Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
THERE is a striking picture of Dambudzo Marechera at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 1983.
Like many pictures taken at that time, it is black and white and so therefore hides some detail that full colour might have revealed. In that picture, the buildings in the background are as grey as the cloudless sky above.
A face reader might say that Marechera’s mood appeared to be as dark and grey as the picture itself. In that brief moment that he was caught by the camera lens, he displays none of the trademark eccentricity that has over the years has been the subject of much fascination and discussion.
Anticipating Marechera’s trademark colour and larger than life character to explode from that portrait would be expecting too much from a simple black and white snap.
But even in that small frame there is enough of Marechera to interest those that follow his life even three decades after it ended. There was certainly enough in that picture to get numerous likes and retweets when the picture made rounds this week on the 32nd anniversary of his death.
Death has done little to diminish Marechera’s superstardom. Perhaps the most striking feature of that picture is not Marechera’s immaculate suit, or the scarf stylishly tossed over his right shoulder.
It is the group of men crowded around the podium, like children gathered around the feet of their storytelling grandmother, listening intently. These men are there to listen to Marechera who stands poised, a notepad in his left hand and a microphone close to his lips.
To anyone who has attended book launches, book festivals or literature related events in Zimbabwe over the recent past that image would be striking.
It would be striking not because of the neatly dressed young man who appears ready to serenade the crowd before him with words either lifted from his brain teasing poetry or a mouthful of words snatched from his explosive prose. The picture would be striking because of the people who had gathered to see him do so.
That year, still fresh from his stay in the United Kingdom, Marechera was a star attraction at the Book Fair. It would be fair to say that Marechera, who at that point had already led a remarkable life while in his early 30s, was a recognisable figure at most events he attended.
That particular reading seemed to have attracted a diverse crowd. Once cannot say the same about literary events these days. The voices of Zimbabwe’s new literature powerhouses are no longer heard on the street, as Marechera’s was at First Street Mall on that August noon.
The country’s literary voices have retreated to the comfort of art galleries, lecture rooms and elegant conference rooms. While there is nothing wrong with those places, it perhaps reflects where the country’s literature has gone since the heydays of Marechera, Ndabezinhle Sigogo, Barbara Makhalisa, Mthandazo Ndema Ngwenya, Chenjerai Hove and Charles Mungoshi.
Decades after these names passed on or capped their pens, they are still the names that come to mind when one mentions Zimbabwean literature. Does this mean that the new generation of writers have failed to live up to those unforgettable names?
“First we should appreciate how lonely the yesteryears were; reading was an actual form of entertainment for most people. Now they have the internet, now they binge on series, now they have a tonne of channels on DStv at the flick of a wrist. All that time belongs to a book,” award winning author and actor Philani A Nyoni told Sunday Life.
Nyoni, because of his writing style and character, has in the past been compared to Marechera. He is one of the many children of Marechera, the gifted young men and women who have been unfairly tasked with walking in Marechera’s boots.
The search for the “next Marechera” is one that has not yielded any results for the past 30 odd years.
With his early death in 1987, Marechera cemented his celebrity, attaining the kind of fame that would normally be acquired only by film and movie stars. But what did Marechera have that others that have followed do not?
As prolific as Marechera was as a writer, his fame was not all down to his pen.
His character is at times as big a draw as his writing. He was after all a University of Zimbabwe and Oxford University educated writer who rebelled against society’s expectations. His character had a magnetic pull that aligned perfectly with the explosive text in his books.
Marechera’s one time University of Zimbabwe classmate and friend Peter Harvey said “Myths are easier than men and Dambudzo was the stuff of which myths were made”.
Perhaps details of Marechera’s life seem stranger than the incredible fiction which he wrote. Sex, drugs, alcohol and a suggestion of madness feature prominently in the biography of the writer. It is the kind of image that one would associate with a rock star than the man of words that he was.
Yet some may wonder if some of the things Marechera is said to have done would have escaped scrutiny in the present day. In the age of political correctness, would Marechera have been spoken of kindly if he had thrown around glasses in a ceremony to honour him, as he did in London after scooping the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1979?
Hindsight has been kind to memories of Marechera, airbrushing his transgressions and enhancing his fame.
“I fear that there are many who, in their regret for the loss of Dambudzo, found themselves facing the awful truth that his death made it easier to love him safely, without fear of abuse or rejection,” Harvey said of his former friend.
Marechera was the proverbial drunk uncle at the party, the one despised while he is in the act of spoiling a public gathering but whose actions are the source of laughs when the occasion is over and his mess has been cleaned up. An absence of over 30 years has made hearts even fonder of him.
Therefore to measure current writers against Marechera and his peers would be unfair. Times have clearly changed and while Marechera might have been one of a kind, it does not mean that country’s current generation have covered themselves in glory.
Some might doubt that they have the same passion as the literary greats of yesteryear.
“Writing is a tremendously lonely endeavour. David Mungoshi tells me his brother Charles would go off for a while, away from his family and everything familiar when he was writing. In that period he wouldn’t touch alcohol, just kept focused on the job at hand.
“Marechera also never used alcohol or any substance when he was writing. I know sometimes we do it: doodling after a heavy night out but most of the time whatever you write when you’re not in your right mind isn’t any good.
So in this time where noise surrounds us, if the writer can’t ignore it, avoid alcohol and other narcotics, keep a pure mind for as long as the project will last then we won’t have another Marechera or Mungoshi for a while.”
Marechera was a larger than life figure who became the object of a nation’s obsession, perhaps as much for his writing as his character.
Sometimes writers that have tried to emulate him have had his eccentricity without his writing talent or his writing ability without his magnetic charisma.
As the world of literature mourned him again this past week, Zimbabwe might have to come to terms with the fact that lightning rarely strikes twice and one Dambudzo Marechera is all the Southern African country will ever have.