fact that even after many years of regaining his freedom and relocation to Britain, he still
feels bound to make a case for transformation against the dehumanizing condition of
prison services at home goes further to validate the assertion that transmigrants take
actions that touch on both spaces they occupy at the same time. His testimony may be
divested of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s aura redolent of post-apartheid
South Africa during Mandela’s presidency; it nonetheless suffices in the meanwhile as it
serves this purpose in its own right.^47 Once again, his testimony is worth ruminating
over because unlike the reservations held about some kinds of memories precisely
because they emanate from congeries of “imitation packages... constructed out of dreams
and fantasies that were never paid for with experience” (Bruce Ross 1991: vii),
Mapanje’s, if re-created, is nevertheless configured concretely against the backdrop of an
intimate experience shared not exclusively, but with million others on behalf of whose
subaltern communication he has chosen to intervene across spaces.
An extension of the question of how (not) to punish resonates in the next poem “It’s the
Speed that Matters, my Dear Padre” more personally in that it reflects on the refusal of
the state to grant Mapanje permission to witness the burial of his mother while in prison.
Given the fact that he was imprisoned in the first place without trial, the imprisonment
process itself is already fundamentally flawed. That the denial is traumatic is beyond
contention. Yet one must recognize the import of this testimony as an indictment which
betrays the level of callousness of state power in dealing with opposition personalities
and groups. But if there is an inspiration that stirs at the core of this poem, it is that of the
bold and daring attempt on the part of the priest to put his life on the line to rally people
through various media to ensure a befitting burial is accorded the deceased mother of the
poet. By defying state threat and blackmail, the padre becomes a deserving subject of
47
In his afterword to the book, A Democracy of Chameleons Mapanje laments the non-institution of a Truth
and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after the inauguration of Muluzi. He considers this a serious
“oversight” of the administration that took over from Banda in that it failed to address the many injustices
of the past. To him it would have provided an opportunity to “talk and write about pretty much anything
that came to mind” (178); also because “People who have suffered tend to have long memories of their
suffering; and not all die before their torturers and jailers” (181). His own creative contribution along this
line can therefore be seen as serving a vicarious purpose, in a sense. Yet for all its colour and
sophistication, the TRC experience was not without its shortcomings especially because of the desperation
of the state to secure collective amnesia from the public domain in a bid to forge ahead in the new
dispensation. I engage with this issue in further detail in Chapter Five.