Following Phillip Chidavaenzi’s trail

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It just so happened that I started reading Phillip Chidavaenzi’s book, The Haunted Trail, after weeks of watching the American TV series The Sopranos.

It just so happened that I started reading Phillip Chidavaenzi’s book, The Haunted Trail, after weeks of watching the American TV series The Sopranos.

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There was something charmingly deceiving about Tony Soprano in the film, who as he told people, was into ‘waste management’ and yet behind the scenes, he was a ruthless mafia boss. Michael Denga in Chidavaenzi’s book turns out to be a Zimbabwean member of the Soprano family.

The story revolves around Michael Denga, a young banker, who is corrupt and corrupting, and who has had his bank put under curatorship after spinning away depositor’s money for personal gains.

Chidavaenzi’s narrative is a deft script about survival during the infamous Zimbabwe dollar days. He has clandestine affairs and ends up HIV positive. In the end he commits suicide. But this is to simplify the story or the main character. Denga’s is a rags to riches story.

His mother was a prostitute who ran a famous shebeen but he survives it all after well wishers started taking of him. Eventually he goes to Fort Hare on a Presidential scholarship and comes back to become a banker.

He becomes a wide-eyed savage cat that only thinks about profits and gains. And when he walks, his step became an attempt to outdo everything and everybody other than himself. He keeps a chessboard in his office not in order to enjoy the game but to remind himself about never to fall again.

When he meets a young girl, Chiedza, in Mutare. It is love at first sight but it will take time before they could be together. Chiedza’s dream to go to university comes true but she takes the wrong turn.

While her family urges her to learn at a nearer university in Mutare she opts for the every-student’s-dream University of Zimbabwe where fate leads her to Michael Denga’s arms whom she had met at an event in Mutare.

Chidavaenzi’s book is set somewhere during the crisis period when everything in the country disintegrated. But unlike most of his contemporaries Chidavaenzi doesn’t just focus on the politics or the hopeless situation that obtains. He trails the life of a successful young banker in Harare who stops at nothing to succeed.

He fraternizes with the powerful and the politically connected. Chidavaenzi’s book is a penetrating look at the underworld of Harare – the lives of the rich and powerful that have so often been skipped on the pages of Zimbabwean literature.

There are also glimpses in the sophisticated areas of Law, Media and Business. Too often, young children in Zimbabwe are socialized to aspire to become lawyers and entrepreneurs. Chidavaenzi explores those social desires that if not controlled can kill us.

There are underlying themes that pervades the tone of the narrative – youth delinquency, unemployment, HIV/Aids, sex and drugs and black empowerment – issues that have affected mostly young Zimbabweans. According to the 2012 census, 60% of Zimbabwean population is under the age of 40.

While there are evident traces of Chidavaenzi’s influence from the Nigerian Pacesetters, his writing is more sophisticated. In fact, The Haunted Trail has some influence from Sidney Sheldon and John Grisham.

And the action shuttles between Harare and Mutare. More often than not, Harare is often portrayed as the centre of activity in Zimbabwe but as Chidavaenzi reveals there is also life outside Harare. His ability to create an expansive literary geography is an important skill that many young Zimbabwean writers have failed to master.

Denga’s power not only corrupts him but leaves him diseased with the deadly HIV/Aids. He rapes and infects his young fiancé Chiedza whose denial of her status highlights how HIV is still perceived in Zimbabwe.

It’s a disease many still fail to come to terms with despite the fact that it is no longer a secret as it used to be a few decades ago. Besides there are now many advanced intervention processes and drugs are now easy to access.

What is quite striking in The Haunted Trail is that HIV/Aids is still viewed as a disease for the poor – not for the powerful, and rich. As if having a lot of money is immunity to anything.

In Zimbabwe there are whispered rumours that many powerful politicians and business people are not only carriers but spreaders of the virus. They are known for their philandering and love for “young, vulnerable and inexperienced” girls who are easily enticed with small but frequent doses of money and lots of material gifts. This is the same weakness that Michael Denga falls prey to.

After Chiedza’s date rape by her fiancé leaves her not only pregnant but HIV positive too, thereafter Michael’s influence collapses leaving him with no options but to commit suicide as he could not live with the embarrassment of his fall from grace.

Chiedza, with the support of her family and friends, lives to tell the tale of hope and endurance. We wait to see what becomes of Chiedza in Chidavaenzi’s forthcoming sequel, The Ties that Bind.

This is a book that will resonate with a lot of Zimbabweans in its contemporariness and dissection of issues. Indeed, Philip Chidavaenzi, is in a league of his own and I will not be missing any book that comes from his pen.

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