No, in Africa one cannot just die!

Indeed, the celebration of life and procreation should not also be seen as threatening to the same values it stands for. How, therefore, can death be said to come innocently?

“COWARDS die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once… for death, a necessary end, will come when it will come”, so reasons William Shakespeare in “Julius Caesar”.

Marcus Aurelius concurs: “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” This is so because “a man does not die of love or his liver or even old age; he dies of being a man” (Miguel De Unamuno).

Death is a frightening reality that man has to dangle with as it is born of life; inasmuch as he has no choice as to his birth and station in life, he cannot also choose not to die; “for it is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls” (Epicurus).

Man’s vulnerability to death is neither his desire nor his creation, yet he spends so much time designing others’ downfalls, in a way masterminding a labyrinthine web which does not spare him.

As a natural extension of life, death becomes the beginning of life and, therefore, it is inevitable; yet Man worries so much about losing that which he should give to others as a right. In most African societies death is considered as something that cannot just come naturally. It is something that always happens because of the existence of another presence and not just mortality itself.

Oftentimes we hear of the death of so and so; but in these parts of the world, one cannot just die. It is either he or she is poisoned, assassinated or bewitched. An invisible hand is always extended to our loved ones to usurp that which they only get once - LIFE.

Accusations of witchcraft are always thrown about, usually undisguised, every time somebody dies even though the cause of death may be clear in everyone’s eyes. It is especially so because of the myths and stigma associated with a plethora of afflictions that besots the motherland.

A perusal through African literature in English as well as in indigenous languages reveals the extent to which lack of knowledge on particular diseases like HIV/AIDS and Ebola places a burden on cultural norms as morality takes centre stage when sex becomes a harbinger of sorrow and death.

Indeed, the celebration of life and procreation should not also be seen as threatening to the same values it stands for. How, therefore, can death be said to come innocently?

It is against this backdrop that the reading of the Namibian writer, Francis Sifiso Nyathi’s “The Other Presence” (2008) becomes apt and revealing, as it explores the bane of superstition, which is both divisive and destructive.

A society that is steeped in superstition sees witchcraft in natural phenomena; not that witchcraft is unique to Africa, for it is universal and has been in existence since Satan’s fall from grace, but it is the way that it is allowed to be the harbinger of death and failure even in cases where the purported victims may be at fault, that is despicable, as it sometimes defeats reason.

The advent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on the African landscape which rakes havoc in many a family, brings with it shiploads of emaciated bodies, abattoirs of bleeding hearts, fragmented families, acrimonious distrust and animosity. The stigma that is foisted in the usual way that the disease is contracted; sexual intercourse, makes open discussion taboo in societies that place a burden on the individual to remain the vanguard of the societal norms that inform his or her being.

Sexual immorality is not condonable, as it drags the entire family into disrepute, which makes it imperative for members of the nuclear family to shift blame from the deviant member back to the same community that prescribes the norm.

By exerting too much pressure on the individual to adhere to its dictates, society creates gaps in its precincts so as to allow the individual an elixir to freedom. Witchcraft, real or imagined, creates unnecessary fears in any society that is imbued with the existence of supernatural forces in determining fate; and it is this fear that the individual uses as a vent of escape from his or her own shortcomings.

Failure or affliction as a result of behavioural traits can easily be blamed on the presence of another force, and as such the individual can absolve himself or herself from blame using the same cultural norms that should shape him/her; as a consequence, issues that can be resolved through open discussion are hushed, as society points a finger at invisible enemies.

“The Other Presence”, like Charles Mungoshi’s “Branching Streams Flow in the Dark” (2013), highlights the stigma and alienation that come with the incident of HIV/AIDS. It is the evocative and touching story of Ma Simanga, a widow of 55 whose husband and five children die within three years, from the same ailment. The latest victim, who is the subject of the story, is her son Akapelwa, her lifeline and only surviving offspring.

The community is left astounded as her husband dies in an accident and two of her sons die within three months of each other. The narrator tells us: “All of Ma Simanga’s children underwent a similar process before they bid farewell to this earth. They had all lost weight, developed strange rashes on their skins in such a way that one would suspect they were burnt by a chemical. They coughed, complained of effects similar to malaria, grew thinner and thinner, and went in and out of hospital until they finally died. Obviously, in many people’s eyes, this was a strange affliction, even stranger when it attacked the same family in the same manner.”

In the above citation, the writer clearly outlines the oddity of the disease, especially that it decimates the same family in such a dumbfounding fashion; and it is this that is not only strange about the affliction, but the fact that in such situations death cannot be said to come innocently. Society has already decided that such closure to a family’s dreams should be investigated; and as such witchcraft becomes the natural culprit.

The honed blade finds elder Sinvula, Ma Simanga’s brother-in-law and elder brother to her late husband, at the receiving end. In the ensuing days within which the story revolves, a funeral wake is in progress and the unfortunate old man is suffocated by the unveiled attacks on his person, which prompts him to take the lonesome four-hour walk to the hospital where Akapelwa’s cadaver is, to seek recourse from the expatriate Cuban doctor on his nephew’s death.

Although Sinvula and the bereaved woman’s friend, Chuma’s son, Thomas who spent 12 years living and studying in the United States of America, are among those who are in the know about the cause of death as AIDS, they are ostracised; hence the elder’s resolve is to visit his Cuban friend, Doctor Castro, whom he had known as a child 30 years back when he was working under Castro senior’s mentorship as a political exile in Cuba before Namibia’s independence.

Meanwhile, paraphernalia associated with the supernatural descends on the funeral wake in the form of a vulture and an owl and it is Ma Simanga who sees them first; and on his way to the funeral, Sinvula also comes across an abomination; two black cats mating. The entire village is convinced that the only prudent explanation to the decimated family’s misfortune is witchcraft.

However, at the deceased’s burial, Sinvula, Thomas; whose mother Chuma is rescued from a monstrous serpent by the purported wizard and is now hospitalised, and Doctor Castro, who also takes his time to be at his friend’s side in this hour of need, are determined to educate their fellow kinsmen on the deadly virus they decide to pay a blind eye to and sharpen blades against imaginary foes. Read the full review on www. herald.co.zw