Ode to Mariana, nurse of the liberation struggle

MARIANA: Nurse of the Revolution” (2024) is a memoir of Cde Mispar, a liberation war veteran.

It was researched and refined in the first-person voice by her daughter, writer and poet, Catherine Magodo-Mutukwa.

Award-winning Magodo-Mutukwa, who is based in Scotland, said when she was a child, she enjoyed listening to the story of her mother as it circulated among her relatives and the neighbourhood.

It later occurred to her that she could do more to keep the legacy of one of the mothers of the revolution alive.

The memoir is a cache of history not usually found in the archives, which will inspire today’s generation to appreciate efforts of our elders, who launched the liberation war in all its phases.

Very few autobiographies or biographies of women who fought in the war of liberation are published nowadays, a gap which the memoir tries to fill.

It informs and inspires the Zimbabwean young generation about its history.

Backed by real historical events from the 1960s to Independence in 1980, “Mariana: Nurse of the Revolution”, portrays the profound courage and patriotism displayed by Mariana, the narrator, and her fellow comrades during the tumultuous years of the Second Chimurenga.

The difficult times and awful places, emotions and experiences, especially of a young girl, who would later contribute much to the freedom of her motherland, are captured from a personal perspective.

The narrator spends her childhood in the 1960s at Dora Estate, a reserve area for blacks, with her grandmother after her mother remarries.

The grandmother, who believes in the empowerment of the girl child, is a pillar of strength for Mariana, the dreamer.

During this time, a storm is brewing in the form of a liberation war. However, the war only starts to make sense when Mariana finishes her Grade Seven.

She finds herself unable to proceed to secondary school, and perhaps thereafter advance to a nursing college.

The historical context, given in detail, provides reason for her cool, silent search for what it really means to be free and happy in one’s country.

For example, after her vision to proceed to secondary school is crushed, she at some point works as a maid for a white family.

This experience makes her aware of the grim reality in Rhodesia of the time the racism, the political conflict between Ian Smith’s army and black liberation war fighters.

Mariana’s voice is imbued with a positive outlook and hope in the middle of crisis.

News about the war reached her via word of mouth at a wedding.

It is interesting how Mariana weighs the purpose of the liberation struggle and her goal to become a nurse, and still finds a convincing answer that she could serve her country in a different department.

As she would later say, “Even though I wasn’t at the front, I was fighting the war with needles, injections and medicines.

“As health workers our role was important because we were responsible for making sure that everyone was well and fit.”

Seeing that the comrades and black war victims received medical attention at the camps carried particular value for her. Her warrior character is displayed when she is offered an opportunity to train as a nurse in Libya.

“I knew that this opportunity that had been given to me was no ordinary coincidence, but a call to serve my country and for this I would be forever indebted. I would go to Libya and learn everything that I needed so that when I returned, I would serve my nation well,” she says.

The eyewitness account(s) of events which happened in the bush and at the camps during the war are poignant. Not only does Mariana tell her own side of the story, but she also shares insights into other women’s stories in struggle.

One such woman is Cde Tichatonga, who witnessed first-hand the Nyadzonya massacre in 1976.

The memoir, where the narrator or other characters are overwhelmed by emotion, mixes Shona and English to reveal the extent of the suffering of black people under the Rhodesian government.

But even after Mariana returns from Libya to a free Zimbabwe, she refuses to dwell on the negative.

All she had always dreamt of returning to was a free Zimbabwe and here she was.

“Although the wounds of war were healing, there was a cloud of uncertainty looming on the horizon, but that was another matter altogether.

For now, I was just grateful that this was now Zimbabwe and not colonised Rhodesia,” she says.

There are many women like Mariana, who gave their lives for the love of Zimbabwe during the liberation struggle. The book, if truth be told, celebrates them.

Magodo-Mutukwa is the author of “Back to the Hills” (2013), “Silent Cries” (2015), “Life” (2016), which she co-authored with Sympathy Sibanda, and “Rendition of the Soul” (2017), edited by the late David Mungoshi.

She has received recognition for her contribution to literature, including Ibhuku Women Authors Awards in the African Literature Award category in South Africa in 2018.

She is also actively involved in projects for the girl child, and is working with gender-based violence victims, especially abused women.

Through her works, Magodo-Mutukwa has become a voice for the voiceless.