John Eppel Research Articles

“The Country We Built Up”: Geocriticism, Rhodesian Places and the Nefarious Bush in John Eppel’s The Holy Innocents

This article discusses John Eppel’s Bulawayo novel, The Holy Innocents, in order to see how space and place are constructed. By deploying geocriticism as a spatially oriented theory, the article shows how attention to literary geography reveals political insights into histories of race and Zimbabwean belonging. The city of Bulawayo and the literature it inspires provide a unique commentary on the cultural imagining of place. It is demonstrated that the suburb, as a locale in John Eppel’s writing, is a key unit of analysis in exploring the literary city. The political transition and cultural metamorphosis of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe are discussed through the prism of geography. Through recognising the power of space and the arguments about place Eppel makes, our understanding of Zimbabwean literary culture and its interactions with spatiality is developed.

The Politics of Space and the Search for Ethico-Moral Rearmament in Zimbabwe in John Eppel’s Hatchings

This article analyses the politics of space and the search for national regeneration in a society that is bifurcated along class, moral, and ethical lines. Whichever way one looks at it, Zimbabwe’s spatialised realities in both denotative and connotative terms stubbornly stand out. Space here is used as a discursive method of inclusion and exclusion. There are opposition spaces, ZANU-PF spaces, church spaces, corrupt spaces and spaces of violence and coercion. What are often dwarfed are those spaces that represent the future, national cohesion and multiculturalism, because they have never been allowed to flourish. This article examines the novel Hatchings (2006) by John Eppel in order to argue that the spaces of national toxicity preponderate over the spaces that represent national development, healing and justice. The article invokes theories of space and place by such theorists as Henri Lefebvre, Setha Low and Ranka Primorac to argue that space is socially produced and imbued with symbolic meaning over and above its physicality. As embodied, space(s) houses metaphors, ideology, behaviours, habits and orientations that can either unhinge or redeem a society depending on the balance of forces at play in given social contexts. What Eppel seems to be suggesting, the article concludes, is that despite the fact that Zimbabwe has been in the tenacious grip of the spaces of looters and immoral personages, the nation possesses within itself spaces for self-renewal that are often ignored or suppressed in the relentless pursuit of self-interest. There is a need for a new national culture and ethos that propels the nation into the future rather than the abyss.

“Haunted Still by Memories”: John Eppel’s Post-Settler Plant Poetic

SummaryBulawayo-based writer John Eppel is gaining increased prominence and acceptance as Zimbabwe’s premier satirist, in both poetry and prose. Early critics, even fellow-poets, failed to read the coruscating and self-referential nature of that satire, and poems treating the natural world were too easily dismissed as Romantic “white” nostalgia. A closer reading reveals a subtler range of questions, exploring the relations between white or Rhodesian identity and nature (especially flowers), between satire and belonging, between seasonal ephemerality and political uncertainty, between literary allusion and sensual immediacy, poetic form and historical turbulence. Above all, many of Eppel’s plant-focused poems treat the layered and conflicting demands of memory. This article explores these questions over thirty years of Eppel’s production (from Spoils of War [1989] to Together [2011]) and through three interlocking phases or aspects: childhood, war and political transition, and post-Independence disillusionment.

“White Man Crawling”: Time, Race and Power in John Eppel’s Depiction of Middle-aged and Elderly Whites during the Zimbabwean “Crisis”

SummaryThis article applies Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, in conjunction with a rights-reading approach, to John Eppel’s fiction, with particular reference to Eppel’s depiction of middle-aged and elderly whites during the Zimbabwean “crisis”. Taken at one level to mean the organisation of value-laden space-time in a literary text, and also at another level, the spatio-temporal relationship between a text and its socio-historical context, the chronotope emerges as a useful concept in analysing polarised racial relationships that characterised Zimbabwe during its “crisis” period. While the Chimurenga chronotope is a cyclical representation of time whose racialising strategy depersonalises whites as constant foes and strangers rendered in a permanent war narrative, Eppel responds in his fiction, particularly through the chronotopes of ageing and reversal, by delineating an array of white subjectivities characterised by physical infirmity and loss of socio-political power, to challenge the homogenisation and vilification of whites.

Of dirt, disinfection and purgation: Discursive construction of state violence in selected contemporary Zimbabwean literature

This paper examines post-independent Zimbabwean literary narratives which engage with how the ruling ZANU-PF government frames dissenting voices as constituting dirt, filth and undesirability. Making use of Achille Mbembe's postulations on the "vulgarity of power" and Kenneth W. Harrow's readings of the politics of dirt, the central thesis of this paper is that the troping of dirt and state sponsored violence are closely related to the themes of memory and belonging. Literary works by writers such as Chistopher Mlalazi, NoViolet Bulawayo and John Eppel become self-effacing speech acts that are involved in reimagining and revisioning our understanding of power dynamics and how this affects human and social experiences.

Towards a Stylistic Re-Reading of John Eppel's Absent: The English Teacher

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to articulate the reasons behind the structure and style John Eppel employs in his novel Absent: The English Teacher. Approaches to John Eppel's creative works have been myopic and slight. Attention has not been paid to the technical achievements and the deliberate construction that Eppel uses in his novel Absent: The English Teacher. This paper eschews prior readings of this work in order to formulate a new one based on structure. By dealing with the unusual elements of the novel the paper explains the alternative ways of representation and storytelling found in the novel. The inclusion of certain structural elements in the novel by Eppel is found to be deliberate. It is concluded that the structure of the novel is appropriate to the story because of the occupation of the protagonist. Multi-genre inclusion in the prose of the novel is identified, assessed and the impact towards its contribution to the narrative objectives is highlighted. This paper argues that Eppel should rightly be considered a member of the Zimbabwean literary establishment based on his innovative creativity.

‘All that doesn’t make headlines’: Responses to Zanu-PF’s imaginaries of belonging in recent fiction from Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTWith the ruling Zanu-PF’s stranglehold on Zimbabwean media, and the same party’s intolerance for dissent, literature has become part of the country’s public sphere in contesting the ruling party’s exclusivist imaginaries of belonging. Such literature, and some of its publishing methods, offer alternative possibilities that suggest a need to re-open the terms of national belonging, thus troubling categories such as race and ethnicity in what can be called a politics of recognition. In many ways, Bryony Rheam’s This September Sun, writings by John Eppel, and the late Julius Chingono in Together, some of the short stories in Where to Now? Short Stories from Zimbabwe, and NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names ask what has happened to ideas of tolerance, reconciliation, inclusivity and human diversity in Zimbabwe. Through various strategies of indirection, Zimbabwean writers present counter-discursive voices that suggest alternative and inclusive imaginaries of nationhood.

(Re)membering the nation’s “forgotten” past: Portrayals of Gukurahundi in Zimbabwean literature

In the early 1980s Zimbabwe witnessed an ethnic cleansing which has been ignored in official state discourses and rendered unspeakable. This “moment of madness” (Ellis, 2006: 40), as Robert Mugabe called it, has come to be referred to as Gukurahundi. The minority Ndebele tribe was persecuted by government-backed forces. This article draws on the theoretical reflections of El Nossery and Hubbell who argue that even though some traumatic experiences may be unspeakable, they are not necessarily unrepresentable. Through an analysis of Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins (2002), Christopher Mlalazi’s novel Running with Mother (2012), several poems by John Eppel as well as Owen Maseko’s paintings , this paper contends that these works of art broach a subject which has been rendered quasi-taboo. It is argued that these works of literature fictionalize, against the grain of the official national narrative, Zimbabwe’s traumatic postcolonial violence in which the national army turned against the country’s citizens under the guise of weeding out “dissidents” in the immediate post-independence period. Moreover, this article contends that fictional and artistic works function in such a way as to keep the memory of civilian victims alive, to heal the national trauma through memorializing it, and to call perpetrators to account by pointing out their culpability.

Whitelier than white? Inversions of the racial gaze in white Zimbabwean writing

This article looks at inscriptions of whiteness in selected white Zimbabwean narratives. Through a reading of Andrea Eames' The Cry of the Go-Away Bird (2011), Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2003) and John Eppel's Absent: the English Teacher (2009), the argument proposes that white Zimbabwean narratives situate whiteness within the context of change and marginality in Zimbabwe. The narratives deal with experiences of change and apprehensions of lived reality marked by the transfer of power from white minority to black majority rule. Our reading of The Cry of the Go-Away Bird examines how whiteness in the postcolonial Zimbabwean state is perceived through an outsider's gaze, resulting in a kind of double consciousness within the (racialized, white) subject of the gaze. It is argued that the text depicts whites as torn between two unreconciled streams of possibility, reinforcing their sense of alienation. Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight represents whiteness as a thoroughly ephemeral experience. The meaning of whiteness is mediated through perpetual physical movement as whites travel from one point to another. Eppel's Absent: the English Teacher affords a rethinking of whiteness as an unstable form of identity contingent on historical and political factors.

Dambudzo Marechera's Amelia Love Poems: Innovative or Overrated?

In this debate concerning Marechera’s Amelia love poems, Drew Shaw argues they are innovative, especially in their adaptation of the traditional European sonnet and their exploration of an intercultural love relationship. He commends Marechera’s uncensored psychosexual investigation and his imaginative fusions of Western (Greco-Roman) mythology with late twentieth-century African realities. By contrast, John Eppel finds Marechera is not the innovative master of the English language he claims to be, at least not in this poetry. Identifying structural inadequacies, he argues there is little to distinguish it from plain prose. For Eppel, Marechera is archaically Eurocentric (in his use of metaphor, myth, and turn of phrase) to the detriment of his poetry. Shaw and Eppel clash on their choice of evaluative criteria and use significantly different interpretive methods, but converge to some extent in advocating close critical readings, which have long been neglected in studies of Marechera’s poetry.

Narrating the Zimbabwean nation: a conversation with John Eppel

In this interview, John Eppel, a veteran of Zimbabwean writing, confirms his reputation as an “angry jester”, determined to expose what he describes as “humbug”, wherever he sees it. With his satires, Eppel has stirred the national literature with subversive laughter, ridiculing both Rhodesian society under Ian Smith and post-independence society under Robert Mugabe. With his poetry, he innovatively marries European forms with southern African content. During the crisis of the 2000s he refused exile and has been consistently critical of political and social corruption and injustice from within Zimbabwe's borders.

Satirical sounds in John Eppel's Songs My Country Taught Me

The paper takes its cue from Zimbabwean poet John Eppel's views on his use of satire stated in a recent paper. It explores how his different approaches to writing at different periods of his country's history are reflected in two poems from his collection Songs, My Country Taught Me.

Filling the void in our national life: The search for a song that captures the spirit of Rhodesian nationalism and national identity

The article examines the Rhodesian Front government's attempts to search for an anthem that instilled a sense of patriotism among an assortment of the dominant minority white people in the colony. The Rhodesian Front came to power in 1962, and in 1965 under the leadership of Ian Smith, it announced the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain. After the UDI, the colony of Rhodesia was a beleaguered space; it was isolated internationally and from within, black nationalists intensified their struggle for self-rule by waging a war against white minority rule. These developments, this article argues, prompted the Rhodesians to search for a cohesive rallying point of resistance to pressures from international isolation and the war waged by black nationalists. The article further contends that the Rhodesian Front government realized that it was no longer sufficient to construct the spirit of Rhodesian nationhood through narratives of canonized historical events such as the arrival of the Pioneer Column. The difficulties of the period (from the mid-1960s to 1980) were compounded by the now visible diversity in the composition of the white population following waves of immigration after the Second World War. This cosmopolitanism of the white population also necessitated a shift in ideological discourses that constructed the colony. These factors resulted in attempts to compose national songs that could appeal to varieties of white people, and inspire them to resist threats to settler power in the colony, especially the threat posed by the liberation war. Two songs, ‘Rhodesians never die’ and ‘Ode to Joy’ are analyzed in this article to critique the sense of nationalism, patriotism and identity that they fostered among Rhodesians. To problematize the identity and nationalist discourses couched in these songs, the article also analyzes two poems from the collection Spoils of War (1989) by a white Rhodesian/Zimbabwean poet John Eppel, who satirizes and deconstructs the concepts of Rhodesian identity and nationalism that these two songs forge.

Corruption, migration and the Zimbabwean nation: John Eppel's Hatchings

The paper examines the link John Eppel's Hatchings establishes between migration and organized crime through its representation of an immigrant community as a virus that infects the body of the newly independent Zimbabwean nation. It argues that with the inclusion in his text of refugees, expatriate teachers and researchers, Eppel has constructed Zimbabwe in the image of the postmodern nation expounded by Bhabha, without necessarily subscribing to all its characteristics. The paper discusses a number of issues Eppel explores in his novel, including the involvement of the foreign contingent in the Zimbabwean underworld and the nature of the moral, political and academic aspirations which take Western academics and aid workers to Third‐World countries. It contends, however, that while a critique of the so‐called Third‐Worldism of Western leftist institutions appears consistent with the thrust of the novel, the reductive characterization of its migrant characters only reinforces stereotypes about foreigners which dominate our often xenophobic society.

Poems by Ingrid de Kok, Nuala Dowling, Loren Anthony and Johannes van Jerusalem; short fiction by John Eppel

Poems by Ingrid de Kok, Nuala Dowling, Loren Anthony and Johannes van Jerusalem; short fiction by John Eppel

Ten poems by Isobel Dixon and two prose poems by John Eppel

Ten poems by Isobel Dixon and two prose poems by John Eppel

Book reviews

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape, 1890–1930 by W. Beinart and C. Bundy. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987. The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, 2nd edition, by C. Bundy. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988. War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa edited by Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988. White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's Bitter Roots as Witnessed by Eight Generations of an Afrikaner Family by Marq de Villiers. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988. Home Truths by Basil Du Toit and Spoils of War by John Eppel. Cape Town: Carrefour Press, 1988 and 1989. Because They Chose the Plan of God: The story of the Bulhoek Massacre by Robert Edgar. History Workshop Topic Series I. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988. Brewers, Beerhalls and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa by Paul la Hausse. History Workshop Topic Series 2. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988. Detention and Torture in South Africa: Psychological, Legal and Historical Studies by Don Foster, with contributions by Dennis Davis and research assistance by Diane Sandier. Cape Town: David Philip, 1987. State Resistance and Change in South Africa edited by Philip Frankel, Noam Pines and Mark Swilling. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1988. Building Tomorrow Today; African Workers in Trade Unions 1970–1984 by Steven Friedman. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987. Facing The Storm: Portraits of Black Lives in Rural South Africa by Tim Keegan. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988. History of Southern Africa by J.D. Omer‐Cooper. London: James Currey, 1987. Journey Continued: An Autobiography by Alan Paton. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988. The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing Movement of 1856–7 by J.B. Peires. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1989. The Blood of Our Silence by Kelwyn Sole. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988.