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Zimbabwe: Colonial White Boys in Zimbabwe – John Eppel’s Autobiography Is a Welcome Book, but a Difficult Read

todayOctober 18, 2024

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Zimbabwean writer John Eppel‘s literary career has always been defined by one peculiar trait. He publishes fictional work, in stark contrast to the majority of the country’s other white writers who have fetishised the autobiographical mode.

During the post 2000s period, white Zimbabwean narratives of crisis which focused on the land reform programme gained an international following.

Read more: Animal Farm has been translated into Shona – why a group of Zimbabwean writers undertook the task

Zimbabwe‘s liberation struggle was fought primarily over the land question. In colonial Rhodesia, racist apportionment of fertile land meant that the black majority was removed from productive farmland. The land reform programme sought to correct this historical injustice.

Eppel‘s focus on novels, poetry and short stories explains why he is rarely ever mentioned with autobiographical writers such as Peter Godwin, Alexandra Fuller, Judith Todd and Douglas Rogers.

His shift to the autobiographical mode with A Colonial Boy: Sketches of My Life Before Zimbabwean Independence, 1950-1980 from indie publisher Pigeon Books, invites those of us who are scholars of his work to re-interrogate his writing.

The literary sketch

In A Colonial Boy, Eppel takes the reader through his early days in South Africa and Swaziland and his arrival in Southern Rhodesia with his family. In the prologue, he sets up the context:

For this collection I wanted to write about the comic side of my life as a Rhodesian, and the sketch, as a literary genre, seemed more appropriate than a conventional autobiography. Although the sketch has a pedigree going back to the 16th century, my interest in it was sparked by Charles Dickens’ first published book Sketches by ‘Boz’.

Eppel is an English teacher and literary critic. Literary analysis even informs some of his fictional characters. One gets the sense that he intends to make A Colonial Boy Dickensian in gravity, scope and quality.

The literary sketch is an uncommon mode. This complicates our understanding of how Eppel tries to deliver his life’s story. Sketches are meant to be brief chronicles of particular events which are not usually connected to a larger story. It’s doubtful that the linear timeline of a human life can be accurately represented through the literary sketch.

The randomness of the sketch as a stylistic method does not adhere well to the classical image of the autobiographer as a “self-interested individual intent on assessing the status of the soul”. This becomes apparent when Eppel moves quickly from sketch to sketch without giving full details and reflection on the incidents being invoked.

Even when writing this book review, it is difficult to give you, the reader, an accurate idea of what Eppel has to say, on reflection, about his earlier years. The scenes (or sketches) do not demonstrate a unity of purpose. Rather than Eppel saying “this is what happened in my life and I would like you to know about it so that you get to know me better”, the reader gets “this is what happened on a random day in a particular year in colonial Rhodesia, so make of it what you will”. To be fair, Eppel does warn the reader in advance:

What you will find in these pages is a series of anecdotes about me from toddlerhood to my early thirties.

Fine. But what is the point of this randomness?

My reading is that it’s an attempt to introduce narrative detachment – in the same way as an author would create distance between themself and their character. The problem is, this is not a novel. There should not be a border between the narrator and the protagonist in self life writing.

White men and war

Of course, Eppel might have good reason for wanting to create narrative detachment. Other white Zimbabwean writers have seen their autobiographical writings affect their daily lives. David Coltart’s memoirs, for example, generated much discussion over his role in the Rhodesian security forces. He was one of the many white men required to undergo compulsory service by the white minority government.

In his sketches, Eppel gives very brief details about his time serving in the armed forces. Ever the renegade with a problem with authority, he describes his time in the Rhodesian army as “eight weeks of institutionalised hell”. The Chimurenga war was fought by black nationalists in order to bring about democracy and black majority rule. Eppel essentially acknowledges that morally, he was on the wrong side of that war.

Eppel is also aware of how the literary establishment has labelled his work as Rhodesian racist rhetoric. This is a charge Eppel scholars like myself have tried to fight. Regardless, Eppel wisely refuses to elaborate on his operational activities in the war:

I was involved in one contact, near a post on the Mozambique border called Vila Salazar. I have recorded this contact in poetry (confessional) and in prose (satirical), but there is no place for it on these pages.

The political considerations Eppel had in mind when writing these sketches prevent the reader from gaining a non-fictional account of his wartime experience.