Frank Sayi grew up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in the 1970s. His childhood straddled two very significant periods in his country’s history, both of which heavily influenced his memoir. The first was the war of liberation (1975-1979), closely followed by the post-independence internecine war (1981-1987).
Crucially, Frank was raised in a native reserve in colonial Rhodesia, a country under white minority rule, governed by Ian Smith’s racist and illegal regime. Native reserves were places of repression, and containment-replete of hope.
Frank and his two older sisters, Thoko and Gift, lived with their grandmother, a stern, wise, mercurial matriarch, capable of intimidating severity, and her son Uncle Sami. Frank’s mother, the main breadwinner, lived in the city. Frank and his siblings didn’t see much of her; in his mind she was just another sister.
The memoir is intricately woven around the lives of the members of Frank’s immediate family, whom he uses to foreground the tragic lives of a people caught within the web of war.
Back to All Events