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Cover of ‘Campus Voices Echoed’

Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
The short story is one of the powerful literary genres which writers have at times employed to put across ideas. In Africa, the short story, with its expansive companion, the novel, has been re-visited by the authors and new trends have emerged with considerable originality. While an anthology of writers from the same country could be exhilarating, much more happens when writers from two different countries on the same continent are put together to showcase their gifts of story-telling.

Such beauty of the art of storytelling can only come from a generous cultural exchange as found in the short story anthology titled “Campus Voices Echoed: Lesotho and Zimbabwe Imagined” (2014, Midlands State University Press) which was edited by Emmanuel A Makadho. The anthology is a collaboration between the National University of Lesotho and the Midlands State University.

A new creativity runs through the anthology, which takes the reader on a self-questioning cruise to the villages of Lesotho, then back to Harare and before you know it, you realise there are no different types of humanity out there but only one. We are all human beings. Our weaknesses and strengths are not so much unique to each other.

In “Campus Voices Echoed” one could feel the agony of women and children whose husbands have disdained them in favour of the younger girls they meet at the mines in Johannesburg. You can actually sense the betrayal in relations.

In the anthology there is counter-play of sadness and lighter moments, fear and strength, love and death. But then a short story has to have condiments in the same way a meal has to have some flavourings. An author’s prowess is exhibited in his/her spontaneous use of technique, depth of theme and above all, a gift with words that appeal to human emotions.

Corrupt characters in various stories in the anthology are men and it is through their lack of control that they stop society from moving on. Vongai Z Nyawo-Shava whose story “Animal or Bank Account Number?” pulls you along with occasional bursts of laughter, points at a solution to the problem of corruption rather than explaining it. A lustful education officer Chimhangwa in a rural area is busy collecting goats as bribes from men and women who are seeking teaching jobs but is trapped and caught red-handed.

While society can act against corruption, it can also fuel it. Indirect pressure is put on Mr Ogock (in the story “Sleight of Hand” by Fritz Ngale Ilongo) to let go of business ethics, which he thinks are making him generate less innocent income. People say he “has nothing to show” for his good administration skills and this pushes him to have something to be proud of but he does so through corruption.

An attractive element in the anthology is the writers’ creative inquiry into human situations to bring out the ‘bones’ of the matter. The influence of money, the shame of poverty and the ill-treatment of orphans are some of the issues raised in the stories. Llongo’s other story “The Two Disciples” portrays Ruth, a married woman, who loses self-control at the sight of money displayed by Lobo, a best-friend of her husband, leading to debauchery. When caught red-handed, Lobo stabs his friend to death!

“A Total Stranger” by Vongai Z Nyawo-Shava, who also compiled the anthology, seems to highlight that sometimes tradition scares away certain problems. A Zimbabwean couple in South Africa is happily married until young Mapaseka, the stranger, joins them as a second wife. Initially, the couple had hoped to go back home and follow traditional belief that a man can marry his wife’s young sister or sisters although this belief is now inapplicable in some modern cultures. However, the husband named Brown falls for the wrong bait.

“Woman to Woman” by Mamohato Motheane is told by a woman who is wondering why her husband, a mine worker, is secretive about his background. Actually, he has another family and this comes in the open when he dies. The story takes a different turn when the man’s death unites the two women instead of sparking battles between them. Motheane changes tenses and points of view in the same story with such amazing skill.

The leit motif of negative social impact of working in the mines of South Africa is also variably shown in stories such as “A Man in Shades” by Mpakoleng Monatsi and “Let Him Suffer Also” by M R Marajaneng. As the stories show, working in the mines came with more money and power and yet underneath these, misery echoed.

Apart from death, marriages are broken up and children suffer after their fathers start working in the mines where they are enchanted by a new life that they totally forget their families. “Let Him Suffer” is a story told by a son whose father, a mine worker, deserted the family only to comeback home years later, sick and weak.

Tradition, which otherwise could have saved Brown in the story “A Total Stranger”, is also upheld in the story “In but Out” by N R Toeba in which it (tradition) triumphs over modernity. Lirontso tries hard to evade her mother-in-law’s demands for traditional healing methods for her barrenness but eventually surrenders and that works wonders!

The African culture of inheritance has its own loopholes particularly where children are involved. When parents die, they (the children) are exposed to various life-threatening conditions. They lose security. Liteboho Moshoeshoe’s story “The Long Road Home” reveals the emotions of 22-year-old narrator who, after her mother dies, is entrusted to relatives who but imprison her. She is ill-treated and then raped by the uncle and still nothing happens to bring the uncle to book.

“And the Devil Wore a Gym Dress to My Funeral” by T S Mothibi shares something with another writer Tendai Huchu’s explorative short story “The Life After” which is found in a different anthology called “Writing Lives”. In these two stories death is not the end but an elevation or beginning of another life for the dead.

Mothibi’s story is told by a dead man just as Huchu’s story but the later involves a dead character’s movement or transition from one place to another within the same unknown realm of death. He wants to tell the living who he really was, that is, a teacher who spread HIV and AIDS to the students who fall prey to his lust.

The anthology is a mixed bag of themes and writing skills that can only confirm the talent existent in these two countries.