These Bones Will Rise Again by Panashe Chigumadzi

Published by The Indigo Press 2018 as part of the Mood Indigo Essay Series

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couldn’t think of a way to start so began mid idea

—-full of names – of people, of places, of events, but of people people people more than anything else;

I don’t know if Chigumadzi literally believes in the literal reincarnation of spirits that she writes about as a cultural belief in Zimbabwe, but this doesn’t matter, as there is no need to denigrate the beliefs of others when expressing ideas;

—–names of those who people believe have reoccurred are powerful and important, as too are the names of people, of individuals, who existed but were not the bodily vessels for the reincarnation of an ancient spirit, because not all of us can be…

Names and individuals are important.

As an essay against the Europhallocentric idea of history as the deeds of “Big Men”, by focusing on the real and the small individuals – some men, yes, but often women (and not all of them presented as virtuous heroes or mere victims of male violence) – and naming them, draws attention to and evidences, proves, the thesis…

It is a history of Zimbabwe, a history of decolonisation and the errors that were made when shifting away from minority colonial rule, and also when shifting away from dictatorship (the book covers the period of time when Mugabe’s just under 40 year run as President came to an end (and not at a time of his choosing)…)

It’s crisp, clear writing, and the level of detail about politics, about historical and contemporary political actors (as in people active in politics, not actors who act in political dramas or something) and though the depth and breadth of detail means that I often lost the flow and the thread of history, I very much understood that were I a better reader, were I reading more slowly or with more knowledge, or if I was looking up the people and the books and the photos and the music that Chigumadzi references here then I would have understood a lot more…

It’s an intriguing and interesting text, offering discussions of family and ancestry and how these inform identity when not living in an ancestral location (Chigumadzi was born in Zimbabwe but has lived almost the entirety of her life in South Africa); it is about the varying spiritualities of this part of the world and the real life mythologies of political figures and how the intersection of histories (realities and fictions) are manipulated in the present… It is about exploitation and colonialism, about dictatorial rule and about false promises, false equivalencies, about about about-

It’s a big and serious and weighty, detailed essay, collated from textual research and also from lots of oral testimony: this text is far from simple.

What this reflexivity and research-led nature means is that These Bones Will Rise Again is not a speech, is not “urgent” or immediately potent and provocative… But why should these be seen as important things for political writing?

This is informed, informative, engaging; it is document and documentary, it is political essay and it is travel journal, it is a personal family story and it is the story of a country, too.

It’s worth a read. Especially if you’ve read lots of Doris Lessing recently and want a more up-to-date (and less white) literary exploration of the politics of that part of the world.

Order direct from The Indigo Press via this link