USA Africa Dialogue Series - Petina Gappah: Calming crystals and herbal tea might help to defuse the tension

http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article591151.ece/Calming-crystals-and-herbal-tea-might-help-to-defuse-the-tension

Calming crystals and herbal tea might help to defuse the tension

Aug 8, 2010 12:00 AM | By Petina Gappah 

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Petina Gappah: I was in Zimbabwe over the last week, and came to the conclusion that Zimbabwe's public figures need some serious therapy and anger management.

I am not normally one for New-Agey-psycho-babble-touchy-feely stuff, but I am now convinced that Zimbabwe needs some calming crystals, Swedish massage, herbal tea and kundalini yoga as much as it needs patched roads, textbooks for children and medical supplies. The toxicity that has infected the public discourse has reached alarming levels.

Where to begin? At the funeral of his sister Sabina Mugabe, declared a national heroine for reasons still unknown to a great number of people, President Mugabe gave a funeral oration during which he told those countries that still retain what Zanu-PF calls illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe to "go to hell". A number of diplomats took umbrage, got up and walked out. Result: consternation.

The state media worked itself into a frothing paroxysm of hatred. Diplomats from Germany, the European Union and the US were called to the Foreign Minister's office to be ticked off.

Apparently, the diplomats should have just sucked up the abuse and clapped and ululated along with the four-legs-good-two-legs-better crowd. Instead they resolutely refused to apologise. Result: stalemate.

Now, I completely understand the position taken by the diplomats, but, as I said to my imaginary friend Bobojani, I did not understand why they went to the funeral in the first place.

Anyone who has listened to any of the President's funeral orations surely knows what is coming.

"Yes indeed," said Bobojani. "Everyone knows that he generally tells people to go to hell, but this time he said it four times." Quite.

In the meantime, those former loving comrades, the Honourable Professor Ncube and the prime minister, the men who stood arm in arm at Zimbabwe Ground in 1999 and waved little red cards and promised a new Zimbabwe free of tyranny and intolerance, were throwing some serious intolerance around.

Addressing a rally last week, the prime minister sneered at the presidential ambitions of Professor Ncube, the heir presumptuous and pretender to the MDC Mutambara throne.

The prime minister has clearly been taking all the wrong lessons from the president, who has mocked the prime minister for his own presidential ambitions. It is as well that I do not harbour presidential ambitions. As for you, readers, if you have any presidential ambitions, you had better keep them to yourselves.

The prime minister's attack was sour, cynical and small-minded. Ncube's response was just as cynical. His response also succeeded in a fantastic feat of history rewriting, which I had always thought the exclusive preserve of our Zanu-PF lords and masters.

It is time Ndebele people stopped believing that they could only ever be deputies, he said. He then referred to what happened when the MDC was founded and the Ndebele Gibson Sibanda, who had been the leader of the ZCTU, gave way to the Shona Morgan Tsvangirai. What the Professor omitted was that he had himself perpetuated the Ndebele deputy syndrome when he outsourced his party's Shona leader, instead of selecting from within the party.

Then there is the internecine conflict between the professor and the deputy prime minister. Having eschewed the Ndebele deputy approach, the Professor apparently wishes to take the reigns of leadership. If this truly results in Arthur Mutambara leaving politics, I will be devastated. I once predicted that the deputy prime minister would be the clown prince of the new administration. He is simply delightful, being that most rare of human beings: a man completely unaware of the effect he has on others.

Then there is Zanu, which is also fighting itself. It is hard to keep track with who is fighting who here. One minute a favoured judge is given a farm, the next moment, it is taken away and given to the First Lady. Another minute Zanu people are selling each other farm equipment, the next they are arresting each other. This is what happens when you institute a thugocracy: as my Karanga ancestors would say, matsotsi haagerane, which roughly translates to "there is no honour among thieves."

The week was not all poison: I was amused to learn that the police have tactics to flush out sexual deviancy. In a Newsday report on an investigation into lesbianism at a girls' school, a police officer quoted a police officer as saying: "Although it is generally believed that something was happening, such cases are difficult because you need to catch someone in the act to be totally sure."

You read that right. You need to catch someone in the act to be totally sure. In case you are nodding your head at this enterprising approach, you must remember that Zimbabwe's penal code punishes not only homosexuality, but all sort of "unnatural" offences.

So ladies, gentlemen: say yes to curtains, blinds or other window screeners. They could well be all that stands between you and that policeman peering into your windows to catch you in the act.

Petina Gappah: An Elegy for Easterly

A woman in a township in Zimbabwe is surrounded by throngs of dusty children but longs for a baby of her own; an old man finds that his new job making coffins at No Matter Funeral Parlor brings unexpected riches; a politician's widow stands quietly by at her husband's funeral, watching his colleagues bury an empty casket. Petina Gappah's characters may have ordinary hopes and dreams, but they are living in a world where a loaf of bread costs half a million dollars, where wives can't trust even their husbands for fear of AIDS, and where people know exactly what will be printed in the one and only daily newspaper because the news is always, always good.

In her spirited debut collection, the Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah brings us the resilience and inventiveness of the people who struggle to live under Robert Mugabe's regime. She takes us across the city of Harare, from the townships beset by power cuts to the manicured lawns of privilege and corruption, where wealthy husbands keep their first wives in the "big houses" while their unofficial second wives wait in the "small houses," hoping for a promotion.

Despite their circumstances, the characters in An Elegy for Easterly are more than victims—they are all too human, with as much capacity to inflict pain as to endure it. They struggle with the larger issues common to all people everywhere: failed promises, unfulfilled dreams, and the yearning for something to anchor them to life.

Praise

"Petina Gappah's stories range from scathing satire of Zimbabwe's ruling elite to earthy comedy to sensitive accounts of the sufferings of humble victims of the regime. Gappah is a fine writer and a rising star of Zimbabwean literature." —J. M. Coetzee

"In an era when a never-ending newsfeed lets crucial events slip into oblivion, Petina Gappah's stories are particularly important. With great insight, humor, and energy, she brings us a world that, despite its differences at first glance, is not unlike our own: its people's hopes and fears are our hopes and fears, their laughter and tears ours, too. Gappah is a powerful new writer worth celebrating." —Yiyun Li, author of The Vagrants

"In An Elegy for Easterly, Petina Gappah has written a vital and honest collection of stories that vividly capture the surreal personal tragedies of twenty-first-century Zimbabweans through a rich palette of wry, dark, and intimate voices." —Owen Sheers, author of Resistance and The Dust Diaries

"Death and disaster, while never glossed over, are handled with unexpected humor, as they often are in folktales, and this is a part of the book's great charm… [One] story, about an elderly coffin maker who comes out of retirement and then dances himself to death on the floor of the "Why Leave Guesthouse and Disco-Bar" has a wild, cracked gallows humor reminiscent of Chekhov's peasant stories. And "The Maid from Lalapanzi", a wonderful tale structured partly as a chronicle of the various country girls hired and fired as maids in the narrator's household, spreads out such a wealth of comedic social detail that you don't fully grasp the underlying brutality of the story until it's over. All of these pieces depend on swiftness and lightness for their effect; flaring up into momentary life and then fading out before they acquire any burdensome solemnity, and this . . . seems true to the essential nature of the [short story] form." —James Lasdun, The Guardian

"A fine, soul-stirring debut presents 13 snapshots of life in desperate contemporary Zimbabwe. … Searing, but never over the top: Gappah holds the anger and horror in check with exemplary artistic discipline." —Kirkus Reviews

"In her accomplished debut, Gappah, a Zimbabwean writer and international trade lawyer, casts her compassionate eye on a diverse array of characters living, grieving, loving–and fighting to survive–under Robert Mugabe's regime . . . Gappah's deep well of empathy and saber-sharp command of satire give her collection a surplus of heart and verve." —Publishers Weekly

"Many of the stories are written with humor and insight, and Gappah's characters are so vivid that it's easy to put aside the politics for a while and embrace the human factor . . . Perhaps it's her love of people that has helped her to get under the skin of her characters and shape them so effortlessly on the page." —Lauren De Beer, The Weekender (South Africa)

"A series of short, heartbreaking tales . . . These stories are shot through with humor and empathy. And for anyone who has been in Zimbabwe in recent years, this book is full of closely observed local detail that will bring back memory." —Geoff Wisner, The Christian Science Monitor

"It is the frequent humour in these stories that makes them remarkable, even if their outcomes can be tragic. Often satirical, occasionally lyrical, they are a delight." —Tom Fleming, The Observer

"The book is an elegy in a broader sense – for the optimism and hope of 1980, beautifully evoked in 'Aunt Juliana's Indian.' … Gappah's language is crisp and clean, with a musical quality that frequently draws on her first language, Shona. An Elegy for Easter is a powerful debut from a fresh voice, with themes – from disappointment and betrayal to promise and love – that will resonate with readers everywhere." —Susan Williams, The Independent

"Laced with deliciously dark comic undertones . . . This hybridization of cultures assimilates the reader into the vibrant, prosperous home left behind, but preserved in Gappah's hopeful imagination." —Eachan Johnson, The Oxonian Review

About the Author(s)

Petina Gappah

PETINA GAPPAH 's writing has appeared in Prospect, Farafina, Per Contra, The Guardian, theZimbabwe Times, PEN America, and Transition. She currently works in Geneva as an international trade lawyer.