Okonkwo in Harare? Reading the Poem ‘Déjà vu’ by Nhamo Mhiripiri through an Intertextual Lens

Abstract

New generations of poets such as Nhamo Mhiripiri offer works that question the contemporary being of Africa by exploring the continuities and disruptions between her pre-colonial past and her postcolonial present. Subtly nuanced, such poetry is often concerned with issues of postcolonial poverty, corruption and the abysmal failure to better lives despite new political dispensations, among other themes. These are poets who have grown up with real life beggars and are inspired to highlight the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial circumstances of Africa such as are articulated by Chinua Achebe in some of his literary works. In the poem Déjà vu, through a complex matrix of intertextual manoeuvring, Mhiripiri counterpoints the fiercely engaged and active Okonkwo of the novel with the disengaged mendicant of the streets of Harare, that is, the latter persona becomes a literary enemy of the former. Feeding on and off other texts, this poem is patently a response to the general postcolonial African tragedy and that of many other formally colonised parts of the world.