Witch's Brew by Ruzvidzo Mupfudza

Whenever I saw the jagged pieces of a broken heart swirling in the depth of her dark soft doe-like eyes, I knew Mai Chamboko was not a witch. But many people said she was. I guess that is why there were echoes of pain in her eyes. When I asked her why her eyes were so sad, she sighed and whispered, “Ah, my little husband, perhaps it is because I yearn for understanding... and peace... things very few are willing to give.”

This story has been selected for the StoryTime anthology African Roar 2011, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Witch's Brew was written by Ruzvidzo Mupfudza.

Copyright Ruzvidzo Mupfudza 2009.

Born in Zimbabwe in 1971, Ruzvidzo Stanley Mupfudza developed a passion for the art of story telling and a love for the written word at a tender age. Long before he was literate he would gaze with fascination at the beauty of the written word on scraps of paper, old magazines, newspapers, books, et al and by the time he was in the third grade was a passionate wide reader, whose reading material was more often than not way beyond his scope.

It was also at this time that he started writing his own stories, spurred by a vivid imagination and his already entrenched reading culture. After studying Literature in English at the University of Zimbabwe, he worked, for eight years, as a high school English Language and Literature in English teacher before moving to Zimbabwe’s national television broadcaster where he worked as Chief Producer of Social and Cultural programmes for children. After that spell, his perennial wanderlust saw him move on to the world of advertising, where he worked as a copywriter for a local advertising agency.

It was not long before he packed his creative bags and joined the mainstream print media as an Assistant Editor, specialising in feature writing and covering the arts for a Zimbabwean daily and weekly paper. He eventually became the Acting Editor of the weekly Sunday paper until its demise in 2007. There was a particularly rough patch where he survived through the benevolence of friends, his art and freelancing. In 2008 he returned to the world of advertising.

His poetry, essays and short stories have been published in Zimbabwe and abroad. His early poetry started appearing in the University of Zimbabwe English Department’s literary magazine, The Bloom, national and international magazines, as well as on the poetryinternational.org - zimbabwe website. His stories appear in the following anthologies, A Roof to Repair (Harare: College Press), Creatures Great and Small (Gweru: Mambo Press 2000), Writing Still: New Stories from Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver Press, 2003), Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (Harare: Weaver Press, 2005), and Dreams, Miracles and Jazz: New Adventures in African Writing (Northlands: Picador Africa, 2008). A revised version of his story, “The Mender of Broken Soles” has been published online by SABLE Literary Magazine. He has also been interviewed on Conversations with Writers and Kubatana.net, and also occasionally, when the spirit moves him, blogs on www.zimbablog.com.

Sadly Ruzvidzo passed away on the 3rd of May 2010, he will be sorely missed, a great loss for Literature and Zimbabwe. May his works live on in our hearts and minds forever.