DISILLUSIONMENT, FRUSTRATION, PROTEST AND ANGER: PALAVER FINISH AND BLIND MOON

Abstract

The paper closely examines Chenjerai Hove’s Palaver Finish and Blind Moon through the application of Historical Criticism. Blind Moon and Palaver Finish complement each other in presenting Hove’s disillusionment, frustration, protest and anger at the level of betrayal displayed by political leaders of independent Zimbabwe. While Hove still shows his passion for historicity, his version of events in Zimbabwe around the year 2000 seems compromised by his apparent detest for ZANU (PF) which he accuses of taking the people’s revolution off the rails through corruption and violence. In the process, Hove also confirms that he has dumped the revolutionary party and some ideals of the struggle for independence to sometimes pose as a propagandist for the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which was formed in 1999, oblivious of the emotive and yet unfinished business of the land question which had occasioned the often chaotic and yet necessary Land Reform Programme implemented by the ZANU (PF) government. This ideological somersault seems to be occasioned by the love lost between him and the ZANU (PF) government which he allegedly accuses of persecuting him into exile in 2003. The paper concludes by affirming that, indeed a writer as a social being cannot stay free from contamination by social circumstances of his time.