Elliot Ziwira @ The Book Store

Everything seems to be skewed in favour of the mighty, who keep on spewing plastic balls in the wake of gravy trains. Who really is at fault, the one who accepts the plastic balls or the “generous” provider? Can the panacea really be mere plastic balls?

IN a world where materialism and avarice – the most egregious of all human foibles – are in vogue, those in the corridors of power and have the arsenal, pacify the poor with “plastic balls” for them to have a false sense of nirvana.

The real problems affecting the downtrodden, feeble and vulnerable are trivialised to create a flippancy of hope. The humongous and gluttonous fish of prey feasts on the small shoals that swim to the shore to eke out an existence out of malnourished algae.

Everything seems to be skewed in favour of the mighty, who keep on spewing plastic balls in the wake of gravy trains. Who really is at fault, the one who accepts the plastic balls or the “generous” provider? Can the panacea really be mere plastic balls?

It is against this backdrop that the reading of “No More Plastic Balls and Other Stories” (2000), edited by Clement Chihota and Robert Muponde, is made a unique one.

Wary of the folly of momentary satiation, the writers advocate the demise of catharsis based on vice. They do not only lambast oppressive tendencies inherent in the political and economic corridors of power, but are also contemptuous of the myopic, gullible, tolerant and patient inclinations of the oppressed.

The metaphors of hope, madness and barrenness pervade the collection, which somehow creates an overall atmosphere of despondency. The barrenness at the centre of familial ties merges with the all-encompassing national discourse leading to universal neurosis and malaise.

The deceit, hypocrisy and irrationality central to the family unit foist the hopelessness that the characters used find themselves entangled in.

Death which stalks individuals in their quest to locate themselves in the labyrinthine net of their existence, like madness and sex becomes not only the elixir, but marks the finality of all their travails. The barrenness of the relationships in the stories, especially when pitted against individual gain; carnal or material, strangles hope.

The children who are the fruits of carnal foibles manifest in incest, fornication and adultery are rather poisoned as they prey on the society that gives them life.

The rationale of the victim-monsters obtains in Memory Chirere’s “Tadamuhwa”, “Keresenzia”, “Plastics and Cardboard” and “The Eyes of a Buck”; Shakespeare Nyereyemhuka’s “Image of a Mother”, and “End of the Line” as well as Nhamo Mhiripiri’s “Elista”.

Such a society that seems to be inspired by grandstanding and madness because of a desperate niche for change for the sheer wont of it, is as barren as it is hopeless. It is such a society that the writers take a swipe at.

Nhamo Mhiripiri, in the title story, “No More Plastic Balls”, explores the vice of materialism which breeds oppressive tendencies in Man, through a boy’s struggles to free himself from the restrictive nature of the family unit in general, and pertinently the claustrophobia of home. The story captures Franklin’s transformation from childhood to adulthood, though not in physical terms, but psychologically.

Through this transformation in space, he is able to circumvent his parents’ tyrannical rules, albeit tragically.

The boy’s parents who like many, are driven on by gain, and sneer at those presumed to be below them in social echelons, confine him behind walls. Under the watchful eye of the maid, Tsitsi, who is used as a decoy in the oppressive machinations, he follows a routine of controlled play, food and all.

Although he has his own toys, he takes a liking to the plastic balls thrown at him over the fence by a neighbouring young man, the narrator.

Realising the conspiracy of oppression against him, the boy refuses to accept the balls anymore. With the carefree excitement issuing from beyond the walls of his caged existence beckoning him, as those of his age enjoy the innocent, thus uninhibited freedom of growing up, Franklin’s heart is encumbered.

The boy’s refusal to have his condition trivialised by a conspiracy of adults; the narrator, the maid and his parents, marks the beginning of his psychological development, hence, his quest for freedom.

An opportunity avails itself, as is always the case with fate, when the boy, having been cajoled by Joe and the other boys from the street to find the keys to unlock the gate and join them with his pet dog for unfettered fun in the street, unlocks the gate.

With the beckoning from the cheers and encouragement outside being more powerful than ever, Franklin escapes to freedom. The momentary thrill spurs him on as he races up and down the street with his peers. His release from bondage does not last long though, for he is hit by a speeding car and sadly he dies.

Ironically, his death at five years of age does not only free him from both physical and psychological oppression, but it also depicts the futility of his struggle against oppression.

In “No More Plastic Balls and Other Stories,” Chihota and Muponde preside over the new writers’ vision of a revolution gone astray as individuals tussle to outdo each other in a rat race devoid of vision.

The writers are inspired by the post-colonial society so much disillusioned that it is desperate for new heroes, but has no idea where such people could be found. This is evident in the stories; “When Passions Gather”, “The Presidential Goggles”, “Touched” and “When the Baobab Gets Fat”.

Like Alexander Kanengoni and Shimmer Chinodya, the artistes in “No More Plastic Balls and Other Stories” use the metaphor of madness to portray the sense of loss that the personae find themselves in upon discovery that their lives are embedded on thin existence as brother rises against brother in an epic fit for the Oscars.

In “When the Baobab Gets Fat”, Philibon, who joined the liberation struggle after stealing from his employer, D.D.M.M.D Sugar Mutape Mupombwi, comes back none the wiser as discord plays havoc with the music of his soul, and the boss who never fired a single shot, becomes the new hero because of his success with women and his money, whose source is shrouded in mystery.

Mupombwi epitomises the sharks that feed on the smaller fish like Kombo and Philibon to such an extent that their only occupation becomes eating. Their obesity is juxtaposed with the malnourished existence of those that toil, as over-eating frets them in the same way that hunger stalks the poor.

The heroes in Robert Muponde’s stories, especially “Touched” and “The Advice” are drawn from intellectuals who find solace in their attempt to usher in a new era of vision. Unfortunately, like Elija in “Touched”, they lack a strategic approach to the problems facing them. Like Julius “The Hero” in Charles Mungoshi’s “Coming of the Dry Season”, Elija is expelled from university because of his defiance of authority and ends up teaching in Sanyati. To echo Muponde and Chihota in their preface to the collection, he is “an expression of the horror of the void that appears in a society that once believed in a common vision, an ideal and ideology”. He does not know who he is, neither is he aware of his enemies; he simply shoots from the hip at whoever he imagines to be his foe, and fancies himself an epic hero.

Such heroic adventures however, are not worthwhile in a society that is already fed up and has lost faith in such heroic antics. Elija’s savage killing of Katsanga over Viola, a woman of questionable morality, the deplorable exposure of his manhood to prove that he is a man, his arrest and subsequent suicide, “as a way of authoring his own epic” put paid the vanity of it all as death-total silence triumphs. As a consequence hope for the oppressed remains as barren as the dry season whirlwind.

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