The Sunday News
We meet again, yet on another Sunday, like any other when undoubtedly you find my name and face in each and every weekly publication of this mostly read press print. Perhaps you are on your way to the synagogue which varies based on whom you worship, we all have connotations of who our God is, but Sunday seems to be a popular day of Christian worship. Please say hello to Jesus for me, I quit that routine a long time ago when I decided to boycott the seminary.
Do not mind my religious opinions, liberalism has taken the best of me, too much access to information has “defiled” my conventionality, but don’t worry; there are worse people than me. Talk to any D.Phil or Professor, Okot P’ Bitek is their point of reference, he could not understand why there was a white man hanging on the stake in a building and they were told to worship him. According to P’ Bitek this was a sign of defeat. To Ngugi, Harambee was a symbol of oppression. My mzukulu, Cain Ginyilitshe Mathema, says at the age of nine he did not understand why there was only ukhulu uJesu and not ukhulu uGinyilitshe. To him this was not logical and fair. Like Marechera, he had to run away from that religious house of hunger. However, truth be told, the creator, uMvelinqangi is alive. He is the root and to him are routes. So today is a day of worship and sharing the truth. Therefore nothing, but the truth shall be said.
My fingers have been itchy to type this all week, but fear grapples me because I think it’s an overly sensitive issue. On the day of his arrest on the mount Olive, Jesus said to his disciples “umoya uyavuma, kodwa inyama iyala” meaning, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, this is exactly what I am feeling. I am compelled to write about this but I fear for my flesh, lest I be battered in these sometimes fearsome streets of Bulawayo because I tempered with some people’s egos. If I had been strong enough to finish the remaining few years of my seminary life, I could be at a parish today, in one of the monumental missions delivering a homily and leading all the rites of a Sunday mass, well, like we sing at my church, “iNkosi ingithumile, ukuba ngishumayeli vangeli, ithi yona, akusini elingikhethileyo, kodwa ngomusa wami, yimi engilikhethileyo.”
My countrymen, over the past 36 years our political struggle has been to reclaim our nationhood following our triumphant dislocation of the colonial regime. Indeed, we have tussled colonial hangovers that we still have not knocked out, we have fought to discover our post-independence identities at individual, regional right up to national level. We have suffered the brunt of the 1992 famine that had us eat the yellow maize meal we called “iKenya” repeatedly in 2002. However, it was less reek than the previous time, we have lived through the fuel shortages of 2002, food scarcity of 2005, and hyperinflation of our Zim Dollar. Then Dr Gideon Gono, the RBZ Governor slashed zeros and formalised the multi-currency system which had been hostage to illicit forex dealers. On the other wild side of things courtesy of the GNU; the “Johnny come late” to politics opposition was all in wining and dining. Some for the first time were privileged to become lovers of pink champagne and forgot their constituencies. In Bulawayo in particular, ethnicity politics was hyped with the growth of sponsored nation dismembering civic society.
This is not something new per se if you still remember the tribal fundamentalist Paul Siwela of the Mthwakazi Liberation Front. After years in the trenches Siwela resurfaced in 2008 lobbying for the halving of Zimbabwe along tribal essentialist terms underpinned on a factually misplaced and emotionally exaggerated Ndebele victimhood. To this day, Siwela’s protégés are headlining the social media with their Mthwakazi restoration agenda. Truly, we cannot reject, denounce or stifle political dissent, but surely we can problematise ideas of this political route and its aspirations to dichotomise Zimbabwe using ethnicity. However, ethnicity ought to be a unifying denominator of our divine ordained national plurality from the day the maker of the heavens said “Let there be Zimbabwe.”
Is ethnic essentialism canvassed as political dissent healthy for Matabeleland? The dominant argument in the camp is continuous reference to the royal King Mzilikazi’s legacy and his conquest of the land. There is glorification of how he owned the land and the harmony he brought. In that argument, there is appropriative claim of the country and why it belongs to Mthwakazi. This on its own is argumentative and we can debate all day referencing D. Beach and T. Ranger and even ask ubaba uPathisa Nyathi, but it will bring us to one conclusion, when we assumed independence we denounced rule by conquest and agreed on democratic processes where there is contest of ideas not cultural masculinity. The imminent danger is that we create a cycle of confusion as to why there was the war of liberation. Was it for the retaining of cultural supremacy or we were breaking cultural barriers to modern governance? The conclusive agenda of Zanla and Zipra attacks to the enemy was to give birth to a nation and nations within a nation? Of course we cannot selectively ignore the 1982 disturbances, but 1987 was a call for unity of the people of Zimbabwe.
Detrimental as it is, the idea of cultural supremacy by the Mthwakazi masquerades cum politicians is that it dominates other Matabele tribes and cultures and appoints itself as a supra-Matabele culture. This is rife in their contest narrative that Shona culture should be done away with in Matabeleland. Such xenophobia is normal (note: xenophobia does not mean attack), co-existence of supra cultures yields collision, it’s normal in anthropological settings and such locales have a contest of dominance over the other. The contest that has been designed by Mthwakazism ousts cultures such as Kalanga, Sotho, Tonga, Venda, Nyanja, Chewa which have been instrumental in the liberation of this country. When an extremist group finds itself dominating a “struggle”, it self-arrogates entitlement to a struggle and superficially dominates others, in the process eliminating “smaller” or what cultural enthusiasts call endangered groups. Pathological tribal essentialists like Paul Siwela and Khumbulani Moyo are successfully suppressing other Matabele cultures and masquerading as the most important and politically entitled cultural vanguards.
History is a good teacher, some champions of the liberation struggle were Kalanga people, Dr Joshua Nkomo grew up amongst Kalanga people but you find a Boko Haram style of political isolation along the lines of which a King is more important therefore this country should be split. Nonsense! Deep research ignites knowledge that Benjamin Burombo contributed so much to the Zapu struggle, Dr Nkomo even had some of his rallies accommodated at the Mahomva Shopping complex, their struggle was funded by a shop conglomerated by Shona businessman, if you are from Matshobana, in Bulawayo, you know koGoveya, that is the shop, so, why my people why? Why do you then think you are more Ndebele than others? Sometimes we do not need to compensate our failures by disrespecting successful Kings.
If King Mzilikazi were to rise today, I really much doubt he would be happy to find his name as a Lanister flag in political duels. The respectable and successful King has been paraded as a gimmick excuse of secession, with continuous allusion of how important he is to the Ndebele people and the history of this country. That is undoubtedly true, he contributed to the history of this country and so did Munhumutapa and Changamire Dombo. It’s not as if he was the first King to discover this land, he found people here, and at that time, governance was conquest, so was his legitimate settlement, but waves have changed now, we vote to appoint leaders, we do not refer to the importance of our Kings as justification to exclude ourselves from others. Political dynamics of Africa have shifted over time and we are not in the league of Monarchs, let’s not be blinded by a sense of belonging to the extent of associating the Ndebele tribe with less thought political inundations.
As we map our way towards 2018, I ask myself if people still vote along tribal lines and if there space for ethnic politics? Truth be told, African politics is still hinged on that. We cannot evade that political dominance in this continent is ethno preferential because majority of voters are still cultural conservatives. Because politics is a game of numbers, the political culture banks on where the most votes come from and the electorate also casts their votes based on cultural representation. It’s a custom that an electorate feels good if their home boy is elected, that is normal; therefore if the scholar Chiwome said the truth that Ndebeles constitute 16% of the population, then does Mthwakazi have a vote of majority?
Asibeni ngabantu!!
n Micheal Mhlanga is a research and strategic communication specialist and is currently serving Leaders for Africa Network (LAN) as the Programmes and Public Liaison Officer. He also administrates multiple youth public dialogue forums in Zimbabwe including the annual Reading Pan Africanism Symposium (REPS) and Back to Pan Africanism Conference.
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