Do Zimbabweans exist?

Analysis, Michael Mhlanga

Highlanders won against Dynamos after 10 years, the Bosso celebration in Bulawayo was as if the team had won the league, yet in elemental sense, to some, it was an ethnic conquest of a group represented by DeMbare.
The whole idea of soccer as entertainment and business was eliminated as historical allusions; even of Mzilikazi’s conquest were chronicled up to the Sunday derby. Bosso’s victory celebration was not of the players’ excellence but how the Ndebele have re-conquered the Shona — a cycle of soft violence.

When the frenzy of soccer becomes this deeply tribal, you would swear that Ralph Matema who has scored a lot of Bosso goals including the derby winner is “Ndebele”. It is the colonial construction of identities that has limited Zimbabwe’s explicit definition of belonging and being. When we dirge identity crisis proffered by race superiority, sexual orientation, colourism and cultural assimilation, we always forget the new hierarchy, the worst enemy of all, ethnic contest disguised as cultural conservatism.

Sabelo Gatsheni Ndlovu once asked: “Do Zimbabweans exist?” the answer is grim to come by today in a society that tribalises even the trivial of all façades “soccer”. Until contact with Dr Lyton Ncube’s works I did not realise how much ethnicity has a bearing on decisions of supporting soccer teams until I read through his works. The appropriation of Highlanders and Dynamos being Ndebele and Shona teams has transcended to levels of political belonging of each tribe.

The frenzy one sees on a derby Sunday surely will tell you that the scores by Bosso are only by Ndebele players, yet the reverse is true. Talk in the street is that Bosso is a team for the Ndebele thus the ethnic derogatory innuendos passed towards Shona people on that match day. The politics of soccer should be about entrepreneurship; however, our situation denies us the fun of going to Barbourfields where Zimbabweans don’t exist but only Shona and Ndebele.

Zimbabweans should know that the greatest friend of African nationalism is race-consciousness; the greatest enemy of African nationhood is ethnic-consciousness. Modern African nationalism was born and prospered under the stimulation of racial solidarity and shared blackness. On the other hand, the struggle for viable modern nations within Africa is considerably hampered by acute ethnic cleavages, often separating Bantu from Nilotes, Ndebele from Shona, Igbo from Hausa and the like.

This week I examine this fundamental dialectic, since it is precisely this which has made the transition from African nationalism to African nationhood so painful and demanding in the wake of democracy in Africa.

We have ceased to be ourselves as a people that our daily misfortunes are ethnic arrogated. When we reduce our means of capability to ethnic particularism, we have missed the plot of nationhood.

All our efforts of political consciousness after a conquest of coloniality become futile because we create new wars of tribal superiority borrowed from historical tales. I do not deny that primitive settlement was based on conquest ability hence kinship was paramount in political structures, but we have long moved from that phase, perhaps we need to re-visit the truth; history should be revised, in any case it’s a human invention.

As our political events unfold, let us re-think what ethnicity and contest brings to our political landscape. This is the quandary that Zimbabwe is beleaguered in today and we need not ignore it. The bearing that clanism has on any country’s productivity and success is synonymous with most failing states.

By virtue of groups identifying themselves separate from others based on linguistic variances, cultural background, kuDotito, koMadabe, koSiphepha routes and historiography, merit is immediately substituted and mediocrity in place of excellence presides. This is the blight that has hit Africa and Zimbabwe has not been spared, and I shall not watch as it will be used to make life changing decisions in 2018.

Part of the project for shaping the future of our children is to make the right decision today so that they enjoy the fruits of our thoughts. Current political divisions in the country are emerging on tribal grounds both in ruling party and opposition. The politics of “mzukuru wasekuru” has plundered the potential of politics as a transformative tool in economic liberalisation of the black Zimbabwean.

Our shift from the Smith regime has been smitten by ethnic dynastic appointments which have suppressed the potential of a capable Zimbabwean to deliver. Affirmative action has failed as a model to counter this ethnic sickness. You see, the 1987 Unity Accord may have successfully united PF-Zapu and Zanu-PF as liberation movements, but it did not draw the unity of those in the periphery. As I have said before, preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity or gender or some other morally irrelevant criterion, discriminating in favour of under-represented groups against over-represented groups, aiming at roughly equal results is reverse discrimination.

It says it is right to do wrong to correct a wrong. It is the policy that is currently being promoted under the name of affirmative action. This is the model that most political parties have taken in Zimbabwe, deputies from parties are from Matabeleland if you look closely and this has angered a sect in the population of Zimbabwe. The question is how should we address ethno politics as we map our way towards the decisive year?

The major problem with ethnic biased political participation is that it pushes those who have been elected into power on cultural belonging to limit their functions to their kinship management as they are installed as an ethnic representative not the best or capable man on land to execute office functions; this is when politics of marginalisation strikes when other sub groups feel left out from positions of “influence”.

Traditionally, we have believed that the highest positions in society should be awarded to those who are best qualified. The Koran states that “A ruler who appoints any man to an office, when there is in his dominion another man better qualified for it, sins against God and against the State”. Rewarding excellence both seems just to the individuals in the competition and makes for efficiency. Note that one of the most successful acts of racial integration, the Brooklyn Dodger’s recruitment of Jackie Robinson in the late 40s, was done in just this way, according to merit.

If Robinson had been brought into the major league as a mediocre player or had batted 200 he would have been scorned and sent back to the minors where he belonged. As I always argue in my social conversations, merit is not an absolute value, but there are strong prima facie reasons for awarding positions on its basis, and it should enjoy a weighty presumption in our social practices. Public institutions should not be known for asking for your surname first before they attend to you, if we so find our spaces being denoted as so, we surely have a big problem, we do not need to decolonise the spaces, we need detribalisation of the space.

While we are still asking ourselves of criterion of an ideal individual to vote into any office come 2018, let us think of the essence of deliberative democracy how evaluating individuals on policy feasibility, trend analysis not ethnic belonging is essential in building our nation. Our plight as Zimbabweans has risen to be of who is Ndebele or Shona and who should get what because they are either of the two ethnic groups.

Society has ignored that it’s creating a new eliminative hierarchy of equally important groups which do not subscribe to Shona or Ndebele. If our political competition is reduced to a contest of Ndebele versus Shona, we simply have ridiculed a political market of endangered ethnic groups. Our deliberate pluralism of Ndebele to encompass Tonga, Venda, Kalanga, Sotho and other Nguni languages limits political competitiveness of these important groups that have capable thinkers who should have a chance in the leadership race.

When we make politics to be about our ethnic belonging, we are creating a new discrimination of Zimbabweans who when they feel the violence of exclusion exerted on them, they contribute to voter apathy. Many at times, people vote for someone they can relate to, based on their areas of common interest and these interests should now be about economic and sustainable livelihood capacity delivery.

Drawing on the work of historians like David Beach and Terrence Ranger, Gerald Mazarire concludes that the “Shona”- a term signifying linguistic, cultural and political characteristics of a people, did not even know themselves by that name until the late nineteenth century, and even then were described as “vaNyai”, ‘abeTshabi’, ‘Karanga”, or “Hole”.

In the case of the Ndebele who settled in the south-west of the Zimbabwe plateau after 1840, what began as a movement of a small Khumalo clan from the Zulu Kingdom as a result of the nineteenth century Mfecane in South Africa, developed into a more heterogeneous nation composed of Rozvi, Kalanga, Birwa, Tonga, Nyubi, Venda and Sotho, brought together through a combination of conquest, assimilation and incorporation.

In emphasising the need to move away from the conception of ethnicity as static and primordial, Terrence Ranger argues that the importance of showing that tribal identity is not inevitable, unchanging, given, but a product of human creativity that can be re-invented and refined to become again open, constructive and flexible, subordinate to other loyalties and associations. Being Ndebele is a creation of coloniality, identifying someone as “Shona” is derogatory and exclusive of other important groups therefore we need to identify ourselves as Zimbabweans not primitive beings that bank on barbaric politics of conquest and plunder.

It was necessary at that time; it does not have space today. If 2018 is to bring a difference, Zimbabweans should start working on making decisions based on political viability not ethnic congruence. When Sabelo Gatsheni asks…Do Zimbabweans exist? Let us not be left with no answer, political decisions should be made by Zimbabweans not families or kinsmen.#2018willtell.
Micheal Mhlanga is a research and strategic communication specialist and is currently serving Leaders for Africa Network (LAN) as the Programmes and Public Liaison Officer.

He also administrates multiple youth public dialogue forums in Zimbabwe including the annual Reading Pan Africanism Symposium (REPS) and Back to Pan Africanism Conference. Feedback can be sent to [email protected]