HomeOld_PostsLand question revisited: Part One

Land question revisited: Part One

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By Farayi Mungoshi

THE best stories hitting the screens at the moment are mostly adaptations from novels or books, for example, Queen Sugar, Game of Thrones and The Boy who Harnessed the Wind. 

In previous articles, I have argued the reason our television dramas of the 1980s seem to be better than the present is because a number of them were adaptations from published books like Ziva Kwawakabva and Inongove Njake Njake as compared to today’s dramas that are mostly rushed in writing as screenplays and shot on the first draft. 

The repercussion is, we find today’s dramas embodying all the glamour, intriguing sets, good cinematography and sound but lacking structure and depth in the story being told.

Some film-makers have caught up as I hear some of them now talking about revisiting written works in order to adapt them for either television or film. 

As such, we now have authors who have, in the past, never entertained thoughts of writing, either for film or television, now considering the idea, thereby intermarrying the two fields — and rightly so.

In this regard, I would like to refer to one such author, Benjamin Sibangani Sibanda. 

Sibanda wrote the 2017 Best Fiction NAMA Award-winning book, Whose Land is it anyway? 

Julian T. Nyarota describes the story as: “A periodic piece told through the eyes of a wide spectrum of well-rounded characters, such as Jacques Venter, the bigoted white commercial farmer; Chief Juru, the tribal leader; Pastor Patrick Jones, with never ending faith and optimism; Peter Lawrence, the man caught inbetween the racial divide; Jonas Mangwende, the loyal farm worker; Itai Mugwazo, the Minister for Agriculture and Themba Ndhlovu, the disenchanted liberation war hero, amongst a host of other characters. 

Although set in the year 2000 at the onset of the land invasions, the story takes a look into the history of Zimbabwe as a means of contextualising events taking place.”

Whose Land is it anyway? is now set for television adaptation in order to reach out to a wider audience given that fewer people have time to pick up a novel and read these days. 

The story addresses the question of land ownership in a manner rarely told, from the blackman’s point of view, the whiteman’s point of view and also the mixed race’s (coloured’s) view point. 

The story opens with a conversation between Venter, the unapologetic racist white commercial farmer who is enjoying the heavenly life on earth in the small town of Macheke and Jones, a white preacher who believes in equality and that black people deserve to be cut some slack and given back the land which up till this moment (year 2000), was still mostly owned by the minority (whites). 

Venter responds by saying: “I forget that you church types have this funny belief that all men are created equal.” 

In his mind, Venter is oblivious of the fact that blacks will one day forcibly demand the land back, and as such, is reluctant to imagine life away from Ventersburg (name of his farm) or the Macheke Country Club where the small white community has continued to enjoy the lavish lifestyle they have always lived as ‘masters’ of this land; with blacks as their servants to command and order like they have always done since Cecil John Rhodes’ time. 

In other words, for Venter, God is white and blacks are meant to serve them — nothing can ever change that.

Therefore, when Chief Juru and his people invade the first farm, Venter and his peers are taken by surprise.

After all, the whites controlled the country’s economy. 

When it finally sinks in that this was really happening, with more farms being taken over across the nation, violence erupts with other white farmers deciding to bring out their guns in retaliation. 

To be continued…

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