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Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
United States-based Zimbabwean writer, Emmanuel Sigauke’s new book “Mukoma’s Marriage and Other Stories” is an interesting collection in many ways, first its history and later, the themes. One wonders how Sigauke of Booklove Publishers in Gweru, Zimbabwe, got the nod to publish such a legendary script ahead of many others. The script to this short story

collection has been well known and talked about in the Zimbabwean writing fraternity long enough to be an enigma. From as far back as 2008, the book has been threatening to come, with some of the stories appearing in various international journals to high acclaim. Sigauke’s colleagues in the writing fraternity must be happy that the book is finally out because the author has a record as a perfectionist, never releasing a script until he is certain that all is well.

For instance, in August 2010 Memory Chirere wrote on his blog in total exasperation: “He (Sigauke) has been at this script for years now and I think he is close to releasing it, Manu, let go.” You have an extremely exciting script.”

A couple of days later, another writer NoViolet Bulawayo responded: “I couldn’t agree more with Chirere. I’ve seen bits and pieces of the project here and there, and I await with a restless hunger. That narrator so alive and raw and stunning in his naivety and sometimes hard circumstances, and the writer’s voice just on the right note and effortless. Either way you are drawn in, and I know we are in trouble when the project drops.”

The wait is over and the book reads like tapestry. Emmanuel Sigauke’s “notoriety” is worthwhile if one considers that so many local writers, especially the young ones, tend to rush to print and dish out material that they even will not buy and read.

Some of the key stories in this book are “Snakes Will follow You”, “Mai Lily’s Promise”, “Mupani Whips” and others. All the fourteen short stories are narrated by Fati who grows from boy to young man as the collection revolves. As in V S Naipaul’s “Miguel Street”, each story can be read as part of the sequence or an independent piece. The journey takes Fati from Mototi in Midlands to Harare’s Glen View suburb.

This book vibrates with the sights and sounds of an African village life before engulfing the hubbub of the African city. The African sensibility erupts from beneath the English language in the manner of Charles Mungoshi’s “Waiting For The Rain” and Katiyo’s “A Son of The Soil”.

At the centre of these stories is Fati’s rather aggressive brother, Mukoma. He is aggrieved by some things that you may not know. So you keep on asking, what does he want? What does he want to become? He is intriguing and unpredictable. He believes so much in using his fists that it is quite shocking that when the story ends, he is still alive. He is either breathing or pounding somebody to pulp. Even when he comes to his brother’s school on open day, he ends up fighting with the Mhere boys, instead of watching his brother play a part in Julius Caesar:

“By the time Brutus stabbed me, Mukoma had already left to fight with the Mhere boys. I don’t think when he left I had finished dying because even before Mark Anthony arrived on the scene, half the audience had left the play and had gone to watch Mukoma’s fight. Miss Mukaro, the teacher who had directed the performance, signalled Mark Anthony, acted by Chari, to stop talking, walked to where I lay dead and whispered, “Caesar, your big brother.” I sprung up and looked where Mukoma had been standing and saw that he was gone.”

That fight seems to represent the irresolvable struggles and rivalries in closed up societies and the dangers of energies that are pent up for far too long. These characters are craving for something that they may not be able to name. The fight has a poetic touch to it. The audience folds their arms and waits until the vanquished staggers out of the human circle and runs across the school and disappears into the bush like a hare!

Mukoma himself is an enigma. He believes in the power of education as a passage to good living. He cherishes family ties. He has a genuine love for Fati whom he asks to stay focused on his books. He wants the boy to succeed so much so that the boy is almost socially suffocated, finding relief in Shakespearean literature.

However, Mukoma seems to unwittingly replicate the violent society that he grows up in. His is a search for a purpose in life to a point of desperation. That his wife cannot bring forth children drives him crazy, searching for an opportunity to reproduce in all places. He has a deep-seated fear for extinction.

That Mukoma misses on the liberation struggle leaves him with not much opportunity to express himself other than taking it on those who are from the struggle. He will not take even a slip of the tongue by them. He is like Peter in Dambudzo Marechera’s “House of Hunger”.

Emmanuel Sigauke teaches English in Sacramento. He is also the founding editor of Munyori Literary Journal and is on the boards of the Sacramento of the Sacramento Poetry Centre and Writers International Network Zimbabwe.