WHILE the installation of digital infrastructure for broadcasting services gathers pace throughout the country, it is important to reflect on some of the characteristics of the local content which we should strive to produce.
Our hope is that as we reflect on the kind of local content which will be in very high demand soon after completion of the digitisation programme, we should also be re-imagining how that content could be made different from what we have so far witnessed on our screens.
Take for instance, the issue of land, its physical features which are part of the geographical landscape that is Zimbabwe!
How much of it do we know as audiences and viewers?
Are there specific features of this land which are becoming iconic images and symbols for us?
Put differently, most of us know through oral literature that a big number of our chiefs or kings lie buried in the deep recesses of some of the mountains which we see today.
How many and much do we know about such mountains which in an ironic sense seem to protect, as well as hide from us, knowledge about our past.
And that past is as recent as the liberation war of 1966-1980, when the same mountains became dramatic sites of military conflict for the liberation of Zimbabwe.
There are also many places which were, and still are, considered sacred, be they mountains, plains or particular places such as the Matopo Hills.
How much of these mountains and places do we utilise in our art as we try to communicate with each other across generations?
In fact, one can argue that there is a way in which some, if not many, of our stories and our collective memories lie embedded in the landscape that we call Zimbabwe.
That there is a way in which our mastery of the land features of this country would also amount to a mastery of distinct bodies of knowledge about our past.
It is obvious that our films so far have hardly made use of our landscape in a manner which seeks to generate meanings for us at symbolic levels.
A similar poverty of recognisable images and symbols has also been observed in our written literature.
In an outburst which has forever remained etched in our minds Musaemura Zimunya had this to say during his review of Solomon Mutsvairo’s historical novel, Mapondera: Soldier of Zimbabwe: “Where is the richness of the language of the Shona people?
“Where is the richness of their environment captured?
“The drama of the seasons and the landscape, the mountains, the rivers, gorges, the plains; the sun, the clouds, the days, the nights, the richness of their culture; all these and many other things that put a people and a hero in a place!”
The outburst outlined above is referring to the portrayal or non-portrayal of those aspects in life which go on to identify a people located in a recognisable setting or, a people whose life and values are defined, enhanced, belittled, underlined or dramatised in a way which distinguishes them in a unique way.
Anyone who has read Mutsvairo’s novel will come to appreciate Zimunya’s outburst.
The author’s intentions in that novel remain noble, the vision is promising and the passion behind the work is palpable throughout.
But, unfortunately, the writer depicts his characters in a way which remains abstract: no concrete setting, no distinctive cultural traits which define a people and not much that is memorable apart from the iron will of the protagonist whose physical features, unfortunately, remain more of an abstract idea than that of a convincing human being.
Put differently, one can argue that Zimunya was asking our writers to write in a way which identifies us as Zimbabweans who live and dream in a recognisable geographical and cultural location that is Zimbabwe.
The poignant questions which he raises during his impatient outburst might as well be raised in regard to most of our films and television programmes.
Do we have films, for instance, whose communication at a symbolic level deliberately rides on the back of the dramatic and indeed spectacular land features of the Eastern Highlands or on those hundreds of thousands of hectares of land which lie between Masvingo and Harare, those undulating valleys and near monotonous, if not haunting, flatlands of Zimbabwe?
What could all these land features mean to us as metaphors of our life?
And those huge caterpillar-like mountains which occasionally interrupt the smooth flow of our movements around the country – those which constitute the Great Dyke that is always imposing itself as the gigantic backbone of our country?
Do all these have a say as to how we look at ourselves and at each other?
How do all of them, including other physical features of our land, shape us and influence us at the emotional, social and psychological levels?
And beneath those huge caterpillar-like mountains of the Great Dyke, are the many treasures which have always attracted attention from both the wicked and the good souls of this world.
Could there be stories here which our artistes, particularly filmmakers, are yet to transform into enchanting visual narratives which go on to define us in relation to our unique surroundings.
With so much of our surroundings being dramatic, rich and varied and in some instances spectacular and breath-taking, do we need to stick to the office, desk and telephone setting which seems to starve most of our stories of oxygen which they desperately require, stories which are almost always gasping for breath in one form or other.
What of the majestic Victoria Falls which goes on thundering year in and year out without fail?
Do these falls mean anything to us in aesthetic terms, in terms of our collective memory as well as in regard to how they are rendered in our cultural repertoire which we hand over from one generation to the next?
Or do they remain mere natural expressions, spectacular and splendid in their own way, but meaningless to our psyche as it were?
What of those enchanting sunrises and sunsets which signal the beginning and ending of each day that we live?
What of those summer downpours accompanied by thunder and lightning?
And the frightful and skeletal images of wilting crops, those fields which characterise desolation of those years of drought and hunger!
Surely all these features mean something as part of the stories of our lives?
What is emerging here is the fact that one of the missing visual narratives and a foundational one at that, is a straightforward story capturing various aspects of our landscape, those physical-cum symbolic features which could easily constitute a virtual version of the Zimbabwe that all of us should strive to know.
This visual story in its elementary form would begin to make us feel that we belong somewhere specific and recognisable, a place and a landscape that is destined to become part of our evolving national sense of belonging.