{"id":505,"date":"2014-06-22T08:07:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T08:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmushava.wordpress.com\/2014\/06\/22\/kaharis-50-year-odyssey-in-literature\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T08:52:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T08:52:48","slug":"george-kaharis-50-year-journey-in-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=505","title":{"rendered":"George Kahari’s 50-Year Journey in Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Maurice Vambe, George Kahari and Memory Chirere (Photo Credit: KwaChirere)<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cNothing good can come out of Zimbabwe,\u201d has become the byword of the day.<\/p>\n

We lack an aggressive estimation of our potential as a nation.<\/span>
Pessimism runs the tapestry of our national outlook. We justify this self-deprecation by playing second fiddle to others on many platforms.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

However, if any truth underlies our deflated self-esteem, it is not because there is nothing good in Zimbabwe but because we lack the virtue of celebrating and exporting our homegrown accomplishments.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The foremost impediment to our cultural development is not lack of funds or absence of talent. Nay; it is our inability to locate those who have excelled among us and build on their achievements.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Prof George Kahari, for one, fits into Phillip Brooks\u2019 observation that biography is a meeting of three characters of whom the most interesting is the subject, the most privileged is the reader and the least regarded is the author.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
On this score, Literature Today takes a fresh look at the work of this pioneering champion of the indigenous novel and, arguably, Zimbabwean literary criticism\u2019s principal thoroughbred.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Prof Kahari\u2019s research interests comprise a vast expanse from traditional narrative genres, social registers, poetry, panegyrics, elegiacs, children\u2019s songs and rhyme, proverbs, riddles, ritual drama to religious lyrics.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
He has profiled and appraised a litany of local authors, including Herbert Chitepo, Mordecai Hamutyinei, Patrick Chakaipa, Joseph Kumbirayi, Paul Chidyausiku, Wilson Chivaura and my late uncle Janfeck Chekure against the critical background of an evolving canon.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
His astute engagement with issues spans a broad thematic range including liberation discourse, political protest, spiritual bankruptcy, family disintegration, femininity, secular education, decadence, crime and dislocated urban life. <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The late minister Dr Bernard Chidzero described Kahari\u2019s writing as \u201ca work of art in its own right in the sense that the author is creatively perceptive and interpretive, handling the twin instruments of word and idea in a neat and mutually integrative fashion so that the whole informs as well as delights the reader.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Despite the prolificacy and proficiency of his work, Kahari remains largely an unfamiliar figure outside the classroom for a man who has laboured for 50 years to bring our literature to universal attention.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
A 1977 entry in \u201cWho\u2019s Who\u201d by Robert Cary and Diana Mitchell describe Kahari as \u201ca well-built, immaculately dressed man with a powerful voice and readiness to enjoy a joke.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
When I met first met Prof Kahari at Harare Club to receive biographical material on Stanelake Samkange from him last year, he had not ceded any of the foregoing qualities to age.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
However, when we met for the second time recently, he appeared reserved, preferring that his work speak for itself, although he maintained his jocular disposition.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Prof Kahari explained that he decided to profile Shona literature because the tradition was growing but there was no corresponding discipline to appraise the emerging works.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cNo one was writing to critique the new work. Zimbabweans were writing in both Shona and English but their works were not being examined,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari ventured into the discipline with a 1964 article \u201cOral and Written Literature in Shona: Contrasts and Continuities\u201d which appeared in \u201cAfrican Languages in Schools\u201d edited by George Fortune.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The article ignited a train of activity \u2013 15 more papers, 14 books, two of which are pending release, and several seminar and conference papers.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Last year the Zimbabwe International Book Fair awarded him a certificate of honour on the occasion of its 30th<\/sup> anniversary.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari also participated in nationalist politics as one of the intellectual revolutionaries of the liberation struggle from 1970 to 1980.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The Government honoured his participation with the Gold Liberation Decoration and the Silver Liberation medals.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
His critical body of work assigns Shona fiction to two compartments: the modern novel and the romance (also called the old world narrative). <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari observes that the local novel is arrived at by balancing oracy (traditional speech patterns) and literacy and, therefore, insists on studying the novel in light of the traditional genres.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThe novel incorporates into its structure traditional Shona narrative devices, fusing the techniques of oral narratives into the alien form of the English novel,\u201d he explains the intermediate status of the Shona novel as a traditional relic and a modern text.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari believes that, far from stagnating, the Shona novel is vastly improving and emerging writers are out-performing their predecessors.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThe novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant style of expressing oneself in one way.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, the predictable way, as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in media res, the first person narrative and other techniques.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped just going from start to finish,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cNovelists like Ignatius Mabasa are approaching writing in Shona from a different perspective. They depart from \u2018sarungano\u2019\u2019s reference to \u2018imwe nyika iri kure kure kwazvo\u2019 (a detached setting) and forcefully relive the reader through contemporary situations,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari said the modern novel\u2019s insistence on imitating social reality based on empirical and existential reality makes it a far richer text.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
The breakaway from static tradition is referenced in Kahari\u2019s seminal text, \u201cThe Rise of the Shona Novel,\u201d when he marks out the second generation of writers, particularly Charles Mungoshi, for a head-on engagement with trending realities.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
He observed that the second generation writers\u2019 image of Shona society differs radically from the one portrayed by their older contemporaries such as Samkange and Mutswairo.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThe latter used historical facts to write historical novels of propaganda, satire and protest while the former used historical facts but internalized and transformalized them so that fit into various levels of meaning, symbols and chains of associations.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThis is understandable since Samkange and Mutswairo have come to the writing of novels through the discipline of History. According to Mungoshi, history is part of us, how each one of us perceives history and its influence on society and how society and history affect us becomes the novel\u2019s point of intensity,\u201d said Kahari.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Turning to the current state of Zimbabwean literature, Kahari is of the view that the declining reception of literature occasioned by an austere economic setting has dealt a disservice to an improving tradition.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThe majority of Zimbabweans are poor and would rather buy mealie-meal than buy a novel,\u201d Kahari said.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cPublishers can only publish what they can sell. And it turns out that libraries and schools are no longer buying much as they used to.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cThere will come a time when the adoption of electronic publishing in Zimbabwe will reawaken interest in literature. Even those old texts people seem to have forgotten about will come back again. It has happened in other countries and it can also happen here,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
However, Kahari also feels that writers are not, altogether, getting the reception merited by their works from the local audience.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cZimbabweans do not have the gift of generosity to hold the achievements of their compatriots in high esteem,\u201d Kahari said.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
He said while Zimbabwe is Africa\u2019s best as far as literacy has concerned, we have failed to convert that to a robust engagement with our literary and intellectual fraternity.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari was a central committee member and deputy publicity secretary in the wartime Zapu and a member of Zanu-PF\u2019s consultative committee after Independence.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
He has served as an ambassador to Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia and has been Visiting Professor of Modern African literature at a couple of American universities.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Kahari has two forthcoming works \u201cA Standard Dictionary of Shona-English Names\u201d and \u201cThe Odyssey of Shona Narratives.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maurice Vambe, George Kahari and Memory Chirere (Photo Credit: KwaChirere) \u201cNothing good can come out of Zimbabwe,\u201d has become the byword of the day. We lack an aggressive estimation of our potential as a nation.Pessimism runs the tapestry of our national outlook. We justify this self-deprecation by playing second fiddle to others on many platforms. However, if any truth underlies our deflated self-esteem, it is not because there is nothing good in Zimbabwe but because we lack the virtue of celebrating and exporting our homegrown accomplishments. The foremost impediment to our cultural development is not lack of funds or absence of talent. Nay; it is our inability to locate those who have excelled among us and build on their achievements. Prof George Kahari, for one, fits into Phillip Brooks\u2019 observation that biography is a meeting of three characters of whom the most interesting is the subject, the most privileged is the reader and the least regarded is the author. On this score, Literature Today takes a fresh look at the work of this pioneering champion of the indigenous novel and, arguably, Zimbabwean literary criticism\u2019s principal thoroughbred. Prof Kahari\u2019s research interests comprise a vast expanse from traditional narrative genres, social registers, poetry, panegyrics, elegiacs, children\u2019s songs and rhyme, proverbs, riddles, ritual drama to religious lyrics. He has profiled and appraised a litany of local authors, including Herbert Chitepo, Mordecai Hamutyinei, Patrick Chakaipa, Joseph Kumbirayi, Paul Chidyausiku, Wilson Chivaura and my late uncle Janfeck Chekure against the critical background of an evolving canon. His astute engagement with issues spans a broad thematic range including liberation discourse, political protest, spiritual bankruptcy, family disintegration, femininity, secular education, decadence, crime and dislocated urban life. The late minister Dr Bernard Chidzero described Kahari\u2019s writing as \u201ca work of art in its own right in the sense that the author is creatively perceptive and interpretive, handling the twin instruments of word and idea in a neat and mutually integrative fashion so that the whole informs as well as delights the reader.\u201d Despite the prolificacy and proficiency of his work, Kahari remains largely an unfamiliar figure outside the classroom for a man who has laboured for 50 years to bring our literature to universal attention. A 1977 entry in \u201cWho\u2019s Who\u201d by Robert Cary and Diana Mitchell describe Kahari as \u201ca well-built, immaculately dressed man with a powerful voice and readiness to enjoy a joke.\u201d When I met first met Prof Kahari at Harare Club to receive biographical material on Stanelake Samkange from him last year, he had not ceded any of the foregoing qualities to age. However, when we met for the second time recently, he appeared reserved, preferring that his work speak for itself, although he maintained his jocular disposition. Prof Kahari explained that he decided to profile Shona literature because the tradition was growing but there was no corresponding discipline to appraise the emerging works. \u201cNo one was writing to critique the new work. Zimbabweans were writing in both Shona and English but their works were not being examined,\u201d he said. Kahari ventured into the discipline with a 1964 article \u201cOral and Written Literature in Shona: Contrasts and Continuities\u201d which appeared in \u201cAfrican Languages in Schools\u201d edited by George Fortune. The article ignited a train of activity \u2013 15 more papers, 14 books, two of which are pending release, and several seminar and conference papers. Last year the Zimbabwe International Book Fair awarded him a certificate of honour on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. Kahari also participated in nationalist politics as one of the intellectual revolutionaries of the liberation struggle from 1970 to 1980. The Government honoured his participation with the Gold Liberation Decoration and the Silver Liberation medals. His critical body of work assigns Shona fiction to two compartments: the modern novel and the romance (also called the old world narrative). Kahari observes that the local novel is arrived at by balancing oracy (traditional speech patterns) and literacy and, therefore, insists on studying the novel in light of the traditional genres. \u201cThe novel incorporates into its structure traditional Shona narrative devices, fusing the techniques of oral narratives into the alien form of the English novel,\u201d he explains the intermediate status of the Shona novel as a traditional relic and a modern text. Kahari believes that, far from stagnating, the Shona novel is vastly improving and emerging writers are out-performing their predecessors. \u201cThe novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant style of expressing oneself in one way. \u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, the predictable way, as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in media res, the first person narrative and other techniques. \u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped just going from start to finish,\u201d he said. \u201cNovelists like Ignatius Mabasa are approaching writing in Shona from a different perspective. They depart from \u2018sarungano\u2019\u2019s reference to \u2018imwe nyika iri kure kure kwazvo\u2019 (a detached setting) and forcefully relive the reader through contemporary situations,\u201d he said. Kahari said the modern novel\u2019s insistence on imitating social reality based on empirical and existential reality makes it a far richer text. The breakaway from static tradition is referenced in Kahari\u2019s seminal text, \u201cThe Rise of the Shona Novel,\u201d when he marks out the second generation of writers, particularly Charles Mungoshi, for a head-on engagement with trending realities. He observed that the second generation writers\u2019 image of Shona society differs radically from the one portrayed by their older contemporaries such as Samkange and Mutswairo. \u201cThe latter used historical facts to write historical novels of propaganda, satire and protest while the former used historical facts but internalized and transformalized them so that fit into various levels of meaning, symbols and chains of associations. \u201cThis is understandable since Samkange and Mutswairo have come to the writing of novels through the discipline<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nGeorge Kahari's 50-Year Journey in Literature | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=505\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"George Kahari's 50-Year Journey in Literature | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Maurice Vambe, George Kahari and Memory Chirere (Photo Credit: KwaChirere) \u201cNothing good can come out of Zimbabwe,\u201d has become the byword of the day. We lack an aggressive estimation of our potential as a nation.Pessimism runs the tapestry of our national outlook. We justify this self-deprecation by playing second fiddle to others on many platforms. However, if any truth underlies our deflated self-esteem, it is not because there is nothing good in Zimbabwe but because we lack the virtue of celebrating and exporting our homegrown accomplishments. The foremost impediment to our cultural development is not lack of funds or absence of talent. Nay; it is our inability to locate those who have excelled among us and build on their achievements. Prof George Kahari, for one, fits into Phillip Brooks\u2019 observation that biography is a meeting of three characters of whom the most interesting is the subject, the most privileged is the reader and the least regarded is the author. On this score, Literature Today takes a fresh look at the work of this pioneering champion of the indigenous novel and, arguably, Zimbabwean literary criticism\u2019s principal thoroughbred. Prof Kahari\u2019s research interests comprise a vast expanse from traditional narrative genres, social registers, poetry, panegyrics, elegiacs, children\u2019s songs and rhyme, proverbs, riddles, ritual drama to religious lyrics. He has profiled and appraised a litany of local authors, including Herbert Chitepo, Mordecai Hamutyinei, Patrick Chakaipa, Joseph Kumbirayi, Paul Chidyausiku, Wilson Chivaura and my late uncle Janfeck Chekure against the critical background of an evolving canon. His astute engagement with issues spans a broad thematic range including liberation discourse, political protest, spiritual bankruptcy, family disintegration, femininity, secular education, decadence, crime and dislocated urban life. The late minister Dr Bernard Chidzero described Kahari\u2019s writing as \u201ca work of art in its own right in the sense that the author is creatively perceptive and interpretive, handling the twin instruments of word and idea in a neat and mutually integrative fashion so that the whole informs as well as delights the reader.\u201d Despite the prolificacy and proficiency of his work, Kahari remains largely an unfamiliar figure outside the classroom for a man who has laboured for 50 years to bring our literature to universal attention. A 1977 entry in \u201cWho\u2019s Who\u201d by Robert Cary and Diana Mitchell describe Kahari as \u201ca well-built, immaculately dressed man with a powerful voice and readiness to enjoy a joke.\u201d When I met first met Prof Kahari at Harare Club to receive biographical material on Stanelake Samkange from him last year, he had not ceded any of the foregoing qualities to age. However, when we met for the second time recently, he appeared reserved, preferring that his work speak for itself, although he maintained his jocular disposition. Prof Kahari explained that he decided to profile Shona literature because the tradition was growing but there was no corresponding discipline to appraise the emerging works. \u201cNo one was writing to critique the new work. Zimbabweans were writing in both Shona and English but their works were not being examined,\u201d he said. Kahari ventured into the discipline with a 1964 article \u201cOral and Written Literature in Shona: Contrasts and Continuities\u201d which appeared in \u201cAfrican Languages in Schools\u201d edited by George Fortune. The article ignited a train of activity \u2013 15 more papers, 14 books, two of which are pending release, and several seminar and conference papers. Last year the Zimbabwe International Book Fair awarded him a certificate of honour on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. Kahari also participated in nationalist politics as one of the intellectual revolutionaries of the liberation struggle from 1970 to 1980. The Government honoured his participation with the Gold Liberation Decoration and the Silver Liberation medals. His critical body of work assigns Shona fiction to two compartments: the modern novel and the romance (also called the old world narrative). Kahari observes that the local novel is arrived at by balancing oracy (traditional speech patterns) and literacy and, therefore, insists on studying the novel in light of the traditional genres. \u201cThe novel incorporates into its structure traditional Shona narrative devices, fusing the techniques of oral narratives into the alien form of the English novel,\u201d he explains the intermediate status of the Shona novel as a traditional relic and a modern text. Kahari believes that, far from stagnating, the Shona novel is vastly improving and emerging writers are out-performing their predecessors. \u201cThe novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant style of expressing oneself in one way. \u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, the predictable way, as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in media res, the first person narrative and other techniques. \u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped just going from start to finish,\u201d he said. \u201cNovelists like Ignatius Mabasa are approaching writing in Shona from a different perspective. They depart from \u2018sarungano\u2019\u2019s reference to \u2018imwe nyika iri kure kure kwazvo\u2019 (a detached setting) and forcefully relive the reader through contemporary situations,\u201d he said. Kahari said the modern novel\u2019s insistence on imitating social reality based on empirical and existential reality makes it a far richer text. The breakaway from static tradition is referenced in Kahari\u2019s seminal text, \u201cThe Rise of the Shona Novel,\u201d when he marks out the second generation of writers, particularly Charles Mungoshi, for a head-on engagement with trending realities. He observed that the second generation writers\u2019 image of Shona society differs radically from the one portrayed by their older contemporaries such as Samkange and Mutswairo. \u201cThe latter used historical facts to write historical novels of propaganda, satire and protest while the former used historical facts but internalized and transformalized them so that fit into various levels of meaning, symbols and chains of associations. \u201cThis is understandable since Samkange and Mutswairo have come to the writing of novels through the discipline\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=505\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-22T08:07:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-26T08:52:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" 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\/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"George Kahari's 50-Year Journey in Literature | Blockspace","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=505","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"George Kahari's 50-Year Journey in Literature | Blockspace","og_description":"Maurice Vambe, George Kahari and Memory Chirere (Photo Credit: KwaChirere) \u201cNothing good can come out of Zimbabwe,\u201d has become the byword of the day. We lack an aggressive estimation of our potential as a nation.Pessimism runs the tapestry of our national outlook. We justify this self-deprecation by playing second fiddle to others on many platforms. However, if any truth underlies our deflated self-esteem, it is not because there is nothing good in Zimbabwe but because we lack the virtue of celebrating and exporting our homegrown accomplishments. The foremost impediment to our cultural development is not lack of funds or absence of talent. Nay; it is our inability to locate those who have excelled among us and build on their achievements. Prof George Kahari, for one, fits into Phillip Brooks\u2019 observation that biography is a meeting of three characters of whom the most interesting is the subject, the most privileged is the reader and the least regarded is the author. On this score, Literature Today takes a fresh look at the work of this pioneering champion of the indigenous novel and, arguably, Zimbabwean literary criticism\u2019s principal thoroughbred. Prof Kahari\u2019s research interests comprise a vast expanse from traditional narrative genres, social registers, poetry, panegyrics, elegiacs, children\u2019s songs and rhyme, proverbs, riddles, ritual drama to religious lyrics. He has profiled and appraised a litany of local authors, including Herbert Chitepo, Mordecai Hamutyinei, Patrick Chakaipa, Joseph Kumbirayi, Paul Chidyausiku, Wilson Chivaura and my late uncle Janfeck Chekure against the critical background of an evolving canon. His astute engagement with issues spans a broad thematic range including liberation discourse, political protest, spiritual bankruptcy, family disintegration, femininity, secular education, decadence, crime and dislocated urban life. The late minister Dr Bernard Chidzero described Kahari\u2019s writing as \u201ca work of art in its own right in the sense that the author is creatively perceptive and interpretive, handling the twin instruments of word and idea in a neat and mutually integrative fashion so that the whole informs as well as delights the reader.\u201d Despite the prolificacy and proficiency of his work, Kahari remains largely an unfamiliar figure outside the classroom for a man who has laboured for 50 years to bring our literature to universal attention. A 1977 entry in \u201cWho\u2019s Who\u201d by Robert Cary and Diana Mitchell describe Kahari as \u201ca well-built, immaculately dressed man with a powerful voice and readiness to enjoy a joke.\u201d When I met first met Prof Kahari at Harare Club to receive biographical material on Stanelake Samkange from him last year, he had not ceded any of the foregoing qualities to age. However, when we met for the second time recently, he appeared reserved, preferring that his work speak for itself, although he maintained his jocular disposition. Prof Kahari explained that he decided to profile Shona literature because the tradition was growing but there was no corresponding discipline to appraise the emerging works. \u201cNo one was writing to critique the new work. Zimbabweans were writing in both Shona and English but their works were not being examined,\u201d he said. Kahari ventured into the discipline with a 1964 article \u201cOral and Written Literature in Shona: Contrasts and Continuities\u201d which appeared in \u201cAfrican Languages in Schools\u201d edited by George Fortune. The article ignited a train of activity \u2013 15 more papers, 14 books, two of which are pending release, and several seminar and conference papers. Last year the Zimbabwe International Book Fair awarded him a certificate of honour on the occasion of its 30th anniversary. Kahari also participated in nationalist politics as one of the intellectual revolutionaries of the liberation struggle from 1970 to 1980. The Government honoured his participation with the Gold Liberation Decoration and the Silver Liberation medals. His critical body of work assigns Shona fiction to two compartments: the modern novel and the romance (also called the old world narrative). Kahari observes that the local novel is arrived at by balancing oracy (traditional speech patterns) and literacy and, therefore, insists on studying the novel in light of the traditional genres. \u201cThe novel incorporates into its structure traditional Shona narrative devices, fusing the techniques of oral narratives into the alien form of the English novel,\u201d he explains the intermediate status of the Shona novel as a traditional relic and a modern text. Kahari believes that, far from stagnating, the Shona novel is vastly improving and emerging writers are out-performing their predecessors. \u201cThe novelists are improving by the day. They are challenging the predominant style of expressing oneself in one way. \u201cWhereas the old writers used to write chronologically, the predictable way, as in the folk-tale, the new writers are exploiting more enabling techniques to capture their world artistically \u2013 talk of stream of consciousness, in media res, the first person narrative and other techniques. \u201cThey imitate social reality in ways they find more compelling for the particular case, from the middle, back and forth; they have stopped just going from start to finish,\u201d he said. \u201cNovelists like Ignatius Mabasa are approaching writing in Shona from a different perspective. They depart from \u2018sarungano\u2019\u2019s reference to \u2018imwe nyika iri kure kure kwazvo\u2019 (a detached setting) and forcefully relive the reader through contemporary situations,\u201d he said. Kahari said the modern novel\u2019s insistence on imitating social reality based on empirical and existential reality makes it a far richer text. The breakaway from static tradition is referenced in Kahari\u2019s seminal text, \u201cThe Rise of the Shona Novel,\u201d when he marks out the second generation of writers, particularly Charles Mungoshi, for a head-on engagement with trending realities. He observed that the second generation writers\u2019 image of Shona society differs radically from the one portrayed by their older contemporaries such as Samkange and Mutswairo. \u201cThe latter used historical facts to write historical novels of propaganda, satire and protest while the former used historical facts but internalized and transformalized them so that fit into various levels of meaning, symbols and chains of associations. \u201cThis is understandable since Samkange and Mutswairo have come to the writing of novels through the discipline","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=505","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2014-06-22T08:07:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-26T08:52:48+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-hYomlURPndk\/T8zJum4OTrI\/AAAAAAAAAkI\/RC8R_kSjOtw\/s400\/Vambe-book%2Blaunch.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written 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