Godwin Muwanguzi
According to psychoanalysis, in literary criticism, a writer and an artist reflect their work. So, literature itself is a fragment of its sculptor—the artist in this case, however much they escape reality, leaves trails of their illness in the written words.
And so, though voluntary act writing is, it victimises a writer and they inadvertently disrobe what they intend to conceal from the audience—this could be their biographical information or experiences: love life, childhood traumas, etc.
Before you even immerse yourself in Zziwa’s “The Muchwezi, the Flower, & the Suitor,” the first thing you notice is his desire to escape himself—it is his love story, which might not have worked in his favour—but he tries to impose it on us, the audience.
Upon reading the writer’s dedication, you envision an incomplete love tale—you learn that the wind of fate swept someone dearer to his heart away, but still, he convinces us otherwise. He creates imaginary characters to make his life more bearable, and he wins—it’s the characters who carry his cross. Playwright Zziwa, Bravo!
“The Muchwezi, The Flower, & The Suitor” zeroes in on the ultimate price that one must pay for true love and the impediments that one encounters in such a pursuit—and I construe it as a sad punch, especially to those who barely understand the worth of love; it could be love for pleasure, wealth, or wisdom—there is always a price that we ought to pay.
Unfortunately, contemporary society is so deprived of volition that many people think love is a waste of their precious time—we have buried the subject in what we call ‘empowerment’, which is about cutting loose of what holds us together—trivialising love and its pains and joys and looking for comfort. This is a fallacy—true love is a bed of thorns and fire, and to drink from its source, one must lose something precious.
On the other hand, the writer also mirrors society as an abyss of endless conflicts—culture against religion; sanity versus idiocy; and he juxtaposes greed with selflessness. His characterisation, too, serves him right, as he assigns every player an appropriate role.
Zziwa crashes our hearts from the start, and we have to read and dramatise the whole play with split hearts—the tone is intense throughout, and from time to time, we have to empathise with a character, whether they appeal to our liking or not—and as readers, we are helpless; we are trapped in a box of agonising emotions.
It is true—the first paragraph or sentence of a story or drama determines its prodigiousness; it is through the first words of a literary piece that a reader decides to proceed or stop instantly, cover the book, and keep it aside—Zziwa opens the book by raising our curiosity.
We are in a theatre, and the drama opens with The Flower, a young university girl in her hostel room, lamenting about her miserable life, but who among us is free from life’s sorrows? Each of us is troubled, but The Flower’s problems are so heavy that they weigh her down—they suffocate her.
The Flower has a traumatic past—one, someone she loved, dumped her; two, her incubus, The Muchwezi, has robbed her of her peace and sleep; he robs her of rest. He comes in the dead of night and rapes her, and even though music is therapeutic, it is sad that it barely heals The Flower from her excruciating pain.
They say only love knits bruised hearts—and maybe there is hope that The Flower might recover if love came knocking on her door, but is she ready to give in—to accept her past and start anew? No. The Flower is a pessimist who believes her pain is indelible. It’s evident when her admirer persistently tries to win her heart, but in vain, she instead friend zones him, even when the boy is willing to drown with her—and in our society, we would brand this guy a simp for trying to prove his genuine love for a woman with a diminishing soul.
The writer further questions our relationship with people—and this should be a point of ramification—do we have any friend who would walk in our shoes; a friend who would put their life in danger to save ours? Well, The Flower’s roommate is a reliable friend—her head incessantly ticks, and she might know how to save her troubled sister.
The Flower’s roommate might be Mama Kanisa of the University Scripture Union—she thinks they can exorcise the possessed friend. But is their God ready to wrestle with the evil spirit? Later, we see her with friends running away because they can barely conquer The Muchwezi with prayers—it is funny that Zziwa paints a picture of religion that we all don’t want to see—he crunches our illusions; religion has become ineffective—prayer warriors can no longer chase away demons or even cure a mere headache. Here, the writer takes an unexpected trajectory, reminding us that as Africans, we should hand whatever belongs to Caesar to Caesar—civilisation has corrupted our consciences so much that we think everything is a church matter. Zziwa portrays Christianity as a meek deity; some traditional matters only call for traditional solutions.
The heart is only human, and however much we rob it of love and pleasure, it will always want what it wants, no matter how long it takes. We might be damaged by our previous experiences or traumas, but a time comes when all we need to feel alive again is falling in love.
When The Suitor joins The Flower’s WhatsApp group, where tens of people share ideas and flirt with each other, he captures her attention—he must be the bad kind of guy; he knows what he wants and never hesitates to confess to The Flower, who once again tells her potential boyfriend that she is damaged; however, The Suitor’s charm is irresistible. The flower finally surrenders herself to the stranger as she asks for a love poem. The Suitor just knows how to pull the right strings—he doesn’t waste time.
Every scene of every act in this poetic play is a lesson—the third scene of the first act teaches us to always fit in however troubled we might be, for life never stops for us, so we have to loosen up and dance to the tunes of moments—go out there and interact with people, go to the bar and quench pain with beers, travel to a new place, or fall in love regardless of your fears; you deserve it.
However, as you rush in, always know that at the end of it all, you must take responsibility for every decision or mistake you make—some choices can be redone, while others are inexpungible. It is indubitable that we have many people whose souls belong to the devil, like The Flower, whose father sold to The Muchwezi, and we should know the weight that comes with committing to such people and how deep we might sink with them.
The young might dismiss the fact that some love journeys are better untraveled, and they might go ahead to take risks only to satisfy their hearts, but later in life their impudence costs them—they swim in the abyss of the murk. Today, many young people would rather satisfy their egos and perish than protect their sanity, but in life, we should let some people or things go for the sake of our mental, spiritual, or emotional hygiene.
In the book, whereas the writer condemns those who advertently cross a red line for love’s sake, those who put love above their lives, like The Suitor, who is blind to the fact that The Muchwezi is his girlfriend’s incubus, who has been visiting her in dreams at night and sleeping with her until she orgasms, he also appreciates such bravery as he portrays The Suitor as a genuine and determined man who is willing to love a woman regardless of her lurid life story; not only that, the writer also poses a clump of trying philosophical questions that haunt our consciences: what good is it for us to conceal our sorrows beneath our feet?
We should split ourselves open, so the world appreciates who we are; so it appreciates our broken selves—here, The Flower confesses to The Suitor that her life is only a broken mirror in an empty room and that it would be better if he gave up on her or else he would choke—but love is a robber; it robs us of our sense of volition—even though The Flower tells The Suitor her story to scare him away; he admits in a soliloquy that The Flower’s love softens his heart. What impudence!
Act two of the play gets more dramatic and intense. The writer buries us in profound romance and rejection, too—The Suitor, who is as sharp as a razor, eventually finds the beams of light in The Flower’s thighs—he lays her new catch on their first meeting. Act one, scene one strikes us with the idea of love being a short dream, and while we dream, we just have to hold the sheets a little longer so we don’t wake up. Zziwa gets obsessively romantic, as if his intention, especially for us virgins, is to expose us to the sweetness that lies between a woman’s thighs, which The Suitor calls contours, with gold.
But in the same capacity, feminists should crucify Zziwa. He portrays women as embarrassing creatures, with no iota of remorse. When The Flower’s admirer, who has been there for her before she met with The Suitor, visits her, all she does is discredit his masculinity in the presence of her new lover; she says that her admirer is only a storm in a teapot and that his pipe is ever down. She says all these words only to please The Suitor, who might be suspicious of her relationship with her admirer. Through The Flower’s words, we learn that love flows like a river—we don’t have to force anything; those who need us will break principles for us, and those who don’t, will always be strict with us, but all we have to do is accept it, and move on.
Writers are little gods—they create their worlds and impose them on us. Zziwa, through this act, portrays love as a burden that we have to carry and never cast on the ground. It is in this same act that The Flower tries to strangle The Suitor during lovemaking—the incubus is jealous and he is unwilling to share The Flower’s beans with any other man; he possesses the little lover and uses her to fight his competitor. But there is nothing love cannot do—even after surviving death, The Suitor promises to stand by The Flower, and he is ready to talk to his ancestors at Nkokonjeru and meet a Medium who might consult the twins on what troubles his lover—and this is the true meaning of love—crossing rivers for those we claim to love.
Act three establishes a spiritual vendetta between The Muchwezi and The Suitor. When The Suitor goes to the shrine, the Medium informs him that he saw The Flower’s naked body and that The Muchwezi is envious, and he must kill his competitor. As if Zziwa is in charge of our country and watches over everything while we are asleep—his book is no different from our society today, where many people are entrapped in a spiritual world only because they engage with partners whose souls belong to the devil—perhaps for money or love.
As we travel back in time, twenty years ago, through The Suitor’s nightmare, we also learn that wealth and power reside in dirty places—it is through this drift flashback that we fathom why The Flower is possessed.
We learn that Francis, The Flower’s father, was a poor man who went to play the game without ever knowing its rules—we see him in the hills of Kisoro, drinking a Medium’s saliva, asking for wealth, and later offering her daughter as ransom. Now, he is quiet; even though he knows that The Flower can never be free, what he cares for is money. Is he even worried that men have avoided his daughter? Francis is an embodiment of greed, irresponsibility, and indifference. As long as the money is in his pockets, he doesn’t care about her blood. Francis represents many parents who have sacrificed their children for material wealth.
And now, after The Suitor finds out the whole truth about The Flower, he worries about his life. He is too young and unready to die, and what he does at the moment is to go silent, something that hurts his troubled lover, who thinks men are only users, forgetting that men only settle where there is peace. She even recalls Michael, her first lover who broke her virginity, and thinks he is responsible for all her misfortune—now The Suitor’s phone is off, and The Flower wonders what is wrong with her as if she doesn’t know her problem.
The book closes with the fourth act after the lovers have exchanged apologies and reconciled. We also see The Flower’s admirer at the scene as he calls Mama Katula, the laundrywoman, to clean his crush’s house and wash some clothes, but just like any other simp, he admires Mama Katula’s big nyash, something that upsets The Flower, who sends him out of her house as she says that men are always hungry for women’s thighs.
At night, The Muchwezi revisits The Flower in a nightmare and reminds her that she will always be his. The book ends in suspense, as the writer doesn’t tell us whether The Flower is free at last or whether The Suitor dies from his continuous involvement with The Flower. We don’t know what happens next, and this is what makes the writer a literary genius—he sees beyond fiction—all he does is sculpt the drama as though it were real life, where no one determines the ending; it just happens in a twinkle, like life, before we realise, all is gone. Maybe Zziwa plans for a sequel to the book; I can’t tell.
Stylistically, Zziwa qualifies as an African playwright and one might think he has been writing drama for decades—his book is too good for a debut. He uses fire as we see it during the chanting of the gods in the Kisoro hills, drums, chorus, African gods and magic—all these contribute to African drama. No ordinary writer does this and having quit reading young contemporary dramatists for their predictability, especially as a student of drama, I am now enthused to discover more Ugandan plays—Zziwa’s book reincarnates my perception of the local plays—and he is up there with the great.
As a critic, I recommend this book to readers, for it is written with dramatic maturity and prowess. Zziwa sets a mark so high that his talent screams throughout the piece. All I can say is that Zziwa is a writer in his time. His book is worth the price.
For copies, you can WhatsApp him at +256794150451 or contact Mahiri Books at +256771233263
Each copy costs 30,000 shillings.
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