When words destroy, mend bridges
I am still to come across a writer who handles the issue of the family unit the way Charles Mungoshi does. He has a way of poking at the core of the family unit with such force that one cannot help finding his or her own travails mirrored in the experiences that the writer’s characters go through. He can cut across social, racial and political barriers with such ease that the reader can only gasp as the pages become a downpour of his or her own experiences.
MY FATHER Kenneth Musumare was a no-nonsense man, and often my brother Shepherd and I were at the receiving end of his whip because of our wayward behaviour, commensurate with growing up.
He would give us a long rope to hang ourselves, and we often did, and he would lock us up and give us a thorough hiding. Each time we were beaten up we never cried, neither did we go about yelling outside our door to attract attention from our neighbours.
We knew that our neighbours would have been willing to accommodate us, at the expense of our father, since we lived in company houses; the houses acquired by Metal Box (Central Africa) Limited in Glen Norah A for its workers, who eventually got deeds for them after honouring their mortgages.
We would receive our punishment like gentlemen, walk out of the house like nothing happened and join our peers in ebullient glee. We knew that no matter what anybody would say about him, he still remained our father and we remained his children. He was a responsible, generous and forgiving man; and most people took advantage of him. We never lacked anything and we believed somehow that we deserved to be at the receiving end of his ire.
It also dawned on him that we would not change through beatings, no matter how thoroughly they might be administered. He knew more than we did of something called nhinhi in Shona. It is that stubborn cowpea, which, no matter how much boiling you expose it to, it remains as hard as the moment you put it in the pot. The rest of the cowpeas would be reduced to a pulp, but the nhinhi remains the same.
He stopped the beatings altogether and replaced them with rewards for good behaviour and withdrawal of favours for waywardness. He resorted to words of encouragement each time we did good, but he would never use words of disparagement for tasks done shoddily or half-heartedly.
My father would never yodel about us to the ready to listen neighbourhood. That strategy appealed to us more and nobody, even our younger siblings, ever received the lashes. Two important lessons that he bequeathed to us was the essence of contrition and the power of the tongue in either destroying or building relations. Forgiveness, he believed, was the essence of life, for he who forgives others also forgives himself; and the better it is for relationships to tick.
He would never beat up or punish anybody who showed contrition. When you are in the wrong, you humble yourself, apologise and pick yourself from the slime; take the bull by the horns and move on. He believed that under the tongue is always that spark capable of igniting bonfires, as well as the catalyst to douse them. Such was my father’s way; may his dear departed soul rest in eternal peace!
It is not nostalgia that has prompted this piece gentle reader, but the brouhaha that comes with emasculation of hope when the individual’s aspirations are always impeded by familial, communal or societal expectations. If past hurts, wrongs and actions are always evoked as a way of finding meaning in the present, then the future becomes a battlefield where scars are used to heal fresh wounds.
It is against this backdrop that the reading of Charles Mungoshi’s story “The Sins of the Fathers” (2003) in “Writing Still” (2003) edited by Irene Staunton and published by Weaver Press becomes revealing and apt.
Having been around at the Bookstore for quite some time, I am still to come across a writer who handles the issue of the family unit the way Charles Mungoshi does. He has a way of poking at the core of the family unit with such force that one cannot help finding his or her own travails mirrored in the experiences that the writer’s characters go through. He can cut across social, racial and political barriers with such ease that the reader can only gasp as the pages become a downpour of his or her own experiences.
The family has a way; indeed it has a way of destroying or moulding an individual; and words, through their lack or prominence are pivotal in that destruction or construction. And if words are accompanied by action, then disaster wears so many ugly faces that the Devil becomes green with envy.
In “Walking still” (1997), especially in the stories “Hare”, “The Empty House” and “Did You Have to go that Far?” Mungoshi tackles the issue of the family unit as adeptly as he does in “Coming of the Dry Season” (1972) and “Waiting for the Rain” (1975).
The empty houses of our strife in the metaphorical sense compound the hollowness of our individual struggles leading to literal and metaphorical barrenness in relationships.
In “The Sins of the Fathers”, Mungoshi explores how familial fissures reflect on the national discourse through characterisation and setting. The realism purveyed in the story through conventional setting and historical allusions articulates the tragedy of expectation if past events are used to premiere current and future ones, with violence remaining a tool for subjugation.
As a master of suspense Mungoshi opens the story with the lines: “Everyone had gone and they were now alone, Rondo Rwafa and his father, the ex-minister. Unknown to the father, the son - who’d never handled a gun before - had one in the inside pocket of his jacket. By the end of the day he would shoot - or not shoot - his father.”
As questions flood the reader’s head as to why a responsible son would want to kill his father, it is revealed that they are at a funeral at Rondo’s house in Borrowdale but it is not immediately intimated what exactly has happened serve for the fact that there has been an accident.
A week has passed now, yet the puzzle is still on, and Rwafa the ex-Minister of Security tells his son: “Your grief will pass away like dew in the morning sun. One day you will be grateful, glad that this has happened now and not later. You will remember me and thank me.”
As the reader learns that Rondo has lost his two daughters Yuna (6) and Rhoda (5) in an accident that also claims his father-in-law Basil Mzamane, the suspense heightens, especially read against Rwafa’s words. Honestly, how would a son, who has lost two daughters in the company of their grandpa, thank his father that it “has happened now and not later?”
Rondo has never really been close to his father, as the memories he has of his past with him always make him cry and wilt inside. The scars he carries make him live in the shadow of his father which in a way robs him of independent thinking, thus becoming a laughing stock to his colleagues in the journalism fraternity. His father calls him a “slob”.
Rwafa is described by his wife as “one bombed-out battlefield of scars”, whose deepest scar is that he cannot forgive: not just his enemies. You. Me. Anyone.” All because he is “Zezuru-Karanga and, once-upon a time, they were raided by the maDzviti-Ndebele
. Read the full review on www. herald.co.zw