The Sunday Mail
By Professor Ken Mufuka – USA
Great Enclosure -A Novel by Jackie Chimatsu: Published by Author-House, UK, 2014
Post-colonial peoples often find it difficult to free themselves from the marriage of their minds to the slavery of imperial think-speak and impediments to the freedom of the mind. This, the author of the book, Great Enclosure, has attempted to do by setting her novel of intrigue, romance and political double-dealing within the walls of the ancient Bantu civilization, whose epicentre lay at Great Zimbabwe.
This genre of writing will indeed enrich our culture and free our minds from slavery.
All the aspects of a good novel are there. An amazingly beautiful woman, Chinake, is the first wife of Emperor Hungwe of the Munhumutapa Empire. Hungwe is ambitious, cunning, devious, as indeed successful politicians must be.
He wants to earn some divine stature before his death. Through the charms of his wife, he must convince the Masvikiro and the Mhondoro (spiritual guardians) of the kingdom to go along. A gift of two of the most beautiful girls in the kingdom might persuade the scoundrel, self-serving Chireshe, but there is a younger more upright mhondoro, Kwatara, who takes his duties more seriously.
As the political drama that is unfolding at Great Zimbabwe plays itself out, in the wings is Nyatsimba Mutota Mbire, king of the largest state in the federated kingdom. The scarcity of rain throughout the kingdom has exacerbated the normal frictions between vassal and overlord. Mutota is ambitious.
We are slaves, maybe a bit free, but still slaves of the Hungwe of Great Zimbabwe. We are a kingdom within a kingdom and what good is a king’s title when he calls another master?
One wants to be divine, master of all that he surveys, the other will not take second place. The cry of freedom is but only a play on words, so as to draw the allegiance of the populace. Love and romance are real, but they too are used as paws in a game that has everything to do with power and nothing to do with love.
The book, which was on display at Miami International Book Fair in the United States, takes the reader to the golden age of the Great Zimbabwe Empire.
As often happens, the golden age preceded the split, led by Mutota MuMbire. The book, intended as a novel, brings cultural enrichment to the student (‘O’Level and above) and to the common reader. Since the present is but a projection of the past, intrigue, romance, and politics intertwine in such a way as to lead to a comparison with our world.
The treatment of subordinates by the Emperor illustrates a continuum of African politics today.
Officials at Great Zimbabwe showed their contempt of subordinate chiefs by spitting at them. The chiefs crawled and grovelled along the ground in absolute humiliation. Bantu checks and balances, guaranteed by the spirit mediums and the medicine men, were undermined as Chileshe, the medicine man, was bribed. His reward, two virgins were added to his harem. No system of government can withstand a determined onslaught from determined men.
Oppression and abuse inevitably produce disruption, though oppressors wish for greater unity.
Mutota, thus humiliated, took his people on the northward journey, recreating the empire under the Kore Kore name. We encourage our readers to buy the book for their children, to be used as part of their cultural enrichment.
The perceptive eye will see itself as if in a mirror. So what else is new under the sun? I salute the young English teacher for her pioneering work.
One can say that what goes for a preface is too long, and that the characters are too many. But that is to be facetious. This is Sister Chimatsu’s first book. It is a worthwhile contribution to our heritage.
