By Zoliswa Mdawini
Tsitsi Dangarembga refers to herself as “a producer of narrative”. However, she says, “Patriarchy stood against my narrative making.”
During her speech at Wednesday’s graduation ceremony, Dangarembga, who received an honorary degree from Rhodes University, highlighted the significant struggles women face under a patriarchal system. “Capital stood against my work also. What was I to do? I could not stop.”
She said the honorary doctorate was very important to her because it represents recognition. “I feel seen by people who matter to me, specifically those on the continent. Recognition for the kind of work I do in storytelling and the creative economy is not easy to come by. So, this honor is the fulfillment of a long-held hope, and I have waited a long time for something like this to happen.”
Dangarembga was born in Mutoko, Zimbabwe, and became an award-winning novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. “I write fiction, I write non-fiction, I write for cinema, I write prose. So, I work in very different fields,” she said. Rhodes University has now honoured her groundbreaking contribution to African literature and film and her advocacy for social justice, gender equality, and the right to free expression.
“I started writing shortly after Zimbabwe gained independence,” Dangarembga said. Her groundbreaking novel, Nervous Conditions, was the first novel published in English by a black woman in Zimbabwe.
She studied psychology at the University of Zimbabwe before pursuing filmmaking in Germany. She has since earned fellowships at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, and the Rockefeller Bellagio Centre. She has also held the International Chair in Creative Writing role at the University of East Anglia. She has also picked up literary accolades, such as the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the PEN Pinter Prize. In 2020, This Mournable Body was a finalist for the Booker Prize.
She did not stop at writing novels; she has also directed widely recognised films, including Everyone’s Child, released in 1996, Kare Kare Zvako in 2004, and I Want a Wedding Dress in 2010.
On the importance of representation in literature, Dangarembga told Grocott’s Mail, “The kind of writing I do stems from the fact that I want to see people represented, and I belong to a group of people who are not well represented. I started writing when I was quite young. So I was at that time a young woman, embodied black also, and from a very small nation that did not have much standing internationally once independence was over.
“I also come from a background where I could see how girls are socialised into not having expectations of themselves to be something in society. And so, I thought that I could contribute by telling stories to show young girls that, in fact, they had the right to become full citizens, to self-actualise, and to be members of the community,” she said.
Dangarembga also explained how she shaped her literary voice by following her instincts as a reader. She chose books that moved her, allowing her to understand her inner voice and what truly mattered to her. This, she said, became the foundation of her writing.
Dangarembga encouraged young writers and students to make reading a habit. She pointed out that many online tools today help students pass exams without reading. She explained that reading is essential because it helps train the mind and develop thinking skills.
In her graduation speech, she concluded by saying, “Not stopping is a fundamental part of my story today. I dream about where we might go and what we might achieve. Even as forces of greed and fascism and racism form, if those who have the good progress of all humankind and all creation in mind, together with unity of purpose, we can decide, no, we are not stopping.”
