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The Herald, 19 August 1987

DAMBUDZO Marechera, one of Zimbabwe’s finest and most controversial writers, died at Parirenyatwa Hospital yesterday.

He was 35.

Marechera who was single, was admitted to Parirenyatwa on Saturday with pneumonia, according to friends.

The hospital informed them of his death shortly after 1am. He had been in poor health in recent months.

It was not known by last night where the burial would take place.

Yesterday, friends and fellow writers paid tribute to a man whose lifestyle was as controversial as his literary works. The Zimbabwe Writers Union said the country had “lost a unique personality”.

The author of three published books — The House of Hunger, Black Sunlight and Mindblast — Marechera returned to Zimbabwe in 1982 from long years of exile in Britain.

He had fled there after being expelled from the then University of Rhodesia in 1973 for leading, with other black students, a demonstration against segregation in campus residences.

He entered Oxford University, but two years later was offered the option to take voluntary psychiatric treatment or being “sent down”.

He opted to be sent down and then became a writer-in-residence at Sheffield, living on grants and with friends.

It was during this time that he wrote The House of Hunger, which in 1979 won him that year’s Guardian Fiction prize.

Black Sunlight was temporarily banned by the Censorship Board in this country in 1982 for unspecified reasons.

It was generally believed, however, that the board felt some passages were obscene.

Mindblast, his third book, was published in Harare in 1984. In a recent interview, Marechera had talked of plans to write a fourth book.

He complained about Zimbabwean publishers “silencing” him with their alleged unwillingness to publish his manuscripts.

In reality, however, Marechera was sensitive to people who hypocritically approached him for one thing or another and he treated them with sarcasm.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

Born Charles William in Rusape, Manicaland Province on June 4, 1952, Dambudzo Marechera had a unique and dynamic personality. He was an artist and intellectual par excellence.

According to another writer, Musaemura Zimunya, Marechera had died “in the very noon of his life and at the prime of his talent”.

Stanley Nyamufukudza, also a celebrated writer who worked and knew Marechera personally, said Marechera’s behaviour, image and writing may have cast a dark shadow in the minds of many people who saw him.

Artists like Marechera are society’s oracles and their words speak to various situations and seasons. This is why The House of Hunger is celebrated as Marechera’s greatest work of art. It immortalised his mind that died at a young age.