HOVE, Chenjerai

---

Nationality: Zimbabwean. Born: 1956. Education: Attended the Catholic Marist Brothers schools, Kutama and Dete, 1970s; trained as a teacher, Gweru; studied literature and education, University of South Africa; University of Zimbabwe, 1984. Career: Has worked as a teacher and also as editor for several publishers, including Mambo Press, Gweru, 1984. Writer-in-residence, University of Zimbabwe. Founding member, and chairman, 1984–92, Zimbabwe Writers Union. Awards: Zimbabwe Book Publishers Literary award, and Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, both 1989, both for Bones.

Publications

Poetry

Up in Arms. Harare, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1982.

Red Hills of Home. Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 1985.

Shadows. Harare, Zimbabwe, Baobab Books, and London, Heinemann, 1991.

Rainbows in the Dust. Harare, Zimbabwe, Baobab Books, 1998.

Play

Radio Play: Sister Sing Again Someday, 1989.

Novels

Masimba Avanhu? Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 1986.

Bones. Harare, Zimbabwe, Baobab Books, and Cape Town, David Philip, 1988; Oxford and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Heinemann, 1990.

Ancestors. Harare, Zimbabwe, College Press, and London, Picador, 1996.

Other

Guardians of the Soil: Meeting Zimbabwe's Elders. Harare, Zimbabwe, Baobab Books, and Munich, Germany, Frederking and Thaler Verlag, 1996.

Shebeen Tales: Messages from Harare. Harare, Zimbabwe, Baobab Books, 1994; London, Serif, 1997.

*

Critical Studies: "Power, Popular Consciousness, and the Fictions of War: Hove's 'Bones' and Chinodya's 'Harvest of Thorns"'" by Liz Gunner, in African Languages and Cultures (Oxford, England), 4 (1), 1991; "Language Thieves: English-Language Strategies in Two Zimbabwean Novellas" by Dan Wylie, in English in Africa (Grahamstown, South Africa), 18 (2), October 1991; "'"I Do Not Know Her, but Someone Ought to Know Her': Chenjerai Hove's 'Bones"'" by Annie Gagiano, in World Literature Written in English (Singapore), 32–33 (2–1), 1992–93; "'"Dances with Bones': Hove's Romanticized Africa" by Flora Veit-Wild, in Research in African Literatures (Bloomington, Indiana), 24 (3), fall 1993; "Self-Definition As a Catalyst for Resistance in Hove's 'Bones"'" by Pauline Kaldas, in Alif (Cairo), 13, 1993; "'"The Fading Songs of Chimurenga': Chenjerai Hove and the Subversion of Nationalist Politics in Zimbabwean Literature" by Mxolisi R. Sibanyoni, in African Studies (Wits, South Africa), 54 (2), 1995; "The New Zimbabwe Writing and Chimurenga" by Angus Calder, in Wasafiri (England), 22, autumn 1995; "Thinking about Nativism in Chenjerai Hove's Work" by Matthew Engelke, in Research in African Literatures (Columbus, Ohio), 29 (2), summer 1998.

*  *  *

Chenjerai Hove is a writer who grew up acutely conscious of the injustices imposed upon Africans during the colonial era. The year 1980 was of historical importance to Hove and Zimbabwe, as it was the year of independence from colonial rule. His voice is Zimbabwean, speaking of the Zimbabwean experience yesterday and today and perhaps implicitly warning us of tomorrow. It is born out of Zimbabwe's short, painful history, impartial to oppressor or oppressed. In the 1970s Hove attended Catholic schools and then trained as a teacher in Gweru and pursued degree studies in literature and education. It was during this time that some of his love poems and stories in Shona were published. Fourteen of his poems in English were particularly inspired by the war of liberation that he witnessed as a secondary school teacher and were published in 1980 in And Now the Poets Speak. Hove's status as a serious writer was confirmed with the publication of Up in Arms and Red Hills of Home. He has continued to distinguish himself in his writings in English and in Shona, the latter being used mostly in love poems, as it was the traditional form he grew up with. In his works he is haunted by the plight of the weak and vulnerable members of society who are powerless to defend themselves against the dominant historical and social forces.

In an interview conducted by Flora Wild, Hove revealed many intimate aspects of his writing. He shares the vision of Wilfred Owen, who also wrote about the absurdity of the war and the universality of human experience. In addition, Hove was influenced by two Africans writing in English: Okot p'Bitek, whose imagery Hove found to be particularly African, and Chinua Achebe, whose writings were expressive of an African experience. Regarding Up in Arms, Hove has said, "I question a lot of what we do in the name of civilization, for example the sophisticated methods of killing and things like that. So I do that deliberately to look at our society and shock our society into looking at itself more critically because it has destroyed itself to a point where, as I say, it is making mince-meat out of the human body." By implication he concedes that life is essentially painful, yet he has seen enough to know that without pain there is no pleasure and vice versa. Up in Arms is a commentary on the Zimbabwean struggle, treating such themes as dying in the bush and in the village and supporting the freedom fighters. The compactness of the work is illustrated by the fusion of the two parallel ideas of the anxious waiting of a pregnant woman and of a wife for the return of her husband from battle; both involve pain, pleasure, and resentment. In Up in Arms Hove creates paradoxical expressions by juxtaposing seemingly incompatible words or lines to force the reader to focus on something beyond, beneath, or in between the words. This can be seen, for example, in "A War-Time Wife," where the woman is

   Torpedoed with bulging wars
   and swelling with fragrant hope …
   Till one day, may be night,
   raids rupture hope and expectancy.

In "Death of a Soldier" Hove uses words in new combinations to enable us to experience directly through the various levels of his poetic medium:

   flooded with a christened hate …
   He died to haunt the soulless
   and to cleanse the earth he manured;
   Praise the living
   With well-nourished greens.

Another technique employed by Hove is the use of silence. By allowing silence to speak for him, he forces the reader to be still. Once the reader is still, he is aware of the poem as an energy force and of the life-death struggle of flesh and blood. In the poem "To Father at Home," for example, one can almost touch the unspoken loneliness and despair that exist in the space between the lines. The horror of the Zimbabwean drought is evoked in these lines:

   If it doesn't fall
   The droplets roam the sky
   and the clouds swell with us.
   If it doesn't fall,
   then, father,
   it's we
   Who have to fall.

Hove's language is simple, and the intention is to express the Zimbabwean experience in an everyday language by referring to the village people's struggle for independence without direct mention of the war. Through his poems, Hove is trying to restore man to himself as he was when he was still free, before he was in the situation of the oppressor and the oppressed.

In Red Hills of Home Hove again uses the themes of pain, wounds, and scars. His images are arbitrary, and the vague feeling of despair makes the reader ponder the cause of suffering. Hove leaves this out of his poems, however, letting the physical reality remain a mystery. In Rainbows in the Dust we hear the same voice, passionate, gentle, strong, and haunted by shadows and visions and often by quiet despair. The poems to Ken Saro-Wiwa are compassionate, flowing from what Hove describes as a bank of memories where treasured tales are kept.

Hove is a leading figure in postcolonial Zimbabwean literature. He reveals a romanticized notion of Africa in re-creating a usable past. He has not, however, necessarily abandoned realist strategies of writing and feels no need to abandon a glorification of African history. Hove's poetry addresses itself to the human heart. He uses descriptive language to evoke powerful images and metaphors in re-creating how it was or how it is, yet he never explains why it is.

—Renu Barrett