Anthony Nhamo Mhiripiri was born in 1968. He holds a doctoral degree in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he also conducted a post-doctoral fellowship. He is currently a senior lecturer in the Media & Society Studies Department, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe.
He has published critical chapters in Emerging Perspectives on Dambudzo Marechera and The Hidden Dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina, and articles in several journals including the Journal of African Cinema, Journal of African Media Studies and Screening the Past.
Nhamo is a fiction writer and poet widely featured in several works in anthologies such as Dreams Miracles and Jazz, No More Plastic Balls, A Roof to Repair, State of the Nation and Ghetto Diary and Other Poems.
He studied literature at A-level and for my bachelors degree. He particularly liked old Russian authors like Dostoyevsky, Chekhov of the short stories, and the so-called Soviet dissident writers like Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak. he was proud of reading beyond the set texts.
The spirited African writer said that there are certainly many things from my formative years right to early adulthood that inspired him to write. It was usually the township landscape and the characters he saw there both from a close intimate position, and as a detached (participant) observer.
After obtaining his BA in English and History at the University of Zimbabwe, he embarked on a post-graduate diploma and later an MA in media and Communication Studies. He has worked as a high school teacher, a researcher, a lecturer at the Zimbabwe Open University, and was founding Acting Dean for the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at Zimbabwe’s Midlands State University until January 2001.
In 2000 he successfully published two short stories publication with College Press Zimbabwe namely No More Plastic Balls and A Roof to Repair.
He laments his use of poetry, as its intensity and density, as an uneasy catharsis for his troubled country and self. At times he feels his poetry address public issues like state injustice, political violence, inflation and corruption. The short stories are much more subtle and delicate.
Mhiriphiri said “While I still prefer writing about the marginalised or the underdog, I find that it takes deeper analytical skills to discern subversion in the apparently innocuous stories about township poverty, an infants rebellion against his bigoted and over-protective parents, early maturation and sexual precociousness, impotence and confessions, superstitious and its place in an African post-modern context like ours, rape and the pathology of power, and so forth”
Mhiripiri has worked as a teacher and writer and his wife, Joyce Tsitsi Mutiti, is an equally gifted writer. At the Midlands State University the English and Communication Studies honours students have a module in creative writing and his wife, Joyce, was invited to make a presentation there one semester. He thinks there is something to be gained from the teaching of writing as some universities are teaching creative writing modules.
In 2000,Mhiripiri’s 10 stories were distributed in two anthologies, namely No more plastic balls and A roof to repair, and still some stories were left over to be published by Mambo Press in yet another anthology, Creatures great and small. Publishers usually complain that Zimbabweans do not buy books unless they are textbooks or set-books for public examinations.
Nhamo says it’s true because the country can’t ignore the economics of the publishing industry. Textbooks often subsidies fiction in Zimbabwe, notwithstanding the reality of fictional bestsellers that can equally subsidise the publication of newer fiction.
Sadly, Zimbabwe have very few powerful publishers who can actually seal writers’ fate as Zimbabwean authors in terms of whether one is going to be known or remain obscure and minor. He added that his generation was disadvantaged in that, very few of their books have been selected for the lucrative school examination system. He personally suspect avarice, corruption and chicanery.
Aspiring writers always need a published mentor or role model to inspire them in their creative endeavors. When he was an undergraduate student at the University of Zimbabwe he noted quite a number of people who made a name on the literary.
Mhiripiri just hope that the students enjoy the module and are not merely there to satisfy examination requirements. If universities give more space and time to those that are creatively inclined probably Africa will have more masterpieces such as Harvest of Thorns, which he understand was Shimmer Chinodyas Masters degree project at a US varsity.
Zimbabwe has a very strong and deeply rooted literary tradition and quality literature continues to be published. The country has authors that have submitted their works for international literary competitions such as Caine Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize have done wonderfully.
The most vibrant publishing houses rely on international donor funding and this compromises quality and the content. Some books strain to satisfy donor interests and editors manipulate manuscripts to please international capital. Mhiripiri said that he expect outsiders to promote the country’s most expressive, most intimate and most sacred art form.
“Literary art is our heart, and the best fiction and prose can define a nation soul and ambition. A cerebral and insightful literature humanises the people that read it since it allows critical reflection by the very nature of its medium and form” said Mhiripiri.
What is important for anybody who calls himself a Zimbabwean writer is to find a reasonable amount of inspiration stemming from Zimbabwe centered subject-matter and characters, and to write as honestly as they can in spite of their own biases and prejudices. Zimbabwean writers are just writers, whether Diasporic, black or white.
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