The Sunday News
Richard Mahomva
The historical turn to Bulawayo specifically for this year’s Uhuru celebrations transcends narrow political posturing. In the words of Msindo (2007:267):
“Bulawayo provides an important case study for historians of urban ethnicity and nationalism in Zimbabwe. Apart from being one of the first colonial cities, Bulawayo emerged as a rich mosaic of different ethnic groups (Shona and their subgroups, Ndebele, Kalanga, Venda, Sotho and others); its inhabitants also came from different countries including Northern Rhodesia, Congo and Nyasaland and from varied social and cultural backgrounds. Because of its multi-ethnic composition, combined with identities such as trade unions, burial societies and sporting clubs, the city’s history illuminates the way in which one of these prominent identities, ethnicity, related with another rising identity of the mid-1950s, nationalism.”
Msindo’s view affirms geography’s role in parenting history — which is made by a people in their interaction with circumstance. To this end, the City of Kings and Queens groomed nationalists. Bulawayo as a hub of anti-colonial national consciousness can be traced to the contribution of the working class at the time. Bulawayo as a mosaic of various ethnicities played a crucial role in building a collective national consciousness. Symbolically and historically, Bulawayo is not only a space of political memory as it was the nerve centre of nationalist political mobilisation. The labour movements and ethnic groups resident in Bulawayo at the peak of regime repression certainly became a collective indigenous anti-colonial protestant movement. Therefore, the mosaic of ethnicities and labour movements found in Bulawayo at the time co-existed as mobilisation units of African nationalism. Without doubt, Bulawayo is the home of modern Zimbabwean nationalism. Modern-day Zimbabwe’s pioneering decolonisation institution was the Rhodesian Railways which was headquartered in Bulawayo. As a result, Bulawayo as a citadel of industry and capital also housed:
“ . . . numerous, small but viable, gold mines that attracted labourers from beyond Southern Rhodesia. Bulawayo was also a temporary stopover for Central African labourers trekking to the better-paid industries in South Africa, though some of them never reached their intended destinations and settled permanently in Bulawayo. Because of its industrial infrastructure, it attracted and raised a generation of young men from different ethnic groups, some of whom, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, became prominent intellectuals in tertiary and government institutions, important trade unionists and leaders of active political associations, recreational organisations and pressure groups. Among them were key figures in the first significant African nationalist political party, the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (ANC), which emerged in 1957” (Msindo 2007:267)
The return to Bulawayo (the space) is a return to the soul of African nationalist resistance. Bulawayo as the cradle of the nationalist project also has a biographic trace. The pioneering work to this effect was produced by Prof Ngwabi Bhebe (1989) in a phenomenal social history of Bulawayo centring on the life of the Late Veteran Nationalist Benjamin Burumbo. In the book, Benjamin Burombo: African Politics In Zimbabwe: 1947-1948 the publication centres on Burombo’s role in initiating a citizen movement conscious which saw an increase in the organisation of strikes and the later maturation of the same sabotage culture whose metamorphosis was the birth of Zapu. With the magnitude of the nationalist cause whose roots were in Bulawayo, nationalists like James Chikerema, George Nyandoro, Henry Hamadziripi, Paul Mushonga, Edison Sithole taking a leaf from the Bulawayo born mutiny activity. This resulted in countrywide insurrections. In Butterfly Burning Yvonne Vera (1998) locates the story of African resistance in a Bulawayo township setting in the 1940s. Then racism was acute, African political consciousness was far above the weight of repression. The account by Vera (1998) goes deeper to locate the spirit of African resistance to the roots of colonialism as far as 1896 by the British born super-colonist Cecil John Rhodes. After imperial conquest, the ruins of the pre-colonial Ndebele capital, Bulawayo, which had been annihilated with ruthlessness. The South African Company became the law. In her story, Vera (1998) casts images of 17 bodies of indigenous men, executed for challenging the colonial invasion. The 17 men were left hanging from the branches of a tree on the edge of the ruined city. The book’s two protagonists Fumbuta and Phephelaphi are symbols of anti-colonial defiance. Their depiction as resistant elements to imperialism questions the conscience of White oppression. It is this resistant gesturing of the two main characterisers which articulates the nationalist resistance. From this fictive account two real life stories which capture the colonial entanglements of the Africans emerge from Bulawayo as a setting of heroic character moulding. The first biographic account articulating this position is one by Retired Col Tshinga Dube published last year. In the book he traces his military leaning to his great grandfather:
“The historical narrations about his contribution to the resistance of the Ndebele are backed up by some photographic evidence that has been well preserved in a variety of public archival institutions in Zimbabwe. There was a picture at the Bulawayo City Hall depicting chained African captives following their last encounter with the settlers in 1896. Earlier on, in 1893 Lobengula’s military had fought against the Pioneer column in such places as Pupu, Whitesrun, Esigodini, and Shangani. Matshotsho was a combatant in those battles” (Dube, 2019: 34).
Guided by the above geneology trace of Cde Tshinga Dube’s militancy, it is justified to submit that his participation in the armed struggle was in pursuit of an inter-generational mandate to displace colonialism. In all this, Bulawayo remains at the centre. Cde Tshinga Dube’s life story; particularly in the formative years of his political consciousness is situated in Bulawayo. His teenage period in Bulawayo as accounted for in his biography is linked to the repressive conditions historicised by Bhebe (1989) and Vera (1998). In his Bulawayo Burning: The Social-History of a Southern-African City, 1893-1960, Ranger (2010) validates the crisis of racism and how it catalysed the fermentation of African nationalism. To this end, Cde Tshinga Dube (2019) argues that there was massive unemployment at the time he was growing up in Bulawayo. Based on his recollection, Cde Dube states that those who were employed serviced the uneven exploitative statuses of colonial capital: “In general most people tended to go for such professions as teaching and nursing. There was not much to aspire for partly because of the fact that a given class of occupations like doctors, geologists and engineers were reserved for whites” (Pg27).
Further to that, Cde Dube argues that the society was stratified on the basis of one’s adherence to colonially prescribed decorum. Those who merged themselves into identities of the colonial heritage were well-regarded in society. However, to young Tshinga this was all wrong and his constant interrogation of this social (dis)order became the inspiration to his radical revulsion towards white history and its prescriptive terms to social norming.
Tendi (2020: 19) takes the debate further by highlighting the contribution of the culture of nationalist conscious to the late Cde Solomon Mujuru’s political career:
“In late 1963 the 18-year-old Solomon began drifting again. Bulawayo, located in Matabeleland province in the south-west of Rhodesia, was his next fleeting post. Bulawayo was the second-largest city after the capital Salisbury. It was traditionally the home of the Ndebele ethnic group but by 1963 it was increasingly mixed ethnically because of rapid urbanisation.”
As indicated by Msindo (2007), Bulawayo provided employment opportunities which conceived trade unionism whose later outgrowth was a nationalist consciousness:
“Bulawayo’s robust manufacturing sector was a pull factor for black job seekers from across Rhodesia and beyond national borders. Joel was attracted by employment opportunities in Bulawayo, like so many young men at the time. He now lived in Bulawayo’s Magwegwe township, which was reserved for Africans. According to Joel, “Solomon came there to live with me for a short time while he looked for work. He got a job as a salesman at Dunlop (a tyre manufacturing company) and lived in Mzilikazi”, another African township in Bulawayo. (Tendi 2020: 19).
There is no doubt that Bulawayo is the birthplace of modern nationalist consciousness. The uncontested academic evidence to this effect substantiates why the celebration of Independence Day this year should and will be in Bulawayo. It was in Bulawayo, where Father Zimbabwe (Joshua Nkomo)’s political mission began. Likewise, Cde Tshinga Dube and the Late General Mujuru are both products of the City of Kings and Queens’ political culture. Besides, these few luminaries, Bulawayo raised a number of war-veterans, war collaborators and political detainees.
– 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]
