Appearance of power on Jidada Square: “Cows mooed, cats meowed, sheep bleated, bulls roared, ducks croaked, donkeys hooted, goats bleated, horses whinnied, pigs grunted, chickens cackled, peacocks screeched and geese cackled (…)” This cheering is unbelievable, and then it trotts to the lectern, on its hoofs, the old horse, His Excellency the Father of the Nation. At his side the donkey Dr. Sweet Mother, who once ordered her PhD from the University of Jidada. The people would do well to cheer, for this force is supported by the troop of dogs, Defenders, whose raging fury will be discussed later.
With “Glory” (Suhrkamp), NoViolet Bulawayo has written a fabulous novel whose dedication reads “For all Jidadas, everywhere”. But of course you can see in Jidada, as it spreads here, the country of her childhood and youth, Zimbabwe. And behind the old horse, as he speaks to his children here in smug kindness, appears Robert Mugabe, who emerged as prime minister from the turmoil of war surrounding the end of the British colonial government.
NoViolet Bulawayo, born Elizabeth Zandile Tshele in 1981, took her surname after the place where she grew up until she fled to Detroit with her aunt at the age of 18. “Glory” is her second novel, a more than 400-page song that goes beyond the country of her origin and tells of the struggle of many African countries for self-determination, of the corrupt squad of their leaders, of terror and the tender hopes.
With the help of the Defender, the old horse is overthrown, a young rival, Tuvy, promises the #freefaircredible election, all he’s eyeing is an end to western sanctions. And then the insanity of hero worship and kleptocracy begins at a next level. There’s a chapter in the beat of Twitter posts, there’s the voice-gathering of angry Jidadians who spend their days waiting in line. Mirroring her animal story, Bulawayo recreates reality with an immense wealth of detail.
The Munich translator Jan Schönherr translated the text into German and received a working grant from the Free State of Bavaria last year. He has recreated a compellingly swinging sound, as will certainly be understood at a reading in the Literaturhaus. Bulawayo builds sentences like long vocal lines, rhythmized with conjunctions, works with repetitions and leitmotifs. “Tholukuthi” is the main word fanfare. Not really translatable, it is used more as an interjection, as a reinforcement of certain statements, a highlighter in the text.
The language pulses through this story like the blood
This language pulses like blood through this story, which is not a history lesson but something very personal. As if they had been waiting for them, the Jidadians watched the appearance of the skinny goat with the purple hard-shell suitcase. A missing daughter, Destiny, returns home to her mother, who hasn’t heard from her in over a decade and has nearly gone insane.
This return is one to one’s own history. The old goat will tell the young goat on April 18, 1983 in her hometown of Bulawayo. As the Defenders rounded up the residents and the clubs came down on their bodies, it sprayed. Things will happen on April 18 that are so terrible that even in animal form you can hardly tell them: “There are simply no words for this – there never were and there never will be,” says the old goat . The massacres by Mugabe’s henchmen in Zimbabwe are known as “gukurahundi,” an ugly euphemism for rain that washes away the chaff before the spring rains arrive.
Young goat Destiny will go to the abandoned village of Bulawayo and talk to the dead. And she will start writing. “Glory” is a novel of shamanic power. The rhythm of his sentences is a new acquisition of language in order to be able to name things. It’s not about memory in the neurological sense, it’s about evocation through the magic of words. At the end, the text opens for the vision. The power of the eternal rulers seeps away like water. And the resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of a community. A new jidada.
NoViolet Bulawayo: Glory, reading: Wed., June 28, 7 p.m., Literaturhaus, with Stefan Wilkening, moderated by Günter Keil, www.literaturhaus-muenchen.de