Nemadzivhani switches back to his roots

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Local author Mashudu Nemadzivhani recently had his third book published, but this time he is proud to present it in his home language.

Nemadzivhani, who previously wrote The Road to Damascus and Surviving Damascus, said that writing a book in his mother tongue had become inevitable. The Tshivenḓa novel is titled Vhaṱali and is published by Grassroots Publishers.

“I chose to write this book in Tshivenḓa because, as a young person, I know how important it is to start learning to write in our home language first, in order to preserve them (our language),” he said. “When we continue to write and publish those books, it proves to other young and upcoming authors that it is possible to write a book in our own mother tongues.”

Vhaṱali tells the story of a young woman called Thilivhali, who was raised by her two loving parents. “But, as we all know, parents give birth to us and not to our hearts,” he said. “We get to choose what we want to do with our own lives. This is exactly what Thilivhali does; she chooses her own way of living. Unfortunately, the one that she chooses is nothing but a piercing sword through the hearts of her parents, and a deadly arrow to her own peace.”

Thilivhali finds herself involved in gangsterism at a very young age. She starts doing unimaginable things, including to kill. “She lives like this until she meets a certain guy called Rudzani one day, who turns her world around when he introduces her to something she has never known existed in her life, and that is love,” said the author. “This new normal makes her to drop her bad self in order to become a fitting wife to Rudzani.”

But just when she starts to get comfortable in her new life, something terrible happens and forces her to revisit her old ways of living and leave the peaceful life with her Rudzani. She has no choice but to do some terrible things, for which she pays a devastating price.

The book was inspired by the kind of trouble people can get into when they are young and wild and must later face as adults.

“This is the time when people set traps on their own paths,” Nemadzivhani said. “They forget that they will need a clear path when they are older and ready to settle.” Through this book he wants young people to remember that whatever they do now while they are young will come back to haunt them at some point in the future.

Nemadzivhani is also a poet of note, whose poems first appeared in an anthology titled Miludzi ya Shango, published by Timbila Poetry Project in 2012.

Nemadzivhani can be followed on Facebook, Twitter (@ANEMADZIVHANI) or Instagram (@Mashudunemadzivhani) and contacted on Tel 062 181 8921. 

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.