Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
ZIMBABWEAN Hollywood actress, Danai Gurira has credited her mother for bequeathing her with the strength to fight injustice wherever she encounters it, including in Hollywood where she has come across racists who find it hard to swallow that she is a talented creator.
Writing about the Say Nothing, Change Nothing campaign, which tackles stereotypes, the acclaimed actress, playwright and activist recalled an incident that happened when she was nine years old while back in Zimbabwe, which forced her to defend a young woman that was being abused because she was wearing a short skirt.
“When I was nine years old, a student at the University of Zimbabwe, where both my parents were employed, was stripped of her clothes by a pack of men because they decreed her attire “inappropriate,” and her character clearly of ill repute. She “deserved” it. And most agreed. I felt a fire in my belly about how unjust this seemed. Not fully equipped with the language to speak against this, I tried nonetheless. At the University of Zimbabwe Church, many of us kids being the children of academics, I argued with an entire group of them — me versus at least nine or 10 others — ranting about how the men shouldn’t have done that to her no matter what she wore. But finally, one girl cut through my passionate diatribe with a sentence of condemnation, chilling in her conviction: “But Danai, her skirt was really short,”’ Gurira wrote.
Gurira said that she had stood up for a stranger, and was credited to the lineage of women in her family, who constantly fought for what was right.
Danai Gurira
“I think back to that nine-year-old girl defending a woman she didn’t know. Where she got that courage from must be credited to the women who brought me into this world. My mother, Josephine Chiza Gurira, has always had a fire in her belly and a passion for injustice around women and girls. Her mother, Miriam Sherekete Mutambara Chiza, the daughter of a powerful chief during turbulent colonial times, chose to defy several norms — including what level of education she was expected to achieve, who she was expected to marry, and as white colonial men beat my grandfather in then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the Seventies, she stood between him and them, asserting herself as a person who would not stand for their abuse as the daughter of a true leader of her country (my great-grandfather Chief Mutambara). They backed away, surprised that she could even speak English. Defiance, courage may be in my DNA, but I have to recommit to it every day,” she wrote.
Gurira said that fighting spirit had given her courage even in Hollywood, where she was often stereotyped by white men in positions of power who did not believe she was as talented as she was.
“Now, there are times when stereotypes can guise themselves as curiosity. For example, years ago, I was questioned by a now retired TV host of his eponymous show about the creation of the premise of my Broadway play, Eclipsed. He was, shockingly, struggling with the fact that I had created it. As successful as it was, he was seeking to find other players in its inception.
Something I am sure he would not have struggled with had it been one of my fellow white male award-winning playwright counterparts. “Who came up with this?” he probed. My cheeks flushed with shock, and hurt. I mean, really? But I just chuckled as I assured him it was me. I was the creator. Who else? He argued, ‘Oh, I don’t know, it may have been a group effort.’
Diminishing me as a creator, as a playwright, flippantly. This encounter reminds me of how stereotypes can guise themselves as curiosity. But it is not.”