Zambezia (1994), XXI (ii).COMPETING INTERPRETATIONS:CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENT'1PATRICIA ALDENDepartment of English, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New YorkAbstractThe essay uses a reader response approach to explore different interpretationsof a short story, interpretations produced by 'O' level students in Harare anduniversity students in the United States. The author proposes that the variousreadings resolve into a hindamental distinction between those who read thestory as a conflict between autonomous individuals and those who stress thatthe social context of that conflict is a significant determinant in framingethical issues. The story itself provides evidence of both readings, and theauthor argues the value of having students explore both possibilities in theirclassrooms.IN HIS ESSAY 'Out of Africa: Topologies of nativism', Kwame Anthony Appiahexplores the relationship between literature, universality and nationality.While literature plays a significant role in articulating collective subjectivity,it can also be held hostage to a particularist or nativist essentialism (e.g.Nigeria's bolekaja critics) deploying itself against the cultural hegemonyof Eurocentric totalizing theories of literature.2 Such polarized models or'topologies' (the West and the rest, centre and periphery, insider andoutsider) are false to the complex cultural positioning of most writers andreaders in most societies. We need theoretical and interpretive modelswhich recognize differentials in cultural power while continuing to mapthe middle ground between an overly simplified nativism and a pseudo-universalism. For the present, Appiah suggests:we shall be better off in our choice of theory if we give up the search for Mr Rightand speak, more modestly, of productive modes of reading . . . the text exists aslinguistic, as historical, as commercial, as political event. And while each of theseways of conceiving the very same object provides opportunities for pedagogy,each provides different opportunities Š opportunities between which we mustchoose ... To understand what a reading is, is to understand that what counts asa reading is always up for grabs.311 want to thank the teachers and students in many Harare schools who advised me andparticipated In this project. I am grateful also, to the faculty members in Curriculum Arts andEducation, University of Zimbabwe, for providing office space, good counsel and hospitalityduring my sabbatical year.2 Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, Ihechukwu Madubuike, Toward the Decolonization ofAfrican Literature (Washington DC, Howard University Press, 1983).3 Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (NewYork, Oxford University Press, 1992), 68-9.107108CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S THE ACCIDENTThe essay that follows is a case study of competing interpretations ofan apparently quite simple short story. Most of these readings are'productive', which is to say, they attend to evidence in the text and findinteresting (but different) problems to explore. Most productive of all, atleast pedagogically, will be to allow different readings to emerge in thesame classroom and to encourage students to listen to each other gatheringtextual evidence and developing the logic of their interpretations.This short story is rather like a recursive figure of the sort one finds inline drawings which can be composed by the viewer's eye into two quitedistinct images depending upon what the viewer determines to be figureand ground. Among the most familiar recursive figures are:1. the image of a skull which can be seen also as a woman seated beforea dressing table;2. a drawing which can be either an old hag or a young woman in afeather hat (see diagram); and3. two silhouetted profiles facing each other which together can beseen as a vase.Old Woman or Young Woman?Reprinted with permission. © 1994 Exploratorium, San Francisco.PATRICIA ALDEN 109What is significant about recursive figures is that each pattern makesuse of all the lines and details but resolves them into two competing'interpretations' or images. Most people instantly see one of the possibilitiesand then have to work to get outside the first interpretation in order to seethe other possibility in the image.After a bit of training, the human eye can move quickly from oneimage to the other, seeing at one moment the old hag, at another theyoung lady, but it cannot see both images at the same moment. Readers ofthis short story composed it in their mind's eye according to the logic ofone interpretation; the more flexible among these readers could then shiftto a different kind of logic and make a different kind of sense Š could 'see'different elements in the story in quite a different way. This experience ofreading and discussing together itself becomes a microcosm of competingdiscourses in the world at large. The classroom becomes a place in whichstudents can think together about what seem to be intractable, if notirreconcilable differences. We abandon the thought of quickly reaching atotalizing or universalizing theory, of achieving a single 'right' interpretation,and accept the necessity for dialogue, for attending to the patterns thatother eyes have found.In 1991,1 spent eight months in Zimbabwe intending to explore studentreaders' responses to contemporary national literature written in English.What did the rising post-independence generation find of interest in thework of Tsitsi Dangarembga, Chenjerai Hove, Shimmer Chinodya,Dambudzo Marechera and Charles Mungoshi? I had anticipated that theschool curriculum, 11 years after independence, would include at leastone or two of the award-winning novels by these Zimbabweans. In fact, thefirst Zimbabwean literary text on the national syllabus for examination inEnglish at the ordinary level was included only in January of 1991Charles Mungoshi's short story collection Coming of the Dry Season.4Because the national curriculum powerfully determines what Zimbabweanstudents and teachers read, much of the literature I had hoped to explorewas unfamiliar, and most teachers had not yet introduced the Mungoshitext. With the assistance and advice of several school heads and teachersI offered workshop classes in some Harare high schools, focusing on anumber of short texts including 'The accident'; this accessible, five-pageshort story in Coming of the Dry Season consistently provoked the mostdiscussion.My intention was to elicit students' responses to the story rather thanto direct them to any particular issues. To this end I provided littleintroduction, giving students a xeroxed copy of the story and asking themfor a five-minute written response before opening discussion. I often beean4 Charles Mungoshi, Coming of the Dry Season (Harare, ZPH, 1981).110 CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENTdiscussion with as neutral a summary as 1 could construct. What follows isan example of such a summary, including those details which frequentlyemerged as important to the interpretive debates.'The accident' is a third-person account of a traffic accident. Thenarration is detached, careful, and seemingly dispassionate, sounding attimes like a newspaper account. The first paragraph reads:A man carrying a packet of tomatoes was knocked down by a car as he wascrossing Cripps Road. He travelled in the air for twenty feet before he dropped tothe side of the road. No one actually saw him hit.5The narrator reports what can be seen and heard, occasionally usinga metaphor to expand upon his report, occasionally telling us what thecrowd felt but never entering the mind of any one character or exploringthe motives of the key actors. The description makes clear that the victimis a poor Black African, the driver a European who is 'short, thickset, witha bullneck', sweating and balding, the top of his head 'as bare and red asan overripe tomato'. He has stopped his car and stands by the twistedbody of the victim while a crowd gathers, speaking an African languagewhich the European cannot understand. His movements (wiping his brow,a facial tic) suggest nervousness, fear, or guilt. The crowd cannot read hisface, but 'they felt he was indifferent'. A young man in a straw hat joins thecrowd sometime after the accident has occurred and begins to tell otherlatecomers what has happened. 'Who did it?' he is asked. 'That Boer... Hedid it on purpose. I saw it all... the bloody baboon went out of his way tokill him'. And later, 'The man who said he had seen it all went on talking asif he was appealing to the people to do something.' In the course of thestory he changes slightly his description of the accident. 'He was juststanding beside the road not talking to anybody and this maniac comesalong and knocks him down.' Further on he says, 'Yes. That's the murderer.I was standing talking to the man when this ... Boer knocked him down. Iam going to say all I saw exactly as I saw it to the police.''They won't listen to you', the crowd says, and he responds, 'But Ishall have said my share. I shall have shown them that they can't get awaywith everything here.'A White police officer arrives with a Black assistant who keeps thecrowd back from the victim. The two Europeans, policeman and driver,talk in 'very low, almost friendly tones', and the crowd infers that they willcollude in dismissing the accident. The man in the straw hat steps forwardto have his testimony heard, and the Black officer attempts to silence him.The crowd responds by reminding the constable that he doesn't 'drink5 Charles Mungoshi, 'The accident', in The Setting Sun and the Rolling World (Boston,Beacon Press, 1989), 119.PATRICIA ALDEN 111with' the Europeans. An ambulance at last arrives and 'more people thanwere really necessary from the crowd [step] forward to help lift the manon to the stretcher'. The Europeans who had stepped together down tothe 'killer car' now return, and the officer asks for witnesses. Now twoothers join the man in the straw hat and 'defiantly [step] forward'. Itlooked as if more were prepared to hand themselves over but the constableheld up his hand and said, 'Enough.' The three are summoned to thepolice station.When they had gone there was a silence in the crowd, a disappointed silence.'He is going to be released.''But those three men have courage. If only we had ten more like them Š men whocan stand up and tell them that they are wrong.''It will be a long, long time before we have ten like that.''We have them, only...' and arguing sad politics the crowd dispersed, all going inthe same direction, south-west, into the location. They all felt the same thing: onceagain, nothing has happened.Charles Mungoshi wrote 'The accident' in the late 1960s and publishedit in 1972 in Coming of the Dry Season. At this period armed resistance tothe Smith government in Rhodesia was gathering very slowly; the storyreflects life in Salisbury before the clear possibility of independence hademerged. From the beginning, this story has elicited different readings. In1974 the government banned and prohibited the collection, largely on thegrounds that it was 'designed to cause hatred and ill-feeling in Africanminds against Europeans and that the circulation of this book [was] likelyto harm relations between the white and black sections of the public'.6 Aprincipal objection was made to 'The accident', which the Censor Boardheld 'was likely to bring a section of the public, i.e. the police force, intocontempt and it was likely to harm relations between sections of thepublic, i.e. the African and European sections'. The story clearly implies'that the police are biased in favour of Europeans to the extent that theyhabitually fail to take action against European offenders, [and this] mustbring that force into contempt in African eyes'. The Board also notes thatthe European is described as a 'comic-strip type bully' and that his actionssuggest 'that all Europeans are automatically indifferent to tragedies ofthis sort'. They further note that the 86-cent Heinemann-Nairobi edition,issued in 1972, 'must be aimed at the African market'. Otherwise, theyargue, complaint about this work must have come to the attention of theBoard much earlier.6 Copies of the Censor Board's initial opinion, the appeal from the Department ofEnglish, and the Board's response are on file in the Department of English, University ofZimbabwe. Dr Musaemura Zimunya graciously allowed me access to them.112 CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENTThe Board is aware that the African is still tremendously influenced by the writtenword and that many cannot distinguish between written fact and fiction. The Boarddoes not, of course, believe that this book will cause Africans to take overt actionagainst Europeans, even though attacks by African spectators on European motor-ists involved in accidents wherein Africans are victims are not unknown, in fact onesuch attack took place the week after this book was banned. But the Board is of theopinion that this book is likely to have a most unfortunate effect on the minds of asubstantial number of African readers and to imbue them with anti-Europeanideas.The English Department at the University of Rhodesia challenged thedecision to ban Mungoshi's collection, arguing thatThe book is a serious work of literature. It is written not as a political harangue ordiatribe... It seeks to educate the reader into a balanced and discriminating moralawareness of the issues raised, not to offer simplified ideological solutions ... TheBoard have, on their own admission, misunderstood the story which they findoffensive. In so far as the author is criticising anyone in this story, his attention isdirected to the crowd and not the police. Whereas the police are shown to behavewith the efficiency and correctness, the immature and emotional response of thecrowd is shown for what it is.The purportedly 'universal' values of literary theory (specifically ofthe 'new criticism' of the 1950s) inform the defence which the EnglishDepartment made to the Censor Board. The Department argues thatMungoshi's work is 'serious', and that the author's intent, far from beingpolitically inflammatory, was to educate readers 'into a balanced anddiscriminating moral awareness'. By way of illustrating this balancedawareness, the Department asks the Board to notice that the story presentsthe police as 'efficient and correct', the crowd and straw hat man as'immature and emotional'. In its reading the Board had ignored material inthe story that could generate a critical perspective on the Black crowd;however, in its defence, the Department also avoids comment on materialthat could generate a critical perspective on the Europeans. Drawing uponthe values of 'new critical theory', the English Department was able topresent the story to the Censor Board as 'safe' for (White) society.The Board, however, remained suspicious. That 86-cent editionsuggested to them that another audience, beyond the university, had beentargeted. The Board sees this audience, the African public, as childlike,unable to distinguish fact and fiction. Although this public's response tothe story will constitute a 'misreading' by academic standards, thatresponse will, nonetheless, constitute a danger to society, whose interestsand security the Censor Board seeks to protect. In responding to theEnglish Department's appeal, the Board observed that university lecturerswerePATRICIA ALDEN 113better able to judge the effect of the stories on the university student rather thanthe man-in-the-street. We consider that it is essential not to confuse the averagereader with the student who will study... under the expert guidance of the Englishlecturer or professor.'Unsophisticated' readers, the Board fears, will not bother to noticethat the man in the straw hat is prepared to testify about something he didnot see. 'The impression left on readers will be that there is great hatredamong Africans towards Europeans, even if the hatred is an unreasoninghatred' and this will 'harm relations between sections of the public'.Almost two decades later, 'The accident' continues to generate radicallydifferent responses. I first led a discussion on 'The accident' at a selectiveprivate high school in Harare which has a racially mixed student body.However, in the first class I visited, there were 15 White students and oneBlack student. Initially the class generated virtually the same reading asthat of the Censor Board 17 years earlier. 1 asked students to write for fiveminutes, capturing their initial response to the story, before beginningdiscussion. One student wrote, 'The European is accused by an Africanman with a really bitter kind of racist attitude ... his sole aim is to attemptto humiliate the European man'. Another student wrote, 'The incident isnothing more than an accident but the crowd that forms around changesit into a vast racial incident that blames the European ... the rumours ...among the crowd immediately cause racial bias to fill the passage'.Discussion began with students reading these freewrites and quicklybecame heated, with a number of students expressing resentment aboutthe story itself. One complained about the 'usual stuff about baldingEuropeans, putting them down that way'. Another considered the story 'apolitically-orientated piece of propaganda' and resented that it was beingseriously considered as a 'decent piece of literature'. Another commented,'Since this is written by a Black man, then it is probably biased but then itmight also be true and direct.' This assumption that because the author isBlack the story is 'probably biased' held sway for some time and thenbegan to be displaced by evidence that the narrator's view of the Blackcommunity might be critical. The interpretation which then began toemerge with a good deal of support was that both the European and thecrowd were to be faulted for failing to show compassion to the victim.Some freewrites capture this view:Human beings' responses are clouded over by prejudiced views regardless of theirskin colour. The story is about how racial feelings can cloud a person's judgement.Everyone is involved in slandering or immersed in his thought, nobody cares aboutthe dead man, his dignity is not preserved, not even fellow Africans make a move tosee if he is alive.114 CHARLES MUNGOSHl'S THE ACCIDENT'This interpretation stressed the view that racism occurs equally inboth Whites and Blacks and is deplorable because it intervenes to blockordinary human concern for the dying man.At this point two students suggested that the man in the straw hatmight be using the only means available to confront an unjust system andthat on this account he and his companions are heroes to the crowd. 'Thestory helps people to comprehend the gravity of the [colonial] situation. Itshows that for one to resist a system one must do so at every opportunity,and even though morals are cast aside here, it is a chance and one thatmust be used.'This view, however, was vigorously rejected by the majority of the class.One student identified the story as a means/ends problem and arguedauthoritatively that ends never justify means. For most, the story was aboutindividual probity (or lack of it); his own racist response had led the man inthe straw hat to an unjust attack on an innocent European. It appeared to methat this interpretation allowed students to retrieve (and now justify) theirinitial resentment of a story that disparaged Europeans; they seemedenergized by a line of argument that allowed them to criticize the Blackcharacters. I was keenly aware throughout the class that the sole Blackstudent, who in a previous workshop had been a vigorous contributor, saidnothing; I discovered later that the student had not handed in either theinitial or the summary freewrite which I collected from the others. Whateverhis views, in this situation the student chose to keep them confidential.I went immediately to another class at this same school; here thestudents included ten students of colour, one from South Africa, and fourWhites. One of these four began discussion with an articulate statementabout the evil of racism in any quarter.... all the people seem to ignore the man and not one steps forward to help him.They just stare and make accusations based on racial hatred and this in my eyes isextremely wrong. People should have stopped their political agitation and helped afellow human being.This student appeared to be well regarded by all the class, and thispersuasive statement about putting individual human concern beforepolitics held the floor for some time. Black students participated in theconversation by exploring reasons for why the Africans had not triedmore to assist the victim, offering the view that they may have 'naturallydeferred' to a European in this situation. Unlike the earlier class, thesestudents found it easy to place themselves in the mind of the crowd whichcannot 'read' the European's face. Throughout the discussion, the otherthree White students looked blank and remote; the first speaker pressedthe humanist view, while several Black students contributed in low, hesitantvoices, seemingly anxious not to displace the dominant reading that hadPATRICIA ALDEN 115been offered. Finally, the South African student spoke up, drawing attentionto the legitimate reasons why Blacks in the crowd feel themselvesoppressed and to the injustice of the social and legal system of the period.This student suggested that one might need to oppose such powerindirectly, using the accident as an occasion for resistance. While thisview was not strongly supported in class discussion, two or three of thefreewrites indicated that other students had been silently sympathetic tothis view.Moving from the low density suburbs of northern Harare towards thecentre of town, I next taught the story in one of the best governmentschools in the city. Formerly a Group A or all-White school, it now has anearly all-Black student body and a significant proportion of White teachers,many of whom have been there for decades. I was curious to see whetherstudents in predominantly Black schools would see in the actions of theman in the straw hat a gesture of resistance to a general and pervasiveinjustice. The story connects the three witnesses with the idea of amovement, with 'ten more like them Š men who can stand up and tellthem that they are wrong'. Would students make the connection betweenthese youths and those who joined the armed struggle?The students in this class were markedly hesitant to offer anythingmore than a neutral summary of the story; none of the interpretationsdeveloped in the first two classrooms (racism versus compassion, meansversus ends, truth-telling versus the need to resist the state) emerged.Race appeared to be virtually a taboo topic, possibly because I was anunknown White person and their teacher, who remained in the class, wasan Englishman who had emigrated to Rhodesia some decades earlier.However, discussion became much more animated when their teachercast the issue in terms of contemporary class divisions. The studentswere eager to explore what would unfold if a Mercedes driven by a Blackgovernment official were to hit a poor man; once again, they felt, an angrybut impotent crowd would form, and justice would be subverted. This wasa story they could connect with; this was a story they felt free to discuss.From here I went southward into a township just off Cripps Road, thesetting of the accident. This school was formerly an all-Black school byvirtue of official segregation, and it remains an all-Black school today. Thestudents' sense of connection to the story and especially to the crowd wasimmediate. They spoke about the speeding on Cripps Road, its width andthe difficulty of crossing, the absence of call boxes and the distance fromtown, so that one would simply have to wait for an ambulance. No oneraised the issue of either the crowd's or the European's failure to attend tothe victim or saw the story's theme as involving a failure of compassion.Discussion focussed first on the European, the class dividing on thequestion of whether his anxiety stems from fear for his own safety fromthe crowd or from shock due to the accident. Several felt some compassion116 CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENTfor the driver despite his apparent impassivity. No one took him for a'comic-strip type bully'. Attention then shifted to the man in the straw hat.One student said this character felt a 'natural hatred' for Europeans,indicating that he had no difficulty in empathizing with the character.Another noted that the crowd immediately supported the man in thestraw hat, sharing the general sense of injustice done to their communityby Europeans. The students accepted the view of the crowd at the end ofthe story that justice would not be done and that the European would 'getaway unpunished', even though they acknowledged repeatedly that thestory does not tell us that the driver had done anything wrong. Theyremained keenly aware of the individual situation of the driver, some quitesympathetic to him, and at the same time they were sympathetic to theoutrage of the crowd. One student said of the man in the straw hat: 'I thinkhe is very patriotic. He loves his people and his country. He is offended bythe malpractices of the Europeans in this community. That's why he isdedicated to go and witness something which he hasn't seen.' However,another student responded that while he had sympathy for the straw hatman's wish to see justice done, he didn't believe that you could be just inthis situation. Making the European the target for the general sense ofinjustice would not be right. 'It's dangerous to bring a generalization tobear on a specific case, especially when he can't be sure what happened.'The discussion continued to range between these views; this workshopwas the most successful in capturing the 'balanced and discriminatingmoral awareness of the issues raised [and not offering] simplifiedideological solutions' Š what the English Department at the Universityhad claimed was the story's strength.Other Zimbabwean student responses to 'The accident' come frommock-examination scripts written in July, 1991. The work was done in aformer Group A, now mostly Black, suburban government school; 55scripts were produced in two O-level literature classes, each class taughtby a Black Zimbabwean who had grown up in colonial Rhodesia. A newemphasis emerges strongly in these essays: solidarity and cooperationwithin the Black community. Many quote the final lines of the story, inwhich the crowd moves off to the locations, as evidence of how theexperience of oppression in a segregated society has forged a bond amongthe crowd. Most stress strongly the spirit of unity in the crowd's supportfor the youths. Fifteen refer to the phrase that 'more people than werereally necessary from the crowd stepped forward to help lift the man on tothe stretcher' as evidence of the crowd's eagerness to help one of its own.A student wrote,'. . . when the ambulance came more people wentand lifted the man on the stretcher bed and into the ambulance and thisshowed that the Africans were beginning to unite among themselves andbetween them there was a growing of one's love.'PATRICIA ALDEN 117None of the 55 note that the phrase 'more . . . than were reallynecessary' can suggest the futility and belatedness of the crowd's response,a crowd from which no individual had emerged to cover the victim ortouch his body until galvanized into action by the arrival of the ambulance.In one case, the urge to emphasize the theme of solidarity leads to somemisstatements about the text.The story also tells us that Blacks' societies were very cooperative. In the story...they gave their fellow Black first aid, they lied in order to defend him and whenthey were asked to carry him, 'more people than necessary' came forward. Itshows that Blacks sacrificed for their fellow Blacks. (This examination got quitelow marks for such errors.)For readers who see the story as primarily about solidarity, onecharacter takes on considerable importance: Constable Tayengwa, theonly character given a proper name. Many students felt they needed toaccount for his complicity in oppression of fellow Blacks, but they makesignificantly different moral judgements:'The Black policeman was a victim of circumstance because he was rude to hispeople so as not to lose his job.''The Europeans also used Black subjects to oppress their own people ...''The Black policeman was tamed by his bosses to discriminate his fellow friends.'While this group of students insistently connected the youths in thestory with the idea of a 'movement', they differ on the relationship betweenthese youths and the crowd. All agree that the crowd is supportive of theyouths. Many connect the spirit of solidarity with fellow Black men whichinspires compassion in the crowd to the youths' desire to bear witness onbehalf of the victim and ultimately to the young men who would join thearmed struggle to fight racial oppression.The society which lived at that time was beginning to be maybe bold enough tospeak out their feeling like the young man in a straw hat. Somebody in the crowdsaid if only we had ten like him.' This statement shows how the person waswishing for more people to join the young man and maybe fight for their country.Others contrast the courageous youths who are willing to speak outwith the fearful, passive crowd; one student explains that such fear is whyarmed resistance becomes necessary to lead the masses.In this society they were united but very few were willing to really stand out andtell the Whites point blank about the wrongs they were doing. They were still a bitfrightened and not willing to speak out. People like the young man in a straw hatwere the very few who were willing and they maybe changed the society andmaybe this then led to many joining the army to fight for their country.118 CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENTIn one way or another, the connection between the youths in the storyand the guerrillas is made in more than half the essays.It is evident from the marginal comments on all the scripts that bothteachers had stressed the fact that the young man in the straw hat istestifying falsely; they expected students to take note of this element.While a few ignore this aspect entirely, most allude to it but do not see itas an important ethical issue. Rather, they see the lie as a necessary act todefend and support the Black community.The Blacks had to lie in order to stand or support their fellow Blacks ... these threedid not see the man being hit but they knew they had to do something, they did notwant the White man to get away with it. They lied in order to defend him . . .The important debate, for these readers, is whether in their actionsthe youths are acting on behalf of the crowd or whether they are 'out infront of the consciousness of the crowd in fighting oppression.Several questions emerged from this material for which I have noanswers. The uniformity in the essays is striking both in the generalemphasis on solidarity and the choice of specific passages to cite asevidence. Did the teachers teach the story in a way that allowed studentsto see the false testimony as a moral problem (and therefore to see theman in the straw hat in a somewhat critical light)? Did the students thenprefer to adopt the view that the lie was unimportant? Students in all ofthese classes are too young to have any memory of the armed struggle,nor was it a topic widely or easily discussed in Zimbabwe. For this reasonit is probably not surprising that no student in the classes I taught thoughtto connect the youths in the story with the guerrillas; nor is it surprisingthat the teachers (for whom this struggle will have been a central piece ofhistory) would teach the connection. They are doing what teacherseverywhere do: passing on narratives of the past to the next generation.To some extent the students seem to speak with one voice about themeaning of that history: the story illustrates the unity of an oppressedpeople. It is impossible to know how much the pressure of producing a'correct' reading for an examination had to do with this uniformity andhow much had to do with a shared preference for this reading. Within thatunifying theme, students offer different explanations for the role of theBlack constable and different understandings of the relationship betweenthe crowd and the youths.Students in this fourth school who wrote the mock-examinations wereinterested in (or encouraged by their teachers to attend to) the backgroundof the story Š the location, the attitude and actions of the crowd, thebehaviour of the Black police officer, the relationship between the youthsand the crowd. They understood the accident, the death of a poor Blackman hit by the car of a White driver, as yet another instance of long-PATRICIA ALDEN 119standing inequity and injustice. In these essays, at least, they do notrespond to the cues which separate this incident from the fabric ofinequality, which signal it is an 'accident' rather than an act of oppression.They make the background the central focus of attention. The first classfrom the first school, the nearly all-White class, focussed on the conflictbetween two individuals: the European and the man in the straw hat. Thebackground was not relevant to the way in which they constructed themoral dilemma about lying and about means and ends. These studentsignored moral questions which preoccupied the fourth group, namely theissue of complicity with an oppressive power (constable Tayengwa) andthe relationship between potential revolutionary leadership and the masses.As I have continued to teach this story in the United States, trying tofind order in the myriad responses of my students there and in Zimbabwe,I have come to make a broad distinction between two kinds of readers.Type A readers, like those at the first school, are absorbed by the storiesof autonomous individuals. Some of these readers focus on the victim andnotice that no-one offers assistance or succour to the man who lies bleedingin the road. For these readers the story shows how racial tension obtrudesto interfere with ordinary human compassion; an 'accident' is blown upinto a 'racial incident', obscuring fundamental, shared humanity. Themoral of the story is that racism (shown to occur in both Whites andBlacks) is deplorable.Other type A readers focus on the relationship between the driver andthe youth in the straw hat who is willing, perhaps even eager, to testifyfalsely. Whatever they think of the motives of the youth, for these readershe is acting wrongly. For some, he is a racist demagogue eager to stir uptrouble, and they will point to the inflammatory language which he uses('the bloody baboon', 'this . . . Boer') and to his disregard for the truth.Others may see him more sympathetically as a frustrated but ultimatelymisguided youth who is trying to rectify social injustice by scapegoatingan innocent man. All type A readers will pay attention to the fact that thestraw-hatted youth is lying. We have heard many Zimbabwean readers'responses to the story. Here are two American students capturing thesedistinctions among type A readers. The first is a White American male,writing at the time of the Los Angeles riots. (These riots had followed theverdict dismissing charges against White police officers who had beaten aBlack man, Rodney King, for allegedly resisting arrest.)The man in the straw hat is, 1 think, the sort of person who feels sobitter and threatened by the treatment of his people that he will defy andcondemn Whites as a whole institution, rather than realizing that theindividual is not to blame. I think the man in the straw hat would be one ofthe people looting Los Angeles right now.120 CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENTAn African-American woman commented, 'I think the man in the strawhat is totally wrong for the way he goes about trying to find justice. I feelhe is lying to get at all Europeans through the mistake of one. Also theyoung man just wants to be heard.'Type A readers see this as a story about individuals who have cometogether accidentally in a world which is tragically fractured by racialdifference. For these readers, these fractures lie outside the main actorsŠ driver, victim, and putative witnesses Š and are illegitimately broughtto bear on this accidental point of contact. The figures in their picture areindividual agents, each capable of moral purposes, and the ground is, infact, background.For type B readers, the background is the figure, the focus of attention.For them the setting itself, evoked in dispassionate, neutral language bythe narrator, is charged with meaning. That some walk and others drive isnot an 'accident', but a function of class and race divisions which separatethose who have power in all its forms from those who do not. The setting,a thoroughfare on which Europeans in cars rapidly move past the nearbytownship, oblivious to the footweary populace, signifies the apartheid ofcolonial Rhodesia. Here are two, mutually incomprehensive worlds Š thecrowd can't 'read' the driver's face, he can't understand their language. Inthese two worlds representatives of justice and the state evoke totallydifferent reactions. The European anxiously awaits the arrival of the police,and the crowd takes note of how he moves close to the White officer, howthey speak 'in low, almost friendly tones'. The episode merely convincesthe crowd that, once again, nothing will be done.For type B readers, the youth in the straw hat is not an autonomousmoral agent but a spokesman for the disempowered crowd. He is the kindof person who, when he sees the mangled body of the victim and notes hispoverty, feels anger at 'the system', at the pervasive conditions of injusticeacknowledged by everyone in the crowd. For him this is no 'accident', butrather the ongoing crushing of Black victims by powerful, privileged Whites.The youth represents the possibility for mobilizing resistance within acommunity that seems amorphous, helpless.Type B readers see the context as more determining than the acts ofindividuals. Some will see the youth as having a painful choice betweentruth-telling and solidarity. A Zimbabwean student commented, 'The Blackshad to lie in order to stand or support their fellow Blacks.' Strong type Breaders understand the straw-hatted youth's behaviour as an intentionalsubversion of the apparatus of justice (police and court system) whichsustains ongoing political, economic and social inequity. For these students,the youth is not choosing between two goods, truth and solidarity. Ratherhe challenges the legal system of justice, which maintains an unjust politicaland social order, by refusing to accept a crucial premise: that it is wrongPATRICIA ALDEN 121to accuse falsely innocent people. It is rare for students to adopt such acritical reading; the South African student I mentioned earlier in this essaysuggested this possibility as did one student in the township school whofound the youth's detestation of the White power structure 'natural'.Some African-American students who define themselves as militantsentertain this reading. One such student forcefully opened discussion ofthe story by quoting Malcolm X's dictum, 'By any means necessary'. Fightracism with any means necessary in order to achieve change. In anotherclass a student wrote:The young man in the straw hat represents the part of the African community whohas the capability of confronting the European White male Š the power structure... He has the ability to defend his right as an African. Whether or not he saw theaccident is irrelevant in order to attain his means. He wishes to acquire a balancingin the system, although this character realizes the likelihood that his attempt willbecome statistical. It becomes a personal effort for the character to stir thecommunity.'The accident' generates multiple readings, ranging from thehumanitarian response that care for the victim should command ourattention rather than racial differences, through various formulations ofmoral dilemmas faced by the characters, to the militant reading thatbrings to the fore the need to fight 'by any means necessary' againstinjustice. I think it is useful for students to hear each other lay out thelogic of these different readings and to connect them with different kindsof social experience. Yet one of the most constructive aspects of suchdiscussion is that student responses are by no means predictable. I beganthis project with the idea that different communities of students wouldproduce different readings: I expected to find Black students more readythan Whites to make a positive connection between the youths and thosewho fought for Zimbabwe's independence. Yet in every classroom therewere contesting views, and in the township classroom where I hadanticipated the most sympathetic reading of the youths, the specifics ofthe situation of the European driver continued to claim attention even asthe view of the man in the straw hat as 'patriotic' emerged. In the UnitedStates, I had in one class two students who identified themselves asmilitant Black Muslims. I have quoted both in this paper, one identifyingthe man in the straw hat as a hero, 'capable of confronting the EuropeanWhite male Š the power structure'. The other wrote that the straw-hattedman is 'totally wrong for the way he goes about trying to find justice'The value of this story lies in its ability to generate these contestinginterpretations. It is constructed in such a way that (as with a recursivefigure) there are at least two images to be seen, depending upon therelationship of foreground and background, and it is this interplay between122CHARLES MUNGOSHI'S 'THE ACCIDENT'figure and ground which should command our attention, obliging us toteach each other how to 'see' the two 'images' in the story. The mostproductive classroom, it seems to me, will be one in which students cancome to see the coherence and validity of competing organizations of thedata and can appreciate that different readings can focus productively ondifferent, but equally pressing and complex debates.