YOU WERE DEAD. YOU HAD not written a will.

What should I do? All I knew was that your work had to be preserved.

And I knew your family had to be kept out of this. I had the key to your flat and I made sure to secure all your papers.

Many questions have been asked about my role as literary executor of the famous writer’s work. Many myths evolved.

Q: Whenever Dambudzo Marechera’s name is mentioned, your name comes up almost simultaneously. Some people insinuate that you have appropriated him and have used his name for your own personal benefits. Others commend you for consecrating most of your life to his legacy, a labour of love, as it were.

A: Yes, wherever I am introduced to someone in Zimbabwe or in African studies generally, the moment my name is mentioned, an air of recognition lights the face of the one I am being introduced to, followed by, ‘Oh, is she the one …?’ Which is an insult, really, as if I did not have an identity of my own. So in a way I am being swallowed by the great reputation he has. Though sometimes it is really sweet. Like when I am in Zimbabwe, in the Book Café in Harare, where many of the young poets hang out, and there is this youngster, skimpy, dreadlocked, and someone sitting with him, talking, points in my direction, and he gets up and walks over to me, his eyes wide open, gasping, ‘Is this really you? No, it cannot be, I thought …’ ‘You thought I was something like a goddess?’ I laugh. ‘Well, here I am, an ordinary human being,’ and he grabs my hand with both of his, shaking and squeezing it, his eyes glazed over as if he was seeing an apparition.

And yet, whatever people think or say with whatever subtext – envy, anger, admiration or curiosity – the assumption that once Marechera was in his grave I grabbed his unpublished work and set out to make it known to the world, is wrong.

Q: But is it not correct that you became Marechera’s literary executor and biographer?

A: Yes, apparently it is so. But I do not feel that I chose that role, it rather chose me. I was very reluctant.

Q: Tell us what happened and why you were reluctant.