POETRY IN SOLIDARITY

Worldwide poetry readings for democracy and media freedom in Zimbabwe were held on 9 September 2007. British poet Karen Margolis, who was born in Zimbabwe, attended the main reading at the Berlin International Literary Festival as correspondent for Poets Against War.

The power of poetry as a grassroots political medium was vividly demonstrated once again on 9 September 2007, when poets, human rights activists and audiences the world over took part in stage and radio readings for democracy and media freedom in Zimbabwe.

The events followed an appeal launched by Ulrich Schreiber, director of the Berlin International Literature Festival, and signed by over 170 writers in 56 countries, including Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer and many other leading South African authors, along with writers from Congo, China, Korea, Latin America, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Palestine, India and Iran, as well as Europe and North America.

Zimbabwe has become a synonym for post-colonial corruption, in-fighting, economic mismanagement, endemic diseases (especially AIDS), persecution of dissidents, attacks on freedom of speech, and collective punishment of people who refuse to support the ruling ZANU PF party under Robert Mugabe. It is yet another case of a population suffering while democracy is trampled down and the world looks on, expressing shock or regret but doing nothing to help change the situation.

Schreiber explained that he hit on the idea for an international reading for democracy in Zimbabwe on a trip to Africa in 2006. Backed by Germany's Peter Weiss Foundation, he organised the central reading on 9 September at this year's Berlin Literature Festival (4-16 September 2007). Texts by Zimbabwean poets, some little known outside their own country, were circulated to literary organisations and media worldwide in the run-up to 9 September.

The Berlin organisers were particularly pleased that several African radio stations including SKY FM in Zambia and SW Radio Africa, the Goethe Centre in Windhoek (Namibia), PEN centres in Sydney and Slovakia and several university professors in South Africa also actively supported the appeal.

The reading in Berlin was held in English and German, with Olaf Schenk's sensitive German translations of the original English poems. Marianne Heuwagen, director of the German branch of Human Rights Watch, began by outlining present-day conditions. She explained how Zimbabwe has degenerated since liberation in 1980 from being the grain chest of Africa to a country where a quarter of the population is starving, 80% are unemployed and inflation is currently running at 7000%. Not only white people, but also the black population have been driven out of the cities to destroy centres of opposition. Three-quarters of a million people are homeless. The mass media are censored, journalists are intimidated or driven into exile, and Mugabe's political opponents are beaten up and imprisoned without trial, or forced to flee the country.

The great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llhosa took the stage in Berlin with a passionate speech. "The Zimbabwean people are victims of one of the worst dictatorships of our days," he declared. He felt saddened that a country which liberated itself from colonialism over 25 years ago, and initially enjoyed the goodwill of the world, had descended into "crony capitalism" while "the majority of the population is deprived of the elementary tools for survival." But Llhosa urged us to fight pessimistic, fatalist attitudes. "Dictatorships are a human creation, not a natural accident," he concluded. "They can be defeated and replaced by decent, humane governments."

Then Zimbabwean poetry took centre stage, with an interlude between the poems for the reading of a recent essay by Elinor Sisulu, a writer and human rights activist living in South African exile since 1991. Her essay introduces a report on a terrible massacre of thousands of people in 1980 by North Korean-trained government troops in the central Zimbabwe provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands. Murder and mayhem raged there until 1988. The report is called Breaking the Silence because the events it describes remain hidden to this day. Sisulu writes that "indifference, shame, denial, terror, bitter anger and deep trauma" are among the emotions still felt, "depending on whether one is a victim, perpetrator or one of the millions of citizens who remained silent."

The poems from Zimbabwe today reflect all this. Some of the poets are in political exile, while others are left desperately trying to feed and educate their children and keep daily life going. Their writings are often incredibly sad or angry, bitter or ironic. At the same time, they are songs of resistance, radiating an indestructible human spirit.

Poet/singer Chirikuré Chirikuré is one of Zimbabwe's most popular bards. His poem, "Let's Cry with Hope", read at the Berlin meeting by US poet Anne Waldman, ends with the words:

"We should definitely mourn
But let us cry with hope
Tomorrow we shall celebrate"

Waldman also gave a delightful rendering of Chirikuré's ironic poem about the shortage in Zimbabwe of one of life's basic needs:

salt

Asking for salt doesn't mean I am poor
Borrowing salt doesn't mean I am broke
Our salt ran out unexpectedly
Our salt got finished unexpectedly

If the tuck-shop was still there
The kids could have gone out to buy some
Now the tuck-shop is no longer there
It was destroyed by the tsunami

The sadza is ready
The relish is ready
The family is waiting
But salt is not there

Don't think I am mad
You and I know who is mad
Don't think I can't plan
We know who the poor planner is

Please help me with salt
Even a teaspoon measure will do
Please, it's not my fault
Our land has been gripped by evil spirits

Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje contributed to the Berlin event with a reading of Chenjerai Hove's moving poetic letter, "nights with ghosts". A strong critic of Mugabe, Hove has lived in exile since being forced to leave Zimbabwe in 2002.

This was the moment when my 11-year-old son David, sitting beside me, suddenly stopped fiddling with his i-Pod and leaned forward to listen intently. The poem is written as a message from a little boy after Operation Murambatsvina, in which the Zimbabwean government destroyed 700,000 houses.

nights with ghosts

dear samueri, my friend
i will never see you again;
maybe i will.
but i shall not know
until father finds us a new address.
addresses!
we have none anymore.
we are of no address.

now that i have written this letter,
where do i post it to?
shall i say, samueri,
care of the next rubble
harare?

or shall i say,
samueri,
care of all the filth,
salisbury?

our little street,
you remember?
the one without broken glass,
the one where we urinated freely
behind the small market
and our mother called us names
with the sweet voices of mothers?
our little street, with chickens that belonged to no one
in particular, is no longer there:

i don't know your address,
you don't know my address,
samueri,
i am standing on a broken brick,
the only survivor
of our home.
what are you standing on,
samueri?

you see, samueri,
we don't have guns
or spears
or arrows,
or sticks.
tell me,
samueri,
why police,
they bring guns
hammers
anger
blood in their eyes
to destroy our only home?

even teacher mutawu,
he also has no address.
i saw our school in the fire.
i saw our teacher crying,
carried away by police
with guns and anger.

i will continue writing this letter,
samueri
till I know
your address
teacher mutawu's address
my father's work address
my little sister's address
my little dog's address
my mother's address
everyone's address,

care of spca
care of filth department
care of order
care of Caledonia camp,
care of tribal trust land
care of the river bank!
care of cockroach camp!
care of maggots
care of crime and grime
care of state house!

samueri,
tell teacher mutawu,
i want to learn to write
so i can erase memories
of our home
in the rubble.

tell teacher mutawu,
we will meet
when i have grown a beard
and drive a car
like the police car
like the soldiers with guns.

samueri,
i send you only
a broken brick
before they break it again
for the second time
the third time
the fourth time.

a broken brick, a broken heart
a broken father
a broken mother.

samueri, stay strong.
samueri,
beware of falling bricks
and guns.

One of Zimbabwe's greatest contemporary writer/dramatists, Dambudzo Marechera, died in 1987, aged only 35. Anne Waldman closed the reading in Berlin with his militant call for poetry to shout out against oppression:

In jail the only telephone is the washbasin hole: blow and we'll hear!

Write the poem not from classroom lectures
But from the barricade's shrieking defiance
From the mortuary's brightly frozen monocle
From day's gunburst to night's screaming human torch
From bleeding teeth that informed to underground
Perception of black fire

Write the poem not from the rhyme & reason of England
Nor the Israeli chant that stutters bullets against
Palestinians
Nor (for fuck's sake) from the negritude that negroed us
Write the poem, the song, the anthem, from what within
You
Fused goals with guns & created citizens instead of slaves

Do not scream quietly
We want to hear, to know
And forge the breastplate a poet needs against THEM!

Karen Margolis
Berlin, 12 September 2007

Note: The poems quoted above are included in the booklet WORLDWIDE READING for Democracy and Media Freedom in Zimbabwe, available from Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin, Chausseestrasse 5, D-10115 Berlin, Germany

e-mail: worldwidereading@literaturfestival.com

Further information: http://www.literaturfestival.com

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