I’m not a human rights defender: Dangarembga
TSITSI Dangarembga (TD) is one of Zimbabwe’s most internationally recognised writers and her latest novel, This Mournable Body — a sequel to her 1988 novel Nervous Conditions — was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker prize.
Her arrest on July 31 last year for protesting high-level government corruption, triggered an international outcry. Despite her long history of activism, Dangarembga (61) says she is not political activist, but simply wants the best for her country. She speaks to NewsDay Weekender (NW)’s Beauty Nyuke….
NW: Who is Tsitsi Dangarembga? TD: Tsitsi Dangarembga is a novelist, a filmmaker, a person who advocates for the role of culture and creative artistic narrative production in society, in that nature I am the director of the institutive creative arts for progress in Africa.
NW: What inspired you to become an author?
TD: I became an author because I enjoyed telling stories, I enjoyed language, I enjoyed inhabiting spaces of imagination and bringing something else into being that did not exist before hand.
NW: What is your memorable experience throughout your journey as an author?
TD: My memorable moment has been completing the Tambudzai trilogy a journal of African Cultural Studies which is intended to tell the history of Zimbabwe through the eyes of the central character, Tambudzai. There is interlinking between characters in the novel and Zimbabwean characters as a country.
NW: What can you say is the greatest achievement in your life?
TD: I have many achievements, sometimes the very fact that I get up in the morning and do the work that I needed to do in the face of challenges as a Zimbabwean creative living in Zimbabwe is an achievement for me, making this whole thing heroic is something I do not want to participate in.
NW: Do you have any project which you are currently working on right now?
TD: I am working on young and disturbing fiction called the Saisai and Great Ancestor of Fire which is about the women who were called by their ancestors to change the world.
NW: Would you mind sharing with us your experience as a human rights defender.
TD: I am not a human rights defender. I am simply a citizen who believes that human beings deserve a meaningful life. When we are talking about human rights defenders, we are talking about people who make a carrier out of advocating for human rights and earn a living through that. I do not earn a living through advocating for human rights, but I earn a living through my creative engagement. In fact, this is what I would like to become more of.
Those of us who are creative in the spaces of bringing attention to the human condition engage with the issues that are called human rights which is the way we live and the way we treat each other in a way that engages other human beings.
NW: You have written several books which has received awesome reception in Zimbabwe and even outside, which one can you say is your best piece and why?
TD: I do not judge my books as the best piece or not my best piece because I have a belief that this is not how creatives work to judge when something is already done or let me say this is not how I work to judge my personal work. I simply write to tell a story and this is the part of lack of understanding, lack of knowledge and understanding of what creativity is. Creativity is about producing something which is of value.
In context, it is when people want to judge their work because the purposes are different and each and every piece is, therefore, fulfilling its own main goal. It is something of value and accounted for if we then judge them according to the best piece or not the best piece.
The context and purposes are different. It is like we are saying something is of value and another one has no value or it is of less value. However, we eventually take something that we think they are of value and throw the rest away and this is what I simply do not want to engage in.
NW: What are some of the challenges you have faced in your journey and how did you overcome them?
TD: I overcame the challenges by keeping going, knowing what I wanted to do and always experimenting to find the best way that I could do. That meant going round sometimes seeing that I cannot reach this or that at the time being. I would try to do something in relation to the field and then take advantage of people who can help. I also learned to recognise who is there to help me and to react positively to the kind of help that they give. Also, not to be afraid to ask for things and not be discouraged if what I ask for is not given to me, but to learn to just stand up and keep going.
NW: What is your words of advice to upcoming artists?
TD: To encourage upcoming artists, I would like to say you need to have something to do that will earn you a living because arts begins to pay later on. Very few of us can come out of school or finish a course and say so I need to be an artist, but honestly speaking, you need to have some kind of the framework that will enable you to earn a living. The other advice is that be open to learning. There is no point that you can say this person cannot teach me anything because if you know how to learn you also know how to be taught in any situation.