Stanley Makuwe

Stanley Makuwe was born on the 15th of January 1972 in Mashava, a small mining town about 30km away from Masvingo, where his mother was working as a maid for a white family. He grew up herding goats and cattle in the rural district of Shurugwi, Midlands province, in an area called Gamwa, whose most famous man is the war hero, Comrade Josiah Tongogara. He is the third born in a family of two brothers and two sisters. He started school towards the end of the liberation war in 1979 at Dlodlo Primary School. He pent four years at this school and moved to Gamwa primary school.

Stanley says that, ‘The main reason to move was because of a lot of beatings to school pupils by teachers, which I now clearly believe were physical abuse. The other reason was there were tribal tensions between older boys as the school was a mixture of Ndebeles and Shonas. Our older brothers used to fight a lot because of tribal differences and the teachers never made any effort to stop the fights. Gamwa primary school was a very good school where we were never beaten for no good reasons. There was no tribalism. The only problem was it was too far away and we had to walk for hours to and from school’.

In 1985 he finished primary school and moved to Gamwa secondary school where he did form one before moving to Chinhoyi where his uncle was now teaching.  Soon after writing his ZJC exams in 1987 he moved back to his rural home where he did form three and four at Gamwa secondary. Because of financial problems he wrote a few ‘O’ level exam papers.

Because his mother was working for white families, he never got the chance to live with her for a period of more than a year and he was always being moved from one relative to another for different reasons. He lived alone from 1988 to 1990 before his aunt came back from the city to live with him. He found the living conditions very hard and decided to run away from home.

On November 24 1990 at sunset he ran away and went to work as a cattle-herder for the headmaster of Dlodlo Primary School. ‘He made me work very hard, only resting on Saturdays to go to church that I never enjoyed. I loved reading a lot, preparing to write the remaining ‘O’ level papers but on Saturdays I was not allowed to read as the headmaster regarded reading as work, which was against his religion to work on Saturdays’. said Stanley.

He used his salary of Z$40 per month to pay for his exam fees, which the headmaster paid in advance. Because of the working conditions he decided to leave the headmaster’s home. He started looking for another job in the villages. When the headmaster came for the weekend he told him and his wife that he wanted to leave but he said he wanted him to stay. When he and his wife went back to work Stanley ran away and went to live with a Mutemeri family. That was on the 8th of April 1991. ‘Mutemeri family was a very good and caring family, always happy and I could read as much as I wanted. Those were the days I discovered writers like Dambudzo Marechera. All about him was such an inspiration. Because of his rebellious lifestyle I, and other youngsters, thought he was a hero and anything written by him was like gold’, said Stanley.

While living with the Mutemeri family he wrote the remaining ‘O’ level papers and got very good passes. ‘I still miss the Mutemeri family even though they still awe me Z$35 of my salary that they didn’t pay me way back in 1991’, he said. After getting his ‘O’ level results he decided to go back home. When he got home there was no-one. His aunt and her children had moved back to the city. He started living by himself. His mother came for Christmas holiday. She was now working in Harare. ‘I asked if I could go to the city with her. She agreed and on the 2nd of January 1992 we went to Harare’, he said.

The conditions for his mother were very difficult because her white boss, referred to as baas, didn’t allow her to live with anyone else except his little sister. In fact, the baas was fine. It was the madam that didn’t want Stanley. Under such difficult conditions his mother went on to bring his older brother, Vincent, who he was meeting for the second time in life as they grew up separated. Being with his brother was such a wonderful experience. He was and still is a warm-hearted man. They got along very well and they used to read a lot together. They started writing poems under the influence of Dambudzo Marechera. Stanley switched to plays when he read in the newspaper about a young playwright named Denford Magora who got into big trouble with the government for writing plays that criticized those at the top. He remembers the government’s CIO were after him after he staged a play called Dr Government. He met this young writer once when he tracked him down to his workplace in Harare’s CBD. ‘He thought he was going to grow into one of the best writers in Zimbabwe but I haven’t heard of him for many years. I still wonder if he is still in the writing business or if he was frustrated out of it’, he said.

While in the city his mother used to talk a lot about her mother’s younger sister who was and is still a university lecturer and a commissioner. She gave Stanley her address and he went to visit her. She helped Stanley to get into nursing and on the 6th of September 1993 he started his nursing training at Harare Hospital School of Nursing. ‘I will always have so much respect and love for my mother’s aunt for the life she gave me. Being into nursing changed my life a lot’, said Stanley.

He finished his training on the 5th of September 1996 and went to work at Chinhoyi Provincial hospital. While at Chinhoyi hospital he started contributing to the Sunday Mail Leisure magazine. Funny Mushava was still the editor of the newspaper. It was a great experience because he made a lot of friends. He spent a year and a half at Chinhoyi hospital before he went to Bulawayo to do mental health nursing training at Ingutsheni Hospital Mental Health Training School. He started his training in June 1998 and finished in January 2000. In Bulawayo he made friends with a lot of guys including Victor Kunonga, the jazz musician. ‘We used to go to the gym together at Dynamic Health Studio and I remember the day Victor was crowned Mr. Bulawayo. Victor introduced me to his family and to this day we are close friends.’, he said. After his training he went back to work at Chinhoyi provincial hospital.

In 2002 he applied for nursing registration in New Zealand, and part of the registration was that he should travel to New Zealand to do a one month orientation course. He had no money to travel as the airfares were only in foreign currency, which was starting to be a scarce commodity. A very good man paid for his airfares and he left Zimbabwe in May 2002. After completing the registration programme he got a job at Auckland City Mental Health Unit. After working there for two and a half years he moved to Middlemore Hospital where he is currently based.

He started taking writing seriously in 2003 while working at Auckland City Hospital. ‘My initial idea was to write a novel based on my upbringing. I mentioned the idea to Dr Lani Hunter, who had just finished his doctorate in philosophy and had just published a book on New Zealand history. He advised me to start with short stories as a way of shaping up my writing skills,’ he said.

He spent two years working hard on shaping his writing skills and in 2005 his first book, a collection of short stories titled UNDER THIS TREE and other stories, was published by Polygraphia Publishers. He also entered South Africa’s SASSPA short story competition and his story titled WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE was long-listed and went on to be published in the anthology titled AMAZING ANECDOTES. In the same year he entered the BBC WORLD African short story competition. His story, LIFE IN A MORGUE, was a runner-up and it was broadcast live on BBC world radio station. Another one of his story, THE FIRST LETTER, was also published in New Zealand by Merge Magazine and LIFE IN A MORGUE was published again by Africa’s leading website, pambazuka. org Earlier this year his other short story, THE VENDOR’S COLD WINTER DREAM , was published on pambazuka.org.

When he heard about the BBC WORLD INTERNATIONATIONAL playwriting competition 2007 he decided to develop his story, LIFE IN A MORGUE, into a play. The play, under the title THE DEAD SHALL RISE AGAIN, made it to the HIGHLY COMMENDED list, making it one of the top 50 plays out of 1 200 submissions from all over the world. This is the same play we are producing in Zimbabwe under the title, OVERTHROWN. Stanley is currently writing another play for African Performance 2008. After trying his hand on poems, short stories and plays, he found out that he has  great love for writing drama. ‘I like the idea of having my characters express their thoughts and feelings and people can see them putting the thoughts and feelings into action’, he said.

Stanley has a great passion for physical fitness and is a strong follower of reggae music. ‘My role models are Chenjerai Hove, the late Comrade Josiah Tongogara, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nelson Mandela. I can rightly say Mr. Cont Mhlanga has added his name on my list’, he concluded.