The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
PART 5
The protracted review of Our War of Liberation, a collection of President Mugabe’s speeches, articles and interviews recorded between 1976 and 1979 has painfully coincided with the passing on of Dr Charles Utete. The late scholar from Chivhu worked closely with the late Dr Nathan Shamuyarira to put together this awe-inspiring collection of President Mugabe’s Chimurenga precepts and oracles.
As clearly illustrated in the four other instalments of this series, the pages of the book are a gallery tour into President Robert Mugabe’s revolutionary path since the time of Zimbabwe’s hard earned liberation war from the yokes of Rhodes’ brutal legacy to the lives of the children of this soil. Today this collection, compiled by the late Utete and Shamuyarira proves the immortality of the written word. The collection proves that a man’s efforts to enlighten the world does not die.
The book is proof that no polarised work of neo-coloniality will make the people of Zimbabwe forget how far they have come with their revolutionary leaders. It is the flesh that wearies when one’s soul joins the ancestors and not one’s ideas. In the same manner those who died to free this land look at their contemporaries and hold them accountable for everything they said yesterday including those who reached the current “Chimurenga River Jordan” and turned back.
However, this collection compiled by President Mugabe’s two right-hand men and contemporaries substantiates President Mugabe’s thought consistency. I am sure that Dr Shamuyarira and Dr Utete will look back at their brother in the struggle, President Mugabe and see how much he will continue to live according to the creed of Our War of Liberation. In the comfort of their new place of rest, the National Heroes Acre, they will look at Zimbabwe and continue to evoke our consciousness of being blessed inheritors of the burden of history we were given by our ancestors and heroes of the Second-Chimurenga.
Today, when Nkrumah, Lumumba, Nyerere and Kenyatta look at Africa they can smile and return to their places of rest knowing that there is one cadre from the heart of Southern Africa who now serves a collective voice of the Africa they envisioned. Today, Garvey is assured of that Africa is indeed for Africans.
When the celestial bodies of departed pan-Africanists residing in the cosmos blow through as wind into the United Nations Council auditorium and the gates of Africa Union residence in Addis Ababa they smile knowing that there still lives one vessel of decoloniality in the form of Robert Mugabe. His stubborn ideological consistency is old as the aspirations of this country’s independence as proved in the introduction of the book under review which was co-authored by Dr Charles Utete and Nathan Shamuyarira.
The prologue of the publication characterises the ideological discipline of President Mugabe as a personality facet hinged on servitude to the freedom of Africans under colonial authoritarianism. The introduction further articulates how the President was and is committed to self-sacrifice in the quest for the liberation of the people of Zimbabwe. This offers the reader some understanding of the President’s resistance to forces of change summoned to his ideological personhood by the West.
The publication under review remains significant as it explicitly substantiates President Mugabe’s resolute proposition to fight on the side of the oppressed. His unwavering interest to suffer and serve the will of the people. However, this account could have not been availed to our generation had it not be for the late father of public service Dr Charles Utete and Dr Nathan Shamuyarira.
Re-imagining ideological personhood of Robert Mugabe in the lens of Utete and Shamuyarira
The introduction of this publication by these two immediate post-independence technocrats of Zimbabwe offers a chronicle of how President Mugabe’s instalment into the leadership of Zanu-PF was a response to the outcry of the people. His ideological conviction to the voice of the people became synonymous with the absence of courageous leadership which could confront the perils of coloniality. The introduction of the book clearly indicates that President Mugabe had won support to lead Zanu-PF as early as 1963 when the party was formed.
However, due to his interest to curb eruption factional wars he let Ndabaningi Sithole to be the leader of the party. What comes out clear from the characterisation of the President in the introduction of the book is his somber degree of ambition compared to individuals like Ndabaningi Sithole and Abel Muzorewa. Msipa (2016) confirms this claim by arguing that President Mugabe was a moderate thinker and showed less interest in extravagant amassing of power during the war for Zimbabwe’s liberation. As such, he was persuaded by the immiseration of the African populace to challenge the repressive political status-quo of Rhodesia, hence quit his job in Ghana to fight the UDI. On several accounts nationalists like Sithole disassociated themselves from what was perceived as the radical reprimand of the colonial system through arms (Tora gidhi uzvitonge) and the storm of the masses. As such the President is presented as a nationalist who identified himself with the outcry of the masses in the quest for radical dismemberment of the tyranny of Rhodesia.
This is the same force behind the endorsement of the fast-track Land Reform Programme under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe as early as 1997. This is because since the time of the liberation struggle the man’s power was derived from the people. His political mandate was and is still sustained by the dictates of the people which safeguard the values of national consciousness. The power of Mugabe’s Presidency was drawn from young men and women who took up military conscriptions in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, Russia and China. President Mugabe’s source of power is derived from the gun barrels that fought the enemy and liberation theologies framed in the pungwes and military bases which were the havens for the revolutionary man-power of our struggle for the country’s liberation.
Apart from expressing using literature as a medium of curating thinkers like Utete must be celebrated for their service to this nation. Their diligence to serve was influenced by their direct contact with the repressions of coloniality and as an honour to his service to Zimbabwe it’s imperative to remind Zimbabwe of who Dr Utete was and why he must be credited for being a distinguished patriot.
Dr Charles Utete: A gallant son of the soil
On 17 July Dr Utete was declared a national hero. This followed his service as first Secretary to the Prime Minister and Cabinet before being appointed Secretary to the President and Cabinet in 1987. Utete’s appointment then was the next step after the introduction of the Executive Presidency which was born from Unity Accord between President Mugabe and the late Father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo after the 1982 to 1987 disturbances experienced by Zimbabwe.
Later Utete was appointed Chairperson of the Presidential Land Review Commission which was mandated to assess the development in the enactment of the Land Reform Programme. The programme saw over 400 000 black families being restituted to the land that was previously owned by 4 000 white farmers. Utete advocated for a framework which was transparent in promoting fair land redistribution. In his perspective, the Land Commission was meant to ensure that black empowerment in land redistribution is transparent and is not meant to be a form of self-aggrandisement, or payback for political affiliation. Utete’s role as leader of this commission shall be remembered for his emphasis on the need for mechanisms ensuring sustainable and productive occupation of A2 farms.
The Land Commission led by Utete also lobbied for an agricultural recovery programme which was aimed at incorporating sector-specific proposals; grains, pulses, horticulture, livestock — both beef and dairy to be mounted as a matter of urgency and the regularising of land acquisition, land use and management in guidance with the Land Tenure Commission Report (1994) and the National Land Policy Framework (1998). The Utete-led Land Commission also placed high priority in agrarian reform beyond the land reform exercise.
This position received backing from scholars like the late Professor Sam Moyo as the process was seemingly pro-people land reform distribution exercises. This, according to the report, required assessment of the levels of technical, financial and institutional support for the agricultural sector as a whole. It is against this background and immense contribution of the late Dr Utete that there is continued reviews of the land reform programme. As a result, President Mugabe appointed the Land Commission appointed last month. It is my hope that this commission will carry on the work of agricultural enrichment of Zimbabwe as strategically set by public service bearers like Dr Utete. May his soul rest in peace.
Richard Runyararo Mahomva is an independent academic researcher, Founder of Leaders for Africa Network — LAN. Convener of the Back to Pan-Africanism Conference and the Reading Pan-Africa Symposium (REPS) and can be contacted on [email protected]
