Novel
The Contact
Garikai Mutasa · 1985
Synopsis
During the armed conflict, the white army stationed at Shabani, present-day Zvishavane, is commanded by Turnball, a veteran who has lost a son and hardly believes in victory any more; Mercati, a convinced racist, wants to teach the Africans a lesson, while his wife tires of the war. Opposite them, in the Shiku region, the fighters of the national liberation army feel bound to the land of the ancestors and win the population to their cause. After hand-to-hand combat, one of them, Tichatora, spares a Rhodesian soldier, who begins to see his adversaries differently.
Context
The novel was published in 1985 in Gweru by Mambo Press, a hundred and twenty-five pages, in the house's series of writers. It follows the model of Soviet socialist realism: a story of victory, in which the war also becomes a school that forces the whites to revise the image they had of the blacks, and in which the fighters dream of a society without distinction of race. Its heroes bear borrowed names, Marx or Mao, though their commitment goes no further than denouncing colonial injustice.
Who it is for
In English, a short novel. The narrative takes sides openly with the African fighters, to whom it grants every engagement.
Prizes and reception
In 1987 Rino Zhuwarara saw in it a partisan tale, sincere in its purpose but treating ideology only on the surface.