A SILENT SONG ESSAY QUESTION
Children suffer when their parents mistreat them. Write an essay to support this statement basing your illustrations on The Sins of the Fathers.

Rwafa exerts unwarranted pressure on Rondo causing him grief, leaving him with bitter memories and ruining his life. Surely, children endure misery when their parents treat them badly.

Rondo suffers when his father Rwafa orchestrates an accident that kills his two daughters, Yuna and Rhoda. When Mr. Basil Mzamane, Rondo’s father-in-law, whom Rwafa abhors, offers to give Rondo’s children a real treat – a road trip to Bulawayo, Rwafa soon disappears. When the trio take the trip, they are involved in a fatal crash that claims their lives. Gaston Shoko, Rondo’s workmate, suggests that Mr. Rwafa must have been involved in the accident since that was a typical second street accident. When Rondo ponders the events and history behind them, he becomes numb and almost like a zombie. He feels trapped like an animal when he thinks back on his father’s routine. Rwafa is a prime suspect in the accident since he loathed Basil Mzamane. He had called him a traitor when he brokered a peace deal between Mrs. Quayle and Rwafa’s club-wielding gang. There has always been tension between the two but it culminates during the birthday party. Mr. Rwafa was also bitter because Rondo had married into and ignominious muDziviti family. Furthermore, instead of a grandson, he had also given him two grand-daughters with Ndevere blood. Rwafa is responsible for the accident that kills his son’s daughters and their grandfather. This causes Rondo untold grief. He even contemplates shooting his own father. He tries to erase the pain by reconstructing the accident, imagining his daughters died happily or at least, obliviously. The pain courses through him again and again for the whole week after the unfortunate incident. He sits on the same sofa, chin lodged in the cup of his hands, listening to the haunting songs sung by the mournful women. His indifferent father tells him that his grief will pass like the morning dew in the sun. That he would be grateful it happened now rather than later and he should thank him. Rondo’s mind was elsewhere. The silence in his mind would have been filled by his daughters’ voices. Surely, Rwafa causes Rondo deep misery when he engineers the untimely death of his two daughters. This destroys Rondo.

Rondo grows up to be a laughing stock as a result of his father’s disrespectful treatment towards him. None of the words he used to address Rondo had any respect in them. When Rwafa compels Rondo to work at The Clarion, and earn his own keep, he refers to him as slob. Because of this, his wife Selina notes that Rondo is always in his father’s shadow. She thinks that she could do better in his pants. Also, his colleagues do not take him seriously. He is not a brilliant journalist and he feels he has been asleep all his life. According to Rwafa, there would not ever be anything Rondo could get right. Even his wife saw him as ‘less-than-me’. At work, people were laughing at him at every moment and the only time they held him in awe is when they needed a favour from his father through him. They even used his name to get something from finance houses, audit stores, legal firms etcetera. They still laughed at him and he knew. This made him defenseless and he would join in the laughter, accepting to be a fool. Rondo admits that his wife was right for positing that he must have been afraid of a shadow – his father’s shadow. This thought was not pleasant to admit.

Although Rondo loved Selina, Rwafa hated her and her family and was against their marriage. Rondo was about to lose Selina because his father, a full blown bhwa Mkwanyashanu, would not let his family be demeaned by his son Rondo. He calls him effeminate for wanting to marry into the ignominious muDziviti family. Rondo told Selina about at the time his father destroyed his old guitar and he peed himself out of fear because he loved her. The flames of the burning guitar gutted all the courage out of him. While Selina and Rondo’s mother were quite close, his father frowned and even spat at the relationship. Rwafa hated Selina’s clan, maDzviti-Ndebele, because they had raided his own clan, Zezeru-Karanga, leaving him with pains of the scars. His deepest scar is that he cannot forgive anyone: not his enemies, not his wife, not his son. The first time Selina came to the house and Rondo told Rwafa about her people, he walked out and stayed away for the whole day. Apart from that, he demanded that Rondo gives him a grandson to inherit his cars, houses, money and charisma. This was not easy for Rondo to accept. Although he was afraid of his father, Rondo still thought he was the greatest.

Rondo’s father demands that Rondo gives him a grandson to whom he could leave the inheritance. He wanted a duplicate or an heir. Rwafa feels that after the ignominy of marrying her, it was ignominious that Rondo first child was a girl with Ndevere blood. His second child was also a grand-daughter. As a result of this, Rwafa could not be appeased by anything. It was as if Rondo had been written out, written off and disappeared. Since Rondo was the only son and only child, his father did many things for him but Rondo did not show enough gratitude of respect because he was not aware. This made Rwafa very disappointed and Rondo’s mother had to do a lot of humiliating things to calm him down. Although she enjoyed the affluence of being married to a senior government official, she had deep fears about the future of her only child Rondo. Rwafa loved himself so much that he was prepared to destroy his son in an effort to have a duplicate or an heir. This demand for grandson was not easy for Rondo to accept.

When Rwafa destroyed Rondo’s old guitar, all the courage was gutted out of him. Selina felt that Rondo was hurt and his pain could affect those around him. She thought he was selfish for apologizing too much. Unlike her who was brought up in a family with people with ‘long hearts’, that is people who forgive others, he was not from such a loving family. Rondo’s first disappointment happened when his father gave him his first sermon. When Rondo was only four, an uncle had given him an old guitar. His father found him strumming tunelessly on the instrument. Rwafa broke the strings and threw the guitar into a fire. He retorted that no son of Rwafa has ever been a Rolling Stone and there would be no Mick Jaggers or John Whites in his house since those people had no sense of responsibility or destination in mind. Rondo, only a child of them, had no idea what he was talking about. Fear was planted in him. He peed his pants. The flames of that burning guitar had gutted all the courage out of him. He tells Selina all this because he loved her. Indeed, Rwafa’s mistreatment adversely affects his son Rondo.

Rondo develops a stammer because throughout his life, he was unable to answer any of his father’s questions. Mr. Rwafa, as a minister of security, had pursued his duties so zealously that he could not distinguish between party and family. This made people, especially Rondo, to suffer. His mother told him that many people developed a stammer when Rwafa asked them questions. Rondo took a long time to learn what his father’s job was. Rondo and Rwafa lived in their separate cages and his mother was caught up in the sensitivity of Rwafa’s job and Rondo’s nature. Because of Rwafa’s actions, Rondo always thought Rwafa was right. He was too diminished to think otherwise. He was also afraid for his mother whenever she had to oppose the old man. Indeed, Rondo suffers because of his father’s ill treatment

Rwafa skips his only son’s wedding causing him pain. When Rwafa drives to Rondo’s house to see Mr. Basil Mzamane, it is surprising. Selina knows that the visit is neither a courtesy call nor a friendly gesture. Rwafa also seems quite cheerful in Rondo and Selina’s house which was unusual, more so with Mr. Basil Mzamane present. The two men’s attitudes towards Rondo’s wedding were different. While Mr. Basil Mzamane fully supported the wedding and paid the larger part of the wedding celebrations expenses, Mr. Rwafa skipped the whole ceremony altogether. Rondo’s mother had also helped but she had been reduced to tears when her husband had asked: “Who did you say is wedding?” then conveniently left town for a ‘state business’ for two weeks just to avoid going.

Rwafa ruins Rondo’s daughters joint birthday celebration when he goes on an irrational hateful rant. Selina and Rondo had invited all their relatives and friends for joint birthday celebration for their daughters, Yuna and Rhoda. It was a generally peaceful scene with children playing and adults enjoying themselves. There were moments of subtle tension, tight smiles and loud laughs between Mr. Rwafa and Mr. Basil Mzamane. Mr. Rwafa’s sarcastic reference to Mr. Basil Mzamane as “Honorable MP” causes a moment of silence and relaxation. Rondo and Selina had longed for a moment like this with their parents who. The peaceful party is destroyed when Mr. Rwafa is prompted to talk of the liberation struggle. He talks of betrayals and alludes to traditional enemies of the people since time immemorial: enemies of the state, clan and family. He calls them looters and cattle thieves. He also calls them personal enemies, child thieves and baby snatchers. He declares that no son of Rwafa can play second fiddle to anyone’s lead nor carry anyone’s pisspot. He is terribly hurt when he refers to his son Rondo as effeminate and spineless for marrying into the family of their enemies, poisoning the pure blood of the Rwafa clan. He suggests that the impostors are smoked out, flashed out and blasted out. Guests grab their children and leave one after another. Rondo remains rooted unable to wave goodbye. He remembers having the feeling he used to have as a boy, where the thought of not being allowed to do something fueled his ambition to do it. Mr. Rwafa’s action causes tension in the air and ruins an otherwise peaceful celebration.

Rwafa senselessly beats up Rondo without bothering to find out what the matter was during a confrontation with a neighbour over his mangoes. Remembering his father’s tirade reminded Rondo of this incident he had almost forgotten. Rondo had helped himself to some ripe mangoes from a neighbours garden. He had seen nothing wrong with this. The neighbour had other ideas. He pulled him down by the leg and proceeded to give him a thorough thrashing using a green pitch switch. His mother was attracted by his howling and she came running out and lifting her skirt in the man’s face. She called him a child murderer. The man shouted “whore” and called Rondo ‘woman’s child’. Rwafa then came to the neighbor’s yard and proceeded to thrash Rondo with his thick elephant-hide belts without bothering to find out what the issue was. What gives Rondo a very uncomfortable feeling even after all these years is the sight of his mother dragging herself on her knees from one man to another, back and forth, clapping and begging them to spare her only child. Rondo just did not want to remember this. He has never told anyone about it not even his wife. He was only eight. He felt powerless. His mother insisted that his father loved him but he did not know how to show it.

When Rondo confronts his father in his guestroom, Rwafa ridicules him as usual. When he hands him a piece of paper, Rwafa asks him whether he had asked one of his more intelligent friends to write that for him. Rondo just stands there, unblinkingly, as his father had not ask him to sit down. Rwafa laughs harshly saying he couldn’t have believed that Rondo had it in him. When Rondo brandishes a gun and offers it to him, a great flood of sadness washes through his face. When he checks the gun and points it at his head, Rondo wishes that his father would shoot him. He feels like a rogue, not out of courage, but out of numbness host of he wished his father would shoot him and take care of things as he had always done. He tells him that he had never used a gun before and he thought his father would do it better than him. Eventually, a soft muffled plop is heard from Rwafa’s room after he orders Rondo and Selina out.

When parents treat their children badly, the children suffer as was in the case of Rwafa and his son Rondo.