Repeat after me
By D. Senda
Say these words after me hi
Say I’m not a victim, say it and mean it
I know you’re hurting
And you may not get it now while going through it
But there’s an answer waiting right now
Washing and wishing away in tears and doubting
For what with our mouths we confess
We pray to occur in our lives
Say the words.
With conviction say them
Say them from the hilltops of your pride
If you have to soar like an eagle soar
Inflate if you have to like a peacock
For every word that departs your lips conditions your mind
I am not a victim, say it nice and loud
Tell me this.
Who tells the waves of the seas to rise after they crash?
But don’t they just?
And the dust, who ever said it deserves to kiss the skies?
If dirt made for the ground will not lie on the ground in the face of a storm
What of you made and ordained to rule over all that creeps and crawls?
All that so you can sit on your self-made sword?
And drink of your cup of pity? I am not a victim!
Say it, repeat after me
I am not a victim!
I am not a victim!
I am not a victim!
I hope you mean it.
Amelia’s Inheritance
Filed under: Books & literature, Entertainment, Arts & Culture, News you won't find elsewhere, Other Entertainment, Topical issues
Amelia
Paperback 204pp, Lion Press, 2010
Zimbabweans are picky readers and even pickier book-buyers. Who can blame us, considering that a considerable portion of the literature that has been churned out over the last two decades has been about the Chimurenga or the more recent political conflict? In a country where professionals earn $100 a month, who really wants to spend $10 on a book about how bad Rhodesia was or how repressive the present regime is? We know all that already.
How refreshing then to come across Sarudzayi Mubvakure’s second and latest literary offering, Amelia’s Inheritance! Set mostly in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, this is the story of Amelia Gruber, the daughter of a German immigrant man and a mixed-race woman of unknown parentage, who had been raised as an orphan. As a child, her peers mark her as an outcast, and perhaps this pushes her from the psychological and social fortress the White settlers built around themselves and allows her a glimpse of the rest of the world. Her father loses his wealth and dies a broken man, leaving the family to cope as best as they can as one of Rhodesia’s best kept secrets; the Poor Whites. Amelia’s mother loses her mind, and her younger sister elopes leaving Amelia to hold on to precious little else. Sisi, their maid, stays with her.
Speaking of secrets, boy are there plenty! The people she meets along the way seem to know a lot more about her past than they should, and it seems less and less a coincidence that they have come in to her life. Amelia is also learning about the wider world, she is crossing the racial and social barriers of Rhodesia. She makes friends with a Black activist. Through their relationship, we are reminded of a fact that doesn’t seem to get mention by other writers; that the dispossession of indigenous Black people’s lands by White Settlers did not end with the Pioneer Column but continued well in to the last days of that ignoble racist political system. Like I noted, Mubvakure doesn’t take up too much prose telling us what we know already. In a suspense-filled, pacy narrative, Amelia becomes part of the process to break down those barriers and the secrets of her past become unlocked in a stunning conclusion.
Mubvakure has marked her own territory on the Zimbabwean literary landscape. Amelia’s Inheritance reminds me of Dickens’ Great Expectations, Oliver Twist etc in that she has a hero whose circumstances are set to change as the mystery of their past unfolds. However, despite her many shortcomings, the most glaring being her poverty and the breakdown of her family, Amelia is hardly a passive subject to the whims of fate. And there may be a bit of Catherine Cookson in the style, too. But Mubvakure’s style is original and establishes her as one of the most exciting new authors on the scene.
Available through Lion Press Ltd’s website and their growing list of distributors worldwide, and the major online bookstores.
Will rise
Ruthless Dictators
Psychological spectators
In this drama
Unmoved by a white mama’s cry
As she watches
Her farmer son die
Murdered by misled youths
Was veterans my ass
They pour on the land
Like leeches on my black skin
Sons of thieves
With government guns
They kill with no remorse
I feel a sense of lose
We can never be
What we were
When we were a people
Years from now
Our children
With tears in their eyes
Reflecting on our history
A sad story
From my heart
I am truelly sorry
For my brothers killing the farmer
They are blinded by greed
So they commit evil deeds
Oneday the spirit of the dead
Will rise
Bring misery to the nation
And their future generations
Breath and Smile
When we die we turn to dust,
Neither soul nor breath will last.
These smiles we see and those i saw
They will be gone together with this soul,
Beneath the dust they will halt…..
So, smile before your breath is out.
Mistakes
Micheal Jackson he surely could not simply die.
How can a man of energetic dances on stage
Just drop down to the ground at that age.
But just like others whose faces are stuck in earth….
He simply made a grievous mistake
Of forgetting to breathe in and out
Death
You see me around please run,
Cos i cut throats i kill for fun.
I take out life with much deft
I am an expert in life theft.
I leave beauty bodies in rigid stiff,
I am related to moaning and grief
I am an omega I’m always the last,
I decay the flesh and tun it to dust.
