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Tichaona Zindoga

Gracious Madondo Own Correspondent
Journalist Tichaona Zindoga is a new breed of media personnel to emerge in Zimbabwe in post 2007. He is among a new breed of journalists not timid to express their viewpoints on an array of issues and have carved a strong presence on social media. He is techno savvy and is perceptively gifted with an analytic mind.

But that’s not all. Zindoga is in his own league. A maverick in the journalistic herd, a redoubtable bon vivant with an inimitable bohemian appearance, Zindoga has a knack for stocking fires wherever possible. It came as no surprise that such a restless mind was to give birth to a gem of a book suitably titled: “The Death of the Commissar” this year.

The title has no relation with Russian’s Kuzman Petrov-Vodkin’s 1928 “Death of a Commissar” painting currently on display in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. Rather these are personal musings of a journalist whose prolific writing flair has given birth to a creative work of art in the form of a poetry anthology.

The liberties taken by Zindoga in penning the poetry anthology demonstrates his awareness of the limitations of journalism as a means of getting the meaning of events. Journalists normally focus on facts while writers create visions.

A decade of newspaper writing has not only broadened Zindoga’s understanding of his own social, economic and political environment but has also opened his mind to the limitations of the Fourth Estate in freeing one’s personal hobgoblins.

Besides having good brains, Zindoga possesses a piercing wit, a gift for coining catchy phrases and has a flair for advertising his accomplishments in a very abrasive style.

From face value Zindoga is querulous, egocentric, grandiose and exuberant but on closer perception and as proven by his inaugural creative output, he is a complicated piece of machinery.

The poem “Death of the Commissar”, which is also the title of the anthology, is the longest poem-probably because it appears to be the soul of the entire collection and contains some of the major themes further developed other poems.

Zindoga’s style of writing and arrangement is similar to that found in Thomas Bvuma anthology “Every Stone that Turns” which also has a long poem titled “Marrow”. “Marrow” captures all the thematic concerns that form the basis of its work.

“Death of the Commissar” is a remarkable work of art that captures every aspect of life from Africa’s history, politics, Zimbabwe’s liberation war and its heroes, religion, love, deception and cross continental issues like slave trade, race, humanitarian affairs and even homosexuality.

The poem “Death of the Commissar” bears like a prose-like format in its arrangement. It is the tale of a female freedom fighter who in the heat of the war conceives a son who dies at the battlefront.

Today you have been hunted down,

Mowed to the ground

By the merchants of death

Crushed and mangled by machines of death,

Zindoga vibrantly paints the image of women’s participation in the liberation war that serves to acknowledge the crucial role played by women alongside their male counterparts.

The poem “The Prophetess” also echoes these sentiments as Zindoga plays on how the liberation war spirit medium Mbuya Nehanda foresaw the uprising of Zimbabweans in fighting against colonialism with her famous prophetic words, “My bones shall rise again”, a historical phenomenon that many such as Chenjerai Hove has harped upon in his historical novel “Bones”.

Zindoga’s anthology has one poem dedicated to Zimbabwe and one of Africa’s most iconic figures President of Zimbabwe Robert Gabriel Mugabe in the poem “Big Shoes”

Zindoga may have been thinking of journalist Itai Dzamara when penned the poem “The Madman in the Park” who he describes a man no one ever fully understood until he disappeared.

The madman of the park

Who went away and they left no mark:

The brother and father we never knew,

Till one day he was no more.

Despite being a maverick Zindoga does not lose his humaneness. In the poem “Run, Child, Run!” he articulates the importance of human life and the critical need for peace, unity and understanding in eradicating violence and hate.

Zindoga’s poetry displays a deep compassion and respect for human life stretching this passion for justice beyond African borders.