The Sunday News
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena
The World Wide Web and rapid technologisation has turned our world into what has been described as an “information society.” In spite of the abundance of information in hard and soft copy there is no sign that human beings are becoming more knowledgeable or any wiser for it. A lot of noise is being made and quantities of ink are being spilt in intellectual and journalistic platforms, in the knowledge economy, but very little substance is in the offing.
The scarcity of informed, informative and rigorous knowledge producers in our era has made such enriching individuals as educationist, poet, playwright and historian, Pathisa Nyathi a subject for intellectual reflection. As the collection and processing of information becomes easier through “magical” search engines, intellectual rigor and robust thinking that leads to canonical ideas seem to be dying. Most of what are called scholars and intellectuals today are sly and slippery power point types who flash a few catchy phrases and soundbites from Google quotable quotes and then disappear. Academic and intellectual research has been reduced to lousy phrase mongering and lazy dissemination of fragile thoughts that are enough for one to pass an examination, get published in a “so what” journal and be promoted to a professor without producing any insights that can change the world or enrich humanity.
Through his public intellection in newspaper columns, a series of history books, biographies, plays and poems, added to his long teaching career, Pathisa Nyathi has produced an archive of knowledge on history and culture. The question that should occupy young scholars, academics and journalists is what kind of upbringing, socialisation, and training and or even inspiration produces the kind of artisanal organic and native intellectual that Pathisa Nyathi has become. Pathisa Nyathi was born on 10 July 1951 at the village of Sankonjana in the Kezi area of Matabeleland South; he has a strong and deep rural and village background.
The Education of an Organic and Native intellectual
The Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci described organic intellectuals as those thinkers who attained modern education that the middle class has access to but remained in touch with the realities of peasants and poor workers. Frantz Fanon described the same kind of intellectuals and thinkers as “native intellectuals” who used the erudition of modern education to understand the experience and condition of their people and to fight for liberation from colonialism. Fanon further described the native intellectuals as “cultured men” and “men of culture” who make their appearance to oppose and resist cultural imperialism and coloniality. Native and organic intellectuals are immersed among the ordinary people of their time while at the same time they dig deep into libraries and archives of the world, mixing the folk wisdom of their people with modern knowledge to fashion fresh insights about the world and life. The dexterity with which Pathisa Nyathi handles the combination of oral traditions and modern art and philosophy has often separated the man in him from the boys around the academy in Zimbabwe.
The organic and native intellectuals, such as Pathisa Nyathi, are different from that tribe of thinkers that the Nigerian scholar Peter Ekeh famously called “members of the second public.” Members of the second public are those Africans who after getting a little colonial education turned themselves into black whites and could not hide their contempt for the culture and traditions of their forefathers. In South Africa they are called “coconuts” while in the Zimbabwe of the nineties they were called the “nose brigade,” but they have one thing in common, they are people who have lost their cultural roots and have sold their entire lives into a modernity that also rejects them and they are therefore rootless subjects. Rootedness and groundedness in one’s culture and traditions combined with a clear understanding of how the world works makes one an educated person.
From 1958 to 1962 Pathisa Nyathi did his primary education in rural Kezi. At the time colonial “civilising mission” education was in full swing. Part of his secondary education was done in Mazowe High School from 1967 to 1970.
Most among us who know Pathisa Nyathi and have encountered his work understand him simply as a historian and or a cultural sage, but the man is also a competent biologist and geographer who excelled in the sciences at A-level and college levels. In 1973 he trained at the Gweru Teachers College as a science teacher. Geography and Development Administration became the initial areas of study when he enrolled into the University of South Africa in 1978. In 1982 Pathisa Nyathi graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Unisa. Over the years, Nyathi has applied his mind to teaching, writing books, newspaper columns, poetry and plays. He has also delivered public lectures and addressed cultural workshops. Simply looking at Pathisa Nyathi’s academic journey does not explain how exactly he got to be the sage or the moving library and a compelling public intellectual. Together with Paul Damasane and Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu, Pathisa Nyathi is that old man who would be stopped by strangers in the streets and interviewed on Ndebele language, history, culture and traditions. The position of a resourceful public intellectual, an intellectual celebrity, also comes with its prices such as being one of the few elders that toddlers call by name and surname in the streets.
On the Sciences and Arts of knowing
Good thinkers, excellent teachers and prolific writers such as Pathisa Nyathi are not born but they are made. Intellectual rigor is a science and an art that is taught and learnt. In the Necomachean Ethics, Aristotle explains that research as the habit of gathering and processing information into knowledge is a science. Writing and teaching as the technologies of expressing knowledge, Aristotle notes, are an art.
In teaching comprehension and composition, basic Zimbabwean education seeks to cultivate at an early age amongst the students the sciences and the arts of knowledge production and dissemination. At the end of the day, there is no enigma to Pathisa Nyathi or the like. He is just one of those organic and native intellectuals who have taken reading and writing seriously. And not only that, most of those that have known Pathisa Nyathi would know that he does not only talk forcefully but the man listens to other speakers usually with that frown of concentration on his forehead.
The ability to collect scattered ideas from books and from oral conversations and compose them into logical lectures and publications makes a good academic. The ability to go further and flavour the ideas and the knowledge with culture, tradition and one’s heritage makes an organic and native intellectual whose ideas are not only consumed but are celebrated and treasured. In these days of the internet and the easy researches that come with it the dignity and pride of intellectual labour has been compromised. Devouring a book from cover to cover, moving up and down in a room or outside talking alone and reflecting on the text has been relegated to the boring stuff of nerds. The space for discussing books and debating ideas in their depth and width has been taken over by passionate investment on the fortunes and misfortunes of European soccer teams among today’s secondary school students.
Those in Zimbabwe and Africa at large who have taken seriously the decolonisation and transformation of the education system should look carefully at the mud and bricks, the art and craft that went into the building of such formidable authors as Pathisa Nyathi. The primary, secondary and tertiary institutions of learning should come up with methods and strategies of teaching that produce scholars who ask strong questions and provide strong answers for the challenges of the present world. Schools and colleges should seek and find the likes of Pathisa Nyathi and encourage them to mentor students and teachers in the arts and sciences of knowing and getting others to know.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena is a Zimbabwean academic based in South Africa. [email protected]
