Zvisinei Sandi
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Zvisinei Sandi is currently a Scholar Rescue Fellow at Stanford University's Center on
Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She lectures on the human rights
situation in Southern Africa, especially in Zimbabwe and South Africa and also
collaborate with the Stanford Law School's Human Rights Clinic on its on going project
in Southern Africa. She taught Social and Political Philosophy at the Zimbabwe Open
University as well as at Masvingo State University. In addition, she has worked as a
journalist and political activist in Zimbabwe. She has published poetry in numerous
print and online journals such as Poetry International Magazine, but her writing and
activism have brought her hostile attention from the Zimbabwean government, resulting
in threats and physical attacks. Contact Zvisinei.
Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She lectures on the human rights
situation in Southern Africa, especially in Zimbabwe and South Africa and also
collaborate with the Stanford Law School's Human Rights Clinic on its on going project
in Southern Africa. She taught Social and Political Philosophy at the Zimbabwe Open
University as well as at Masvingo State University. In addition, she has worked as a
journalist and political activist in Zimbabwe. She has published poetry in numerous
print and online journals such as Poetry International Magazine, but her writing and
activism have brought her hostile attention from the Zimbabwean government, resulting
in threats and physical attacks. Contact Zvisinei.
Emmanuel Sigauke Interviews Zvisinei Sandi
E: Welcome to the United States, Zvisinei. How do you find Stanford?
Z: Beats the University of Zimbabwe! No teargas anywhere on the premises,
no Blackboots to kick my head in, and a relaxed set of healthy, well-fed
students! Coming from Zimbabwe, I have always associated university
education with violence and fear. This takes some adjusting to.
E: It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What, thirteen-fourteen years? And even then I
remember you running through the teargas, and writing your heart out? How
much of that have you done recently?
Z: It’s more like fourteen years, actually. But no, I don’t know that the writing
has done me much good, or the running. They caught me, Emmanuel. In the
end the Blackboots caught me and it wasn’t pretty.
E: I am sorry about that. But I for one have always enjoyed your writing. Tell
me more about that. What inspires you? What’s the breath of your writing?
Z: My inspiration is Africa, that big, beautiful continent, so rich and yet so
unfortunately troubled. It’s like a talented giant in a restless sleep – one
unfortunate turn could turn the house upside down. On a smaller scale, my
inspiration comes from my home country, Zimbabwe.
E: Zimbabwe, a small part of that troubled giant. What are your thoughts on
the current Zimbabwean situation?
Z: Zimbabwe is an incredibly gifted country, with the best literacy levels in all
of Africa, the highest percentages of professionals and the most hardworking
population I know – a land so rich that people find gold virtually anywhere
under their feet, and diamonds. But there is no measure for the damage bad
governance can do to even the greatest of countries. Sometimes I find myself
comparing it in my mind to a young bull – powerful, amazingly handsome,
eager and ready to face life. But on his back sits an evil leprechaun, with a red-
hot iron thrust into its spine. The bull jumps about, twisting and turning and
foaming on the mouth in an effort to throw off its torturer. He is so beautiful
and strong, almost majestic, and his life is so full of potential. If only he were
allowed to run free, and graze on the hills, and beget sons like himself… But
the ugly leprechaun wants only to break him to his own purpose and the result
is untold pain and destruction. That’s what Robert Mugabe has done to my
country.
E: Your persona in “Child of the Streets” presents a very interesting angle, all
alone and lost among thousands of other city dwellers. Does he perhaps
represent your own exile?
Z: Giggs tends to look rather like a mental image, doesn’t he? Almost like the
majestic bull with the evil leprechaun sitting on it’s back. But Giggs is a real
person – a lonely, homeless teenager, strong and full of promise, but wasted
among Harare’s rubbish pits. I met him a few years ago while interviewing
homeless people for my novel, Vagrant Souls. We sat and talked, shared my
packed lunch, I gave him the few Zim dollars in my purse, and then he walked
away. I never saw him again. “Child of the Streets” is a mixture of what he
told me, and the impression I had of him. On whether he reminds me of my
own exile… Yes, he does. Rather poignantly.
E: Would you care to explain how?
Z: The US is a lovely place, full of all kinds of opportunity and it has treated
me well. It has given me a place to hide and lick my wounds, to begin thinking
of the future again and to realize that however challenging my injuries may be,
I am still a young woman with a lot of living ahead of me. However, being
unable to go back home is a different issue altogether. I am Zimbabwean
through and through – a daughter of the rich soils of the Dande and that is
where I belong, together with the spirits of the thousands of my kin all the way
back to Munhumutapa. Sometimes I find myself thinking of my father – of the
crinkled smile that has seen so many weathers, and of the calloused, hard-
working hands that raised me. Sometimes I find myself actually reaching out to
touch him, and then I realize that, like Giggs, I am reaching out for shadows. It’
s a heartbreaking feeling.
E: Do you think that powers like the United States and other countries are
doing their best to help troubled countries like Zimbabwe?
Z: I think that it’s all to do with ignorance. By that I do not mean the ignorance
of the guys in the White House, because those are kept well informed. I mean
the ignorance of the ordinary guy in the street, the one whose vote is going to
influence what kind of help, if any, is going to Zimbabwe. When I first came
here to Stanford, I was taken to hospital under the care of a young intern, all
blue eyes, fair hair, enthusiasm and total ignorance. I remember thinking that I
did not want her near me then. I could not bear to have her sweet innocence
corrupted by the ugliness of what I had lived through. But later on I found
myself thinking that this kid was the real America, with her innocence, her nice
little boyfriend and her ignorance about what goes on in other parts of the
world. She was America, and I, with my battered body and tears and snort and
all the blood and disorder of where I had come from, was Africa, and it was up
to me to make her, and others like her, understand. Until she does, Zimbabwe
and other places like it will remain dark places where ugly things happen and
nobody comes to help. There is not dialing 911 from Africa.
E: A very passionate topic, I understand. But the main question, what
everybody would like to know, is this: What would be the best solution for the
crisis that Zimbabwe is going through right now?
Z: You know what I would like to be able to say? That I want to see all the
bad guys beaten down and thrown in jail. I would like to see everyone who has
ever tortured or raped or committed murder in Mugabe’s name brought to
book. That’s justice isn’t it? The way things should go. The right way. To God
and the Glory. To honor and justice. Right?
E: Are you suggesting that there is another way acceptable to individuals like
you, who have witnessed first hand the atrocities that Mugabe has committed?
Z: Honestly? Nothing would please me more than to have the people who did
this to me tied up and helpless in their turn, with me standing over them, and
for one blissful moment, to forget any law ever made by God or man. But
things do not work that way. We are human after all, and that sets us above
unthinking beasts. An eye for an eye gives you nothing but two half blind,
bitter people, slashing at each other in the darkness of their half-blindness. It
takes a moral giant to see the bigger picture – to let bygones be bygones and to
have the strength to salvage what they can from the mess and I, of all people,
with what I have seen and what I have suffered, should be the least forgiving.
E: So you would advocate forgiveness?
Z: I do not ask that anyone forgive a monster like Mugabe. That would be too
much for any normal human being, and believe me, I have been there. What is
needed is that there be a breaking point somewhere in this deadlock, a point
for the transition to begin. If turning the other cheek is what will bring that
transition, so be it, that we may all move forward, not backwards. I want
something to come out of that beautiful land. I want something for the children
that I will one day have. I want the spray from the mighty Victoria Falls to wet
their happy faces, with no hidden monsters anywhere to come out and disturb
their peaceful innocence. I want them to splash around in my childhood haunts
in the Ruya River, and to swim in that pool where old Sandi, my grandfather,
was murdered, so that his spirit may float freely over the hills, knowing at last
that his violent death was not in vain.
ZVISINEI SANDI'S POETRY
Child of the Streets
Experience has taught him survival
He knows never to discriminate
Between the good, the bad and the evil.
He knows only to choose life
In his time he has known the bitter gal
A tasteless, ugly unwanted, existence
A mind too simple to stem the flow of life
He knows only to go on,
Floating through the fog of glue fumes.
Day in and day out he floats,
Thinking only to escape the sting of bitterness.
Mother would frown, and say how bad
But mother is not here any more
They are gone now all of them
What matters now is survival – to eat.
As for God – what does he know,
What experience has he of human suffering,
Of the ache of the hungry belly,
The unrelenting bite of the cold,
What does he know of the taste of glue,
Fumes that block out the acid bitterness –
The ache of longing – what does he know
Of the pain of belonging nowhere
Of daily having to blend in the background
Of overflowing garbage cans?
Our boy has no kinship with haven,
With hope, with faith, with honour
He has since learned
That prayer leads to no payer.
His kin are his fellow-sufferers –
The beggar on the street corner,
The harlot who takes his place at night
His bedroom is the public toilet in First Street
He has nothing to call his own,
Save the grimy clothes on his back
Held together by the strength of desperation.
Suddenly his bored head snaps up
A new life comes into his listless eyes.
The tinkling laughter of a passer-by
Has struck a cord from long ago.
Memo! Is that you dear sister?
Blindly, he stumbles after her.
Memo! Memo! Please wait!
He grasps her hand and she turns –
A total stranger, whose laughter turns horror
At the sight of his unwashed face
Disappointment washes over him – shame.
Tears on his face, he staggers away.
Memo! Where are you dear sister?
Are you happy, well fed, clean,
Is some stranger making you cry,
Or do you lie cold in some unmarked grave,
Dead these many years?
Where are you now, daughter to my mother?
Do you ever wonder about your brother?
Are you somewhere crying for help,
Where he cannot reach you shelter you?
He has become Giggs, little sister,
The Giggs of First Street,
Who has nowhere to sleep, nowhere to eat –
The Giggs of the shadows, who has no morals
Will you ever come back, dear Memo –
Come back the way you were then –
Warm and alive and strong and laughing,
Back to the telephone booth where,
With a hurried farewell, you bade him wait?
His life now lies bare, Memo,
A wasteland with no love, nor comfort, nor life
His life has long since shriven and shrunken
To a tiny ball, the concentration of a dream
The heart is stopped, aching for a sign,
A breath of hope, a word from you
The only warm thought to comfort
In this cold land of no love
Till you should come back to him
He remains a whiff of the wind –
A rambler, like Cain, forever condemned
To follow an empty road
The long road that winds about the dark side streets
The dusty dumping pits and public toilets –
The rambling road that leads nowhere –
Memo!
The Call
Dreams… more and more dreams…
Of Baobab trees rising in scores
Ghostly gray in the darkness
Twisted, leafless branches flailing
Of a woman with so many arms wailing
Calling, calling into the night
Come home child, her spirit is nigh
Calling to a daughter long lost, calling
Ever waiting for you, ever calling
The huge baobab fruit dangling
Sumptuous breasts for a child for suckling
Copious with comfort, with new life
Tears
Why does mother’s face look so sad?
Is that not a tear?
Do grown ups cry too?
You seem to wonder, my baby
Sometimes things are really good
And you are loved
And you are forever safe
And then you are happy
Then bang! Strife erupts!
Blood everywhere,
So much blood
Your own
And then you cry.
You wish you were dead but –
You are afraid to die
Then you cry.
You want company but –
You don’t find it
Then you cry
You wish there was someone
To wipe away your tears but –
You just cry
There isn’t and
Blood everywhere, heartbreak
The cry, fatherless baby!
Cry for her,
The woman who is your mother
Cry for her
Who has had to sow
And watch others reap
Cry for her
The used woman
The wretched one
Cry for her
Who has no more strength
To cry for herself
Is God a Woman?
They say God can be no woman
’Tis not for woman to be so cruel
Not for her to crush life before the ripening
Nor for all the world, torture a sinless child
Agony, soul destroying, bewildering agony
An angry, defiant, disbelieving child
Exacting, unforgiving, unrepentant.
Demanding eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Is God then uncaring, a Mugabe, a villain?
To whom the lonely, suffering soul matters not?
Must have multitudes to stroke his vanity
Yet will crush the innocent without a care?
Hush! Hush child. God is God should it matter.
God is compromise, compassion, Love.
Mother’s love, that makes breakfast from the air –
Love, that builds a life out of tears.
Exhortation
I said it to you, yet you did not listen
I tapped your shoulder, you paid no heed
Look now, as all falls apart
Pay heed as your head is smashed in
How many days have passed hence
Since the moment I told it to you
How long, how long, brother mine,
Till the day you hear my voice?
For the long snake does not bite its own tail
And the father eats only a little
He leaves some crumbs for his children.
Brother mine, you rip open the belly of the crib!
Divine Discontent
Deep, coal-black grief
Deep, cleansing tears…
So long as life is full
Should it matter at all
Whether one is choking with tears
Or choking with laughter?
E: Welcome to the United States, Zvisinei. How do you find Stanford?
Z: Beats the University of Zimbabwe! No teargas anywhere on the premises,
no Blackboots to kick my head in, and a relaxed set of healthy, well-fed
students! Coming from Zimbabwe, I have always associated university
education with violence and fear. This takes some adjusting to.
E: It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What, thirteen-fourteen years? And even then I
remember you running through the teargas, and writing your heart out? How
much of that have you done recently?
Z: It’s more like fourteen years, actually. But no, I don’t know that the writing
has done me much good, or the running. They caught me, Emmanuel. In the
end the Blackboots caught me and it wasn’t pretty.
E: I am sorry about that. But I for one have always enjoyed your writing. Tell
me more about that. What inspires you? What’s the breath of your writing?
Z: My inspiration is Africa, that big, beautiful continent, so rich and yet so
unfortunately troubled. It’s like a talented giant in a restless sleep – one
unfortunate turn could turn the house upside down. On a smaller scale, my
inspiration comes from my home country, Zimbabwe.
E: Zimbabwe, a small part of that troubled giant. What are your thoughts on
the current Zimbabwean situation?
Z: Zimbabwe is an incredibly gifted country, with the best literacy levels in all
of Africa, the highest percentages of professionals and the most hardworking
population I know – a land so rich that people find gold virtually anywhere
under their feet, and diamonds. But there is no measure for the damage bad
governance can do to even the greatest of countries. Sometimes I find myself
comparing it in my mind to a young bull – powerful, amazingly handsome,
eager and ready to face life. But on his back sits an evil leprechaun, with a red-
hot iron thrust into its spine. The bull jumps about, twisting and turning and
foaming on the mouth in an effort to throw off its torturer. He is so beautiful
and strong, almost majestic, and his life is so full of potential. If only he were
allowed to run free, and graze on the hills, and beget sons like himself… But
the ugly leprechaun wants only to break him to his own purpose and the result
is untold pain and destruction. That’s what Robert Mugabe has done to my
country.
E: Your persona in “Child of the Streets” presents a very interesting angle, all
alone and lost among thousands of other city dwellers. Does he perhaps
represent your own exile?
Z: Giggs tends to look rather like a mental image, doesn’t he? Almost like the
majestic bull with the evil leprechaun sitting on it’s back. But Giggs is a real
person – a lonely, homeless teenager, strong and full of promise, but wasted
among Harare’s rubbish pits. I met him a few years ago while interviewing
homeless people for my novel, Vagrant Souls. We sat and talked, shared my
packed lunch, I gave him the few Zim dollars in my purse, and then he walked
away. I never saw him again. “Child of the Streets” is a mixture of what he
told me, and the impression I had of him. On whether he reminds me of my
own exile… Yes, he does. Rather poignantly.
E: Would you care to explain how?
Z: The US is a lovely place, full of all kinds of opportunity and it has treated
me well. It has given me a place to hide and lick my wounds, to begin thinking
of the future again and to realize that however challenging my injuries may be,
I am still a young woman with a lot of living ahead of me. However, being
unable to go back home is a different issue altogether. I am Zimbabwean
through and through – a daughter of the rich soils of the Dande and that is
where I belong, together with the spirits of the thousands of my kin all the way
back to Munhumutapa. Sometimes I find myself thinking of my father – of the
crinkled smile that has seen so many weathers, and of the calloused, hard-
working hands that raised me. Sometimes I find myself actually reaching out to
touch him, and then I realize that, like Giggs, I am reaching out for shadows. It’
s a heartbreaking feeling.
E: Do you think that powers like the United States and other countries are
doing their best to help troubled countries like Zimbabwe?
Z: I think that it’s all to do with ignorance. By that I do not mean the ignorance
of the guys in the White House, because those are kept well informed. I mean
the ignorance of the ordinary guy in the street, the one whose vote is going to
influence what kind of help, if any, is going to Zimbabwe. When I first came
here to Stanford, I was taken to hospital under the care of a young intern, all
blue eyes, fair hair, enthusiasm and total ignorance. I remember thinking that I
did not want her near me then. I could not bear to have her sweet innocence
corrupted by the ugliness of what I had lived through. But later on I found
myself thinking that this kid was the real America, with her innocence, her nice
little boyfriend and her ignorance about what goes on in other parts of the
world. She was America, and I, with my battered body and tears and snort and
all the blood and disorder of where I had come from, was Africa, and it was up
to me to make her, and others like her, understand. Until she does, Zimbabwe
and other places like it will remain dark places where ugly things happen and
nobody comes to help. There is not dialing 911 from Africa.
E: A very passionate topic, I understand. But the main question, what
everybody would like to know, is this: What would be the best solution for the
crisis that Zimbabwe is going through right now?
Z: You know what I would like to be able to say? That I want to see all the
bad guys beaten down and thrown in jail. I would like to see everyone who has
ever tortured or raped or committed murder in Mugabe’s name brought to
book. That’s justice isn’t it? The way things should go. The right way. To God
and the Glory. To honor and justice. Right?
E: Are you suggesting that there is another way acceptable to individuals like
you, who have witnessed first hand the atrocities that Mugabe has committed?
Z: Honestly? Nothing would please me more than to have the people who did
this to me tied up and helpless in their turn, with me standing over them, and
for one blissful moment, to forget any law ever made by God or man. But
things do not work that way. We are human after all, and that sets us above
unthinking beasts. An eye for an eye gives you nothing but two half blind,
bitter people, slashing at each other in the darkness of their half-blindness. It
takes a moral giant to see the bigger picture – to let bygones be bygones and to
have the strength to salvage what they can from the mess and I, of all people,
with what I have seen and what I have suffered, should be the least forgiving.
E: So you would advocate forgiveness?
Z: I do not ask that anyone forgive a monster like Mugabe. That would be too
much for any normal human being, and believe me, I have been there. What is
needed is that there be a breaking point somewhere in this deadlock, a point
for the transition to begin. If turning the other cheek is what will bring that
transition, so be it, that we may all move forward, not backwards. I want
something to come out of that beautiful land. I want something for the children
that I will one day have. I want the spray from the mighty Victoria Falls to wet
their happy faces, with no hidden monsters anywhere to come out and disturb
their peaceful innocence. I want them to splash around in my childhood haunts
in the Ruya River, and to swim in that pool where old Sandi, my grandfather,
was murdered, so that his spirit may float freely over the hills, knowing at last
that his violent death was not in vain.
ZVISINEI SANDI'S POETRY
Child of the Streets
Experience has taught him survival
He knows never to discriminate
Between the good, the bad and the evil.
He knows only to choose life
In his time he has known the bitter gal
A tasteless, ugly unwanted, existence
A mind too simple to stem the flow of life
He knows only to go on,
Floating through the fog of glue fumes.
Day in and day out he floats,
Thinking only to escape the sting of bitterness.
Mother would frown, and say how bad
But mother is not here any more
They are gone now all of them
What matters now is survival – to eat.
As for God – what does he know,
What experience has he of human suffering,
Of the ache of the hungry belly,
The unrelenting bite of the cold,
What does he know of the taste of glue,
Fumes that block out the acid bitterness –
The ache of longing – what does he know
Of the pain of belonging nowhere
Of daily having to blend in the background
Of overflowing garbage cans?
Our boy has no kinship with haven,
With hope, with faith, with honour
He has since learned
That prayer leads to no payer.
His kin are his fellow-sufferers –
The beggar on the street corner,
The harlot who takes his place at night
His bedroom is the public toilet in First Street
He has nothing to call his own,
Save the grimy clothes on his back
Held together by the strength of desperation.
Suddenly his bored head snaps up
A new life comes into his listless eyes.
The tinkling laughter of a passer-by
Has struck a cord from long ago.
Memo! Is that you dear sister?
Blindly, he stumbles after her.
Memo! Memo! Please wait!
He grasps her hand and she turns –
A total stranger, whose laughter turns horror
At the sight of his unwashed face
Disappointment washes over him – shame.
Tears on his face, he staggers away.
Memo! Where are you dear sister?
Are you happy, well fed, clean,
Is some stranger making you cry,
Or do you lie cold in some unmarked grave,
Dead these many years?
Where are you now, daughter to my mother?
Do you ever wonder about your brother?
Are you somewhere crying for help,
Where he cannot reach you shelter you?
He has become Giggs, little sister,
The Giggs of First Street,
Who has nowhere to sleep, nowhere to eat –
The Giggs of the shadows, who has no morals
Will you ever come back, dear Memo –
Come back the way you were then –
Warm and alive and strong and laughing,
Back to the telephone booth where,
With a hurried farewell, you bade him wait?
His life now lies bare, Memo,
A wasteland with no love, nor comfort, nor life
His life has long since shriven and shrunken
To a tiny ball, the concentration of a dream
The heart is stopped, aching for a sign,
A breath of hope, a word from you
The only warm thought to comfort
In this cold land of no love
Till you should come back to him
He remains a whiff of the wind –
A rambler, like Cain, forever condemned
To follow an empty road
The long road that winds about the dark side streets
The dusty dumping pits and public toilets –
The rambling road that leads nowhere –
Memo!
The Call
Dreams… more and more dreams…
Of Baobab trees rising in scores
Ghostly gray in the darkness
Twisted, leafless branches flailing
Of a woman with so many arms wailing
Calling, calling into the night
Come home child, her spirit is nigh
Calling to a daughter long lost, calling
Ever waiting for you, ever calling
The huge baobab fruit dangling
Sumptuous breasts for a child for suckling
Copious with comfort, with new life
Tears
Why does mother’s face look so sad?
Is that not a tear?
Do grown ups cry too?
You seem to wonder, my baby
Sometimes things are really good
And you are loved
And you are forever safe
And then you are happy
Then bang! Strife erupts!
Blood everywhere,
So much blood
Your own
And then you cry.
You wish you were dead but –
You are afraid to die
Then you cry.
You want company but –
You don’t find it
Then you cry
You wish there was someone
To wipe away your tears but –
You just cry
There isn’t and
Blood everywhere, heartbreak
The cry, fatherless baby!
Cry for her,
The woman who is your mother
Cry for her
Who has had to sow
And watch others reap
Cry for her
The used woman
The wretched one
Cry for her
Who has no more strength
To cry for herself
Is God a Woman?
They say God can be no woman
’Tis not for woman to be so cruel
Not for her to crush life before the ripening
Nor for all the world, torture a sinless child
Agony, soul destroying, bewildering agony
An angry, defiant, disbelieving child
Exacting, unforgiving, unrepentant.
Demanding eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Is God then uncaring, a Mugabe, a villain?
To whom the lonely, suffering soul matters not?
Must have multitudes to stroke his vanity
Yet will crush the innocent without a care?
Hush! Hush child. God is God should it matter.
God is compromise, compassion, Love.
Mother’s love, that makes breakfast from the air –
Love, that builds a life out of tears.
Exhortation
I said it to you, yet you did not listen
I tapped your shoulder, you paid no heed
Look now, as all falls apart
Pay heed as your head is smashed in
How many days have passed hence
Since the moment I told it to you
How long, how long, brother mine,
Till the day you hear my voice?
For the long snake does not bite its own tail
And the father eats only a little
He leaves some crumbs for his children.
Brother mine, you rip open the belly of the crib!
Divine Discontent
Deep, coal-black grief
Deep, cleansing tears…
So long as life is full
Should it matter at all
Whether one is choking with tears
Or choking with laughter?