soldiers, dictators etc.

I have never commented on this opinion like I said whenever I come across it, especially on social networking platforms, mainly because I have always been amazed, and if not disappointed, that there are some people with this train of thought, because, for goodness sake, what constitutes of the very term of literature?

Of course we are aware that people have diverse tastes, just as we would see somebody preferring to go half dressed whilst some hold that as a taboo in their cultures.  But does having diverse tastes warrant a ‘dressing down’ of the other? Is there anybody who can rightly say they are the judges of world literature, and people should always pay homage to their opinions on this matter?

I hope I am not being abstract, as I have often discovered myself confusing myself in some of my writing when I use words that seem to hang in mid air, but my opinion on this matter, which I will stand by through thick and thin, is that let each horse chose from which river it wants to drink from, for who knows, maybe those forbidden waters are the ones that hold healing chemicals.

Literature should heal.  There can be no healing if there is no exposure.  Lack of exposure can lead to a perpetuation of the illness, a suppuration of the wound. Let the political writers write.

The Literary Year Ahead (2012)

It is January now, and I think this is a good time to try to take stock of what the year ahead holds in store for one.  Is this a good thing to do – well, I think it is in terms of career planning, and to also try to bolster one’s soul.

Is writing my career? Yes definitely it is.  And that question I am always having to answer – what do you do full time? How do you earn a living?

This question has unpleasant connotations. That people believe that one cannot make a living through the arts, or writing as in my case.

The answer to that one is subjective, one can or cannot, but for the past four years ever since I left my job as an acting bursar in a government school, I have become more freer and happier, and what more do we pursue in life other than that? So there…

Of course there have been turbulent times, life has never been smooth for anybody and it will never be– if it’s not this it’s that, but here I am writing and enjoying every moment of it all, and more so when I see what I aspire to achieve blossoming by the day...

And so here is the check list.  My play, Fes’bhuku, directed by Daniel Maposa, and produced by Savana Trust of Harare, which opened, in October 2011, is headed for more shows around the country in 2012. Fes’bhuku is a look-see on social media, Facebook, Twitter and so forth, and its impact on semi rural communities, and infused with loads of humor, and of course the usual acid political satire. Check.

The present core of my 2012 expectations is the publishing of my latest novel, Running With Mother, by Weaver Press sometime between March and February which I finished during my 2011 term as guest writer at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden, but had started started when I was Feuchtwanger Fellow at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2010  I would like to believe that this is an international book as it has crossed seas and continents during its creation.  This is my third book to be published so far after DANCING WITH LIFE and MANY RIVERS, and oh yes I am happy I have gone this far in terms of publishing. What more can a writer wish for?   This gives me strength and a heart warming smile, some energy that sometimes is so hard to muster.  I wont talk much about the latest book as it is still not yet out, but please watch out for it. And please don’t ask for free copies, but BUY.

I also have two plays which are still at manuscript stage, and which were written in 2011 but written for the 2012 theatre year.  I am still looking for production houses for the plays and so far have not met with any luck, but I believe in the plays, and one day they will hit the light.  I am loath to look for a director and actors/actresses and produce the plays myself as it involves so much work and also resources that I do not have – I guess I am very lazy, and so finding a production house seems the easier option for me – if only somebody they can believe in the plays just as I do.

Still on the plays, one is titled THE FORGOTTEN, and tells the story of a visually impaired woman conquering over serious adversity.   This one is a two character cast. The other, titled PURPLE BLOSSOMS, is a one character cast, and also tells the story of adversity and hope from the point of view of a grave digger called Digger who is looking for his missing wife and daughter.

I also have another novel manuscript which I have been working over for the past three years, and the funny thing is that the one that has been taken up by Weaver Press was started much later than this one, about six months ago, but will see the printing press first. So you see, this proves that if you feel you are stuck on a novel project, put it aside and start on another one, you can still go back to it if you finish the new one.  Do not let old work delay your advancement.

Currently, I am working on a Ndebele TV drama which is now at an advanced stage.

There is another project I am working on when I am not writing or reading – hey, this just reminds me, I am so behind in my reading it shames me!

This project, which I am working on with visual artists, is titled ‘VisualisingZim.’ When I was in Los Angeles in 2010, I did a Multi Media Story Telling course, which entailed learning to collect and create stories/news for the electronic media using the video, audioslide shows, and podcasts  fomart.  And so I have been creating short documentaries of visual artists (painters) in my city of Bulawayo and loading them on youtube and Facebook, with the hope that the work of these painters can be viewed internationally and draw attention to Zimbabwean art. So far I have done 15 documentaries in Bulawayo, and hope one day to as many as I can nationally.  My other hope is that one day I will open up a website for these documentaries which will serve as an electronic gallery/register of the visual arts of Zimbabwe.  This is an exciting project, and I love every minute I working on it.

Lastly, but not least, I have been promised a Fiction Fellowship in the USA sometime soon in 2012, but I will talk about this when everything has been finalised…

Fes'bhuku, my new play (launched October 2010 at PROTEST ART INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL)

....2011 has seen a flurry of plays coming out of my pen.  The first was opened at HIFA 2011, the hilarious comedy COLOURS OF DREAMS, and the second opened at the PROTEST ART INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL, also in Harare, in October.  The following is an extract from the press statement posted by Leonard Matsa of Savanna Arts, the organization behind PROTEST ART FEST.  This was copied from Facebook..

....However, one of the plays that is certain to leave lasting impressions at the festival is Fes’bhuku performed by Savanna Trust, a play that talks about the impact that social networks such as Facebook have made to communities in Zimbabwe. Until recently, remote areas in Zimbabwe have been insulated from the rest of the world due their inaccessibility and other reasons. With the advent of internet and e-mobile, the rural folks have suddenly found the whole world at the tip of their fingers.

Social networking sites have become as popular as elsewhere in the world giving the hitherto “invisible” rural folks a platform to speak and access world-wide views. Everything is now almost within reach. But it is the social network wave that has taken these remote areas and other places by storm. Such a powerful tool in the hands of anyone and everyone is bound to present interesting questions and scenarios.
The play, Fes’bhuku written by Chris Mlalazi, is based on this new social networking phenomenon. In the absence of specific regulation, how does this platform of expression impact on remote communities that are suddenly fast-tracked into “ownership” of this powerful tool? Or does it even need to be regulated seeing regulating it would be tantamount to crafting what to and not to say for the previously disempowered voices?

The setting is a rural growth point. Marvellous is new on Facebook and his past posts have not be so clean so to speak, well according to his friends and family. His wife has hidden the only record of his profile password to discourage Marvellous’ obsession with Facebook and Marvellous, oblivious of how to recover the password is prepared to lose everything for his password so he can throw an important post. Marvellous will stop at nothing to be heard. Fes’bhuku is a must watch....

***

I must also add that I have written two other plays for 2012, and this time I am  going for the one man cast, so watch out for them.  I hope the first will premiere at HIFA 2012 if they accept it, but following the success of my 2011 plays, I bet it will be taken...

I have another important announcement to make in the following weeks about my writing career, something has happened, and oh yes it is GOOD!

And those who already know please keep your lips sealed....:)

Reflections on my Nordic-Africa Institute 2011 Guest Writer residency

Towards the end of my Villa Aurora creative writing residency in Los Angeles last year, I was already thinking where I could get the next residence where I could try to finish the novel project I had started there. 

I must also comment that it is very challenging for me to write from my home country of  Zimbabwe currently because of the incessant power cuts that we have been experiencing for the past decade or so ever since our politics tottered - my writing relies heavily on the computer and online research and if there is no electricity that becomes a very huge challenge. 

Of course when I started writing seriously all those years back, a solid sixteen of them now, I was using the old fashioned clickety-clack typewriter, but I cannot deny myself the advantages of the advances of modern technology simple because our politicians are failing to get their act right can I?

And so here I was pondering on how and where I could find another residency when I got an email from the Nordic Africa Institute saying they would like to have me over as their 2011 Guest writer for the months of April to June 2011. 

Wow! When I got the email it was around November 2010.  I some way this was an excellent development because I had just started working on the new manuscript and I was writing slowly, but when I got the invitation I was like a cat whose tail has caught fire.  I was galvanised.

I set a target.  I wanted to have the first draft finished in Los Angeles in three months from October to December, and then take a break from the manuscript from January to March 2011, and then go to Sweden in April and immediately start writing from April to June (Another three months) and then get back home, sit down another three months from July to September, and then hopefully work on the manuscript for the last time for another three months – October to December. 

So far everything is on a brilliant schedule, it is mid September right now as I am writing this document and I am just waiting for October to come so that I can get to work on this exciting manuscript again.  Yes the manuscript has got me excited and I can barely hold myself from touching it…

The Nordic Africa Institute is based in the charming university town of Uppsala in Sweden, where everybody seems to ride a bicycle. Almost all the streets of the city are paved, and so clean that the city seemed to me almost surreal.  Of course my city of Bulawayo, which is the second largest one after Harare in Zimbabwe, once held a continental record of cleanliness, and so somehow I was almost at home in Uppsala, almost....

I arrived in Sweden in spring, just as the snow was thawing from what the locals commented had been a very frigid winter.  I do not like the cold and so one can imagine how happy I was at this news as I had just escaped from another winter at home. 

Of course when I arrived I saw the last dregs of snow on the countryside on the way from Stockholm airport, and I think this was good as later I was to see a magical change of the landscapes as the land suddenly blossomed into full spring. 

In Zimbabwe we do not have snow, and so I guess our winters do not have the devastation on the land that snow countries have, and the experience of seeing a seemingly totally vegetation dead landscape suddenly come to green life was so touching.

I had an office at the Institute, but I preferred writing from my hotel room, a habit I have developed over a long time as even in my home country I write from home in the mornings, and then go to my studio at the National Gallery In Bulawayo in the afternoons to do administration – write emails, discuss writing with other writers, and also creativity with visual artists.

I guess there is something about writing in a room that smells of home that is totally different from the scents of an office – at home you feel laid back, and  for me that is the correct stimulant for a good dose of creative output.

Some writers might wonder about what a writing residency really is. 

I remember before I went to one. I always thought it would be all stiff and scholarly - well there is a bit of scholarliness, which from my experience in the USA and Sweden, is about ten percent of residence time, just like a book royalty  - for the rest you are left alone, and literally so – but are given the resources to make your writing time fruitfull – free internet, maybe a stipend (depending on the residence), and lots and lots of private space if you are the lone dog or yoga type.

What you have to do is just make sure that you leave the residency with your writing batteries re-fired.

There are also rigorous application processes to get into a residency, and these are based on your writing record.

As part of the guest writer grant at the Nordic Africa Institute, I was also given the opportunity to attend the Literature Festival in Lillehammer in Norway, another magical city with awe inspiring landscapes, and also World Village in Helsinki (Finland), a two day festival which had about 40 000 people passing through it in on the first day.  Another wow!

In Lillehammer I had a poetry reading, where I met one of my favourite female singers from Zimbabwe I had almost forgotten still existed because of this Diaspora thing.

This was Busi Ncube of the ‘I want True Love’ fame, and she was still singing as brilliantly as I last saw her in Zimbabwe, and if not more.  Watching her sing and dance I had a pang of sadness – will we ever see all these brilliant artists who have fled the country coming back home even if things normalise?  But I was happy for her too, that here she was doing what she knew best, and making people dance and be happy.

At World Vilage in Helsinki I had two talks. And during this time I also visited Berlin where I gave a talk at the Literature House to a packed house which was facilitated by my 2010 hosts in Los Angeles, Villa Aurora, whose office are in Berlin.

So, in summary, I am back home, back in the incessant power cuts and a political climate that is at stalemate, but I am happy to say that my two plays which I wrote during the Nordic Africa Institute residency have both been taken by two different organisations, Savanna Trust and the world renowned  Inkululeko Yabatsha School Of Arts (IYASA). The one for Savana Trust is titled Fes’bhuku, which is a commentary on the impact of Facebook on semi rural life, and the other one for IYASA, a musical, is titled WE CAN ALL DANCE (Dancing For Peace And Reconciliation), and it is the story of a young female dancer who wants to unite the people of her township across all divides through dance and music.

Both plays will be opened before the end of this year, 2011.

Of course there is also the novel, but I am still working on that, the title and names of characters and set have performed so many chameleonic changes, and one never knows when such a project can see the light of day, but all I can say is that I am still excited by the project, and am working hard on it.

Thank you.

My books at Amazon.com

Visualising Bulawayo In Paintings

                                                                   Charles Bhebhe on Food Aid


I have recently started a new project with painters from Bulawayo, titled Visualising Bulawayo In Paintings.  This is a series of audioslide documentaries of painters, showing their work plus close interviews on the inspiration or philosophy behind it.

Danisile Ncube on - collage & fractured society

The audioslide shows are three minutes or less in length, which is an ideal format for quick viewing, and can also be used as fillers in between TV programs, or as culture news both on TV or on news websites.

Voti Thebe on The Sprituality of Color

I have found the execution of this project very interesting - it is giving me an insight into paintings which I would not have got had I not involved myself in interviews with the painters, for often for the uninitiated into the fine arts, we often view paintings from a distance without knowing what they mean or reflect, and espeially abstract paintings - and even though we observe them from a distance, we are aware that there migt be some messages or information encoded into them which with our scant knowledge we are unable to decrypt.  This is the enigma of the visual arts - and sometimes too we do not want to decode that message behind the painting, but we want it to remain unknown, so that we can keep coming back to the painting to gaze and ponder on it.

Tafadzwa Gwetai on Grafitti & Existence

It is now my intention to document almost every painter in Bulawayo in this project if I can find them, although I will have a criteria for those who will come into the project for it must have merit. I also hope to create an electronic register of all practising painters in Bulawayo, and hopefully one day or year come up with a national register that can be accessed for research purposes, or can be used for screenings in visual arts workshops.  I have uploaded a few of the audioslide show documentaries on this post for those who want to have a  taste. Enjoy

Allen Sibanda on Follow Your Heart

My journey in theatre so far…

It is every playwrights dream in Zimbabwe to break into the Harare International Festival Of The Arts theatre program, http://www.hifa.co.zw/node/129, and more so as this festival is regarded as an international arts platform, and also drawing huge international audiences where one might possible grab international opportunity.

I remember when I wrote my first theatre script sometime back in 1998, which I gave to the now defunct Sadala Amajekete Theatre group.

I must admit that then I didn’t know what HIFA was. I was only aware of Inxusa, the arts festival pioneered by Amakhosi in Bulawayo, and run by Cont Mhlanga, which I also wanted to break into but failed to do so as Inxusa ceased to exist before I was ready. I was only able to break into other Amakhosi Theatre programs later, the National Amateur Theatre program, which is also now no longer in existence, but I will talk about that later.

Why did I write that first play in 1998? Let me try to remember. Then I had been writing prose and poetry for a long long time, and some of it was beginning to appear in our local Sunday Newspaper, and then the artistic director of Sadala Amajeke Theater, the late Clever Biggie Chimwanza, noticed that and he approached me and asked me to try my hand at writing for theatre. Never underestimate the power of your local community newspaper to also throw opportunity your way.

This was the beginning of my long engagement with theatre, which also had its ups and downs like any other human endeavour, which has finally led me to the HIFA stage. Of course there is more ahead in theatre, but I will talk about the now here.

When I wrote that first play in 1998 for Sadalala, I didn’t even know how one structures the play script, for reading and writing are two very different things, and I had to scramble and start re-reading other play scripts, how scenes were divided, and how the storyline is kept unfolding without losing the interest of the audience.

I finally came out with the manuscript THE TIME OF TROUBLE. The play was about the coming of the Ndebele people to present day Matabeleland, and led by Mzilikazi. I must say Sadala Amajeke really let me down on that play. They only managed to put on stage the first scene, which they went around showing as a teaser of their upcoming play by a new playwright going by the name of Christopher Mlalazi. But I must admit that even that one scene caught the attention of theatre lovers – it was as hair-raising as any good play could be.

I waited for many years for Sadala Amajekete Theater to complete and master the whole play and stage it – and they totally failed. They kept telling me that they were still rehearsing, ‘and if you want you can come and watch it.’

I would go to the rehearsals, and find the rehearsal room full, of both actors and people from around the rehearsal centre attracted by the play, for, like I said, the play was a stunner – everybody so much wanted to see the it fully staged. Ishmael Muvingi, one of the greatest actors/singers/dancers from Bulawayo, who is now touring the world with Siyaya Arts, was still with Sadalala Amajekete then, and he was the spine of the rehearsals coming up with breathtaking performances.

Five years later, and nothing had still been done with the play, it was still standing literally with – that one scene that was the talk of town. I must say I had become a disappointed man then. These guys had been holding up my growth in theatre for so long.

And then came another break. Sometime in 2003 Ishmael moved from Sadalala to Umkhathi Theatre, which was a wise move indeed because Sadalala were just wasting people’s time. Umkhathi Theatre is also more professionally run by their Director, Matesu Dube. When Ishmael moved to Umkhathi, he asked me to write a play for his new group along the lines of THE TIME OF TROUBLE, and I quickly scripted THE SOIL OF THE SON for them.

This play told the story of Shaka the King of the Zulu, from his birth to the time he became King, and stops there. Traditional plays fascinated me then, especially political traditional satire, because most of them ran a parallel with the political situation of Zimbabwe, and also had a universal appeal. And this new play was a completely different take from the movie Shaka Zulu starring Henry Cele that was a hit during those days, as it concentrated more on attempting an psycho –analytic investigation of Shaka’s childhood, and the reasons why he became the bloodthirsty conqueror at adulthood. I was reading Sigmund Freud during those times also.

Umkhathi Theatre were fast and efficient, and within a short time the play hit the stage, and became an instant hit in theatre circles in Bulawayo. I remember vividly one performance at Girls College in Bulawayo during their Culture Week, where I had invited Brian Jones and Jane Morris of amaBooks, my present publishers. The play received a standing ovation from the audience, and so too at Bulawayo Theatre. Ishmael Muvingi had directed the play and infused in it traditional music and dances that made it into this stupefying quasi musical drama that transported even me the writer to that bygone era of the Zulu Kingdom.

I became totally hooked into theater.

From there I wrote two plays for the Amakhosi Amateur Theatre program, THE SUN BEFORE, and AS I AM. And then I wrote another one for Umkhathi Theater, titled NKULUMANE, which was another traditional play about Prince Nkulumane, the son of King Mzilikazi of the Ndebele.

At this time I was also active in short story and poetry writing, and both were beginning to be published internationally, but I will not write on my literature exploits here.

And then in 2008 I co-wrote THE CROCODILE OF ZAMBEZI with one of Zimbabwe’s most prolific and award winning playwrights, Raisedon Baya, which was awarded the OXFAM-NOVIB PEN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AWARD at the Hague. This was my first award in theatre, although I had been mentioned in several in my prose work at that time.

I was now in full gear, a runaway train hurtling along.

In 2010 I opened my first play at HIFA, titled ELECTION DAY. The play went on to be nominated in three categories at the 2011 National Arts Merit Award – Outstanding Theatrical Production, Best Actor, and Best Actress. It finally scooped two awards, the Outstanding Theatrical Production and Best Actor, which was a highly satisfying achievement indeed. The play was directed by Eunice Tava.

Election Day tells the story of a dictator from an unnamed African country who is losing at the polls during Presidential Elections, and all those around him have panicked and want to flee the country, at the forefront his wife and personal advisor, but the dictator is refusing to flee, saying he wants to be buried on the soil of his country. Unknown to everybody, he has an ace up his sleeve.

I first wrote Election Day as a short story which was published in the Edinburgh Review of 2005, and later adapted it into a stage play in 2007, and it got into the stage in 2010.

And now I am back again at the 2011 edition of HIFA with another play titled COLORS OF DREAMS. This play, which I hope will be as exciting to audiences as the writing process was to me, is another socio, economic and political satire. It tells the story of two families, a former money changer and his wife, and a school teacher and his live in girlfriend who is a prostitute. Both couples have been affected by the collapse and removal of the Zimbabwean dollar from the money market, and now a rumour has come into town from the money changers ‘highly placed’ connections. This rumour galvanises these two families into a trail of dreaming about their future and that of the nation.

It is April of 2011 as I am writing this article, COLORS OF DREAMS is under rehearsal at HIFA 2011 right, and I am already thinking of another play for HIFA 2012,for it is said once you start a fire, keep blowing on the flame…

Reflection on my 2010 Villa Aurora Residency in Los Angeles

http://www.villa-aurora.org

It is very difficult to describe how I felt when I first read the email that announced the news that I had been selected to be the 2010 Feuchtwanger Fellow at the Villa Aurora artists’ residency in Los Angeles.

It was in January of 2010 when I read that email, and at that time I was attending the HIFA-DIRECT theatre workshops in Harare where I was preparing my political satire titled Election Day for its world premiere at the 2010 Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA).

It was also my first time to be involved with HIFA after an almost decade long struggle of attempting to breakthrough. It really is tough to make breakthroughs in life, and surprisingly when they come sometimes they come as an avalanche, true to the saying ‘sometimes it does not rain but it pours.’ In 2010 it was pouring for me.

As I am writing this article, it is January of 2011, and I am waiting to go to Sweden where I was selected at the end of 2010 to be the 2011 guest writer by the Nordic-Africa institute, a fellowship that will also allow me to finish off a novel project I started at Villa Aurora, and also give me the opportunity to do book tours of Nordic countries as well as see the countries and its peoples.

So there I was one morning in January of 2010 and I go into the theatre workshop at HIFA-DIRECT and coolly announce to the other participants that on my way to the workshop venue I had passed through an internet shop and there I had received the news that beginning of April to December of 2010 I had been invited to a residency in Los Angeles, and also unfortunately for my play, that I wouldn’t be there to see its premier in April at HIFA as I would be in the USA by then. Of course I can’t keep secrets, and that is one of my biggest weaknesses, and in Ndebele such a person like me is referred to as ‘somebody whose chest was kicked by a Zebra.’ You are always coughing out everything.

Soon I had sent this news to all me email contacts, I had posted it on my blog, and also on my Facebook page. How could I deny myself this glory? This was my moment.

And this also came at a time when I had never been out of Africa – of course I had been to several international writers’ forums in other African countries, in Kenya twice – The Caine Prize Workshop and Kwani Lit Fest, Uganda for Beyond Borders Literature Conference, and Ghana for the Pan African Literary Forum. I had also toured Zambia and Botswana for Power In The Voice, which was a spoken word festival for High School students from all countries of the SADC Region and also the UK.

But now Los Angeles…

I think anybody can agree with me that there is something magical about the name of Los Angeles, the city of angels, and especially if you are coming from a township somewhere in Africa…

The Villa Aurora was the home of Leon Feuchtwanger, the German-Jewish writer who fled persecution in Nazi Germany during World War 2 and temporarily lived in France, and had also to flee France before the Nazi advance, and finally settled in the USA, where he bought Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, which is now an artists residence and historic landmark. When Leon Feuchtwanger fled Germany, he took along with him some of the books from his library which had survived seizure and burnings by the Nazi’s, whilst other books were shipped out to him by sympathetic friends, and this vast collection of books is now housed at Villa Aurora and also at the University of Southern California.

Going to the USA was also a task in itself. First when I tried to apply for a visa, I was told that my case was being investigated by the USA embassy for fraud, and so I could not be issued the visa straight away, but I would be informed after a few weeks about the results of the application.

Fraud, me! Anybody can guess that the next coming two weeks were not the happiest in my life - I wanted to be gone, I wanted to get to Los Angeles and start writing, and also revel in being there, for who does not want to travel to the world film capital once in their lives?

I also wanted to get out of Zimbabwe and refresh my exhausted soul, because even though our economy was sort of stabilising because of the recently introduced Unity Government and the introduction of the multi currency system, life was not as easy as one would wish it to be in their lives, and also a bit distracting to the novel project I was involved in then, titled Autumn Leaves, and which thankfully I finished at Villa Aurora and am now looking for a publisher for it.

I will also not hide the fact that I have received several rejections of the manuscript from publishers so far, but I believe in the manuscript and will never lose hope – I know a publisher is waiting out there for such a kind of story as is written in the way I have written mine, and it is only a matter of us meeting; Rome was not built in one day, so the learned say…

I had thought the investigation of my visa application would take a few days, but we had to cancel the flight bookings and reschedule them again as the flight days got dangerously nearer and there was still no word about the visa from the USA embassy. The original flight dates passed by, and there was still silence from the USA embassy. Now I was beginning to get worried – silence is worrying, especially if one is waiting for something that you know has the power to bring change to your life – just like the Presidential election results of 2008 in Zimbabwe.

Finally, after some weeks, I received a telephone call from the USA embassy – my visa was ready.

I live in Bulawayo city, a six hours travel by road to the capital, and when I got to the embassy, it was discovered that my passport had been printed with a visa with an error and it had to be cancelled for another one, and this new one had to be requested from Washington again too, and would be issued the following day.

I spent another night in Harare, and the following day the new visa was issued, and I think my sigh of relief was even heard in Los Angeles.

Then the volcano in Norway exploded, and the ash cloud closed all flights over Europe.

I travelled as far as Johannesburg from Bulawayo where I spent an anxious two nights at the airport there sleeping in the transit lounge because my connecting flight to Frankfurt had been cancelled, and finally decided to abandon the trip, and flew back to Bulawayo again with a heavy heart, for I felt that life seemed to be against me.

If I had been a superstitious man, I think I would have gone to a bone thrower to ask for luck, but I didn’t. I spent another week waiting for the dust cloud to clear, and finally flew off again, and safely and finally got to Los Angeles.

Villa Aurora in a majestic two-storey house in an isolated part of the Pacific Palisades in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles. Of Spanish architecture with magnificent balconies, it overlooks the Pacific Ocean, and one can imagine such a place, of waking up every morning high up on a mountain to the sound of birds, and with the sea spread far down below you.

One would argue that such a sight is too grand, and it can distract one from work because all you would want to do is just to sit in the garden or balcony and enjoy the view, and I would agree to a certain extent, but after a few days or weeks depending on one, the beautiful sight sort of recedes into the distance, and the beauty of your work in progress once again comes to the forefront, and once you combine these two, the idyllic scenery and your work, then you can now start working beautifully.

For me, the best way to enjoy the scenery and my work was to put both two on a schedule – have time for the view and also time to work.

In the morning, like a patient taking their morning dose, I would give myself time to sit or stand in the garden and absorb the sight, just also like a person praying and finding a balance with one’s soul, then after some time I would go into my room which also had a window overlooking the ocean, and I would start writing or reading. Sometimes I would put a chair in the garden or balcony and work from there.

Villa Aurora also houses artists from Germany for a period of three months in three cycles annually who come in groups of four; a visual artist, a music composer, a writer and a film maker. The Feuchtwanger Fellow is the only artist who stays at the villa for nine months, and also is not from Germany.

There is also a wonderful support staff for the artists at Villa Aurora, led by Imogen, and I am forever grateful for their warmth and homeliness – Claudia, Daniel, Mechtchild (based in the office in Germany), and all the internees. And also the wonderful Gould family in the house across the street, Howard and Trish.

The residency also offered me the valuable chance for cross cultural interaction with my fellow German artists, twelve of them in total during my entire period there, and also with American people, of which I found beneficial as it opened my world view, and in some way I know that in the long run this will feed into my writing as, also, engagement with these foreign cultures also put my own African culture into clear perspective.

I also took part in panel discussion during festivals at the Universities of California (UCLA) and Southern California (USC), and did readings in Los Angeles at Eso Wan Book Shop, and in Sacramento at the Sacramento Poetry centre to wonderful audiences.

Of course I did not forget to go on long rambling walks in Santa Monica, the nearest town, and especially the 3^rd Street Promenade where the performing artists display their art on the streets.

Nine months later, like I mentioned before, I am back in Zimbabwe and I am the proud owner of a finished novel manuscript and I am also now trying to finish another one. I will not mention the contents of the novels I am working on before I find publishers for them as I do not want to compromise my work.

I am also refreshed and attacking my writing with a new vigour. I find I am also more confident, I am more aggressive, and lastly but also importantly, I am also even more inquisitive.

Election Day

http://www.newsday.co.zw/article/2010-11-02-mlalazis-debut-play-opens

Mlalazi’s debut play opens

There probably could have been no better time than now for award-winning writer Christopher Mlalazi’s play, Election Day, to premiere at Theatre in the Park than now, as the talk of elections next year reaches fever pitch.

First staged at the Harare International Festival of the Arts (Hifa), the play pulsates with the rich touch of first-time director and two-time Nama best actress Eunice Tava.

Election Day, which opens to the public on November 10, poignantly reflects the agitation people experience around election time, The Zimbo Jam reports.

The play’s cast, made up of talented actors and actresses, includes Privillage Mutendera, Teddy Mangawa, Tafadzwa Bob and Brezhnev Guveya.

According to the play’s brief synopsis, it is election time and His Excellency Poka Oka Ndiseng’s ruling party is losing by a very wide margin in the polls.

His wife, Samantha, and his personal advisor, Twenty, are both panicking and they are urging Ndiseng to flee the country, but an adamant Ndiseng tells them he is not going anywhere and wants to be buried under the soil of his ancestors.

“The intention is not to insult anyone but to just poke fun at election fever in not only Zimbabwe but the whole world,” Tava said.

“Elections have been a very sensitive subject in most countries and as artists we find the various stories about elections in Zimbabwe very interesting and full of drama hence a source for our creative work.”

Rooftop Promotions producer Daves Guzha said they were “on a deliberate drive as an organiasation to provide exposure to Zimbabwe’s emerging talent” in line with their mission.

“Our experience with emerging artists has been fulfilling so we are confident that what we are doing is to ensure posterity in the theatre industry,” Guzha said.

Election Day had its world premiere at HIFA 2010 as part of the Hifa direct theatre mentorship project by Hifa and British Council where it had three sold out shows at the 50-or-so seater Reps Upstairs theatre.

While Tava is not new to theatre, being an experienced actress in her own right, Mlalazi is prominently known as a novel, poetry and short story writer.