The Setting Sun and the Rolling World

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1987

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Background

Cultural Context

In almost every story featured in the book, witchcraft or other traditional, non-Christian belief systems play a central role, whether in the supernatural journey Nharo and Chemai take in “The Mountain” or the horrifying filicide ritual proposed in “The Mount of Moriah.” It may therefore come as a surprise that around 85% of Zimbabweans are Christian. (“Inter-Censal Demographic Survey 2017.” Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency.) Yet there is a fluidity to religious practices in Zimbabwe, as Christian and non-Christian rituals and icons intermingle and play significant roles in the everyday lives of Zimbabweans. In The Blackwell Companion to Protestantism, scholar Allan Anderson writes that in Christian churches in countries like Zimbabwe, “the emphasis is on the power and gifts of the Spirit, particularly healing, exorcism, and prophecy, which have been interpreted within an older African context dealing with daily witchcraft and rampant disease.” (McGrath, Alister E., and Darren C. Marks, editors. The Blackwell Companion to Protestantism. Wiley Blackwell, 2006.)

This helps explain the persistence of old African traditions in Mungoshi’s stories and in Zimbabwe’s past and present more generally. Traditional healers like the medicine men who emerge in “The Mount of Moriah” and “The Flood” still find plenty of patrons in the 21st century, though few encourage filicide or mutilation. Most of them step in for patients who lack access to more modern healthcare practitioners, as Africa Renewal magazine’s Itai Madamombe points out. (Madamombe, Itai. “Traditional Healers Boost Primary Health Care.” Africa Renewal, Jan. 2006.) Madamombe also cites World Health Organization data indicating that 80% of people living in Africa regularly consult traditional healers, often using them in concert with Western medicine practitioners. Thus, the messy and fluid religious traditions and systems shown in The Setting Sun and the Rolling World reflect the hybrid nature of beliefs and customs in Zimbabwean communities, urban and rural alike.

Socio-Historical Context

Mungoshi wrote the stories in The Setting Sun and the Rolling World in the 1970s and 1980s, and they appear to take place in the time frame in which they were written. This is significant because that era of Zimbabwean history was one of profound social and political change. Between 1923 and 1965, Zimbabwe—known then as Southern Rhodesia—was considered a self-governing colony of Great Britain. Then in 1965, the predominantly White government led by Prime Minister Ian Smith issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, claiming the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 as a precedent. Although Great Britain did not seek to forcibly reassert control, Smith’s government met resistance from within, as revolutionaries like Robert Mugabe led guerilla operations against the White government. In 1978, after more than a decade of internal violence, Smith reached a power-sharing agreement with Mugabe and other African nationalist leaders to establish a multiracial democracy.

Yet as part of the agreement, the country’s White minority remained in control of the Rhodesian Security Forces, the judiciary, and a third of the Parliament. This is why, even in the stories written after 1978, White characters are still disproportionately represented in positions of power, as seen in “The Flood” and “The Victim.” That said, there is clearly a greater focus on racial tensions in the stories published earlier in 1972, particularly “The Accident” and “The Ten Shillings,” in which racism plays a key narrative role.