The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
MAN does not live on bread alone. A healthy diet that properly sustains the body is one that is varied and encompasses a wide range of ingredients. So, it is in the political arena. Very often we have been subjected to a political cuisine to the exclusion of everything else that we need. We are saying this in reference to what we have come to regard as normal in the political sphere.
In Zimbabwe, the definition and scope of leadership has come to refer to political leadership. This is a narrow base, a narrow definition of leadership that is not inclusive. A collegiate of leadership would be a better alternative where it embraces leaders in commerce, industry, religious and spiritual spheres, and arts, culture and heritage.
Even the already restrictive definition of political leadership has been whittled down to a narrowly defined national leadership. As if the restrictive definition has not been enough, the levels of leadership too, have been suffocating.
Soon after independence, the country witnessed the villagisation of leadership. Political leaders found relevance within their villages, regions and provinces only, a move calculated to create a leadership that comprised a few at the top facing no challenge from those who would have been unceremoniously villagised, regionalised and tribalised.
On Thursday, 3 June 2021 Bulawayo witnessed something quite rare, innovative and different. The national political leadership devoted the whole day attending to the arts, culture and heritage in Bulawayo. In Zimbabwe, political diet rules the roost to the total and quite often to the exclusion of other facets of life. For once, the country welcomed and experienced a departure from what it has come to consider as the norm. The welcome change came about when the political leadership, comprising President Mnangagwa, Vice-President Chiwenga, Cabinet Ministers and Government officials descended on Bulawayo and spent the whole day attending to the business of arts culture and heritage.
In order to develop strategies for sustainable development, one must be thoroughly au fait with what obtains on the ground. That allows leaders to understand and appreciate obtaining dynamics, bottlenecks, deficiencies and what resources and management strategies may be applied to initiate and sustain enduring change.
Last year the President did attend to some interactive meeting with stakeholders in the arts, culture and heritage sector at the Bulawayo Large City Hall. The meeting dealt in the main with policy matters relating to the upliftment of the cultural industries to a sustainable level, one that would, in the final analysis, ensure bread gets to the tables of artists and their families when livelihoods improve.
Bulawayo has for very long been considered a cultural hub, a recognised leader in the arts, culture and heritage. Of late there have been heightened moves to develop the sector further and the City Council has created an office that seeks to provide advice to it on matters relating to the development of arts, culture and heritage. In pursuance of that goal to expand the cultural sector and create a Cultural Corridor, some sites of a cultural nature have been identified in the effort of boosting cultural tourism within the city and confines, as far as the Matobo World Heritage Site where Amagugu International Heritage Centre is located.
The Presidential team was taken on a tour that included identified heritage sites of a varied kind. The trip started at the Inxwala Site where, in the heyday of the Ndebele State, a grand public ceremony presided over by the King was held with the intention of enhancing national unity, national regeneration, thanksgiving for bountiful harvests and expressions of loyalty to the monarch.
The next port of call was the “Hanging Tree” where Ndebele men who took up arms to reassert their political independence were led out of the Bulawayo Prison and hanged on the False Marula tree (uMganunkomo/uMganunduna), the only surviving indigenous tree in Bulawayo’s Central Business District (CBD).
Other areas that the Presidential team visited were the statue of late Zimbabwe Vice President and long-time campaigner for political independence, Dr Joshua Nkomo along the street bearing his name, the St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica and finally, the Joshua Nkomo Museum. In the afternoon the President attended, as guest of Honour, the Bulawayo Arts Festival which was taking place in the Large City Hall.
It was a diet of arts, culture and heritage where the President and his entourage toured, listened to tour guides and, in the process, was learning more and more about the non-political side of lives of Bulawayo’s citizens. Our emphasis and thrust in this article is to highlight the significance and importance of the President’s visit. As already pointed out above, the visit was an icebreaker, a deviation from what we have hitherto known, a suffocating, confined, restrictive concern with political issues to the unfortunate and total exclusion of the all-important arts culture and heritage sector.
Arts performances were lined up at all the heritage sites that the Presidential team visited. The arts are expressive culture and heritage. Such offerings as availed to the President afforded him the opportunity to see a broader scope of the arts from a contextualised perspective.
Arts, culture and heritage bring to the fore the diversity that exists within a nation. Each ethnic group takes pride in its own cultural identity, history and heritage. When the President shows interest and support for these the egos and self-identity of these varied groups within the national kaleidoscope are enhanced and in the end, national pride and unity in diversity are boosted and advanced.
To understand a people more fully and thus be in a position to boost their development, it is important to recognise, appreciate and be empathetic to their arts, culture and heritage. Development is viewed through cultural lenses. It is culture, arts and heritage that inform and define the content, complexion and direction of development. Ultimately, development is evaluated in terms of cultural parameters, those very definitive yardsticks of development.
I will argue that political differences are toxic to a community and present an atmosphere where centrifugal forces are generated and powered with the real possibility of tearing apart a nation-state. The arts, culture and heritage, as they might be diverse, present an opportunity to mediate, within a cool and pacific environment, competing interests and challenges.
It is in this context that the arts, culture and heritage may provide the key to unlock the long-standing political logjams and gridlocks. They thus, provide some niche which may be utilised to heal a nation and regenerate it as did Inxwala ceremony long back. A common national vision may be fostered and engendered and there is pride, joy and satisfaction in a healed, reconciled and mediated society.
Political values, ideas and ideals find expression through immortalised iconic individuals. These are individuals who become beacons of light in societies who future generations seek to emulate. A nation without cherished values is a nation without energy to power and steer it through turbulent waters.
Where the values represented by iconic leaders are not identified and inculcated in the minds of both the young and old, vision and direction are compromised. In the absence of a visionary leadership, the nation perishes. There is something to learn from Dr Joshua Nkomo’s statue as preserving and immortalising some values, both political, cultural, economic and social that the nation would do well to adopt.
Cultural tourism is on the ascendancy the world over. Cultural trails, when provided with strong, vibrant and well-researched narratives should hope for an increased broadened array of destination to be visited which, in turn, may translate to heightened employment and income generation. The national fiscus is boosted and government, at its various levels, is better placed to support sustained and citizen-preferred and citizen-defined development. A vibrant urban environment requires injection, from time to time, of new developmental ideas that hold hope for diversified and sustained urban growth and development, for the good of citizens.
Leadership in its diversity, at different levels, holds hope to weld together a nation and lead it towards some envisaged and desired state where there is a place for all of its citizens in their diversities. A good start was made towards the appreciation of diverse cultures, traditions and historical pasts.
All that remains is to remove the putrid and rancid fly, cockroach and rat nestled in the ointment — the choice of time of celebration of the arts, culture and heritage in Bulawayo so that we are not seen to be celebrating our ancestors’ political and economic demise in the hands of colonists and, in the process, relegating pre-colonial history and heritage of our ancestors to some smelly and fetid dustbin.
