Listen to Panashe Chigumadzi’s Interview with The Cheeky Natives Podcast

Plenty of gems are dropped here.

Zimbabwean writer and author Panashe Chigumadzi recently sat down with the hosts of the literary podcast The Cheeky Natives to discuss her latest book These Bones Will Rise Again. The author and the hosts discussed a range of topics in relation to the book—the thinking behind the book, how it was commissioned, gender, race, Zimbabwe, Panashe learning her mother tongue Shona, and many other topics.

A few gems we picked up from the interview:On Ubuntu:

"We have many white scholars, especially in the post-94 period in South Afric who talk about Ubuntu. But we having Ubuntu without abantu. One that does not focus on the humanity of actual black people. It's more about a particular kind of project of saving whiteness on the onslaught of this revenge of black people. But a critique is that many of these white scholars cannot actually speak African languages. Imagine me doing French philosophy without having understood French."

She then spoke about the importance of her learning Shona before she could engage with her grandmother about specific topics.

Our latest episode features the prodigious @PanasheChig talking to us about her latest offering ‘These Bones Will Rise Again’ https://t.co/ku1DBa90J9

— The Cheeky Natives (@CheekyNatives) November 8, 2018

On women not being allowed their complexity

"There's always this framing of women in public spaces doing what they not supposed to do, as prostitutes. As a woman, you can either become a mother of the nation who's all that is good within the nation or you are an evil stepmother of the nation, and the best way to think about is through Mugabe's two wives, which is Grace Mugabe and Sally Mugabe, who both are very complex figures. And you can see this even in South Africa; Winnie Mandela is not allowed her complexity. Nelson Mandela, of course, is allowed to be a complex figure, but dare Winnie have any sense of complexity, she must immediately be disposed. And we're happy for her to carry the liberation struggle, for her to continue the name of the ANC, but now that liberation has come she needs to go back and become the wife again."

On Zimbabwe

"I get really frustrated when people wanna talk about Mugabe's Zimbabwe. For example, many Zimbabweans get really frustrated about how the country has been narrativized. Particularly growing outside of Zimbabwe, I grew up at a time when Zimbabwe was a laughing stork; we couldN'T think about Zimbabwe outside of hyperinflation and outside of Mugabe. And I wanted to understand Zimbabwe outside of that."

There are plenty more gems to pick up in the interview as she goes on to discuss spirituality, her previous book Sweet Medicine, and many other topics with the specificity and intelligence we've grown to expect from her.

Listen to the whole interview below, and/or subscribe to The Cheeky Natives on Apple Podcasts here.

“To imagine these women is to face their questions. They are difficult. They are painful. They are necessary. We cannot turn away even as we know in our hearts that we collectively fear facing these women because they will demand that their questions be answered. We know that their questions will release a torrent of granite boulders that will destroy the versions of us and the nation that we hold dear even when they harm us in ways untold. The force of their questions will surely crush the old certainties cast in Zimbabwe’s great house of stone. And then, what will become of us? Who will we be?” - Panashe Chigumadzi Panashe Chigumadzi is a Zimbabwean born writer. She was raised in South Africa. Panashe is an award-winning author. Her debut novel Sweet Medicine, published by Blackbird Books in 2015, won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award. Her sophomore book, a long reflective essay, These Bones Will Rise Again recently won Best Author at the fifth Zimbabwe International Women’s Award. These Bones Will Rise Again is a reflective long essay on the ‘coup that was not a coup’ in Zimbabwe. This reflection is done through the telling of history through the eyes of various womxn in her own family and the history of Zimbabwe. She writes about the history of chimurenga and the role of womxn in the liberation project in Zimbabwe. In this episode, we sat down with the prodigious Panashe pondering on her latest offering. The conversation was filled with musings on the erasure of Black womxn in history. We spoke about Mbuya Nehanda and the meaning of the ‘Big C AND small c’ chimurenga. The conversation led us to topics about the Big men in Zimbabwe, the role of music in Zimbabwe’s liberation project. In many ways, the conversation was a journey in Panashe’s own history. Throughout the conversation, we encountered various parts of Panashe – the granddaughter, the historian, the Zimbabwean, the born free, the outsider and the writer. We spend moments being ruminative about Robert Mugabe and Grace Mugabe as key figures in Zimbabwe. The conversation highlighted the various ways in which womxn and men are reported in history, through respectability politics and taking up of space. We spoke about the meaning of language in knowing and telling histories and other musings about spirituality, a theme prevalent in both Panashe’s books. The conversation touched on a number of other important topics such as the future of Zimbabwe under the new leadership. We also asked Panashe about her favourite writers, and her prestigious PhD undertaking at Harvard University. Panashe’s book is archiving Black womxn and their stories, it can be received as academic text about reimagining Black womxnhood and the telling of histories. Twitter: @PanasheChig Twitter: @cheekynatives