African Laughter

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by 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.

  GLOSSARY

  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’.

  Acknowledgments

  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.

  About the Author

  DORIS LESSING 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.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  PRAISE 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 blac
k 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

  Also by Doris Lessing

  NOVELS

  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

  SHORT STORIES

  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

  OPERA

  The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (Music by Philip Glass)

  POETRY

  Fourteen Poems

  NONFICTION

  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

  Copyright

  AFRICAN LAUGHTER: FOUR VISITS TO ZIMBABWE. Copyright © 1992 by Doris Lessing. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195201-2

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  * Doctor Huggins was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia for many years. During Federation, as Lord Malvern, he was Prime Minister of the Federation for the year 1956 while Garfield Todd was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia.

  * South Africa is usually referred to as The Republic.

  * I am told the word ‘tribe’ is unacceptable. One should say, ethnic group. But everyone knows what ‘tribe’ means. Most people I think would find ‘ethnic group’ confusing, certainly at the time this book is being written.

  * Farm animals have at regular intervals to be made to swim through a bath of chemically treated water to kill the insects which cause disease.

  * It turns out that many of the Secret Police under the whites went on working under the blacks.

  * The Japanese are building Zimbabwe a telephone system.

 

 

 


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