Elliot Ziwira @ The Book Store
When we were growing up in our ever intriguing ‘hood of Glen Norah A, one of our pastimes was playing cards, particularly Crazy 8. We were all inspired by the belief that “every hand is a loser and every hand is a winner”, as Kenny Rodgers aptly croons in his timeless song “The Gambler”.

A deck of French playing cards, which is also known as the English or Anglo-American deck, has 52 cards.

It has been established that the number of possibilities that may come out of shuffling a deck of 52 cards makes it trite to assume fairness of outcomes in two shuffles.

But no matter how many times the deck may be shuffled, the cards that each player is dealt can either soothe or break his heart, for there is an equal chance of winning as in losing.

We realised that the best was to make use of what one was dealt, by playing the cards close to the chest, and determining the cards of other players by looking at their faces. However, if one were not careful, one could easily be cheated out of a winning deal. Even if one were to be given a chance to shuffle and deal the cards, it was no guarantee that the cards which one dropped at his lap were winning ones.

I have realised since then that life itself is a gamble where cards are dealt randomly and it is up to every individual to play them to his or her advantage. But I have also realised that there were some who could have a streak of losses no matter who dealt the cards or which cards they got.

They were simply perennial losers. I always wondered whether they were unlucky, too honest to cheat here and there, as some of us would resort to if mother luck seemed to chide us once too often, or they were born to be losers.

Fate has a way with people, gentle reader, but can one simply resign to fate? Is it not possible for one to chance or alter his or her destiny? Is suffering a condition or a state of mind where others are perennial sufferers and others winners ad infinitum? Honestly, how could it be possible that others are born to suffer the slings of oppressive tendencies inherent in man from the cradle to the grave, without doing anything to alter the clock in their favour?

I am inspired by Martin Luther King Jnr, who once remarked that: “The greatest tragedy of our time is not the few who have destroyed, but the vast majority who sat idly by,” and Mahatma Gandhi who observes that: “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes,” and yet still idealist Hall Lancaster who maintains: “Getting fired is nature’s way of telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place.”

Whining, moaning and groaning every time one feels the weight of the world on his or her shoulders is never a solution; the gagged voice should be allowed to come out, for opportunities do not always come your way but you should learn to create them. If you make mistakes, well, that is part of your freedom, if you lose your job, well it wasn’t the right one for you.

It is a given that many a time we see the gravy train whistling at great speed across the graveyard of our dreams, but is the solution merely in watching; silently, blindly, fatalistically and harrowingly?

In the books “The Wretched Ones” (1989) and “The Sun Will Rise Again” (1999), George Mujajati interestingly captures the nature of suffering, resilience and fate in a world that would rather be blind than be deceived by sight. There is so much sorrow, suffering, pain, hurt and despondency in the fictional experiences of the characters in Mujajati’s works that the reader cannot help getting consumed in the same. The dejection, pain, conceit, cruelty, brutality, corruption, disillusionment and frustration is so real that it leaves the reader aghast.

Because hope is that indispensable ingredient that allows the downtrodden to see beyond their mundane and sordid condition, it has to be in abundance as they toil away the scorching sun of their suffering to its setting, conscious to the fact that it will indeed rise again; and perchance bring fruition to their travails.

Though using different genres and techniques, the writer skilfully captures the pain of sutured dreams through avarice, betrayal, deceit, materialism and vengeance.

Though a hilarious satire on the surface, the play “The Wretched Ones” purveys the tragedy of lack on the periphery of plenty as is also the case in the novel “The Sun Will Rise Again”. In both books the tragic and unequal nature of life is explored through setting, characterisation and style.

Using nihilistic, surrealist and realistic traits of modernism, Mujajati exposes the glaring gap been the rich and the poor. In the play the poor wallow in abject poverty a stone’s throw away from opulence and abundance, when all they have in abundance is hope.

Lazarus, the protagonist in “The Wretched Ones”, is a permanent job-seeker who is chided by his irked wife: “Looking-for-a-job that is your job! That is your job! Do you think that you can find a job other than that one?”

As everything conspires against him, Lazarus finally decides that he is done with sight and closes his eyes for two days before finally gorging them out because he is “tired of seeing a world full of riches, luxuries and plenty”. He “would rather see this darkness, because I own nothing more than darkness . . . So I want to see nothing more than this darkness”.

Can hope really be that hopeless?

Fatima, one of the major characters in “The Sun Will Rise Again”, says: “Is it what it is like to be blind? The thin threads of my frail voice unwind through the darkness. My eyes are alive, blinking, yet all I can visualise are frozen images of graves.”

Blindness and death become elixirs from an oppressive and intolerant world, as losing cards are dealt on the emaciated laps of the oppressed, and the traders of death smile all the way to the bank. They seem to find no other vents as suffering becomes a generational curse.

Through the use of the stream of consciousness technique, Mujajati takes the reader into the feelings and thought processes of the characters in the fashion of James Joyce, Virgina Woolf and Chenjerai Hove in “Ulysses”, “The Waves” and “Bones” (1988).

Central to the tragedy in the story is Fatima, who as a 26th child, is born into a polygamous marriage, which disadvantages her as a girl. Despite passing her Grade Seven with flying colours she drops out of school and becomes a victim of rape and early marriage.

Through her marriage to Takundwa, Fatima condemns the central family to suffering; not that it is of her own making but the cards that life dealt her seem to be doomed. Takundwa, who also drops out of school to pursue a career in the Rhodesian army, is driven more by gain than love and responsibility.

His deserting of the army to become an informer for the Rhodesian army links him to the calculating, opportunistic and cold-hearted Nyati, the leader of the infamous Selous Scouts, who also betrays the struggle by siding with the enemy against his fellow comrades after deserting. Thousands of innocent children, women and trained freedom fighters suffered death at Chimoio in Mozambique because of him, but after independence he cunningly switches allegiance.

The reader learns through reflections into the experiences of Nyati, Takundwa, Jeremiah, Fatima and Sofia that Nyati is the architect of his own and Takundwa’s downfall.

Nyati, like Takundwa, makes a lot of money during the liberation war by selling out. Unlike Nyati, Takundwa is exposed and escapes, leaving his son Lovemore behind, to face the ire of the freedom fighters who brutally kill him.

Read the full review on www.herald.co.zw

 

 

 

 

As events interact and merge over the years Nyati manipulates the cards to his favour and becomes a darling of the ruling party, eventually becoming a councillor and influential businessman. With his past atrocities unknown he rises and becomes filthy rich; owning a chain of supermarkets, fleet of buses, lorries, factories, cars and houses.

Dreaming of emulating the deceitful opportunist, Takundwa rapes his six-year-old daughter Tabitha because her private parts and heart are wanted for ritual purposes by Nyati.

As events unfold, Nyati rapes Sofia who becomes his eighth wife. As the sun seems to be setting on the central family, the cat is let out of the bag leaving Nyati dead, Takundwa hanging, Sofia in the dock and Fatima contemplating suicide.

For indeed where there is hope and the will to live, there is always a way, and indeed it was for Sofia and her childhood sweetheart Jeremiah, as poetic justice prevails over vice. Sofia the victim, who momentarily becomes a monster is set free.

Natural justice favours the weak for the mighty will always tilt the scales of justice in their favour, for it is always in their domain, either by hook or crook, because in a corrupt world justice wears the colour of money.

Such is the nature of life in a world where the gargantuan fish of prey is always out to gag the smaller fish that eke out a living on non-existent algae on the shores of their existence, waiting for the sun to rise again.

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