The Sunday News
Michael Mhlanga
“Wanderer in the forest!
A single hand cannot lift the load on the head.
The little hand of the child cannot reach the shelf under the roof;
The large hand of the adult cannot enter the narrow neck of the calabash.
The stranger of today could be a friend of tomorrow.
Wanderer in the forest:
Help me lift my load on my head”.
This is a prophetic and richly philosophical response by the God of fate; Eshu to Obatala in scene 3 of the classical play “The Trial of Obatala” by the ever remarkable Obutunde Ijimere. I was moved to my library of African literature in memory of how the dialogue in the play is a summary of my thoughts of re-imaging and imagining 22 December’s three decades and counting that we question;
Eshu’s response succeeds Obatala’s entrance melody, which tutors on the importance of friendship, that no matter how a “friend” is, a stranger is never important than your “friend”. Obatala says: (a friend)
“His hands cannot be so thin — that you should rub a stranger’s arm with camwood. His buttocks cannot be so flat — that you should tie beads around a stranger’s waist . . . ” The progress of the dialogue fits well in analysing the customs of 22 December and the emerging discourses that should be embedded within the memory of that day.
The importance of friendship despite his shortcomings, the importance of unity despite our differences, the centrality of our differences that complement our progress and the temporality of our enmity — in summary, Zimbabwe is a family more than what pessimists think. What is left is reconciling ourselves beyond, indoctrinated, imported and dis-informed animosities that we have always thought were obliterated on 22 December 1987, yet their remnants have transformed into deceptively new challenges yet their origination is the same.
The monkey is wise. But he has his own logic. Again, the wise words of Eshu; God of Fate.
While many (including scholars) enquire on the sincerity of 22 December 1987, it is prudent to reflect on truth that whatever happened and is happening to the millennials (Generation Z) good or bad, are residues of early 80s.
What gave birth to all political violence is a reflection of how Zimbabwe was fragmented, with a hegemony on violence, yet to this day, there is a competition of monopoly of violence and the level of political intolerance has been assumed by any with an unquenchable thirst for political power, whose distaste for anyone who does not subscribe to them, politically, ethnically and ideologically (with lack of) is pilloried. Such a character of political intolerance, toxic masculinity, regionalism, tribalism and stunted use of logic in decision making should be the mainstay of reflection on today’s celebrations.
On the other hand, the transformation of a violent state to a democracy-guided state should be celebrated. It is an achievement in terms of celebrating Unity Day for in 1987 it resembled the expiration of five years (honestly, its decades) of violence hence this day, it is no longer about the end of PF-Zapu and Zanu animosity but the end of a violent phase where the new politics is characterised by different characters battling the same challenges which looked differently. Truly, post-colonial expressions of regionalism and political tribalism still remain and we have to surgeon them otherwise all efforts of 22 December are as futile as we will always celebrate that we repeatedly destroy to remake.
Knowing that 22 December 1987 was uniquely meant for the alliance of then PF-Zapu and Zanu, marking the end of a devastatingly post-independence political animosity, one wonders if 22 December should still be limited to a unison of political institutions that morphed into a singular entity whose heroes and heroines, both living and resting in power, celebratory achieved their goal.
I say this because I am suggesting a change in narrative in the meaning of 22 December whose founding and celebratory objectives were indeed achieved. I write portentous that 22 December graduates perceptions of festivities of Mugabe and Nkomo holding hands coalescing political efforts, but be a day we reflect on what has divided us as a nation and what we have accomplished so far in all that has harassed and ruptured this nation.
From here on, the whole nation should adopt clean politics, that is patriotic, that values friendship over strangers; like Obatala said: “A friend is as precious as a child . . . His eyes cannot be so ugly that you would paint a stranger’s eyes with antimony.” This is rich tutelage to those who choose to be friends of oppressive Senates at the expense of what we share with them (blackness, victims of racial oppression, victims of colonial residues, perceived as monkeys and experiments, residents of the periphery that should always suffer and feed the core centre, African, Zimbabwean). 22 December should be a reflection point of unifying with those who are keen to divide the nation this way.
It is on that basis that decades later, “the People” are still the core of nation building. However, “the People” are distant, they are suspicious of each other, they are angry, they sell out others in “strangers”, they violate women, they attack and intimidate those who think differently, they query everything when it does not plump their pockets, they masquerade as apolitical, they celebrate vile, they lie, they are pessimistic, extremely divorced from reality — in short, they are fragmented.
Shall we call it a celebration or a commemoration? The day should transcend its political residency and function to unite every aspect of Zimbabwe, down from the family unit which has been ruptured by politics, dis-engineered by social mis-organisation and en route to vegetable-like-fractures by economics.
