Online Reporter
Gibson Nyikadzino
Ziimpapers Politics Hub
THEY say that politics cannot do without ideology. Ideology acts as a mediator between the political institution and the masses, explaining and interpreting values, beliefs and principles that govern the politics of the party.
Likewise, this applies in similar fashion. The ruling class or the dominant elite cannot do anything without a class of intellectuals who also act as mediators between the leaders and the people, implementing and shaping what is in their interests, their ideas and pursuits.
Such was the role that the late hero Cde Isaak Stanislaus Gorerazvo Mudenge, or Stan Mudenge, played for the political leaders and the society in his various roles as an academic, historian, diplomat and intellectual. He was born on December 17, 1941, died on October 4, 2012. He was buried at the National Heroes Acre on October 8.
Throughout history, intellectuals have often played a key role in struggles for the modernisation of societies, national liberation and social justice.
For Cde Mudenge, at national and institutional level as a member of the ZANU PF Politburo, Central Committee and legislator, he was a formidable force in the shaping of liberation understanding and guiding action towards resisting oppression in intellectual and ideological ways. The struggle for intellectual liberation is a critical component of the contemporary practice of philosophy in Africa, explaining how Zimbabwe is today managing to scale some greater heights in diverse sectors. Such can be attributed to the role intellectual organisations play.
At every stage of change in the very nature of society, there exists increasing complexities and accelerating social dynamics, some that threaten to change and tear the social community, but the intelligentsia interpret the new structural and functional features that society will be taking.
Cde Mudenge was one person, among the many, who was responsible for articulating the values that underpinned the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe and introducing concepts to drive the masses forward against colonialism.
Having started his political activism in the 1960s against the colonial establishment, he was later arrested in June 1966 and expelled from the University of Rhodesia for opposing the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Ian Smith regime and subsequently spent a year as a detainee at Gonakudzingwa Prison.
Because the colonial regime feared student activists, by arresting, expelling and imprisoning Cde Mudenge, the racist establishment was trying to block him and others from articulating the struggle for the liberation of the working class and the people who were exploited under colonialism.
Such anti-colonial waves led by Cde Mudenge were not only intended to contest the idea of empire and the alleged European ‘civilising mission’ of Africa and Zimbabwe, but was a step towards the delegitimation and ultimate end of European colonial and imperial rule.
Upon his release in 1967, he left Rhodesia to attend the University of York in England to further his studies, where he obtained a degree in history in 1968, marking an illustrious nationalist journey for Zimbabwe’s independence that took him to Sierra Leone and Lesotho.
As a historian, that discipline was crucial for Cde Mudenge to influence many people back then in the quest to stimulate revolutionary change and political action. It is crucial to highlight that societies study history because history does not stay behind people, but it lives with people to help them understand how events in the past made things the way they are today.
In 1969, he was elected the Zimbabwe African National union (ZANU) Students’ union Secretary for Information while in the United Kingdom, before attaining his PhD from the University of London 1972.
Due to his political and intellectual vibrancy, in 1977, he was designated as the Zanu Secretary for External Affairs in Lesotho where he was a Dean of History at the National University of Lesotho.
At independence in 1980, Cde Mudenge was among the first bureaucrats who shaped national institutions and contributed to their longevity and sustainability 45 years later. Having been appointed to be Zimbabwe’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations among other portfolios, the crucial turn of his tenure came when Zimbabwe embarked on the historic agrarian reform as the Foreign Affairs Minister from 1995 to 2005.
It was a crucial moment for Zimbabwe, in reality and upon today’s reflection. He was the face of Zimbabwe’s foreign policy when the country was attacked internally through the funding by the West, of opposition parties, when international corporate media built a negative opinion on Zimbabwe and when Zimbabwe was labelled a pariah state, just to isolate it.
As Zimbabwe’s top diplomat, back then, he steered the ideological projection that was anti imperialistic in nature, character and form, giving credence to the importance of self-determination, non-interference and the principle of equality among nations.
He was a vigorous defender of the Zimbabwean revolution and became a tough negotiator for the benefit of Zimbabwe, leading to new alliances and pronouncements like the Look East Policy. His insistence that Zimbabwe would awaken after the challenges with the West is represented today.
Such is the role of intellectuals in liberation politics. They are people who possess a diverse wisdom and foresight, who apply their intellect and forward-looking visions for the purpose of awakening society. In the education sector, he was an instrumental figure in implementing government policies that ensured there was a connection between the people and the national leadership.
His contributions to society were provoking in order to open people to new ideas.
It is now incumbent on new intellectuals to use their skills and benefit society which they belong to. It will be of no use to be educated and smart in ideas yet the society we belong and live in does not reflect that. Now is the time to use all intellectual efforts to complement the groundwork that heroes like Cde Mudenge laid.
In his physical absence, some of his high-level responses to acts of misinformation and misrepresentation are greatly inspirational in dealing with rumours. At a graduation ceremony at Harare Polytechnic in 2010, Cde Mudenge denied, in humorous mastery of the Queen’s language, claims that pupils were prohibited from completing examinations due to outstanding costs.
“Such a claim is playing fandango dance with the facts. It is based on a farrago of confusion which has created a phantasmagoria of conflicting images of dreamland on the minds of the public,” he said.
Such was Cde Mudenge, the intellectual!
