Folklorising the Newsman: The Memoirs of Geoffrey Nyarota

Abstract

Geoffrey Nyarota, the author of Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman (2006) is well known in Zimbabwe’s media and political circles as a troubling and troubled, and now self-exiled journalist. His name is controversially folklorised as synonymous with the growth, tensions, and fate of the Zimbabwean story as told by newsmen. He is not known as a writer of books. His memoirs, advertised as long-awaited, and their arrival coinciding with the much-hyped long “winter of discontent” for Robert Mugabe’s political party, is uncannily in active conjunction with the politics of the times. Nyarota’s memoirs are not an ordinary collation of life histories, recollections and musings, but are in many ways an attempt at self-folklorisation. This places him in direct competition for authorial resources with the metanarratives of the nation, along which he writes his story, and against whose grain he also writes. What then should we learn about this newsman? While his memoirs help us to understand some of the ways Zimbabwean nationalism has congealed into a frightening narrative and space, Nyarota’s story is a metanarrative of some sort, which should be undone to reveal the figure that hides behind it as a truth-seeking, but forgetful and compromised newsman. This essay traces not only the conflictual relationship between the personal of the memoir-writer and the public histories, but the very similarities – however they are established in conflict – between the narrativised histories of the nation and of the person. It is not just the notion of the self-in-society in autobiography, nor its susceptibility to chronology and multiple lives that is of interest to this essay, but its similarities to what it disavows. Is the nation therefore a sum total of its memoirs?

Opsomming

Geoffrey Nyarota, outeur van Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman (2006), staan in die media en politieke kringe van Zimbabwe bekend as 'n lastige en gekwelde en nou ook selfverbanne joernalis. Sy naam word op kontroversiële wyse in volksoorlewerings verbind met die groei, spanninge en lot van Zimbabwe soos dit deur verslaggewers vertel word. Hy staan nie as 'n skrywer van boeke bekend nie. Sy memoirs, wat as langverwag geadverteer is en saamgeval het met die "winter van onvergenoegdheid" vir Robert Mugabe se politieke party waarvan daar groot gewag gemaak is, staan op vreemde wyse in aktiewe verbinding met die politiek van die tyd. Nyarota se memoirs is nie 'n gewone versameling van lewensverhale, herinneringe en mymeringe nie, maar is in vele opsigte 'n poging om homself in die volksoorleweringe te verewig. Dit bring hom in direkte mededinging om outeurshulpbronne met die metaverhale van die nasie, waarnaas hy sy verhaal vertel, en teen wie se grein hy ook skryf. Wat kom ons dus omtrent hierdie verslaggewer te wete? Hoewel sy memoirs ons help om in sekere mate te begryp hoe Zimbabwiese nasionalisme tot 'n skrikwekkende verhaal en ruimte verstar het, is Nyarota se storie 'n soort metaverhaal wat uitmekaargehaal behoort te word om die waarheidsoekende dog vergeetagtige en gekompromitteerde koerantman daar-agter bloot te lê. Hierdie essay speur nie net die konflikterende verhouding tussen die persoonlike verhale van die outeur en die openbare verhale na nie, maar ook die ooreenkomste – hoe hulle ook al in konflik gevestig word – tussen die oorvertelde verhale van die nasie en dié van die persoon. Dit is nie alleenlik die nosie van die self-in-samelewing in outobiografie nie, en ook nie slegs die vatbaarheid daarvan vir chronologie en veelvuldige lewens, wat hier van belang is nie, maar die ooreenkoms met dit wat daardeur ontken word. Is die nasie derhalwe die somtotaal van sy gedenkskrifte?