‘Rosa Mistika’ still has profound messages for the modern times

As a student of literature, Saturday Nation’s ‘Weekend’ offering is one I always look forward to. The last edition’s Readers’ Corner, and specifically the Talking Point, had special appeal to me. Titled: “Why Swahili literary critics should break their silence,’ the article by Enock Matundura dealt with a topic, which literary critics, and not necessarily those who specialise in Kiswahili, should pay heed to.

Matundura lamented the treatment of Kiswahili literature as inferior.

The writer listed various Kiswahili writers, including Tanzania’s Euphrase Kezilahabi, with whom I have special affinity, having analysed two of his novels for my MA in Literature thesis. While he has several titles to his name, including Rosa Mistika, Kichwa Maji and Gamba la Nyoka, it is the first one that comes to most readers’ minds, given the controversy and surrounding its first publication. For those who may not know the 1971 novella, the ex-seminarian caused quite a stir when the book, considered pornographic by church authorities, was banned, going viral as often happens in such cases.

However, it is not its perceived pornographic content that drew my attention to the novella; rather, it is its strong gender overtones and messages that led to its choice for my thesis, titled: “A Critical Analysis of Patriarchy and Masculinity in Kezilahabi’s Rosa Mistika and Kichwa Maji”.

Naturally, my supervisors were quite curious that in 2006 — the year I embarked on my thesis — I should be preoccupied with a book that was relatively old.

IDEOLOGIES OF PATRIARCHY

It took refuge in Terry Eagleton’s assertion that “different historical periods have constructed a ‘different Homer and Shakespeare’ for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones.

All literary works, in other words, are ‘rewritten’, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’”. In this regard, my thesis reviews Kezilahabi’s works through gender lenses.

Matundura’s assertion that “Kiswahili literary works do capture some of the challenges Kenya is grappling with” vindicates the choice of Rosa Mistika as a novella about the tragedy of the African girl child. The same applies to Kichwa Maji; just like Rosa Mistika, the main character of the first book, kills herself after her fiancé dumps her for not being the virgin she claimed to be, Kazimoto of Kichwa Maji also commits suicide.

The suicides of Rosa Mistika and Kazimoto have profound messages for our times, and especially now that the gender debate has shifted from women’s liberation to male responsibility. My thesis explored the theory that Kezilahabi’s main characters are victims of the ideologies of patriarchy and masculinity.

It was clear from reading the novels that although the themes of patriarchy and masculinity pervade the two novels, Rosa Mistika and Kichwa Maji, Kiswahili literary critics had, up until then, not linked them to the tragedies of the main characters.

And yet, this is the ultimate tragedy of our times. The raging debate on the plight of the boy child is tied up with the Women’s Liberation Movement, which climaxed over the 1976-1995 period when three global women’s conferences left out the boy child.

Matundura challenged a whole list of eminent Kiswahili scholars, including Kyallo Wadi Wamitilla, Mwenda Mbatiah, Timothy Arege, Richard Makhanu Wafula, Pamella Ngugi, Chacha Nyaigotti Chacha, Kimani Njogu, Wendo Nabea, John Kobia, Clara Momanyi, and Owen McOnyango “to come forth and debate in the Literary Discourse forum to end the notion that Kiswahili Literature is inferior”.

Kezilahabi’s novels tackle some of the most nagging gender problems of our times, not just sexual promiscuity and its consequences — central themes in the two books — but the whole debate around traditional manhood and womanhood.

The theme of male responsibility that pervades Kezilahabi’s books indicates that traditional manhood, where men have the licence to indulge in reckless sex, is untenable as they suffer just as much as women when their lifestyle misfires.

Prof Momanyi of the Catholic University gave me the gender lenses through which I examined Kezilahabi. I share Matundura’s view that she should come forward and debunk the myth that Kiswahili literature is inferior to English, given the weighty issues it tackles.

It couldn’t be, given the extent to which Kezilahabi’s novels stir up the gender debate.