The Sunday Mail
Vuso Mhlanga
Few words defy concise definition as the term frontier; the elasticity and panoramic nature of the term is dazzling. Used in a limited sense the term carries the thought of a boundary or a border zone separating different cultures and nations. Still, the term is not confined to physical space. Used in a border context, the term embraces the psychological, socio- economic and even cultural space of engagement between people of different races — especially blacks (natives) and whites (settlers)
Therefore the frontier is not restricted to physical space; it is defined by the conditions that ensue when the settler and the native meet. Often times the conditions on the frontier are anything, but hostile. Even the narratives of the frontier are characterised by confrontation.
In a colonial set up, the farm is usually the site of the engagement. The coloniser wields a lot of power and physically and emotionally abuses the later. One reminisces . . . Daniel’s observation . . . made through Medza in Mongo Beti’s “Mission to Kala when he succinctly portrays the relations at the frontier, “ Whenever there was a Negro, there was always some European colonial to kick his backside “
In Doris Lessing’s “The Grass is singing “the frontier is the farm . Mary and Dick Turner, the owners of the struggling farm show a deep revulsion and disdain of blacks. Stereotypes against blacks are rife. For instance, blacks are viewed as lacking a work ethic.
Blacks are abused. Mary Turner however, develops a love — hate disposition toward Moses, the black figure at the farm house . Mary is frigid sexually. Eventually she seems to be turned on sexually by Moses’ dark attractive body. Mary muzzles that feeling; it is a taboo to form a romantic inclination that traverses the racial divide. The story comes to a head when Moses kills Mary and is arrested — obviously after buttressing the long held notion by whites that blacks are killers and uncivilised.
That is somehow to be expected of a white liberal writer, Doris Lessing. She, like other liberal writers, faces a crisis of belonging. It is not possible for a liberal writer to deny fossilised prejudices and her tradition. One remains part of the white system despite a seeming veneer of liberal tendencies. There is no middle ground. Thus the voices of white liberal writers become muffled when it comes to criticising the prejudices of their fellow race.
Not in “Somewhere in this Country”! Chirere re-engages the narratives of the frontier. In the story, “When Passions Gather” the black man is presented as having assumed a new status especially in the wake of having reclaimed his land.
In the aforesaid story, Rich the white settler is portrayed as distant and emasculated. Frail and tired, dwelling in evasive and detached contemplations (just like the old man in the poem Gerontion who sits in a dry land waiting for the rain with impotent and dry thoughts), Rich’s stature symbolise the subdued settler presence in the ‘new’ frontier. He is described as ‘scarce and weak and discouraging “He cannot even satisfy his wife sexually .His impotence symbolise the death of the ‘empire’ in Africa.
Rich’s impotence is juxtaposed with the vibrant and commanding presence of Rex, a thoroughbred pedigree African full of virility and life as Africa itself. He is an imposing figure. Anna’s description of him is revealing, ‘I can’t even exhaust him myself .I only want him when the pain in me , which Rich cant reach at becomes unbearable .He has the unfailing strength of a gorilla ‘is sexual prowess portrayed in the light of Rich’s seeming insignificance denotes a shift in the frontier narratives.
“Somewhere in this Country” rewrites the frontier and subverts the dominant narratives of the frontier. Long — held notions of white superiority are starved to death. The capacity of the said anthology to subvert stereotypes is amazing.
Vuso Mhlanga, the writer, lectures in Literature in English at Denmak Training Services.
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