“I was surprised that the state was able to attack two middle-aged women like us”

2023-11-16 22:00:51

BarcelonaZimbabwe, the country where Tsitsi Dangarembga (Mutoko, 1959) lives and writes, did not exist as such when she was a child. It was in 1965, that the unilateral declaration of independence of Rhodesia took place, and that land, until then under British control, began a long road towards emancipation that culminated in 1980 with the creation of a new been Four decades later, Zimbabwe is reeling from such serious problems as government corruption and rising unemployment and drug use among young people. Dangarembga debuted as a writer in 1989 with Permanent neguit, a novel that traces the transition from childhood to adolescence by a young woman, Tambudzai, who wants to study at all costs to leave behind the life tied to the earth. The girl’s intimate and familiar story has been translated into Catalan by Aurora Ballester and published in L’Agulla Daurada, and the author recently received the PEN Free Voice award “for her commitment to the values ​​of feminism and the struggle anti-colonial”.

Since debuting with Permanent neguit, has let more than a decade pass between each novel. the last one, This mournable body (This sad body, 2018), is the most disenchanted of all. Because?

— It is the one that takes place closest to the present, in the decade of the 90s, and it is the moment when the symptoms of Zimbabwe’s decline began to become evident. Independence did not mean that the majority of people stopped being poor, that they had access to education and that they acquired a social conscience.

Thirty years later, even someone like you, a renowned writer and filmmaker, has had problems with her country’s justice system.

— We have gone to worse. I participated in an anti-corruption demonstration with a friend, Julie Barnes, in July 2020, and we were arrested. I was shocked that the state was able to assault two middle-aged women like us for demanding a better country. The trial has lasted three years.

And what was the result?

— We were found guilty. But we appealed, and on May 8 the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. Now I am a free citizen again. It has been a difficult process, during which I have had to leave the life I was leading hanging.

All he could do was gather his items, Black and female [Dona i negra, 2022]which are an evolution of feminist thought that we already find in Permanent neguitstarring a girl, Tambudzai, who has to fight to be able to go to school.

— Being a girl in a traditional society like that of the 50s and 60s meant that you couldn’t decide anything. You just did what you were asked.

His older brother, Nhamo, is the one chosen by the family to study.

— The brother has the privilege of being a boy. The novel explores the situation of inequality within the same family.

The first sentence of the book is impressive: “I was not sad when my brother died,” Tambudzai writes in the first person.

— Tambudzai is very clear that she wants to study, and she will do whatever it takes to achieve it. The privileges that the brother has cause him a lot of anxiety.

I was surprised that the state was able to assault two middle-aged women like us to claim a better country”

The parents are farmers and live off the land. It is his uncle who runs the mission school where the children will study. In his case, it was the parents, who were the teachers, right?

– Yes. The novel is not autobiographical, but it does show the reality of a part of my family. In my country it was common to help distant relatives who had financial problems. In those years, 85% of the black population lived in rural areas. Now that percentage has dropped to 60%.

It talks about the last years of colonialism and Zimbabwe’s independence process from the point of view of a humble family.

— Going to school brought you closer to the colonizers, in my country, because the teachers were often chaplains, and the chaplains belonged to the religion the government was interested in.

In the book there is a process of losing the family language at the same time as the English of schooling gains ground.

— My two languages ​​are Shona and English. I lived in the UK until we moved back to Zimbabwe and I started school. One of the things that surprises me the most, even today, is the great value given to English. I think that the more languages ​​you know, the better you can know the world. But the majority opinion is different. In fact, what is happening in Zimbabwe is that there is a very large backsliding of Shona speakers, which is the majority language. Even in rural areas of the country people speak a mixture of Shona and English. There is a part of our identity that is being lost.

You were one of the first female writers in Zimbabwe to publish.

— There were authors who wrote in local languages, but none in English. I wrote the novel while studying Psychology at university. When I finished it, I sent it to the English publisher who had published Alice Walker [autora d’El color porpra]and the book spent four years in a basement.

Because?

— Until I visited the publisher, they had not looked at the book. There are voices we are not ready to hear yet. Perseverance is very important: you have to believe that the story you have to tell is worth it.

After the novel was published and received very good reviews, it took a long time to write. Then he studied cinema in Germany. He ended up directing several films from Zimbabwe.

— I have always defended that writers can work from our countries. This is very difficult, in Africa. There are very few places where the conditions are right for this to happen: I can only think of South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. If we leave our continent it is difficult for us to tell authentic stories of the people who live there. After exporting our bodies and stripping us of the earth, the West now wants our creativity.

Do you want to write about the present of your country?

— I’m doing it. There are many problems in Zimbabwe, for now. Unemployment among young people is very high – barely 10% have an employment contract – and this has led to an increase in drug use. There has been a regression in access to education among girls after the pandemic. Child marriages have increased, and child prostitution has also increased.