Chitepo’s push for African identity

HERBERT Chitepo’s speech at the National Press Club in Australia on July 17, 1973, especially when it came to the land question, was particularly consequential.

Charles Mavhunga

Land was central to all the revolutions that took place in Africa, and Zimbabwe holds the rare distinction of delivering this resource to the people through the successful land reform programme.

During colonisation, laws such as the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which reserved fertile land for whites and resettled blacks on poor soils, destroyed the African identity.

According to the December 3, 1971 issue of The Rhodesia Herald, chiefs such as Mzimuni, Chirau, Mafala, Sogwala, Ndiweni and Seke voiced their concern.

So, Chitepo’s speech helped the world understand the main grievance behind the armed struggle.

He managed to tell the world that the whites did not consider blacks as human beings, but a resource to be exploited.

Essentially, Africans were not people worth identifying through branding, but mere objects of pity and tools for personal use by white settlers.

“If there is any other group of people in a country who are affected, injured and hurt more than any other group on the land issue, it is the black peasant farmer,” said Chitepo in the famous speech.

The identity of Africans was reduced to that of slaves. The question of why the African continent remains behind in terms of global identity can be traced back to the land.

Land is a resource that can be identified through a particular group of people and through a particular geographical space.

Chitepo’s articulation of the land question in Zimbabwe made him a famous revolutionary icon in African history. He has since been immortalised both at the National Heroes Acre and the Museum of African Liberation.

In the tourism industry, heroes are revered through their artefacts that are housed by museums to establish an intimate and interactive relationship with the public.

The Museum of African Liberation has a collection of Chitepo’s artefacts — a shirt and a tie — to assist Zimbabweans and the global world at large to have an objective understanding of the need to defend the country’s African identity through land reform.

The success of the land reform programme was, therefore, momentous for Zimbabwe.

Charles Mavhunga co-authored textbooks in business enterprising skills and is currently studying for a PhD in Management at Bindura University of Science Education. He can be contacted at: [email protected]/ Cell:0772989816