Chenjerai Hove – Freedom to write

Freedom of speech is something that we in the western world often take for granted. With the rise of social networking and blogging, being able to say what we want whenever we want about whomever we want to say it about (particularly our often mocked and criticised politicians) is most certainly the norm for many of us, particularly we writers. However for people like Zimbabwe-born award-winning novelist, poet, and social commentator Chenjerai Hove, writing about his thoughts, feelings, views and yes, sometimes his government, landed him in exile and number 17 on his government’s most wanted list.

Born on February 9th 1956 and growing up during the Zimbabwean War of Liberation, it is not too surprising that Hove’s work is keenly interested in freedom and the price tag that, for Hove and many Zimbabwean writers like him, it more often than not comes with. In 2001, he was forced to flee his country, leaving his wife and children, after several attempts on his life and his writing were made by President Robert Mugabe and his government. Even one of his relatives, a government worker, tried to bribe him into silence. Hove, however, refused to put down his pen and continues to be critical of Mugabe, particularly his blatant disregard for human rights.

Despite all of this, Hove’s work somehow manages to remain hopeful. “Blind Moon” (2003), the first collection of poetry that he published after his exile, explores the important role that poetry plays in giving people a voice, particularly those who cannot speak up for themselves. In the opening to “Blind Moon” entitled “Why Poetry”, Hove claims that poetry ‘allows…that suppressed voice to live, to breathe, to fly and be heard.’ And this is precisely what Hove’s poetry attempts to do. He uses this said voice in the poem “What Are You Doing”, in which he openly criticises Mugabe’s attack on freedom using the metaphor of a singing bird being shot dead ‘the birds that sing//are shot dead’, suggesting that those who try to tell the truth, like him, are often silenced.

This is true of many writers and poets around the world who do not share the privilege that we have to speak and write as we wish. Although Hove is able to write and his work is published around the world in several different languages, he is forced to do this away from the land that he knows and the people that he loves.