The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
THE controversy surrounding the erection of Mbuya Nehanda’s statue presents yet another vivid example of the polarised character of our society.
The debate on Mbuya Nehanda’s statue is founded on two conflicting ideological premises — the liberation and neo-colonial underpinned perspectives.
The liberation grounded view celebrates the Government’s decision to honour Nehanda through the proposed construction of a statue at the intersection of Samora Machel Avenue and Julius Nyerere Way in Harare’s CBD.
Having the effigy of Nehanda — a hero of Zimbabwe’s landmark armed resistance at this heroic junction named after Africa’s two liberation icons (Machel and Nyerere) immortalises Nehanda not as towering figure of the Chimurenga but as a forerunner of pan-Africanism in her own right. Samora Machel of Mozambique and Mwalimu Nyerere of Tanzania shared fragments of their then newly independent states’ fiscal to finance the Second Chimurenga.
Tanzania and Mozambique were among the Front Lines States (FLS) whose post-independence metamorphosis credits them the Former Liberation Movements (FLMs) status alongside other anti-colonial independent nations such as Angola, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa.
Nehanda — the spirit which possessed Charwe Nyakasikana (the revolution mother-figure of Zimbabwe’s independence) among many other guardian forces of our struggle represents a movement and an idea of resistance shared across the African continent.
Therefore, Nehanda as a spirit and as a person should be conceptually located as a collective embodiment of every institution opposed to colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid and all apparatus designed to keep Africans as subjects of Anglo-American oppression.
Nehanda as an idea to be immortalised through the proposed statue will be imprinted in history as a contemporary counter-alternative to the heterogeneous global stratifications of power, knowledge and being.
At an elementary level, Nehanda is a combative microcosm of the broader fight against heterarchies of the Global North and the Global South. Therefore, the proverbial ‘’Mapfupa angu achamuka’’ represents the contemporary revolutionary thesis founded on a deconstruction of grotesque racial supremacy.
Therefore, the celebration of Nehanda at this magnitude as proposed by the Government serves as a reconstruction of a once decimated force of resistance but is now awakening to challenge all colonially designed stratifications of race, ethnicity, gender and class. This should mark a call to Zimbabwe’s political and socio-economic re-existence. As such, I don’t expect Christians to celebrate Nehanda today when she died in the hands of a Christian Priest.
Charwe Nyakasikana Nehanda refused to be converted to Christianity in as much as she did not concede to the political subjugation of her people. Apart from colleagues in the opposition, I understand those orthodox Christians who have not evolved towards African re-existent re-reading of the bible who think erecting Nehanda’s statue is an act of idolatry. I mean those Christians stuck in the hope for salvation from Jerusalem and would dare call Great Zimbabwe and Khami Complex “ruins’’.
I don’t expect those “global-citizens’’ who celebrate the Statue of Liberty and shun the statue of Mbuya Nehanda. This breed assumes that all democracy is linear and only has a Western socio-genesis which should be forcefully handed down to Africa.
These neo-liberal recruits forget that democracy in Africa is founded on the continent’s revolution against colonialism. Even before the advent of anticolonial democracy, the concept of leadership deriving its power from the people has always been an idea engendered in contemporary African political-thought. Nehanda epitomises the ultimate character of Madzimbabwe/Chimurenga/Umvukela/African/Ubuntu democracy.
In support of this call for Zimbabwe’s political re-existence through the symbol of Nehanda Dr Grasian Mkodzongi intervened:
A fundamental problem with all these western sponsored/inspired neo-colonial activists is their lack of national consciousness. It’s the house Negro mentality. Once they are fed, they start denigrating their country! No matter your political grievances against Zanu-PF, your allegiance must be to Zimbabwe.
Zanu-PF is not Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe is not Zanu-PF. Mbuya Nehanda and other heroines and heroes are Zimbabwean heroes. They deserve our respect. The problem of this confused lot is to use their hatred of Zanu-PF to celebrate foreign heroes.
Why Now and Not 40 years Ago?
Dr Ibbo Mandaza also weighed into the discussion and interrogates the timely urgency of the move by the Government: The statue of Cecil John Rhodes was removed from Jameson Ave after the latter was renamed Samora Machel Ave at independence: Why was Ambuya Nehanda’s statue not erected in its place 40 years ago?
And, now, as the Black Lives Matter Movement engulfs the globe following yet another murder of a black person, and statues and monuments of slave traders and colonialist murderers alike are felled and removed, including one of Cecil John Rhodes at Oxford, what do the rulers in Harare do in response to these poignant events that should resonate with Zimbabwe were it not that the rulers are stricken by incorrigible amnesia fuelled by self-aggrandisement?
As we remember Nehanda, one wonders; what should happen to the grave of one of those who had a hand in her murder is preserved as a “National Monument”, along with one Allan Wilson and his fellow terrorists who participated in the removal of King Lobengula and the destruction of his kingdom?
Taking the debate further, Professor George Shire engaged the debate as he posted the following on my Facebook timeline in response to my last piece:
At the forefront of it, all must be the preservation of the memory of what were the genocidal crimes the likes Cecil Rhodes, Allan Wilson, Baden Powell, et al unleashed on our people. It cannot and must not be erased from history.
The building of Mbuya Nehanda’s statue might be belated to some but it is timely and important nevertheless. I salute it as part of that effort to decolonise museums and public space as an ongoing practice. The idea that the memory of Ambuya Nehanda’s body and svikiro racho should have been tangled up with the statue of Cecil Rhodes is on one hand obscene and on the other shows a lack of knowledge about what our customs and culture teach us about how to honour our ancestors.
I add that the miseries unleashed by neoliberalism are not going to disappear as a result of this very important memory or from the ‘Shaisano’ jibes thrown at the Mnangagwa-led Zanu-PF administration by those who were already permanently wired to its opposition.
They fail to grasp that the triumph of our ancestors was born on the site of a disaster. Maintaining a collective ontological totality of our Zimbabweaness drawn from the memory and (re)membering of all our ancestors reconciles that which was destroyed with what has been newly introduced.
Prof Shire went further to posit that: It is Zimbabwean academics and especially those that were involved in state formation in the 80s who failed to provide proper intellectual capital to advance the significance of Ambuya Nehanda and many others to our collective political imaginary and history.
What Zimbabwean academics should be doing now is to put their skills to use in exposing what is in the colonial archive and do the research that tells us where the likes of Allan Wilson and many others are buried. It is the responsibility of us all and in keeping with our customs and culture not to desecrate anybody’s grave.
What should be done however is to board up those graves and notify members of the families of the dead offering them an opportunity to exhume the bodies of their family members if they so wish.
I most certainly think that Cecil Rhodes’ grave should be boarded up and that his estate should be ‘persuaded’ to exhume his body from the Njelele Sacred Shrine at Motopo Hills and for them to find an appropriate place to bury them.
The campaign should be led by us and not the government of the day although they are most welcome to join.
Based on the submissions made by these distinguished academics on this pertinent national discussion, it remains imperative for all progressive Zimbabweans to see this as an opportunity to reclaim re-existence.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva (BSc-MSU, MSc-AU, MSc-UZ) is a Political-Scientist with an avid interest in political theory, liberation memory and architecture of governance in Africa. He is also a creative literature aficionado. Feedback: [email protected]
