The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
Indeed, it’s a new beginning not only to the intervallic dictates of time as declared by the Gregorian calendar.
It’s a year making the rebirth of our national memory as we entomb ruins of our rotten past rot to unveil a future brusquely reclaiming the densities of yesteryear’s emotions of split patriotic consciousness.
Never again shall we be a tribe. It’s high time we forget being a party or a race. We are graduating more to being a new nation — not one termed an imagined community — and that one sworn to envisioning itself as a divided lot squandered in tribal wars and political hate!
We must go beyond the nation once buried in White nostalgia accounting for the being through the division of our land as Matebeleland, MaNyikalandand MaShonaland. Furthermore, 2018 signals the renaissance of the nationalist movement — long disparaged by the unparalleled ignorance of a scatter-brain First Woman.
At the same time, 2018 takes one down the lane of our historic archive produced by patriotic pronouncements of our organic intelligentsia. Joseph Nhara — AKA Man Soul Jah is one living archive.
His song, “Mr Government Man” — so prophetic and so in tandem with the current political context foretold in a forewarning by one Nathaniel Manheru on January, 17 last year:
Chine vene vacho chinhu ichi and you won’t be there when great questions of the day are settled mumatare avo! Too young, too small, simply a late arrivant, my good soul-mate!
You, me, all others like us, must do what we know and do best: quietly remake our worlds by remarking the knowledge that animates and moves them.
This was a warning to the chief architect of the fallen cabal who thought that a corrupt clamour the party’s generational renewal would erase the tradition of the nationalist values. To his folly and more Manheru warned:
Not long from now, we shall find ourselves described yet again, heirs of Munhumutapa, Mzilikazi, who do not seem to know that a good and lusty STEM is one sitting on solid roots of a national history.
We who would rather recede into parochial politics of Mthwakazi, than expend our energies in reconstructing grand narratives that befit a great sprawling civilisation we are known to have been.
Late Terrence Ranger, a more nuanced student of Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper — that racist who repudiated African history, arguing all there was, was the history of the white man in Africa — Ranger, his student was no fool to sponsor the notion of “patriotic history”, itself an effective, pseudo-academic way of dissuading us from rewriting and reclaiming our history, while indemnifying perpetuation of white “patriotic” history which objectify us as “the” history.
In his famous song, Mr Government Man, more than 15 years ago Joseph Nhara predicted the arrival of this current political era:
Vene vedzino nyika vachauya. Hona machinda ose achauya baba.
Gwendenge rine Shumba inoruma, vana pfumojena vachauya iwe.
(Honour of this land shall rise. Those wielding power to lead the land shall rise.
That sacred mountain houses a ferocious lion, the gallant ammunition bearers shall).
Nhara’s song was produced in the bitter point of our Agrarian (3rd) Chimurenga which saw war veterans and the land hungry peasantry (Vene vedzino nyika) reclaiming our stolen soil.
Then the people were unconsciously tilting towards mass organic rewriting of this country’s turn to liberate our history from the hands of white capital, monopoly and dominance.
In the same way, the entire country kissed good bye the year of dirty factional politics ravaging the revolutionary movement. In our current reality, vanapfumojena mentioned in Nhara’s song are those who presented conventional combat to the supremacy of Rhodesia.
The same army which we see coming to the fore to reassert the principles of the nationalist creed birthed through liberation barrages. In the same spirit of national consciousness, the same restoration of nationalist pride sets out an audit as some “Mr Government Man” reprimanded in the same song — machinda munoba (woe to you stealing Ministers).
This indicates that Zimbabwe is transitioning to a new culture of arresting corruption, nepotism and lethargy in the public service. Part of the nationalist tradition under reconstruction entails reversing the lost gains of Uhuru over the past years and denoting the progressive side of what was consolidated under President Mugabe.
Therefore, our entry into this year of elections gives us a cumbersome task to be more patriotic than ever and make sure that we do not barter our principles for vain self-capital over national interests.
2018’s assignment
On Friday, in the spirit of Zanu-PF’s embrace of dissident and ubuntu, President Mnangagwa visited Cde Morgan Tsvangirai who is currently suffering from a chronic ailment.
In all sincerity, I believe President Mnangagwa was deeply philanthropic and humane by so doing. Really, what does one gain by telling the whole world that their “rivalry” is “ailing”? Even if the idea was to expose Tsvangirai’s fate, why are MDC supporters feel threatened that the condition of their leader has been exposed for the whole world to see?
Does it mean that Tsvangirai is the party’s sole source of legitimacy and not the party’s perpetual ideas which must nurture perpetual succession?
It’s only evil when President Mnangagwa visits “sick” Tsvangirai and yet it was not wrong for Cde Tsvangirai to attend President Mnangagwa’s inauguration last month. Being a reader of Machiavelli myself, I agree, we are all political animals, but beyond Hobbes’ lens of appreciating politics; we are more human than we are that “nasty, selfish and brutish”.
Cde Mnangagwa’s visit to Tsvangirai was a high pitched patriotic gesture whose essence was misread by those dwelling in the cocoon of hate politics outside the auspices of our modern democracy.
The noble example set by President Mnangagwa is a template to all that we may differ in ideas, but we are all people of this land. Whatever the split ideological leanings we are unified by our birth right to this country. For long, we have been soiled in the politics of intolerance, hate and essentialism.
It is this essentialism that has led to the criminalisation of President Mnangagwa’s innocent visit to the unwell veteran of opposition leaders. It is the culture of essentialism which confuses a brotherly gesture and misnames humane charity for nasty political dishonest to soil Tsvangirai’s legitimacy in the forthcoming election.
Does this mean that the opposition was going to win the elections had President Mnangagwa not visited Tsvangirai in the company of the media? This narrow proposition insinuates Zanu-PF’s dependence on dirty politics; yet omitting that those in Zanu-PF do not always act at the behest of realism. Leadership also entails humanism as declared through the President’s visit to the Tsvangirai residence.
Sadly, the same essentialist mouthpieces speculating this hate are ignorant of the fact that Tsvangirai was once a Government official.
Therefore, what is the crime of Mnangagwa visiting a former colleague in Government?
Our problem is that we have allowed political rivalry to be an incentive for hate. As we move into 2018 we must look at rivalry in politics as a justification for competition of ideas. It is tragic that we choose to see mischief in an act of benevolence. We choose to see a primordial scheming instead of embracing our leaders’ adherence to civil human relations beyond their conflicting individual ideological proclivities.
President Mnangagwa’s gesture further symbolises that intermarriages between man and women of conflicting political backgrounds must remain a taboo of our ugly yesterday.
Political difference must not be a justification for hatred which caters for the erasure of our common Zimbabwean identity.
However, the continued emphasis on our wagging differences should remain in the past. We should sought unifying truths to what we have been made believe is our source of tension.
I am inspired by Cde Manheru’s poetry rendition penned in response to the acrimonious media framing of the hosting of the 21st February Movement in Matobo last year.
Contrary to the tribal imagination of essentialists, Manheru saw the hosting of the 21st February Movement as an opportunity for Zimbabwe to rewrite the myths misrepresenting the former President of Zimbabwe and Zanu-PF as an unpopular figure in Matebeleland:
(Hayi mani bakithi (!) — MATOBO!!!)— goes to Matobo, Matombo:
place of stubborn boulders,
the land’s mute womb that won’t say
what it has eaten, seen, or carries.
When Mugabe goes to Matobo,
I ask, ONLY ASK, this of him:
topple u-rhodes,
scoff the gnarl of his rhodesian tale.
And please bring back
OUR-, MY-,HER-, HIS-TORY!
tell b(l)ack our story,
for so long mangled in fanged white lies
coursing down our corrupted veins, untreated.
Bring back our history, please!
In the same manner, the key intention of President Mnangagwa’s visit to Tsvangirai can be comprehended better as a vision of the Zimbabwe we await as articulated by Manheru the poet:
. . . and what a joyous day it shall be!
to shout HELLO(!) to our story,
to greet HI(!)(MY)STORY!
a ringing, vengeful black Echo
hitting back at white tales so tall,
a clasping Echo reverberating
. . . and all shall listen, learn,
all shall hear: clutch, grasp,
all shall own: keep, hold dear:
thereafter a brace new story told,
to bear, to mould, to nourish anew
true generations to come,
to come . . . and to come, ad infinitum:
this broken story of Stone — freed, sutured once more,
from our restless lips seeding and serenadingminds of scions so nubile.
