Chirikure Chirikure blends humour and anger, text and music to achieve a pointed, wicked, risky satire that always hits the mark in contemporary Zimbabwe. Here, we document his journey from humble beginnings in rural Gutu, to achieving a cult following and literary acclaim.
One of Zimbabwes most popular poets, Chirikure Chirikure began his literary career in the 1980s, an era when much Shona literature was celebratory, focusing uncritically on the liberation struggle. By contrast, Chirikure’s poetry was, and continues to be, satiric in tone, lampooning the excesses and indulgences of corrupt, irresponsible leaders who stand in the way of national development.
In the introduction to his anthology, Rukuvhute, Chirikure declares that the purpose of his poetry is to acknowledge society’s cracks . . . in order to prevent our dream crumbling. In performance and in print, Chirikure focuses on the worsening plight of the Zimbabwean people.
Look back and see
Born on 17 March 1962 in Gutu, a rural district of Zimbabwe, Chirikure belongs to the third generation of the country’s writers, if we follow Flora Veit-Wild’s classification of Zimbabwean writers into eras. These writers, born after 1960, experienced childhood and adolescence during the politically turbulent decades of the war when race relations were more polarised than ever before. Like others of this generation writing about the post-independent period, Chirikure frequently introduces flashbacks to the liberation war. As he laments the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans and Africans today, these flashbacks remind the audience of the genesis of our post-independence problems. Like Chinua Achebe, he wants to persuade his readers to look back and see where the rains began to beat us.
Chirikure’s influences derive first and foremost from traditional Shona music performed in his home village during his childhood. The rhythm of Shona village life is always garnished with song and dance, drum and percussion. However, the poet confesses that the pulpit rhetoric of charismatic African Christian teachers inspired some of the devices he employs in his poetry.
Zimbabwe attained independence from Britain in 1980 and it was in that first decade, when Shona was re-affirmed as a national language, that Chirikure began writing and reciting in public, almost always in Shona. From 1984, as a student of History and Shona at the University of Zimbabwe, Chirikure gained new impetus and technique from urban musicians and theatre clubs. It is this poly-inspirational background that has culminated in Chirikures unique and celebrated style of contemporary Shona poetry. He writes poetry in free verse, partly to make it more accessible and partly to follow traditional Shona delivery.
A dream unrealised
After a postgraduate degree in Religious Studies, Chirikure joined College Press as an editor in 1988 and worked with the publishing house for the next seventeen years. During this time, he published his first two anthologies of poetry, Rukuvhute (The umbilical cord) (1989) and Chamupupuri (The whirlwind) (1994). Here, his main preoccupations are revealed. He considers the country’s cultural and political history in order to explore the source of the national dream, to show why ordinary people voluntarily invested their blood in a war of liberation. Now that the nation is free from bondage, his concern is to find out why the dream has not been realised.
From 1984 to the late 1990s, Chirikure performed with several music and theatre groups. Currently, he performs solo, occasionally without musical backing but usually to the accompaniment of mbira (the thumb piano associated with spirituality and the ancestors). On occasion, he uses poetry as a teaching instrument, for example in HIV/AIDS campaigns. To date, he has produced one album, Napukeni (napkin/nappy), with the support of the musical group, DeteMbira. His first attempt to record musical poetry, the album draws on his published work, just as his performances do.
The poet’s vision of post-independent Zimbabwe is analytical and critical. In all three of anthologies published to date Rukuvhute (The umbilical cord, 1989), Chamupupuri (The whirlwind, 1994) and Hakurarwi (We shall not sleep, 1998) he advocates for a genuine recommitment to the goals of the liberation war: patriotism and social reform.
Chirikure’s is a dynamic but reflective authorial ideology. He continues to address the failure of the national leadership to transform the country for the benefit of the people who, over almost a century of colonialism, suffered dislocation from their cultural values and ancestral resources, especially land.
Post published in: Arts