By Dr Augustine Tirivangana

IN the anthology, Every Stone that Turns, Thomas Bvuma takes liberation beyond the scope of just the war of liberation.
Here is a revolutionary poet who understands that the liberation struggle is only part of an entire process of resisting all forms of oppression.
History and all its ups and downs is captured in the very image of a revolving stone.
Throughout the anthology, Bvuma attempts to capture the many struggles people wage against fellow mankind and against the excesses of nature.
He also demonstrates struggles that are waged during life as well as in life after death.
Yes, as Chirere puts it, “Under every stone that one may overturn, there are new and different scorpions to be dealt with.”
The depiction of life as a struggle is best captured in the poem ‘Real Poetry’. We are reminded of the ‘centuries of chains and whips’ of slavery and of the ‘red streams of blood’ of the people resisting ‘effective occupation’ (colonialism).
We are reminded of the killings in Katanga (reference to the murder of Lumumba in Zaire).
We are also reminded of the betrayals of the Mau Mau in Kenya; betrayed by sellouts during the liberation struggle and even after uhuru when the leadership of Kenya abandon the socialist ideals of the struggle as they embrace their erstwhile colonisers as partners in under-developing Kenya.
The poet laments such betrayals which are symptomatic of most post-independent African economies.
Bvuma takes the struggle further to include the suffering of the impoverished peasants of Africa and the languishing factory worker.
He argues that these too are the subject of real poetry by which he meant useful and worthwhile art.
It is true that serious art is not about private and personal indulgence or about personal lamentations, but about ‘the pain and pleasure of people in struggle’ as they traverse different epochs in history.
‘Real poetry’ is a fighting poem which insists, through both content and form, that poetry should not only be revolutionary, but “must spring from life’s struggles and not from back-sitting imagination and fantasies”. (ibid).
Bvuma’s other poem, ‘Mafaiti’ dramatises the communal and selfless nature of the struggle.
Here you find Mafaiti taking time to pluck plumb lice from a fellow comrade’s hair; itself an act which symbolises the liberation struggle, the louse representing the fat parasitic capitalist and Mafaiti himself representing the cause of the collective oppressed such as the enslaved, the colonised and oppressed peasant and factory worker of the previous poem.
What is pathetically deplorable is the way Mafaiti (including all he typifies) is betrayed by the very people he fought along with as well as those he died to liberate.
When the ‘fire ceased’, Mafaiti himself, his wife and son, remain on the fringes of history.
The persona “wonder(s) whether (he) should visit mother and son and tell them how dad loved to pluck a plump louse off a famished comrade’s skull”.
When you come to the poem ‘Neither Fruit Nor Shelter’ you realise that the plight of the majority of Africans is hardly quenched by the dawn of political independence.
Ironically, this new turn of the stone ushers more misery.
The continent scratches and clutches in decaying chaos orchestrated by both external and internal deficiencies of love.
Widespread poverty and disease become the hallmark of a once thriving continent.
“The baobab (Africa) offers / neither fruit no shelter” as a result of the wars, the mass displacements, the accompanying diseases and famine, and above all, the pervasive perverse ignorance.
Is it not a pity that independence turns Africa into a cannibalistic giant feeding off its own children?
Aren’t we ashamed to stare reversals of high expectations without being moved?
Bvuma captures with unrelenting detail “desires distorted / hopes mutilated / (as) the continent mutate (s) / into a moaning monster / suckling children / in foreign lands / (and) holding out a bowl / to feed its own children”.
Bvuma’s analysis of the relationship between Africa and the West invokes profound poignancy.
Africa is again held in a neo-colonial grip which is even more damaging than slavery and colonialism combined.
The dependency syndrome seems so deeply entrenched that Africa seems to fail permanently to develop a local vision that can transform its economies without external hand-lift.
What is more lamentable is the fact that even when Africa turns away from the West it bypasses itself and proceeds to look elsewhere other than unto itself?
Bvuma surgically bares the cause of this barrenness of wit and poverty of philosophy.
It comes from centuries of psychological battering through colonial education, colonial religions and colonial media.
In his other poem ‘Marrow’ the poet shows how self-doubt has been implanted right into the marrow.
Africans have been colossally alienated into doubting their own languages, their cultures and ultimately themselves.
Today, “Africa / Lies obscene on her back / One leg pegged to Europe / The other to America / One handcuffed to Japan / The other clutching / At straws and fireflies”.
Through this awakening poem and many others in the anthology, Bvuma invites Africans to search for answers to their problems in their own hearts and minds. This is the ultimate level of liberation, mental liberation which will bring about humanisation and the return of dignity and confidence in the self.
In ‘Marrow’ we are warned against, “Aid / from East / aid / from West / aid / from North,” for all these total ‘AIDS for Africa’.
Indeed, history has taught us that there is no benevolence from a neighbour. Chese chemutorwa chinouya nemuseredzero.
To this end, Bvuma navigates with us the vicissitudes of the past, present and the future, demonstrating that the only compass we can trust is our own compass.
Hence the parting cry: “Sink your bucket where you are.”