I began to notice Animal Farm references proliferating in Zimbabwe in 2008.

That was the year hyperinflation nosedived the economy, and long-time leader Robert Mugabe felt threatened enough by a newly formed opposition party that he silenced its supporters.

In the years since, writers and independent media have repeatedly turned to Animal Farm as a way to illuminate our political reality—even after Mugabe’s 2017 ousting. Last year, a group of Zimbabwean writers published the first-ever Shona translation of it, Chimurenga Chemhuka or Animal Revolution. Chimurenga Chemhuka, published by House of Books, strategically appeared on the literary stage in the lead-up to last August’s general elections to encourage Zimbabwean readers to think critically about politics at home and abroad.

Animal Farm follows a group of anthropomorphized barnyard animals who gather to overthrow their oppressive human masters and set up an egalitarian society on the farm. However, power-loving pigs take advantage of internal divisions to subvert the revolution. Concluding that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” the pigs install a dictatorship led by the despotic pig Napoleon.

George Orwell intended the book to be a commentary on Joseph Stalin’s betrayal of Russia’s Bolshevik revolution. But since Animal Farm was published in 1945, the story’s message has served as a bitter pill to all Napoleons threatened by freedom and equality, including in Zimbabwe.

After the end of white-minority rule in 1980, Mugabe, like Napoleon, seized the reins and installed himself as the head of the country for the next three decades.

When a people-powered movement finally pressured Mugabe to step down, euphoria filled streets and homes. Only it did not last long. People had expected a government of national unity would run the country until the house was in order, but new leaders ignored that.  The people of Zimbabwe came to feel they had been neglected by the same leaders they had united with to remove a dictator.

Orwell’s tale is a powerful reminder of how freedom decomposes when it’s entrusted to the hands of the selfish.  

Over and over again, we see people unite in times of revolution—but once the goal is collectively achieved, greed and power crash the original dream. Who in Africa did not hope that after colonialism and apartheid, the people would enjoy true independence?

Petina Gappah, a lawyer and leading Zimbabwean writer, said that she first hatched the idea for a Shona translation of Animal Farm a few years ago. She and the rest of the team behind the effort sought to do more than put Orwell’s book in the Shona vernacular—they wanted it to feel Zimbabwean.

“Reading [Chimurenga Chemhuka] is like reading a story told in Shona to a Shona audience. This makes it our story, and the similarities also inform the reader that human beings are almost the same in deeds in spite of differences in skin color and geographical space,” another translation team member, Tinashe Muchuri, a Shona author, translator, poet, and journalist, told me.

The settings and places of traditional Shona folktales are vague, just like in Orwell’s tale.  However, the translators used different Shona dialects to appeal to a local readership here. In his article last year, Zimbabwean literary scholar Tinashe Mushakavanhu called attention to the number of dialects employed in the book: “Though Chimurenga Chemhuka is mainly in standard Shona, its characters speak a medley of different Shona dialects—such as chiKaranga, chiZezuru, chiManyika—plus a smattering of contemporary slang.”

Through the translators’ creativity, the original tale gained additional meanings as well. In most African folklore, and many other cultures, the pig represents selfishness. This makes the actions of Napoleon, and his fellow pigs, even more resonant.

Chimurenga Chemhuka is part of a larger renaissance of literary translation happening in Zimbabwe today, which is often centered on works about human rights. Ignatius Mabasa, an illustrious Zimbabwean writer and translator, has said that he sees translating as a “form of liberation struggle” that furthers a decolonized mindset. His translations include Finnish author Tove Jansson’s 1962 “The Invisible Child” (“Mwana Asingaonekwe”), which tells the story of a girl named Ninny who became invisible after her caretaker mistreats her, and Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarebga’s Nervous Conditions (Kusagadzikana). First published in English in 1988, Nervous Conditions tells the story of Tambudzai Sigauke, who dreams of escaping a life of poverty in rural Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1960s to pursue an education.

Recently, I attended a writers’ retreat in Nyanga, here in Zimbabwe, where I discussed today’s translation efforts with Blessing Musariri, a Zimbabwean children’s book author, poet, and screenwriter. Musariri said that she sees translation as a way to begin a global conversation in the Shona vernacular. “Translation is a great way to expand on the literary lexicon of works written in Shona. International literature usually deals with broader themes and ideas than what we might write about specifically in our own language,” Musariri told me.

Animal Farm is an important example of this. Zimbabweans have long been conscious of Orwell’s novel, but reading Chimurenga Chemhuka offers a chance to fuse the novel’s 1945 message with present-day politics.

Now it’s only a matter of making sure these translated works are made accessible to their intended audience.

Distribution must not be limited to critics and intellectuals in offices and universities. Instead, publishers must be diligent about getting books in local bookstores and libraries, and thus to the ordinary Zimbabwean—the very people whose lives these stories reflect.

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Poet Philani A. Nyoni captured the excitement vividly in a stanza of a poem he composed on the day Mugabe stepped down:

Twenty-one-gun salute to the November sun!
I washed my face and wiped it with the flag.
Not for lack of a more appropriate rag,
But in salute of the spirit of the time …

The poem appears in his book Philtrum, which candidly expresses the bitterness that gripped the country during Mugabe’s rule and soon afterward. Mugabe’s philtrum, the vertical groove between the base of the nose and the upper lip, has become an unmistakable symbol identifiable with his political character. Nyoni, a spoken word artist, portrays the spirit of resistance against what he describes as “the eye of the demon.”

Three years later, Nyoni’s work and other fresh, vigorous writing by the younger generation of Zimbabwean writers continue to evoke the country’s fears, struggles, and hopes.

Zimbabwean literature has been a literature of resistance against political and socio-economic injustice. This tradition, which it shares with other African countries, dates back to the days of colonialism. The Zimbabwean struggle for independence from Britain was portrayed by an earlier generation of writers including Solomon Mutsvairo, whose 1956 book Feso, the first novel written in the Shona language, probed the condition of the people under colonial rule. The tradition of literary resistance carried over in the post-independence era with voices such as Dambudzo Marechera, Chenjerai Hove, Yvonne Vera, and many others writing in Shona.

Emerging authors today are carrying on the themes of struggle and resistance, capturing the harsh socio-economic conditions prevailing in the country through realism, satire, and other modes. The works carry strains of protest against the ever-worsening situation. The coronavirus is only the latest calamity, ushering in a final collapse of vital sectors like education and industry. Zimbabwe’s legal tender, the Bond note, is struggling so much that almost all prices are set in U.S. dollars, putting many everyday items beyond reach of many ordinary people.

A collection of short stories by Farayi Mungoshi, Behind The Wall Everywhere, portrays introspective characters wandering through amazing plots, trying to eke meaning from their circumstances. Like his father, the legendary Zimbabwean author Charles Mungoshi, Farayi Mungoshi uses an apparent simplicity of language to explore how economic problems become psychological.

In the title short story of the collection, for instance, a farmer’s bride tries to awaken her new husband to the dangers of a controversial land reform program:

Everything in this country is going downwards, there is no production, industries are closing down and the money keeps losing value. The Governor keeps on removing zeros from the Dollar to save paper. Now he wants to bring back coins we last used God knows when. How is that going to help us?

The new government promised to resolve these major issues—the land redistribution question, inflation, unemployment, poverty—with an initiative to develop local industry and court international investment. Despite declaring that “Zimbabwe Is Open For Business,” however, they stand unresolved. Recent arrests of advocates for change and economic uncertainty may spell disaster for the initiative.

In harsh economic times, unemployment leads to spiritual hopelessness. In Mungoshi’s story “The Tower Light, Weed & Becoming,” the characters keep their “issues” locked up in their hearts. Ordinary Zimbabweans are doing the same because it seems there is no one—no person or government—ready to listen. Lacking a normal, functional society to belong to, Mungoshi’s character Nugget smokes Mozambican marijuana, climbs up a tower, and threatens to jump.

He is not alone; many young Zimbabweans fall victim to drug abuse and suicidal behavior. One of the most poignant characters in Behind the Wall Everywhere is Zvidzayi, whose parents have sent him to the United Kingdom because “they did not like seeing him hanging out at street corners with Tendayi and Jimba, drinking and smoking and coming back home drunk out of his head.”

Alone in a foreign country, the young man holds two burning wishes: for change in his life and for conditions to improve back home in Zimbabwe. Zvidzayi is superstitious, embodying the extreme despair which has now become a spiritual crisis for the unemployed young people. He says, “I am tired of doing the same things over and over, like there is some invisible force controlling me.”

In August, the government echoed the sentiment, with President Emmerson Mnangagwa commenting, “The dark forces inside and outside our borders have tampered with our growth and development for too long.”

The lack of trust between the government and the people is mutual. Zimbabwe’s official National Youth Policy vows to “empower the youth” by “marshalling the resources necessary for undertaking programmes to fully develop youth’s mental, moral, social, economic, political, cultural, spiritual and physical potential in order to improve their quality of life.”

Yet in conference rooms and at political rallies, young people are promised non-existent jobs. Teen pregnancies and alcohol and substance abuse are rampant. If a country’s young people are unhealthy mentally, will there be any development? Are there any pathways to empowerment available for the youth?

To answer these questions, author Charlene Vuta wrote the nonfiction book Beyond Politics while still a student at the Midlands State University. Vuta’s major concern is that politics have overtaken economic development, and this has created economic dependency. In simple non-fictional terms that even the leadership can understand, she proposes a number of brilliant ideas for reforming economic sectors in Zimbabwe. Collective responsibility, resource prioritization, education for development, and youth empowerment are essential, she argues, to the recovery process.

According to Vuta, Zimbabweans—along with other Africans—must re-define youth empowerment. She begins by re-defining it in the context of Africa as a concept essential to not only education but all sectors of the economy. Without this practical definition, she says, youth empowerment could be misinterpreted as a political idea.

“The discussion of youth’s problems has only become a familiar debate topic in Africa,” she writes, “and not a cause for concern to be dealt with.”

Other new writers are giving voice to their generation’s despair about the country’s broken political and socioeconomic reality. Dobhadobha: A Book Without Margins (2019) by Shepherd Mutamba, who is also a biographer and journalist, is an innovative book which fuses photography and poetry. The poems and the vivid photographs accompanying them capture the heart of a struggling Zimbabwe and raise questions many Zimbabweans keep asking.

Aluta Continua: The Struggle Continues (2018) by Kudakwashe Manjonjo is a collection of fictionalized tales about some of Zimbabwean human rights activists. By using political fiction, his book seeks to restore the dignity of the work of activists.

Gather the Children (2018) by Batsirai Chigama is a national award-winning poetry collection with poignant, lyrical words. In the spoken-word cadences, her book casts light upon the Zimbabwean reality.

These books are voices for the voiceless. The opportunities presented by self-publishing and the digital world have made it possible for the new writers to share words about their individual situations, as well as Zimbabwe’s collective turmoil, with deep sensitivity.

If only post-Mugabe Zimbabwe were to listen to its young voices, the country could be restored to caring for our own needs. Zimbabwe, once known as “the bread basket” of southern Africa, is more than capable of feeding itself and some of its neighbors.

But with the youth unemployment rate shooting high and no economic solutions in sight in this hour of the coronavirus, deep despair is lurking—”behind the wall everywhere.”

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Most tourists to Zimbabwe slide across the border to see the panoramic view of Victoria Falls, and then quickly hop back into Zambia or Botswana, where it’s supposedly safer. At Zimbabwe’s second most popular tourist attraction, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, the guestbook is full of Zimbabwean names, although every few pages you’ll see that some curious European or Canadian passed through as well. In general, tourists avoid Zimbabwe because the news has frightened them into thinking they’ll die of cholera or be personally imprisoned by President Mugabe.

But there was a time when Zimbabwe had allure, when tourists weren’t afraid to come.

Three middle-aged men tell me this as we share a cabin on a train through central Zimbabwe. When the train breaks down, these men grumble about how the train never used to break down. After we hop off the train to use the bathroom in the bushes, they point to the stainless steel toilet in our cabin and remember a time when it used to work. When I offer a slice of bread to one of the men, he takes it and reminisces about a time when food was delivered to the cabins. And then he tosses me a small bag of cheap rum and we lay in our bunk beds, stuck on a dead train, all of us quietly sipping our rum.

The stories continue in Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city. Zimbabwe used to have excellent healthcare and education, says the taxi driver driving the beat-up minibus. (Even now, Zimbabwe maintains one of the highest adult literacy rates in the world, a legacy of that education system). Zimbabweans used to take vacations to London to buy things on the cheap because the Zimbabwean dollar was so strong, says one of the artists at the National Art Gallery. Zimbabwe used to be the jewel of Africa, says the guy sitting next to me, as we watch Zambia win the African Cup of Nations, a soccer tournament Zimbabwe didn’t qualify for. They tell these stories with a kind of obligatory zeal, the energy you need to relate tales so far removed from the present that they don’t feel quite real.

Bulawayo’s low, dignified, colonial-era buildings face onto wide streets lined with mature jacaranda trees, and I walk around feeling a kind of dour appreciation, like you do in a museum. Bulawayo’s central park, located just outside the city center, is all decay and neglect. Bubbling streams of sewage run through well-built canals. The aviary is empty, as is the skating rink, which is now overgrown by a mat of thick, healthy vines. The abandoned putt-putt golf course can only be identified thanks to a rusted sign, and nearby the miniature train station’s roof is caved in. There aren’t many people at the park, and the only noise comes from a bunch of truant school kids on a creaking swing set. It’s not hard to imagine how beautiful this park was in the past. No wonder everyone seems so nostalgic.

The only institutions growing in Bulawayo are the cemeteries. One day Brian, a local artist, invites me to a funeral. While we wait for the hearse to arrive, we walk through the cemetery, which is so overgrown with coarse, brown weeds that I can’t see most of the headstones. A few lithe gravediggers walk past us carrying dirt-caked shovels. Brian jokes that they’re too busy digging new graves to maintain the old ones. Finally, we stop at his brother’s grave. Brian knows its exact location; the headstone is covered under a brown bush. He stoops down and plucks a weed off, and we stand over the grave, silently picking the weeds off the small mound until we can see the headstone. Afterward, Brian waves to a part of the graveyard where the grass is so high that you wouldn’t know it was a graveyard unless someone told you. He says maybe we’ll go to his mother’s grave out there sometime.

By the time the hearse arrives, two other funerals have started. The attendees at all three funerals begin singing hymns in Ndebele. As we leave, I overhear someone say that, all things considered, it’s been a pretty light day; usually six or seven funerals are happening at the same time.

In America, we tend to think of pain as extraneous to the human experience. Suffering is an exception in what we hope will be happy and trouble-free lives. But as I move around Zimbabwe, where the parks have emptied and the cemeteries have filled, I see a different understanding of tragedy. Suffering is as integral to the human experience as joy. Bad things happen to everybody; why wouldn’t they? Brian shows no self-pity as we walk through a cemetery containing his entire family. Almost no one cries at the funeral. These are not signs of callousness or fatalism, but a recognition of life’s idiosyncrasies, the impenetrable calculus that determines who finds good fortune and who doesn’t.

People who haven’t spent time in Africa don’t understand this. No matter the problems plaguing the continent, I rarely meet people wallowing in self-pity. The West loves to feel sorry for Africa, to lament the continent’s challenges, but it’s hard to find Africans who feel sorry for themselves. And I think it’s because of a dogged belief I see from city to city and country to country: life will present challenges simply because that is what it is supposed to do, and we will go on and try to overcome them, simply because that is what we are supposed to do.

Lanre Akinsiku is a California-born travel and short story writer.

*Photo courtesy of Sokwanele – Zimbabwe.

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