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Richard Runyararo Mahomva
It is highly motivating that the second episode of this series comes at a time history commands our variant nationalist convictions of belonging to Zimbabwe. Moreover, it is a well suiting month to reflect on the broad subject of ‘patriotism’ as we proceed with our analyses of Msipa and Coltart’s newly published memoirs. The complex subject of patriotism in Zimbabwe requires a balanced appreciation of the varying parameters of citizen dissent towards it.
As one inclined to the Afrocentric paradigm of patriotism, the month of April serves the purpose of this week’s article well. This is the month when Zimbabwe was born in 1980 after a bitter and protracted liberation war. As Thomas Mapfumo proclaims it in his other song: pemberai pemberai … nhasi tavekuzvitonga… inhaka yababa (Rejoice, rejoice… today we enjoy self-rule… in the land we inherited from our forefathers), as such it’s month of celebration.
The liberation theologies and memories of our country awash in music and literature incessantly evoke the sacredness of being a child of the soil and a reason to celebrate being Zimbabwean. Our independence month is sacred as it carries energies of nationhood conceived by efforts of those who chose to be sacrificial lambs of the liberation of Zimbabwe. It is in this month we also hail the strength of African unity which conquered colonial power.
We do not exclusively celebrate this freedom, but we also take this opportunity of national reminiscence to remember those who seized African humanity through irony rule to enhance theirs. We remember those who looted our wealth to sustain their gross capitalist aspirations and further the dominance of their ancestral interests on Africa’s people and her rich soils. It’s a month we take stock of the residues of Rhodesia in our midst.
The books under review here help us establish an amplified justification of appreciating our national paradigm of difference through the lens of patriotism. The books assist us to understand that race continuously affects the perceptions we hold about each other in Zimbabwe and in the continent at large. David Coltart’s book offers a candid reflection of the transgressions of Whiteness to Blackness in Zimbabwe and Africa’s historical experience since her contact with colonialism. Coltart’s book is important as it substantiates personally sketched narrative of colonial privilege which most Africans are afraid to confront because of fearing to be perceived as racists. If the same account came from one inclined to the Afrocentric paradigm of patriotism the same facts would be summarised as “racist”.
As I pointed last week, this particular series since its inception has been described as an absolute malign review of reconstruction of Coltart’s person. This suggests the magnitude of fear our society is accommodative of constructive critic of race issues. However, the multiple award winning writer Petina Gappah had a different view when she shared the article on her facebook timeline: “So refreshing to read incisive commentary that does not rely on hate language and belittling others to deliver a point”. She went on to state that the review advanced debate, and that made “no assumptions of mala fides, malice or bad faith”.
Therefore it is quite relieving that other our literary icons like Petina Gappah see things in the same light. Coltart’s memoir to some extent affirms the authenticity what has been long dismissed as ‘state propaganda’ to service partisan hegemony through public media. This comes after long overdue criminalisation of history propagation through state media since the launch of the regime-change agenda by Zimbabwe’s opposition and multiple civic society actors. The writing by David Coltart offers an important and honest affirmation of the wrongs of colonial interests to the African masses in Rhodesia. The book must serve as a new revelation to those who think that revisiting the ills of coloniality is racist and should transform such thinking if read critically.
As means of supplying alternative thinking, Coltart must be appraised for taking it upon himself to honestly take stock of the plight of Black Rhodesians under the tyranny of a government which favoured his race. Therefore, if Coltart can openly express the transgressions of coloniality, what is wrong when the state does the same and even proves how coloniality still obstructs Africa’s decoloniality aspirations today? Is there anything racist if those inclined to the African perspective of patriotism in Zimbabwe express their distaste about the ugly aspects of the colonial past as narrated by David Coltart? Coltart’s memoir affirms the justifications of the attempts by the ruling government’s constant revisitation of the decolonisation gospel. I also appreciate the voluminous blurbs that endorsed the book, especially the one by Petina Gappah and Professor Alex Magaisa.
Gappah and Magaisa are significant thought-leaders with views largely perceived as anti-establishment; therefore one can narrowly dismiss their endorsement of the book as leftist, but their input is another affirmation of the anti-colonial gospel equally propagated by establishment discourses. Their contribution as Black Zimbabweans to this publication which largely evokes horrid memories of colonialism in its first ten chapters emphasises the need for all of us to take part in building memories of our past regardless of its wrongs and right. Their contribution further solicits the need for all Zimbabweans to help each other to construct and appreciate conditions of the nation’s split patriotic consciousness. This is a mandatory progressive attitude towards ‘difference’ and appreciating its existence.
This way it is easy to frame realist approaches of tackling the effects of ‘difference’ on our aspirations to belong as post-colonial Zimbabweans. This way we will be able to understand the dynamics of Afrocentric power consolidation interests. On the other hand demystify the existence of mindsets borrowed from the colonial past to negating aspirations of the present tasks of building Zimbabwe. Understanding the continued efforts to restore colonial interests and the indefatigable African redemptive spirit will also help in respectively comprehending Msipa and Coltart’s memoirs.
The roles played by the Coltart and Msipa and their ideological propensities as accounted in their books also highlights how their contemporaries and associates in today’s power struggles have produced the country’s split patriotic consciousness in Zimbabwe. It is from this background that Msipa will be continuously well-regarded as a ‘MaDzimbahwe’ pinnacle of Black nationalism and the positive aspects it represents today. One the other hand, this is what will justify the dismissal of David Coltart and others who helped to enhance white privilege and are still in pursuit of that until this day. This follows Coltart’s membership to the general colonial police force which repressed guerilla warfare. Later conscripted into its Central Intelligence Department (CID) which also launched advanced attacks on African nationalism.
On the opposite extreme, Msipa’s adulthood was disfigured by burdens of seeking self-actualisation which was repressed by the racist status-quo of the time. Msipa’s migration to the urban areas did less to redeem him from the separationist evils of his rural life. From Kwekwe’s Imbizo township to Highfields and Mufakose, Msipa was exposed to the colonial injustices that subjugated Africans to suffering and ontological dismemberment. His experience in the townships inducted him to intense nationalism as a unionist for African teachers. His interest in Africans’ freedom made him a target for Rhodesian repression. In no time he was enlisted among those who were detained at Gonakudzingwa for challenging the colonial system. Prior to the detention, it had taken a bitter struggle for him to rise through the ranks to become a headmaster in accordance to his wishes as an ordinary teacher in colonial Rhodesia.
However, race served the best for Coltart as he was able to enroll at the University of Cape-Town. The same university that experienced a decolonial overhaul through the “Rhodes Must-Fall” Campaign. This is why when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 the two continued to work in the service of their historical experience. Later on, when the time came for them to choose sides, Msipa remained attached to the African paradigm of patriotism through the ruling party and Coltart found it easy to be part of the liberal regime change project through the opposition. As such, this is the aspect of ‘difference’ which explains why most Zimbabweans find themselves in a space conflicting patriotic consciousness provided by the country’s domestic space. However, what unites us besides the historical paradigm of ‘difference’ is that “Zimbabwe will never be a colony again!” as proclaimed by President Robert Mugabe (2001).
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]
Bongani Ndlovu