The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
As we continue to celebrate the life of the late gallant Chimurenga ideological hero par-excellent, Cde Dickson Chingaira, affectionately known as a Cde Chinx; it is important to reiterate the fact that Cde Chinx was no ordinary singer. He was an ideological pivot of our liberation struggle and an ecclesiast of our becoming a nation.
He, beyond the changing tides of the country’s political outlook, remained unwaveringly consistent to what he stood for throughout the time of our struggle. Three decades after independence, the pen writing his music had an avid capture of the life lived in the trenches:
Chaiti chouya chikopokopo kuseniseni
kushungurudza mweya wegamba pamusoroi Cde.
Hanzi Zimbabwe yakanganisa
… kuva nemugodi kukanganisa?
… Kuva nenhaka kukanganisa?
I use the term ecclesiast when referring to the ideological personhood of Cde Chinx because Zimbabwe is a country which was born out of liberation theologies which were constantly emphasised by the scribes of the songs of our righteous uprising to the illegitimacy of imperialism. As such this theology of our God-ordained cause to be free finds its premise in the psalmody of the liberation war and its apt reflection on the role of the spiritual custodians of our struggle like Saint Nyakasikana Nehanda:
Mbuya nehanda kufa vachitaura
shuwa kuti tinotora sei nyika ino
shoko rimwe ravakati udza: tora gidi
uzvitonge.
This substantiates without doubt that interpretation of the Chimurenga music must not be alien of intellectual interventions. In fact, Chimurenga music is a pertinent sphere of intellectual attraction like any other aspect of our liberation memory. However, an attempt to give intellectual interpretation to Chimurenga music is usually treated as a clandestine approach to “regime-praise”. In some instances, reflecting on the ideological premise of the Chimurenga music is viewed from a perspective of “nothingness” by those who claim to be “highly academic” — by virtue of pedestrian anti-establishment intellectual accreditations. Coming from a political science background, I have over the years observed how my peers would regard any attempt to articulate the philosophical bedrock of Chimurenga music as a “sublime piece of mysticism and nonsense”.
This indicates that as a continent we are still far from finding what in decolonial terms is called the “epistemic locus” or thinking from where one stands. Moreover, this goes further to indicate Africa’s incongruence in terms of reaching the expected heights of cognitive democracy. A quick scan on the awash body of political science literature and other fields of humanities and social science, reveals that the faculty of humanities and social science (whose function is to articulate pathways of making being and proffer remedies to the crisis of being) has destabilised the prospects of providing an indulgent appreciation of the African condition — the politics and economics thereof. Despite the voluminous attempts to reposition social sciences and humanities within the broad intellectual cluster of pan-Africanism and the decoloniality school of thought, the academic output of our political theory continues to be under serious colonial capture.
All combined, perspectives of political theory are largely preoccupied with anxieties of what is proximately worthwhile, hemmed in the simplistic clamour for “good governance” and the neo-liberal dogma about the repressive market economies in Africa. This is why to this day, Chinx’s music does not find malleable residence in the cognitive terrain of those who subscribe to the coloniality of knowledge and power. Thus when Cde Chinx sings;
“Hondo yakura muZimbabwe; hondo yeminda” his music is viewed as an acrimonious distortion to the efforts made by civil society to build firm foundations of “democracy” hence his music gives opportunity to the need to accelerate the superficial “civil society” ploy for “conflict resolution” and of course the need for “political transition” which in our case, exposes its grotesque nudity through the infamous “regime change” project which Cde Chinx lambasts for its folly as a lost cause: “Hondo maiona imi vapambepfumi . . . hondo yeChimurenga. Maruza imi”.
Music and invention of political ideology
The above account on the life of Chinx is reflective of how music is an important discursive outlet just like literature, it helps explain the political feelings of a people at any given moment as it serves as a human livelihood commentary. Naturally music settles well in the human mind and thus determining its appreciation of the surrounding world and it marks the genesis of idea making informed by the messages of the genre in concern.
Therefore, Chimurenga music facilitated an African consciousness of the colonial illegitimacy. After independence, Chimurenga music communicated the challenges and prospects of nation-building in Zimbabwe. Canaan Banana confirmed the ideological significance of the Chimurenga music in relation to nationhood in the foreword of; The Songs that Won the Liberation-War:
“These songs were a necessary component of our revolutionary struggle. They were . . . providing that necessary anchor-sheet for the successful prosecution of our just struggle for freedom and independence. The Chimurenga songs helped instill grim determination among all actors in the revolutionary process” (Banana 1982).
In this book, Pongweni (1982) acknowledges the ideological function of this music apart from its generally perceived role it played to entertain the soldiers and expressing the solidarity of the masses with the guerillas. The songs that won this war were not only common in the battlefield, but they were an integral part of the African communities that subscribed to the goals of the Chimurenga. It reflected a shared desire for freedom between the freedom fighters and those being fought for, the masses.
This is why the armed guerillas found solace in music which justified their involvement in the struggle for liberation. On the other side, Pungwes and Biras (overnight entertainment gatherings organised by communities to celebrate the liberation war) were held in the rural homes. These gatherings served as private platforms of mass engagement to communicate the political status-quo and mobilisation processes of the struggle for liberation. This was a way of showing embracement of a common liberation ideology and music made this possible at communal level. As a result, the celebrations of independence would have been void without the Songs that won the liberation War. This is why the evening of the 18th of April 1980 was marked by a large scale pungwe punctuated by song and dance (Mhiripiri 2012).
Likewise across the Limpopo, Mzwakhe Mbuli is one musician whose work articulated the prevailing political ideologies of resistance to apartheid until the country’s post-independence era. His dub poetry has criticised the apartheid system and the post-independence nationalist infidelity to the masses after independence. In a similar approach another Zimbabwean dub poet, Albert Nyathi had posed as a voice of the down trodden Africans in Rhodesia:
Senzeni na . . . tatadzei ko? Kulicala na ukulwelwela inkululeko yakho?
Chimurenga music: The meaning in time and space.
This music genre symbolises warfare art which:
. . . expresses a political ideology articulated through the military . . . distinctly Shona; therefore it is a sui-generis expression of African nationalism in Zimbabwe. Thomas Mapfumo used the term chimurenga to brand his music at the beginning of the armed struggle. As a manifestation of the ideology of African liberation, chimurenga represents communal African memory harking back to the time of Munhumutapa’s struggles against the Portuguese in the early 17th century, and the Shona’s struggles with the Ndebeles in the 1830s. (Vambe 2004; 169)
Vambe’s submission on the roots of the Chimurenga music suggests that its ideological functions informed the armed struggles of the Shona since the time of the Mutapa. This music expressed the need for Shona-self-assertion. From this definition Vambe can be viewed as one who subscribes to the common pro-establishment narratives of Zanu-PF patriotic nationalism (Ranger 2004; 2005). The above definition excludes the aspect of the Zvimurenga as cited by Beach (1986) and the Ndebele version of the liberation encounters namely the 1893 war. Even Umvukela of 1896 which ran parallel with the much emphasised Shona version of the armed struggle referred to as the First-Chimurenga.
This is why most of the Chimurenga songs are sang in Shona. Likewise, Thomas Mapfumo was comfortable to assume the brand tag of being Chimurenga musician. Other musicians associated with this genre include Dickson “Chinx” Chingaira, Simon Chimbetu both former Zanla members. It is from this aspect that Vambe argues that Chimurenga music has subversions. It does not have a uniformed expression of nationalism. This is because sometimes Chimurenga music seems to compliment the nature of the state and its functions and on the other flip side the same Chimurenga interrogates establishment values. This became more apparent in the era of the land reform which witnessed the entry of new idols of this genre compliant to establishment discourses. These include Elliot Manyika, Tambaoga and the Mbare Chimurenga Choir used their music to eulogise the Third Chimurenga ideology. On the other hand, Thomas Mapfumo re-emerged from his erstwhile loyalty to the struggle with a changed perspective which was largely anti-establishment alongside the regime change Chimurenga music brand.
The change in the political landscape and the music discourses suggest how this music belongs to a paradigm of the “Chimurenga culture” which is not stagnant as noted by Vambe:
The reality is that chimurenga constantly revises state goals; ironically, that same process of destabilising dominant values and history sometimes necessitates a preliminary critique of the ways in which Chimurenga songs construct their own reality. In such cases the music can perpetually interrogate institutional authoritarian structures even as it consistently reflects on the state or conditions of its own possibility.
The above assertion by Vambe (2004; 170) justifies the view that the Chimurenga music has the ability to either consolidate power for the state or introspect its influence. Hence this music is an audience builder for both establishment and anti-establishment ideological discourses that feed into the processes of nation-building at large. Unlike other perspectives which depict Chimurenga music as a source of national identity monologue, I argue that this music offers epistemic constructions and deconstruction of the meaning of nationalism in Zimbabwe. In other words, Chimurenga music broadly defines the broader conversation which gives meaning to being Zimbabwean.
