An interview with Owen Sheers
Owen Sheers wrote about his return to Zimbabwe in ‘Road Trip’, which is free to read online. Granta’s online editor Ollie Brock spoke to Sheers about his reasons for returning and what he found there.
OB: You first went to Zimbabwe to write a book about Arthur Cripps, an English missionary who moved there in 1901. What made you pick this subject?
OS: When I first discovered Cripps I felt very passionate about rescuing what appeared to me to be a remarkable man and a remarkable story – both of which had been somewhat covered by the sands of time here in Britain. I was 24 at the time and felt humbled by his moral shadow, and the scale of his endeavour. Here was a man who stood resolutely against the currents of contemporary thought when it came to the rights of Africans at the turn of the century, who devoted his life to trying to provide a voice for the voiceless. What also made him fascinating, though, were the contradictions in his story. He was also a missionary, a position which would seem to stand at odds with other areas of his life, particularly his desire to minimise the influence of the western world upon the Shona he lived and worked amongst.
As my relationship with the book progressed other motivations entered the frame. I found myself travelling through Zimbabwe in 1999 and 2000 when the early land disputes were starting. There seemed to be a very definite conversation between my experiences in Zimbabwe then and Arthur’s in Southern Rhodesia 100 years earlier. It was from that moment on that I hoped I could also use Arthur’s life as a lens through which to explore aspects of Zimbabwe’s history, to tell the story of a country through the story of a man – and, I suppose, vice versa.
What is the greatest change in Zimbabwe that you've observed since that trip?
Zimbabweans are still some of the most resilient, optimistic people on the planet, but the shared pride in Zimbabwe that was evident everywhere I travelled in 1999 has been vastly eroded by a decade of neglect, economic hardships and ruthless political intimidation. The saddest thing I’ve heard in Zimbabwe in recent years, more than once, is when a black Zimbabwean tells me they wish the country was under Ian Smith again. This is the extent to which Mugabe’s ZANU PF has demoralised their own population, to a point when some would rather be treated as second-class citizens under a racist administration than endure the contemporary situation. Beyond this emotional and psychological change there has been all the fraying of the country’s infrastructure of course – the blackouts, the pot-holed roads, the food shortages in a nation that once exported food aid to its neighbours, rather than imported it.
What challenges do writers face in Zimbabwe? What benefits can they bring?
A few years ago I taught a short course to promising young writers in Bulawayo. Some of the difficulties they told me about were very much connected with the mechanics of writing. No power for their computers, or light to write by. A shortage of books to read for influence and inspiration. And then there were issues of censorship too - experienced more by playwrights than novelists or poets, as far as I could tell. In some of the short story writers I met the response to this sometimes manifested itself in pieces of stunning surrealism or post-realist fiction. One playwright recently told me that what most concerned him at the moment was that although there was work for playwrights, so much of it was writing pieces for NGOs and educational theatre, that he felt the very quality of Zimbabwean theatrical writing was suffering as a result – that ‘issue’ theatre was killing a genuine dramatic tradition.
On a broader canvas, I think one of the challenges that Zimbabean writers face is finding a wider international audience prepared to look beyond the ‘known’ stories of Zimbabwe. I’ve been very struck that over the last 10 to 15 years most of the books about Zimbabwe (mine included) were written by white Zimbabeans or European visitors. There are plenty of writers in Zimbabwe, and plenty of good ones too, but it seemed as though it was still the white writers who had access to the international publishing scene. Thankfully that is starting to change, with writers such as Petina Gappah finding wider audiences, as with some remarkable home-grown Zimbabwean publishers such as amabooks still publishing vibrantly, determined that more Zimbabwean voices from inside Zimbabwe are heard on the world stage.
As for benefits? Who knows. I do believe that a well written piece of imaginative prose or poetry has the potential to penetrate further, and stay with a reader longer, than hundreds of factual articles. That by engaging readers’ hearts, heads and ears simultaneously, writers can bring Zimbabwe today springing off the page. I also think that it’s important for Zimbabwe to see herself reflected in fiction and poetry. When that reflection starts to fade is when a country and a people can start to seem invisible. I think Arthur Cripps understood this, changing the views of western readers by being the first to write pastoral poetry about the daily life of Shona farmers, treating them as equals in literature so that one day they might be given that status in their real lives too.
What did you learn on this recent trip that the media and your research couldn’t have told you?
Many things, some of which I can’t commit to print. Mostly, though, I was surprised by the optimism I found in Zimbabwe. As I suggest, this was partly fuelled by the recent dollarization. But in many areas it went deeper than that. One politician told me that change is a process, not an event, and that even if they’re not there yet, Zimbabweans really believe that process has now begun. I sincerely hope for their sake that he, and they, are right.
Read Owen Sheers’ essay ‘Road Trip’, part of the online edition of Granta 111: Going Back.