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When I read Ezekiel Mphahlele “Down Second Avenue” (1959), for the first time many years ago, I was so consumed by it that I could not separate myself from the writer’s experiences in apartheid South Africa.

There are citations from the autobiographical novel that my elder brother Shepherd and I still recite to this day; just a phrase and we both complete the sentences as we shared them since the first time we encountered the same.

“And then . . .,” I would start; and my brother would go, “And then my frightened little boy . . .”

Gentle reader, if you have read Mphahlele’s “Down Second Avenue”, you should be able to complete that sentence, and many more. The writer has a way of hooking you into his story that in the end you cannot help wondering how your own story can be so much linked to the South African story purveyed.

Everything is told in such a way that the characters come to life as they take on the traits of your granny, your mother, brothers, cousins and neighbours in the ‘hood. Each one of the characters becomes someone that you already know, their experiences become your own, and their aspirations, despondency and frustrations become intertwined with yours.

The carefully selected images, symbols and metaphors assume a captivatingly universal appeal, which you can easily identify with. I also felt the same when I read Peter Abrahams’ “Mine Boy” (1946) and Alan Paton’s “Cry the Beloved Country” (1948).

There is so much about the passion with which the three South African writers tell the stories of their toil as they eke out a mundane and sordid existence in the slums created by apartheid and its segregationist tendencies, which leaves the reader not only aghast, but draw him/her in as a willing participant and co-storyteller.

Such is the essence of a good story in the hands of a great storyteller; it never tires because it is given life anew regardless of the many times it may have been told. There is so much skill required in the use of the autobiographical mode, lest one gets carried away in his own story that he forgets that it belongs to all of us.

The aspect of self-justification is usually cited as the major weakness of the mode, because as human beings the tendency is to downplay our own foibles and highlight our heroic antics, which makes it cumbersome for the reader to separate the writer from the experiences highlighted in an attempt to give the story a universal appeal.

However, though it may have its flipside, the autobiographical mode is unique in that it gives the writer a chance to interact with his/her own experiences and capture them for a communal and national audience, because the writer functions as a virtual recorder of events prevailing in his/her community at a particular time.

Unlike a historian who relies more on others’ eyes and ears, the artiste is his own eye and ear, therefore, his lenses are more reliable than the historian’s blurred ones.

It is against the backdrop of the journalistic function of the writer that I find the reading of Stephen Mpofu’s “Creatures at the Top” (2012) apt and evocative. If the writer functions as a journalist or recorder of events, as Hove (2002) posits, what would one expect from a scribe with four decades of experience in his bag, close to two decades of them as an editor?

It is this gentle reader, that makes Mpofu’s autobiographical novel more than just a good read; it is a must read, for he really has something serious to say; something worthy of your attention. He has not only travelled the familiar path, but he has a way of dragging the reader along with such familiarity that leaves one dumbfounded.

Using the autobiographical mode, the artiste brings to a cirque the many interacting episodes shaping his experiences as a young man, not only questing to shape his own destiny, but that of his motherland, through the pen.

Believing that a story that is told is worth more than a thousand that remain subdued through fear, violence, brutality and hopelessness, the narrator, Sam, who is Mpofu himself, finds himself exiled in Zambia in 1963, to train as a journalist. With hope dreams shining ever brighter, the young narrator hoists the reader on a whirlwind voyage of intrigue upon a scribe’s scroll.

There is so much obtaining on the political front in Africa, which makes it worthwhile to follow the creatures that have been fashioned out to give a face to a suffering people. The year 1964 sees Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) getting its independence from Britain, and many revolutionary outfits, like ZANU, ZAPU, ANC, FREELIMO and MPLA, are domiciled here.

Without pretensions, Sam highlights, as a journalist and Zimbabwean living in exile, the crumbs that Southern Rhodesia brings to the tables of blacks, both at home and in the Diaspora. As a reporter and news editor for the Times of Zambia, the narrator has to juggle between being an exile and a political insider.

It is through Sam that one gets to understand the Zambians’ position regarding Zimbabweans in general, and pertinently ZAPU and ZANU, the two revolutionary outfits that brought independence to the motherland, through their armed wings; ZIPRA and ZANLA, respectively. One also gets a kind of insider’s understanding of what it means to be an exile, yet fighting for one’s country.

Stephen Mpofu also takes the reader to Mozambique from where a protracted onslaught against the Smith regime is plotted by ZANU leaders and ZANLA commanders, and the United States of America, where he encounters firsthand the squalid conditions that blacks have to put up with.

The euphoria that comes with Independence in April 1980 does not fail to excite Sam’s pen, which spews on end, the need to remain on guard. Through Sam, Mpofu highlights the seeds of despondency in both blacks and whites as Robert Mugabe, the Prime Minister of the newly independent Zimbabwe, advocates reconciliation.

There is so much hope for the new nation, yet the golden horizon continues receding. In politics as in sport, losing is as disheartening as winning is exhilarating. Those who lose do not take it gracefully, as those who win want to remain on the winning side.

The Americans, British, South Africans and their Western cousins wish the new nation state a stillbirth; black Zimbabweans on the losing end push their mouths to their noses in gloom, wishing doom to their fellows.

Such a recipe can only be a perfect one for disaster in waiting; especially when one thinks of the cocktails prescribed against Prime Minister Mugabe’s Government, disguised as aid. But Mpofu is not lost to this, because as a journalist he is privy to the American peccadilloes, as well as those of the creatures at the top.

Avarice, selfishness and materialism remain glaring traits in the new “creatures at the top”, much to Mugabe’s chagrin, as illustrated thus: “Speaking in London in an interview with BBC television in August 1989 while on his way home from Oslo, Norway, the President was quoted by The Herald on August 17, 1989 as attacking avaricious leaders in zanu-pf and Government, describing some of them as “creatures at the top out to amass wealth”.

He warned that such leaders would not be allowed to hold government or party posts after a Congress to ‘cement’ the unity with PF ZAPU,” (Mpofu, 2012: 165).

As a voice of vision, Mpofu is conscious of the fact that the emergent black bourgeoisie is as dangerous as the bruised whites, who believe that a black government cannot steer the nation to the proverbial Promised Land.

The writer intimates: “However, President Mugabe’s clear dismay at the insatiable greed of the creatures at the top would appear to point to something equally tragic, which was that the red-hot embers of the revolution had started to smolder on the night that the Union Jack bowed down and out and the Zimbabwean flag rose triumphantly to flutter from the vacated mast and Socialism, a log embraced by povo and thrown into the flickering coals to revive the fire, was frowned upon by an emergent class of black bourgeoisie”, (ibid).

Taping into the discontent of the masses and those irked by being left out of the speeding gravy train, Mpofu adeptly captures the disturbances of the early and mid-1980s, otherwise known as Gukurahundi, culminating in the Unity Accord of December 22, 1987.

The rise of the “native bourgeoisie”, as Fanon (1967) puts it, is the bane of post-independent African nation states; and in the end, “The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour, but the result of organised, protected robbery,” (Fanon, 1967: 154).

Indeed, the people will begin to see through the façade of the creatures at the top, who eat the national cake on their behalf; and it is this that led to Operation Restore Legacy, which saw the Command element of the people’s army under the guidance of General Constantino Guvheya Nyikadzino Chiwenga (who is now Vice President of the motherland) intervening, to bring back the cake to the national table. It is our sincere hope that the euphoria that came with the resignation of former President Mugabe, and the envisaged bringing to book of the “criminals around him”, will remain as engulfing as ever, for “the creatures at the top” have been metamorphosed to our beloved leaders at the top in a novel political dispensation.

Mpofu uses his experiences as a journalist in Zambia, and at Zimbabwe Newspapers (1980) Limited after Independence, where he worked for over 20 years in editorial positions at The Herald, The Sunday Mail and Chronicle, which he edited for 12 years, in “Creatures at the Top”, to highlight the challenges that journalists face in their quest to expose the follies of the creatures at the top.

One cannot help reflecting on the talented crop of journalists and dedicated war veterans that Mpofu was in contact with, during and after the liberation struggle for the beloved motherland. The familiar names that the reader comes across lend credence to the narrator’s timeless experiences.

Stephen Mpofu’s must-read masterpiece is indeed an evocative, enthralling, thought-provoking and informative repertoire of individual episodes adeptly stitched-up into a selfless blanket of national consciousness.

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