The Sunday News
To be frank I am just lazy to write. I am really trying too hard to get this mind on the grind and it’s trying to go the tajamuka way.
I won’t permit it to take that ugly surrogate route. I must write.
The deadline must be met. As for you dear reader, you can’t afford to have a decoloniality-empty Sunday as we have been religiously unthinking the colonial givenness of knowledge and power together. Honestly, what Sunday would it be without a rethink of literature?
Nonetheless, I wish I could carry on last week’s confrontation with Zimbabwe’s anti-establishment merriment of easy victories and veneration of half-baked neo-colonial “intellectual” objectification of Zimbabwe’s political-economy largely by unashamed and unpatriotic Rhodesian zealotry.
Consumed by their “Rhodesian Will Never Die” hallucinogenic effect of the past they continue to demonise our peace and stability to find relevance in strife which has failed to suffice since the day they created their archangel of death called regime-change. This has popularised the perversion of the Zimbabwean experience in a quest to promote an anti-establishment conceptualisation of the nation’s science, technology, politics and commerce processes.
As we continue with the review of Prof Muchaparara Musemwa’s book Water, History, and Politics in Zimbabwe: Bulawayo’s Struggles with the Environment, 1894-2008; it remains critical to grapple with our colonial misreading of issues as fashioned by the neo-colonial narrative.
This misapprehension of the Zimbabwean crisis is reflective of the tragedy faced by the post-independence generation — traditionally entangled in myths of the past framed by the “elders”. The same elders who are proud of being in contact with both worlds — Rhodesia (a hoax sketched Eldorado bed of roses) and Zimbabwe (and this — a harvest of thorns). As such, today’s youth and Zimbabwe’s future leader is snared in the misleading misinterpretation of the present state of affairs borrowed from the old ignorance of our fathers lost in the double — consciousness of our becoming as a people.
The young Zimbabwean is socialised into believing that the challenges faced by his city and his country owe to ethnic disadvantage and grows up to be a tribal confined thinker.
The previous weeks of dialogue on the water debate and mainly the roots of water shedding better explain much of the premises of regional politicking and how we nurture inexistent ethnic feuds as we are falsely subjected to thinking that policy pitfalls are a reflection of ethnic political punishments.
In Chapter Four of Prof Musemwa’s book this is called “disciplining a dissident city”. Disappointing to the core, is the reality of the neo-colonial manipulation of ethnicity all over Africa to keep wars alive to finance the West weapon industries. One may think that this position is not connected to the water discussion, however, it is important to note that:
“Zimbabwe’s political crisis has engendered a series of inter-connected crises. Of all these crises,water shortages have produced, perhaps, the most contentious aspect of the urban crisis, pitting the city and the state in a constant struggle over water control.
For two decades, the post colonial state focused heavily on rural water development at the expense of urban areas.” (Musemwa 2008:2).
That same incurable colonial hangover is drowsing the reason of my father’s contemporaries; most of whom selectively recollect colonial public service as par-excellent to the extent of out-marching the gains of the liberation struggle — which they consciously and unconsciously fought for.
However, it is their present discernment function which presents us with a clear side of history each one of them belong to.
This is clear to see from leading proponents of today’s political discourses from the nationalist, devolutionists, socialists, pan-Africanists right up to the so-called liberalists. Likewise, in the victory ahead of the current Chimurenga, future generations shall know the side of the past each “born-free” including those who mischievously conspire with the opponents of Afrocentricty; at the same time slumbering all through the past and current revolutions.
As the poet Mzwakhe Mbuli declares it: “Bazozisola”; They shall regret! A Christian carol unvaryingly posits a question to the guilty-conscience of such men and women: Muchazvovepi kana tsuri yorira? (Where will you be at the call of your name on judgement day?)
Voices of national re-membering
In fact, many of those belonging to the old generation directly linked with the epoch of the second armed struggle do not consider themselves war veterans and yet they ironically fought Rhodesia through the ballot.
Engrossed in today’s unsubstantiated debates on electoral fraud they always have this to say: “we fought for one man — one vote”.
This claim is usually popular among the urban soft-power guerillas of that time. Their equivalents raised in the rural areas would gallantly chronicle how they secretly tagged along the guerillas to fight the enemy right up to his kneeling point.
For them it was more than the common soft-power ballot confrontation with colonialism. It was a hard self-sacrificial fight to the end in the rural jungles of this country. These were the then young boys and girls who kept the morale of the pungwes ablaze constantly mind-jogging the “magandanga” to carry on the legacy of Nehanda and Chaminuka.
Pardon me for sounding too pro-establishment least I am criminalised for my pride in Zimbabwe nationalist legacy by my fellow anti-Chimurenga memory prefects. They usually link pride to the sacred memory of our coming into being as a nation with partisan appropriation of the liberation struggle.
Untrue as it is; the same comrades are always up in arms with every aorta of truth as long it seems to authenticate the path which the anti-colonial revolutionary movement has traversed.
Before fully tackling the subject of the day; I had to bring this up because I am cognisant of the fact that the 31st of January this year will mark the first anniversary of this column. It’s so delightful to be reflecting on a path of consistency, loyalty and adamant support to Africa’s revolutionary cause.
Indeed, it has been a painful path of losing friends to this cause, being criticised for being an Isaiah of the regime as if the anti-establishment has no mouth-pieces. Certainly this year-old journey has been a Mount-Horeb mammoth task of proving the sacredness of our national memory to the plentiful prophets of Baal.
Through this sword of reason, the main itinerary of this weekly read has been to complement the voice of the revolution: “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again”. Those immersed in the decolonial gospel clearly know that, “tiriparwendo”. (We are on a journey). There is no other way; “Handei tione” (let us move forth and see what is ahead). As is the command of Bulawayo City Council — motto — aphorism — dictum if not a precept: “Masiye-phambili”.
Certainly, there is no stopping, the idea is to continue discharging the realism of decolonial pan-Africanism and of course grabbing by the horn every form of epistemic falsehood constructed to denigrate our hard-earned liberation from Rhodesianism as lyrically coded in the Mbira psalmody pedagogies of Nharira:
Nyika yedu yakauya neChimurenga.
Chokwadi mwanawevhu anga azvipira.
Kusunungura hutongi hwekudzvinyirirwa
Pakatanga yemapfumo kuchizouya
magidi.
(Our country came because of the Chimurenga.
Surely the child of the soil had committed
himself to break the chains of tyrannical rule.
It began with a war fought spears followed by that of guns)
Takangodaro, takazvarwa takangodaro
As such, the idea is to remain relevant to the future of Zimbabwe in the making and not wasting time and resources attempting to resurrect the dry bones of Rhodesia. As given to those with eyes not to just hear, but to also understand.
The quoted Mbira DzeNharira song entails how Zimbabwe is a product of a sacred revolutionary software — the Chimurenga/Umvukela. As such, Chimurenga/Umvukela patriotism is a significant aspect of the country’s political culture.
This follows Zimbabwe’s sons and daughters’ indelible bearing of the many liberation crosses through the barrel of the gun; torcher; dehumanisation and finally the peace settlement. Even at a time they did not have advanced weapons compared to the white settlers; they resorted to spears in order to achieve decolonisation. The coming in of the guns with the nationalist movements of the 60s is an expression of patriotic endurance to dismantle the force of the enemy.
This long-lasting hatred to imperialism transcended the passing of time as each epoch of the struggle produced its new breed of revolutionaries as sang by that “out of the world” mbira orchestra of Nharira:
Hona torangarira magamba, Ambuya Nehanda, Chaminuka, Sekuru Kaguvi.
Mhondoro huru dzenyika ino dzakatidzigira kuti tikunde paChimurenga.
Hona ndorangarira vaParirenyatwa. Rekai Tangwena tinomuremekedza.
[See we remember the magnanimous life-givers to the struggle
— Mbuya Nehanda, Chaminuka and Kaguvi the great grandfather of our liberation struggle. The great intercessors in the hierarchy of national spirituality whose supplications gave us the Chimurenga triumph. Lest I forget Dr Parirenyatwa; I also honour Rekai Tangwena]
Having mentioned these greats, one cannot deny that there were some absorbed by the enemy to slash, slip and rip the fibre of anti-imperialism.
Therefore, as the struggle is continuing and not stopping it is imperative for one to remain guided by the values of the winning side to remain relevant. Just this week, Bikita reaffirmed that reality.
Masiye-phambili
In the fourth chapter of the book under review Muchemwa (2014) mainly argues that the Bulawayo water crisis was meant to discipline a dissident city. he proof to his claim is that Bulawayo’s water crisis has remained ethnic charged simple because the city was pro-Zapu after independence.
As a result, the ruling established its power through sabotaging the water projects and since 1983 Bulawayo has failed to cater for its growing post-independence population’s water demands.
However, this perspective falls short of similar administrative realities encountered in other parts of the country. As it is, Harare has lived to endure several cholera attacks not to mention the recent typhoid outbreak.
Then one wonders why the issue of water and sanitation supply crisis is linked to ethnicity in relation to Bulawayo and yet Harare the misrepresented capital of Shona hegemony has similar if not worst water and sanitation challenges.
While Makhokhoba the oldest high density suburb of Bulawayo is a case of reference in Musemwa’s study; Harare testifies of a worse condition in the leafy low density, Highlands’ suburb. I wish I could go on and on, but today I have to stop here.
However, what is critical is that we need to be cautious of the history we read so that we are found on the right side of the history we are making today as it will be inevitably read by others.
Let us be living templates of Africa’s liberated history.
Mayibuye!
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].
