Home Writing A call to domesticate a writing lifestyle

A call to domesticate a writing lifestyle

by Lisa A. Yeager

A few days earlier than Africa Day, Zimbabwe certainly lost one of its illustrious sons – Cde Dumiso Dabengwa, affectionately recognized using compatriots as “The Black Russian” or the “Intelligence Supremo.” One via one, those illustrious sons of our soil are referred to as through the writer, leaving a massive void of institutional reminiscence desperately wanted as an inspirational springboard for future generations.

Describing the past due nationalist as principled and imaginative, President Mnangagwa stated Cde Dabengwa’s heroics rank high among the pioneering generations of early nationalists and freedom combatants. Summarising Cde Dabengwa’s life history, President Mnangagwa said, “As we mourn his untimely departure, our entire nation is lifted through the story of his life and that of his era, a tale which smartly interweaves with our own story as human beings within the battle for independence and Statehood.”

A call to domesticate a writing lifestyle 2

Herein lies the problem.

Most liberation warfare stalwarts are a wealthy reservoir of our u. S .’s records; however, only a few have taken their time to file their memories in order not best to complement our war narrative but to paintings as inspirational springboards for future generations.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Professor Arthur Mutambara has expressed his exasperation approximately the lack of a writing subculture inside the u. S. A.

Mutambara said it changed into a tragedy of enormous proportions. Former President Robert Mugabe has not written a single e-book approximately the adventure he has traveled thus far.

Except only some like Joshua Nkomo, Cephas Msipa, Maurice Nyagumbo, Didymus Mutasa, Dzinashe Machingura, Agrippa Mutambara, Fay Chung, Freedom Nyamubaya, Alexander Kanengoni, Edgar Tekere, and Edison Zvobgo – there has never been a subculture of writing amongst comrades.

Someone desires to remind those cadres of the cost of storytelling. Chinua Achebe placed it succinctly while he says:

Most effective the tale.Can retain past the war and the warrior.

It is the story that outlives the sound of battle drums and the exploits of courageous fighters.

It is the tale. That saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.

The story is our escort; without it, we’re blind.

Does the blind guy personal his escort? No, neither do we the tale; rather, it’s for the story that owns us and directs us.” – Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

While in years long gone via we used to have griots that had been custodians of a country’s historiography, the arrival of the written word has made it easier for one technology to bestow to the next its reports, trials, and tribulations. It has made it possible to skip on the national memory.

In Achebe’s words, the written word is beautiful in that once exceeded down, and it gives us a 2nd cope with reality. We want Africans to research something from Achebe’s recommendation for it’s far authentic that the written and literature in preferred have each social and political significance.

The written word is a great deal more than a creative ornament. It offers an essential angle on regular experience, educates us on the meaning of our moves, and offers us more manage over our social and personal lives.

We need to broaden a tradition of writing for this type of subculture serves a dual cause.

It educates each African and other nationalities wishing to have a better know-how of us as a people and reinstate a sense of pride in African cultures. Documenting their non-public histories and contribution to the liberation of a nationalist like Cde Dabengwa would no longer assist society in regaining belief in itself and put away the complexes of years of denigration and self-debasement.

Imagine how lots of expertise and records we’d have lost if Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Almicar Cabral, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Thomas Sankara, or even Muammar Gadaffi had now not written something approximately their lives, their philosophies, notion and fashionable perspective on several troubles.

The written word is crucial. It is the written word that, nowadays nonetheless, encourages hundreds of thousands of people who comply with Jesus Christ, for his word is enshrined inside the Holy Bible.

It is said that Cde Dabengwa has passed on without having authored his memoirs. His loss of life should, in reality, be a wake-up call for other nationalists, freedom combatants, and the general population in documenting their testimonies for destiny generations.

We need to hold writing our testimonies from our angle. No one story is absolute but mixed they increase a character and a nation. We need to transport far from what Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie calls the “single story narrative” this is specially manufactured through individuals who least apprehend us or have a forked manner of looking at us.

We hope nearby historians like Pathisa Nyathi will take it as a countrywide obligation to document the records of stalwarts like Cde Dabengwa – the person whose dedication to his country has become truly beyond reproach. A country-wide icon who sacrificed interest for the good of his native land.

Related Posts