The Black Insider (African Writers Library)

From the Back Cover
"A profund even if exaggeratedly self-aware writer, an instinctive nomad and Bohemian in temperament, marechera was a writer in constant quest for his real self, quarrying towards a core that he once wryly expressed in the cry, 'My whole life has been an attempt to make myself a skeleton in my own cupboard.'" --Wole Soyinka This was the first volume of Dambudzo marechera's work to appear since his death in 1987. The title piece, the major work in this collection, was written in London in 1978. It has been edited here by Marechera's biographer, Flora Veit-Wild, together with three short stories and two poems from the same period. Veit-Wild's introduction provides a vivid picture of the young Zimbabwean's life in Britain as a student and writer. 'The Black Insider' develops the preoccupations of his award-winning 'House of Hunger' by exploring, in his devastatingly honest way, the predicaments of exile and the black identity, and examining the realities of living under the threat of the Bomb. Above all, 'The Black Insider' gives a brilliant and profound insight into Marechera's concept of the liberating force of literature, a literature which "unhinges the world and churns up people's minds."


About the Author
Dambudzo Marechera, a Zimabwean who died at the young age of 35 in 1987, is also the author of the award winning novel, 'House of Hunger'. He left behind a large number of unpublished lterary works. 'The Black Insider', 'Cemetery of Mind', and 'Scrapiron Blues' comprise many of his poems and short stories that wre published after his death.


Excerpted from The Black Insider by Dambudzo Marechera, Flora Veit-Wild. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Chapter 1: .... The ability to read and write exposes the mind to the haustoria of everything that is written. The parasite is entirely dependent for food upon our minds. There are very few animals living in natural conditions which do not possess at least one parasite, and sometimes a whole fauna is sheltered un various parts of our thinking. Apart fro such ectoparasites as bugs, like fleas, mosquitoes, leeches, and vampire bats which lead a free existence but periodically attack the host to suck blood, there are endoparasites which actually live permanently in our minds. The latter are also known collectively as 'culture', 'tradition', 'history' or 'civilization'. There is a definite degree of tolerance established between host and parasite; each becomes adapted to the other. It is not to the advantage of a parasite to cause serious harm to its host, as thus it is likely to suffer itself. To cause the death of its host is tantamount to its committing suicide. There have been cultures, however, in Germany, Uganda, Japan, and South Africa which have pig-headedly embroiled their host in catastrophic strife. Hermann hesse sought to excape the social parasite: Would you really want
to be a gentleman now,
and a master craftsman
with a wife and children
reading the paper by the fireside?
Look, said God, I wanted you
The way you are and no different
You were a wanderer in my name
and wherever you went you brought the settled folk
a little homesickness for freedom. And in South Africa, Mtshali saw the grim parasitism everwhere:
Glorious is this world,
the world that sustains man
like a maggot in a carcass. Language is like water. You can drink it. You can swin in it. You can drown in it. You can wear a snorkel in it. You can flow to the sea in it. You can evaporate and become invisible with it. You can remain standing in a bucket for hours. The Japanese invented a way of torturing people with drops of wter. The Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique also used water to torutre people. The dead friend Owen, who painted the mural on my wall, used to dream about putting LSD into South Africa's drinking water. It seems inconceivable to think of humans who have no language. They may have invented gelignite but they cannot do without water. Some take it neat from rivers and wells. Some have it chemically treated and reservoired. Others drink nothing but beer and Bloody Marys and wine but this too is a way of taking your wter. The way you take your water is supposed to say a lot about you. It is supposed to reflect your history, culture, your breeding, etc. It is supposed to show the extent to which you and your nation have developed or degenerated. The word 'primitive' is applied to all those who take their alphabet neat from rivers, sewers, and natural scenery--sometimes this may be described as the romantic imagination. The height of sophistication is actually to channel your water through a system of pipes right into your very own lavatory wher you shake the hand of a machine and your shit and filthy manners disappear in a roaring of water. Being water you can spread diseases like bilharzia and thought. Thought is more fatal than bilharzia. And if you want to wirte a book you cannot think unless your thoughts are contagious. 'Do you still think and dream in your first language?' someone asked me in London. Words are worlds massively shrunk.
In yonder raindrop should its heart disclose,
Behold therein a hundred seas displayed. When thought becomes wisdom, the scholar can say,
I cam like water, and like wind I go. And the believer can only sing,
Celestial sweetness unalloy'd
Who eat thee hunger still;
Who drink of thee still feel a void
Which only thou canst fill. The languages of Europe (except Basque, Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish) are descended from one parent language which was spoken about 2500 to 2000 BC. Thid Indo-European grouup of languages--in their modern form has been carried (by colonization, trade, conquest) to the far corners of the earth. Thus the Indo-European river has quite neatly overflowed its banks and like the flood in the Bible has flooded Africa, Asia, America and all the islands. In this case there does not seem to have been any Noah about who built an ark to save even just two workds of all the languages and speech, which were drowned. Literacy today is just the beginning of the story. Words are the waters which power the hydro-electricity of nations. Words are the chemcials that H2O human intercourse. Words are the thunderstorm when a nation is divided. words are the water in a shattering glass when friends break into argument. words are the acronym of a nuclear test site. Every single minute the world is deluged by boulders of words crushing down upon us over the cliff of the TV, the telephone, the telex, the pst, the satellite, the radio, the advertisement, the billposter, the traffic sign, graffiti, etc. Everywhere you go, some shit world will collide with you on the wrong side of the road. You can't even hide in yourself because your thoughts think of themselves in the words you ahve been taught to read and write. Even if you flee home and country, sanity and feeling, the priest and mourners, if any, will be muttering words over your coffin; the people you leave behind will be imagining you in their minds with words and signs. And there will be no silence in the cemetery because always there are burials and more burials of people asphyxiated by words. No wonder it is said,
In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God.
And the World was God,
All things were made by him;
And without him was not any thing made
That was made. No wonder too it was said,
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the dust descend;
dust into dust, and under dust, to lie
Sans wind, sans song, sans singer, and--
sans end! Suddenly the other side of the world is only an alphabet away. Existence itself becomes a description, our lives a mere pattern in the massive universal web of words. Fictions become more documentary than actual documentaries. The only certain thing about these world descriptions is the damage they do, the devastation they bring to the minds of men and children. You do not become a man by studying the species but his language. The winds of change have cooled our porridge and now we can take up our spoons and eat it. Go, good countrymen, have yourselves a ball.


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This was the first volume of Dambudzo Marechera's work to appear since his death in 1987. The title piece, the major work in this collection, was written in London in 1978. It has been edited here by Marechera's biographer, Flora Veit-Wild, together with three short stories and two poems from the same period. Veit-Wild's introduction provides a vivid picture of the young Zimbabwean's life in Britain as a student and writer. The Black Inside develops the preoccupations of his award-winning House of Hunger by exploring, in his devastatingly honest way, the predicaments of exile and the black identity, and examining the realities of living under the threat of the Bomb.


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