Ignatius Mabasa in conversation with Philani Nyoni about the translation of Mapenzi and its publication in English as Madmen

 Reproduced from South Africa's Litnet  (https://www.litnet.co.za/from-mapenzi-to-madmen-a-conversation-with-ignatius-mabasa/)

From Mapenzi to Madmen: 

A conversation with Ignatius Mabasa

Philani A Nyoni, Ignatius Tirivangani Mabasa

Ignatius Mabasa (Photo: supplied)

In 1999, a 28-year-old, Ignatius Mabasa, wrote a novel that would not only stake its claim in the Zimbabwean literary canon, but go on to receive international recognition in the form of the Times Literary Supplement calling it “one of the most significant books to have come out of Africa”. It was rumoured that Tanaka Chidora would translate it into English, but sadly that did not come to pass. It is not all gloom, however. In 2025, amaBooks Publishers will publish Tsitsi Mutiti’s translation of Mapenzi into English under the title Madmen, while the University of Georgia Press is set to release the translation in North America. Philani A Nyoni talks to Ignatius Mabasa about this new lease of life on his iconic multi-award-winning book, and what it means to him and the zeitgeist after a quarter century in circulation.

You recently translated Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions into Shona, and have been a strong advocate for the preservation of native tongues, especially your indigenous language, Shona. You must admit there’s a certain irony to your book being translated into English. What gives, milord?

Irony, because Mapenzi has been translated from its original language into English, and not vice versa – I actually see the translation into English as a gain against Western hegemony, because the mountain has come to Muhammad to acknowledge his existence. Instead of an African story being forced by the capitalist world system and globalisation into English, the translation is a sign of respect to Shona people in wanting to understand their worldview and the issues that trouble them. The Mapenzi story is important for my people’s pedagogy and emancipation, because it encapsulates the historical, cultural and social identity of a nation. It is a kind of extension of Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger and a version of Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions. Getting Mapenzi translated into English is a coup, because our efforts and works in our own languages are a way of refusing to let the world dominate and silence us ideologically. The Mapenzi translation is giving a bird a branch to perch on, but the bird truly belongs and finds meaning, rest and peace in the nest of its mother tongue.

In 2021, the Times Literary Supplement named Mapenzi “one of the most significant books to have come out of Africa”. In your opinion, why has it taken so long to have it brought to a wider audience in the form of translation?

Personally, I think it has taken this long to have Mapenzi brought to a wider audience in the form of translation because it is not a light read. It reeks with the experiences of marginalised people dealing with issues of poverty, violence, disintegration, fear, coloniality and dejection. It paints huge murals of the brutal nature of African life in the postcolonial era. Such socially realistic issues are like Third Cinema – they don’t sell and are uncomfortable for Western readers, because they are indicators of the long-term impact of colonisation.

Are you worried something might be lost in the process of translation? Something particular and nuanced that may be part of the book’s immortal soul? I mean this in the context of your having said that the lines always come to you in your mother tongue, and that you have found difficulty in translating the words when they come.

Certainly I am. There is something deeply ingrained in the language of the people who are telling their story in Mapenzi. There are issues which don’t need translation, because they are at home in the nest of the language that is telling the story. However, there were cases where the beauty and richness of the Shona idiom, metaphor and way of expressing issues presented a real struggle. It was like trying to get a stubborn donkey to move – you can pull and pull, but it simply will not move, digging its hooves into the ground. Under such circumstances I felt for the translator, because the message that was coming across was, as somebody clever once said, that “each language has its own language”. Mapenzi is a story of ordinary folk in the ghetto who may understand English, but English doesn’t quite define, explain or get tickled by the witty and clever use as the original language.

How involved were you in the process of translation? Did Tsitsi Mutiti and Jane Morris engage you during the process, or did you leave the process to their professional discretion?

I got heavily involved only in the end when I had to work with the editor, who did a fantastic job in pointing out ambiguities and things she felt had the potential to confuse foreign audiences. I also had the task of reading the translated story three times, as we kept discovering things and had to make difficult decisions.

It has been about a quarter of a century since Mapenzi was published. With the time that has passed in your personal and professional life, what does this text mean to you today, now that you are a different man in a different epoch?

I tell you that this was the biggest challenge for me. Literature is shaped by the conditions of the time in which it is created, but it is also influenced by the level of development that the author is at. Mapenzi is my first novel, written when I was aged 28, and I feel that, if I had proper guidance, I would have paid more attention to developing my characters and story. Actually, if I were to be given the opportunity, I would love to rewrite the story, paying more attention to what I now consider amateur ways of handling the story. This is something Tendai Huchu observed and struggled with when he at one time helped me. However, major improvements would have had implications for the original story. I consulted widely, and the sentiment was that if I were to rewrite or embellish the story as the mature writer that I am now, I would be destroying the popular Mapenzi, which was well received and loved with the “flaws” that I was now noticing. Although the TLS called it one of the most significant books to have come out of Africa, Mapenzi also shows how much indigenous literature has potential but requires support. As a budding writer at the time, I benefited immensely from studying the Shona novel as a course for my BA general degree. It was through that course that I understood that for most indigenous books, a sincerely told story matters more than the style. There is a lot of work that still has to go into the aestheticisation of Shona writing. Anyway, I am glad that while Mapenzi may be from a different epoch, it still remains relevant in terms of the themes and issues it deals with.