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.
You got a car? You are the celebrity!
Filed under: Family, Friendship, Community, Joking around, Topical issues
My closest college buddy brings his car to school. Of course, to the average first world middle class citizen, this is a norm, with kids form this group even driving Mercedes Benz and BMWs even to high school. However to the average African who still believes owning a car is a sing of wealth, bringing one to school makes you fit to eat with the gods and makes you nothing less than an arch-angel.
Its funny how people will literally lick my friend’s ass just to be with him; boys and girls alike. Not that I am worried he gets all the attention; being in his shadow gets me a few licks as well. Take this example; there is this girl who goes out of her way to please the the guy, bringing him food (Get a life bitch. If he can afford to bring a car to school, he sure can afford his own food). She goes out of her way finding silly excuses to get stuck with the guy in the car in the middle of the night. So when her antics failed to do the trick, she turned to me thinking since we are buddies, I can convince him how blah-blah she is and he would change his mind about her. Although I haven’t done anything to date, I still get spoilt to one or two. Read more
Zimbabwe Internet entreprenuer launches website to assist orphans
Filed under: Entrepreneurship, Family, Friendship, Community, General & Common
Dec 07, 2009 – Richwell Phinias, renowned internet marketing consultant and the co-founder of Dariro.com has partnered with a number organisations in Zimbabwe in an innovative ICT project meant to give hope and support to more than 2 500 children in at least 50 orphanages in Zimbabwe starting this Christmas.
Dariro.com developed a website www.dariro.com/christmas2009 where people with access to the internet across the country and over the world are submitting profiles of orphanages which are in need of various levels of assistant in their operations.
Details on each submitted profile includes such critical areas like contact details, number of children at the centre, people involved, owners or trustees, needy areas, wishlists, projects, volunteer needs, location and any other information that could be used to find development partners. Read more
David Coltart comments on GPA talks
“Zanu and the Mutambara group simply do not know what to do. If they agree to do what the region wants, they are dead in the water.” Eddie Cross writing on his blog on the 21st November 2009 asserting that the MDC M is deliberately delaying the finalisation of the GPA talks.
This is an outrageously false comment about the MDC M which bears no relation to the facts.
We all in MDC M want the GPA implemented urgently and fully. We fully supported what the region asked for. I personally had a lengthy discussion with President Kabila’s principal advisor Mr Ilunga Ngandu on the 3rd November 2009 impressing on him the need to attend to all of the outstanding issues. My colleagues have done the same. I have been present in Cabinet and know what has been said by all of us there. Arthur Mutambara’s statement made when the disengagement started is a matter of public record. Indeed it was Mutambara who clearly articulated for the first time that the SADC communiqué issued in the January 2009 could not be ignored, something Zanu PF was trying to do.
And as for the allegations that MDC M are responsible for the delays since Maputo consider the following: Read more
Tsvangirai’s visit to Spain
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, today received Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of Zimbabwe, at the Viana Palace. During this bilateral encounter, which was followed by a working lunch, matters of common interest in politics, economics, and cultural issues were addressed, with the purpose of re-launching relations between Spain and this important Southern African country.
Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos expressed Spain’s decisive support for the process of political stabilization that the Government of National Unity of Zimbabwe is undertaking, giving special mention to the political transition that Prime Minister Tsvangirai himself is leading, who, to quote the Minister, “represents a new Zimbabwe and the hopes of the people of this African country”. Read more
The Bally Vaughan lion who lost his roar
Courtesy of The Bally Vaughan Sanctuary News October 2009
It is eleven pm at the Bally Vaughan Sanctuary and twelve hours since I returned from my honeymoon. As our trucks come home from a day-long mission sourcing food for the animals, the throb of the diesel engines mask the ubiquitous night chorus of a thousand syncopating crickets and tree frogs. Three massive cow carcasses need to be processed immediately; dinner for two weeks for our many predators at the Sanctuary, and as I help load sacks of meat onto on of our elderly, rust-riddled wheel-barrows, I watch my French-manicured fingernails flick off one by one into the gore.
At 2am I fall into bed, only to be woken an hour later by the frantic ringing of the cowbell on my gate. A gigantic python has just seized a goat on the other side of the river. We race down to the water’s edge and see the python half out of the water, with a still-writhing goat clamped between its jaws. As we approach, it sinks beneath the surface, pulling the goat with it and we spend the next hour thrashing about in the freezing cold water trying, to no avail, to locate and rescue the goat. Read more
