"He unlocked many doors for me and let me peek into the marvellous world beyond. He gave me intimations of hell but also the strength to resist. He, who said he had never met an 'African' but only human beings, made me into an 'Africanist'." Flora Veit-Wild
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-03-02-through-closed-doors-with-an--african-prankster
I have often been asked why I did not write a proper Dambudzo Marechera biography.
My answer was that I did not want to collapse his multi-faceted personality into one authoritative narrative but rather let the diverse voices speak for themselves. But this is not the whole truth. I could not write his life story because my own life was so intricately entangled with his. While I have generally come to be known as 'The Marechera Authority', there have always been two narrative strands behind this persona -- the public and the private. While the public one has stood out as strong and clear, my private life has been interlaced with love and passion, loss and pain, with illness and the threat of death. Yet, what I have gained is so much more than what I have endured that I am filled with gratitude and, I might add, with laughter.
My personal involvement with Dambudzo Marechera has affected my professional life in a way I would never have expected. The many ironic twists, the tricks that Dambudzo played on me even posthumously, make our story an immensely rich and funny one, one that I now, more than twenty-five years after I came to know him, want to tell.
I first met Dambudzo Marechera in Charles Mungoshi's office.....................................................
