The Sunday News
Micheal Mhlanga
In my attempt to start a new subject, I have been challenged to proceed with the discourse of changing the political culture we have.
This, I have been alerted by one of my readers who shares the same thoughts with me that we don’t own anything as Zimbabweans, particularly politics. There are powers still controlling how we behave daily and if we do not deconstruct that famous wall of conformity, we are doomed to be slaves of systems we poetically praise that we conquered yet we are proliferating en masse. To advance that discourse I have decided to trace where it all begins so that we do not repeat the same mistake. This series will specifically zone on Zimbabwe and her unique challenges and how we all have appeased Rhode’s’ ghost which resides among us.
We have failed to change
We live in a world of continuous changes. Change is a fact of life. But changes create fears and insecurity as well as challenges and possibilities.
Problems confronting Zimbabwe are very complex and deep-rooted in history and my contention this week is that Zimbabwe is poor and still developing primarily because it has failed to respond effectively and timely to changes, challenges and opportunities in the domestic and global market places. We have failed because we still lack the requisite capabilities, the political will, or both, to effectively respond to the changes, challenges and opportunities that have confronted the country in the course of its modern history — we are expert global conformists.
For various reasons we have failed to participate in these changes and exchanges in the global market places of goods and services, of ideas and new ways of doing things because we have always read from a script we didn’t participate in writing — we clearly will never understand it no matter how much we fabricate our enthusiasm and expressions in acting.
For us, the story dates back to more than three decades when we were slaves in our own land until the Europeans gave us the impression that we are independent using their script. Little did we understand then, except a few of the luminaries who have been pegged with bad names by BBC,CNN and even some of our sponsored people to taint them as “primitive oppression machines” just because they tore some pages of the colonial script imposed on us — that was the stage of spitting on Rhodes’ grave. These are what I call in this piece — The first generation of Zimbabwe’s leadership.
These leaders were the product of colonial governance. We can best understand the paucity of them with the requisite capability, integrity, vision, commitment and will power to lead Zimbabwe towards its rebirth by briefly revisiting the manner by which they were recruited during the colonial period. We need to understand the environment and conditions in which the first generation of these leaders emerged.
The system made them
It is important to have a balanced perspective. These leaders were creatures of the times. They were both victims and beneficiaries of the exigencies of the Cold War and decolonisation. There was so much expected of them; and they expected so much for themselves. They were subjected to the conventional wisdom and the buzzwords of the nascent development community of that period.
The same thing is taking place today. New buzzwords are flying around and globally driven market forces are all impacting on Zimbabwe and young leaders have to respond to them.
Time changes, opportunities come and go and circumstances are never repeated; and if they do appear to be repeated they may not respond to similar strategies. As Rhodes’ ancestor, Shakespeare put it: “Time and tide waits for no man or person”. Each situation is a combination of continuity and change; the old and tested, and the unfamiliar yet to be tested — and these are the emergent cabal attempting to make inroads to the continuity of our liberation struggles which are far from over.
Some were created, some are being
I would like to believe that there were two types of leaders: those created and supported by the colonial authorities, like many of our young people branded by YALI, FES, Mandela Fellowship, and numerous scholarships which take them to the United States and European tours; and those who emerged among the people to lead the struggle against colonial rule and for independence — just like some who are critical of how a colonial culture is hegemonically maintained through “cheese snares” (hotel residence and air travelled youth conventions). The latter came to be generally known as “African nationalists” and the former as “colonial collaborators or stooges”. Democracy played no part in the recruitment or creation of either type of leaders. The colonial government identified the collaborators and imposed them on the people — just like they want to do today by legitimising electoral results in a sovereign Zimbabwe when their preferred candidate wins.
In most cases these differences were so profound and seemingly insoluble that hostility and war-like atmosphere was created between the two types of leaders. Each regarded the other as the enemy or obstacles to the real interests and welfare of the people. They called each other names: snakes and hyenas. There was very little co-operation between them other than the one that was occasionally forced upon them by the colonial government; and this was often done in support of the colonial interests. Each leader was more inclined to trust the colonial authorities than anyone in the other group
— this was our case of negotiating in the colonial land — Lancaster is a curse to us — Thank God we did away with their document.
Did they know what they were doing anyway?
Born and bred under colonial rule, the first generation of Zimbabwean leaders was acutely conscious of racial domination, oppression and discrimination, and their impacts on our self-esteem and self-confidence. Once Independence was achieved these leaders were determined to ensure that the succeeding generations of Zimbabweans should not suffer the same fate as they did, But Alas!! We are submerged in perhaps the worst forms of racial domination, sometimes praised and exerted by those we expect to destroy it in the coming years — indeed the protracted racial oppression and discrimination won’t stop when the level of consciousness is contesting with a drool of flying to America or staying at a hotel or a meagre grant meant for the poor yet you twirl it into bride price.
Hypocrites, Hypocrites oh! they should have shame!
Europe lies to us and tells us that our leaders have been total failures. They have successfully turned our brothers and sisters into remote speakers, advocates of their malice, absurdly vocal on petty things in the name of freedom of expression yet when you express your freedom on white hegemony they are quick to flash the globalisation and tranquillity card, yes, they tell you to forget the past, pray to the one above reciting the line “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”, even Helen Zille confirmed what white people think of our oppression, Donald Trump might as well get married to her, they can make a perfect white family.
Europe and her “black” proselytes should be reminded that the first generation of our leaders were most successful in the provision and extension of social services, particularly education and health facilities. They built schools, colleges and universities where none existed before. They increased in multiple folds the entrance to the schools and colleges.
They built hospitals, dispensaries, and health stations of various sizes, and trained doctors, nurses and all kinds of hospital support.
They raised the levels of adult literacy, and gave pride and self-respect to those that for the first time in their lives could read the newspapers for themselves, or write replies to the letters they received from their families. They brought piped water to isolated towns, and improved the quality of drinking water to the villagers. They extended electric power to a much wider circle than was the case during the colonial period.
They built impressive transport and communication net work. They improved the postal services. In their enthusiasms to serve their people, post-colonial Zimbabwe moved into manufacturing and the supply of basic consumer goods, like soft drinks, beer, textile, detergents, cereals; and so on- although not what we exactly want, it is still a stunning success, the ghost of Rhodes is not happy with it.
The first decade of independence was in many ways exhilarating; partly because independence itself was a novelty and partly because there were many things we could now have or do which in the colonial period they could not — like walking in pavements in town and even residing in Khumalo or Parddonhurst.
Nation-building and economic developments were the major pre-occupations of the first generation of our political leaders.
They were obsessed with the fears of ethnic and racial conflicts and the loss of the mobilisation momentum achieved during the anti-colonial struggles. In the process; and due to various other factors, many problems were created. By then the novelty of independence had worn off, the crudities and hardships of the real world, magnanimous challenges manifested and coloniality still resided.
-To be continued…
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