The Sunday News
Richard Runyararo Mahomva
Title: On the Shoulders of Struggle: Memoirs of a Political Insider
Author: Dr Obert Moses Mpofu
Publisher: LAN Readers, Bulawayo
Year: 2020
The politics of nationalist historiography in Zimbabwe
Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems (2009), building upon Ranger (2004)’s castigation of nationalist historiography submit that the state deployed “commemorative nationalism” and made it the core of Zanu-PF’s hegemony to conceal Zimbabwe’s post-2000 economic decline.
Zanu-PF has been castigated for monopolising its predominant connection to nationalist memory for political expedience. However, several historians and political academics have ignored how the post-land reform era has produced neo-liberal inclined academia. The post-land reform era resulted in hyped global market-oriented writing which was aimed at “exposing” Zimbabwe as a failed state. Those who have attempted to locate the protagonist role of the liberation movements have been labelled “regime enablers” bent on promoting what Ranger (2004: 220) classifies as “patriotic history”:
“The history instructors in the youth militia camps are war-veterans and it has been suggested that ‘patriotic history’, with its focus on violent resistance, is the result of the re-emergence of the ex-guerillas at the centre of Zimbabwean politics . . . The rhetoric of patriotic history displays ‘the same dynamic that I have shown characterised the relationship between veterans and the ruling party in the context of working out the legacies of the [1980] peace settlement: often simultaneous conflict and collaboration as party and veterans manipulate one another, using violence and intimidation and a war discourse, to advance their respective agendas.”
The reference to the National Youth Service (NYS) as a militia initiative is indicative of an affirmative stance to deconstruct efforts by Zanu-PF to create platforms for nationalist re-membering. The position further affirms the Western-instigated characterisation of Zanu-PF as a violent political institution founded on crushing dissent.
The continuous focus on the internal contradictions within the nationalist movement has been used by those opposed to Zanu-PF to castigate the ruling party’s inclination towards ideological proliferation and its mantra of national unity. The incessant problematisation of the liberation movement is somehow selectively ignorant of the points of triumphs in the liberation political parties.
This is where this publication comes in handy as the author reflects on major battles which were fought in Wankie and Sipolilo (during the liberation struggle). Here, Mpofu is reasserting the exigent task of not only exposing the successes of the nationalist movement, but he is calling the need to rationalise the Western impositions of democracy and economic policy designs.
In Ranger’s “coloniality-of-knowledge” implied perspective, the production of history must be only done by history academics. Zanu-PF apologists, including war veterans who were directly involved in the armed struggle, must not participate in the dissemination of history as Ranger (2004) criminalises them for being agents of repressing liberal (opposition-linked) narratives which tend to contest and undermine liberation chronicles. Most scholars who subscribe to Ranger’s narrow “patriotic history” argument seem to only disapprove those whose self-narrations are situated in the pro-Zanu-PF/ZANLA liberation legacy. However, Zimbabwean history is littered with auto/biographies which challenge Zanu-PF but were not written by professional historians as Ranger (2004) recommends. Surprisingly, such auto/biographies are not subjected to the “patriotic history” vilification. There is surely no doubt, this particular publication will be criticised on this basis since the author is a member of the ruling Zanu-PF.
There have also been determined efforts to effectively silence liberation theologies by the anti-establishment academia on the claims that Zanu-PF has been at the centre of producing a linear and hegemonic liberation memory since independence.
This epistemic collective has also been at the fore of disapproving all historical accounts with a link to the establishment. As a way of positing a counter-narrative to the alleged liberation memory monopoly of Zanu-PF, some historians have developed a new affinity for ZAPU/ZPRA history which in the past they abhorred in favour of ZANLA’s contribution to the armed struggle.
The same historians were equally collaborating in the creation of what they now problematise as an imposed ruling party narrative of the national memory. This is evidence of the extent to which writing the past has been manipulated in mapping the various dimensions of political contestations in Zimbabwe. However, this seminal contribution to Zimbabwe’s political debate foregoes this selective silencing of memory since the author’s past can be traced to Zimbabwe’s major liberation movements; ZPRA, ZAPU and Zanu-PF. Mpofu locates his contributions in the margins of history because a greater part of ex-combatant memoirs have been written by those who were in lines of command in the armed struggle:
“However, not much has been said by those cadres who bore the brunt of the real combat operations against the vicious enemy. I represent that group of liberation fighters whose story of involvement in the fight for independence and the consolidation of its values has not been fully chronicled. Not much has also been exhaustively recounted about the countless men, women and children who came face to face with the full wrath of Rhodesian violence directed at obliterating the continuity of the nationalist struggle.” (p. 40)
Mpofu’s self-location to other luminaries of the struggle serves as the author’s tactful way of avoiding an excessive construction of self-heroism. The profound humility of this narrative demonstrates that the struggle for independence was led by modest men and women in society. Therefore, this book calls all ranks and strata of our society to define the national narrative and not be intimidated by any circumstance to collate all memories which have a unifying outcome to our nation.
Whilst the systematic silencing of those who fought in the armed struggle on the side of the masses continues, enablers of the colonial system are praised as heroes of reinventing Zanu-PF’s monopoly to history. David Coltart (2016), a former serviceman of the repressive apparatus of the Rhodesia regime and a founding member of the opposition MDC has written a nationalist white-washing autobiography. In his book, The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe, Coltart writes extensively about the post-independence political violence particularly the events of 1982 to 1987 to depict Zanu-PF’s supposed traditional entrenchment in the culture of disrespecting human-rights.
Automatically, in the face of those disturbances, self-location ensues as Coltart projects himself as a benevolent human-rights lawyer who was defending ZAPU politicians who were being annihilated at the time. He also refers to his efforts in securing legal protection for MDC supporters who faced violence from Zanu-PF.
Coltart’s protagonist self-location in Zimbabwe’s post-independence conflicts is meant to nullify his role in the Rhodesian security system.
Through self-representation, he is transformed into a political saint with an unquestionable morality to challenge what he expediently terms “The 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe.”
This opportunistic self-representation buttresses the proverbial representation of White involvement in politics as agents of human rights and democracy. This perpetuates the old colonial narrative of projecting Christian missionaries as “saviours”. This is not to disregard the sincerity of one’s benevolence based on their skin colour, as the author also acknowledges how some missionaries were actively involved in contributing to his childhood political radicalisation:
“Father Cunwell and Father Renatto were among the key Catholic figures we relied on for supporting our fight against the colonialists. These two Catholic priests were of Spanish origin and their role gestured that emotive reality of how the fight for independence transcended race. Their support for our cause displayed the logical reality of the need for Rhodesia to fall. In the same spirit of the race-blind brotherhood to the liberation agenda, Russia became a strong ally of ZPRA.” (p 59).
On the other hand, a majority of auto/biographies about the former President of Zimbabwe Robert Gabriel Mugabe uniformly characterise Mugabe as a dictator. These were mainly produced by White writers whose clear race-centred line of thinking was meant to associate Mugabe’s economic indigenisation trajectory with post-independence racial retribution.
Such auto/biographies include Martin Meredith’s Robert Mugabe: Power, Plunder and Tyranny in Zimbabwe (2002) and Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (2002); David Blair’s Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe (2002); Stephen Chan’s Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence (2003); Andrew Norman’s Robert Mugabe and the Betrayal of Zimbabwe (2004); Geoff Hill’s What Happens After Mugabe (2005); Heidi Holland’s Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who Became a Tyrant (2008); Daniel Compagnon’s A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe (2011); David Coltart’s The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe (2016).
Richard Runyararo Mahomva 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]
