The Sunday News
Richard Mahomva and Micheal Mhlanga
Ummmh vaMugabe vakanganisa?
If our history is to be retold, let it be done by us the custodians of what made us to be in the journey of decolonial “becoming”.
We are drained of listening to monolithic narratives that seasonally decide to frame any story of ours, however, diagonal it deems. Our story is that of a ladybird which does not describe its beauty and purpose, but waits for the frog to gulp it so that we remember that there was once a pretty poker dotted insect. Ours is no different from tapestries of mythology depicting political enfranchisement to villains whom we glorify when they narrate lies to us. Many of our unsung heroes lie in haste in those unknown graves, waiting for what is said to be our prayers to redeem them from purgatory. If it exists, then our best servitude prayers are of narrating our own stories through celebrating those who were with them in the struggles, missed bullets, ground relentlessly in prisons whose lexicon celebrates success of exiling — Gonakudzingwa.
It is the computation of those who challenged oppressive systems past independence whom we should celebrate. They contested global hegemonies that sought to maintain racial supremacy and detain Africa as a dependant backyard of European capitalism. They are the victors who repudiated to be pallets of Britain’s neo-imperial despots. They ignored preposterous utterances of compensating a man who had stolen our land, the land bought for a shilling, a reward for a voluntary manslaughter of our kith and kin, surely the propensity of the absurd finds valour in such meandering stupidity which warrants a froth of undulated dismissal.
It is such champions whom President Mugabe represents when we celebrate his birthday; a day that has been immortalised, mummified and engraved into the barracks of history, the 21st February Movement is immortal and never shall it be truncated into the cauldrons of forgotten memoirs-it’s here to stay. In that same spirit of acknowledging the power of perpetuity associated with this day; we proceed with last week’s discussion. At the same time, we find it relevant to explain to our compatriots and Africa in general why it is of paramount importance if not pivotal for us to cherish the birth of our President, His Excellency, the excellent, President Robert Mugabe. This is because this day serves a crucial parable to those eyeing the zenith of decoloniality. Particularly, the intellectually mature who have confidence in defying the traditional order of the West’s interest to continuously undermine the sovereignty of the so-called “third-world”.
Enter Trump the thumb
Somehow we are not perturbed by the sudden interaction of the racist Trump with Africa’s two countries, South Africa and Nigeria and not Zimbabwe. President Mugabe does not need Donald Trump’s call to confirm his leadership excellence, nor does he need a racial supremacy to mail him a greeting. Ironically, President Mugabe represents that which defies racism, cultural dominance and global hegemony canvassed in euphemistic diplomatic propriety, his birthday is a reminder of the birth of an unsullied movement that demolished all structures that legitimated black minorism relegating land owners to peasants. It’s a memorial not of his advent into earth but the pinnacle of relinquishing narratives that preserved a wrong story about Zimbabweans.
A new political school of thought was born on that 21st day of February 1924, not for the Mugabe family alone, but for everyone who chooses to be identified as Zimbabwean. Let us momentarily embrace the lottery of birth as advantageous this time, being Zimbabwean is the most marvellous thing anyone can truly cuddle at this time. If determinism is factual, then we owe our all to the person of President Mugabe,even if we can academically disagree that all patterns of our lives are pre-determined and we don’t make choices about our lives, then still, the choices that President Mugabe made which bore a movement are an aromatic heap of intelligent thoughts that maketh you and me today.
Arguably, there are lesser chances that we would be what we are today if historical patterns of events slightly shifted. There is more belief that we would have delayed independence if the “Mugabe Factor” continuously missed in the liberation equation.
This is called to our attention after intensive interactions with Maurice Nyagumbo, Cephas Msipa, Joshua Nkomo, Simon Muzenda’s memoirs which parable the menacing inertness in action executions, abrupt disintegrations of associations, distrusts among themselves and a repetition of the same mishaps until the “Mugabe Factor” was ushered in.
The Mugabe Factor
What is this phenomenon and what does it represent in the global scheme of liberation in continuum? This is the factor that is represented through celebratory political moves by the man himself as an intelligent, smart, upright and always right (Msipa, 2016) citizen, who saw an opportunity of helping Zimbabweans attain their long waited freedom through a crippled resistance grouping that was far from its objectives. The factor is suggestive of eloquence and articulation on political ideology and strategy through the dispensing of Marxism as a grounding spiritual novena for all who believed in a free Zimbabwe.
President Mugabe, realised a niche in political leadership and grabbed it. His desire was to fulfil his ambition like any other young person-making history and fend for his family. His emergence in the story of becoming Zimbabwe should be a reminder to any aspiring youth leader on opportunity identification, harnessing and acting to achieve a collective goal.
His entrance into Zimbabwean politics gave birth to a series of the much needed centuries’ worth reparations to molestations our people had been subjected to. When we think of President Mugabe, we think of the seven young men who ignited the five hour battle in Chinhoyi which led to numerous battle fronts attacks to which the Rhodesian army reminisces of casualties which it decisively arrogates as “unfair and inhumane” on its equally oppressive wives and highly potential racist children, we then ask the question; why should we draw boundaries of semantics when military reciprocities are executed? Didn’t they butcher our own in 1896-7? Didn’t they maim our own unarmed in Chimoio and Nyadzonia? Everyday our people were denied access to resources, streets, schools, land and everything that defines a human being; that is the worst form of mental rape any human being can contain in their lifetime; there are more chances of not drowning in the Indian Ocean than recovering from such human exploitation.
The “Mugabe Factor” reversed all that; it challenged the entire system through its subtle political strategy. When Rhodies thought less of him, he unleashed Robert Greene’s 3rd law of power “Conceal your intentions”. He was too smart to be too vocal and very precise in calculating his political moves, there is nothing wrong in that, there is everything to celebrate in such craftiness, in any case, politics is a vocation and competitive, one should be calculative. The truth about what the President has taught on politics is that “it’s either you dominate or get dominated” — that is realism there, a lesson on what the movement harbours; it is a fountain of political knowledge — the Mugabe Factor.
Mugabeism: The theoretical flip side
As we march towards the 21st February Movement Celebrations, it is imperative that we invite some theoretical paradigm to it. Mugabeism is an ideology that is not grounded in highly celebrated conveyance of political power misnamed as transformation or independence across the continent. The outbreak of the third-Chimurenga under the wise decolonial counsel of President Mugabe, has been punctuated by a steadfast political will to shift the means of production. Of course, none can doubt that the Mugabe era deserves elegant appraisal for liberating the farmlands, minerals, and corporations from the historically belligerent wealth looting white minority. Now the average Zimbabwean understands the practical meaning of independence within the context of a pro-people political economy system.
As argued in the piece we wrote and was published in the Chronicle on the 9th of February, 2017; now Mugabeism is a pan-African revolutionary philosophy, the final decolonial attack on colonialism on the continent. With no doubt, Mugabeism now poses as an antithesis of neo-imperialism. The imperialists will not let this idea thrive. This is because Mugabeism now serves as a consortium of nativist discourses (from pan-Africanism to decoloniality of knowledge and power) seeking overall liberation of the African masses. For that reason, it has become inevitable that Mugabeism has become a third-world template of rethinking the relationship of the centre and periphery. It is now a modern medium of plainly articulating Fanon’s teaching of liberating violence to make disorder of the colonially set state of order. For those of us born after 1980, Mugabeism is a thought-alternative representing a radical policy makeover as far as breaking the umbilical cord of the colony and the mother-colony is concerned.
Mugabeism: land, the person and the soil
Moreover, the responsiveness of Mugabeism to the land question is a mark of post-colonial relevance of the person and the legacy of President Mugabe. Of course in some perspectives opposed to the idea of Mugabeism, Zimbabwe has been described as a country plunged into a political crisis largely polarising Zimbabwe as a state-run under dictatorial and corrupt terms.
