African Laughter (57 page)
Authors: Doris Lessing
PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA, AND THEN
MOZAMBIQUE
While in Southern Rhodesia the black guerilla armies fought in the bush, in Portuguese East Africa the blacks fought against the Portuguese. They won, years before the birth of Zimbabwe. This war was headed by Frelimo, or the Liberation Front, whose leader was Samora Machel, a man with every quality of the popular hero. He was clever and brave, handsome and witty, and it seems would have successfully headed a government able to make Mozambique a comfortable place to live in. He was killed in a plane crash in 1986 that was almost certainly engineered by the South African secret police. When white Southern Rhodesia ended, Renamo, which was a creation of the white Southern Rhodesians to undo Frelimo, was taken over by the South Africans. Renamo–National Resistance Movement–that is, resistance against Frelimo–was armed and financed by South Africa and it destroyed Mozambique, and forced millions of refugees out into Malawi and Zimbabwe. Renamo bands continue to burn, steal, rape and murder: South Africa may have called its dogs to heel, but not effectively. When Samora Machel was killed, he was succeeded as President by Jaochim Chissano, a man with probably the least enviable job in the world.
Southern Rhodesia, landlocked, had its railway to the port in Beira, and landlocked Zimbabwe has been largely dependent on this railway, this port, and the pipeline bringing in oil. It is Zimbabwe’s armies who have protected railway and pipeline, repeatedly repairing both as they were blown up during the fighting. And, too, just as poor and precarious Zambia helped the guerillas fighting the white governments of Southern Rhodesia and Malawi, which meant its territory was bombed and sometimes even its towns from Southern Rhodesia, so, now, Zimbabwe has helped Frelimo against the common enemy, South Africa.
The bond between these countries was nominally marxist, but the real bond remains–how to keep control of their countries and their policies against outside pressures.
And what will happen now that South Africa has had its change of heart? I think it should be asked what those hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women are doing whose occupation has gone–trained to sabotage, destroy, undermine, destabilize their neighbouring black countries. Are these clever and cunning and brutal people now sitting back smiling benevolently while Mozambique, which they have destroyed, tries to restore itself? While Botswana, where they sent agents to murder and sabotage, becomes prosperous? While Zimbabwe, where they fomented every kind of disaffection, becomes peaceful and united? Well, how are these people spending their time these days?
THE AGRICULTURE
Under the whites most Africans lived in the Native Reserves, where they were put when the whites took the good land for their own farms. There were also Native Purchase Areas where blacks could buy land. The existence of these prosperous black farmers is one reason for the success of Zimbabwe’s agriculture. After Liberation the Reserves became Communal Areas. The Resettlement Areas are where blacks are settled on previously unsettled land (of which there is still a great deal left) or on previously white-owned land. The Resettlement Areas were originally meant to be something like the Kolkhozes in the Soviet Union, never mind that they were so conspicuously unsuccessful. Now the exact terms on which these newly settled farmers will hold their land is being debated.
Words borrowed from Afrikaans
vlei | a valley |
kopje | a hill |
skellum | bad person or animal, a rascal, a crook |
lager | a camp, a defended place |
mealies | maize |
donga | a gully |
drop | a small town or village |
spoor | tracks–of animals, of people |
biltong | dried meat |
Word borrowed from Swahili
boma | a safe place, a headquarters |
Words borrowed from the Portuguese
Chef | a boss, a leader |
povos | the poor |
viva! | hail! hurrah! |
Indigenous words
mombies | cattle |
sadza | a stiff porridge made of maize meal |
nganga | a shaman, male or female, a ‘witchdoctor’ |
mudzimo | a spirit or soul |
musasa | the most common tree in Mashonaland |
guti | mist |
honkey | slang word for a white. Because whites talk through their noses, say Africans. Should there be degrees of honkiness, with the French and the Americans at an extreme end of the scale? |
Notes
The Matabele | the inhabitants of Matabeleland. But more and more they are called the Ndebele which is the word once used for the language. Once the Matabele lived in Matabeleland and spoke Ndebele, but now the Ndebele live in Matabeleland and speak Ndebele. |
The Mashona | Similarly, the Mashona lived in Mashonaland and spoke Shona. More and more the Shona live in Mashonaland and speak Shona. |
The War | It was called the Liberation War, or, popularly, the War in the Bush, and the fighters on the black side were the Freedom Fighters, or the Boys in the Bush, or the Comrades. Or, from another point of view, Terrorists or the ‘terrs’. |
With most particular gratitude to
Dr Antony Chennells of the University
of Zimbabwe for his help, his patience,
his generosity, the energy of his
commitment to Zimbabwe and his
knowledge of the history of Southern
Africa. Gratitude, too, for the use of his
library of books and material from the
earliest days of the country.
And my most grateful thanks to the
members of the Book Team of the
Community Publishing Programme.
This programme was initiated by
the Ministry of Community and
Co-operative Development. The
Women’s Book, the third in the series,
is being jointly produced with the
Ministry of Political Affairs.
And with grateful thanks to Peter Garlake
for generously sharing his expert
knowledge of Bushmen painting in
South Africa.
Acknowledgements to:
Anton Chekhov,
The Island. A Journey to
Sakhalin
; Loren Eiseley,
The Unexpected
Universe; The Independent
for material
used in articles; F. C. Selous,
Travel and
Adventure in South-East Africa;
Lloyd
Timberlake,
Africa in Crisis; The Times
obituary page; D. C. De Waal,
With
Rhodes in Mashonaland; The Observer,
Jan Raath.
D
ORIS
L
ESSING
was born of British parents in Persia in 1919, and moved with her family to Southern Rhodesia when she was five years old. She went to England in 1949 and has lived there ever since. She is the author of more than thirty books—novels, stories, reportage, poems and plays. Doris Lessing lives in London.
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FOR AFRICAN LAUGHTER
“One of the most penetrating and evenhanded critiques of Zimbabwe as a new nation…. What Lessing does superbly in this book is make us realize that Zimbabwe has a rich life and history of its own, in every way as fascinating, complicated, tragic and deserving of study and empathy as that of South Africa…. An exhilarating memoir.”
—Mark Mathabane,
Washington Post Book World
“In addition to an extraordinary glimpse of a writer investigating her own memories, the book provides an engrossing exploration of the responses of Zimbabwe’s white residents to the black majority government and of the dreams and failures of that government. At the same time the book offers a stunned, angry and nostalgic eulogy for the animals and forests of that country…. One can only hope that these will not be Lessing’s last words on Zimbabwe.”
—Roz Spafford,
San Francisco Chronicle
“Elegant and elegaic…. Lessing’s writing is breezy and magisterial at the same time, and she is a wise and even jolly companion…. She has the eye of a Nikon, no detail escapes her.”
—Richard Stengel,
Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Brilliant…. She captures the contradictions in a young nation.”
—Vincent Crapanzano,
New York Times Book Review
“Her gentle, principled sanity makes her an excellent commentator on this country to which, once a prodigal, she returns an eminence.”
—
New York
magazine
“Ms. Lessing states that being in love with a country is a tricky business: ‘You get your heart broken even more surely than by being in love with a person.’
African Laughter
is the touching, beautifully written story of a broken heart. The laughter is to hold back the tears.”
—Frank Ruddy,
Wall Street Journal
“An idiosyncratic, entertaining book that does what travel literature should, it makes the reader long to see Zimbabwe.”
—Gene Lyons,
Entertainment Weekly
“The human raw material of hope is present [in Zimbabwe], and it is in dealing with human raw material that Doris Lessing has always excelled.”
—Christopher Hitchens,
Newsday
“Incredibly powerful reading.”
—Louise Bernikow,
Cosmopolitan
“Inimitably forthright…. Always the fair-minded realist, Lessing isn’t overly optimistic about the future, but her sympathetic account of Zimbabwe’s struggle to forge a common destiny is most worthwhile.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“A powerfully written, passionately felt memoir by a writer of conscience.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Highly recommended…. A fascinating look at life in Zimbabwe from someone who has an intimate knowledge of the country.”
—
Library Journal
N
OVELS
The Grass Is Singing
The Golden Notebook
Briefing for a Descent into Hell
The Summer Before the Dark
The Memoirs of a Survivor
The Diaries of Jane Somers:
The Diary of a Good Neighbor
If the Old Could…
The Good Terrorist
The Fifth Child
“Canopus in Argos: Archives” series
Re: Colonized Planet 5, Shikasta
The Marriages Between Zones
Three, Four and Five
The Sirian Experiments
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire
“Children of Violence” series
Martha Quest
A Proper Marriage
A Ripple from the Storm
Landlocked
The Four-Gated City
S
HORT
S
TORIES
This Was the Old Chiefs Country
The Habit of Loving
A Man and Two Women
The Temptation of Jack Orkney and Other stories
Stories
African Stories
The Real Thing: Stories and Sketches
O
PERA
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8
(Music by Philip Glass)
P
OETRY
Fourteen Poems
N
ONFICTION
In Pursuit of the English
Particularly Cats
Going Home
A Small Personal Voice
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
The Wind Blows Away Our Words
Particularly Cats…and Rufus
The Doris Lessing Reader